Ubuntu's Community team offers 2 full-time 6-month unpaid internships | Hacker News Reader

Ubuntu's Community team offers 2 full-time 6-month unpaid internships

jonobacon.org

25 pointsdropTheBrown19 comments

"Like most internships, these roles are unpaid."

Apparently he hasn't read Joel on Software: "I need to clarify something about internships in computer science and software development. In this day and age, in this country, it is totally expected that these are paid internships, and the salaries are usually pretty competitive."

If you have excellent Django, PHP, HTML, CSS, etc skills don't just give them away. It's great if you want to help out with the Ubuntu project, but make sure it's on your terms. Someone riding you 9 to 5 for no pay is called being taken advantage of.

Agreed. Six months of full time work is ridiculous. That's not even an internship, it's just unpaid labor.

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This is way, way over the line. "I want to be clear that my team is a fast-paced, hard-working, hectic environment. I am going to work you hard...". There are places where you can lose your job for publicly describing an internship that way.

Working from home, you're not even as likely to gain the valuable contacts that are a genuine benefit of office-based internships. You're basically just bashing away in a room on your own all day.

I frequent a UK-based media website that offers job postings. Some time ago, they banned unpaid "work experience" and "internship" postings (except for genuine non-profits like community radio stations) because of UK minimum wage laws. Good summary here: http://www.mediauk.com/article/32681/media-uks-policy-on-adv...

It's really strange to see this little respect for people's livelihoods from the guy who wrote The Art of Community. His post looks more like a joke made by people who say that open-source is communism with people doing slave work for free.

Is it just me or are unpaid internships a way to prey on the not-so-savvy young person, especially those indoctrinated at universities to find any internship come hell or high water?

I dunno, it just seems like a scam to me.

I currently cannot complete my degree. Practicuum - Internship - n/a.

I put in 22~ hours/semester for a year in 8 week courses at Navarro College in Corsicana, Texas. While I was finishing the program, the partnership doing internships (Northrop Grumman) had a breakup with the college and left my 6 man class without a place to call home for the final part of the course. Now, we have a wasted year of work, no certificate, and no law suit (they relisted the course load this year in their catalog and really tempted me (it clearly states they still have a partnership)). 0 of the credits transfer to my university.

So, an e-internship sounds like it would be the final piece for me to complete that certificate. I have given up on it for the most part though and just regard that year of work as my first taste of the business world. Some of us are desperate! Especially with some of the horrid Dallas internship offers... (ruby internship offer @ 70+ hours a week unpaid)

Sorry to hear about your bad luck. :(

"ruby internship offer @ 70+ hours a week unpaid"

Wow. Just wow. Why would anyone choose to program Ruby for 70+ hours a week unpaid when they could launch their own Ruby web app instead? Either way you get business experience but if you launch your own web app at least you have a chance at revenue.

Maybe not a scam, but it really limits your options for talent to those who can support themselves for 6 months. Maybe they are looking for some potential investors kids or something. Not many individuals still working on internships could afford 6 months on their own.

Dunno, I did one this past summer (concurrently with a GSOC project) and I found it to be a good experience, and a good way to get some real world experience on my resume to pad a ton of open source stuff. That being said there's no way I'd take unpaid work anymore.

I don't have a problem unpaid summer or other short-term internships, although I can't afford to take them. (I'm a junior in college right now.)

Asking someone to work from 9-5 with no pay for 6 months is completely ridiculous though.

Asking for half a year of full time unpaid work is asking for an awful lot. I think it's fine to ask, but I wonder who Jono is imagining when he's thinking of potential applicants.

Doing an internship that was required for completion of my course I got $10 an hour, it was good experience and over a full time week was enough to get me by while I did it.

There is a big difference though for most people in receiving about $400 to reviving $0 in terms of getting by. You could justify it if you were going to come away with a lot of new skills but to be honest here it looks like their looking for someone who already has the skills required to do a lot of hard work.

Unpaid internships are illegal if all of the following conditions are not met:

1. If the training, even though it includes actual operation of the facilities of the employer, is similar to training which would be given in a vocational school;

2. If the training is for the benefit of the trainee;

3. If the trainees do not displace regular employees, but work under close observation;

4. If the employer that provides the training derives no immediate advantage from the activities of the trainees and, on occasion, the employer’s operations are actually impeded;

5. If the trainees are not necessarily entitled to employment at the completion of the training period;

6. If the employer and the trainees understand that the trainees are not entitled to wages for the time spent in training.

From http://www.cohenandwolf.com/CM/EmploymentLaborPublications/E... . The specific provisions listed are derived from the 1947 SCOTUS case Walling v. Portland Terminal Co., http://supreme.justia.com/us/330/148/case.html .

Since the "interns" are to be "working on awesome solutions to help make Ubuntu an ever more compelling community to be a part of" it's pretty clear that the fourth provision above is not met: Ubuntu is deriving immediate advantage from the activities of the trainees.

Or, or, or, and this is the tough part, I could get an internship at a national lab, working on more interesting OS stuff, for $24/hour. Damn, what to choose.

Honestly, who does unpaid engineering internships anymore?

6 months of intense, hectic, and hard unpaid work? You'd learn more by spending 6 months on your first software or web startup for probably roughly the same cost. If you make no money, you'll still learn a ridiculous amount of stuff in those 6 months.

I think the whole "internship" house of cards is already falling, but those inside haven't noticed yet. For example, there has been concern expressed recently in the UK (where there are minimum wage laws) that describing something as an internship is being used as an attempt to circumvent those laws. If the BBC News story was even close to accurate, then the view from just about everyone who matters (government, trade unions, etc.) was that this is just a con and won't stand up if challenged, and that organisations found to be abusing the idea of internships would be removed from government programmes.

It's just simply rude.

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