Calling Bullshit on Unpaid Interships • Hacker News Board

Re: Calling Bullshit on Unpaid Interships

#151

Post by gnosis » Thu, Jun 30, 2011, 8:22 PM UTC

Klinky wrote: post #111

sans-serif wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Intriguingly enough, without outsourced jobs from first-world countries, economic development in the third world would be even slower and labor standards poorer due to the lack of employer competition.

Are you implying a chicken and egg scenario whereby a third-world needs a first-world before it can become a first world? Going by that logic there should have never been a first world country in the first place. Who was the United States' United States? Much of the third world is the way it is due to a history of instability, violence & repression, not necessarily a lack of well to do business men looking for an opp…

"Who was the United States' United States?"

Great Britain.

Re: Calling Bullshit on Unpaid Interships

#152

Post by deadmansshoes » Thu, Jun 30, 2011, 8:29 PM UTC

philwelch wrote: post #136

quanticle wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>If your labour has value then you can find work that pays you a rate for it (except for minimum wage - more about this shortly). You have the opportunity to expose yourself to experience by doing internships. If you don't have anything better to be doing, then it's a win-win situation for you and the person you're doing internship. That only works in an absolutely frictionless labor market. Meanwhile, in the real wo…

The minimum wage is a price floor, and like any price control, there's exactly two ways it can effect the economy: it can result in a shortage of labor or it can have absolutely no effect. At $7.25 it's closer to the "absolutely no effect" side of the spectrum--I've seen high turnover, low wage jobs priced above that due to market forces alone. There might be paid apprenticeships that are priced out of the market by…

Maybe a minimum wage policy has a wider remit than "the economy." Why bother with any regulations, or indeed employee rights at all? As for your arguments about immigrants - people may migrate to live "the American dream", but how many people's situations are actually improved?

Re: Calling Bullshit on Unpaid Interships

#153

Post by phxrsng » Thu, Jun 30, 2011, 8:31 PM UTC

In the US at least, there are many opportunities for paid internships. All the major tech companies offer them - Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, Facebook, Zynga, Boeing, Lockheed, etc - and many of the smaller ones do (though in smaller numbers). At almost all of them, interns are treated as normal engineers and put on teams as basically full time employees with an end date ~3-4 months after they start. They are paid very well (competitive with what a FT employee would make for 3 months). The internship can, and in many cases, does result in a full time or reintern offer.

The thing is, you have to be able to cut it and basically interview as someone who they would WANT to hire as a FT after a year or two more experience.

Re: Calling Bullshit on Unpaid Interships

#154

Post by rmc » Thu, Jun 30, 2011, 8:33 PM UTC

stevenwilkin wrote: post #106

rmc wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't realize that the unpaid internship situation is as bad in Ireland as it is here in the U.S. Ireland has been hit by a strong recession. Unemployment is high (~15%), and particularly high amount young people. Many are emigrating to find other work. The media is full of stories about how there are no jobs. Which is a shame because there is a massive skill shortage if you know programming/sysadmining in Ireland…

I can vouch for the skills gap here in Ireland. I have siblings working in fields which were quite dependent on the housing bubble and as such they have been out of work for some time. On the other hand, every IT recruiter I know here is complaining about the lack of candidates and I've had as much work as I've wanted in the past few years.

working in fields which were quite dependent on the housing bubble

To be fair a few years ago one quarter of working men worked in construction. That's just crazy.

Re: Calling Bullshit on Unpaid Interships

#155

Post by johngalt » Thu, Jun 30, 2011, 8:37 PM UTC

WillyF wrote: post #37

I didn't realize that the unpaid internship situation is as bad in Ireland as it is here in the U.S. My startup helps college students find entry level jobs and internships, so I'm constantly aware of what the latest trends are. One trend that really scares me is that there are some "career experts" whom I interact with regularly who offer their own unpaid virtual internships (I've seen lots of other internships like…

There will always be people looking to take advantage. I had a potential employer call me in for three multiple hour "interviews" during which time they grilled me on how I would handle problem X and design system Y. I was fairly naive because in hindsight it's obvious to me that they didn't want an employee just a free consultation. Smart hack on their part though, and I learned something too.

For the right job I'll offer a trial period. Usually a one-two month stint followed up by a buy or fly decision. Play it right and you have a lot of leverage. They just finished training you and you're showing a lot of promise out of the gate. In the managers head they are dreading the idea of having to go through the interview process all over again. The key is not to go looking for people offering unpaid work, but to find people who want to pay and make the buy decision easier.

When negotiating keep in mind that you have nothing to lose. If the job is unpaid you gain by leaving. The other side of the table has a lot more at stake. They lose someone they've spent a lot of time/money training, and they have to start over at square one with someone new. Don't underestimate how hard it is to find good people. Frankly if they aren't going to pay you then chances are you aren't that good, or the managers are fools for not trying to keep good people. In either case what would you gain by staying?

Re: Calling Bullshit on Unpaid Interships

#156

Post by ceejayoz » Thu, Jun 30, 2011, 8:45 PM UTC

yummyfajitas wrote: post #107

quanticle wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>In that setting you have to do one or more of retrain, move somewhere else, start your own business. Except the presence of a minimum wage makes two of those three more difficult than it would otherwise be. Without savings, how do you pay for retraining? Without savings, how do you pay for relocation? Without savings, how do you start a new venture of your own? Without a minimum wage, how does a person on the very b…

Without savings, how do you pay for retraining? One common method is to work for free for a short time, until you gain the skills necessary to perform a new job. Without a minimum wage, how does a person on the very bottom of the social scale accumulate savings? By reducing consumption. Where I live, the GDP per capita is about 40x lower than the US. The top 5% tends to have a standard of living comparable to the bot…

> By reducing consumption.

If you're making minimum wage, there's not much consumption to be lowered. Rent, transport, and food will eat it all up (and then some).

Re: Calling Bullshit on Unpaid Interships

#157

Post by mattdeboard » Thu, Jun 30, 2011, 8:57 PM UTC

jasonlotito wrote: post #130

tkahn6 wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But interns aren't producing anything (if they are, it's not an internship). That seems like a false dichotomy. I'm at an internship right now getting paid quite well and I'm contributing to their bottom line (albeit indirectly since I am working on internal tools). I'm also learning quite a lot.

Sorry, I should have been explicit (though, I feel I was fairly obvious). unpaid interships aren't producing anything. If you are getting paid, then it's not really relevant to the discussion of "unpaid internships."

Whatever point you thought you were making, you weren't. And even if you were, it certainly wasn't obvious.

Re: Calling Bullshit on Unpaid Interships

#158

Post by mattdeboard » Thu, Jun 30, 2011, 9:00 PM UTC

tkahn6 wrote: post #113

jasonlotito wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But interns aren't producing anything (if they are, it's not an internship). The idea is they are learning. If they are producing things the company then uses to sell, they should get paid. But I've seen interns that literally follow around, take notes, ask questions. So, why should someone be paid for not contributing to the bottom line?

> But interns aren't producing anything (if they are, it's not an internship). That seems like a false dichotomy. I'm at an internship right now getting paid quite well and I'm contributing to their bottom line (albeit indirectly since I am working on internal tools). I'm also learning quite a lot.

Same here as well. Though, probably not getting paid quite as much as an intern at Bloomberg. Still great money for an internship and I too am working on internal tools, which earned me a decent raise.

Paid internships are great for folks like you and me. In school with some good foundations in programming but really need to learn a lot more. The best opportunity for that is on internal tools where if we screw something up it won't be customer-facing and potentially lose money.

Re: Calling Bullshit on Unpaid Interships

#159

Post by chrisclark1729 » Thu, Jun 30, 2011, 9:03 PM UTC

Perhaps this thread has gone too long, but the comments are overwhelmingly against doing work for free.

TL;DR - It’s an interns fault for taking crap free work, in essence putting their future in someone else’s hands.

My experience: 3 years ago I was an accountant and thought about killing myself nearly every day. It used to take me 10 - 15 minutes to get out of my car every morning just to walk inside. I was able to use free work to transition from a boring career to one I enjoy in an incredibly short amount of time.

Rather than go back to school only to finish in debt and start at the bottom I was able to trade valuable work that I could do (finance/accounting) for experience in work that I wanted to do (development/data analysis). I would always suggest short projects so as not to overwhelm either party, but this turned out to be very favorable in the long run. One major caveat is that these were not company created internships. I wasn’t in the business of letting a company compile all of their shitty work only to pass it off on someone to do for free. THAT IS WHAT NEEDS TO BE CALLED BULLSHIT ON.

If a job seeker shows just a little initiative they can force free work to have a training component that is defined in advance and one from which they will benefit. Too many workers put their future in someone else’s hands by assuming the company has some training program mapped out for them. Not surprisingly, these are exactly the types of employees who continue the cycle of useless and exploitative internships that you rail against.

If you are doing work for free, YOU are on the hook. You hold most of the cards because there is nothing forcing you to continue working.

Re: Calling Bullshit on Unpaid Interships

#160

Post by philwelch » Thu, Jun 30, 2011, 9:18 PM UTC

deadmansshoes wrote: post #152

philwelch wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The minimum wage is a price floor, and like any price control, there's exactly two ways it can effect the economy: it can result in a shortage of labor or it can have absolutely no effect. At $7.25 it's closer to the "absolutely no effect" side of the spectrum--I've seen high turnover, low wage jobs priced above that due to market forces alone. There might be paid apprenticeships that are priced out of the market by…

Maybe a minimum wage policy has a wider remit than "the economy." Why bother with any regulations, or indeed employee rights at all? As for your arguments about immigrants - people may migrate to live "the American dream", but how many people's situations are actually improved?

Maybe a minimum wage policy has a wider remit than "the economy."

That doesn't make much sense to me. The consequences of a minimum wage law are purely economic, on the people as a whole and on the employers and employees affected by that law, as well as on the people who aren't employed due to that law.

Why bother with any regulations, or indeed employee rights at all?

Some regulations are helpful; some aren't. I'm just talking about the minimum wage.

As for your arguments about immigrants - people may migrate to live "the American dream", but how many people's situations are actually improved?

That question is for them to answer. If they don't find their conditions improved, they're free to return home. (Obviously, I'm setting aside cases of human trafficking and so forth--that's an entirely separate issue, and I think we both agree that human trafficking is wrong.)