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Comment by 32bitkid | Hacker News Reader

"Do work for free" is the worst suggestion I've heard in a long time. Your time is valuable; it should be to you and it should be to the person you are working for. Even if you aren't getting a monetary remuneration for your services there should be some kind of compensation, and you should be clear – at least in your head – what it is. Never – ever –work for free. It may seem like a good idea but its not.

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If you're not planning to have monetary return from a project, it's almost always better to work on a personal side project than for someone else.

Your enjoyment of the project will be higher, you have more control over scope and tech stack and you can choose to solve an interesting problem within your ability.

In short, think it as marketing material development for yourself, which will be way more effective at getting future work than some free work you can get.

> The problem with having no skills or track record is that it's not worth paying you

Required experience for paid work is a fact of life. If you don't have the skills to work for pay in a certain area you work for free. You can do that by putting in the time on your own side projects or you can accomplish it some other way. Like doing free work in exchange for experience.

That's not for free. Doing work for free means "I will do this for you and get nothing in return." All I'm saying is don't run around willy-nilly doing work for free, thinking that will somehow magically lead to success; be cognizant of what you will actually get in return. And I'm not saying that money is the only type of payment, not at all.

Frankly, I think you are deliberately misinterpreting the spirit of the suggestion. Your interpretation reduces the original point to absurdity: "do something for no reward."

I'm not in the startup scene at all and if I were, I wouldn't expect that working for free would magically lead to success, but why is a bad idea to work strictly for experience - assuming you have some idea of what "good" experience would be? What's an example of the non-monetary payment you have in mind?

Wages are only part (I've heard 50% before) of the cost of hiring. There are other expenses like training, desk space, insurance, etc. So I can't imagine that it'd be much easier getting an unpaid position as a paid one. At the very least there'd have to be some expectation that you'd offer a return on any training you receive. If you've got the potential, they'd probably just pay you. There's nothing stopping them from employing casually or on a short term contract to alleviate risk. Taking people on for free might even violate labour laws in some jurisdictions.

Volunteering for a not-for-profit is a different matter of course.

The author's time is apparently not worth much, considering the things that he recommends doing.

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