They're also advertising for a "Junior Front End Engineer" for no salary and 2-5% equity. They seem to think they are doing the world a favour. Arrogance in the highest. [2]
[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/cscareerquestions/comments/78rhz7/t...
[2] https://angel.co/bee-technologies-inc/jobs/275465-junior-fro...
From the Reddit thread this is a guy who is still in college and brags about his 3 month internship at Amazon. Someone's gotta knock him down a peg, or two, or five.
Fuck it, just throw him all the way down the stairs, he really needs it.
I guess I was using the idiom wrong, it's apparently "take (one) down a peg" but I've always said "knock (one) down a peg," and when I say it I always pictured, in my head, a bunch of pegs lined up like stairs and someone being knocked "down" to a physically lower peg. it's actually one of the few idioms that prompts me have a mental image of it in my head.
I wonder what the actual origin of the idiom is.
"Violent" idioms are not uncommon:
"My wife is going to kill me when I get home."
"This company is raking me over the coals."
"That's it, the gloves are off."
"She's out for blood."
(Since I can't reply to the inner comment: - the phrase itself seems to have no solid canonical first reference but a few sources online say it's to do with ships and the navy, eg http://jimcofer.com/personal/2011/04/13/what-the-navy-gave-e..., I guess pick your favourite and run with it! :)
>It has been suggested... or... Either of these might be correct... 'pegs' could relate to many things.... it isn't clear what they were... Lacking any real evidence, we can't be sure of the origin.
Yep, and that's why I acknowledged it was hyperbole. There is no need to then say he needs to be thrown down some stairs.
Yeah, this company is the absolute worst. I would also bet that the engineer would get fired before ever being able to cash out on that equity.
Their business model is "paying" people for stock photos with exposure. I'm not surprised they're averse to fairly compensating people who do work for them.
I guess with more and more automation, problems like these are only going to get worse.
OK, I was intending to be snarky and cynical but re-reading that...apart from the last sentence it probably is their plan!
These middle men will the go pay companies to secure internships.
I’d expect more of this happening as the divide between rich and poor deepens.
I’m not sure it’s totally a bad thing. You get to work for a renowned agency. The problem is that it excludes skilled people who don’t already have money
“Money flows toward the writer.”
or, to generalize:
Money flows towards the people doing the work.
Anything which involves the other direction is a scam of some kind. If Weiden Kennedy thinks that they are so awesome that people should pay them to learn from them, the legitimate thing to do is to open a school, not pretend that they are employees.
Pay an employee to take care of the company's problems; get paid by customers to take care of their problems; but if they're not paying you, their problems aren't your problems.
For example, in most states mental health therapists are required to finish their course of study with a certain large number of hours working "under supervision". They pay for the supervision, but at the same time they are working, so they are paid by their patients. Paying for an education isn't a scam.
If registered dietitians have to pay for their "internship", where they actually do work for the facility but don't get paid for it, yes, I think that's a scam too. Just because it's institutionalized doesn't make it an ethical practice.
There are clearly some (such as at the company in the post) but in my experience software internships have gotten really good in the past years since so many companies are competing for talent. Most places that I’ve seen in SF, interns are paid a pro-rated fulltime salary, but since they’re only working for 3 months they have few day to day operational responsinsibilities and get to spend all their time on interesting projects of their choosing (that are also also still useful to the company).
It’s pretty much the best job I can think of, I wouldn’t feel too bad for them.
Companies want it both ways now - they mandate having a CS degree or similar and then in the same breath tell people they expect months of low or unpaid work "so they can be useful". No wonder millennials are fed up with business culture. I don't blame them.
This is of course a particular terrible example of a "company" but I think good, strong internships as you describe are rare - from what I've seen in the UK at least.
Oh, or there's calories in regular Coke, so as long as the guy doesn't prefer diet, maybe he can subsist on that!
"Please do not apply if you know you do not have the skill necessary build something extraordinary."
So I guess I'm out. Shucks.
Unfortunately a steady stream of newbies will fall for this sort of trap. The rest of us should follow the wisdom of Mike Monteiro: https://theamericangenius.com/entrepreneur/the-entrepreneurs...
It's a bit rude, but there is a LOT of sage advice therein.
So....maybe that is what they expect?
And it gets worse if you're not looking for software development jobs. At least for the former, there are some paying extremely high wages to make up for the low end ones expecting Silicon Valley quality engineers to work for free. In non tech jobs... forget it. Anything that doesn't have 'manager' in the title (and many that do) is probably not going to offer enough to live on in the location its based in.
The site has its uses, and it's not bad in theory, but I suspect it needs more moderation to strip out stuff like this.
Edit: I guess I should have been less ambiguous, I wasn't really talking about an employee/employer situation, I agree all work should be paid for. Now that I think about it more, I guess the scenario I was describing was 1-2 people working on a project, and then getting someone else in their immediate circle (i.e. friend, connection, etc) involved. I guess this person would then be called a co-founder, since they are assuming similar risk as the 1-2 original people. My question was more, how have others structured equity for those people, (co-founders?) who join significantly after inception?
You don't hire people if you can't afford to pay them, holy shit.
"Hi, you mind cleaning my house? I'm a college student so I can't afford to pay you but I might get a job when I'm out of school, so I'll think about paying you then."
What you really are looking for if you are at that "I got an idea but no business plan" stage is investor(s). This could be a bank or one or more people, but these people wouldn't be employees.
Realistically though, you won't proceed with your crackpot idea as you realize "starting a business" is not "finding someone to work for you for free", ie, having them take on all the risk just so you can reap the rewards.
If a trusted friend with a good idea wanted me to "invest" in their software idea, I would be much more willing to invest the time for development than enough money to hire a developer. Especially if I could do that and work.
The context was "bootstrap without investment." The answer is, you don't, you either invest yourself (capital or labor) or you look for investors. You don't "make someone a co-founder," that strongly implies that they are a passive actor, you look for someone willing in invest, you look for someone looking to start a company. You don't have "employment agreements," you have "business partnership."
You don't.
Pay people for their work, or don't hire them. Anything else is at best ethically gray, but almost always bad.
If you aren't generating profits, and want someone to work for you, either:
* borrow the money in your own name
* borrow against your house
* don't bring them on
You're the one creating the risk. You've gotta eat it.
Anything else is massively unethical.
If you're less than 3-5 people and have no money, you're looking for a technical co-founder, not an employee.
I've done say, 1 day a week of dev on the weekend while having a dayjob to get a project started for a share of equity because I liked the project. (So have others I know.)
Just have realistic asks in terms of time/equity trade so people can balance their risk by having other work as well.
People pay them for their products or services, then they take the money so gained and distribute it to their employees in exchange for their work.
My understanding is that this concept has been quite popular historically.
It's almost like people have forgotten how a business works...
(One pitfall however is that some bootstrapped business owners become unreasonably cheap even when there is reason not to be.)
If you don't have operating capital now, what guarantees can you give that you will have x months later?
The former means giving more than you would to an "employee" and giving shares rather than options, and giving them a real say in the business.
The latter means going to people like me who earn well enough from consulting etc. that we can afford to spend some of our time on startups without getting paid in cash fully knowing it's a high risk thing, and who will insist on seeing your cap table and investment prospectus so that we can judge the risk, and who will insist on terms that provides additional security.
Note that in the latter case my first question would be "why haven't you been able to find an investor yet"?
I've talked to people who have had convincing reasons, but I've also talked to people who presented me with investor decks where it took me 5 seconds to see why they'd failed to secure investors.
Personally I don't think devs who are inexperienced with startups should consider those kind of arrangements. For me it's kind-of a fun gamble that I take on the side of making more money than most from my paying clients - I expect most of the won't pay, but that's ok.
Secure financing by convincing someone with money you have a viable business model, then bring people on since you can pay them.
Yeah, it might take a bit longer to reach higher revenues.
You wait until you have the operating income to afford to hire another. Until then, focus on growing your current business.
Two people taking on a third after 6 months would probably not split out 1/3 to the new person, but it should almost certainly be more than 10% and on the same voting terms as all the other equity.
Don't forget that this now gives them a say in further dilution when you want to take on a fourth or fifth, or carve out an option pool etc.
(I've been the "first non cofounder employee" at a startup, but they paid me properly from day 1 with actual money, as well as options on a normal vesting schedule)
"This also isn't one of those startups that is trying to find a developer to do what they can not. We have a fully functioning in house dev team and simply want to move faster. As such, you will also be working alongside one of the leading React developers in the world who will assist you every step of the way."
Go get a business loan. Go get funding. Don't ask others to work to make you rich for free. It's quite disgusting.
"These 90 days are specifically designated to bring people like you up to speed on our very complex tech stack."
I'm all for onboarding and training, but 3 months to get a grasp on a glorified photo sharing app?
The example the lawyer used to explain it to me is a railroad can have an unpaid intern who moves cars from place to place. However those places all need to be places where the car isn't needed. If the intern moves a car from a siding to an unloading dock and somebody then unloads the car that was useful work and the intern needs to be paid because it was useful work.
BTW, if you get an offer for an unpaid internship and do useful work for the company you should contact a lawyer after your employment and sue for back pay AFTER you get your letter of recommendation: it is any easy lawsuit to win (be sure to ask for lawyer fees) if you have any evidence.
Its also illegal if the unpaid training position is directly tied to employment, which the “this is unpaid for three months” listing seems to directly indicate.
I suspect, if someone were actually hired on these terms and subsequently filed a wage and hour complaint, they’d be due back pay governed by minimum wage laws, damages for any violation of mandatory break and other working hours regulations applicable to non-exempt employees (since, regardless of the kind of work, a $0 salary is below the minimum for exemption), plus penalties and interest for payment being after the time required in law. And, on top of all that, the employer would pay additional fines to the government for the violations.
The only industry I know of where interns get a decent deal is in software as companies are competing to try and get future employees, and those internships are only in the hot markets like SF
Any company worth their salt should not care about this. Any company that would be upset that someone sued because their employer was treating them poorly is by definition a shitty company.
Otherwise it would be no problem to start a software union cause that's just making sure the company doesn't treat you poorly right? Yet I have not met a manager who hasn't stated that they wouldn't look on someone being involved with a union as a red flsg
Like a letter of recommendation describing the work you did.
What the hell? That is the whole _point_ of a job. You know...to get paid for it.
Like, what do they expect their employees to do for three months while they're not getting paid? Live in a cardboard box down by the river?
I mean, I get it. It is probably just a scam to get people to work for free, but regardless, that policy is absolutely idiotic.