[mindcrime]

I have really mixed feelings about this. As the founder of a self-funded, bootstrapping startup, every dollar that we spend is coming out of my $dayjob salary, which really limits what we can spend on paying other people. Even paying minimum wage is probably not a realistic option.

And, I think an unpaid internship can be a win-win for both parties in at least some situations.

And, as a libertarian, I reject the notion that the govt. has any business interfering in private contractual arrangements that don't involve the use of force or fraud.

So, would we offer and engage in an unpaid internship at Fogbeam Labs? Well... I don't know. As I said, I don't think they should be prohibited, but the idea also leaves something of a sour taste in my mouth.

We've been talking to some intern candidates over the past couple of weeks, and the idea we've been batting around is to offer a fixed sum stipend, on the order of a few thousand dollars, as compensation for a 6-8 week internship, where the intern would be asked to contribute around 20 hours / week.

8 * 20 = 160 hours, and at $10.00 / hour, you'd be looking at $1600 dollars. The number we have in mind is higher than that, so I guess we actually are talking about paying more than minimum wage. We could only afford to take on one intern at that rate though, but that's probably OK... I doubt the founders have the bandwidth to manage more than one intern anyway.

[andykmaguire]

Author here - good point about bandwidth. We typically see that companies that can't afford to pay "x" interns typically don't have bandwidth to manage "x" interns.

[thedufer]

If you were to hire an unpaid intern - are they not creating any value for you (or very little)? Then why are you hiring them? If they are creating value for you, then that should be extra money in the pool, and some of it should go to the intern. What am I missing?

[mindcrime]

If they are creating value for you, then that should be extra money in the pool, and some of it should go to the intern. What am I missing?

The time delay between creating the value and turning that value in money. In a situation like ours, a pre-revenue, bootstrapped startup, we can create a ton of value, but nobody knows exactly when our first (and subsequent) sales will be.

Now, if an intern wanted an arrangement with deferred compensation, contingent on some future revenue, etc., etc., that could theoretically be arranged. But it probably wouldn't be worth the effort to do all that.

OTOH, value can be exchanged in other ways other than money. An intern who works for "free" in the monetary sense may still benefit from the situation. A strong letter of recommendation and a verifiable reference to put on the resume represent a form of value as well.

But, all of that said, I'm still not super crazy about unpaid internships. Like I said above, if we take on any intern(s) we are looking to pay them.

[olivier1664]

Concerning the libertarian argument, a counterpoint is that the student is kind of "forced" to do an internship.