61–70 of 112 posts
Jeff said it best when he was asked the question at an event in Boston, "What is better, YC or TechStars?" Jeff's answer: "You can teach a hacker business, but you can't teach a businessman how to hack". 'nuff said.
Give me a break.
Actually, rather than repeat myself, here's my comment from a couple weeks ago:
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Unethical is way too harsh. This is NOT class discrimination. If you ask me,judging on the basis of GPA alone is class discrimination. Poor people don't stand a fighting chance. But that's a slightly different argument. Unpaid internships don't impose requirements that would keep you from getting paid elsewhere, so regardless of your economic situation, you can decide how much you want to work. My employer doesn't ca…
You've gotta be kidding me. Being poor prevents you from having a high GPA?
(Disclosure: I'm one of the founders of Devver, one of the TechStars 08 companies) I think that some of the variables will likely need to be adjusted (for example, 15 hours per week seems high to me), but I think the fundamental idea is interesting, although it's clearly not for everyone. At 15 hours a week, it's clear that a volunteer developer is not going to come close to replacing a technical founder or a full-ti…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I know everyone can't do this because at some point you need compensation Which is why using unpaid internships to screen your hires is unethical. It's an artfully disguised form of class discrimination. Lots of very smart and hardworking people cannot afford to work for free. Apparently those people are at a severe disadvantage when applying to work at your company. And it's not as if unpaid internships offer financ…
Unethical is way too harsh. This is NOT class discrimination. If you ask me,judging on the basis of GPA alone is class discrimination. Poor people don't stand a fighting chance. But that's a slightly different argument. Unpaid internships don't impose requirements that would keep you from getting paid elsewhere, so regardless of your economic situation, you can decide how much you want to work. My employer doesn't ca…
Here's what I'd say to that: "I enjoy doing work that adds value. If you have something valuable for me to do for your company, pay me what it is worth. If not, I'll be happy to sit in your air-conditioned office writing free software that has value for me. And then you will be able to see how much I enjoy doing that."
But you probably shouldn't say that out loud. You're not in a very strong negotiating position, after all.
This illustrates another reason why unpaid internship is pernicious: It doesn't teach anyone how well you add value. Because your time is unmetered and unpaid, you have no incentive to spend it wisely. And your employer certainly has no incentive to track it -- at least not out loud. (Imagine the conversation: "Wow, last week you worked 10 hours for free and saved the company $100k. Have a muffin!") What, exactly, is either of you learning? I guess your employer is learning how much value you can be coerced to add, for free, without you noticing or complaining. And you're learning how to look and act like a model employee.
Onward. "You can decide how much you want to work?" Yeah, I guess. I could also "decide" to live in a cardboard box and save on expenses. If I have a family, I could "decide" to never see them because I have to work two jobs instead. If I've got elderly parents I could "decide" not to take care of them.
But, more likely, an unpaid internship requirement will tend to select for young people with no family and a lot of time to spend at work. How convenient. Especially since overtly screening your employees for these traits is against the law.
Do you see why I'm tempted to call this "unethical" yet?
Anyway, none of this is to suggest that you're doing the wrong thing. We have to live with the hands we're dealt. Congratulations for finding a way forward, and good luck with your jobs.
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A few months ago, a guy from DePaul sent me an email and we got coffee. His "weekend" was during the normal work week, because of his shift job. He was looking for something to do during that off time. He had no work experience in our field. We picked him up. He's been excellent. So your (somewhat strange) questions, broken down: "Apply for and get a job" --- Check. "Work however many hours they want" --- You need to…
If your intern does work that you charge your client for, then of course it makes sense to compensate him or her. At my unpaid internship, I came in with no programming experience. They basically paired me with sr. programmers so I could learn how to program efficiently, but was still too inexperienced to give me actual client work they could charge for. Believe me, I wouldn't want to charge the client either for the…
http://bit.ly/13kxv3
(Timur works for us full-time now, of course).
I don't have to compromise the work we deliver for our clients to put interns on useful projects. And we're a special case: we do hard core programming work on a billable basis. Most of the companies people talk about on HN don't have that problem. There's a million useful things an intern can do without jeopardizing product quality.
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You've gotta be kidding me. Being poor prevents you from having a high GPA?
Prevents? No. I didn't say that. But being poor usually means you don't have access to the same levels of education. Read the comments in this thread. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=520836
I've read one of Gladwell's other books, and I think he makes the same mistake you are making. A correlation does not necessarily imply "discrimination" or that the odds can't be overcome. For instance, women have higher GPAs than men, on average. That doesn't mean that using GPA as an indicator of performance discriminates against males. It might mean that males might need to work harder or do something a bit differently in order to get the same GPA.
In the end, my admittedly subjective take is that the biggest factor is individual motivation. We all have our setbacks and obstacles to overcome, but that's just the craps of life. I can verify, however, that it is indeed possible to go from moving out of your house at 16 with no money to graduating Phi Beta Kappa from Stanford (not me, but someone very close to me). Difficult, yes... but it shows that there is almost always a "fighting chance."
Even if this program deserves a critical assessment, that doesn't belong in a sarcastic headline.
In general, any sort of unpaid internship biases against people who aren't well enough off to work for free (i.e. whose parents won't support them while they do). It's really a kind of class discrimination that prevents people from lower socioeconomic standing from having much of a chance at certain jobs (like in the finance world) that tend to rely heavily on unpaid internships. One thing I've always liked about my…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Unethical is way too harsh. This is NOT class discrimination. If you ask me,judging on the basis of GPA alone is class discrimination. Poor people don't stand a fighting chance. But that's a slightly different argument. Unpaid internships don't impose requirements that would keep you from getting paid elsewhere, so regardless of your economic situation, you can decide how much you want to work. My employer doesn't ca…
they just want to see how much you enjoy doing the work. Here's what I'd say to that: "I enjoy doing work that adds value . If you have something valuable for me to do for your company, pay me what it is worth. If not, I'll be happy to sit in your air-conditioned office writing free software that has value for me . And then you will be able to see how much I enjoy doing that." But you probably shouldn't say that out…
I guess I just don't see this practice as unethical because if I look at the whole spectrum of unethical behaviors, this seems very minor to me. Does that make it excusable? Probably not. But to me this is just about acquiring a skill which I previously did not have. It's not about recognition or compensation.
But even still, I fail to see what my employers are doing wrong. You will be compensated for the skills you bring to the company and what you produce. And if you're middle aged with a family to support you could get a paid job there if you had the skills. If not, you could apply for the unpaid internship.
But nothing bars you from getting hired, so that's why I don't view it as an injustice. At the end of the day, its a choice, and if you didn't like the terms, you are perfectly free to go somewhere else.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Prevents? No. I didn't say that. But being poor usually means you don't have access to the same levels of education. Read the comments in this thread. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=520836
No -- you didn't say anything about education level, which is tangential to GPA. What you said is "judging on the basis of GPA alone is class discrimination. Poor people don't stand a fighting chance." In other words, if you're poor, you don't stand a chance of (i.e. are prevented from) being able to achieve a high GPA. My experience says differently. I've read one of Gladwell's other books, and I think he makes the…