Hacker News Reader

Comment by bmmayer1 | Hacker News Reader

This is fluff. Unpaid internships are so mainstream there's really no reason to call out Sheryl Sandberg personally for being associated with the practice (as opposed to every big bank in America which have 100x more money and also have unpaid interns). Furthermore, the amount of money the company/CEO has is completely irrelevant to what constitutes a market wage for a position. Sheryl Sandberg can afford to pay interns $100,000/year also, but the job isn't worth that much so no one is outraged that she's not doing it.

View on HN

Doesn't wash. Just because lots of people are unpleasant doesn't mean that you can't tell individuals that they themselves are unpleasant.

Unpaid internships and the people who support (edit - for support, read offer) them are particularly unpleasant for a number of reasons, the main one being that they are for the most part little more than a test to see if you are from a rich enough background to consider regularly talking to.

Yes, but the only difference is that Sandberg portraits herself as an advocate for work fairness and equality. Therefore I think it is fair game to call her out personally.

I've noticed a pattern with people who are very public figures/very wealthy calling themselves an advocate of fairness/equality/whatever....

If I ever become a very wealthy public figure, I promise you I will not advocate for any of that.

Thank you.

Yea, I agree. There's nothing worse than a hypocrite. Well, almost nothing?

Her personal assets != foundation assets.

Presumably she runs a non-profit, which, for better or worse, are frequently graded on value delivered vs. administrative expenses. Paying an intern is an administrative expense.

Is this internship program unpaid just for women? If not, I don't see how having an internship program constitutes unfairness. If she isn't paying interns unequally, what exactly is hypocritical about her having an internship program?

There is a reason to call out Sandberg. The reason is to point out that this "mainstream" practise is unjust. And that the market should not set the criteria on decency.

You could say that "call[ing] out" Sandberg is unjust to her because, as you say, big banks do it too. However, (a) the injustice, in concrete material terms, is negligible in comparison to the lives of those working without pay, and (b) this logic, it seems to me, would suggest that all prosecution of individuals is fundamentally unjust unless one is able to round up each and every similar violators.

What banks don't pay their interns? By any metric big banks/high finance pay better than tech companies, for interns or salaried. I didn't know anyone who went through finance internships that wasn't paid comfortably.

They often don't for internships (vs Google), but for salaried employees they quickly surpass Google a few years out. More boutique firms and quant funds do have very high paying internships for Masters and PhDs however.

What places don't pay their interns? The quant/algo funds I and my friends interned at all paid 80-100k annualized, and every single person I knew that went into an internship at a big bank got paid 70-80k annualized.

I didn't mean don't pay -- I mean't don't pay as much as Google. Google internships pay more than big bank internships.

AFAIK Google paid 85k annualized. Have they increased it?

Are we really ready to put Facebook on the level of big banks? Many of those banks have admittedly participated in gangsterism and fraud. I think FB should be held to a somewhat higher standard than the most hated institutions in the US today.

She is absolutely free to pay "market wage." We are free to mock the hell out of her.

AFAIK all big investment banks pay their interns. Are you saying there are big commercial banks that offer unpaid internships? What are they?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com