I write software. The work I do is difficult for "most people" (outside of this community, perhaps). If you're any good at it you have any number of well paid o

I write software. The work I do is difficult for "most people" (outside of this community, perhaps). If you're any good at it you have any number of well paid opportunities. If you're a recent graduate who's very green and looking for experience, you'll still find any number of paid opportunities. At the previous company I worked for, I had managed quite a few paid interns. I love managing, but I've always turned down serious management positions out of fear that I'd fall behind from a technical standpoint. I have never turned down an opportunity to manage an intern and my company took the relationship seriously. Interns negotiated salary just like any other employee, however, they were treated as a short-term contract so as a manager I was not able to see salary specifics. Despite that, I've been confided in and they were doing quite. Minimum wage was nowhere to be found. Purely for CS grads looking to land a career in software development (and I'm not in The Valley where things are arguably quite different): Don't take an unpaid internship. If the place is incredible and you really, really want to work there, ask yourself why they're not willing to pay you. My former company hired some of the greenest interns* from colleges you've likely never heard of. They were paid and they were all very good after a couple of months of apprenticeship. They also never worked a minute over 40 hours (by design, they were paid hourly as my former company had a fear of overtime). I haven't had this opportunity at my current employer, but if offered a "free intern" to manage, I'd turn that option down. Anyone willing to take a job where I work (an aside: good job, good company, but not the sort of thing that a recent grad would consider exciting enough to skip the paycheck) is probably going to cost me more than just doing the "intern work" myself. * I don't mean this condescendingly. We all start somewhere. I've have the privilege of managing incredibly intelligent people being an "intern manager" and every experience, thus far, has been rewarding for both of us. I keep in touch with them (some are likely reading this) and they all, currently, have well paying jobs as professional developers.