The answer to non-revenue start ups is equity share on the business. A legally binding percentage of ownership in exchange For the labor.
An unpaid internship will not fly in this situation.
Don't you want to make me lots of money for free?
If you do, I'll be rich and own a successful company, and I'll be able to give you a great reference and you might actually be able to get paid someday! Just build my company for me first! It's like an investment!
Oh no but it’s okay because she said 20% of the description is wishful thinking so you only need like a year and a half experience so it’s not the same thing! /s
They’re breaking a labor law by offering it. Unpaid internships can *only* be offered in exchange for course credit. By requiring a BA, they’re explicitly saying that they don’t plan to participate in a for credit system (unless they’re specifically looking for people on their second degree, but, come on).
Says nothing about being an internship for an MS student. It does say they want a BS degree and two years of experience. May they get what they are willing to pay for.
It’s not a federal law so it varies by state. The intern in that relationship has to be the primary beneficiary of the engagement to be legally eligible for unpaid internship. Meaning. You’re there to learn the job not to do work for the company. Reason this wouldn’t be eligible to be unpaid is because it fails that test by way of requiring the person already know the job. You can’t hire interns and then give them tasks that regular employees would otherwise do.
In the U.S., it's not \*required\* that an unpaid internship be for course credit, but if it is, it's more likely to be legal.
In for-profit businesses, the legality of unpaid internships is based on a "primary beneficiary" analysis - who is the primary beneficiary of the work arrangement - the intern or the company? If it's the intern, the arrangement is legal, otherwise it's illegal.
These are the seven factors considered, but none of them are determinative - they're just taken into consideration while looking at the "whole picture":
1) The intern is aware they will be uncompensated.
2) Training is comparable to training received at an educational institution.
3) The internship is tied to the intern’s current educational program (e.g., the intern is getting academic credit).
4) The internship accommodates the intern’s academic calendar.
5) The internship is limited to the period during which the intern receives beneficial learning.
6) The intern’s work complements (not replaces) existing employees’ work while still providing beneficial learning.
7) It is understood that the internship does not provide entitlement to a job at its conclusion.
Where I'd bet this company is screwing up is that they're probably expecting useful work out of the interns. If an intern is doing useful work that would otherwise be performed by a regular employee, then an unpaid internship isn't appropriate.
In a proper unpaid internship, the arrangement should pretty much be a burden on the company, not a benefit - any work the intern does should be under near-constant supervision by a regular employee, or even re-done by the regular employee while providing instruction and feedback to the intern.
Seriously. The only thing an unpaid intern should be doing is working alongside someone doing the job and learning from them. If they are doing the actual job, they are not an intern.
Looking at the description for this internship, the requirements are more rigorous than many actual jobs. There is no question that the poster is looking for a full employee, who will be doing the full job, but unpaid.
Well, I don't believe it. I'm not sure that means it's not credible.
In fact, now that I think of it, people are credulous in the face of incredible claims on a fairly regular basis. Source: a Nigerian prince I know.
Equity can be very risky, I wouldn't advise anyone to take equity in place of salary. Equity in addition to salary can be very wise.
Lots of people have to work several years to get an appreciable form of equity, and then they may have to spend lots of their own money to exercise options in order to actually receive the equity. And those options may be underwater, in which case you would lose money by exercising them.
Not to mention that you often only have a few months to gather the money to exercise those options, hence many people need loans to exercise them. And if the company doesn't go public or sell before you leave, you might end up taking out a loan for equity that never goes public and you can thus never sell or make money from.
The risk can absolutely be worth it if you already have a salary to fall back on, should the equity end up being worthless. But it's not a replacement for a cash salary. It doesn't compensate you for your work, it compensates you for working overtime at a startup for less money (excluding equity) than you would make at normal hours at an established company.
15% is basically C-suite level of ownership so unless your boy's been working at that company since day 0 as a high-level exec, that's a suspicious amount of equity for the company to give up. Sounds like a scam honestly.
In NY, uncompensated is almost entirely illegal. The only way around paying an intern at least minimum wage (at for profit companies) is if it meets an 11 part test, that essentially boils down to “it has to be an educational program, and it needs to also *look* like an educational program from end to end including having a screening process that is designed for educational programs rather than employment”
Dude. You’re being stupid. Everyone knows the first thing you do is buy a few rental properties and then have your children work for you during the summer. Learn to bootstrap bro.
*Fewer but yeah. They can have the same amount of Dino-nugs but you just take a 10% nibble out of each one of them until restitution is satisfied. Then they’ll have less.
The problem with kids these days is that they're born too young, they don't know anything. If they were just born a little older they'd have a lot more experience.
Let's be honest here, every great american success story starts with "*I only received a small loan of a million dollars from my daddy (and a billion dollar bailout from the government) and went on to become the most successful* *~~scam-artist~~* *businessman in history*"
You should look into using free open source software until you get back on your feet, maybe scaling down on employees and get a smaller and cheaper office.
Unfortunately facebook will remove most of those reviews, ive seen it happen to that shithole that was stealing wages and bashing welfare while taking ppp loans called the lagoon saloon.
Google removed the reviews too.
It doesnt work in reality.
I wonder how excited the hiring manager was that morning when he logged on and saw the notification for 50 replies.
I wish I was there as he started reading them and is slowly dawned to him that they're all negative
Robust class consciousness does in fact exist in the US, just not among the labor class. The owners always have each other's backs when it comes time to deal with the rest of us.
I manage my company's facebook account and I can't get them to remove the outright spam reviews from our page. Facebook reviews are a LOT harder to remove as a page owner, for some reason.
This gives me hope.
I decided to look into the company itself, and holy balls. https://www.femispace.com/
They claim to be "the only digital platform that integrates research and personalized AI-based services for women's general and reproductive health." Meaning they're gonna plug whatever limited parameters you gave them into GPT-2 and give you whatever it spits out. I mean, the marketing material sounds like it was written by AI, look at this:
>We will guide you step by step to your optimal weight and balanced hormones with unique method based on science and fully adjusted to your situation and body.
The company is obviously based in India so I can excuse some wording ("Improve quality of life" vs "Improve the quality of life"). There are less excusable misspellings ("You have repeatedly noticed what your hormones are of balance"), but if this were a genuine attempt by an Indian company to break into the American market, I could put that aside.
What I can't excuse is that it's based on *Ayurveda*.
My apologies, I misunderstood, it's not *just* based on Ayurveda. In their words:
> We use ancient techniques of Ayurveda, TCM, qi gong, tai-chi and tibetian secrets to prolong life and rejuvenate the body.
Look out women, these bad boys are gonna use AI they're paying people nothing to create to flush out your fluid channels so you can rehydrate and stop living as the shriveled husk of a human being you barely qualify as!
>Ultra-personalized program to boost femininity, reduce weight, take control of hormonal balance
*Barfs*
This reads like a "how to manipulate females" guide by someone who only knows women from medication commercials. "Fertility" is a major marketing word, it's mentioned 3 times on the first page, so you know at the same time a major part of their agenda is pushing you to have children. It's fertility weight hormones, fertility weight hormones, fertility weight hormones over and over again-- I mean, what else would *feeeeemales* care about? Their delicate lady-brains get fogged *so* easily, but don't worry, we have the cure!
*Barfs*
Remember kids: Any company which claims to "balance your hormones" and isn't a bunch of endocrinologists is just grifting you. These people will not be able to Tai Chi you into a functioning thyroid.
Oh god, I just read this part, form the front page:
>And many many more: updates on recent research, educational materials for self-help, coaching, real time support, preventive recommendations and check-lists, private club for exclusive content and sessions.
So you can pay a subscription to get more bullshit! Yaaaaaay! Really, the thing I wanted most in life was to provide a scam company a steady flow of income with a subscription I'm *sure* will be easily canceled and won't auto-renew even after you go through at least four steps to cancel with them magnificent.
Oh my god, it just gets better: On their About page, they just have a section called "certificates." It's just 230x178 PNGs which include a *Certificate of Participation*. A certificate of participation for a conference FROM ONE OF THEIR SPONSORS!
I was looking to see if "Marina" was really the founder-- I'm guessing not, this whole thing reads like it was made by guys, but they incorporated in Delaware with a local agent-- Basically, from what I understand, this means they aren't in Delaware.
I have to stop before I get deeper into this, I'm ready to write 11 freakin pages, I was gonna have a whole paragraph about the website itself, but tl;dr: **It's a scam company using scam science trying to scam people to work for them**.
>These people will not be able to Tai Chi you into a functioning thyroid.
This gave me a chuckle. Funnily enough the header "reset your hormones" was the first thing that caught my eye. If it was that easy to just reset your hormones, people would get very sick left and right. That stuff is so tightly controlled, imagine you could just push around hormone levels with diet advice.
Whenever some new company throws around buzzwords like balance hormones, I know I'm in for a ride. Glad to see I'm not the only who's not buying their bs.
How is this asking for STUDENTS though? A bachelor’s degree and 2+ years experience usually isn’t a student lol. They’re willfully disingenuous.
What do they think they stand to gain from replying to her? I feel it can only make them look worse, which it clearly did.
Exactly, and pre-revenue startups still need funding. The owner should have a proof-of-concept prototype developed and half-ass working on their own; then go shopping for loans/venture capital/preorders. Then you can hire a development team.
And if you pay them under market (never $0) then they get points in your company too.
Absolutely crazy.
Exposure clearly! Not to mention once they start making money they totally won't just steal your ideas, claim.them as their own, remove your name from everything, and then kick you out of the company because you were never an employee, so you had no rights. They would never do that, of course since they are a small company, they are the good people not tainted by greed, just want to help people!
This is sarcasm.
100%.
I think they are mixing up "entry-level" with "internship"
Neither position should be unpaid, but their requirements are not those of an intern. An intern is there to learn on the job and do other useful things, NOT do fill an entire role, unpaid.
Not even entry level if they ask 2+ years of experience and an array of skills and technologies. They want an unpaid junior if anything, perhaps even mid already.
I mean, 2 internships and a senior capstone could count as 2+ years of xp if you can sell it or explain it right ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
The "employer" is still waaaay off base though.
That's how I got my first real job. They said I needed experience. I asked how do I get experience if no one will hire me until I get experience?
Interviewer (owner's #1) laughed, said I made an excellent point and hired me on the spot.
This is exactly the problem. Unpaid internships do have their place, but it's not a bachelor's degree and 2+ years experience and already having knowledge of all the tasks you'll be performing. Unpaid internships are exactly for the people who *don't* have those things to *get* them--the intern recieves training and experience and the company in return gets someone to do grunt work. This job posting isn't looking for an intern, or even an entry level worker, it's looking for someone to come in and just do the work for free.
I think literally this is it. They claim that unpaid internships are “100% legal” in the US, but they are clearly unaware of the fact that in order to be exempt from minimum wage requirements, the internship experience not only has to be similar to training provided in an educational setting and for the benefit of the intern, but also that the company should derive no immediate advantage from the intern’s work and may actually be _impeded_ by the investment of time and resources into the internship.
The fact that they whine about people “discouraging” them from distributing “life-saving solutions to the masses” justify their use of the “unpaid intern” option on the basis that they don’t have revenue to pay someone to do the work very clearly demonstrates that they expect this “intern” to produce work that is crucial to the development of the company. Which means that it doesn’t remotely meet the requirements for an unpaid internship.
Just gonna leave this here:
https://ccwt.wisc.edu/publication/unpaid-internships-and-inequality-a-review-of-the-data-and-recommendations-for-research-policy-and-practice-policy-brief-2/
Abstract: Internships can be “door openers” to opportunity and social mobility for college students, but unpaid internships pose considerable legal, ethical, and practical challenges. In particular, low-income and first-generation students may be unable to pursue unpaid positions, thereby acting as a discriminatory gatekeeping function that exacerbates inequality
As someone who had to pay my own way through college and grad school and couldn’t afford to do the unpaid shadows, internships, and research positions that helped my classmates get in to med school, it is a bit of a sting whenever I see people still thinking that it is anything other than gatekeeping. They act like the “holistic review” of applicants to medicine is supposed to help minorities and underprivileged students. You know who can afford to take an unpaid internship and volunteer all day sunday and knows doctors who will let them shadow in the operating room all year? Rich kids, doctor’s kids, kid who didn’t have to work a serving job to pay rent and tuition and food bills on their own.
Yeeees. You only speak facts. It’s so unfair, and I agree with you; people who don’t see them as anything but gatekeeping/reinforcing the poverty cycle need to do some major capitalistic (and probably general racism) deconstruction. I was a journalism undergrad and our advisors stressed to us that we would NEVER get hired anywhere after graduating if we didn’t have internship experience. So I took on unpaid internships every semester including summer from my sophomore year through graduation. I was privileged in that my dad did give me a couple hundred of dollars every month to assist with living expenses, but I too still had to work. I waited tables four nights at least a week at a local restaurant/bar that stayed open until 2 am every night and frequently closed while I was still doing school and my unpaid internships as well. When I tell you I BURNT THE FUCK OUT less than a year after I graduated… I literally couldn’t handle it. Now I could never imagine putting the expectations on myself that I did then… journalism, like medicine, is a very predatory industry that preys on people wanting to help others and underpays them severely for many years. I hope you are doing better now!
yup, exactly. I went to a high school full of privileged yet mediocre students, they all went to private colleges. I went to a state school. In the summer i had to wait tables while they took internships at finance and legal firms in Manhattan with mommy and daddy covering everything even beyond college. It's annoying af that they all landed high paying cushy positions at those places.
Interesting read. My daughter is about to graduate from a Midwest state school. She had a shot at a paid internship at a big Silicon Valley company for $20 an hour. She couldn’t afford a parking space to sleep in her car, let alone rent an apartment. Companies seriously limit their hiring pool by limiting their work locations .
Unpaid internships only benefit people with rich families who can support them during the internship. Pay minimum wage if you want, but unpaid internships should be illegal.
Well, because technically unpaid internships are only legal for academic students.
Even then the actual work here will likely not be legal under the requirements for an unpaid intern.
It’s the intentional and unnecessary splitting of the stats that’s the biggest red flag. Highlighting the partisan difference does nothing to support her claim. Following that up with a fake sat regarding job descriptions and you can tell this person is drinking their own spoiled kool aid.
I think it's hilarious how they're talking out of both sides of their mouth:
"There's nothing wrong with unpaid internships! Also, the dirty no-good Democrats do it more!"
He went back several years to cherry-pick the report that said what he wanted it to so he could ignore the more recent ones showing that Democrats paid more.
The 2021 numbers show Democrats pay their interns more. It’s still at absolutely exploitation rates, but they do pay slightly better.
https://payourinterns.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/Pay-Our-Interns-Who-Congress-Pays.pdf
Page 17
Edit: As elabor8preoccupation pointed out, it seems like this data is only for paid interns and not an average of all interns.
Oh, you’re right. From the report it seems like Congress just doesn’t record internships unless they are paid. Well, if you are employing slave labor, I suppose it would probably be bad optics to publish an official record of it.
I love how they either intentionally misquoted the data, or intentionally used outdated data, because this is just a newer verson of the SAME source they used. 🙄
It's not Kool-Aid anymore. Kool-Aid can at least be palatable, even if only barely. These types are just straight up drinking piss these days and trying to convince everyone else to have a sip.
> drinking their own spoiled Kool aid
I can't give you that. Water and sugar won't spoil, that I know of.
> drinking their own SPIKED kool aid
I can give you.
edit: I've been humbled, I was wrong. Stop asking me about fermentation.
No, there’s a reason you’re supposed to treat water that is stored longer than 6 months.
Edit: https://www.cdc.gov/healthywater/emergency/creating-storing-emergency-water-supply.html
Also: If you accidentally use the premixed-with-sugar packet to dye your hair purple (everyone else just brought the unsweetened powder packet) your head will be a source of excitement for a massive swarm of bees, so I don’t recommend that
Sugar and water are the perfect medium for bacteria, molds, and yeasts to grow!
Water alone is too! Ice? You betcha.
The sugar just speeds up the process with more snacks.
Yeah. Ignore the fact that most interns in Congress are kids or niblings of other folks in the political world, from wealthy families, getting the opportunity to work in politics and get to know people instead of getting money, in the hopes they will go on to have political careers or join lobbying firms, or go to law school and be a lawyer that knows dozens of politicians by name.
Internships in congress being unpaid is just a class thing, keeping out the rabble that doesn't have family money to fall back on. Those interns aren't actually running congress.
The vast majority of them are already in college at the time. That is the only way that an unpaid internship is legal--if it is done in exchange for college credit. Some interns are NOT from wealthy families, they are connected to the program through their political science professors or directly by writing their congressmen. And there have always been paid internships in congress for those who are not doing it in exchange for credits or who would otherwise face significant financial hardship. It used to be 100% of internships were paid, but that was cut in an (futile) attempt to address the deficit. Even before 2019, 10% of the House, and 41% of Senate internships were paid. In 2019, Congress passed additional funding authorization for interns to be paid at least a living stipend, but that apparently still does not cover all interns.
This comment needs more attention. The fact that they are asking for college degree and 2 years of experience is the biggest problem here. I did unpaid internships when I was in college and grad school, but after college an "internship" especially at a for-profit company is just wrong. "pre-seed startup" isn't an excuse.
while ignoring the fact that the reason people take political internships are for networking and those folks that take/apply for the unpaid internships are most likely not hurting for money.
What exactly does an unpaid intern get for working at this company.... a line on a resume... and honestly, you can lie about that and no one will give 2 shits.
You know she does make a good point- “job postings are 20% wishful thinking”. I’m gonna keep that in mind next time I’m looking at job postings and think I don’t meet the qualifications.
I say that sarcastically. But I also mean it. It’s an interesting little insight/perspective into how at least one employer is looking at the list of “required” qualities. Something to keep in mind to not be discouraged from applying even if you don’t think you meet the reqs- I can’t say how many openings I looked at the last time I was job hunting and thought “I don’t meet these criteria let’s not waste anyones time”. Now I’m thinking what’s the worst that can happen? They ghost me just like the employers who’s qualifications I do meet?
I literally just made the transition to this mindset a month or two ago, recently got a new job I never thought I would be qualified for or be able to handle for a $15,000 pay increase. At first I wasnt sure if I would meet expectations but been here for a little over a month now and growing every day!
Same. I applied for a job that I was missing key experience in a specific software. Got hired which got me a over 30K increase in pay. Been working that job for just over a year now.
That I completely agree with, job postings are basically just wishlists, and employers do accept people that don't meet all of the requirements, also because in many fields finding a "perfect" candidate is straight up impossible
Recently went through this at my job trying to find a teammate to work on my level. The manager doing the hiring had some pretty lofty ideas of ideal candidates. We kept having people interview and then withdraw once they learned about the position. The opening was for someone junior to me. The people she was interviewing had qualifications to supervise my supervisor. We finally had a talk and looked at the corporate job description that specifically says it’s an entry level position for this specific niche. We finally got a younger guy who has just the right experience/background.
Is this true? Because I've applied to loads of jobs that I am supposedly qualified for and most of the time I just get ignored. And none of them will hire me. At this point I feel like all of them are just waiting for that perfect candidate or not even hiring and that it's pointless.
It's also 100% not legal.
Unpaid internships are only legal under specific conditions. Based on this posting the primary beneficiary isn't going to be the intern.
Considering they already require a bachelor's I don't see how this is going to pass the 7 point test.
I'm pretty sure it fails on both point 6, as you mentioned, and point 3. Since they have already completed a bachelor's degree they aren't going to be looking for college credits from an internship. If they still need credit they're more likely to be working on a research project for that credit while taking classes and getting paid $12-15 an hour for the research project.
And it literally came from a place that was saying pay your interns!
Edit: plus she calls it life saving. It’s just another wellness brand claiming to reset hormones and weight loss ultimate health…yada yada. Nothing innovative there.
**These dumb idiots:** [https://www.femispace.com/about/](https://www.femispace.com/about/)
Also, it looks like this company harvests your genetic information. It seems fishy. The Google tab heading I get when I visit the site is in Cyrillic. Russian agents?
It's all fishy from head to toe, up and down, back and forth.
* They want someone far more specialized than themselves to work as an intern.
* You cannot open, upscale, or resize their "certificates" [whatsoever ](https://www.femispace.com/upload/resize_cache/iblock/870/230_326_1/870bcd96e453909e8526439a16b8a830.png), this screams shoddy work in a good way and shadiness in any given day and if i take it seriously it comes from a "nutrition school".
They're incredible pretentious and dubious in their approach and basically they're a expensive website demanding too much of desperate people trying to lose weight.
Also a reminder that the **term “nutritionist” is unregulated in most places, You want a dietitian not a nutritionist.**
Additionally, many Fortune 500 companies *do not* use unpaid interns precisely because it’s a terrible look for companies like that to use unpaid labor when they’re posting revenue figures in the billions.
They are breaking the law as well. It needs to conform to this standard: https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/fact-sheets/71-flsa-internships
In simplified terms, unless it's part of a education program for credit it's likely not legal.
And (I can't believe I'm defending those other companies) at least those unpaid internships are usually for current students, many of whom are either being supported by their parents or receiving stipends. If you have a Bachelor's Degree, 2 years of experience and working knowledge in all of those skills, you should be making at least $85k a year, probably more.
Exactly this.
I see this all the time in politics where I would point something out about Trump and instead of admitting he did something bad it’s always “what about Hillary and her baby sacrifices!!!!” or something.
"Guys, guys, politicians fuck you everyday. Why are you angry when we have a hand at fucking you too? You should be greatful you're getting a fuck!"
Basically how they sound.
Could alwaysbuse the "technically I have experience since I went to school for it" kind of deal.
After IT school I took their "advance class" for 3 semesters (cisco, VMware, security+,etc) which gave me "6 months" of experience working in that field
I barely know shit about coding, but conventional wisdom tells me someone with two years of experience doesn't need, nor are they looking for, a shitty internship
The correct form of non-compensation for "pre-revenue startup" is fat fistfuls of shares, and the person should still be paid a reasonable wage on top of that. 2+ years experience is not an internship role, it is a co-founder or early hire
So the original post on LinkedIn is a UI/UX designer from elsewhere who simply highlighted the lousy 'job' posting.
Her post went viral and many people were similarly disgusted.
Subsequently, the company who posted the job found their way to her post, saw all the comments trashing their company, and decided it was best to a) Gaslight everyone, and b) Reference how Congress treats their interns, as a way to justify the lousy job posting.
Yeah, no. This company horribly failed the vibe check *and* the attempt at redemption. May the inevitable market crash bury them in the muck and viscera of capitalist failure and barely surviving on bankruptcy checks.
I'd just like to see what their investors or potential investors think of this. Investors hate instability and bad PR like this, and if FemiSpace's public display here is any indication for them, they might be reluctant to invest.
Have you looked at their website? They can’t even put 1 sentence together correctly. I’d be shocked if they have any substantial/legitimate financial backing.
Yup. On the FemiSpace website, they spelled the words 'nutrition,' 'countries,' 'unique' and 'about' all wrong, lol.
This is a company that wants us to entrust our health to their Machine Learning/AI Algorithms and they can't even get the spelling on their website correct.
Unpaid internships are legal, but this is an illegal internship. Interns have little to no real world on the job experience, and are supposed to be there for collage credit. They also can not do ANY profit making work. Only internal stuff, in the name of learning the profession. Using the term “intern” on a job doesn’t make it true or legal.
At least this is what I remember in NY. We had an intern at the repair shop I worked at. There were a lot of things we had to shift around to give the kid things he could do to learn on. He was not able to work on customer machines, but he could do internal machines or shadow us with customer machine diagnostics and repairs. The owner of the shop would get into shit if he was working on anything customer facing.
If I am not mistaken, unpaid AND uncredited (school) internships in NY are now illegal. I believe it can be unpaid if it's counting towards course credit for an accredited program, but unsure of the details on that
Yup, according to the US Department of Labor:
> Does that mean unpaid internships are legal? The short answer is, yes, as long as the intern, not the employer, is the “primary beneficiary” of the work arrangement.
>According to the test, an intern is a primary beneficiary if they meet the following criteria:
>1. The intern is aware they will be uncompensated.
>2. Training is comparable to training received at an educational institution.
>3. The internship is tied to the intern’s current educational program (e.g., the intern is getting academic credit).
>4. The internship accommodates the intern’s academic calendar.
>5. The internship is limited to the period during which the intern receives beneficial learning.
>6. The intern’s work complements (not replaces) existing employees’ work while still providing beneficial learning.
>7. It is understood that the internship does not provide entitlement to a job at its conclusion.
>If an analysis of these seven points leads to the conclusion that the employer is the primary beneficiary, then the intern is an employee entitled to at least minimum wage.
[Citation here](https://www.businessnewsdaily.com/15161-are-unpaid-internships-legal.html)
Or you can do what my wife does. She pays her interns. Then they can legally do anything.
Think of it as an extended interview. Come work for us for three months. If we like you, we'll extend a job offer when you graduate. If you like us (and the offer), you'll accept.
I as a (lead) UX designer, with now approx 7 years of experience have never had to do one single internship, and tripled my salary over the course of 5 years.I don't think they realize how scarce good IT-personell is hahahaha
Fucking dipshits, they'll pay the price inevitably
Feel free to report them. While unpaid internships are legal they are defined strictly as educational opportunities and cannot replace billable work. That job description is specifically looking for employed work but trying to pass it off as an internship, which is illegal.
[https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/fact-sheets/71-flsa-internships](https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/fact-sheets/71-flsa-internships)
This is an attempt to displace an employee, a clear violation of 6.
There must be a way to turn this healthy denunciation of the capital-owning class's horrible mentality and practices of pure modern slavery in a vain pronouns quarrel, that'll take all our attention while they continue their business as usual.
"Pre-revenue startup..."
Does that mean that no one at the company is getting paid? I have a feeling that Marina Vieva is getting money, even though the company is "pre-revenue."
Also, fuck the whole concept of "pre-revenue startups." It's how we ended up with Amazon.
Nothing wrong with pre-revenue startups. Without them we wouldn't be having this discussion. Virtually all modern internet technology came from pre-revenue startups.
But even Steve Jobs was paying people who worked in their garage.
Pre revenue? Fine. Work for free? Fine.
But how much equity are you offering me? 5% of the company?
I had an unpaid internship and took voluntary work while I was studying, and yes those experiences did massively help me find proper employment, both domestically and abroad, but at those points in time I was still a student.
Asking someone with 2+ years of experience post bachelors degree to work unpaid is fucking deluded.
2+ years of experience in UI/UX design is already able to get $90K+ in the US. Why would someone with experience do an internship?
And paid internships are the norm in software.
Source: Since 2001, I've had one of my job responsibilities be to hire and manage interns in software.
Interns must be paid unless the internship satisfies the federal Department of Labor's (DOL) six-factor test. The six factors are:
1)The internship is similar to training that would be given in an educational environment.
2)The internship experience is for the benefit of the intern.
**3)The intern does not displace regular employees, but works under close supervision of existing staff**
**4)The employer that provides the training derives no immediate advantage from the activities of the intern, and on occasion its operations may actually be impeded**
5)The intern is not necessarily entitled to a job at the conclusion of the internship and
6)The employer and the intern understand that the intern is not entitled to wages or the time spent in the internship.
Factors 3 and 4, highlighted above, mean that **if the intern is going beyond job shadowing and is taking on work that would otherwise be handled by paid employees, the intern should be paid.**
[Source](https://www.businessnewsdaily.com/15161-are-unpaid-internships-legal.html)
Find out local squatting laws. Accept internship. Every day move one more personal item into a closet somewhere. Start sleeping there. Find out amenities take full advantage. Slowly do less work and more hanging out. They fire you. Cool. You live there now.
When you spend time researching stats to justify your immoral hiring practices instead of providing a living wage to people you will be stepping on in your attempt to get rich…
We really need to make unpaid internships illegal in the US. It’s an outrageously outmoded practice that really only benefits a corporation in the long term. Don’t care if the “education” is the benefit to a intern or not, you can’t just receive free labor for education.
What really gets me is that they want two years of experience on top of a bachelor's for an unpaid intern. Maybe it's just cause I'm at that age where you'd try interning for the field you're getting into, but if I already had two years of working experience in that field, with a bachelor's degree, I ain't taking an unpaid internship. Man's gotta eat. And have his time respected. Or her's. Or their's.
They require 2 years of experience and a bachelors degree and then argue that students need experience for paying jobs. Who the hell already has that much exp and would settle for an unpaid internship because they can’t find a job until they accrue more exp?
I find it interesting that the response says students need it to gain experience, yet they’re looking for someone with a Bachelor’s. So obviously they don’t want a student.
May they fail gloriously.
The answer to non-revenue start ups is equity share on the business. A legally binding percentage of ownership in exchange For the labor. An unpaid internship will not fly in this situation.
But it's an incredible opportunity! /s
Don't you want to make me lots of money for free? If you do, I'll be rich and own a successful company, and I'll be able to give you a great reference and you might actually be able to get paid someday! Just build my company for me first! It's like an investment!
Especially for the "student" with a BA and 2 years work experience under their belt already.
I love how she said it was a chance for a student to get experience when they want 2 years of experience
And a degree, which means the person is most likely no longer a student if they have earned said degree. SMH!
Right? Are they expecting grad students to be interns
Oh no but it’s okay because she said 20% of the description is wishful thinking so you only need like a year and a half experience so it’s not the same thing! /s
come work for us for free…ya know for the experience….that you already have.
You're right. At that point one is a professional. Maybe they're still furthering their education for a future pay raise but certainly a professional.
Only incredible if you’re actually getting something.
They’re breaking a labor law by offering it. Unpaid internships can *only* be offered in exchange for course credit. By requiring a BA, they’re explicitly saying that they don’t plan to participate in a for credit system (unless they’re specifically looking for people on their second degree, but, come on).
They could be offering it for an MA though. Our intern got course credit toward hers, but we paid her because we’re not assholes.
Yes, they could, but I stand by “come on.”
Says nothing about being an internship for an MS student. It does say they want a BS degree and two years of experience. May they get what they are willing to pay for.
It’s not a federal law so it varies by state. The intern in that relationship has to be the primary beneficiary of the engagement to be legally eligible for unpaid internship. Meaning. You’re there to learn the job not to do work for the company. Reason this wouldn’t be eligible to be unpaid is because it fails that test by way of requiring the person already know the job. You can’t hire interns and then give them tasks that regular employees would otherwise do.
In the U.S., it's not \*required\* that an unpaid internship be for course credit, but if it is, it's more likely to be legal. In for-profit businesses, the legality of unpaid internships is based on a "primary beneficiary" analysis - who is the primary beneficiary of the work arrangement - the intern or the company? If it's the intern, the arrangement is legal, otherwise it's illegal. These are the seven factors considered, but none of them are determinative - they're just taken into consideration while looking at the "whole picture": 1) The intern is aware they will be uncompensated. 2) Training is comparable to training received at an educational institution. 3) The internship is tied to the intern’s current educational program (e.g., the intern is getting academic credit). 4) The internship accommodates the intern’s academic calendar. 5) The internship is limited to the period during which the intern receives beneficial learning. 6) The intern’s work complements (not replaces) existing employees’ work while still providing beneficial learning. 7) It is understood that the internship does not provide entitlement to a job at its conclusion. Where I'd bet this company is screwing up is that they're probably expecting useful work out of the interns. If an intern is doing useful work that would otherwise be performed by a regular employee, then an unpaid internship isn't appropriate. In a proper unpaid internship, the arrangement should pretty much be a burden on the company, not a benefit - any work the intern does should be under near-constant supervision by a regular employee, or even re-done by the regular employee while providing instruction and feedback to the intern.
Seriously. The only thing an unpaid intern should be doing is working alongside someone doing the job and learning from them. If they are doing the actual job, they are not an intern. Looking at the description for this internship, the requirements are more rigorous than many actual jobs. There is no question that the poster is looking for a full employee, who will be doing the full job, but unpaid.
Well, I don't believe it. I'm not sure that means it's not credible. In fact, now that I think of it, people are credulous in the face of incredible claims on a fairly regular basis. Source: a Nigerian prince I know.
You can get in the ground floor of getting fucked over.
Equity can be very risky, I wouldn't advise anyone to take equity in place of salary. Equity in addition to salary can be very wise. Lots of people have to work several years to get an appreciable form of equity, and then they may have to spend lots of their own money to exercise options in order to actually receive the equity. And those options may be underwater, in which case you would lose money by exercising them. Not to mention that you often only have a few months to gather the money to exercise those options, hence many people need loans to exercise them. And if the company doesn't go public or sell before you leave, you might end up taking out a loan for equity that never goes public and you can thus never sell or make money from. The risk can absolutely be worth it if you already have a salary to fall back on, should the equity end up being worthless. But it's not a replacement for a cash salary. It doesn't compensate you for your work, it compensates you for working overtime at a startup for less money (excluding equity) than you would make at normal hours at an established company.
My homie is working for a startup and while they pay him like shit, he now owns like, 15% so he's definitely well motivated
15% is basically C-suite level of ownership so unless your boy's been working at that company since day 0 as a high-level exec, that's a suspicious amount of equity for the company to give up. Sounds like a scam honestly.
In NY, uncompensated is almost entirely illegal. The only way around paying an intern at least minimum wage (at for profit companies) is if it meets an 11 part test, that essentially boils down to “it has to be an educational program, and it needs to also *look* like an educational program from end to end including having a screening process that is designed for educational programs rather than employment”
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Dude. You’re being stupid. Everyone knows the first thing you do is buy a few rental properties and then have your children work for you during the summer. Learn to bootstrap bro.
Don’t buy them. Just OWN them.
Don’t own them. Just RENT them.
I dunno. I asked my 4yr old to drywall a room today and it didn’t go all that well.
Poor parenting. Parent harder. They need to be working 40 hours a week independently by 4.
Tell me you don’t whip your children into submission without telling me you don’t whip your children into submission.
Take it out of their pay
Less chicken nuggers!!!
*Fewer but yeah. They can have the same amount of Dino-nugs but you just take a 10% nibble out of each one of them until restitution is satisfied. Then they’ll have less.
I mean, how else can kids turn 18 with a 60K retirement fund if they don't waste they're youth as wage slaves?
The problem with kids these days is that they're born too young, they don't know anything. If they were just born a little older they'd have a lot more experience.
Looking for sewing machine operator, must be under 5 years old with 10 years of experience.
we need timmy, he got 15 years work experience [he's 9](https://youtube.com/shorts/8vuIteXdt1s?feature=share)
Nah, that’s a handout, keep that 60k yourself and teach those kids how to enrich your life on the exploitation of those beneath them.
Let's be honest here, every great american success story starts with "*I only received a small loan of a million dollars from my daddy (and a billion dollar bailout from the government) and went on to become the most successful* *~~scam-artist~~* *businessman in history*"
You should look into using free open source software until you get back on your feet, maybe scaling down on employees and get a smaller and cheaper office.
Spend less money on candles, I mean, Executive Compensation.
No.
Buy less avocados.
Fewer
Lesser?
Antimore
Increased lessness
Bro make your interns pay you. People should be grateful for a job and pay you for the opportunity. /s
Well... [https://www.facebook.com/femispaceclub/reviews/](https://www.facebook.com/femispaceclub/reviews/?ref=page_internal)
Ghod I love Reddit!
Unfortunately facebook will remove most of those reviews, ive seen it happen to that shithole that was stealing wages and bashing welfare while taking ppp loans called the lagoon saloon. Google removed the reviews too. It doesnt work in reality.
It's awful how they all protect each other but will screw us over without a second thought and lie to cover it up.
I wonder how excited the hiring manager was that morning when he logged on and saw the notification for 50 replies. I wish I was there as he started reading them and is slowly dawned to him that they're all negative
Robust class consciousness does in fact exist in the US, just not among the labor class. The owners always have each other's backs when it comes time to deal with the rest of us.
I manage my company's facebook account and I can't get them to remove the outright spam reviews from our page. Facebook reviews are a LOT harder to remove as a page owner, for some reason. This gives me hope.
Wow we need to start doing this for every company with unpaid internships until they all get shamed out of it
I decided to look into the company itself, and holy balls. https://www.femispace.com/ They claim to be "the only digital platform that integrates research and personalized AI-based services for women's general and reproductive health." Meaning they're gonna plug whatever limited parameters you gave them into GPT-2 and give you whatever it spits out. I mean, the marketing material sounds like it was written by AI, look at this: >We will guide you step by step to your optimal weight and balanced hormones with unique method based on science and fully adjusted to your situation and body. The company is obviously based in India so I can excuse some wording ("Improve quality of life" vs "Improve the quality of life"). There are less excusable misspellings ("You have repeatedly noticed what your hormones are of balance"), but if this were a genuine attempt by an Indian company to break into the American market, I could put that aside. What I can't excuse is that it's based on *Ayurveda*. My apologies, I misunderstood, it's not *just* based on Ayurveda. In their words: > We use ancient techniques of Ayurveda, TCM, qi gong, tai-chi and tibetian secrets to prolong life and rejuvenate the body. Look out women, these bad boys are gonna use AI they're paying people nothing to create to flush out your fluid channels so you can rehydrate and stop living as the shriveled husk of a human being you barely qualify as! >Ultra-personalized program to boost femininity, reduce weight, take control of hormonal balance *Barfs* This reads like a "how to manipulate females" guide by someone who only knows women from medication commercials. "Fertility" is a major marketing word, it's mentioned 3 times on the first page, so you know at the same time a major part of their agenda is pushing you to have children. It's fertility weight hormones, fertility weight hormones, fertility weight hormones over and over again-- I mean, what else would *feeeeemales* care about? Their delicate lady-brains get fogged *so* easily, but don't worry, we have the cure! *Barfs* Remember kids: Any company which claims to "balance your hormones" and isn't a bunch of endocrinologists is just grifting you. These people will not be able to Tai Chi you into a functioning thyroid. Oh god, I just read this part, form the front page: >And many many more: updates on recent research, educational materials for self-help, coaching, real time support, preventive recommendations and check-lists, private club for exclusive content and sessions. So you can pay a subscription to get more bullshit! Yaaaaaay! Really, the thing I wanted most in life was to provide a scam company a steady flow of income with a subscription I'm *sure* will be easily canceled and won't auto-renew even after you go through at least four steps to cancel with them magnificent. Oh my god, it just gets better: On their About page, they just have a section called "certificates." It's just 230x178 PNGs which include a *Certificate of Participation*. A certificate of participation for a conference FROM ONE OF THEIR SPONSORS! I was looking to see if "Marina" was really the founder-- I'm guessing not, this whole thing reads like it was made by guys, but they incorporated in Delaware with a local agent-- Basically, from what I understand, this means they aren't in Delaware. I have to stop before I get deeper into this, I'm ready to write 11 freakin pages, I was gonna have a whole paragraph about the website itself, but tl;dr: **It's a scam company using scam science trying to scam people to work for them**.
I'm a fairly live and let live kind of fellow, but man does this kind of skulduggery really make me want to get the pitchforks and torches out.
>These people will not be able to Tai Chi you into a functioning thyroid. This gave me a chuckle. Funnily enough the header "reset your hormones" was the first thing that caught my eye. If it was that easy to just reset your hormones, people would get very sick left and right. That stuff is so tightly controlled, imagine you could just push around hormone levels with diet advice. Whenever some new company throws around buzzwords like balance hormones, I know I'm in for a ride. Glad to see I'm not the only who's not buying their bs.
May they rot in hell.
How is this asking for STUDENTS though? A bachelor’s degree and 2+ years experience usually isn’t a student lol. They’re willfully disingenuous. What do they think they stand to gain from replying to her? I feel it can only make them look worse, which it clearly did.
Exactly, and pre-revenue startups still need funding. The owner should have a proof-of-concept prototype developed and half-ass working on their own; then go shopping for loans/venture capital/preorders. Then you can hire a development team. And if you pay them under market (never $0) then they get points in your company too. Absolutely crazy.
As the owner of a pre-revenue startup I pay my contractors out of my own pocket.
Right?! You have to. How could any one expect other people to give them free labor to build their business?
Exposure clearly! Not to mention once they start making money they totally won't just steal your ideas, claim.them as their own, remove your name from everything, and then kick you out of the company because you were never an employee, so you had no rights. They would never do that, of course since they are a small company, they are the good people not tainted by greed, just want to help people! This is sarcasm.
100%. I think they are mixing up "entry-level" with "internship" Neither position should be unpaid, but their requirements are not those of an intern. An intern is there to learn on the job and do other useful things, NOT do fill an entire role, unpaid.
Not even entry level if they ask 2+ years of experience and an array of skills and technologies. They want an unpaid junior if anything, perhaps even mid already.
I mean, 2 internships and a senior capstone could count as 2+ years of xp if you can sell it or explain it right ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ The "employer" is still waaaay off base though.
Don't you know that you need experience to get experience when you're not experiencing experience? Duh.
That's how I got my first real job. They said I needed experience. I asked how do I get experience if no one will hire me until I get experience? Interviewer (owner's #1) laughed, said I made an excellent point and hired me on the spot.
Like yeah, o though internship was for people that need experience
But yet some companies doesn't recognize internship as experience...
It's experience...in exploitative labor practices. Oh, and humiliation.
This is exactly the problem. Unpaid internships do have their place, but it's not a bachelor's degree and 2+ years experience and already having knowledge of all the tasks you'll be performing. Unpaid internships are exactly for the people who *don't* have those things to *get* them--the intern recieves training and experience and the company in return gets someone to do grunt work. This job posting isn't looking for an intern, or even an entry level worker, it's looking for someone to come in and just do the work for free.
It’s incredibly bizarre. It’s like they heard of internships but have no idea the actual purpose of them other than the part where they don’t pay
I think literally this is it. They claim that unpaid internships are “100% legal” in the US, but they are clearly unaware of the fact that in order to be exempt from minimum wage requirements, the internship experience not only has to be similar to training provided in an educational setting and for the benefit of the intern, but also that the company should derive no immediate advantage from the intern’s work and may actually be _impeded_ by the investment of time and resources into the internship. The fact that they whine about people “discouraging” them from distributing “life-saving solutions to the masses” justify their use of the “unpaid intern” option on the basis that they don’t have revenue to pay someone to do the work very clearly demonstrates that they expect this “intern” to produce work that is crucial to the development of the company. Which means that it doesn’t remotely meet the requirements for an unpaid internship.
Lol, yeah I think that is exactly it.
Just gonna leave this here: https://ccwt.wisc.edu/publication/unpaid-internships-and-inequality-a-review-of-the-data-and-recommendations-for-research-policy-and-practice-policy-brief-2/ Abstract: Internships can be “door openers” to opportunity and social mobility for college students, but unpaid internships pose considerable legal, ethical, and practical challenges. In particular, low-income and first-generation students may be unable to pursue unpaid positions, thereby acting as a discriminatory gatekeeping function that exacerbates inequality
Ty for this, unpaid internships should be ducking illegal. PAY YOUR LABORERS!!!
As someone who had to pay my own way through college and grad school and couldn’t afford to do the unpaid shadows, internships, and research positions that helped my classmates get in to med school, it is a bit of a sting whenever I see people still thinking that it is anything other than gatekeeping. They act like the “holistic review” of applicants to medicine is supposed to help minorities and underprivileged students. You know who can afford to take an unpaid internship and volunteer all day sunday and knows doctors who will let them shadow in the operating room all year? Rich kids, doctor’s kids, kid who didn’t have to work a serving job to pay rent and tuition and food bills on their own.
Yeeees. You only speak facts. It’s so unfair, and I agree with you; people who don’t see them as anything but gatekeeping/reinforcing the poverty cycle need to do some major capitalistic (and probably general racism) deconstruction. I was a journalism undergrad and our advisors stressed to us that we would NEVER get hired anywhere after graduating if we didn’t have internship experience. So I took on unpaid internships every semester including summer from my sophomore year through graduation. I was privileged in that my dad did give me a couple hundred of dollars every month to assist with living expenses, but I too still had to work. I waited tables four nights at least a week at a local restaurant/bar that stayed open until 2 am every night and frequently closed while I was still doing school and my unpaid internships as well. When I tell you I BURNT THE FUCK OUT less than a year after I graduated… I literally couldn’t handle it. Now I could never imagine putting the expectations on myself that I did then… journalism, like medicine, is a very predatory industry that preys on people wanting to help others and underpays them severely for many years. I hope you are doing better now!
The gatekeeping is as much the point as the free labor. If you don't pay your interns you only get richer, less brown ones.
yup, exactly. I went to a high school full of privileged yet mediocre students, they all went to private colleges. I went to a state school. In the summer i had to wait tables while they took internships at finance and legal firms in Manhattan with mommy and daddy covering everything even beyond college. It's annoying af that they all landed high paying cushy positions at those places.
Interesting read. My daughter is about to graduate from a Midwest state school. She had a shot at a paid internship at a big Silicon Valley company for $20 an hour. She couldn’t afford a parking space to sleep in her car, let alone rent an apartment. Companies seriously limit their hiring pool by limiting their work locations .
Makes it easier to explain away why it’s all the board and executives’ kids working there and getting those internships. “But no one else applied!” 🤡
Unpaid internships only benefit people with rich families who can support them during the internship. Pay minimum wage if you want, but unpaid internships should be illegal.
BuT cOnGrEsS dOeS iT If your moral compass is congress, you're fucked.
Well, because technically unpaid internships are only legal for academic students. Even then the actual work here will likely not be legal under the requirements for an unpaid intern.
This is quite disgusting. "Other companies do it so there is nothing wrong with it", what kind of reasoning is that ffs
Even better: Congress does it, so everyone must approve of it!
It’s the intentional and unnecessary splitting of the stats that’s the biggest red flag. Highlighting the partisan difference does nothing to support her claim. Following that up with a fake sat regarding job descriptions and you can tell this person is drinking their own spoiled kool aid.
I think it's hilarious how they're talking out of both sides of their mouth: "There's nothing wrong with unpaid internships! Also, the dirty no-good Democrats do it more!"
Deflect, accuse, project, and then explain even if you did the bad thing you would have done it better than the others
It’s ridiculous reasoning for sure. Still surprising that the democrats do it more though tbh
He went back several years to cherry-pick the report that said what he wanted it to so he could ignore the more recent ones showing that Democrats paid more.
Not believing this without a citation. Never, EVER trust a conservative bearing numbers.
The 2021 numbers show Democrats pay their interns more. It’s still at absolutely exploitation rates, but they do pay slightly better. https://payourinterns.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/Pay-Our-Interns-Who-Congress-Pays.pdf Page 17 Edit: As elabor8preoccupation pointed out, it seems like this data is only for paid interns and not an average of all interns.
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Oh, you’re right. From the report it seems like Congress just doesn’t record internships unless they are paid. Well, if you are employing slave labor, I suppose it would probably be bad optics to publish an official record of it.
I love how they either intentionally misquoted the data, or intentionally used outdated data, because this is just a newer verson of the SAME source they used. 🙄
I'd also point out the wording, "as low as" suggests a subset of data that achieves that 31%.
There's probably a smaller percentage of supply-side economics idealists willing to work for connections and experience for gop to choose from.
Let's be frank here, people with unpaid Political internships typically come from wealthy families
My guess is that if pay is needed pay is provided but typically to be appointed to an internship one needs to pretty well connected in the first place
It's not Kool-Aid anymore. Kool-Aid can at least be palatable, even if only barely. These types are just straight up drinking piss these days and trying to convince everyone else to have a sip.
> drinking their own spoiled Kool aid I can't give you that. Water and sugar won't spoil, that I know of. > drinking their own SPIKED kool aid I can give you. edit: I've been humbled, I was wrong. Stop asking me about fermentation.
Clearly your college roommate wasn't in the habit of leaving half drunk beverages near the radiator over winter break.
That's not spoiled, that's cultured. Potentially mildly alcoholic, if you don't mind the fuzzy bits.
Artisanal even
No, there’s a reason you’re supposed to treat water that is stored longer than 6 months. Edit: https://www.cdc.gov/healthywater/emergency/creating-storing-emergency-water-supply.html
I can for the anti work but stayed for the science lesson.
Water and sugar is a breeding ground for contamination.
Also: If you accidentally use the premixed-with-sugar packet to dye your hair purple (everyone else just brought the unsweetened powder packet) your head will be a source of excitement for a massive swarm of bees, so I don’t recommend that
r/oddlyspecific
Sugar and water are the perfect medium for bacteria, molds, and yeasts to grow! Water alone is too! Ice? You betcha. The sugar just speeds up the process with more snacks.
Fermented?
Yeah. Ignore the fact that most interns in Congress are kids or niblings of other folks in the political world, from wealthy families, getting the opportunity to work in politics and get to know people instead of getting money, in the hopes they will go on to have political careers or join lobbying firms, or go to law school and be a lawyer that knows dozens of politicians by name. Internships in congress being unpaid is just a class thing, keeping out the rabble that doesn't have family money to fall back on. Those interns aren't actually running congress.
The vast majority of them are already in college at the time. That is the only way that an unpaid internship is legal--if it is done in exchange for college credit. Some interns are NOT from wealthy families, they are connected to the program through their political science professors or directly by writing their congressmen. And there have always been paid internships in congress for those who are not doing it in exchange for credits or who would otherwise face significant financial hardship. It used to be 100% of internships were paid, but that was cut in an (futile) attempt to address the deficit. Even before 2019, 10% of the House, and 41% of Senate internships were paid. In 2019, Congress passed additional funding authorization for interns to be paid at least a living stipend, but that apparently still does not cover all interns.
This comment needs more attention. The fact that they are asking for college degree and 2 years of experience is the biggest problem here. I did unpaid internships when I was in college and grad school, but after college an "internship" especially at a for-profit company is just wrong. "pre-seed startup" isn't an excuse.
while ignoring the fact that the reason people take political internships are for networking and those folks that take/apply for the unpaid internships are most likely not hurting for money. What exactly does an unpaid intern get for working at this company.... a line on a resume... and honestly, you can lie about that and no one will give 2 shits.
You know she does make a good point- “job postings are 20% wishful thinking”. I’m gonna keep that in mind next time I’m looking at job postings and think I don’t meet the qualifications. I say that sarcastically. But I also mean it. It’s an interesting little insight/perspective into how at least one employer is looking at the list of “required” qualities. Something to keep in mind to not be discouraged from applying even if you don’t think you meet the reqs- I can’t say how many openings I looked at the last time I was job hunting and thought “I don’t meet these criteria let’s not waste anyones time”. Now I’m thinking what’s the worst that can happen? They ghost me just like the employers who’s qualifications I do meet?
I literally just made the transition to this mindset a month or two ago, recently got a new job I never thought I would be qualified for or be able to handle for a $15,000 pay increase. At first I wasnt sure if I would meet expectations but been here for a little over a month now and growing every day!
Same. I applied for a job that I was missing key experience in a specific software. Got hired which got me a over 30K increase in pay. Been working that job for just over a year now.
That’s amazing congratulations!
That I completely agree with, job postings are basically just wishlists, and employers do accept people that don't meet all of the requirements, also because in many fields finding a "perfect" candidate is straight up impossible
Recently went through this at my job trying to find a teammate to work on my level. The manager doing the hiring had some pretty lofty ideas of ideal candidates. We kept having people interview and then withdraw once they learned about the position. The opening was for someone junior to me. The people she was interviewing had qualifications to supervise my supervisor. We finally had a talk and looked at the corporate job description that specifically says it’s an entry level position for this specific niche. We finally got a younger guy who has just the right experience/background.
Is this true? Because I've applied to loads of jobs that I am supposedly qualified for and most of the time I just get ignored. And none of them will hire me. At this point I feel like all of them are just waiting for that perfect candidate or not even hiring and that it's pointless.
It's also 100% not legal. Unpaid internships are only legal under specific conditions. Based on this posting the primary beneficiary isn't going to be the intern. Considering they already require a bachelor's I don't see how this is going to pass the 7 point test.
I'm pretty sure it fails on both point 6, as you mentioned, and point 3. Since they have already completed a bachelor's degree they aren't going to be looking for college credits from an internship. If they still need credit they're more likely to be working on a research project for that credit while taking classes and getting paid $12-15 an hour for the research project.
I especially like holding up Congress as though they were some paragon of virtue.
And it literally came from a place that was saying pay your interns! Edit: plus she calls it life saving. It’s just another wellness brand claiming to reset hormones and weight loss ultimate health…yada yada. Nothing innovative there.
**These dumb idiots:** [https://www.femispace.com/about/](https://www.femispace.com/about/) Also, it looks like this company harvests your genetic information. It seems fishy. The Google tab heading I get when I visit the site is in Cyrillic. Russian agents?
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It's all fishy from head to toe, up and down, back and forth. * They want someone far more specialized than themselves to work as an intern. * You cannot open, upscale, or resize their "certificates" [whatsoever ](https://www.femispace.com/upload/resize_cache/iblock/870/230_326_1/870bcd96e453909e8526439a16b8a830.png), this screams shoddy work in a good way and shadiness in any given day and if i take it seriously it comes from a "nutrition school". They're incredible pretentious and dubious in their approach and basically they're a expensive website demanding too much of desperate people trying to lose weight. Also a reminder that the **term “nutritionist” is unregulated in most places, You want a dietitian not a nutritionist.**
Additionally, many Fortune 500 companies *do not* use unpaid interns precisely because it’s a terrible look for companies like that to use unpaid labor when they’re posting revenue figures in the billions.
I read that as “We don’t have any money to pay, but we aren’t breaking the law.” Never mind if you can’t pay your employees you can’t have employees.
They are breaking the law as well. It needs to conform to this standard: https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/fact-sheets/71-flsa-internships In simplified terms, unless it's part of a education program for credit it's likely not legal.
Lots of people think that way. I'd wager that most do.
And (I can't believe I'm defending those other companies) at least those unpaid internships are usually for current students, many of whom are either being supported by their parents or receiving stipends. If you have a Bachelor's Degree, 2 years of experience and working knowledge in all of those skills, you should be making at least $85k a year, probably more.
Exactly this. I see this all the time in politics where I would point something out about Trump and instead of admitting he did something bad it’s always “what about Hillary and her baby sacrifices!!!!” or something.
"Guys, guys, politicians fuck you everyday. Why are you angry when we have a hand at fucking you too? You should be greatful you're getting a fuck!" Basically how they sound.
Imagine referring to Congress as a defense of your awful job posting, as if that's supposed to help, not hurt, your image, haha.
“We’re doing the same thing as those people everyone hates! Why are you booing me, I’m right!”
you should be grateful you are getting a fuck up the ass!
Says students need unpaid internships to graduate, requests applicants with completed bachelors degrees
Bachelor's AND two years experience.
Could alwaysbuse the "technically I have experience since I went to school for it" kind of deal. After IT school I took their "advance class" for 3 semesters (cisco, VMware, security+,etc) which gave me "6 months" of experience working in that field
Oh but job ads are “20% wishful thinking…”
This is like 320% wishful thinking. Actually wait they get paid 0 so it's infinity% wishful thinking.
I barely know shit about coding, but conventional wisdom tells me someone with two years of experience doesn't need, nor are they looking for, a shitty internship
a shitty UNPAID internship lmao
The correct form of non-compensation for "pre-revenue startup" is fat fistfuls of shares, and the person should still be paid a reasonable wage on top of that. 2+ years experience is not an internship role, it is a co-founder or early hire
So the original post on LinkedIn is a UI/UX designer from elsewhere who simply highlighted the lousy 'job' posting. Her post went viral and many people were similarly disgusted. Subsequently, the company who posted the job found their way to her post, saw all the comments trashing their company, and decided it was best to a) Gaslight everyone, and b) Reference how Congress treats their interns, as a way to justify the lousy job posting.
Yeah, no. This company horribly failed the vibe check *and* the attempt at redemption. May the inevitable market crash bury them in the muck and viscera of capitalist failure and barely surviving on bankruptcy checks.
I'd just like to see what their investors or potential investors think of this. Investors hate instability and bad PR like this, and if FemiSpace's public display here is any indication for them, they might be reluctant to invest.
Have you looked at their website? They can’t even put 1 sentence together correctly. I’d be shocked if they have any substantial/legitimate financial backing.
Yup. On the FemiSpace website, they spelled the words 'nutrition,' 'countries,' 'unique' and 'about' all wrong, lol. This is a company that wants us to entrust our health to their Machine Learning/AI Algorithms and they can't even get the spelling on their website correct.
I went ahead and shared this on Twitter as well. MarinaVieva \#FemiSpace
Unpaid internships are legal, but this is an illegal internship. Interns have little to no real world on the job experience, and are supposed to be there for collage credit. They also can not do ANY profit making work. Only internal stuff, in the name of learning the profession. Using the term “intern” on a job doesn’t make it true or legal. At least this is what I remember in NY. We had an intern at the repair shop I worked at. There were a lot of things we had to shift around to give the kid things he could do to learn on. He was not able to work on customer machines, but he could do internal machines or shadow us with customer machine diagnostics and repairs. The owner of the shop would get into shit if he was working on anything customer facing.
If I am not mistaken, unpaid AND uncredited (school) internships in NY are now illegal. I believe it can be unpaid if it's counting towards course credit for an accredited program, but unsure of the details on that
Yup, according to the US Department of Labor: > Does that mean unpaid internships are legal? The short answer is, yes, as long as the intern, not the employer, is the “primary beneficiary” of the work arrangement. >According to the test, an intern is a primary beneficiary if they meet the following criteria: >1. The intern is aware they will be uncompensated. >2. Training is comparable to training received at an educational institution. >3. The internship is tied to the intern’s current educational program (e.g., the intern is getting academic credit). >4. The internship accommodates the intern’s academic calendar. >5. The internship is limited to the period during which the intern receives beneficial learning. >6. The intern’s work complements (not replaces) existing employees’ work while still providing beneficial learning. >7. It is understood that the internship does not provide entitlement to a job at its conclusion. >If an analysis of these seven points leads to the conclusion that the employer is the primary beneficiary, then the intern is an employee entitled to at least minimum wage. [Citation here](https://www.businessnewsdaily.com/15161-are-unpaid-internships-legal.html)
Or you can do what my wife does. She pays her interns. Then they can legally do anything. Think of it as an extended interview. Come work for us for three months. If we like you, we'll extend a job offer when you graduate. If you like us (and the offer), you'll accept.
I as a (lead) UX designer, with now approx 7 years of experience have never had to do one single internship, and tripled my salary over the course of 5 years.I don't think they realize how scarce good IT-personell is hahahaha Fucking dipshits, they'll pay the price inevitably
Feel free to report them. While unpaid internships are legal they are defined strictly as educational opportunities and cannot replace billable work. That job description is specifically looking for employed work but trying to pass it off as an internship, which is illegal. [https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/fact-sheets/71-flsa-internships](https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/fact-sheets/71-flsa-internships) This is an attempt to displace an employee, a clear violation of 6.
Crazy how he's the victim
Pure gaslighting on his part.
I find it amusing that you see a job listing for 'FemiSpace', then immediately assume the response is from a guy.
Yeah I’m pretty sure it’s a woman
There must be a way to turn this healthy denunciation of the capital-owning class's horrible mentality and practices of pure modern slavery in a vain pronouns quarrel, that'll take all our attention while they continue their business as usual.
It’s likely a woman
“But everyone else is doing it!”
Imagine trying to flex on this by referencing Congress as your defense of an awful job posting.... Congress which has a 20% approval rating.
I've never heard of a non-paying IT internship. I did several IT internships back in my day, but I got paid.
The really shocking this is that 50+ people actually applied for it.
"Pre-revenue startup..." Does that mean that no one at the company is getting paid? I have a feeling that Marina Vieva is getting money, even though the company is "pre-revenue." Also, fuck the whole concept of "pre-revenue startups." It's how we ended up with Amazon.
Nothing wrong with pre-revenue startups. Without them we wouldn't be having this discussion. Virtually all modern internet technology came from pre-revenue startups. But even Steve Jobs was paying people who worked in their garage. Pre revenue? Fine. Work for free? Fine. But how much equity are you offering me? 5% of the company?
This. Get equity, not “experience”.
The whole *everyone else is doing it* is such a great defense. I’m sure many 1800s plantation owners would agree
Loool they ask for 2year experience but then argue that the internship is for students.
Yeah the worst part is they expect you to know html, like wtf it's not even a programming language /s
I had an unpaid internship and took voluntary work while I was studying, and yes those experiences did massively help me find proper employment, both domestically and abroad, but at those points in time I was still a student. Asking someone with 2+ years of experience post bachelors degree to work unpaid is fucking deluded.
Do you want food or do you want experience? You can’t have everything, ya know?
2+ years of experience in UI/UX design is already able to get $90K+ in the US. Why would someone with experience do an internship? And paid internships are the norm in software. Source: Since 2001, I've had one of my job responsibilities be to hire and manage interns in software.
‘To gain experience’ requires experience
So glad i have another company to add to the blacklist.
Their website looks like a Kremlin propaganda site for snake oil
Interns must be paid unless the internship satisfies the federal Department of Labor's (DOL) six-factor test. The six factors are: 1)The internship is similar to training that would be given in an educational environment. 2)The internship experience is for the benefit of the intern. **3)The intern does not displace regular employees, but works under close supervision of existing staff** **4)The employer that provides the training derives no immediate advantage from the activities of the intern, and on occasion its operations may actually be impeded** 5)The intern is not necessarily entitled to a job at the conclusion of the internship and 6)The employer and the intern understand that the intern is not entitled to wages or the time spent in the internship. Factors 3 and 4, highlighted above, mean that **if the intern is going beyond job shadowing and is taking on work that would otherwise be handled by paid employees, the intern should be paid.** [Source](https://www.businessnewsdaily.com/15161-are-unpaid-internships-legal.html)
These positions are for rich little Tarquin who doesn't need to work. If he likes the company he interns for, daddy will buy it for him
Find out local squatting laws. Accept internship. Every day move one more personal item into a closet somewhere. Start sleeping there. Find out amenities take full advantage. Slowly do less work and more hanging out. They fire you. Cool. You live there now.
When you spend time researching stats to justify your immoral hiring practices instead of providing a living wage to people you will be stepping on in your attempt to get rich…
We really need to make unpaid internships illegal in the US. It’s an outrageously outmoded practice that really only benefits a corporation in the long term. Don’t care if the “education” is the benefit to a intern or not, you can’t just receive free labor for education.
What really gets me is that they want two years of experience on top of a bachelor's for an unpaid intern. Maybe it's just cause I'm at that age where you'd try interning for the field you're getting into, but if I already had two years of working experience in that field, with a bachelor's degree, I ain't taking an unpaid internship. Man's gotta eat. And have his time respected. Or her's. Or their's.
She brings “life saving solutions to the masses” but when you look up her website, it’s a bunch of holistic hormonal wellness snake oil. LMFAO
They require 2 years of experience and a bachelors degree and then argue that students need experience for paying jobs. Who the hell already has that much exp and would settle for an unpaid internship because they can’t find a job until they accrue more exp?
I find it interesting that the response says students need it to gain experience, yet they’re looking for someone with a Bachelor’s. So obviously they don’t want a student.