Hackers: Intern for the Summer, Get Paid for a Year

by LukeG • 17 years ago

27 60 17 years ago

I'm missing the part where an unpaid intern can support living in SF and working up to 7 days a week, esp in software where pretty much every internship in industry pays quite nicely

LukeG17• 17 years ago

You're right that it's not the right opportunity for everyone. For people with a little more flexibility (or who are already in the Bay Area) and want a more entrepreneurial summer experience that coding for a big software company, we think this could be pretty sweet.

You'll put SW into people's hands almost immediately, get to work through the business implications of what you're building, and more. We also hope that this becomes seriously lucrative for the intern(s) over the course of the next year.

Also keep in mind that this is an experiment, in many ways. We haven't tried this before, and we don't know anyone else who has, either. It's a relatively risky internship in that sense, but one with pretty significant upside potential, too.

breck3• 17 years ago

I think it's a very cool experiment. I could see it working very well. However, no pay and only 10% of the profits doesn't seem like such a great deal.

To me, getting a full time job and doing affiliate marketing at night--keeping 100% of the profits, seems like it would be a better deal.

There are many very profitable affiliate companies in San Francisco that both pay well and offer revenue sharing deals to their workers. These companies really know what they are doing in the lead gen/affiliate space and offering a decent base salary is small peanuts to them.

Dilpil• 17 years ago

Indeed, 10% sounds pretty low. 10% sounds like what it would be fair for the company to retain.

LukeG17• 17 years ago

I should have said at least 10%. We'll talk with whoever's interested, take a look at projected cash flows, and find the right number for everyone. Everything is always up for discussion.

As tptacek points out below, many internships are unpaid or offer minimum wage. How do people afford them? Parents and student loans, I imagine. We think this is a pretty decent option.

jpcx013• 17 years ago

Please... Leave this ad for late night infomercials.

Use jobberbase.com, build your own, and get 100%

LukeG17• 17 years ago

[In what way is this worse than offering an unpaid summer internship, which seem to proliferate everywhere (especially in an economy like this)?]

There are a number of white label job board solutions out there. I think ours delivers a far superior user experience, but that's open for debate. I can say for sure that there's more to building successful sites than sticking an implementation of someone else's software on a page somewhere.

We think we're working on some pretty fun stuff, and would love to have some smart help for the summer. Because we don't have the cash on hand to pay interns $20-$30/hour, we're trying a deferred compensation arrangement - which we want to pay more, in the end.

I do have some extra sham wows I could sell you, though.

andylei• 17 years ago

This is better than an unpaid summer internship, but unpaid summer internships suck. I'm sure you can find some desperate students to take this, but I still don't think it's a good deal. Even if you're not offering that much now, I think it'd be better if you'd pay some fixed amount for the work they're doing.

DavidSJ• 17 years ago

The programming is the hard part. 10% is ridiculous.

LukeG17• 17 years ago

The hard part and the fun part. Fortunately, we've been building online recruiting software for almost a year and half, so we've got just a little bit of a foundation to work from.

What number do you think is fair?

tptacek11• 17 years ago

You may get 3 interns just from this post (we provide no information at all about what we pay our interns, only that it's a paid position, and we have no trouble filling slots). But you might get better interns if you address the risk of not being able to pay living expenses in SV.

banned_man2• 17 years ago

I have an idea for a novel that is truly earth-shattering. It might be described as "fucking brilliant". I'm very busy and therefore don't have time to write it myself, and I obviously can't discuss the concept here; I have to safeguard this earth-shattering idea so it isn't stolen. But if you've scored at least 700 on your verbal SAT-- formal score reports, please-- and can pass a 4-hour writing test I will administer on-site in New York, you can ghost-write my novel. You'll be expected to fill out at least 900 pages, because my idea is just too epic to implemented in fewer. You'll have 2 months to complete the task, revisions and editing included, and you'll be expected to live in New York during that period, with full responsibility for accommodations being yours. If you're successful and on time, I'll offer you a full 12.5 percent of the proceeds between publication and April 20, 2011.

Your name will not appear on the novel, though mine will. However, I'll forward your name to a couple of literary agents and, without getting specific, tell them that I know you to "generally do very good work".

How does this deal sound to you?

tptacek11• 17 years ago

It's an internship position. Plenty of CS people take internships that pay minimum wage, or nothing at all. So far as I can tell, even Spolsky's interns get a flat stipend. Royalties are uncommon even for fulltimers and contractors.

I wouldn't do it, but it's not a BS offer.

LukeG17• 17 years ago

'appreciate that. We think it'll be a sweet experience for the right folks.

neilc2• 17 years ago

Plenty of CS people take internships that pay minimum wage, or nothing at all.

Perhaps, but "amazing hackers" with "great references" who are taking CS "likely at a very good school" aren't going to be considering internships that pay minimum wage, or anything close. Even in this economy, I'd expect that good students should be looking at something in the ballpark of $5k/month.

Zev3• 17 years ago

Fog Creek pays $750/week + free housing + free lunch and MetroCard for transportation. You can easily live on $750/week if you don't have to deal with housing in NYC. And even if you had to deal with housing, you can still survive on $3000/month, even in NYC.

Saying "We'll give you some $ and housing and food if you intern for us. Don't live around here? No problem, we'll give you housing!" is hugely different then "Come intern for us. Don't live in SF? Move here anyway! We might not actually pay you, but it will be a good experience."

jacoblyles• 17 years ago

I don't know of any CS students at my university that are taking minimum wage this summer. All the places I interviewed at had a floor of about $20/hr.

Since the ad stated that they want students from very good universities, I can't imagine their prospects would be worse.

That said, if someone takes this position, they will get far more experience than working most other gigs.

It's not necessarily a bad offer, though the ability to obtain food and shelter are usually factors I consider in my job search. However, I think the comparison to minimum wage or unpaid internships is invalid. We ain't Poli Sci students.

byrneseyeview4• 17 years ago

This is the worst YC clone yet. $0 in funding, for a 90% equity stake.

LukeG17• 17 years ago

Ha it's an internship. It's also the only internship I've ever heard of that will give the interns an actual revenue share. We've spent eighteen months building the software, domain knowledge and business processes that they'll get to leverage while learning, having fun, and making money. You're right, crappy deal.

falsestprophet• 17 years ago

And, apparently, they will throw in some winning sarcasm.

byrneseyeview4• 17 years ago

I know, I know. There's just a very tiny slice of talent for which this is a good deal: if you can't make a business that generates, say, $40K in a year, this internship pays worse than most others. If you're able to do much better than that, though, the 10% revenue share seems pretty minor, when you could pay some of the upfront costs and get 100% instead.

It's the only software internship I've heard of with those terms, but in New York lots of startups looking for biz-dev interns will compensate like that.

rms• 17 years ago

This would go over better if it was rev share + housing stipend.

LukeG17• 17 years ago

I'm with you, and we're definitely looking for a way to make this happen.

cmos2• 17 years ago

I like your approach! It would be nice to at least offer them a bed in your broom closet. When we were starting out we paid our summer interns a little above minimum wage (one of their mom's was a tough negotiator) and let them sleep on our couches.

They still talk about it as one of the best summers of their lives, and for the ones that didn't stay with us, it definitely helped them get better jobs later in life.

Part of your pitch should be (and might be) an involvement in more than just low level coding so that you attract people who understand that working for a startup at such a raw stage will be a unique experience that both you and they hope will be priceless.

nikron• 17 years ago

I can't tell if this comment is serious or not.

cmos2• 17 years ago

100% serious. One of them still works for us, 10 years later.

mannicken2• 17 years ago

Ok. But what stops me from paying myself $0, working a profitable project over summer and having all the 100% to myself during the year?

I apologize in advance if I'm impolite but it sounds like a ripoff and is even worse than Rentacoder's slave wages.

In fact, here is my counter-proposal: come to Seattle where I live, work on my ideas and if you're successful I will give you 50% of the profits. It's like: work for a summer get paid for five years! I may or may not give you office space but I guarantee that I will micromanage you and give you advice even though I don't actually know your area of development.

LukeG17• 17 years ago

Forget "ideas." We have working, proven software and a platform for extending it. We have hard won domain knowledge and battle-tested business processes that deliver. We have a pipeline of revenue-producing products that we can't get to because we're short handed. As PG has suggested, ideas on their own are worth nothing. We have the product and the adoption.

It sucks that this sounds like a ripoff to you. Can you elaborate on why? It also seems like you're trivializing the challenges of "working a profitable project over summer." This is not an either/or situation, either - most people probably aren't trying to figure out whether to (a) intern or (b) start their own company. The two are generally pretty distinct.

So the only thing that stops you is everything else.

mannicken2• 17 years ago

Well, this is what it sounds like to me.

1. We have some projects that bring us money. 2. We have some ideas. 3. You develop those ideas without any pay. 4. If they succeed, we'll give you measly 10%. 5. Our platform is worth 90% of your revenue-generating product.

Microsoft also has products and platforms for extending them. Adsense is a battle-tested business process.

And as much evil as MS is, they don't practically own your company just because you happened to built on their platform, whatever that means.

Hackers: Intern for the Summer, Get Paid for a Year

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