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Comment by jwwest | Hacker News Reader

Are unpaid internships something that's uniquely common in NYC? I scan Craigslist all the time for freelance opportunities and almost every single unpaid gig in New York is touted as an "internship". I have never seen this in listings in Dallas or Austin. Internships are incredibly murky things. You cannot, legally, get free labor from someone for the sole benefit of the business. The DoE has cracked down on this type of thing before. One would assume that in a strong liberal city like NYC, this sort of nonsense wouldn't happen often.

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http://www.amazon.com/Intern-Nation-Nothing-Little-Economy/d...

There are some mentions of NYC internships in this book... along with research, etc. Pretty good (very anti-Internship in general).

You have to remember that while liberal, NYC is at its core a business focused city that has a long history (for US standards at least) in business. With that in mind "internships" i.e. unpaid labor for the inexperienced is almost expected proving ground for the up and comers. In reality, the "best" internships can go unpaid because their target market is students from top universities who come from affluent backgrounds whose parents could easily afford an apartment in NYC over the Summer. That being said, I'm being general here. A lot of startups pay (and should pay) for programmers. Actually, us programmers have it pretty good. Try to a paid business internship in NYC sometime.

If you're in "real" business not a creative industry like Fashion, Music, or Publishing you can get paid professional level salaries, for instance Investment banking interns get paid get paid a few thousand a month.

Don't forget the author's own confirmation bias; the author is in an industry that relies on unpaid internships, and probably has many friends, who are also in unpaid internships in related fields (i.e. fashion, non-profit, etc).

Can you explain what NYC being liberal has to do with it?

Liberals usually favor high minimum wage

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