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Honest question: is it legal (at least in the US) to hire kids that young? Are they able to legally enter into contracts at that age? How about as interns? What

Honest question: is it legal (at least in the US) to hire kids that young? Are they able to legally enter into contracts at that age? How about as interns? What could some of the possible repercussions be?

gexla 16y ago
In this story the "client" didn't even expect to hear anything back from the kids. Apparently there was no contract. This is a client setting a very low bar with very low expectations. Also, some clients are happy with even the ugliest results because they don't know any better themselves.
nickbarnwell 16y ago
As someone who was in this exact situation themselves, having started a tiny IT firm at thirteen, the answers are: >Is it legal (at least in the US) to hire kids that young? No, it's not, at least from from the perspective of most states. However, as long as you're not going to make them do manual labour and they are doing it as contracting, it is likely that no one is going to care. >Are they able to legally enter into contracts at that age? I did have each one of my clients sign a boilerplate contract about data loss, hardware damage, acts of god etc... but fortunately never had to test if it was binding for either party. >How about as interns? The laws regarding interns are very well defined, and very strict. You are almost always better off hiring some schmuck for $7.25 or whatever minimum wage is than trying to figure out if someone qualifies as an intern and preventing them from doing any work that actually benefits the company, as that's illegal without compensation. If you do hire someone as an intern, have them do work that would typically be done by a full-time employee, and don't pay them or grant them college credits and someone tells the Labour Board my understanding is that it's a civil case with very large fines associated, but YMMV by state.
aplusbi 16y ago
I remember reading an article during the Dot-Com era about hiring kids, and one company would pay in video games (and similar) because giving him cash was illegal.

gexla 16y ago

In this story the "client" didn't even expect to hear anything back from the kids. Apparently there was no contract. This is a client setting a very low bar with very low expectations. Also, some clients are happy with even the ugliest results because they don't know any better themselves.

nickbarnwell 16y ago

As someone who was in this exact situation themselves, having started a tiny IT firm at thirteen, the answers are: >Is it legal (at least in the US) to hire kids that young? No, it's not, at least from from the perspective of most states. However, as long as you're not going to make them do manual labour and they are doing it as contracting, it is likely that no one is going to care. >Are they able to legally enter into contracts at that age? I did have each one of my clients sign a boilerplate contract about data loss, hardware damage, acts of god etc... but fortunately never had to test if it was binding for either party. >How about as interns? The laws regarding interns are very well defined, and very strict. You are almost always better off hiring some schmuck for $7.25 or whatever minimum wage is than trying to figure out if someone qualifies as an intern and preventing them from doing any work that actually benefits the company, as that's illegal without compensation. If you do hire someone as an intern, have them do work that would typically be done by a full-time employee, and don't pay them or grant them college credits and someone tells the Labour Board my understanding is that it's a civil case with very large fines associated, but YMMV by state.

aplusbi 16y ago

I remember reading an article during the Dot-Com era about hiring kids, and one company would pay in video games (and similar) because giving him cash was illegal.