The Bottom Line of Unpaid Internships
Today the internet is aflutter with talks about whether internships should be paid after a big-time podcaster who works in music said people who complain about them will never make it.
It was noon when the Tweet came across my timeline. My phone showed me an older white dude who could barely write talking about how he hates even working with interns because they don’t do anything and I laughed thinking, “You get what you pay for.” Thinking back to my days when I made websites on Angelfire for shitty punk rock bands from Queens, and how they even they paid me — in cash. I’d blow that money on records and crap I didn’t need, but I was paid. I grew up in the 90s and like Wu Tang said, “Cash rules everything around me.”
When it comes to unpaid internships, it seems there are two major camps of thought:
1. The experience is compensation
2. They’re unethical
I want to throw in the third angle: it’s a failing business model.
When you invest in businesses, you consider a factor like how much money do they make compared to how much it costs for them to stay open. How a company treats their employees not only speaks volumes about their ethics but how they run their business. A business that can’t or won’t pay their employees is teaching you the wrong way to do business. You’ll just have bad habits that you’ll have to kick later.
Big ole’ red flags
Anthony Bourdain said in his book Kitchen Confidential that he measures a restaurant by the quality of their bathroom because any corners cut it is available for anyone to see. The kitchen, hidden from public view, would also have cut corners that you’d never notice.
Every business’ bottom line is to produce a profit — make more money than you spend. A good company is one that has the proper accounting. They know exactly how much they need to spend to make money.
A restaurant buys food, pays rent, advertises, and buys labor — payment for the people to do the work. Each employee is a product purchased to make the business happen. That restaurant is going to buy the right food. It’s specific to their customers and their promise. A burger joint is going to buy ground beef, not eggroll wrappers. They’re probably going to buy or hire the right chef who knows how to flip burgers and perhaps not a vegan with no experience. They could employ that vegan without experience, but it’ll be an expensive purchase with limited benefits.
A record company could buy or hire someone entirely new to sound production with no experience and pay them no money, but they probably wouldn’t get someone who’s talented enough to know that they’re right. If that record company didn’t budget their payrolls and can’t afford to hire someone, well something is wrong and what would be worth learning from them?
You’ll get exposure
What kind of exposure?
Writers, illustrators, musicians, videographers, etc. aren’t the kind of people who like unpaid invoices. They have their own bills and avoid slackers. Whatever industry, people who are known to pay will attract the top talent. Even when you’re new to the work, you’ll recognize the work of the best in that field whether it’s movies, music, art, or writing. You’ll want to work where the best create.
The best aren’t competing to work for the idiots who can’t manage payroll, and you won’t be exposed to them.
It’ll be great for your portfolio
So the business that won’t pay interns can’t attract top talent, so who’s managing you?
When you’re young or new to creative work, you need direction. Working with someone with experience and talent forms your growth. It’s probably why you would instead go to a good college instead of an online school that only advertises during daytime tv right? You know the teachers at the excellent college have the knowledge and experience.
Businesses that don’t pay interns are probably stingy around the pay for their full-time employees. They’ve got mediocre people who’ll impart their meh experiences and there whatever knowledge on you, and your portfolio will reflect that blandness.
You’ll learn how the business works
It’s illegal in the US, for the most part, to have unpaid interns. If the company can’t read up on how to legally run their business or would rather cheap out and do things illegally, what are you learning?
You might learn how to lose a lawsuit for back pay, but you won’t learn how to run a successful business.
It’s brutal out there. Landing a job in the creative field is competitive no matter the specialty. You get to do what you love, express yourself and can stay engaged the entire time. Other people want that life, too. There are tons of businesses made up of people who want desperately to do creative things for a living. Many of these businesses fail.
If you want to be successful, it behooves you to learn how to do so correctly and set yourself up with the best skills including how to operate.
You gain experience
Yeah, I don’t know if you’ve heard of resumes, but you get experience with every job you work. Even companies like GAP or McDonald’s can give you skills that can be applied to creative work (like team management, the ability to sell things, etc.).
The experience to work a job unpaid is a bit like when the army promises “free college” as if joining the military wasn’t work.
Jobs can also promise you air, but would you take that as payment?
But at least I get to make art, music, movies or whatever
As creatives, we fall into this trap thinking that what we make is the product. It’s not. A business that hires you whether it’s an unpaid internship or to be part of their family isn’t buying a song, logo, or footage. They’re buying your ability to make those things. Each hour you make stuff for them is a product you’ve sold to them.
If you’re giving away your abilities for free, you have no ownership of that work.
If you work for yourself, you own the work. You can do that with friends and make a killer business where you’re hired for that talent. If your business fails, you can try again. You don’t have to give someone your time to help them fail.
Bottomline
You can work for someone who won’t pay you. You can tell yourself that it’s a unique opportunity, but the IRS’ books say otherwise.
The best internships pay. Many of them remote whatever your role thanks to the internet. You’ll get to work with a company that can run a business, is given good work, attracts top talent, provides experience in those things, and respects you.
Does this sound like a good internship? Let’s just hang out.
