Calling Bullshit on Unpaid Interships

Unpaid internships are essentially a form of serfdom.<p>The serf system in Russia IIRC started with free peasants who sold themselves into slavery to the landowner when they fell into debt - unlike African slaves in the US, who were essentially kidnapped into servitude.<p>In the same vein people are taking up voluntary servitude in order to get a paid job - sometimes even paying for the privilege.<p>Moreover - a point not raised in the article - in expensive cities the only way a fresh graduate can survive without salary is if their parents subsidize them. Who can afford to do so ? Rich families. So it's a form of discrimination.<p>A company has <i>no</i> excuse for not paying at least minimum wage. If you can't afford the employees you need you shouldn't be in business, period. Any company that uses unpaid internships is morally bankrupt and should be boycotted.

And as usual, I disagree.<p>When I was just starting my career, I would have gladly worked for free as an intern to get my foot in the door of the industry. Now, I wouldn't have done it for -long-, but internships aren't supposed to last a long time. As it was, instead I spent a year unemployed, and then took a job as a stock clerk at a grocery store. That time would have been much better spent as an intern... Especially since I think I could have found a job after 3 months of being an intern. 6 at the most.<p>The reason his entire post is wrong is that the person DOES get something out of it. They get training (whether it was structured or not is a different matter) and they get experience. Guess what helps you get a job most in the IT industry? Experience.<p>As for being hired, any company worth their salt will offer a real job to anyone who shows skill. Job offers should never be automatic.

Perhaps it is different for design, but taking on an intern for a software shop is almost always a greater burden than benefit.<p>I interned at a few different places while in college, and I was definitely way ahead of the class as far as writing useful code. Regardless, the overhead of people bringing you up to speed on their specific projects and processes for only three months of work just doesn't match what you are going to contribute. The cold hard fact is that you are still junior, very junior, no matter how much a hotshot you think you are. So the time they put into you makes it a pretty even trade for it not to be paid.<p>Though come to think of it, both internships I went to were paid. But the point stands.<p>To put it simpler terms, ask any company whether they find new college graduates effective and worth the overhead for the first few months they work. I doubt many would say yes, and those are people more qualified than those seeking internships.

At my organization, we used to have unpaid internships for college students, but they would receive college credit. We thought that was still kinda B.S., so we found some money and created paid internships.<p>Back in the day, when I started my career, to get my foot in the door, I worked at a temp agency. "Word processing" was all the rage and they needed people who knew how to use Microsoft Word. After a couple of months the boss noticed I knew how to spell "glaciolacustrine" correctly, so he asked if I had a degree. A couple months later I was hired. All the time I was getting paid $10/hr.<p>That's the way firms should be finding and cultivating young talent: paid internships, temp services, and recruiting. Unpaid internships are indeed bullshit.

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.<p>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 this, but the fact that career experts who are supposed to help interns are offering these really blows my mind). These are people who don't have the ability to offer many of the benefits that do come with an unpaid internship such as making connections, learning what it's like to work in a real office, having a recognizable name on your resume, etc.<p>Another trend that scares me is that we're seeing more and more internships auctioned off in charity auctions. Rich parents actually pay for their kids to get some experience.<p>Unfortunately, interns aren't going to be the ones to stop this trend. Unpaid interns do benefit from their internships. They mostly accept it as something that they have to do, and they know that if they refuse to take an unpaid internship, there are thousands of other students who will snap up the opportunity.<p>Change is either going to have to come from employers or the government. I strongly believe that offering paid internships is more favorable to employers because they get better quality interns who are more motivated, and the employer has a stronger incentive to use the intern's time well.<p>Here in the U.S. there are already laws against unpaid internships. I wrote an article on it here: <a href="http://www.onedayoneinternship.com/blog/are-unpaid-internships-illegal/" rel="nofollow">http://www.onedayoneinternship.com/blog/are-unpaid-internshi...</a><p>There's actually an excellent and fair standard for determining when an unpaid internship should be allowed; however, I've never heard of an employer's being prosecuted under the Fair Labor Standards Act for having unpaid interns. And if the law were to start to be enforced, I'm not sure the outcome would benefit students in the short-term. There would be a lot fewer opportunities as many employers would get rid of their internship programs. This would result in even more competition for what paid opportunities were left.<p>I really hate unpaid internships, but I still haven't figured out what it's going to take to make them a thing of the past. They've become an essential part of the transition from education to employment, and messing around with that in a time when really talented grads are struggling to land jobs probably isn't a good idea. We may have to wait until the economy really heats up again.

If you're not paid, you're not valued. Nothing you produce will ever be good enough. Nobody will make time for you, because they have more valuable things to spend their time on. No money is lost if you're struggling to do your assignments; no money is lost if you don't learn anything.<p>A company should be invested into their interns and the best way to be invested is by paying them a wage and expecting decent work in return.

I work in academia. In academia, we pay crap, especially to the people at the bottom of the totem pole.<p>But even <i>we</i> pay our summer interns.

As this is Ireland I've got to assume there is also an element of trying to reduce the numbers who are technically unemployed and so make things look better. It sounds very familiar to the community employment schemes etc. from the '80s where people basically worked for their unemployment benefit so as to gain work experience / help the community. I can even remember being turned down at an interview for one of these way back when and feeling pretty bad. In the end some people will gain something &#38; some people will be exploited but it wont make much difference to the economy other than to help drive down wages.

Companies tend to save money at all costs, even at the expense of decency and Doing The Right Thing™. It's the same reason a lot of them have clauses in their contracts forbidding people from discussing their wages, even though it is in the employees' interests to do so.<p>I figured something out when thinking about this one day - where you're going is how you'll get there. If your goal is to make money, your goal is greed and your path will be a greedy one. If your goal is to make a positive contribution to those around you and get one back in return, then you will still make money but won't step on peoples' toes in the process.

It's not a problem for IT students. I could choose from many offers in my city. At our forums we laugh from low paid offers and I haven't seen unpaid one. I ended up going to different country and earn 1,1k euro with no real experience at all and I extended it during crisis (it was few years ago) so I guess I was useful.<p>If you really can't find anything it's better to make nice portfolio projects for yourself at home or work on some opensource project. It's similar experience but feels much better than working as slave for some awful company that can't even afford small wage.

Even Wal Mart will pay you while training you. If a company cannot meet that standard, something is wrong, imo.

The place I'm currently contracting in (mentioned in article) has their summer intern programme in full swing.<p>Not only are the guys getting decent pay but they are building a useful in-house app while getting trained up in technologies like OS X, Linux, Git, Ruby, Rails, MongoDB etc.<p>Win-win!

Perhaps this thread has gone too long, but the comments are overwhelmingly against doing work for free.<p>TL;DR - It’s an interns fault for taking crap free work, in essence putting their future in someone else’s hands.<p>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.<p>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.<p>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.<p>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.

30-day free trials are for software. People deserve more respect.

This past year I followed a web development course. I'm now supposed to work 3 months for free. I don't mind it because I've been jobless for a long time before. The problem is, I just can't find an employer (in France). I get the interviews, but my interviewer always assumes that I'm supposed to know everything by heart, have nothing more to learn, and more importantly, they want to see a portfolio of sites I've done before other than the one I've done in class. Basically, they don't want an intern, they want a real, super-fast worker for free. So I'm going to fail at my diploma because nobody wants me to work for free for them. To make it worse, I'm the best student of my class. Those who can't code found an internship. Are we supposed to lie and bluff to be allowed to be exploited?

0 is just one number along a range of numbers - it's not particularly special. In some cultures, it's considered normal to exchange not just free labor to get your foot in the door, but to actually pay cash to do so.<p>I am not convinced it's a net win for society.

While I think it's horrible if companies don't pay interns, I can see how the "you're learning things!" angle could seem more reasonable in the US.<p>My outside view is that a lot of Americans pay thousands of dollars to go to university.<p>Universities are, for a lot of people, just a means for learning a discipline and giving them more/better possibilities in a future job search.<p>While most internships aren't as "prestigious" as a university degree, they probably don't cost as much either.<p>In the end, both of them will have allowed you to make some new contacts, learn trade-specific things and add a new slot on your résumé.<p>p.s. this certainly doesn't go for all professions/internships. But the general direction seems about right.

Wow. We hire almost every intern that works for us, unless they suck. Internships are also normally done pre-graduation from college. It is not a job, it is in exchange for college credit. We hire the day they graduate.<p>But it is also up to the intern to decide whether or not our internship is right for them. A overgeneralized diatribe like the one posted is aiming to get people to not intern at all, whereas the appropriate act would be to critically evaluate your options, and make an informed decision about each specific company.

Personally I got a lot of value out of my unpaid internships (Kate Spade &#38; Sports Illustrated). Though I understand the reasons against it, I got to a) work with a great team, b) make some great business contacts for future job referrals, and c) get experience that looked great on my resume.<p>That said, I completely understand that my experience was the exception rather than the rule. Plus, both companies I interned at most likely could have afforded to pay me too.

In Germany I often see unpaid interns, but actually not in a bad situation. There are 2 situations in Germany when an unpaid internship will happen: One is, when the students working as interns are still going to their schools and maybe are first or second semesters. So actually they don't really create value, but they cost time, energy, working hours of coworkers, electricity, rent and so on. The company basically already pays a load to have this intern sitting there and a high chance to get no value back in return. I think in this situation it is quite fair, not to pay wages.<p>The second situation is, when students try to get a job, which a lot of people want to have, like at Google, Price Waterhouse Coopers and so on. In this situation the brand alone will help them out later to get better jobs or even give them a chance for a full time job in this company that others can't get. It's a little like doing a start-up. You put in a lot for the small chance to get a unnatural big payoff.<p>In both situations I can't disapprove of unpaid internships. I hope with sharing these experiences, other readers might get a more objective point of view. It is not all bad about unpaid internships!

I've had friends who wanted to get into journalism and publishing and the only way they could do it was by working for free for several months. Not even 'internships', just free work. Eventually, there were vacancies and they were the obvious hires.<p>I'm not suggesting this was fair but it was a pretty clear case of supply outstripping demand, which meant that employers could afford to let the system develop this way.

I can't find the article right now, but there have been studies about and there is evidence for that many people will do something for free, but if offered to be paid a market rate that is low for the same work, will <i>not</i> do it. In fact, they'll be insulted by the low value ascribed to it.<p>Personally I would feel like an a-hole offering someone minimum wage to do intern-level work at our startup. Nor would I want it on my resume that I worked as a web developer for $8/hour. They do <i>not</i> want a market price that low on their skills. They'd rather have a free internship on paper.<p>That said, it does all depend on context. In fact during high school I worked in a bio lab for free for about 50 hours and then asked for a paid internship (which was minimum wage) during the summer. However I was a high-schooler, so this was cool. But I would not have taken (and in fact turned down) low-paying jobs after college. So I can see that context does matter, and I don't think it's fair to rip on all unpaid internships with the same stroke.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't the idea of an internship about learning, not about producing? If your producing for the company something they are selling (or creating net value), don't you have to get paid? I mean, people here are talking about actually working on projects the company is earning money for. That's not an internship.<p>Am I clueless, or are other people just ignorant?

Last summer, I took an unpaid internship at a software company, if it can be called an internship. I was introduced to someone who worked there, and he got it worked out for me. I didn't work on core stuff for the company, so maybe it was less an internship than just hanging out in the offices while I worked on an open-source project relevant to them, specifically github.com/andrewf/pcap2har .<p>I learned a crap-load of stuff there, technical and otherwise. I am enormously better off having taken that opportunity. Would I have been worse off if I had worked on stuff that directly made them money? No.<p>My friend has left to work on his own startup, but I started this week as a paid intern. I hope to keep working part-time when I start school again.<p>I cant speak for other people's experience with less-scrupulous employers, but I have nothing but gratitude for the people who gave me my unpaid internship.

Companies often don't pay interns for 2 reasons: 1. They don't think they can afford to give them responsibility, and with no responsibility = no pay. This is a terrible relationship. (no pay = no responsibility as well) 2. They know that if it's unpaid - it's likely that only people very interested will apply - and this signal is, supposedly, very strong.<p>The 3 MAJOR problems are: 1. The company is sending a signal that says, "we don't trust you", "we don't think you can do valuable work", "and we don't value you enough to pay you" 2. The company gets lower skilled people, because the good ones get the jobs with good experience AND pay 3. Have you EVER tried to get a volunteer to do anything?! It's impossible. Incentives are not aligned.

Passing judgment on all unpaid internships in all situations is unreasonable. When deciding whether to accept an unpaid internship, common sense is the best guide.<p>I've seen both unpaid and paid interns treated poorly. I've also seen both thrive. I personally had 2 paid internships before I graduated college. One was demeaning and the other an incredible learning experience.<p>If an unpaid opportunity offers a lot and you can afford to take it, why not? How is this different than contributing to open source or doing pro bono for charities?<p>However, if a company doesn't want to pay, I'd suggest more caution. Ask lots of questions, and if you end up just getting people coffee, quit. Interns are working professionals just like anyone else and deserve equal respect.

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.<p>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.

This is what I learned from a half-day legal seminar in california aimed at startups:<p>In California, unless the work is for course credit at an established institution, an intern must be paid minimum wage. If not, the intern can do the work, and then file with the state, which will then do all the investigation. The intern doesnt need to get a laywer. They get the state's lawyers looking for a hefty fine, back taxes, and the opportunity to audit the hell out of someone. Start-ups are especially vulnerable to this because programmers who would normally be exempt probably aren't making enough and should be paid overtime. The state doesn't care what those programmers want. They want their back taxes.

There's a great book that came out recently, Intern Nation, it's the first exposé on this issue that I'm aware of. It is fantastic, totally engaging, covers all of the many aspects of the internship problem and its genesis.

The CV still rules when it comes to getting past HR departments and into interview. The HR departments (and employment agencies) I've worked with look directly at the Work Experience section of a CV and then tick off a bunch of boxes for the job they're trying to fill. Unpaid internships are one way to fill a CV with relevant experience. Find a way to bridge that gap and you don't need to do an unpaid internship. I went through 3 months of unpaid work with an ugly little company for exactly this reason, and it paid off, but those were the most trying 3 months of my professional career.

I had a paid internship but would have gladly done it unpaid if I had to. I interned at a big name place, so YMMV, but I can say that senior year when I was looking for jobs _no one_ cared about what I did in school and _everyone_ cared what I did at that internship.<p>You are not going to work there to do slave labor, you're getting bullet points on your resume, mentorship from senior engineers, as well as taking in the business environment which you've probably never seen before.<p>I hope no college student who can't find another option has decided to stick his nose up at an unpaid internship because of this post.

The problem is part informational. Grads take internships in the _hope_ it will lead to a job. For most it doesn't. Hope is perennial, so more bums can always be found for seats.<p>Banning them is unlikely in most countries as it's politically unrealistic. Exhorting companies not to do it is unreliable. So not easy to close off intern demand.<p>Tackling the supply side might be a better bet. The answer might be in educating grads to mentally file internships alongside diet pills and pyramid schemes. Providing alternatives also good (but more difficult).

In the US there's two very different sorts of internships.<p>The first is what you describe, scamming desperate people during a economic depression out of free skilled labor that has monetary value to the company.<p>The second is internships at places like magazines, newspapers and politicians offices. These ones are more interesting. Poor people and minorities can't afford to work for a year for free. But the children of the rich can. The internship provides cover to avoid having to hire minorities since hiring takes place from the internship pool.

Totally true; I did an unpaid internship for a startup and didn't learn a thing(actually they where doing a verrrry bad software engineering job). The advantage was that I didn't really had to work much &#38; I got grades for the internship @unif. But I wouldn't do it again.<p>I felt under valuated, I can make really complex s/w architectures, solve complex, challenging problems &#38; I was doing work that I could've done as a 14 year old during the internship..

I'm very desperate to join a startup as an intern or employee. Some of us (me) have been dreaming (literally) about being in a startup that it doesn't matter what we do, as long as we get in one. It's gotten to the point where I would even pay to be in one. What I get out of it is that I will see if a startup is right for me, and at this point that's all I can ask for.

While in college i chased a small design studio you have never heard of to take me as an unpaid intern. I learnt loads just watching them run a studio and work with clients. I do not see how they could possibly have justified paying me for the little value i gave back. Still gratefull for the opportunity they gave me.

I'm currently in my sixth and final year of pharmacy school which consists entirely of clinical rotations at different practice sites in the area. Not only are these internships completely unpaid, we have to pay ~$30k for the priviledge which equates to almost $1000/week (6 x 6 week rotations). It's a complete scam.

Are CS students not cynical enough? Compared to, say engineers (non-software)? Or is it just the effect of fierce and deep competition?<p>Or perhaps the potential for learning a lot (practical knowledge) in a short time is greater in software dev work than others?

The only reason for me to do an unpaid internship would be to do it a 'brand-name' company. You do see the best practices, meet an amazing team and it might lead to an eventual job with the company.<p>For an unknown company - not a chance.

It's all relative and depends entirely on how much you put into it and how much your employer does the same. I've had friends who've taken unpaid internships and have gotten entirely different experiences out of it.

If someone tells me I wont be paid..but still i want to take up that work ? why blame<p>But if someone fresh grad is duped into believing doing unpaid work will get him something else then its bad.

I have to disagree with calling unpaid internships a rip-off.<p>As a student, I see this as a way of getting something on the resume to break the catch-22 situation of having zero experience.

If products can be free so can interns.<p>Look at it as a freemium model.

I'm confused. Who forces people to work for free?

This guy clearly never had a company.<p>We do not pay our interns and still lose money in the process if we don't hire them after because we have lost too much time not just training but also fixing errors people at their first experience will do.<p>Nevertheless we still invest on internships because that's the only way to snap good talent just out of university.<p>So please, stop the bullshit. Yeah, and downvote away.

If you become an unpaid intern, then you better be learning 10 new things per day that you couldn't have learnd any other way. I can see where interning where be beneficial for both individual, company and society. However in the vast majority of cases the intern is just getting ripped off.

I don't know why there aren't more low-level tech jobs for college students. I paid for a couple years of state school by working in a deli. The only jobs I saw that would hire a "college kid" were <i>on campus</i>, and those basically boiled down to having the right connections as soon as you arrived. No longer a freshman and nothing related on your resume? Not interested.