Hackers: Intern for the Summer, Get Paid for a Year | Hacker News Reader

Hackers: Intern for the Summer, Get Paid for a Year

jobalchemist.com

27 pointsLukeG60 comments

I'm missing the part where an unpaid intern can support living in SF and working up to 7 days a week, esp in software where pretty much every internship in industry pays quite nicely

You're right that it's not the right opportunity for everyone. For people with a little more flexibility (or who are already in the Bay Area) and want a more entrepreneurial summer experience that coding for a big software company, we think this could be pretty sweet.

You'll put SW into people's hands almost immediately, get to work through the business implications of what you're building, and more. We also hope that this becomes seriously lucrative for the intern(s) over the course of the next year.

Also keep in mind that this is an experiment, in many ways. We haven't tried this before, and we don't know anyone else who has, either. It's a relatively risky internship in that sense, but one with pretty significant upside potential, too.

I think it's a very cool experiment. I could see it working very well. However, no pay and only 10% of the profits doesn't seem like such a great deal.

To me, getting a full time job and doing affiliate marketing at night--keeping 100% of the profits, seems like it would be a better deal.

There are many very profitable affiliate companies in San Francisco that both pay well and offer revenue sharing deals to their workers. These companies really know what they are doing in the lead gen/affiliate space and offering a decent base salary is small peanuts to them.

You could be right, but I suspect the groups of people that enjoy building software and doing affiliate marketing have a relatively small area of overlap.

Yes, I think you're right about that.

I read the post a little too quickly and it seemed like more of an affiliate role than a software dev role.

Indeed, 10% sounds pretty low. 10% sounds like what it would be fair for the company to retain.

I should have said at least 10%. We'll talk with whoever's interested, take a look at projected cash flows, and find the right number for everyone. Everything is always up for discussion.

As tptacek points out below, many internships are unpaid or offer minimum wage. How do people afford them? Parents and student loans, I imagine. We think this is a pretty decent option.

So you're OK with intentionally biasing this internship towards people with rich parents, and possibly ignoring someone who has to actually make money over the summer that might be better off at making whatever application it is that you're interested in having made?

It's necessity, not preference. We just can't pay a normal, livable salary for the summer.

"Biasing the internship toward people with rich parents"... what is this, a John Hughes movie? Give me the choice between two comparable people, one of whom will work for nothing because she has rich parents, and I'll take the free one (or maybe both) every time.

Why are you trolling this guy? It's an internship. Many internships come with no compensation whatsoever. You don't need an internship position? Awesome! Neither do I. But stop acting like it's weird to offer them.

I'm not acting like its weird to offer an internship, merely pointing out that not offering some form of guaranteed payment in exchange for work will exclude a group of people who don't have the money (either set aside or from an outside source) to do such a thing.

Unless you're seriously suggesting that someone should take out a few thousand dollars worth loans in order to go move hundreds or thousands of miles across the country in order to work without knowing if they'll be able to pay that money back anytime soon? Which is more of a troll then anything I've said IMO. Not that I can see how anything I've personally said in this thread is a troll at all, but we all have different perspectives on things and definitions of trolling, so I suppose that's subjective.

From when I was looking at internships for this upcoming summer, there's not that many Engineering/CS internships that are unpaid. An overwhelming majority of the unpaid internships are Marketing/PR/PolSci internships. The Engineering/CS companies tend to realize that its a good idea to pay people for doing work.

You're right. Unpaid internships definitely exclude people who can't afford to live without a living wage. Also, you are right that most CS internships are paid. This is, as you point out, an unusual offer.

This is the worst YC clone yet. $0 in funding, for a 90% equity stake.

Ha it's an internship. It's also the only internship I've ever heard of that will give the interns an actual revenue share. We've spent eighteen months building the software, domain knowledge and business processes that they'll get to leverage while learning, having fun, and making money. You're right, crappy deal.

And, apparently, they will throw in some winning sarcasm.

Why would we do something like that?

I know, I know. There's just a very tiny slice of talent for which this is a good deal: if you can't make a business that generates, say, $40K in a year, this internship pays worse than most others. If you're able to do much better than that, though, the 10% revenue share seems pretty minor, when you could pay some of the upfront costs and get 100% instead.

It's the only software internship I've heard of with those terms, but in New York lots of startups looking for biz-dev interns will compensate like that.

Right. We would all be extremely disappointed if their work brought in just $40K in the next year. We have more paying work than we can get to at this point, and we're confident that we can do well for everyone with this arrangement.

If you have existing paying work that you're adding people to, it sounds more like you're in the staffing industry -- where paying someone 70% of what you're billing them out for is about the limit. I suppose you could argue that there's more uncertainty, but not enough to justify that big a difference.

I do like your company (when I was unemployed, Startuply was the only job board I liked checking), but I think this internship needs to be tweaked pretty seriously before it's a good deal for everyone involved.

We're definitely open to suggestions.

Our thought with this was "come work with us for the summer, let's build cool stuff and make some money, and we'll pay you a piece of what you earn for 12 months rather than 3. We get help when that we can't pay for off the bat, and they get (1) cool work experience and (2) paid for a year.

We thought then and continue to feel that this is a fun, unorthodox, kinda risky and potentially very lucrative way for some college kids to spend the summer. There's nothing malign about our intentions, but we're resource-constrained enough that we have to be creative in our approach.

Just because it's a rev share rather than a flat fee, though, doesn't mean it's like the staffing industry. The staffing industry pays people below-market wages in return for letting them be entirely reactive about finding work. Our approach is to have interns share some risk in return for an upside that isn't capped.

If you're open to suggestions, here's how I would have done it:

1) offer a stipend. It's going to be modest, but you're a startup, so "We'll pay for your lunch, and give you enough money to rent a place with roommates," is enough.

2) Instead of ownership of revenue, give people ownership in the properties they create. Getting 10% of something questionable is okay, but being in charge of whatever new, successful lines of business you create is great.

3) Drop the '12 months' line. Tell people that you're looking for folks who can create good sites, and that if they can do it in a few months, you'll bring them on board full-time. A cut of revenue might be the right way to do things, but it makes you sound like an affiliate marketer masquerading as an internship, rather than an internship with a novel compensation scheme.

Interesting. We're trying to put together the cash for a reasonable stipend, and will if we can. We won't give equity for intern/contract type work; almost no one goes, for good reason. That being said, we'd love to be able to bring someone on full time after the summer, assuming things go well. The summer/12 months was designed to appeal to college students who compose the traditional intern market...

I like your approach! It would be nice to at least offer them a bed in your broom closet. When we were starting out we paid our summer interns a little above minimum wage (one of their mom's was a tough negotiator) and let them sleep on our couches.

They still talk about it as one of the best summers of their lives, and for the ones that didn't stay with us, it definitely helped them get better jobs later in life.

Part of your pitch should be (and might be) an involvement in more than just low level coding so that you attract people who understand that working for a startup at such a raw stage will be a unique experience that both you and they hope will be priceless.

I can't tell if this comment is serious or not.

100% serious. One of them still works for us, 10 years later.

Ok. But what stops me from paying myself $0, working a profitable project over summer and having all the 100% to myself during the year?

I apologize in advance if I'm impolite but it sounds like a ripoff and is even worse than Rentacoder's slave wages.

In fact, here is my counter-proposal: come to Seattle where I live, work on my ideas and if you're successful I will give you 50% of the profits. It's like: work for a summer get paid for five years! I may or may not give you office space but I guarantee that I will micromanage you and give you advice even though I don't actually know your area of development.

Forget "ideas." We have working, proven software and a platform for extending it. We have hard won domain knowledge and battle-tested business processes that deliver. We have a pipeline of revenue-producing products that we can't get to because we're short handed. As PG has suggested, ideas on their own are worth nothing. We have the product and the adoption.

It sucks that this sounds like a ripoff to you. Can you elaborate on why? It also seems like you're trivializing the challenges of "working a profitable project over summer." This is not an either/or situation, either - most people probably aren't trying to figure out whether to (a) intern or (b) start their own company. The two are generally pretty distinct.

So the only thing that stops you is everything else.

Well, this is what it sounds like to me.

1. We have some projects that bring us money. 2. We have some ideas. 3. You develop those ideas without any pay. 4. If they succeed, we'll give you measly 10%. 5. Our platform is worth 90% of your revenue-generating product.

Microsoft also has products and platforms for extending them. Adsense is a battle-tested business process.

And as much evil as MS is, they don't practically own your company just because you happened to built on their platform, whatever that means.

Please... Leave this ad for late night infomercials.

Use jobberbase.com, build your own, and get 100%

[In what way is this worse than offering an unpaid summer internship, which seem to proliferate everywhere (especially in an economy like this)?]

There are a number of white label job board solutions out there. I think ours delivers a far superior user experience, but that's open for debate. I can say for sure that there's more to building successful sites than sticking an implementation of someone else's software on a page somewhere.

We think we're working on some pretty fun stuff, and would love to have some smart help for the summer. Because we don't have the cash on hand to pay interns $20-$30/hour, we're trying a deferred compensation arrangement - which we want to pay more, in the end.

I do have some extra sham wows I could sell you, though.

This is better than an unpaid summer internship, but unpaid summer internships suck. I'm sure you can find some desperate students to take this, but I still don't think it's a good deal. Even if you're not offering that much now, I think it'd be better if you'd pay some fixed amount for the work they're doing.

The programming is the hard part. 10% is ridiculous.

The hard part and the fun part. Fortunately, we've been building online recruiting software for almost a year and half, so we've got just a little bit of a foundation to work from.

What number do you think is fair?

You may get 3 interns just from this post (we provide no information at all about what we pay our interns, only that it's a paid position, and we have no trouble filling slots). But you might get better interns if you address the risk of not being able to pay living expenses in SV.

I have an idea for a novel that is truly earth-shattering. It might be described as "fucking brilliant". I'm very busy and therefore don't have time to write it myself, and I obviously can't discuss the concept here; I have to safeguard this earth-shattering idea so it isn't stolen. But if you've scored at least 700 on your verbal SAT-- formal score reports, please-- and can pass a 4-hour writing test I will administer on-site in New York, you can ghost-write my novel. You'll be expected to fill out at least 900 pages, because my idea is just too epic to implemented in fewer. You'll have 2 months to complete the task, revisions and editing included, and you'll be expected to live in New York during that period, with full responsibility for accommodations being yours. If you're successful and on time, I'll offer you a full 12.5 percent of the proceeds between publication and April 20, 2011.

Your name will not appear on the novel, though mine will. However, I'll forward your name to a couple of literary agents and, without getting specific, tell them that I know you to "generally do very good work".

How does this deal sound to you?

It sounds like a labored metaphor that's way off base.

We're not secretive; our software is already built, live and proven; we'll absolutely tell everyone who will listen about the folks who work with us; it's an internship, man.

I'm obviously joking, but those kinds of "offers" have been given (and presumably accepted) in the writing world. A common scenario is an offer (usually given by scummy, second-rate magazines) where the writer is required to use a pseudonym and forbidden by contract to disclose her relationship to that name. They don't want the writer to develop a reputation and suddenly demand a salary.

For a more serious analysis, here goes: a person who works for deferred or no salary is a founder and should be paid with some equity (a percentage of the whole company, not just a small percentage of what he produces) in the venture. Understandably, you don't want to give equity to interns. So you probably shouldn't have interns until you can pay wages.

In general, if you develop a platform and someone develops an app on it, the application writer gets more than a 50% share of the proceeds. I believe iPhone and Kindle developers get 70%.

Looking at it as a platform is interesting - we could end up paying more, and are in no way adverse to discussing it. We could also use the help and think it's a pretty sweet opportunity for the right folks, and I don't see the "shouldn't have interns" as a or the only logical answer here.

It's an internship position. Plenty of CS people take internships that pay minimum wage, or nothing at all. So far as I can tell, even Spolsky's interns get a flat stipend. Royalties are uncommon even for fulltimers and contractors.

I wouldn't do it, but it's not a BS offer.

'appreciate that. We think it'll be a sweet experience for the right folks.

I think you've set yourself up so that anyone who would be willing to take your offer shouldn't be trusted.

why?

Because its a shitty deal. A good developer wouldn't take it.

Plenty of smart people will take unpaid internships because they really like the company and because the position fits their lifestyle in between school years. You just implied they were subpar developers.

The two lowest-paid positions I've taken (obviously not counting the zero-salary founder role) were the two most lucrative --- in straight up dollar terms --- in my career to date.

Plenty of CS people take internships that pay minimum wage, or nothing at all.

Perhaps, but "amazing hackers" with "great references" who are taking CS "likely at a very good school" aren't going to be considering internships that pay minimum wage, or anything close. Even in this economy, I'd expect that good students should be looking at something in the ballpark of $5k/month.

$30/hr? I think you're wildly overstating what typical interns make. Interns aren't full-time employees, and they come with zero industry experience.

$60,000/yr is more than the average starting full-time salary for a CS graduate.

Fog Creek --- they of the gold-plated Manhattan offices, the first class airplane tickets, and the fridges stocked with Louis XIII --- offers ~18/hr to interns.

But Fog Creek is small. Both of my offers for this summer were at least 30/hour.

Furthermore, the average wage at my school is 22/hour (for ECE interns).

I'm interested in what the company profiles were of the places that extended you offers (I know you don't want to name names).

$30/hr? I think you're wildly overstating what typical interns make.

Well, I'm only speaking from my own experience. I wasn't talking about "typical interns", because the original article specifically said they were looking for "amazing hackers". But I think most good student hackers will have a very good chance of getting an internship offer from Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, and so on, and AFAIK they all pay somewhere in the ballpark of $5k/month.

Interns aren't full-time employees, and they come with zero industry experience.

Sure, but if you want to hire top college grads, a very effective way to do so is to hire them as interns, pay them well, and give them a good experience.

Fog Creek pays $750/week + free housing + free lunch and MetroCard for transportation. You can easily live on $750/week if you don't have to deal with housing in NYC. And even if you had to deal with housing, you can still survive on $3000/month, even in NYC.

Saying "We'll give you some $ and housing and food if you intern for us. Don't live around here? No problem, we'll give you housing!" is hugely different then "Come intern for us. Don't live in SF? Move here anyway! We might not actually pay you, but it will be a good experience."

I'm not trying to argue that this offer is better, but you're arguing about apples when I'm talking about oranges; what I said was, I don't see where it says Spolsky offers royalties on work product.

I don't know of any CS students at my university that are taking minimum wage this summer. All the places I interviewed at had a floor of about $20/hr.

Since the ad stated that they want students from very good universities, I can't imagine their prospects would be worse.

That said, if someone takes this position, they will get far more experience than working most other gigs.

It's not necessarily a bad offer, though the ability to obtain food and shelter are usually factors I consider in my job search. However, I think the comparison to minimum wage or unpaid internships is invalid. We ain't Poli Sci students.

Let's stipulate that there is a CS student profile that clearly would not be interested in an unpaid internship, and move on from that rathole.

This thread has already produced one apparent example of a high-profile internship that pays less than $20/hr: Joel Spolsky's Fog Creek. I could name three well-known companies in my space that also pay less than that. I believe you that there are lots of internships that pay $20+/hr, but $20/hr is still pretty far from $5k/mo.

> pays less than $20/hr: Joel Spolsky's Fog Creek.

$750/40 = $18.75

plus

free meals =~ $100/week, so now we're up to $21.25 an hour

plus

free nyc housing =~ $200/week, so now we're up to $25.25 an hour.

That's a good point.

I'd agree with you. I don't know much about cs students, but engineering internships usually always pay. While looking for engineering internships the range seemed to be between 12 and 20 an hour.

I have offered to work for free, but whenever I have done that, I have been informed that the internship paid. Also, I have only volunteered that when the internship was close to home. I understand that the startup might not be able to afford to pay, but I don't really know how affordable it would be for me to volunteer and have to pay for food, housing, and transportation.

The offer would be a whole lot more attractive if you offered housing, even if housing was just sharing a room with another employee.

Ok, just for the record: $12-$20/hr is about the range I'm arguing internships seem to land. The original claim was that interns should be making $5k/mo.

I agree with you that the big thing missing here is housing. On the other hand, if you mostly plan on picking up locals, housing doesn't matter. We pay interns, but we still end up with Chicago and NYC people for the same reason.

I just reread my post. I was referring to the startup not paying, not anyone else.

I agree with you. Royalty is a very surprising offer. But their most competitive applicants will probably be local. I don't really know how to judge the expected worth of the royalty, and the cost seems like it would be expensive for anyone not local.

This would go over better if it was rev share + housing stipend.

I'm with you, and we're definitely looking for a way to make this happen.

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