[bcostlow]

I just love articles like this. The economy's bad, but the upside to hiring is you can screw your new employees for a while.

It's one thing to suggest new hire salaries can be lowered a bit, but only offering internships, usually for little or no pay, or withholding benefits?

The real upside to hiring now (which is one of the benefits mentioned in the article, to be fair) is that a lot of great talent is in play.

But if you're hiring a top prospect, it's presumably for what they bring to the table. If you use the current conditions to push a new employee's compensation well below what you could afford to pay for the value they add, they'll be the first one out the door when things pick up again.