[simonsarris]

My company has exclusively hired interns out of high school, including myself, since the mid 2000s. Every single hire was an intern first, either as a junior or senior in HS. The board is now 2/3rds former interns (I'm one of them), 1/3rds original founders.

It works extremely well. Any high school AP CS teacher we ask is delighted to send us their best students. We basically get to interview for 3-5 years during summers while they're at college and then hire (if we have a spot, we are a "lifestyle" company) when they graduate. Of course this means we don't hire seniors, which probably gives us some blind spots, and it means we can't silicon-valley-scale up, but we're very happy with growing software engineers vs hiring them.

[flufluflufluffy]

So you get 3-5 years of unpaid labor out of every employee first? Radical man

[simonsarris]

We pay the interns. Is that not usual where you are?

[flufluflufluffy]

A lot are unpaid but I admit I haven’t looked around the internship space in quite a while. That’s good they are paid

[master-lincoln]

You don't pay interns fairly? Radical man...

[rimbo789]

Why would anyone accept such a terrible deal

[simonsarris]

Why would anyone take a programming job over the summer fresh out of high school? What makes that a terrible deal? What is your counterfactual here?

[ryukoposting]

If you're talented enough to pique a recruiter's interest in high school, you're much too talented to sign yourself away to a single company for the long haul in your 20s. Get experience in different industries, see what different corporate cultures are like, and learn how to negotiate compensation. Do these things early and often, because you don't have a spouse, or kids, or a house yet.

[raddan]

I think there are actually a lot more kids like this than you’d think. Like many of those kids, I was so desperate for a job (I needed a job, to pay rent and to eat) that I would have been happy to take any computer job, since the alternative for me was stuff like unloading trucks and stocking shelves.

Unfortunately the standard hiring channels are not very good at finding those folks because they have few credentials. Also, like me, they may be good at certain things and have huge blind spots in other areas.