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Comment by rdtsc | Hacker News Reader

Like article says, unpaid internships, especially in expensive cities, is also a reliable way to select people from upper crust i.e. parents can bankroll their stay in high priced neighborhoods. Sometimes I wonder if that is what some firms and banks are doing.

In this case some are using student loans for it. Which is an interesting twist on things.

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If you're referring to investment banks, they pay roughly around what the upper ends of SV pays. I just signed a summer analyst internship that's prorated at 90k. I didn't hear of any firms that have structured summer analyst programs, with active campus recruitment, paying any less than 70k prorated to the term of the internship.

Congratulations! I signed with an investment bank as well, you working in Manhattan?

Thanks very much! Yes, I'm at one of the bulge brackets. I'm a pure maths student, not CS or finance, so the whole interview process has been really interesting.

Are you working in IB/S&T or software development?

S&T. I'm a pure maths student, not CS or finance, which is where an increasing number of the S&T pool is being drawn from.

Very cool. What group are you going to be working in? Also curious what your ideal career path would be. Are you planning on going to the buyside eventually? As somebody in a similar place, one concern is that while S&T used to be a feeder into HF pre 2008 it seems with the effective death of prop trading at banks nowadays this is a trickier path to navigate.

Not an irrational concern, although I'd say banks are still sussing out regulatory limits and workarounds. I'd be fine working at GS for many years into the future and see folks with similar backgrounds who have done that.

For me, it's less about money and more about the institutional leverage implicit in bulge bracket firms. I'm content when I can think about big, creative problems and if that translates into less money for me personally that's alright. A large problem, in my opinion, with S&T desks is the relatively recent adoption of the IBD mentality of moving up the invisible hierarchy by working at x for two years, y for one year, getting z graduate degree, etc.

You see something similar in congress in DC. A lot of internships there are unpaid too so most interns come from "good" families.

To be fair, paying for an internship might have higher returns than paying for classes. Although that doesn't mean an internship abroad is worth a whole lot more than an internship at home.

The world sure is changing when the most valuable resource on earth (labor from humans) has to pay to work, and when that is sold as a good idea and potentially better than credentialing.

I'm pretty sure the article was questioning the global optimality not the local optimality of the practice; it came across more as "hey, look at this stupid system" than "hey, look at this stupid guy."

Which isn't to say that the article has done convincing global analysis, just that I find handwaving about the "local optima serve as good proxies" assumption to be even less convincing that my gut feelings about the issue.

What is the incentive for employers to do this?

The same incentive as people of same status wanting to congregate together. It is a signal.

Like say someone wearing a $50K custom watch. It is a small detail but those that "know" will notice. Which is probably one of the main reasons it is worn to begin with.

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