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Comment by merpnderp | Hacker News Reader

One thing in this article that really caught my eye was "Do free work". When I was a young kid I remember my grandfather, who was about to retire from a long career at the power utility having been head of the union, and much beloved by all his coworkers and managers, told me about how he got that job. He had been laid off at a grain mill, and was getting by as a butcher. But a friend of his got him in the door to see the hiring manager at the utility. My grandfather said I'll work two weeks for you for free, and if I make you happy, then you can hire me. After the first day, he was hired. I guess this also touches on the article's point about networking.

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It's illegal to work for free today, unless you're a Congressional intern, since they exempted themselves from the law. Lots of "my grandfather..." stories are illegal in today's US, land of freedom and such.

> It's illegal to work for free today

Really? What law is this?

https://www.dol.gov/whd/regs/compliance/whdfs71.pdf

It's a basic consequence of having minimum wage laws. Unless you're being picky and want to hear that it's illegal to have someone work for you for free.

In this case, you could still work for free, as a volunteer at a charity. Or attend user group meetings and give presentations. That is one way to increase your network.

> Or attend user group meetings and give presentations.

You realize the article specifically highlighted that as one of the bad pieces of advice proffered on the Internet.

I don't see that in there -- I see where it mentions about writing blog posts is bad advice, so this may be similar. However, I don't think they are saying it is bad per se, just that it won't magically land you a job.

However, presenting in front of a peer group does do a couple things. First, you have to prepare, which helps you realize what skill you actually have. Secondly you end up building a lot of self confidence, especially on the topics that you are presenting on.

Which in my case somehow worked major magic. When I was last unemployed for about 4 months, I seemed to have flubbed a couple interviews. Well, I went to some Linux user group meetings, presented on a couple technical topics I was passionate about, and then offered to help anyone with problems that they were having on any of their environments (this was related to things like iptables configurations, clustering, virtualization, etc). The following week I went into an interview, and it was like I was watching myself on auto-pilot. Identifying problems and offering possible solutions, picking up on what was working or not based on body language, dynamically adjusting my message to fit what the interviewer was looking for, and I landed the job and started the next day.

> I don't see that in there -- I see where it mentions about writing blog posts is bad advice, so this may be similar. However, I don't think they are saying it is bad per se, just that it won't magically land you a job.

Sorry, you're right. I read that bit in the linked article about getting a job with no connections.[1]

> However, presenting in front of a peer group does do a couple things. First, you have to prepare, which helps you realize what skill you actually have. Secondly you end up building a lot of self confidence, especially on the topics that you are presenting on.

I think you are definitely right on that. The more experience you get explaining things to strangers, the better you will do in interviews. I took the "free work" section of the article as being more focused on audition than practice, though.

[1] http://cultivatedculture.com/how-to-get-a-job-anywhere-no-co...

What about free internships?

In the US, unpaid internships are only legal when they pass a six-part test. Generally, if the intern is doing stuff that benefits the company the internship must be paid. http://smallbusiness.findlaw.com/employment-law-and-human-re... lists the six-part test

If an intern is 'working' for free, then it's considered educational. They're not allowed to contribute materially to the business. For example, I can have an unpaid intern shadow me and watch what I do all day, but I can't put any code they write into production.

As I understand it, many of the internships that happen today don't meet the (U.S.) legal requirements, but neither party (the intern nor the company) is complaining.

Basically, the intern is supposed to be learning a trade with some incidental work output, and what really happens is that they are given junior-level labor and some guidance and pointers (i.e. the same thing you'd do with a PAID junior level worker).

As a recent graduate, I know many people who used the "free work for a short term" method to get in the door for a new job. It isn't going to work at very large companies, but at startups and agencies, absolutely. "Illegal" sure, but a smart manager wouldn't turn down a chance to get a great look at a potential employee

A smart manager would know better than to open their company up to potential employment litigation.

Unpaid wages are one of the few offenses that can "pierce the corporate veil" and leave founders/owners personally liable.

For very good reason. For every "my grandfather" story, there are probably 5 more whom were simply taken advantage of, with the hiring person having absolutely no intention of hiring them.

I bet they would have kept trying the same game at every factory until they perished, if not for laws preventing it.

And now they don't get hired at all.

They weren't getting hired in the first place.

Which is sending the signal to the factories that they can get away with not paying people for quite some time.

Don't worry there are plenty of people willing to break the law and the government doesn't have the resources to prosecute crimes like these!

Yeah - to clarify, we don't literally mean work for free. Rather, do highly side projects, make concrete proposals, trial periods, internships etc.

>It's illegal to work for free today

Tell that to all the unpaid interns out there.

The fashion and journalism industries are rife with them.

Apart from the legal issues that others have pointed out, I would strongly discourage my students from working for free. Canada seems to have a lot of this crap going on - maybe because the labour market in CS isn't that great. Just say no.

I would love to do this and I'm convinced this would land me a job 90% of the time. But laws and privilege and all that stuff prevents me from doing what I believe is in my best interest.

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