Comment by fat0wl | Hacker News Reader

Comment by fat0wl | Hacker News Reader

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Yeah I may help out a non-profit team but nothing like this. When you work for a company teacher/student relationships are somewhat natural, its part of what the company is paying for (senior devs should mentor juniors). Even then there is the worry "this guy could take my job..." but you expect the company to reward your teaching ability and promote you. In a case like this it just seems like a way for the hobby market to steal more work from solid engineers.

I know guys who do this for $$ or for close friends knowing that they'll get something in return (help on a startup idea?) but teaching for free is odd -- tutors in other fields get paid, why should comp sci keep racing to the bottom?

I would be much more comfortable with "Code my startup project: I retain property rights, you get to learn". It's a much more even agreement. Not super exploitative given that the tutor probably could code everything they are teaching, but they let the student do it at a slower pace in exchange for some oversight (hopefully a lower time investment for the senior than coding the project themselves).

I think the standard view is that this is exploitative, and I doubt you would find many students opting in.

The closest analogous scenario: there are pretty strict ethical rules against e.g. professors offering extra help to students in exchange for labor. Doing so would probably be grounds for inquiry and possible dismissal, even from a tenure position. I realize it's not exactly the same scenario, but it's probably as close as you can get where there are codified rules.

This seems to be exactly the case in psychology. Undergraduate students often assist with experiments in return for research experience on their resumes. Depending on the degree to which they were involved in a project, they may be thanked in a paper, but not listed as a coauthor.

Research is significantly different from private, for-profit business.

And those studies are always IRB-approved. The IRB takes into account the conflict of interest, and will sometimes protest if you don't pay the student subjects (e.g. if the study involves a significant time commitment).

I'm not talking about students who participate in experiments as subjects. The students who are research assistants are sometimes unpaid, and might not receive course credit for RA work, but contribute code to projects for research experience. It's relevant to working for a private, for-profit business in the sense that the alternative is often doing an internship for a private company.

The IRB only monitors study participants, not research assistant work.

Ah, I misinterpreted your comment. Sorry.

> It's relevant to working for a private, for-profit business in the sense that the alternative is often doing an internship for a private company.

I still think there's a pretty significant ethical difference between not-for-profit research and a for-profit business. Even without the student-teacher relationship, unpaid internships in CS are pretty ethically dubious and uncommon.

We want to help novice coders get advice from experienced people instead of what happens to most people - getting worn down and confused by an overwhelming amount of information. We want it to be free because money shouldn't stop you from learning. Maybe it's too idealistic but we're going to try.

Not to sound like a naysayer, but while the idea that education shouldn't cost money is laudable, it seems fairly untrue given the fact that education as a professional sector exists.

I think the site is a good idea, and it'd be great if it takes off. But I presume it'll briefly take off due to the novelty/pride value of being a mentor, and then see an exodus of mentors as they figure out on their second lesson that education is difficult, and that's why people usually get paid for it.

It's acting as a guide and less as a teacher, which is what students need. They need to figure most of it out for themselves and have a helping hand to get them over the humps.

Is the last part of your post meant to be ironic? People should feel privileged for the purpose of coding for someone else's for profit company, for free?

It's essentially the concept of an apprenticeship as it works in the UK. The apprentice is paid a far below minimum wage salary, and is ostensibly trained by the company they apprentice with as part of their remuneration. The apprentice then works on commercial projects, again ostensibly with mentors.

Heck, throw in a ~$5/h wage and it's basically the UK apprenticeship model except with the guarantee of an actually qualified mentor. I agree that working for free is a bit of a steep ask, but I know I'd prefer to work for free with a properly qualified mentor than work at $5/h for someone totally unqualified (as my own apprenticeship turned out some years back).

EDIT: Yes, my last line is a false dichotomy. Ideally you'd be working for some sort of wage with a qualified mentor.

Facebook pays their interns over 5k/month. With how tight the market for CS graduates is, the idea of someone working for free for a company that makes a for-profit product is pretty crazy.

Unpaid (or, practically unpaid) internships are a sad reality of job markets where the supply far, far outpaces the demand - this is common in high prestige professions that do not require extensive qualifications - things like PR, fashion design, art galleries, magazine publishing, event organizing, etc.

Yes, but this is interns rather than apprentices. Interns are typically, as you've said, graduates. They're inexperienced, but they've had 3 years of theoretical training. Apprentices have had no training, much like the end user of askadev.

I agree it'd be fairly preposterous to hire a CS graduate for a very low or no wage salary. It just wouldn't be effective, what with the demand for CS at the moment.

EDIT: typo

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