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Comment by mdwrigh2 | Hacker News Reader

While I agree that that solving an interesting problem is number one on the requirements for hiring a hacker, the last point is way off the mark. "Take the money off the table"? You can't match $5k for three months of work? I'm sorry, but even students need to pay for living. I'd love to be able to work for free on interesting problems, but it just isn't possible.

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To give some perspectives, the article is written by someone in Singapore and intern rate there is about SGD 1000 per month ~ 750 USD, so 5k USD is kind of big deal for 3 months of work. I used to work for Apple Singapore for 800 SGD per month.

Additional figures, fresh graduate CS major worth about 30k USD per year.

I had kind of figured he wasn't American, but also misunderstood what he meant by "take it off the table". He's since updated it saying he meant to pay market rates, which is absolutely correct. I think you just need to pay enough to take the worry of being able to pay cost of living for the summer off the table.

The reality is that there are startups out there working on really interesting problems that can't afford the $5k, but would love to get great interns.

Yes, that reduces the pool drastically. You are essentially finding the intersection of students that believe in your challenge over immediate compensation, and do not have financial constraints. But to quote the quoted Chris Dixon: "People who say recruiting is hard are right. People who say it is impossible just aren’t showing up enough."

Reaching out to this group of students is about pitching yourself right. And as the post highlights, understanding the motivations is an important first step.

I'm not saying they don't exist, I'm sure there's probably a few of them, but you have to hope they're in your town. And don't have other interesting offers. Furthermore, Chris Dixon's quote wasn't (as far as I can tell) talking about recruiting interns, but recruiting employees and that's an entirely different ballgame in my opinion. These companies don't have money to offer employees or interns, but they will offer equity to employees. What's the chance a company will offer any form of equity to interns? So you're suggesting that rather than "immediate compensation", their compensation is that they have a couple months experience at a successful company? That's much less compelling than what employees are getting (a much greater experience and some equity).

Not every company needs interns, and if you can't afford to pay them, maybe you don't need them quite yet. If you want to recruit people as full-time employees or something, on the other hand, that's an entirely different argument.

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