[liberationtech] Internships available at leading Palo Alto tech startup

[Andy Isaacson]

Unpaid internships are not universally illegal, but are often misused to
avoid minimum wage laws.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/03/business/03intern.html
http://www.good.is/posts/unpaid-internship-unfair-likely-illegal-and-not-going-away-anytime-soon
http://www.moneysideoflife.com/illegal-internship-flowchart/
http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/01/the-paradox-of-the-unpaid-internship/266964/

In particular, to be legal, the employer should "derive no immediate
benefit" from the intern's work, and the experience should be similar to
training given by an educational institution.  Neither of those is
likely to be true in the case at hand.

A venture-funded startup paying for office space in Palo Alto has no
legitimate justification to avoid paying a reasonable wage to qualified
interns.  Looks like GraphScience is funded by "EchoVC Partners" and
"Raptor Ventures":

http://www.crunchbase.com/company/graphscience
https://www.fis.dowjones.com/article.aspx?ProductIDFromApplication=32&aid=DJFVW00020120328e83sr7ds4&r=Rss&s=DJFVW
http://www.crunchbase.com/financial-organization/raptor-ventures
http://www.crunchbase.com/financial-organization/echovc-partners

-andy

On Fri, Feb 22, 2013 at 11:20:07AM -0800, Jillian C. York wrote:
> Unpaid internships are not universally illegal, and how does it help anyone
> to spread untruths like that?
> 
> I'm not saying I'm in favor of them (I'm not), but a quick Google search
> shows you're wrong in most US states.
> 
> On Fri, Feb 22, 2013 at 9:52 AM, Greg Norcie <greg at norcie.com> wrote:
> 
> > Unpaid internships are illegal actually. Unless receiving course credit
> > from a university  - then they're just morally unsound :)
> >
> > --
> > Greg Norcie (greg at norcie.com)
> > GPG key: 0x1B873635
> >
> > On 2/22/13 10:16 AM, Q. Parker wrote:
> > > A list enumerating some items which make this post objectionable:
> > >
> > > 1) Unpaid internships are wrong on a number of levels.
> > >
> > > 2) This is data-mining/graph analysis for spam.
> > >
> > > 3) "Quirky" should be a qualification for employment only for clinical
> > trials.
> > >
> > > 4) The only thing this work will liberate is the will to live from
> > fresh-faced recent grads.
> > >
> > > All in all, I'd rather bag groceries than work for a company that posts
> > an ad like this
> > > (and here, no less).
> > >
> > > Quirkily,
> > > Q.
> > >
> > > On Thu, Feb 21, 2013 at 06:43:38PM -0800, Hamdan Azhar wrote:
> > >> Please forward widely!
> > >>
> > >> ---
> > >> INTERNSHIPS AVAILABLE AT LEADING SILICON VALLEY STARTUP
> > >>
> > >> GraphScience - a Palo Alto based venture-backed startup focusing on
> > >> predictive behavioral analytics in social networks - is offering
> > >> internships for college students and recent graduates. Interns will
> > play a
> > >> valuable role in building the leading social advertising platform on
> > >> Facebook.
> > >>
> > >> Our clients are major Fortune 500 retailers and we're looking for
> > quirky,
> > >> creative, self-motivated individuals who would thrive in a fast-paced
> > >> environment. Internships are unpaid and last for at least 3 months.
> > >>
> > >> Interested? Email us your resume, your favorite ice cream flavor, and
> > the
> > >> name of the last book you read.
> > >>
> > >> CONTACT: Hamdan Azhar, Lead Data Scientist, hamdan at graphscience.com
> > >
> > >> --
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> 
> 
> 
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