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Oh, am I. Yes, economic necessity can be a diversion, and it's important to ensure you don't get trapped by said diversion. But to think you can't learn anything from being diverted is foolish. You can, and you can leverage that experience in a variety of ways so in that sense it is not a terminal disaster.

Actually, I do work in a highly competitive industry of the kind you describe, the film business, and networking and word of mouth does matter. And I've done a lot of free work to get a toehold in it - in that sense, my comments were far too general and therefore wrong. On the other hand, those were mostly cooperative ventures where everyone was working for free or nominal payment.

Let me rephrase: unpaid internships at well-established, highly profitable companies are a scam. If you can afford the risk of having a clueless newbie around, you can afford to pay them minimum wage. If the work needs doing, then plainly it has some economic value. So does the learning environment for the intern, but that doesn't pay the rent while they're working for you. Landlords, retailers etc. aren't in the business of giving the first one away, they tend to request money up front.

It's not the shitty menial work I object to, mastering those tasks with a smile is an essential quality in many industries. It's the willingness to exploit people when you can afford to pay them without any significant cost to yourself. Shitty menial work on internships does filter out people who can't get shit done, have an entitlement attitude etc. Unpaid internships filter out anyone anyone who doesn't have a financial safety net, regardless of their skillset, motivation, or potential benefit to your organization. Working a second job for that period can be impractical, considering that the eager intern wants to give 110% to show off how great they are.

Is it really too much to ask that in return for such a commitment, someone should get paid enough to afford food, laundry, transit and a bed to sleep in?

Hmmm... Had a bit of a think about this one. We have some things that we could do with a hand on but don't have the time to do ourselves nor the budget to put out elsewhere. This stuff is mainly developing internal tools for our penetration testing team. If you're a Uni student looking to expand beyond a straight CS degree or go into pen testing or information security I can think of worse ways to spend your summer than helping a bunch of guys out with projects, probably wangling sponsorship for government clearance and getting to help out on real world pen tests - then of course if you do well there might be a job when you finish uni, or at least a set of industry references.

I agree that exploitation is wrong, but the key is to find something that pays you back in ways that will help you, and money isn't always the best way to get paid.

Sure - as you describe it, that sounds quite equitable.

But, at minimum, that university student would need room and board ---plus income to service debt--- to work with you. Not all people have trivial access to that even small income ---particularly if their family does not live in the metropolitan area.

This doesn't mean that unpaid internships shouldn't exist if they otherwise couldn't exist as paid positions, but it does mean that some empathy and social awareness to offer even a couple hundred dollars a week, plus lunch, would help many young people "find something that pays them back in ways that will help them."

"Taking a paid summer job that is "character-forming" just to make ends meet instead of pursuing the career you want is just a diversion."

Alternatives? Remember, this is after the "pursuing the career you want" was already tried, not before.

This story could be about my little sister. Her degree is in social work. Putting aside for a moment the wisdom of that (ahem), what is she supposed to do? Entrepreneur-up a job or something? We aren't all in computer programming, where we should if nothing else at least be resume-building with work in open source. That's the exception.

I'd say the way you described unpaid internships, it is pretty much exploitation. The intern is doing essential and valuable work, and is producing value for the company. They should be compensated for it.

The fact that the system is set up to encourage people working for free is simply a setup for exploitation. A mild form of blackmail, if you will; "You'll never get ahead if you don't work for me for free". While an intern might not get paid very much, I think they should at least be able to cover living costs from their earnings.

Most internships I've seen tend to cover a good deal more than that, with pay starting in the ballpark of $20/hour.