Unpaid Internships: Bad for Students, Bad for Workers, Bad for Society
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Re: Unpaid Internships: Bad for Students, Bad for Workers, Bad for Society
#2Are internships with The Atlantic paid or unpaid?
Edit: According to this article: http://www.dailyfinance.com/2010/04/06/atlantic-publisher-ta... all atlantic interns are paid.
Re: Unpaid Internships: Bad for Students, Bad for Workers, Bad for Society
#3is this really an issue in the tech industry? I'm studying in austria, absolved an internship in germany, got paid quite well and so did all my fellow students (internships all over europe, US, australia).
Re: Unpaid Internships: Bad for Students, Bad for Workers, Bad for Society
#4I got paid during my internship and when I later started a company we always paid our interns.
I think as a general rule internships should be paid simply because if the company can't afford to hire an intern then they shouldn't be having one in the first place.
I realize it's a nice way to get some help for your struggling business and if someone really want to get in to a place that isn't looking for interns then it makes some sense.
Re: Unpaid Internships: Bad for Students, Bad for Workers, Bad for Society
#5is this really an issue in the tech industry? I'm studying in austria, absolved an internship in germany, got paid quite well and so did all my fellow students (internships all over europe, US, australia).
In my experience - no. I have worked at startups ranging in size from 3 to 20 developers and funding from 25k incubator grants to multimillion dollar series A, and never have I gone unpaid. The two YC companies I applied to and received offers for this summer also offered pay, and Google, Microsoft, et al all have very competitive offers.
Re: Unpaid Internships: Bad for Students, Bad for Workers, Bad for Society
#6is this really an issue in the tech industry? I'm studying in austria, absolved an internship in germany, got paid quite well and so did all my fellow students (internships all over europe, US, australia).
Here in the Netherlands, from what I gather, it's the norm, yes. My gf did all of her internships for free, and the place I work at now pays something like 200 euros/month to their interns, which comprise almost half of our staff. They do pretty great work, too - definitely comparable with what a full-time employee produces.
Comparing it to the one internship I did while at university in the UK, where I worked at UBS for a summer and was paid enough to buy bottles of champagne at a bar on pay day to celebrate and go shopping at Harrods, it seems pretty unfair.
Re: Unpaid Internships: Bad for Students, Bad for Workers, Bad for Society
#7is this really an issue in the tech industry? I'm studying in austria, absolved an internship in germany, got paid quite well and so did all my fellow students (internships all over europe, US, australia).
Mainly an issue outside of tech, I believe. With the kinds of wages that Microsoft/Google/IBM/nVidia/Facebook/Oracle/etc. pay interns, it's going to be pretty difficult to recruit good interns with an offer of $0, unless circumstances are pretty unusual (unusual location, some kind of super-hot niche product, etc.).
Re: Unpaid Internships: Bad for Students, Bad for Workers, Bad for Society
#8Do we have a good economic narrative for unpaid internships outside of naturally abusive talent driven industries (music, film, journalism)?
Do internships just fall in this hole where you'd like to have an office wench but can't quite justify it in a budget, or is it entirely a made up social convention where older generations are extracting rents from new graduates?
At any rate, the effect seems pretty clear to me: unpaid internships are huge drivers of inequality. They obviously limit opportunities for social mobility towards people that can be subsidized, or otherwise have access to liquidity. There's something really insidious about pushing people away from increasingly wide classes of cushy jobs they're otherwise perfectly capable of performing.
Startups: pay your (non technical) interns minimum wage, at least. It makes me kind enraged to see this start to happen in our industry.
Re: Unpaid Internships: Bad for Students, Bad for Workers, Bad for Society
#9I got paid during my internship and when I later started a company we always paid our interns. I think as a general rule internships should be paid simply because if the company can't afford to hire an intern then they shouldn't be having one in the first place. I realize it's a nice way to get some help for your struggling business and if someone really want to get in to a place that isn't looking for interns then i…
I agree completely. To be honest I don't even understand how it's legal (I'm in the EU). I think through some kind of academia-related loophole.
Re: Unpaid Internships: Bad for Students, Bad for Workers, Bad for Society
#10Do we have a good economic narrative for unpaid internships outside of naturally abusive talent driven industries (music, film, journalism)? Do internships just fall in this hole where you'd like to have an office wench but can't quite justify it in a budget, or is it entirely a made up social convention where older generations are extracting rents from new graduates? At any rate, the effect seems pretty clear to me:…
I hope your last sentence is meant to suggest technical interns should be paid above minimum wage, rather than that only non-techs should be paid fairly?