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Comment by _delirium | Hacker News Reader

Yeah, this allegedly happens in some areas in the U.S. too, especially business and law--- unpaid internships as a way to filter out the poor, who can't afford to work unpaid internships.

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It's not just business and law in the US. When I was a CS student in college (not very long ago), during the summer students had to make a choice to go do low-paying internships for brand-name companies like MS, Google, and Amazon or take real summer jobs that would pay better but not look as good on a resume. Poorer students with more debt would take the short-term better paying jobs while students whose parents were footing the bills would take the internships that would give them better future prospects.

What are you talking about? I interned at Microsoft for a summer 3 years ago and was compensated almost 20k... Low paying my ass.

Yeah, in my experience it's always been the opposite: internships from companies like Google, Microsoft, and Intel are about the highest-paying summer jobs (~$30-50/hr) any college student is likely to find, versus "normal" summer jobs that pay more like ~$15/hr at best. When I decided to do a $5k-stipend research internship instead of working somewhere like that, it was turning down a good deal of money.

My upcoming Microsoft internship is more than $5k a month. My summer NSF REU last year was $3k total.

My experience has been completely different. I'm a CS student from a low income household, yet it was the brand-name (and well-known startup) internship opportunities that were not only incredibly educational and provided with me with invaluable experience, but also paid pretty darn well. I made more than half of our annual household income in a single summer.

I know this is just a single anecdote, but I don't think my story is that unusual for people in the tech/engineering/finance industry.

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