Rebuttal to "A hacker's loneliness" - <AUTHOR>

I too "wasted" most of my teens writing "pointless" programs - games in Basic that I never finished, assembly language programs optimized for old computers 20 years obsolete, and C++ programs with extensible architectures that no one else will ever extend.
My father always warned me that one day I would wake up and realize I'd wasted my life sitting in front of a computer screen.  Bullshit.
When I was in college I ran into people I'd known in high school who told me some stories about what was really going on in the social circles I'd missed while I spent my days with a computer, and I was shocked.  Most of my "normal" peers who had social lives drank heavily and got into drugs - some died or nearly died.  Many of them became teen parents.  I never even knew!  My obsession with computers had kept me insulated from all of that.
Now that I'm a working adult and married, I look back with wonder at the thought of having long summer vacations where I had no responsibilities preventing me from hacking for days on end.  Though I didn't appreciate the time I had then as much as I would appreciate it now, I would not change a single minute of how I spent it.  There is a depth of understanding I built up during those years doing "pointless" hacking that I simply could not have picked up in the piecemeal way my time is split up today.  Every year that I spent working 12 hours a day on interesting problems while I was in high school put me ahead 6 years on what I could accomplish today, when I'm lucky to get 1-2 hours free a day.  Whenever I run across a problem today that I can solve in a snap because it mirrors a problem I already solved at my leisure during those early year, I think, "Damn it's good to be a geek." <comment><USER2> Yeah, I didn't have those problems. Of course, my dad's a physicist who hacks Matlab & FORTRAN all day, so I may have grown up with a different interpretation of all this.

The wonderful thing about programming is that the computer is an honest mirror. If you screwed something up, you'll know. It won't spare your feelings or let you delude yourself into thinking it's working (well, within reason -- eventually you learn to write good tests).

In a world with so much bullshit, it's pretty nice. While growing up, it's a great anchor of simple reality in a volatile time in your life.

As for other questions as "does it make you into a loser" or "is it a life- long cockblock?" the answer's simple: it's fairly unrelated. If you're a true loser, you'll just be a computer loser. Ditto for the cockblock.

OTOH, you'll notice that there percentage of college-educated men has been dropping recently, while the opposite has been occurring for women. Which means a certain tolerance to loserness is building to help against that self- cockblock threshold.

Maybe 5-10 years ago it was a problem, but in my generation (I'm 29), everyone's using a computer almost all day long. The only difference is that it's my job directly, while others have other jobs using the computer. Gaming is deeply mainstream now (esp. in men in my age group & younger), and programming's just a good sign of intelligence in this group.

Look, here's what you do:

1\. Hit the fucking gym. It's really not hard. Usually single programmers have lots of disposable income. Instead of buying that new Amiga motherboard you've been salivating over, spend some cash on looking hot. Experiment with it like you would any other problem: maybe a trainer, different exercises, buy some books on it, maybe some equipment, whatever. You've got the CPU for this, and this really is a simple problem that's usually solved if you can get off the terminal for an hour or so every other day (and you can, just schedule your gentoo builds).

2\. Drink water and/or diet soda while hacking. It's the cheap sugar calories in regular soda that give programmers the "fat loser" stigma.

3\. Don't wear the free t-shirts you get at social events. Actually spend money on what you wear and research what looks good & bad. For men, fashion is dumb-fuck-simple. If you don't know, just read "Dressing the Man" and only do 1/10th of what it says.

4\. Have other non-computer-geek things in your life. Somewhere that'll let people connect with you somehow. Politics, music, sports, whatever.

With that, you're a good-looking, intelligent, well-paid guy. Suddenly you can be a complete jackass and still get laid pretty often. Just, you know, don't start singing to yourself & rocking in your seat when a girl approaches you.

Sorry for the preaching, but when I hear the same seemingly easy-to-solve complaints over & over, I kinda have to get this way.

<comment><USER3> I totally agree.

People tend to associate computer geekery with loneliness and social ineptness, but I think what's actually happening is the solitary nature of hacking attracts the loners.

Another facet of this is the fact that hackers tend to think overly quantitatively about the world, and try to approach everything from a 100% logical standpoint. The real world dynamics have feelings, emotions, and totally irrational behavior. Continuing to moan about how everyone else doesn't see the light of logic and retreating to hacking technology which does follow a strict guideline is self-detrimental.

Learning to hack society is also interesting and has potentially larger pay- offs.

<comment><USER2> Takedown II: Mitnick gets laid.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I mixed "geeky" and "normal" for most of my life as well, though skewed towards "geeky." I think joining the military out of high school did a lot to improve my non-geek image, though that wasn't at all why I did it. Every girlfriend I've ever had has informed me that I am "such a geek" on a regular basis, albeit in an endearing fashion.

The most interesting part, though, is that Dan (co-founder and long-time friend) did largely the same thing, but he was skewed towards the "normal" side of things -- the interesting part being how much it shows now that we're older. For instance, he maintains a lot more relationships than I do, both romantic and otherwise. I am far less socially active than he is, especially when it comes to meeting new people, though I can play the game when necessity warrants it.

Essentially, he ended up being more "popular." The thing is, it's by and large a product of our differing personalities. When we were kids we spent a roughly equal amount of time on the computer (I know because we played the same games together every free hour of the day!) and the only difference today is that I think he spends even more time in front of the screens than I do. He doesn't have more friends because he was doing bong hits while I was writing code in seclusion. It's that way because he's just a more social person and, in my opinion, seems to like people in general more than I do. I had friends and a social life in high school and beyond, I was just content with having fewer friends and a smaller circle.

So, do I feel like I've missed out? Not at all. I've had my fair share of life experiences, probably far more than most "normal" people ever will, and I'm only 23. Right now I'm perfectly content being a single, boring programmer working on a start-up who goes out with the sole purpose of drinking with existing friends and being left alone otherwise. If I stop being content with that, all the hours in front of the computer aren't going to negatively affect any change I desire.

Don't blame the past, just change the present.

<comment><USER5> What's also hilarious: even though I can't code for shit I'm regarded as the "tech dork" or "geek" or "nerd" in the majority of my friend circles. I take it as a compliment.

Tom can definitely play the game when he needs to. You should see him with VCs or Irish women. They look like they're talking to a Monarch or something.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I have the benefit of having enjoyed the best (and worst) of both worlds.

When I was 13 I had a crappy old PC that I used to take apart and fiddle with. When it bust altogether, I pretty much forgot about computers.

I reached 14, I lost my brother, and as I watched my family crumble I turned to drinking and smoking weed. Yes, at 14. I hung out with the wrong crowd, I did things I shouldn't have and I spent my school time living up what was deemed the "ideal" social life by my peers.

A year or so later I got really in to computers again. I started making web pages; I got a new (old) desktop which I tweaked up and geeked out on. I progressed from HTML and CSS to PHP (and yeah, I know that PHP has a bad rap amongst most hackers here, but I like it), spent all my time in IT at school etc. I gently progressed in to a real computer nerd.

Looking back now, I can honestly say that the time I "wasted" messing about with computers, teaching myself how to code, etc.. they were the best of my teenage years, and I have no regrets on how I spent my time. It is who I am, I enjoy doing what I do. I wouldn't change for anyone.

<comment><USER7> Great point here as well.

People often feel like they wasted their youth regardless of how they spent it. They always feel they could have done more, could have been more. I have heard the same stories from friends who made it to a very high level in sports - they feel they dedicated too much of their life just to one purpose too. The same goes with the socialites - they often feel they just wasted too much time at parties and all those blend together with time.

It actually reminds me of a key point in my life when I was talking with a close friend of mine. He had just returned from an amazing trip backpacking through South America for 4 months and he told me he was envious of how I could be so stable and driven towards my one goal of starting my own company. I was shocked, because I felt the exact opposite and wished I had went on that trip with him.

Such is life, and it is full of compromises.

<comment><USER8> >People often feel like they wasted their youth regardless of how they spent it.

"Youth is often wasted on the young" - George Bernard Shaw

<comment><USER9> Well, I'm youth. What would you do if you were in my place? (High school, likes hacking, general geek, plays DnD, etc)

I'm actually sincerely curious, since somehow lately I've been feeling that I'm not doing anything significantly awesome or useful - nothing I'll remember in a year or two.

<comment><USER8> I originally wrote more, but thought better of it. All the things I listed, I heard when I was also in HS, but they meant nothing until I actually had to deal with it. Advice is tricky business. So here's two for the immediate future.

Date girls and get use to rejection - Things don't 'just happen' for guys (assuming you are one), so get out there and make some magic happen. Keep in mind that girls (and guys) sometimes have no idea what they want, and it's not always you. I use to think this was a natural thing, but like most anything else, it just takes practice. The skills you learn here you'll find applicable to a lot of situations where you'll have to deal with others.

Cultivate a sense of curiosity - For that, I refer to you Bill Watterson of Calvin and Hobbes <http://home3.inet.tele.dk/stadil/spe_kc.htm>

<comment><USER10> Thanks for the link! I found it a very refreshing essay.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Hmm, somehow I managed to have a computer habit AND friends. Also some drugs, some drinking, etc. Of course, my grades weren't stellar in high school; something has to give.

<comment><USER12> I think that on a vast cosmetic scale, high school grades mean the least of nearly everything. Unless you run across a snobby Ivy kid - and most Ivy kids I know tend not to care about your school so much as your mind - they change nothing.

<comment><USER13> It's true. I dropped out of high school to join the gamedev industry, and the company didn't seem to mind.

<comment><USER12> I'm in college right now (freshman), and every instinct in me is telling me to figure out how to get out and DO something. It's tough, because I love the college atmosphere. I just am tired of being in classes, doing really basic stuff, when I have ideas that could change things.

Has anybody else had that sort of dilemma in their life?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Sounds like the key difference here is that you're married.

Apparently what ever you do is worthless if you can't get a va-je-jey, and totally worthwhile if you do.

What if you're a virgin, who's gotten super rich through hacking and is donating tons of money to charity and changing the lives of countless people?

What if you're a broke, jerk, selfish hacker who gets tons of pussy?

<comment><USER15> Super rich _and_ a virgin? Is that even possible? ;)

<comment><USER16> If you want it to be yes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> An interesting book might be to collect a bunch of choice essays from people about this same topic: "Growing up geek"

I'm sure there are some pretty cool stories, and it might help younger generations get through their early years with a bit more confidence etc.

<comment><USER18> That's a great idea! I sincerely think that you should do it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I had a more rebellious teenhood(drigs, drinking, other crimes*), it was fun, but you didn't miss much. Last night i was hunting a pretty tricky bug in a game im writing, all evening i was pounding my head, wondering why my code, which should be working, didn't. When i figured it all out it was a wonderful moment, i had defeated my self, i had become wiser. But unlike a good joint, i couldn't share that with my friends.

</comment><comment><USER20> > I never even knew!

Exactly. And it seems you still don't understand what you missed. The essay probably should have ended there.

\- Written as another person who also spent countless hours every single day with programming/engineering for entire youth.

</comment><comment><USER21> Thank you.

The reason why old people keep telling this BS is that they just don't understand what it is.

They can understand a person practicing musical instrument, they can understand a person working with canvas and brushes, they can understand the scientist sitting around his papers but they can't understand people doing the same behind their computers.

Computers are the whole new medium: we need at least two more generations to make it fully acceptable by average daddy and mommy.

</comment><comment><USER22> I like the way you put you reply, and it's interesting to get another point of view.

To share my own present experience, I'm still in college myself and working with nearly all of my free time on various projects of my own, summers included. In contrast to you, though, I've kept up fairly well with the things going on outside of my own world (please note this is not a knock on you). While I haven't heard quite the same things you have, I've definitely heard some fairly awful stories about what people get themselves up to with too much time and not enough to do.

Even now, I can appreciate the concept that in the future, I'll already have a significant amount of experience to rely on when I may have to address a specific problem. Undoubtedly, it may be a little lonelier while you're working your ass off to get ahead, but it also doesn't mean that a person has to be totally isolated -- I still have a circle of friends, and go out on a regular basis. I just may do it less often than a person who isn't working quite as hard.

</comment><comment><USER23> I'm east indian but born and raised here. Both my parents were upper middle class workers. The 'puter wasn't just encouraged, it was my babysitter from when I was 9. I was friends with the cool kids and the geeks. I was some kind of mashed up co-eek. I spent tons of hours in front of my 486, but I also went to parties. One thing to note, back in those netscape/prodigy days, friends I met online seemed to get me more than friends I had in reality. Maybe because the online family and I always worked towards the same goal(s). Either way, I don't talk to anyone from high school. In fact, I came to realize I didn't like very many of them. Maybe cause I was smarter than 92% of them or I never had a fundamental reason for enjoying their company, outside of their company itself. All the friends I have now are from college. =)

<comment><USER24> "Maybe cause I was smarter than 92% of them or I never had a fundamental reason for enjoying their company"

Maybe they didn't care much for you because you looked down your nose at everyone.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> It may be good to be a geek, but looking at those who took the path of self- destruction is not a good judgement on drug use or socialization (with those profoundly different). When one seeking knowledge does drugs, they usually become bored of the escapism quickly (unless they are depressed, or hate their life, etc to the extent that they would rather never accotiate with another human, and retreats into themself), and finds the other use of psychoactive substances: 'Hacking' the mind. Different psychoactive substances highlight different parts of the mind, some open doors, some help you understand others, most[NOT ALL!!!] have value if you learn from the experiences like you learned to use a computer. Socializing with those profoundly different then yourself can teach you things about yourself you could never learn alone.

Of the people I commonly interact with, maybe 10% are 'geeks' (in the stereotypical sense) and the rest run the gambit, from cleptomania, to borderline psychotic to bipolar to disturbingly happy and sure of there own 'normalness' and everything inbetween.

I've learned something from these people: sanity, normality and reality, are all subjective; defining people into groups is pointless and damaging. Being sure of your own superiority for taking a more societally acceptable path no doubt is 'normal' to you, but there are many on this earth who would rather die a thousand deaths then spend more then the tiniest fraction of their lives coding or solving problems in a 'made up world'.

Do what makes you happy, or what makes you feel fufilled, or fill whatever else your need might be. But don't judge others for doing the same.

I do not know you, and cannot judge you, but I would recommend, however, that if you truely have a desire for knowledge, to endevour to understand why others choose the path of feel-goodism and why others shun the path of knowledge and understanding (and the many other paths for that matter, but this one is likely particularily relevent). (Look beyond, they are duped, or they have problem x)

</comment><comment><USER26> My own view is that acquiring "geek skills" in one's teens and early twenties, increases one's earning potential. From this, all else follows. I freely admit, personally, I didn't have much of a social life in terms of high school or even so much thereafter. I did however get my finger in the pie of the bubble after graduating high school in '99, and that I think has given me more insights in terms of things people do positive and negative in a start-up environment. These insights I think can only help going forward, and so if, even today, I probably do not consider myself a complete "socialite", that simply isn't as important in the long run as earning potential, based on exposure to start-up environments. And needless to say, in terms of "getting laid", to be blunt about it, earning potential is an aphrodisiac. In my experience, the beautiful can be bought! :-)

<comment><USER24> Money's pretty boring stuff. It's a good feeling to get some, but give me a good book and a good cup of coffee and I'm happy. Now competition, success, etc: That's what's always keeping me going.

<comment><USER27> Money is freedom; it can't tell you what to do but if you know what you want, it can make obstacles just go away.</comment></comment></comment>


How the failed deal with Waymo left Ford in the lurch - <AUTHOR> http://www.autonews.com/article/20170529/OEM/170529795/google-ford-deal-mark-fields <comment><USER2> Disclaimer: I work for a Ford competitor, but have no first-hand knowledge of this deal.

I'm thinking about the concept of 'frenemies' and jumping to some unsupported conclusions.

In tech you may have a turnaround of weeks or months for some products. In automotive, you may plan a new vehicle for 5 years and then in some cases produce it for up to 10 years after that, and then continue to support that vehicle for 10 more years.

Also, automotive customers do not support the idea of moving quickly and breaking things (excepting some Tesla customers).

This leads to relationships like 'frenemies' not making much sense in auto manufacturing. If you can't trust the other party to be there for years, you don't start a relationship.

Now the mostly baseless speculation: It seems that Mark Fields felt that Ford brought a lot of value to a potential Ford-Google partnership. I assume Fields though Google would understand and value that as well, and it seems that Google did not value that, leading to misunderstanding and frustration.

<comment><USER3> I don't know any serious business that embraces 'breaking things' when a bit more effort and time ensures that nothing gets broken.

<comment><USER4> It goes along with CEOs who wear T-shirts to work.

<comment><USER5> What's the word for this kind of phrase? One where the author of the sentence has some kind of skewed world view, and we get to see a glimpse of it?

<comment><USER6> Parapraxis, or Freudian slip maybe?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> What is revealing is that a former office furniture CEO from sleepy West Michigan is apparently much more hip on Silicon Valley technology than the whole of Ford.

This is how entire industries get disintermediated.

<comment><USER8> The auto companies everywhere except Tesla are so far behind.

Lived in Detroit most of my life. When discussed, the big 3's problems get brushed away irrationally.

But it's worse than the future catching up with the auto companies. I feel like the execs don't even know how to market to their customers.

Comparing Mary Barbra's unveiling of the Bolt to Elon's Model 3 was night and day. Elon had a teleprompter but he spoke like a normal guy about things he and I am interested in.

On the other hand Mary's speech was stiff and read word for word. They used early 90's cutting edge graphics in the background at one point. They talked about the history of GM which no one cares about. It felt like it was directed at share holders not customers.

A lot of ideas about how to run a car company will change. I'm not sure the big 3 will make it.

<comment><USER9> Well, the big 3 are all currently profitable, so they have that going for them. I'm not sure how Tesla is going to make it as they continue to overpromise, underdeliver, and hemorrhage money.

I do agree with you though that Tesla is far better at marketing.

<comment><USER10> Tesla has had repeated success raising money by going to the financial markets, so, it appears that enough fools are willing to invest to sustain them until now and for a while longer.

<comment><USER11> And the Big 3 have had big success in getting large near zero interest rate loans and liens of liquidity provided by tax payers directly and the issuance/sales of t-backs on behalf of tax payers. Financially speaking, the shenanigans of Tesla and the Big 3 aren't too dissimilar…

<comment><USER12> Ford didn't get a bailout, nor did they need the cash for clunkers assistance.

<comment><USER9> This isn't true. Ford actually took out a bigger loan than GM. In fact, Ford still owes the government over $6 billion when the other automakers have repaid their debts.

[https://www.forbes.com/sites/joannmuller/2011/09/19/ford- loo...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/joannmuller/2011/09/19/ford-looks- hypocritical-in-new-anti-bailout-commercial/#5dbec21a1efc)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Reading this article my conclusion is that "autonomous self-driving vehicles don't work at present". Ford management had the belief that they do work and therefore wanted to press ahead with a go-to-market plan. Google management knows they don't work and so back-pedaled. Deal fell apart as a result.

<comment><USER14> That conclusion is almost certainly incorrect. Internal communications at Google indicate strong confidence in the approach and viability of the cars. There was constant crowing about hundreds of thousands of miles driven autonomously (with the only at fault accident being the car committing the egregious sin of expecting an overtaking public bus to yield for an indicated merge). A recurring internal criticism is that they have been ready to go to market for a while, but are proceeding with extraordinarily caution. Google probably wants a repeat of the Personal Computer market: open, agile, competative. There's a hint of this in the way they structure deals (quietly helpful, non-exclusive). "You want the technology? Sure. You want exclusivity? Nope." If Uber had asked for a technical partnership instead of straight up stealing the tech they'd probably have gotten what they stole and more with a smile and a high five.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Interesting this website is "not secure". I remember that chrome was going to start doing this, but the first time I actually saw it happen.

<comment><USER16> We had this issue on our sites for a short time; all in all, it was very effective at forcing a much higher business priority for the fix.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Hopeless on the part of Ford.

</comment><comment><USER18> This article makes Google look really bad.

<comment><USER19> Does it? The article made it sound like Ford's main goal was to appease Wall St, whereas Google was focused on actually building the damn thing.

<comment><USER14> That's my take on the situation too.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> "At the time, none of the major automakers had spelled out a serious plan for getting fully self-driving cars on the road."

Even if it had worked out, a deal with Waymo would not have been a "serious plan". This deal only amounted to throwing money at a hype factory in order to gain credibility in an imaginary market. Waymo hasn't proven it's even on track to create a workable product in the next decade. Google in particular has a proven track record of having a very short attention span. They won't make a good partner in the long run, no matter what. Carmakers like Ford would be a lot better off playing the long game on this, focusing on building out practical semi-automated safety features in the proven iterative manner they know, and growing their own expertise in self-driving engineering in-house.

<comment><USER17> Google have been doing this for longer than anyone else and have logged an order of magnitude more miles (cf. all their competitors combined). They also have by far and away the most accurate/reliable technology as evidenced by their dis/engagement stats. They are years ahead of everyone else. As a separate company they would be valued at ~$70 billion- with huge upside

<comment><USER21> I don't see how people could be tricked to buy a google car with the expectation of the controlling software being obsolete in a couple year and left unupdated as the sensor technology improves.

That alone makes google a risky partner for any serious automaker - they're better of as a partner to a leasing agency than a seller.

<comment><USER14> Ha! You have a point there.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Startup founders – have you renegotiated office rent? - <AUTHOR> Additionally, any luck with cloud providers?<p>Looking for ideas. <comment><USER2> Not exactly what you are looking for but I know one person who got their apt rent reduced.

Can you give us an idea of what location and size of place you are trying get reduced?</comment>


Ask HN: Learn (Linux) Embedded Development in 15 days - <AUTHOR> Hi folks, I'm a junior dev that's been unemployed for some 5 months now. I've got an interview for embedded dev position two weeks from now, hence my clickbaity title. Acknowledging it's a long shot, what is the best area to focus on, bang for buck?
I know some C, and I know they're big on networking stuff. There is some talk about Python and Qt. Do I focus on learning assembly, on OSDev or tinkering with a microcontroller (like in Rust's https://docs.rust-embedded.org/discovery/), more C?
Thanks to anyone that can pitch in. HN has been part of my code learning ride, mostly in the positive way :D. <comment><USER2> Focus on the popular stuff: C on AtMegas, Real time Linux on rasperry pi's. That's something where there are tons of tutorials and books. Forget about fancyness in the moment.

Instead, if your future company does Qt, learn Qt. It's easy to learn In a few days if you are familiar with C++ (or Python, respectively). If you feel the urge to learn some theoretical background about TCP/IP or so, I think again two weeks are doable. Of course two weeks cannot replace years of practice.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you! If you have any further thoughts or some links I appreciate it.</comment></comment>


Calling Bullshit on Unpaid Interships - <AUTHOR> http://www.irishstu.com/stublog/2011/06/30/calling-bullshit-on-unpaid-interships/ <comment><USER2> Unpaid internships are essentially a form of serfdom.

The serf system in Russia IIRC started with free peasants who sold themselves into slavery to the landowner when they fell into debt - unlike African slaves in the US, who were essentially kidnapped into servitude.

In the same vein people are taking up voluntary servitude in order to get a paid job - sometimes even paying for the privilege.

Moreover - a point not raised in the article - in expensive cities the only way a fresh graduate can survive without salary is if their parents subsidize them. Who can afford to do so ? Rich families. So it's a form of discrimination.

A company has _no_ excuse for not paying at least minimum wage. If you can't afford the employees you need you shouldn't be in business, period. Any company that uses unpaid internships is morally bankrupt and should be boycotted.

<comment><USER3> There's a temptation in politics to see patterns and then fit language to it that kind of fits. It's important not to do this, because it ruins the sense of scale. For example, when someone describes a politician they don't like as a "fascist" it's disrespectful to the memory of people who are squashed under tanks and who are taken in the night by state agents, raped and murdered.

Along these lines, it doesn't fit to equate unpaid internships to serfdom. Serfdom involves effectively permanent, near total servitude to a landowner for most aspects of life. You don't travel. You don't get educated. You don't have upside. You can't escape. You're screwed. An unpaid internship is not at all like this. Unpaid internships are not "essentially a form of serfdom".

If your labour has value then you can find work that pays you a rate for it (except for minimum wage - more about this shortly). You have the opportunity to expose yourself to experience by doing internships. If you don't have anything better to be doing, then it's a win-win situation for you and the person you're doing internship.

When I was young I worked in a computer assembly shop for basically no money. In the course of this work I plugged a power cable into a motherboard and fried it. I probably rubbed customers up the wrong way, and certainly did dumb things. My labour was worth less than nothing, and I was lucky to have the opportunity to be allowed near the place or customers.

As I became valuable I struck a private agreement with the owner and spent a summer working full-time, for which I was paid one gravis ultrasound ACE. I think I ended up better on the deal than the owner, but it was a close-run thing.

Another time I was contracted to do a job for an oil company. It took me a month to do something that would now take me a day, and the end result was so bad that they got no return on investment of the the AUD 300 they paid me for the job. Note that in the case of the oil company work, I already had most of a computer science degree, and so was more qualified than the average kind of person who lives on minimum wage and still near-worthless.

After spending some time working to build up my skills, I'm now happy with my career. I wouldn't be here except for working in situations where I was earning less than minimum wage, often with people giving my low money on the offchance I might not be incompetent.

The minimum wage is a horrible stain on a free society. It traps people with low skills out of work and cements them into an underclass that's much more difficult to break out of. It prevents business that are operating on the edge from continuing to operate. It's a classic example of do-gooders riding in and creating damage.

There is an argument in favour of minimum wage, and it's this: some people are too incompetent to be capable of standing up for themselves, and these people would be easy to take advantage of for malicious bosses, of which there are no shortage. The minimum wage is a blunt force mechanism that aims (and fails) to protect this set of people. The reason it fails is that in protecting low-wage employed people, it locks out people who are in a worse situation - unempployed.

It's a ridiculous solution that hurts the people it claims to represent. There are much better avenues that would be cheaper and have more positive effect on people: basic risk, valuation and business skills being taught in early high- school, television campaigns that encourage people to think about how their labour is used, what they could do to make themselves marketable. Mechanisms to get people speaking English more effectively. Lower taxation. Effective technical colleges.

The minimum wage system is a mechanism designed by the elite to allow that elite to paper over things and sleep at night pretending they're doing the right thing. It hurts the people it claims to protect.

<comment><USER2> _Along these lines, it doesn't fit to equate unpaid internships to serfdom. Serfdom involves effectively permanent, near total servitude to a landowner for most aspects of life. You don't travel. You don't get educated. You don't have upside. You can't escape. You're screwed. An unpaid internship is not at all like this. Unpaid internships are not "essentially a form of serfdom"._

No, but that's how serfdom _started_ \- through voluntary servitude.

The point isn't to equate 21st century Europe or US with pre-19th century Russia. The point is that serfdom is a form of voluntary servitude which people entered into out of desperation. Likewise, nobody works for free (outside of charitable work) unless they are desperate (or they are rich kids, and don't need to care). Companies exploit this through unpaid internships - assuming they can get away with it.

Saying "you're free to walk away" is not a moral argument; if the only way a young person can find work is through doing voluntary servitude then they are stuck in that position until they do so.

Minimum wage laws exist for a number of reasons. If people don't get enough from employers, who pays ? The welfare system, i.e. the rest of us. So employers can exploit the system to boost their profits. Second, how does it fail to protect people ? Since when did a living wage for a day's work become a controversial issue ?

<comment><USER4> _If people don't get enough from employers, who pays ? The welfare system, i.e. the rest of us._

If a potential employer chooses not to employ someone, who pays? The welfare system.

For either low pay or no pay, low value workers will require welfare. I don't see how this is a valid argument for a minimum wage.

<comment><USER2> Well, the employer gets cheap (or even free) labour - and therefore higher profits - paid for by the taxpayer. In essence, the employer is exploiting the system as much as any "welfare queen".

Sure, workers on minimum wage may receive benefits - but they would require less benefits than if there was no minimum wage.

<comment><USER5> "In 2004, a year in which Wal-Mart reported $9.1 billion in profits, the retailer's California employees collected $86 million in public assistance, according to researchers at the University of California-Berkeley. [...]In 2004, Democratic staffers of the House education and workforce committee calculated that each 200-employee Wal-Mart store costs taxpayers an average of more than $400,000 a year, based on entitlements ranging from energy- assistance grants to Medicaid to food stamps to WIC—the federal program that provides food to low-income women with children."

<http://motherjones.com/politics/2009/01/america-195-week>

And this is with a minimum wage.

<comment><USER6> Bull. The store didn't create the problem. The numbers may be correct; the conclusion is yellow journalism.

The store may even help alleviate the problem, by providing Some income for these people.

Its not very clever to ask WalMart to just pay these people more; how about UCBerkely show some sincerity and pay them themselves?

<comment><USER5> The numbers are the only thing that's quoted. The conclusion is that if they paid lower wages, the amount of government support to employed people would rise unless those policies were changed also. Government support paid by taxes, including the taxes of those who work at UCBerkeley.

<comment><USER6> The statement was squarely that it cost the public money to have WalMart in our town - they expressed it as the cost per WalMart.

For example, they could have expressed how much is Saved the public per WalMart. They didn't express it that way. Because it made a more sensationalist article the other way.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> And as usual, I disagree.

When I was just starting my career, I would have gladly worked for free as an intern to get my foot in the door of the industry. Now, I wouldn't have done it for -long-, but internships aren't supposed to last a long time. As it was, instead I spent a year unemployed, and then took a job as a stock clerk at a grocery store. That time would have been much better spent as an intern... Especially since I think I could have found a job after 3 months of being an intern. 6 at the most.

The reason his entire post is wrong is that the person DOES get something out of it. They get training (whether it was structured or not is a different matter) and they get experience. Guess what helps you get a job most in the IT industry? Experience.

As for being hired, any company worth their salt will offer a real job to anyone who shows skill. Job offers should never be automatic.

<comment><USER8> _You_ may have been better off as an intern, but I could see the argument that if nobody's willing to work for free companies will have to pay a decent wage - a degree of collective bargaining by students and recent graduates who are unwilling to sell their summers for almost no money.

<comment><USER7> Interns don't produce much output. They're inexperienced. What would take a professional a day to finish might take an intern 2 weeks, and take time from others to boot.

In that situation, the intern should be working for free (for the experience) and the company should consider any actual output to be compensation for the time spent having to help the intern along.

As the post's author noted, the 2 job descriptions he linked to do not fit the above criteria.

Any company that expects actual productivity from an intern is in the wrong.

<comment><USER8> I'm not a software developer (researcher), but are there really no tasks simple enough for interns in your average software company? When I worked as a sysadmin for a couple of months, the two (paid) intern programmers seemed to do most of the work on some (small) contracts. They definitely had some things to learn, but they got it done (with some help) and were absolutely net positive.

Maybe we just had unusually good interns, though (this was in the Netherlands).

<comment><USER7> Tasks that simple don't provide them any experience and we're back to paying them for work done.

Complicated tasks need guidance and take time. But they're great for experience.

It's not even that they're really hard tasks, but that there are so many little details to software develop that everyone treats like common sense, but it's not... Until you have experience.

<comment><USER8> In this specific case, they created some simple Rails websites - one seems to have basically been a simple CMS (with a nice design) for a customer, another was an internal time tracking tool. Both had at least one (more-or-less harmless) WTF [1], but the customer seems to have been happy, time tracking worked, and they definitely learned something.

[1] To be fair, one was putting my sample code in production.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Perhaps it is different for design, but taking on an intern for a software shop is almost always a greater burden than benefit.

I interned at a few different places while in college, and I was definitely way ahead of the class as far as writing useful code. Regardless, the overhead of people bringing you up to speed on their specific projects and processes for only three months of work just doesn't match what you are going to contribute. The cold hard fact is that you are still junior, very junior, no matter how much a hotshot you think you are. So the time they put into you makes it a pretty even trade for it not to be paid.

Though come to think of it, both internships I went to were paid. But the point stands.

To put it simpler terms, ask any company whether they find new college graduates effective and worth the overhead for the first few months they work. I doubt many would say yes, and those are people more qualified than those seeking internships.

<comment><USER10> I did a six month (paid) internship when I was in uni and after two weeks of "training", we were pair programming with the fulltime employees. By month three, I was working on core services that are still in use by the company now.

So, interns are definitely _not always_ a burden, but I certainly do understand that they often would be, but to be honest, you get what you pay for - if it had been an unpaid internship, I'd have had very little incentive to really put much effort into it. I mean, months of unpaid work would be demoralizing and I'd probably quickly have ended up producing little of value.. Luckily it never came to that and I ended up going back to work at the company for another 1.75 years, before I left to try out the world of freelancing and startups.

For the record, that company hires between two and five interns every year. They find it effective enough to keep doing it. They treat it as much as a hiring thing as a cheap labor thing and they find having (paid) interns to be pretty effective.

<comment><USER9> Six months is definitely different, I would agree that in that time you can become effective.

In a way you are agreeing though, as you said, it took two months for you to be working on core services, so there is a significant ramp up time. If we are talking about a summer internship then it is questionable whether you will really add more value than extract. This is irrespective of ability level and just the reality of getting to know an organizations processes, codebase, etc..

In any case, I'm not quite sure what the article's beef is. If there was no market for unpaid internships, then there wouldn't be any. Clearly some interns are finding it worth their while enough to go work for free.

Do totally agree that it is an absolutely awesome funnel for candidates though, and worth drawing those candidates in via pay or other fringe benefits.

<comment><USER10> Well, I was working on core services, together with fulltime employees (pair programming), after the first two weeks and at the time, they did a lot of pair programming anyway. After two months, I was basically working on my own, but I like to think that I added value much sooner.

Having said that, I don't disagree - it definitely does have a rampup time and I don't disagree with that theres a market and value in unpaid internships, especially short term ones - I'm just saying that I also think theres value for employers and candidates alike in paid internships too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> At my organization, we used to have unpaid internships for college students, but they would receive college credit. We thought that was still kinda B.S., so we found some money and created paid internships.

Back in the day, when I started my career, to get my foot in the door, I worked at a temp agency. "Word processing" was all the rage and they needed people who knew how to use Microsoft Word. After a couple of months the boss noticed I knew how to spell "glaciolacustrine" correctly, so he asked if I had a degree. A couple months later I was hired. All the time I was getting paid $10/hr.

That's the way firms should be finding and cultivating young talent: paid internships, temp services, and recruiting. Unpaid internships are indeed bullshit.

</comment><comment><USER12> I didn't realize that the unpaid internship situation is as bad in Ireland as it is here in the U.S. My startup helps college students find entry level jobs and internships, so I'm constantly aware of what the latest trends are.

One trend that really scares me is that there are some "career experts" whom I interact with regularly who offer their own unpaid virtual internships (I've seen lots of other internships like this, but the fact that career experts who are supposed to help interns are offering these really blows my mind). These are people who don't have the ability to offer many of the benefits that do come with an unpaid internship such as making connections, learning what it's like to work in a real office, having a recognizable name on your resume, etc.

Another trend that scares me is that we're seeing more and more internships auctioned off in charity auctions. Rich parents actually pay for their kids to get some experience.

Unfortunately, interns aren't going to be the ones to stop this trend. Unpaid interns do benefit from their internships. They mostly accept it as something that they have to do, and they know that if they refuse to take an unpaid internship, there are thousands of other students who will snap up the opportunity.

Change is either going to have to come from employers or the government. I strongly believe that offering paid internships is more favorable to employers because they get better quality interns who are more motivated, and the employer has a stronger incentive to use the intern's time well.

Here in the U.S. there are already laws against unpaid internships. I wrote an article on it here: [http://www.onedayoneinternship.com/blog/are-unpaid- internshi...](http://www.onedayoneinternship.com/blog/are-unpaid-internships- illegal/)

There's actually an excellent and fair standard for determining when an unpaid internship should be allowed; however, I've never heard of an employer's being prosecuted under the Fair Labor Standards Act for having unpaid interns. And if the law were to start to be enforced, I'm not sure the outcome would benefit students in the short-term. There would be a lot fewer opportunities as many employers would get rid of their internship programs. This would result in even more competition for what paid opportunities were left.

I really hate unpaid internships, but I still haven't figured out what it's going to take to make them a thing of the past. They've become an essential part of the transition from education to employment, and messing around with that in a time when really talented grads are struggling to land jobs probably isn't a good idea. We may have to wait until the economy really heats up again.

<comment><USER13> _I didn't realize that the unpaid internship situation is as bad in Ireland as it is here in the U.S._

Ireland has been hit by a strong recession. Unemployment is high (~15%), and particularly high amount young people. Many are emigrating to find other work. The media is full of stories about how there are no jobs.

Which is a shame because there is a massive skill shortage if you know programming/sysadmining in Ireland. Companies spend months trying to find employees.

<comment><USER14> Wow, how can I move there?

<comment><USER15> Some friends of mine (first degree friends, this is verified) moved to Dublin and just, well, didn't leave.

At least in 2006 it was rather easy to get a tax identification number (I forget what it's called) with a signed affidavit and a witness saying you live at some address, and you can use that to get work. Now, without better documentation the government taxes you at the highest rate possible, and since you won't file you'll never get a penny back.

Also, they worked in card houses, so maybe the documentation requirements weren't as strict as a professional programming environment. Oh, and I'm sure it's all sorts of illegal. But just doing it is easier than it seems. :)

<comment><USER13> _tax identification number (I forget what it's called)_

PPS Number

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> If you're not paid, you're not valued. Nothing you produce will ever be good enough. Nobody will make time for you, because they have more valuable things to spend their time on. No money is lost if you're struggling to do your assignments; no money is lost if you don't learn anything.

A company should be invested into their interns and the best way to be invested is by paying them a wage and expecting decent work in return.

</comment><comment><USER17> I work in academia. In academia, we pay crap, especially to the people at the bottom of the totem pole.

But even _we_ pay our summer interns.

</comment><comment><USER18> As this is Ireland I've got to assume there is also an element of trying to reduce the numbers who are technically unemployed and so make things look better. It sounds very familiar to the community employment schemes etc. from the '80s where people basically worked for their unemployment benefit so as to gain work experience / help the community. I can even remember being turned down at an interview for one of these way back when and feeling pretty bad. In the end some people will gain something & some people will be exploited but it wont make much difference to the economy other than to help drive down wages.

<comment><USER19> I'm not sure if you can be on the unemployment register and still work in an internship. I wouldn't be surprised to learn that the government isn't looking too deeply into the situation because it keeps the dole numbers down.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Companies tend to save money at all costs, even at the expense of decency and Doing The Right Thing™. It's the same reason a lot of them have clauses in their contracts forbidding people from discussing their wages, even though it is in the employees' interests to do so.

I figured something out when thinking about this one day - where you're going is how you'll get there. If your goal is to make money, your goal is greed and your path will be a greedy one. If your goal is to make a positive contribution to those around you and get one back in return, then you will still make money but won't step on peoples' toes in the process.

</comment><comment><USER21> It's not a problem for IT students. I could choose from many offers in my city. At our forums we laugh from low paid offers and I haven't seen unpaid one. I ended up going to different country and earn 1,1k euro with no real experience at all and I extended it during crisis (it was few years ago) so I guess I was useful.

If you really can't find anything it's better to make nice portfolio projects for yourself at home or work on some opensource project. It's similar experience but feels much better than working as slave for some awful company that can't even afford small wage.

<comment><USER22> My experience is that a number of larger companies is paying rather well for internships of people 1 or 2 years from graduation. I had a great half a year in southern france on the cost of one of them (small flat, benefits and a final performance bonus included).

They see it as gambling money: if they find a good guy, they will try to hold on him. Otherwise, even a 1k wage doesn't really cost them much.

Also: Good interns usually are not available for hire after their studies, so its money well invested.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Even Wal Mart will pay you while training you. If a company cannot meet that standard, something is wrong, imo.

</comment><comment><USER24> The place I'm currently contracting in (mentioned in article) has their summer intern programme in full swing.

Not only are the guys getting decent pay but they are building a useful in- house app while getting trained up in technologies like OS X, Linux, Git, Ruby, Rails, MongoDB etc.

Win-win!

</comment><comment><USER25> Perhaps this thread has gone too long, but the comments are overwhelmingly against doing work for free.

TL;DR - It's an interns fault for taking crap free work, in essence putting their future in someone else's hands.

My experience: 3 years ago I was an accountant and thought about killing myself nearly every day. It used to take me 10 - 15 minutes to get out of my car every morning just to walk inside. I was able to use free work to transition from a boring career to one I enjoy in an incredibly short amount of time.

Rather than go back to school only to finish in debt and start at the bottom I was able to trade valuable work that I could do (finance/accounting) for experience in work that I wanted to do (development/data analysis). I would always suggest short projects so as not to overwhelm either party, but this turned out to be very favorable in the long run. One major caveat is that these were not company created internships. I wasn't in the business of letting a company compile all of their shitty work only to pass it off on someone to do for free. THAT IS WHAT NEEDS TO BE CALLED BULLSHIT ON.

If a job seeker shows just a little initiative they can force free work to have a training component that is defined in advance and one from which they will benefit. Too many workers put their future in someone else's hands by assuming the company has some training program mapped out for them. Not surprisingly, these are exactly the types of employees who continue the cycle of useless and exploitative internships that you rail against.

If you are doing work for free, YOU are on the hook. You hold most of the cards because there is nothing forcing you to continue working.

</comment><comment><USER26> 30-day free trials are for software. People deserve more respect.

<comment><USER27> But interns aren't producing anything (if they are, it's not an internship). The idea is they are learning. If they are producing things the company then uses to sell, they should get paid. But I've seen interns that literally follow around, take notes, ask questions.

So, why should someone be paid for not contributing to the bottom line?

<comment><USER28> > But interns aren't producing anything (if they are, it's not an internship).

That seems like a false dichotomy.

I'm at an internship right now getting paid quite well and I'm contributing to their bottom line (albeit indirectly since I am working on internal tools). I'm also learning quite a lot.

<comment><USER27> Sorry, I should have been explicit (though, I feel I was fairly obvious).

 _unpaid interships_ aren't producing anything. If you are getting paid, then it's not really relevant to the discussion of "unpaid internships."

<comment><USER29> Whatever point you thought you were making, you weren't. And even if you were, it certainly wasn't obvious.

<comment><USER27> No. I was correct. Interns producing something of value to the company have to be paid, otherwise it's illegal. If you are getting paid, then the discussion doesn't involve you.

Sorry if you don't understand. Your ignorance doesn't make me wrong.

<comment><USER29> I know, I know, it's everyone else's fault they misunderstood you.

<comment><USER27> Everyone else?

Regardless, being right has nothing to do with popularity. I mean, enough people watch Fox News. Besides, I'm not the one support unpaid interns doing illegal work. And before you try to chime in with some quip about straw man, unpaid internships are the topic, not paid work. It's what my comment was about. A few people disagreed.

Whatever. Go back to your "popularity makes it right" way of life.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> This past year I followed a web development course. I'm now supposed to work 3 months for free. I don't mind it because I've been jobless for a long time before. The problem is, I just can't find an employer (in France). I get the interviews, but my interviewer always assumes that I'm supposed to know everything by heart, have nothing more to learn, and more importantly, they want to see a portfolio of sites I've done before other than the one I've done in class. Basically, they don't want an intern, they want a real, super-fast worker for free. So I'm going to fail at my diploma because nobody wants me to work for free for them. To make it worse, I'm the best student of my class. Those who can't code found an internship. Are we supposed to lie and bluff to be allowed to be exploited?

<comment><USER31> Did you try remote work?

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> 0 is just one number along a range of numbers - it's not particularly special. In some cultures, it's considered normal to exchange not just free labor to get your foot in the door, but to actually pay cash to do so.

I am not convinced it's a net win for society.

</comment><comment><USER33> While I think it's horrible if companies don't pay interns, I can see how the "you're learning things!" angle could seem more reasonable in the US.

My outside view is that a lot of Americans pay thousands of dollars to go to university.

Universities are, for a lot of people, just a means for learning a discipline and giving them more/better possibilities in a future job search.

While most internships aren't as "prestigious" as a university degree, they probably don't cost as much either.

In the end, both of them will have allowed you to make some new contacts, learn trade-specific things and add a new slot on your résumé.

p.s. this certainly doesn't go for all professions/internships. But the general direction seems about right.

</comment><comment><USER34> Wow. We hire almost every intern that works for us, unless they suck. Internships are also normally done pre-graduation from college. It is not a job, it is in exchange for college credit. We hire the day they graduate.

But it is also up to the intern to decide whether or not our internship is right for them. A overgeneralized diatribe like the one posted is aiming to get people to not intern at all, whereas the appropriate act would be to critically evaluate your options, and make an informed decision about each specific company.

<comment><USER35> In my school, we call them "co-op jobs". If you sign up for co-op, you get college credit for them, but either way you get paid. And of course if you're any good, your co-op employers will want to hang onto you after you graduate. I didn't bother signing up for co-op because co-op or no, it's impossible to complete all the other graduation requirements and not have enough credits. So the credits you get from a co-op job are useless. Students pay money to the school to be part of the co-op program, and that's not unusual. Here, it's $400 for a once a week class that teaches you how to make a resume plus an additional ~$100 fee if you find a job, even if you didn't use the school's connections to find it. If your internship results in college credit, its likely that students are actually losing money by working for you. I think that's absurd.

<comment><USER34> You also inadvertently prove a more subtle point of internships. Employees who offer the greatest value are ones who are engaged with the company and want to be part of it. If someone doesn't think enough of us to want to go through the trouble of an internship, and think working for us is absurd, then they would not have been a good fit anyway. No loss to us if they don't work with us.

<comment><USER35> Paying money to work for anyone is absurd. I don't care if your company is the best thing since sliced bread. It isn't worth going homeless, nor is it worth taking on tens of thousands extra in loans to (a) support myself while providing you with free labor and (b) cover other expenses I could've paid for out of pocket if I'd been paid fairly, such as tuition. If free internships became standard, it would put students from low-income families at a serious disadvantage. Who needs meritocracy when we can make a caste system? Hopefully, your company will be successful, so you can afford to pay all your kids' expenses and put them through unpaid internships of their own.

I want to be able to buy gas and keep my car maintained so I can actually come to work, so I'm not "engaged". If I want to pay enough of my tuition up-front so that when I graduate I can afford to work for small companies doing interesting projects, instead of auctioning myself to the highest bidder to cover my loan payments, then I'm a "bad fit". So be it, I guess.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Personally I got a lot of value out of my unpaid internships (Kate Spade & Sports Illustrated). Though I understand the reasons against it, I got to a) work with a great team, b) make some great business contacts for future job referrals, and c) get experience that looked great on my resume.

That said, I completely understand that my experience was the exception rather than the rule. Plus, both companies I interned at most likely could have afforded to pay me too.

</comment><comment><USER37> In Germany I often see unpaid interns, but actually not in a bad situation. There are 2 situations in Germany when an unpaid internship will happen: One is, when the students working as interns are still going to their schools and maybe are first or second semesters. So actually they don't really create value, but they cost time, energy, working hours of coworkers, electricity, rent and so on. The company basically already pays a load to have this intern sitting there and a high chance to get no value back in return. I think in this situation it is quite fair, not to pay wages.

The second situation is, when students try to get a job, which a lot of people want to have, like at Google, Price Waterhouse Coopers and so on. In this situation the brand alone will help them out later to get better jobs or even give them a chance for a full time job in this company that others can't get. It's a little like doing a start-up. You put in a lot for the small chance to get a unnatural big payoff.

In both situations I can't disapprove of unpaid internships. I hope with sharing these experiences, other readers might get a more objective point of view. It is not all bad about unpaid internships!

</comment><comment><USER38> I've had friends who wanted to get into journalism and publishing and the only way they could do it was by working for free for several months. Not even 'internships', just free work. Eventually, there were vacancies and they were the obvious hires.

I'm not suggesting this was fair but it was a pretty clear case of supply outstripping demand, which meant that employers could afford to let the system develop this way.

</comment><comment><USER39> I can't find the article right now, but there have been studies about and there is evidence for that many people will do something for free, but if offered to be paid a market rate that is low for the same work, will _not_ do it. In fact, they'll be insulted by the low value ascribed to it.

Personally I would feel like an a-hole offering someone minimum wage to do intern-level work at our startup. Nor would I want it on my resume that I worked as a web developer for $8/hour. They do _not_ want a market price that low on their skills. They'd rather have a free internship on paper.

That said, it does all depend on context. In fact during high school I worked in a bio lab for free for about 50 hours and then asked for a paid internship (which was minimum wage) during the summer. However I was a high-schooler, so this was cool. But I would not have taken (and in fact turned down) low-paying jobs after college. So I can see that context does matter, and I don't think it's fair to rip on all unpaid internships with the same stroke.

<comment><USER40> The whole low pay versus free psychology thing is tricky. It also depends on how the pay is structured. If you offer it as a low hourly rate, it'll probably be rejected, as opposed to working for some lumpsum at the end (or split into two). The second is typically more acceptable. Then instead of feeling like their labour is worth minimal wage, they feel like they're being paid for finishing a job.

 _shrug_ worked on me. 600 dollars for a parttime research thing during school for a term that worked out to $9 an hour, felt way better split into 2x300.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't the idea of an internship about learning, not about producing? If your producing for the company something they are selling (or creating net value), don't you have to get paid? I mean, people here are talking about actually working on projects the company is earning money for. That's not an internship.

Am I clueless, or are other people just ignorant?

<comment><USER41> Are you making a moral argument, or a legal one? If legal, what country?

The "idea of an internship" is experience and networking if you're the intern, recruiting if you're a smart company, and free/cheap labor if you're a dumb company.

<comment><USER42> It's a matter of legality in the United States.

"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 [. . .]" <https://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/03/business/03intern.html>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> Last summer, I took an unpaid internship at a software company, if it can be called an internship. I was introduced to someone who worked there, and he got it worked out for me. I didn't work on core stuff for the company, so maybe it was less an internship than just hanging out in the offices while I worked on an open-source project relevant to them, specifically github.com/andrewf/pcap2har .

I learned a crap-load of stuff there, technical and otherwise. I am enormously better off having taken that opportunity. Would I have been worse off if I had worked on stuff that directly made them money? No.

My friend has left to work on his own startup, but I started this week as a paid intern. I hope to keep working part-time when I start school again.

I cant speak for other people's experience with less-scrupulous employers, but I have nothing but gratitude for the people who gave me my unpaid internship.

</comment><comment><USER44> Companies often don't pay interns for 2 reasons: 1\. They don't think they can afford to give them responsibility, and with no responsibility = no pay. This is a terrible relationship. (no pay = no responsibility as well) 2\. They know that if it's unpaid - it's likely that only people very interested will apply - and this signal is, supposedly, very strong.

The 3 MAJOR problems are: 1\. The company is sending a signal that says, "we don't trust you", "we don't think you can do valuable work", "and we don't value you enough to pay you" 2\. The company gets lower skilled people, because the good ones get the jobs with good experience AND pay 3\. Have you EVER tried to get a volunteer to do anything?! It's impossible. Incentives are not aligned.

</comment><comment><USER45> Passing judgment on all unpaid internships in all situations is unreasonable. When deciding whether to accept an unpaid internship, common sense is the best guide.

I've seen both unpaid and paid interns treated poorly. I've also seen both thrive. I personally had 2 paid internships before I graduated college. One was demeaning and the other an incredible learning experience.

If an unpaid opportunity offers a lot and you can afford to take it, why not? How is this different than contributing to open source or doing pro bono for charities?

However, if a company doesn't want to pay, I'd suggest more caution. Ask lots of questions, and if you end up just getting people coffee, quit. Interns are working professionals just like anyone else and deserve equal respect.

</comment><comment><USER46> In the US at least, there are many opportunities for paid internships. All the major tech companies offer them - Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, Facebook, Zynga, Boeing, Lockheed, etc - and many of the smaller ones do (though in smaller numbers). At almost all of them, interns are treated as normal engineers and put on teams as basically full time employees with an end date ~3-4 months after they start. They are paid very well (competitive with what a FT employee would make for 3 months). The internship can, and in many cases, does result in a full time or reintern offer.

The thing is, you have to be able to cut it and basically interview as someone who they would WANT to hire as a FT after a year or two more experience.

</comment><comment><USER47> This is what I learned from a half-day legal seminar in california aimed at startups:

In California, unless the work is for course credit at an established institution, an intern must be paid minimum wage. If not, the intern can do the work, and then file with the state, which will then do all the investigation. The intern doesnt need to get a laywer. They get the state's lawyers looking for a hefty fine, back taxes, and the opportunity to audit the hell out of someone. Start-ups are especially vulnerable to this because programmers who would normally be exempt probably aren't making enough and should be paid overtime. The state doesn't care what those programmers want. They want their back taxes.

</comment><comment><USER48> There's a great book that came out recently, Intern Nation, it's the first exposé on this issue that I'm aware of. It is fantastic, totally engaging, covers all of the many aspects of the internship problem and its genesis.

</comment><comment><USER49> The CV still rules when it comes to getting past HR departments and into interview. The HR departments (and employment agencies) I've worked with look directly at the Work Experience section of a CV and then tick off a bunch of boxes for the job they're trying to fill. Unpaid internships are one way to fill a CV with relevant experience. Find a way to bridge that gap and you don't need to do an unpaid internship. I went through 3 months of unpaid work with an ugly little company for exactly this reason, and it paid off, but those were the most trying 3 months of my professional career.

</comment><comment><USER50> I had a paid internship but would have gladly done it unpaid if I had to. I interned at a big name place, so YMMV, but I can say that senior year when I was looking for jobs _no one_ cared about what I did in school and _everyone_ cared what I did at that internship.

You are not going to work there to do slave labor, you're getting bullet points on your resume, mentorship from senior engineers, as well as taking in the business environment which you've probably never seen before.

I hope no college student who can't find another option has decided to stick his nose up at an unpaid internship because of this post.

</comment><comment><USER51> The problem is part informational. Grads take internships in the _hope_ it will lead to a job. For most it doesn't. Hope is perennial, so more bums can always be found for seats.

Banning them is unlikely in most countries as it's politically unrealistic. Exhorting companies not to do it is unreliable. So not easy to close off intern demand.

Tackling the supply side might be a better bet. The answer might be in educating grads to mentally file internships alongside diet pills and pyramid schemes. Providing alternatives also good (but more difficult).

</comment><comment><USER52> In the US there's two very different sorts of internships.

The first is what you describe, scamming desperate people during a economic depression out of free skilled labor that has monetary value to the company.

The second is internships at places like magazines, newspapers and politicians offices. These ones are more interesting. Poor people and minorities can't afford to work for a year for free. But the children of the rich can. The internship provides cover to avoid having to hire minorities since hiring takes place from the internship pool.

<comment><USER17> _Poor people and minorities can't afford to work for a year for free_

Poor people _and_ minorities? So minorities, even if they happen to be individually rich, can't afford to work for a year for free?

<comment><USER52> Thanks. To clarify, certain classes of minorities, because of endemic racism, are statistically less financially able to work for free for a year. These are the sorts of types of minorities that certain kinds of firms don't want to hire, but also don't want to be held accountable. Unpaid internships, to which said minorities, and the poor (including white trash) do not apply, act as a filtering mechanism to make sure only the right sorts of blue blooded folks end up getting hired.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> Totally true; I did an unpaid internship for a startup and didn't learn a thing(actually they where doing a verrrry bad software engineering job). The advantage was that I didn't really had to work much & I got grades for the internship @unif. But I wouldn't do it again.

I felt under valuated, I can make really complex s/w architectures, solve complex, challenging problems & I was doing work that I could've done as a 14 year old during the internship..

</comment><comment><USER54> I'm very desperate to join a startup as an intern or employee. Some of us (me) have been dreaming (literally) about being in a startup that it doesn't matter what we do, as long as we get in one. It's gotten to the point where I would even pay to be in one. What I get out of it is that I will see if a startup is right for me, and at this point that's all I can ask for.

</comment><comment><USER55> While in college i chased a small design studio you have never heard of to take me as an unpaid intern. I learnt loads just watching them run a studio and work with clients. I do not see how they could possibly have justified paying me for the little value i gave back. Still gratefull for the opportunity they gave me.

</comment><comment><USER56> I'm currently in my sixth and final year of pharmacy school which consists entirely of clinical rotations at different practice sites in the area. Not only are these internships completely unpaid, we have to pay ~$30k for the priviledge which equates to almost $1000/week (6 x 6 week rotations). It's a complete scam.

</comment><comment><USER57> Are CS students not cynical enough? Compared to, say engineers (non-software)? Or is it just the effect of fierce and deep competition?

Or perhaps the potential for learning a lot (practical knowledge) in a short time is greater in software dev work than others?

</comment><comment><USER58> The only reason for me to do an unpaid internship would be to do it a 'brand- name' company. You do see the best practices, meet an amazing team and it might lead to an eventual job with the company.

For an unknown company - not a chance.

<comment><USER2> A "brand-name" company that can't even afford to pay you minimum wage is not worthy of that brand.

</comment></comment><comment><USER59> It's all relative and depends entirely on how much you put into it and how much your employer does the same. I've had friends who've taken unpaid internships and have gotten entirely different experiences out of it.

</comment><comment><USER60> If someone tells me I wont be paid..but still i want to take up that work ? why blame

But if someone fresh grad is duped into believing doing unpaid work will get him something else then its bad.

</comment><comment><USER61> I have to disagree with calling unpaid internships a rip-off.

As a student, I see this as a way of getting something on the resume to break the catch-22 situation of having zero experience.

<comment><USER22> As a student who worked during most of his studies: a low-paying job gives you as much experience and is definitely preferable.

With most of my bosses, I had the following deal: "I have no experience, so every task lasts as long as I think I need. You pay a low wage, so if you hit one of the points where I am actually experienced: you make a good cut. If you assign me to tasks where I have to learn everything: you make a bad cut." It worked great, if you know the line where you shouldn't force those terms.

Its a business and working for free is harmful to everyone who wants to make a living from it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER62> If products can be free so can interns.

Look at it as a freemium model.

<comment><USER63> People are not products.

<comment><USER64> technically, you are when you are looking for a job. You need to market and sell yourself to the highest bidder.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER65> I'm confused. Who forces people to work for free?

<comment><USER65> When down voting, please explain.

If working as an unpaid intern is indeed horrible and so incredibly lacking in non-monetary value, then people will learn there is no reason to voluntarily engage (or continue) in such a relationship.

</comment></comment><comment><USER66> This guy clearly never had a company.

We do not pay our interns and still lose money in the process if we don't hire them after because we have lost too much time not just training but also fixing errors people at their first experience will do.

Nevertheless we still invest on internships because that's the only way to snap good talent just out of university.

So please, stop the bullshit. Yeah, and downvote away.

</comment><comment><USER67> If you become an unpaid intern, then you better be learning 10 new things per day that you couldn't have learnd any other way. I can see where interning where be beneficial for both individual, company and society. However in the vast majority of cases the intern is just getting ripped off.

</comment><comment><USER68> I don't know why there aren't more low-level tech jobs for college students. I paid for a couple years of state school by working in a deli. The only jobs I saw that would hire a "college kid" were _on campus_ , and those basically boiled down to having the right connections as soon as you arrived. No longer a freshman and nothing related on your resume? Not interested.</comment>


Show HN: Netlify for PHP - <AUTHOR> https://www.amezmo.com/ <comment><USER2> Interesting, I'll give it a try. Thanks!</comment>


Show HN: Discord utility to compress video to 8MB - <AUTHOR> https://8mb.video/ <comment><AUTHOR> The neat thing is that incoming bandwidth to AWS is free, so people upload 100's of megabytes and we only get billed for the 8MB we send back. (CPU time/cost to transcode is negligible).

<comment><USER2> Why the 8 MB limit? Is this a limit on Discord?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes. That's their free limit. If you pay $5/mo you get 50MB and $10/month gets you 100MB uploads. All of which seem like low limits to me, shrug.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Somewhat related: This semester we got a Moodle in the university. Sometimes the students write the homework in paper and upload a photo to the site. But the maximum files size is 1Mb, that is like the average size of a photo of a paper, so half of the time they have a problem. So if you want to diversify later, you can try with photos. (Good luck getting students to pay for this, but it may be a losing lead.)

Some questions after writing my unrelated comment: [Instant Edit: I tried it now.]

Can I choose a smaller size? [I only can choose bigger sizes. Can I choose smaller sizes?]

Do you add a watermark? [No]

Do you preserve sound? [Yes :), and I can mute it too :).]

More feature requests after trying it:

Can I change the resolution of the video?

It would be nice to see the options before I click upload file.

After I download the video it is not longer available (as promised). Perhaps it would be nice to add some javascript trick to change the link from "Download xyz.mp4" to "You have already downloaded the video. Click here to upload a new one."

The name of the video is uninteligible. Perhaps it should be something like "8mb.uploaded_file_name.mp4".

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for taking the time to write all this great feedback.

I am very appreciative.

Photos: Yes I actually recently added support for photos. It just resizes them to 1080p resolution. So not very flexible but all software must start somewhere. Give it a shot? They tend to be around 0.1MB.

I bought the domain 8mb.app .. maybe should switch names since it does more then video?

What kind of watermark do you want to add? text? graphic?

What video resolution do you want? Right now it reduces video to 720p, or keeps it the same if already smaller.

> It would be nice to see the options before I click upload file.

What do you mean?

> Perhaps it would be nice to add some javascript trick to change the link > from "Download xyz.mp4" to "You have already downloaded the video. Click > here to upload a new one."

Yes! Good idea! Will do.

> Perhaps it should be something like "8mb.uploaded_file_name.mp4".

That would make sense. I will consider it.

If you have more feedback, I'm listening because those were great points.

<comment><USER3> Watermark: I worried that the free version adds a watermark.

Resolution: I tried with a smaller video. 720p is probably fine.

>> _It would be nice to see the options before I click upload file._

The landing page only says "Upload file..." and after I click it I get the options like 8/50/100Mb. Why do I have to click "Upload file"?

The advanced options like "mute" are hidden by default. I think it is a good idea to hide them initially.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> 8mb.video is a service that compresses video, images and audio to just under Discord's 8MB upload limit.

</comment><comment><USER4> This is very cool! Any plans for more granular file sizes?

<comment><AUTHOR> Possibly - whats your use case?</comment></comment>


UCSD Researchers Give Computers Common Sense - <AUTHOR> http://ucsdnews.ucsd.edu/newsrel/science/10-07ComputersCommonSenseDK-L.asp <comment><USER2> Common sense reasoning is one of the hardest parts of AI. I don't think top- down solutions will work. Look to a project like Cyc for one of the best efforts, and most wasted money <http://www.cyc.com/>

You can't build a top down taxonomy of ideas and expect everything too work. You can't just "hard code" the ideas.

I think building tools from the ground up, with increasingly complicated and capable recognition and modeling, might work. For example, a visual object class recognition suite that first learned faces, phones, cars, etc. and eventually moved on to be able to recognize everything in a scene, might be able to automatically perhaps with some training build up the taxonomy for common sense.

<comment><USER3> I agree.

On the last point, I'd start with even lower level - objects, how many, how large, etc, and only then try to figure out what those objects are.

Also, I think it's interesting that it appears that the first successful AI will come from analysis of visual information (computer vision) not textual (like the recent Twine, or semantic web in general).

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Wonder how it would do on this image: <http://media.funlol.com/content/img/cute-tennis-balls.jpg>

</comment><comment><USER5> A point of relevancy to this site is that Serge Belongie started a biometrics startup while an undergraduate at Caltech. Failure for biometrics companies is even higher than normal for technology startups.

</comment><comment><USER6> This solution will become less relevant as the popularity of floating-bovine photography increases.</comment>