7 ms·

Unpaid internships seem to be a way for unscrupulous companies to ensure they hire the "right kind of people" that already come from a cashed up family.

nindalf 8y ago
I don’t think the phenomenon of unpaid internships is primarily driven by a wish to shape wealth dynamics of society. It’s mostly about companies thinking “why pay ... when we don’t need to”. It’s still despicable because it has the same side effect in the end - only folks from wealthy families can afford to take these internships. But I thought it was worth drawing a distinction between the primary motivation and the inevitable consequences.
- shkkmo 8y ago
  > I don’t think the phenomenon of unpaid internships is primarily driven by a wish to shape wealth dynamics of society. The person you are responding to is not at all claiming the companies are driven By "altruistically" trying to shape the wealth dynamics of society. Their claim was that the goal is to self-select for a certain type of desirable intern, not to give a certain type of person an overall economic advantage. I don't buy that paid vs. unpaid internships offer a significant enough difference in cost to companies to be able to dismiss non-cost motivations as "not primary" without actual evidence.
  - nindalf 8y ago
    For a large enough corporation, very few employees can make a significant enough difference in cost savings. Every employee moves the needle a bit and the aggregate effort of thousands of employees is significant. With these internships, it's possible that the person in charge of hiring interns decided an easy to way to have impact is to reduce the salaries of interns. They do it and at the end of the year claim in their performance review "reduced the cost of the intern program to $0 while not compromising on quality". Great, here's your bonus. Another possibility is that some folks need interns but don't want to go through the hassle of fighting other departments in the organisation for budget. The workaround is to offer unpaid internships that cost nothing. And then there's just plain greed. The Kardashians run a business empire that makes hundreds of millions of dollars of revenue annually. They offered an unpaid internship as a gopher because they were stingy and knew people would do it anyway. All of these strike me as more plausible motivations for unpaid internships rather than wanting to shape society. I'm sure that exists in some places, like elite law firms, but I think the scenarios I highlighted are much more widespread.
    - shkkmo 8y ago
      > All of these strike me as more plausible motivations for unpaid internships rather than wanting to shape society. Again, nobody made the claim that the goal is to shape society. > With these internships, it's possible that the person in charge of hiring interns decided an easy to way to have impact is to reduce the salaries of interns. They do it and at the end of the year claim in their performance review "reduced the cost of the intern program to $0 while not compromising on quality". Great, here's your bonus. There are legal requirement for what you must do to offer an unpaid internship. The most likely result is not a bonus, but being reprimanded / fired for switching to an illegal internship program and exposing the company to unnecessary liability and loss of reputation. If that hiring manager is able to do this at zero additional cost while adding no legal risk and suffering no reduction in quality of work.... well they deserve that bonus. However, this is a work of fiction and as such does nothing to support your argument. > They offered an unpaid internship as a gopher because they were stingy and knew people would do it anyway. You are stating this as a fact, do you have evidence for this? I find it equally plausible that the Kardashians were intentionally trying to select for fans who are loyal, devoted and well off enough to accept an unpaid internship.
      - nindalf 8y ago
        You're talking past me. GP claimed that unpaid internships are offered by folks who want to select for candidates from wealthy families. I agreed that this was possible but it was more likely that a company would want to save money. Either because every little helps, or because it makes budget planning easier. You said "big companies don't care about small savings". I pointed out a scenario where they could. You dismissed it as fiction. You claimed that there's some massive legal risk associated with this. There isn't. If someone from the Department of Labour asks about your unpaid internship, simply say "the student earned college credit for this, so there was an educational component", even if all they did was fetch groceries for you. You pointed out that the Kardashians could have wanted a loyal, devoted fan for their unpaid internship. Sure, that's entirely possible. That's just as valid a reason as wanting to save money. I'm sure there are plenty of companies that justify it to themselves this way. "We don't want people who are in it for the money, we want them to be really passionate about the useless widget we're building"
  - sonnyblarney 8y ago
    "t the goal is to self-select for a certain type of desirable intern" It's more often than not a money issue. People don't want to pay if they don't have to.

nindalf 8y ago

I don’t think the phenomenon of unpaid internships is primarily driven by a wish to shape wealth dynamics of society. It’s mostly about companies thinking “why pay ... when we don’t need to”. It’s still despicable because it has the same side effect in the end - only folks from wealthy families can afford to take these internships. But I thought it was worth drawing a distinction between the primary motivation and the inevitable consequences.

shkkmo 8y ago
> I don’t think the phenomenon of unpaid internships is primarily driven by a wish to shape wealth dynamics of society. The person you are responding to is not at all claiming the companies are driven By "altruistically" trying to shape the wealth dynamics of society. Their claim was that the goal is to self-select for a certain type of desirable intern, not to give a certain type of person an overall economic advantage. I don't buy that paid vs. unpaid internships offer a significant enough difference in cost to companies to be able to dismiss non-cost motivations as "not primary" without actual evidence.
- nindalf 8y ago
  For a large enough corporation, very few employees can make a significant enough difference in cost savings. Every employee moves the needle a bit and the aggregate effort of thousands of employees is significant. With these internships, it's possible that the person in charge of hiring interns decided an easy to way to have impact is to reduce the salaries of interns. They do it and at the end of the year claim in their performance review "reduced the cost of the intern program to $0 while not compromising on quality". Great, here's your bonus. Another possibility is that some folks need interns but don't want to go through the hassle of fighting other departments in the organisation for budget. The workaround is to offer unpaid internships that cost nothing. And then there's just plain greed. The Kardashians run a business empire that makes hundreds of millions of dollars of revenue annually. They offered an unpaid internship as a gopher because they were stingy and knew people would do it anyway. All of these strike me as more plausible motivations for unpaid internships rather than wanting to shape society. I'm sure that exists in some places, like elite law firms, but I think the scenarios I highlighted are much more widespread.
  - shkkmo 8y ago
    > All of these strike me as more plausible motivations for unpaid internships rather than wanting to shape society. Again, nobody made the claim that the goal is to shape society. > With these internships, it's possible that the person in charge of hiring interns decided an easy to way to have impact is to reduce the salaries of interns. They do it and at the end of the year claim in their performance review "reduced the cost of the intern program to $0 while not compromising on quality". Great, here's your bonus. There are legal requirement for what you must do to offer an unpaid internship. The most likely result is not a bonus, but being reprimanded / fired for switching to an illegal internship program and exposing the company to unnecessary liability and loss of reputation. If that hiring manager is able to do this at zero additional cost while adding no legal risk and suffering no reduction in quality of work.... well they deserve that bonus. However, this is a work of fiction and as such does nothing to support your argument. > They offered an unpaid internship as a gopher because they were stingy and knew people would do it anyway. You are stating this as a fact, do you have evidence for this? I find it equally plausible that the Kardashians were intentionally trying to select for fans who are loyal, devoted and well off enough to accept an unpaid internship.
    - nindalf 8y ago
      You're talking past me. GP claimed that unpaid internships are offered by folks who want to select for candidates from wealthy families. I agreed that this was possible but it was more likely that a company would want to save money. Either because every little helps, or because it makes budget planning easier. You said "big companies don't care about small savings". I pointed out a scenario where they could. You dismissed it as fiction. You claimed that there's some massive legal risk associated with this. There isn't. If someone from the Department of Labour asks about your unpaid internship, simply say "the student earned college credit for this, so there was an educational component", even if all they did was fetch groceries for you. You pointed out that the Kardashians could have wanted a loyal, devoted fan for their unpaid internship. Sure, that's entirely possible. That's just as valid a reason as wanting to save money. I'm sure there are plenty of companies that justify it to themselves this way. "We don't want people who are in it for the money, we want them to be really passionate about the useless widget we're building"
- sonnyblarney 8y ago
  "t the goal is to self-select for a certain type of desirable intern" It's more often than not a money issue. People don't want to pay if they don't have to.