The programming is the hard part. 10% is ridiculous.
I wouldn't do it, but it's not a BS offer.
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.
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.
$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.
Furthermore, the average wage at my school is 22/hour (for ECE interns).
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.
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."
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.
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.
$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.
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.
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 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.
What number do you think is fair?
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?
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.
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%.