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My summary and thoughts: Living in NYC is amazingly expensive. When you're lower on the totem pole of the working world, your income doesn't reflect this greate
by tibbon 16y ago
My summary and thoughts: Living in NYC is amazingly expensive. When you're lower on the totem pole of the working world, your income doesn't reflect this greater expense on a percentage basis. Sometimes its worth it in the long term for additional opportunities and later career progress, but for millions it likely turns out to be a net loss compared to living somewhere more reasonable.
Its very possible to have an unpaid internship (whereas you might get paid minimally for the same internship in other cities) that lasts for months , where the employer has no intention of providing the possibility of fulltime employment at the end. This is exceedingly common in the recording industry. Everyone wants an intern, but no one cares to pay the best ones a fulltime wage afterward. Your living expenses may easily be 2-4x higher than where you came from.
- ceejayoz 16y agoUnpaid internship in NYC = way to weed out qualified folks who don't come from money already.
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- rdtsc 16y agoSo basically unpaid internship are just class filters ?
- ceejayoz 16y agoIn a lot of industries, I believe that to deliberately be the case.
- mpk 16y ago> In a lot of industries, I believe that to deliberately be the case. Maybe a simpler way of looking at this might be that given a large pool of potential applicants the incentive to actually pay these people simply isn't there if a large enough percentage of the pool doesn't require payment. It's still the same brutally unfair result, but it doesn't require looking for conspiracy.
- electricocean 16y agoNot necessarily true. I saved up enough money from an old job and sold my car to move to NY two years ago. I took an unpaid internship that lasted 2 months. Was hired on as freelance and eventually bumped to salary.
- ceejayoz 16y agoIt's sorta like politics. Sure, third-party candidates can make it through at times, but the system is heavily weighted against them.
- tzs 16y agoAren't unpaid internships illegal? http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/03/business/03intern.html http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/03/business/03intern.html
- ceejayoz 16y agoSo's medical marijuana, on a Federal level. No enforcement, no effect.
- joshhart 16y agoNot if you can get at least one credit at your college/university.
- starpilot 16y agoNo. As the article you link says: ...[there are] six federal legal criteria that must be satisfied for internships to be unpaid. Among those criteria are that the internship should be similar to the training given in a vocational school or academic institution, that the intern does not displace regular paid workers and that the employer “derives no immediate advantage” from the intern’s activities — in other words, it’s largely a benevolent contribution to the intern.
- natrius 16y agoThe vast majority of unpaid internships don't meet those criteria.
- tzs 16y agoVery few internships provide "no immediate advantage" to the company where the intern is working. For instance, if you were a publisher, and had an intern read unsolicited manuscripts and rate them, and then used those ratings to decide which manuscripts to read, that would be questionable. If, on the other hand, the intern were told to read the manuscripts that have already been accepted and the ones that have already been rejected, so as to learn what makes a good manuscript, that would be OK. That's not benefiting you--it is just providing training to the intern. Essentially, from what I've read, it seems that what you need to give an unpaid intern is work that you don't actually need to have done, and have no use for.
- dkasper 16y agoMy story is kind of the opposite, but I wouldn't have the savings to be working full time on my startup without doing the shared room thing for a year. And it was $600 a month in SF too, and that was for a room with friends who were willing to give me a good deal.
- jseliger 16y agoIndeed. Penelope Trunk writes about this: http://blog.penelopetrunk.com/2009/06/11/do-you-belong-in-nyc-take-the-test/ http://blog.penelopetrunk.com/2009/06/11/do-you-belong-in-ny... and http://blog.penelopetrunk.com/2006/08/10/im-moving-out-of-new-york-city http://blog.penelopetrunk.com/2006/08/10/im-moving-out-of-ne... . If you want to live in New York City, you're effectively shortening your personal "runway" to use Paul Graham's term.