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Federal law for unpaid interns in for-profit organizations requires that six criteria be met: (1) the work or training should function as an extension of the in

by grellas 17y ago

Federal law for unpaid interns in for-profit organizations requires that six criteria be met: (1) the work or training should function as an extension of the intern's educational training; (2) it should be provided primarily for the benefit of the intern; (3) it does not replace the work performed by regular employees; (4) it does not provide the employer with any immediate benefit; (5) it does not entitle the intern to employment at the end of the internship; and (6) there is no expectation by employer or intern that compensation will be paid for the work or training. To have a bona fide intern, all six of the criteria need to be met. State law may also impose additional requirements, as for example in California where the training must be part of an official educational curriculum at an accredited school - California imposes other restrictions as well. All in all, the rules may be well-meaning but they effectively kill opportunities for students to get training in many situations where the employer would otherwise normally be glad to make the opportunities available. In practical terms, it means that an employer wanting to open opportunities to students needs to pay minimum wage at least. Of course, the idea of the regulations is to prevent employers from circumventing minimum wage rules by dressing up what is really a job as an "internship" and in this sense they serve a protective function. Mark Cuban once did a piece entitled "Want an Unpaid Internship So You Can Get Valuable Experience - Screw You" (http://blogmaverick.com/2009/09/05/want-an-unpaid-internship-so-you-can-get-valuable-experience-screw-you/ http://blogmaverick.com/2009/09/05/want-an-unpaid-internship...) in which he recounted his frustrations in dealing with the federal regulations, and this in turn elicited an interesting and lively thread here at HN (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=806563 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=806563).

_delirium 17y ago
In tech at least, I've always found the "valuable experience" argument to be a bit of a scam. There are plenty of companies that will be happy to pay you a good stipend (not even anywhere near minimum wage) for an internship. If you want something less job-like, you can work informally with lots of smaller companies, visiting their office and doing odd jobs, essentially as an unpaid freelancer (e.g. find something crappy about their site and offer to fix it). But if they want someone coming in to the office 40 hrs/wk, with a boss and deliverables, they should be prepared to pay them in something more than vague promises of "valuable experience".
- brettnak 17y ago
  I, too, believe that most technology internships are a total scam. The usual phrase from a small company is that they want a 'rock star' ( insert your synonym here ) intern. I'm fairly certain that any 'rock star' intern can replace many hours of labor spent by an FTE. To put it in some perspective, and this is all personal point of view, I believe that a company in three to four months of a full time internship should be able to teach a computer science student ruby, rails to a working knowledge extent, the why's and how's of why rails is the way it is (the ups and downs of MVC, convention over configuration, etc), limited database knowledge, and some basic UI/UX considerations. Deeper knowledge into any of those (especially databases with CAP and the whole sql/nosql argument) would be valuable if there were any time remaining. And, obviously, the previous paragraph can be replaced by the equivalents in your specific niche. EDIT: spelling
lionhearted 17y ago
Always insightful to have you weigh in on the Grellas - cheers. As for this... > this in turn elicited an interesting and lively thread here at HN (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=806563 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=806563). There's a lot of ignorance in that thread. People seem completely unable to imagine the other side of the table in situations they haven't been in. I did an unpaid internship for the state government at one point for a couple months and learned quite a bit how government works, made some friends, and got to meet some interesting people. Later, I had an unpaid intern come in and work for 3 hours twice a week with me. It evolved into me sitting, working hands on and training him for 2 and a half hours of that time, teaching him all sorts of things, and he'd make some reports during the week about that and some writeups, which I used as the basis of some marketing literature. But if I'm going to be totally honest - it was a fun experience, a good time, he's a great guy, but it was a bad business decision. I'd have produced a lot more in the 6-10 hours per week on my own or working with one of my paid staff or contractors than I did with him. He got a heck of a lot of it. Me? I mean, it was good fun, I learned some things, I don't regret it at all, but in the end the time cost on my side was more than it was worth. An unpaid internship can absolutely be worth a heck of a lot - I mean, many of us wind up paying thousands for some college courses of dubious value. Getting to spend hands-on time with someone talented, seeing how they do things - that can be a tremendous amount of value if you're in the right organization working with the right person or people. Personally, I probably won't take an unpaid intern again, but there's a lot of people I'd work for free for in some capacity to learn from.
stretchwithme 17y ago
I agree. Probably kills a lot of learning and a lot of jobs. But that's just unintended consequences. Why should government be concerned with those, unless there is some expansion of government that can be engineered to address it?
- ig1 17y ago
  There is a strong argument against unpaid internships, they're hugely damaging to social mobility. If you need an unpaid internship to enter a career you're essentially excluding anyone from a poorer background (who have to work for money) from those occupations.
  - fexl 17y ago
    Problem is there's no middle ground between $0.00 per hour and $7.15 per hour. If you outlaw $0.00 then those opportunities would simply cease to exist for everyone, including poor people working at McDonald's who could swing an internship on the side.
    - ig1 17y ago
      Yes. But it means those from more well off backgrounds and those from poorer backgrounds will be on a more level playing field when it comes to applying for permanent jobs.
      - fexl 17y ago
        No, people with money can afford to purchase technical and vocational training which poor people cannot. Money is valuable. If money did not confer advantages to its owner, it would not be valuable. Therefore a "level playing field" between people with more money and people with less money cannot exist. Besides, you are saying that you would forcefully prevent peaceful people from making mutually beneficial voluntary contractual arrangements among themselves, simply because not everyone is capable of participating. The implications are monstrous. Keep in mind that you are also forcefully excluding the McDonald's worker doing a part-time internship on the side.
URSpider94 17y ago
My take on this is that anyone who would be worth taking on as an unpaid intern, is worth paying minimum wage. I can imagine that not all employers feel this way, but for a typical high-tech company (especially a start-up), the opportunity cost to train and integrate a new team member for, say 6 months, would dwarf a minimum salary.
- WildUtah 17y ago
  anyone who would be worth taking on as an unpaid intern, is worth paying minimum wage It's not the money you save by not paying the intern that is valuable to the explosion of companies that want unpaid interns. The real value comes in restricting the opportunity to people of the right social class and with the right family connections to be able to subsidize your company by paying. Working unpaid costs money for commuting, for dressing up, by closing the chance to work a job for money, and other ways. Only the privileged can afford to do it. So if you want to include only the already privileged in your company, unpaid internships are the way to go. And that's also the reason they should be tightly regulated or outlawed.
  - pyre 17y ago
    "Unpaid intern" doesn't mean "unpaid full-time intern." You could intern, unpaid, while working other jobs.

by grellas 17y ago

_delirium 17y ago

In tech at least, I've always found the "valuable experience" argument to be a bit of a scam. There are plenty of companies that will be happy to pay you a good stipend (not even anywhere near minimum wage) for an internship. If you want something less job-like, you can work informally with lots of smaller companies, visiting their office and doing odd jobs, essentially as an unpaid freelancer (e.g. find something crappy about their site and offer to fix it). But if they want someone coming in to the office 40 hrs/wk, with a boss and deliverables, they should be prepared to pay them in something more than vague promises of "valuable experience".

brettnak 17y ago
I, too, believe that most technology internships are a total scam. The usual phrase from a small company is that they want a 'rock star' ( insert your synonym here ) intern. I'm fairly certain that any 'rock star' intern can replace many hours of labor spent by an FTE. To put it in some perspective, and this is all personal point of view, I believe that a company in three to four months of a full time internship should be able to teach a computer science student ruby, rails to a working knowledge extent, the why's and how's of why rails is the way it is (the ups and downs of MVC, convention over configuration, etc), limited database knowledge, and some basic UI/UX considerations. Deeper knowledge into any of those (especially databases with CAP and the whole sql/nosql argument) would be valuable if there were any time remaining. And, obviously, the previous paragraph can be replaced by the equivalents in your specific niche. EDIT: spelling

lionhearted 17y ago

Always insightful to have you weigh in on the Grellas - cheers. As for this... > this in turn elicited an interesting and lively thread here at HN (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=806563 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=806563). There's a lot of ignorance in that thread. People seem completely unable to imagine the other side of the table in situations they haven't been in. I did an unpaid internship for the state government at one point for a couple months and learned quite a bit how government works, made some friends, and got to meet some interesting people. Later, I had an unpaid intern come in and work for 3 hours twice a week with me. It evolved into me sitting, working hands on and training him for 2 and a half hours of that time, teaching him all sorts of things, and he'd make some reports during the week about that and some writeups, which I used as the basis of some marketing literature. But if I'm going to be totally honest - it was a fun experience, a good time, he's a great guy, but it was a bad business decision. I'd have produced a lot more in the 6-10 hours per week on my own or working with one of my paid staff or contractors than I did with him. He got a heck of a lot of it. Me? I mean, it was good fun, I learned some things, I don't regret it at all, but in the end the time cost on my side was more than it was worth. An unpaid internship can absolutely be worth a heck of a lot - I mean, many of us wind up paying thousands for some college courses of dubious value. Getting to spend hands-on time with someone talented, seeing how they do things - that can be a tremendous amount of value if you're in the right organization working with the right person or people. Personally, I probably won't take an unpaid intern again, but there's a lot of people I'd work for free for in some capacity to learn from.

stretchwithme 17y ago

I agree. Probably kills a lot of learning and a lot of jobs. But that's just unintended consequences. Why should government be concerned with those, unless there is some expansion of government that can be engineered to address it?

ig1 17y ago
There is a strong argument against unpaid internships, they're hugely damaging to social mobility. If you need an unpaid internship to enter a career you're essentially excluding anyone from a poorer background (who have to work for money) from those occupations.
- fexl 17y ago
  Problem is there's no middle ground between $0.00 per hour and $7.15 per hour. If you outlaw $0.00 then those opportunities would simply cease to exist for everyone, including poor people working at McDonald's who could swing an internship on the side.
  - ig1 17y ago
    Yes. But it means those from more well off backgrounds and those from poorer backgrounds will be on a more level playing field when it comes to applying for permanent jobs.
    - fexl 17y ago
      No, people with money can afford to purchase technical and vocational training which poor people cannot. Money is valuable. If money did not confer advantages to its owner, it would not be valuable. Therefore a "level playing field" between people with more money and people with less money cannot exist. Besides, you are saying that you would forcefully prevent peaceful people from making mutually beneficial voluntary contractual arrangements among themselves, simply because not everyone is capable of participating. The implications are monstrous. Keep in mind that you are also forcefully excluding the McDonald's worker doing a part-time internship on the side.

URSpider94 17y ago

My take on this is that anyone who would be worth taking on as an unpaid intern, is worth paying minimum wage. I can imagine that not all employers feel this way, but for a typical high-tech company (especially a start-up), the opportunity cost to train and integrate a new team member for, say 6 months, would dwarf a minimum salary.

WildUtah 17y ago
anyone who would be worth taking on as an unpaid intern, is worth paying minimum wage It's not the money you save by not paying the intern that is valuable to the explosion of companies that want unpaid interns. The real value comes in restricting the opportunity to people of the right social class and with the right family connections to be able to subsidize your company by paying. Working unpaid costs money for commuting, for dressing up, by closing the chance to work a job for money, and other ways. Only the privileged can afford to do it. So if you want to include only the already privileged in your company, unpaid internships are the way to go. And that's also the reason they should be tightly regulated or outlawed.
- pyre 17y ago
  "Unpaid intern" doesn't mean "unpaid full-time intern." You could intern, unpaid, while working other jobs.