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://new

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.