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How Internships Work · Stuff You Should Know

0:01
Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you Should Know Fromhouse Stuff Works dot com. Hey,
0:11
Speaker 1: and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and there's
0:15
Speaker 1: Charles W. Chuck Bryant, and there's Jerry and I'm Josh Clark. Uh,
0:19
Speaker 1: and this is stuff you should Know. Anna turned this
0:22
Speaker 1: coffee is too hot. You're fired, even though it don't
0:25
Speaker 1: pay you. Yeah, that's pretty much an average monday for
0:29
Speaker 1: an intern can be. Man, when I was researching and
0:33
Speaker 1: when I was reading this, I was like, Okay, this
0:35
Speaker 1: is interesting, you know, I like all the movie references.
0:38
Speaker 1: That's great. Um. But then when I did some um
0:42
Speaker 1: external research too, I was like, whoa this is This
0:45
Speaker 1: is like a real social issue that we're facing, right,
0:49
Speaker 1: you know, and it's um, it's like the dirty underbelly
0:52
Speaker 1: for sure. And it sucks because it seems like there's
0:55
Speaker 1: a significant portion of millennials who are just strapped with that,
1:01
Speaker 1: who are saddled with this is just the way that
1:04
Speaker 1: the career paths have kind of gone. And from doing research,
1:08
Speaker 1: it's our fault. The gen xers are the first ones
1:10
Speaker 1: who caved on this, and it just paved the way
1:12
Speaker 1: for it to be the new normal. Did you ever
1:14
Speaker 1: do an internship. No, me neither. And it wasn't like
1:18
Speaker 1: a like when I was in college seventy five years ago.
1:23
Speaker 1: It wasn't uh that big of a thing. Like, of
1:27
Speaker 1: course it knew of internships, but like nobody I knew
1:32
Speaker 1: did one. No, you were basically like a go getter
1:36
Speaker 1: who was just looking to pad your resume a little bit.
1:40
Speaker 1: Definitely extracurricular. Yeah, it was not super super common, at
1:46
Speaker 1: least among the people I knew, and we were all,
1:49
Speaker 1: you know, just normal, average, smart college students. It wasn't
1:52
Speaker 1: like hung out with the heads by the dumpster. So
1:56
Speaker 1: I didn't know about internships. Well that's why I I
2:00
Speaker 1: didn't know about internship. I'm glad to know that I
2:02
Speaker 1: wasn't missing out though my mom's made me steer clearer.
2:05
Speaker 1: Guys like you I saw, I know, and now we
2:07
Speaker 1: work together. Fates are intertwined. Um, get this check. I
2:11
Speaker 1: saw the statistic between the nineteen eighties and the mid
2:15
Speaker 1: two thousand's, the number of the percentage of college graduates
2:19
Speaker 1: who've done an internship went from between win and win
2:26
Speaker 1: and the mid two thousands. That's crazy. That underscores what
2:32
Speaker 1: we were just saying, which is why I threw that
2:35
Speaker 1: out there, you have data to back it up. Yeah,
2:38
Speaker 1: and data, by the way, is plural. Okay, I just
2:41
Speaker 1: want to make sure that that's set out. So like
2:44
Speaker 1: if I stood up in front of my sympose um
2:46
Speaker 1: and say I have a lot of datas for this,
2:49
Speaker 1: I might get left off stage. What symposium are you
2:53
Speaker 1: talking to? The data's symposium? I want to be there,
2:57
Speaker 1: all right, I'll put you on the list. Okay, some pretzels.
3:01
Speaker 1: So this article is just so cute because it opens
3:05
Speaker 1: with a episode of Friends, which I don't even remember,
3:09
Speaker 1: and I've seen all those, but apparently Chandler got an
3:11
Speaker 1: internship and it led to wacky hi jinks. Imagine that, right,
3:17
Speaker 1: which is also the plot of every other intern movie
3:21
Speaker 1: or film ever. Yeah, there's one with Robert de Niro
3:24
Speaker 1: and and Hathaway didn't see it neither. There's one with
3:28
Speaker 1: Owen Wilson and Vince Vaughan. I saw just a little bit,
3:31
Speaker 1: just enough of that to know I didn't want to
3:33
Speaker 1: see it. That was shot here in Atlanta, though. Okay,
3:35
Speaker 1: so you saw it being filmed and you're like you
3:38
Speaker 1: and everybody on set heard you. Yeah it was I
3:42
Speaker 1: think that it was at Google, like real Google, not
3:44
Speaker 1: made up Google like. I saw a guy the other
3:47
Speaker 1: day I meant to tell you this, and um, what
3:51
Speaker 1: city were we just in? Not Lawrence, Kansas but Austin, Texas.
3:55
Speaker 1: And by the way, thank you to those cities and
3:58
Speaker 1: all the others on this most recent to yeah, which
4:01
Speaker 1: we're winding up here in New York in Atlanta soon,
4:03
Speaker 1: but big shout outs to Lawrence, Kansas especially, love that place. Right.
4:08
Speaker 1: But anyway, I was in Austin and there was a
4:10
Speaker 1: group of tech dudes, um in Austin, Yeah, uh, at
4:17
Speaker 1: this restaurant that I was at, having drinks, and one
4:20
Speaker 1: of them, the most obnoxious of of the lot, had
4:23
Speaker 1: a Hoolie shirt on. And Hooly is the fake Google
4:28
Speaker 1: type company from oh from what's it called Silicon Valley
4:33
Speaker 1: the TV show. So he had a hoolie shirt and
4:36
Speaker 1: he was the one leading with all the bad jokes
4:38
Speaker 1: and I wanted to punch him in the face. I'll
4:41
Speaker 1: Betty listens to the show too, So you've really made
4:44
Speaker 1: your point here. Yeah, you know, if you were in
4:46
Speaker 1: Austin then you had the Hooly shirt, you, sir, have
4:50
Speaker 1: a punch coming. Yeah, some that guy's listening, he's like, well,
4:53
Speaker 1: it's not me. My jokes rock Alright, So here's another
5:00
Speaker 1: stat for you. Um, the two thousand sixteen survey from
5:03
Speaker 1: the National Association of Colleges and Employers in a c E.
5:09
Speaker 1: They said more than seventy And this is where it
5:12
Speaker 1: gets a little like, this is actually good information because
5:15
Speaker 1: the whole big question is our internships worth doing? Uh?
5:19
Speaker 1: And they found that more than seventy paid internships did
5:23
Speaker 1: lead to job offers. So that's pretty good. That's a
5:27
Speaker 1: good number right there. I actually saw one from two
5:30
Speaker 1: thousand thirteen and it was at six, so there's an
5:34
Speaker 1: actual getting better. Yeah, it is getting better, which is
5:37
Speaker 1: pretty interesting because that means that it's it's it's becoming
5:42
Speaker 1: I guess, a legitimate career path then, rather than just
5:45
Speaker 1: a fake career path. Right. But that is to point
5:48
Speaker 1: out very clearly paid internships, paid unpaid internships, which will
5:53
Speaker 1: get to which is basically to me, very un ethical,
5:58
Speaker 1: illegal thing to do. Illegal. Depending on how you're doing it,
6:02
Speaker 1: you can get away with it, but I think completely unethical.
6:05
Speaker 1: You should always pay people to work, um, not exposure. Yeah, exactly.
6:11
Speaker 1: If fewer than forty percent got job offers, from unpaid internships,
6:15
Speaker 1: and that is not too far above the thirty six
6:18
Speaker 1: point five percent of people who get a job offer
6:22
Speaker 1: with no internship at all. Yes, so that two more
6:27
Speaker 1: two thirteen saw that climb to because it was thirty
6:30
Speaker 1: seven percent got a job offer versus thirty front who
6:35
Speaker 1: hadn't intern So it does seem to be having an
6:38
Speaker 1: impact at least between two thousand thirteen and two thousand
6:41
Speaker 1: and sixteen, it's been changing. And with unpaid internships in particular,
6:46
Speaker 1: I've seen that, um there is like a whole mentality
6:51
Speaker 1: among millennials entering the workforce who are saying, you know what,
6:56
Speaker 1: I would rather take an unpaid internship in the field
7:00
Speaker 1: that I want to get into in the hopes of
7:02
Speaker 1: getting a good job in that field than to start
7:05
Speaker 1: down a different path in another field that I'm not
7:08
Speaker 1: feeling so hot about and end up getting trapped in there.
7:12
Speaker 1: And apparently they are um so dedicated to this idea
7:17
Speaker 1: that people are starting to take like two three four
7:21
Speaker 1: unpaid internships in their field in the hopes of making
7:24
Speaker 1: this work. Part of the problem is is that means
7:27
Speaker 1: that you're you're you're feeding the gig economy because you're
7:31
Speaker 1: doing whatever side hustle you can, which a man, I
7:35
Speaker 1: hate that term so much. Um, Yeah, to pay the
7:40
Speaker 1: bills because it just makes it so cool. It's like, no,
7:44
Speaker 1: you're being exploited. That's what it is. A side hustle.
7:47
Speaker 1: It's exploitation. Okay, So you're having to carry out gigs
7:53
Speaker 1: to to make ends meet, or you have some other, um,
7:57
Speaker 1: you know, a low paying job that is not so
7:59
Speaker 1: demanding that you can't also do your internship at the
8:01
Speaker 1: same time for parents who will just float you. Right,
8:04
Speaker 1: that's a big one too. And so if this is
8:07
Speaker 1: the new career path where you work unpaid internships to
8:12
Speaker 1: three four of them before you finally get a paying
8:15
Speaker 1: job and your chosen field, and it makes you, um,
8:20
Speaker 1: makes you rely on say your parents or whatever. For
8:22
Speaker 1: people who can't rely on their parents, that means that
8:25
Speaker 1: that path to chosen career is closed to them. They
8:29
Speaker 1: have to just start working immediately. And that that means
8:33
Speaker 1: that it's automatically unfair. So exploitation is leading to unfairness
8:38
Speaker 1: in in even more sinister ways as well. Yeah, and
8:41
Speaker 1: that's something that you know what, because of my privilege,
8:44
Speaker 1: I never thought about. But if you're out there saying, well,
8:47
Speaker 1: what's a big deal if I want to take an
8:48
Speaker 1: unpaid internship and my parents gonna float me to do that,
8:51
Speaker 1: and I get the experience and I get a job, Like,
8:54
Speaker 1: who am I hurting? And you're screwing up the economy
8:59
Speaker 1: and your care getting an unfair system for people that
9:02
Speaker 1: cannot afford to do so you're part of the problem.
9:06
Speaker 1: And and it's not just you millennials. Calm down, Calm down.
9:09
Speaker 1: This is this has always been the case with internships,
9:12
Speaker 1: especially unpaid internships. But internships typically come from connections. So
9:20
Speaker 1: the more connected you are or your parents are, meaning
9:24
Speaker 1: the wealthier they are, UM, the the the higher chance
9:29
Speaker 1: you have of getting a plumb internship and so advancing
9:33
Speaker 1: along the way. So much so that I was reading
9:35
Speaker 1: this really good article I would recommend to everybody. UM
9:38
Speaker 1: it's called the Dream Hoarders, How America's Top perpetuates inequality,
9:43
Speaker 1: And it was basically saying that you anytime you use
9:47
Speaker 1: your UM outside channel connections, outside of formal networks, your
9:53
Speaker 1: connections to get your kid or your nephew or whoever
9:56
Speaker 1: UM a an internship, you are gaming this system and
10:01
Speaker 1: making sure that inequality. It just perpetuates on and on
10:05
Speaker 1: and on. Yeah, cronyism, that's what it's called. Yeah, I
10:07
Speaker 1: guess so. And nepotism, both both theisms. So let's look
10:12
Speaker 1: a little bit about the history of the intern. Um.
10:14
Speaker 1: You need not look any further than the medical community
10:18
Speaker 1: as to where that comes from, that term, at least
10:21
Speaker 1: because post w W one, Uh, there was a a
10:26
Speaker 1: consensus that, like, hey, you went to medical school. That
10:30
Speaker 1: was fine. You poked around some dead bodies, you maybe
10:33
Speaker 1: cut a few open, and that's great, you know a lot,
10:37
Speaker 1: But we don't fully feel great about just releasing you
10:40
Speaker 1: into the world as a doctor just yet. Maybe you
10:42
Speaker 1: should tag along and work as an apprentice of sorts,
10:47
Speaker 1: as a physician in training in a hospital or a
10:50
Speaker 1: physician's office or whatever, you know, wherever however you're gonna
10:53
Speaker 1: do this, maybe you should do that. And we're gonna
10:56
Speaker 1: call them interns. And that's an internship. Uh. They been
11:00
Speaker 1: doing this for for centuries and centuries. There have been
11:03
Speaker 1: apprentices where you would learn about a trade, uh, and
11:08
Speaker 1: then later when when politics came around, um, you could
11:12
Speaker 1: be an apprentice to a politician and learn about government
11:16
Speaker 1: jobs and such. But the word intern really comes from medicine.
11:22
Speaker 1: You could be a sorcerer's apprentice to that. So your
11:26
Speaker 1: parents would float you, right, Mickey mass his parents were loaded. Um.
11:32
Speaker 1: At some point, though, some companies started to say, Hey,
11:36
Speaker 1: I got a great idea. We can actually kind of
11:40
Speaker 1: formalize this informal thing of like, hey, can you get
11:43
Speaker 1: um my cousin Biff's kid on this summer as an
11:47
Speaker 1: intern at your company or at your law firm or whatever. Um, look,
11:52
Speaker 1: we could formalize it by using our connections with other
11:56
Speaker 1: prestigious universities. So prestigious company, meet prestigious university, and um,
12:02
Speaker 1: we will. We want some of your students to come
12:05
Speaker 1: work here for us for free, for free. We just
12:08
Speaker 1: want to make sure that's clear. And in return, why
12:11
Speaker 1: don't you give them like college credit for it? How
12:13
Speaker 1: about that? And that's when the internship at the time
12:18
Speaker 1: it was called a co op, but that's when it
12:20
Speaker 1: really started to develop and spread and catch on. And
12:24
Speaker 1: I think the earliest one was something like nineteen o
12:26
Speaker 1: nine at um Northeastern University, which sounds made up so
12:31
Speaker 1: like from a Jeremy Piven movie or something like that.
12:35
Speaker 1: But it wasn't until the sixties that it really started
12:38
Speaker 1: to catch on. Yeah, it sort of started and then
12:40
Speaker 1: took a bit of a dive in the nineteen sixties,
12:42
Speaker 1: seventies and obviously eighties and beyond from your stat But again,
12:46
Speaker 1: as we said, like even even as we're saying like
12:48
Speaker 1: caught on, like you were not and you were not
12:51
Speaker 1: in the norm if you got an internship in college,
12:54
Speaker 1: it was still unusual. But between seventy and eighty three,
12:58
Speaker 1: the number of university's offering these co ops or internships
13:02
Speaker 1: I went from two hundred to a thousand, so a
13:05
Speaker 1: big increase to be sure. Uh, And some people still
13:08
Speaker 1: say co op, although they're probably like in their seventies.
13:11
Speaker 1: If they're saying that, all right, then trying to sign hip, um, well,
13:17
Speaker 1: and there's a bit of a difference actually co ops.
13:20
Speaker 1: I think usually you would just stop going to school
13:24
Speaker 1: and take a full time job for a little bit,
13:26
Speaker 1: like up to a year. It's almost like a work abroad,
13:28
Speaker 1: but you don't leave. I guess you could leave, whereas
13:31
Speaker 1: internships usually, like you said, it's like a summer thing
13:34
Speaker 1: or I'm going to take a semester off and do
13:37
Speaker 1: this kind of kind of deal. Right, is that right?
13:39
Speaker 1: I believe so so, um, well, let's take a break, man,
13:44
Speaker 1: and we'll come back and talk a little bit about
13:47
Speaker 1: whether not internships are really necessary right after this. Yeah,
14:12
Speaker 1: all right, So under the banner of this article, do
14:16
Speaker 1: we need internships? Uh? They can be super useful. Here's
14:21
Speaker 1: my take on it. If you if you're going for
14:25
Speaker 1: a science based job in the STEM field, if you
14:28
Speaker 1: want to be a chemist or a biotechnologist or a
14:31
Speaker 1: neuroscientist or something, Uh, you want to work in AI
14:35
Speaker 1: data analysis, you might benefit from an pretty well from
14:40
Speaker 1: doing an internship. Uh. The same goes with like psychology,
14:45
Speaker 1: political science, economics, a lot of those fields. It can
14:48
Speaker 1: be a good way to get your foot in the
14:50
Speaker 1: door and really learn as like a research in turn
14:54
Speaker 1: or a laboratory intern Yeah, because I mean when you
14:58
Speaker 1: when you enter profession, there's a lot of stuff that
15:02
Speaker 1: are really peculiar to that. Profession has certain jargon. People
15:06
Speaker 1: tend to work in certain types of groups, They use
15:09
Speaker 1: certain types of software and you're making good connections they use, right,
15:13
Speaker 1: they use certain types of um of like equipment, that
15:16
Speaker 1: kind of stuff, and so like through a formal internship,
15:19
Speaker 1: a real internship, you can um you can learn quite
15:24
Speaker 1: a bit and a lot, so much so that, um,
15:27
Speaker 1: even people who are generally against unpaid internships would say,
15:31
Speaker 1: if that's the type of internship you're talking about, then
15:34
Speaker 1: then yes, technically an unpaid internship is acceptable because what
15:37
Speaker 1: you're getting is such um unrecreatable real world experience, like
15:45
Speaker 1: real job training, that that that that's value, that's worth
15:49
Speaker 1: at least as much as you would be paid for
15:51
Speaker 1: for doing the whatever work they're having you do as well. Yeah,
15:55
Speaker 1: and this is just me talking here, but my sense
15:58
Speaker 1: and my experience of talking to people in reading about
16:00
Speaker 1: this stuff is that internships with like and this is
16:05
Speaker 1: not across the board, because we have had interns here
16:07
Speaker 1: not for stuff you should know, but here and how
16:09
Speaker 1: stuff works. Uh And by all accounts, they obviously were
16:13
Speaker 1: paid and paid well, but I think in every case
16:17
Speaker 1: like really enjoyed their time and learned a lot um.
16:21
Speaker 1: But generally, I think media and entertainment companies are where
16:25
Speaker 1: you're most likely to be uh exploit, exploited and abused
16:32
Speaker 1: and get less real world training out of your internship. Yeah,
16:37
Speaker 1: because the broad statement, but generally true, they're the ones
16:40
Speaker 1: that are always getting sued by former interns, which is true.
16:44
Speaker 1: We'll talk about it later and and I think one
16:47
Speaker 1: of the reasons why is because some of these, especially
16:50
Speaker 1: like the stem professions or architecture is a really good example. Um.
16:54
Speaker 1: It has such a long history of internships that there's
16:58
Speaker 1: like a formal process um that has been established over
17:02
Speaker 1: the years. So it would be very obvious to any
17:05
Speaker 1: intern very quickly if they were being exploited instead of
17:09
Speaker 1: actually being trained in the field that they're looking to
17:12
Speaker 1: go into. Ye, you're probably You're probably not gonna go
17:14
Speaker 1: to a science laboratory and have them say, hey, I
17:18
Speaker 1: need you to take my personal laundry to the cleaners
17:20
Speaker 1: after work. Probably not, but you will probably get that
17:23
Speaker 1: from a producer, right exactly. Or go, um, sit in
17:28
Speaker 1: Selena Gomezs front row seats at this concert because she's
17:32
Speaker 1: gonna be a little late. Seriously, I've read that one
17:35
Speaker 1: of the articles. The opening band pretty pretty much they're like, yeah,
17:40
Speaker 1: that's why you want to look at it. Look your
17:43
Speaker 1: attitude to go You're gonna go places. That's funny. But yes,
17:48
Speaker 1: with media companies it's they're kind of like, hey, we
17:50
Speaker 1: want that too. So I think that they kind of
17:54
Speaker 1: picked up the slack and started um, you know, twisting
18:00
Speaker 1: what was initially a good thing into something exploitive. Correct, Well,
18:05
Speaker 1: what why does Sanita Selena Selena Sanita go manz. What's
18:08
Speaker 1: her name? Selena? You know, Selena Gomez. Don't like I
18:13
Speaker 1: take it to someone famous? But why would she need
18:15
Speaker 1: someone to hold her seat? I wonder that myself signed seat.
18:21
Speaker 1: I took it. You would think so. But let's say
18:24
Speaker 1: that there's some riff raff who are like, I'm going
18:26
Speaker 1: to sit wherever I want. Selena doesn't want to deal
18:29
Speaker 1: with that. She didn't want to have to come and
18:31
Speaker 1: be like, excuse me, this very nice, excuse me, you're
18:34
Speaker 1: in my seat. So in turn, you just go sit there. Yeah,
18:38
Speaker 1: because she could walk up and be like, intern you
18:40
Speaker 1: you can go now? Yeah, you better not fart. I
18:43
Speaker 1: would fart all over that seat she had. She had
18:46
Speaker 1: the fartiest seat in the joint. It have like those cartoons,
18:48
Speaker 1: like green like wisps of air coming off of that.
18:52
Speaker 1: All right, So all getting aside, um, what you want
18:58
Speaker 1: to do when you get that internship? Though, if you're
19:00
Speaker 1: looking like some people are just looking for experience, some
19:03
Speaker 1: people are looking for a job at that company, make
19:06
Speaker 1: yourself invaluable. Like that's true with whatever, whether it's an
19:10
Speaker 1: internship or whether it's your job. Yeah, sure, always make
19:13
Speaker 1: yourself invaluable. But what we want is an intern is
19:16
Speaker 1: for when you leave, for them to go, crap, Sam's gone,
19:21
Speaker 1: Like where did Sam go? We had Sam doing all
19:24
Speaker 1: this great stuff for us. Sam's the real intern, remember
19:27
Speaker 1: I know, well I was, you know, reminding everybody else
19:31
Speaker 1: I new. Yeah, well, I think people we might have
19:33
Speaker 1: said this on the air. Sam who used to send
19:37
Speaker 1: us our our podcast topic ideas that one summer summer
19:41
Speaker 1: of Sam and and was the bat boy in one
19:43
Speaker 1: episode of the Softball episode of our short lived TV show. Yeah,
19:47
Speaker 1: I ended up writing a letter of recommendation for Sam
19:49
Speaker 1: for college. He went there and ended up coming back
19:52
Speaker 1: and interning with How Stuff Works this year, and he
19:55
Speaker 1: was shoved by nary How Stuff Work staff member. No.
19:59
Speaker 1: I think Sam had a good time time. He had
20:00
Speaker 1: a great time, and I could see Sam coming to
20:02
Speaker 1: work here full time. Yep. I mean that's not a
20:04
Speaker 1: job offer Sam. I'm not the decider, but it's one
20:09
Speaker 1: of those things like when Sam or any of our interns,
20:13
Speaker 1: when they leave, you want people to say, well, what
20:16
Speaker 1: do we do now, because that means that they have
20:18
Speaker 1: a good chance at coming back and working. You know,
20:22
Speaker 1: what does this have to do with Sleena Gomez? Though
20:25
Speaker 1: I don't know because she's probably never an intern, But
20:27
Speaker 1: you know who was an intern? Bill Gates? Was he
20:31
Speaker 1: really where? I don't know? Oprah? Okay, oh you just
20:36
Speaker 1: got a list, Tom Hanks, Brookshields, Steven Spielberg, Tom Ford,
20:42
Speaker 1: Spike Lee, tom Ford hunh. Yeah. The fashion industry is
20:46
Speaker 1: like notorious for exploiting its um. I could see that
20:50
Speaker 1: so much so that um, there was a I can't
20:54
Speaker 1: remember the name of the organization but out of Occupy
20:57
Speaker 1: Wall Street and they were handing out um buttons at
21:01
Speaker 1: Fashion Week that was saying like pay your interns. I
21:05
Speaker 1: don't think it went over all that well, I said, VENTI, VENTI, Right.
21:10
Speaker 1: I wonder how many times that's been screamed? A lot
21:13
Speaker 1: in a fashion office A lot? Yeah, a fashion office.
21:19
Speaker 1: Well yeah, fashion office, cow farms. That's my understanding. Um,
21:26
Speaker 1: all right, Well, let's talk a little bit more about
21:28
Speaker 1: paid versus unpaid and get real with some stats. So
21:32
Speaker 1: the n A c E that I was telling you
21:33
Speaker 1: about earlier in two thousand and sixteen, they did a
21:36
Speaker 1: Internship and co Op survey report and they said the
21:40
Speaker 1: hourly wage average for interns undergrad um has been close
21:46
Speaker 1: to the same for about seven years, at a pretty
21:49
Speaker 1: good seventeen dollars and sixty nine cents an hour. That's
21:53
Speaker 1: not bad for an average for a paid internship. I
21:57
Speaker 1: was surprised by that. I have never made that much
21:59
Speaker 1: an hour. I wonder what industry is driving that up.
22:03
Speaker 1: I don't know, because that just doesn't seem that seems
22:06
Speaker 1: high to me. Maybe us well, I mean, you were
22:09
Speaker 1: never paid that because the cost of living was like
22:11
Speaker 1: a third of what it is now and you were
22:14
Speaker 1: at intern age. I think my first job, I was
22:18
Speaker 1: a bus boy at JJ's Barbecue in Stone Mountain when
22:21
Speaker 1: I was thirteen, and I think I think it was
22:25
Speaker 1: like three thirty five or three seventy five an hour
22:28
Speaker 1: was the minimum wage. Isn't that crazy? That is so low?
22:34
Speaker 1: That's gross. You're like, I'm thirteen and I live with
22:37
Speaker 1: my parents and I can't even live on this. That
22:40
Speaker 1: was pretty great, Like what thirteen year old was making,
22:43
Speaker 1: you know, sixty bucks a week. That's a lot for
22:45
Speaker 1: a thirteen year old. Yeah, in nineteen eighty three, man,
22:50
Speaker 1: you could have bought a car for sixty bucks in yeah,
22:55
Speaker 1: at all the band Hala albums I could buy buying
22:58
Speaker 1: doubles just so I can play frisbee with him. Uh.
23:01
Speaker 1: So that's paid internships. But as we have been saying, um,
23:05
Speaker 1: you can get away still with not paying internships. Uh.
23:08
Speaker 1: There is a six point um bullet point list from
23:14
Speaker 1: the Fair Labored Uh Fair Labor Standards Act for private
23:19
Speaker 1: sector for profit businesses. Yeah, because we should point out
23:23
Speaker 1: that if you're an intern at a nonprofit they have
23:25
Speaker 1: no problems with this. Legally, you're just a volunteer, right exactly. Okay,
23:29
Speaker 1: that's a distinction. Yea good good pointing that out. But
23:33
Speaker 1: private sector for profit you can technically not paying it.
23:38
Speaker 1: Or here here are the qualifications to meet for unpaid internship.
23:43
Speaker 1: Number one is internship is similar to training that would
23:46
Speaker 1: be given in an educational environment. It's boom right there,
23:51
Speaker 1: that's all you need right there. Yeah, that's the one
23:54
Speaker 1: that's not met I think most of the time. What's
23:57
Speaker 1: another one? Another one is that um that the in
24:00
Speaker 1: the experience has to be for the benefit of the
24:03
Speaker 1: intern that's a big one. Oh, yeah, that is a
24:06
Speaker 1: big one. These are all pretty big. Number three, The
24:09
Speaker 1: intern does not displace regular employees. That is big, but
24:12
Speaker 1: works under close supervision of existing staff. Right, not like,
24:17
Speaker 1: go make these knockoff Gucci wallets. Well, here's how you
24:20
Speaker 1: do it, and then we'll see you at the end
24:22
Speaker 1: of the summer. Make five hundred of them. Yeah, you
24:24
Speaker 1: have to run a cell machine. Well, t too bad
24:28
Speaker 1: because you have to stitch this by hand. What's number four? Uh,
24:32
Speaker 1: the employer that provides the training, this is weird. Doesn't
24:36
Speaker 1: get any immediate advantage from the activities of the intern.
24:40
Speaker 1: And this is my favorite part. And on occasion it's
24:43
Speaker 1: operations may actually be impeded. Yeah, this is the one
24:46
Speaker 1: that's probably never adhered to. That's the intern rule. Yeah, yeah,
24:54
Speaker 1: no immediate advantage. In other words, it has to be
24:58
Speaker 1: about you giving of yourself to teach the intern, right,
25:01
Speaker 1: and you're actually putting yourself out by having an intern.
25:05
Speaker 1: Apparently Gomer Pile is your intern or something like that,
25:08
Speaker 1: because your operations are impeded. I don't even know if
25:11
Speaker 1: I fully agree with that one. To be honest, I
25:12
Speaker 1: love that one though. Uh. Number five, the intern is
25:15
Speaker 1: not necessarily entitled to a job at the end of
25:17
Speaker 1: the internship easy enough, and finally the employer and the
25:20
Speaker 1: intern understand that the intern is not entitled to wages.
25:24
Speaker 1: So it's just got to be clear. It's not like
25:27
Speaker 1: after two weeks you're like, so, where's my paycheck? Right like, oh,
25:30
Speaker 1: we didn't tell you. And this is the way that
25:32
Speaker 1: things have been for years and years and years. But
25:35
Speaker 1: then there is this something that happened in two thousand
25:37
Speaker 1: and eleven and it changed everything, and we're going to
25:40
Speaker 1: talk about that right after this message. M alright, Chuck.
26:04
Speaker 1: So I was saying that in two thousand and eleven
26:06
Speaker 1: things changed a little bit because for years and years,
26:10
Speaker 1: everybody's just like whatever, everyone knows interns are exploited, free labor,
26:14
Speaker 1: who cares if they want to do it whatever, um.
26:18
Speaker 1: But then in two thousand and eleven, two interns stood
26:21
Speaker 1: up and said no, no, and end to this. Eric
26:25
Speaker 1: Glott and Alex Footman both worked for Fox Searchlight Pictures,
26:30
Speaker 1: and I believe they both interned on the film Black Swan,
26:33
Speaker 1: in particular in New York, and they said, you know what,
26:37
Speaker 1: this is total b s. We're employees were being worked
26:42
Speaker 1: like employees were This is not an internship. We're gonna
26:46
Speaker 1: sue Fox for back wages, and they did. They filed
26:50
Speaker 1: suit against them, and their whole case was based on
26:52
Speaker 1: the idea that everything that they had gotten out of
26:55
Speaker 1: it was the same thing that any entry level employee
26:59
Speaker 1: would have gotten from it. There was no formal internship whatsoever.
27:04
Speaker 1: They weren't taught anything. There wasn't like any kind of
27:06
Speaker 1: vocational training, nothing like that. Um, they were just basically
27:11
Speaker 1: exploited grunt work. And and like I said, they sued
27:14
Speaker 1: Fox and they actually won. Yeah, I mean I read
27:17
Speaker 1: an article called work is work Cohen wy Free internships
27:20
Speaker 1: are immoral from the Atlantic, and the author said, basically, uh,
27:25
Speaker 1: there's a good quote. We accept that they are not
27:27
Speaker 1: salaried because they are temporary, um, because the work is
27:31
Speaker 1: done by students and not insignificantly for the simple reason
27:35
Speaker 1: that we choose to call them internships, a position we've
27:38
Speaker 1: come to consider unpaid. Like by all accounts, these dudes
27:42
Speaker 1: were p a s right exactly, and they thought so too.
27:46
Speaker 1: And a judge actually in two thirteen said you know what,
27:49
Speaker 1: I agree with you. Um. It was in the the
27:52
Speaker 1: Second Circuit Court of Appeals. The judge said, Yep, these
27:56
Speaker 1: guys are right. They were employees. You exploited them, you
27:59
Speaker 1: need to pay that. Um. And he actually came up
28:02
Speaker 1: with a different set of rules his own test, which
28:06
Speaker 1: is basically like the exact same thing as the other test. Yeah. Um,
28:13
Speaker 1: well we'll read through it quickly. Just because it is
28:16
Speaker 1: a little different. Um, the intern and the employee understand,
28:18
Speaker 1: there's no expectation of compensation or job guarantee. Provides similar
28:23
Speaker 1: training to the educational environment. Uh, this one's a little
28:26
Speaker 1: bit different. It's tied to the interns formal education program
28:29
Speaker 1: through integrated coursework or academic credit. That is different. That
28:34
Speaker 1: is significant to Uh. It is aligned with the academic calendar.
28:37
Speaker 1: That's a little different. And the interns work compliments rather
28:41
Speaker 1: than displaces paid employees. Yeah right. And but he also
28:44
Speaker 1: took out something, um, which was that the employer does
28:48
Speaker 1: not benefit from the internship, which I guess in some
28:54
Speaker 1: ways at the very least clarifies that. It takes out
28:56
Speaker 1: what the judge considered was an impossibility. Yeah. Um, and
29:02
Speaker 1: made it harder for for interns to point to that
29:05
Speaker 1: and say, no, this is they clearly benefited from it,
29:08
Speaker 1: but they're going to anyway, I think was the judges point.
29:12
Speaker 1: So with with Ultimately, Fox settled in two thousand and
29:16
Speaker 1: sixteen with these two guys, and they have been awarded
29:21
Speaker 1: four hundred No, I'm sorry, one of them was awarded
29:26
Speaker 1: and the other one was awarded six thousand dollars in
29:29
Speaker 1: back pay. And then like, I think night other um
29:34
Speaker 1: interns from Fox Searchlight at the time who joined the
29:37
Speaker 1: class action are getting four dollars in back pay each
29:42
Speaker 1: for them. Yeah, it's the point. And they actually there
29:45
Speaker 1: were huge ripples that went through the industry, all industries
29:49
Speaker 1: that involved interns UM and just changed things quite a bit. Well,
29:53
Speaker 1: I saw were one of them. I don't know if
29:55
Speaker 1: it was this case, but one of them was appealing
29:58
Speaker 1: the decision and I read that and I was just like,
30:01
Speaker 1: are you serious. Yeah. The fact that Fox went for
30:05
Speaker 1: five years arguing against this and they had to pay
30:08
Speaker 1: out thirteen five plus another I don't know, five grand,
30:13
Speaker 1: fifty grand, you're paying these kids to work and do
30:16
Speaker 1: a good job. Unbelievable. Yeah, it was a little unbelievable.
30:20
Speaker 1: But again, I think what they were fighting was, no,
30:24
Speaker 1: we we really like having free interns. We don't want
30:27
Speaker 1: any of the rules to change. That's ultimately what I
30:30
Speaker 1: think they were fighting. And because of this lawsuit, the
30:33
Speaker 1: rules did change, um not with this test that the
30:37
Speaker 1: judge came up with. Most states still used the original
30:40
Speaker 1: one that we went over, but a lot of companies
30:43
Speaker 1: said they're legal counsel said, hey, uh, your your legal
30:47
Speaker 1: exposure has changed now, so you need to reconsider your
30:52
Speaker 1: internship programs. Yeah, and that was just one suit. There
30:55
Speaker 1: was one in two thousand fourteen against Conde Nast where
30:58
Speaker 1: they paid five point eight million dollars to settle a
31:01
Speaker 1: class action suit. Hundred interns got together. And this is
31:06
Speaker 1: like in the fashion world, like you were saying, they
31:07
Speaker 1: worked for Vogue and Vanity Fair and other magazines like that,
31:12
Speaker 1: and they refused to pay them like at least minimum wage,
31:16
Speaker 1: and so they and well is the other one, Viacom, Yeah,
31:21
Speaker 1: Viacom MTV b ET. They agreed to pay about seven
31:25
Speaker 1: point two million dollars in two thousand thirteen. MGM paid
31:29
Speaker 1: about two d and thirty two thousand and earlier this year.
31:33
Speaker 1: So you know, again, like I was saying, it's like
31:36
Speaker 1: media and entertainment companies are the ones that seemed to
31:39
Speaker 1: take the most advantage. So like the all of these lawsuits,
31:42
Speaker 1: like just it was a huge ripple um and a
31:45
Speaker 1: lot of places like Conde Nast said we're not doing
31:49
Speaker 1: interns anymore. It's just it's too much legal exposure. Places
31:54
Speaker 1: like some places like I think NBC News said we're
31:57
Speaker 1: gonna pay our interns now um, and that just kind
32:00
Speaker 1: of it's just like flipping a switch. You know, you
32:04
Speaker 1: basically have to do one or another. Or there's actually
32:07
Speaker 1: three things that you could do. You could set up
32:09
Speaker 1: a formal internship program that like works with you know, universities,
32:15
Speaker 1: you can start paying your unpaid interns, or you can
32:18
Speaker 1: just stop your internship program. But the fact that like
32:21
Speaker 1: these two interns like just changed the entire intern economy
32:27
Speaker 1: with that initial lawsuit in two thousand and eleven, it's
32:30
Speaker 1: it's surprising. Yeah, I mean they're just now there. If
32:34
Speaker 1: they get do away with internships, they're just calling them
32:37
Speaker 1: entry level jobs. Yeah, and so I guess the differences.
32:40
Speaker 1: You can't do that as a student probably, right, what
32:45
Speaker 1: do you mean, well, do that entry level job. You
32:47
Speaker 1: would have to quit your college probably to do that
32:49
Speaker 1: in most cases. Uh, yeah, I guess so. But again
32:53
Speaker 1: there's like there's another way to do it, which is
32:55
Speaker 1: to actually set up a formal internship program, which is
32:59
Speaker 1: I think we have here, right, I would guess, so,
33:02
Speaker 1: I actually don't know. I'm just I would guess just
33:05
Speaker 1: because we're one of the top hundred most ethical companies
33:09
Speaker 1: in the world. Yeah, is that a real ranking? Yeah,
33:14
Speaker 1: I can't remember whereas I think I saw it on
33:16
Speaker 1: like the side of adulta jet maybe, Yeah, I saw
33:20
Speaker 1: it somewhere nice or no, my coffee, I've seen it somewhere.
33:26
Speaker 1: It's definitely a real thing and how stuff works deserves
33:28
Speaker 1: if you ask me, Yeah, for sure. Uh So, if
33:31
Speaker 1: you do want to take part in an internship because
33:34
Speaker 1: it can lead to jobs, We're not pooping internships. We're
33:37
Speaker 1: poopooing nonpaid ones. We're I'm poopooing the non ideal internships
33:43
Speaker 1: where you are learning real stuff that is going to
33:47
Speaker 1: apply to your real career and that you got based
33:51
Speaker 1: on your merit rather than your parents connections. Yeah, that's
33:54
Speaker 1: what we're celebrating here. Um So one way to get
33:57
Speaker 1: these uh internships is to use your parents connection. Well,
34:02
Speaker 1: it is true though, friends and family and networking, like
34:04
Speaker 1: that's how you get jobs. It's it's just sort of
34:09
Speaker 1: the reality of life, you know. Um, your university professor
34:14
Speaker 1: might can help out contact the business themselves. I remember
34:18
Speaker 1: Sam sent an email to us and I said great,
34:22
Speaker 1: And I sent Sam to Tamika here in the office
34:25
Speaker 1: who handles that stuff, and said, I recommend Sam. And
34:29
Speaker 1: he got the gig. So it was through a connection
34:32
Speaker 1: in a way, but it was through a connection he
34:34
Speaker 1: made by being a go getter and emailing us. Sure
34:38
Speaker 1: what else you can linked in as a place you
34:40
Speaker 1: can look? Um, there's something called insurn tips insurn tips.
34:45
Speaker 1: That's that's a great website name internships dot com. Um
34:50
Speaker 1: that they called the e Harmony of Internships Media Media Bistro.
34:57
Speaker 1: Do you ever look on Media Bistro for jobs? No?
34:59
Speaker 1: I never heard of that one. Oh it's all like
35:01
Speaker 1: all things like writing and movies and um yeah yeah,
35:06
Speaker 1: but like you can find lots of internships in there
35:08
Speaker 1: and on our beloved zip recruiter Chuck Post internship jobs too. Yeah,
35:14
Speaker 1: that's true. Go out and get one, get get get
35:19
Speaker 1: a good one, get it in the right way. You
35:21
Speaker 1: can learn what there's Also I also ran across some stuff.
35:24
Speaker 1: Um there's like a whole community of unpaid interns intern Nation, um,
35:32
Speaker 1: and they've kind of come up with like blogs to
35:34
Speaker 1: just commiserate with one another. There's fashion intern problems is
35:38
Speaker 1: one of them, Anonymous Production assistant blog, and intern anonymous.
35:44
Speaker 1: Because there are three three good ones to start. I
35:46
Speaker 1: think the last two are mostly associated with like um
35:50
Speaker 1: production stuff out in Hollywood. Yeah, but in all seriousness,
35:53
Speaker 1: if you're being exploited for real or taking advantage of
35:56
Speaker 1: a real I know it's probably hard to speak up
35:59
Speaker 1: because you think like you're in there, you don't want
36:02
Speaker 1: to cause trouble. But be brave and blow that whistle.
36:06
Speaker 1: That's what I say. You're just ruined like five kids
36:09
Speaker 1: lives or made them better. Yeah. Well, thanks for listening everybody.
36:14
Speaker 1: This is a tough one right now. Right, Uh, let's see.
36:18
Speaker 1: If you want to know more about internships, you can
36:20
Speaker 1: type that word into the search bar at how stuff
36:23
Speaker 1: first dot com. And since I said that, it's time
36:24
Speaker 1: for listening to me, I'm gonna call the Secret Service.
36:30
Speaker 1: It was a good one. Just listen to Secret Service
36:33
Speaker 1: guys want to fill you in on a missing piece.
36:35
Speaker 1: You're joking a little bit about why there weren't younger,
36:38
Speaker 1: more agile Secret Service agents out there protecting the president.
36:41
Speaker 1: But that's a really important there's a really important reason
36:43
Speaker 1: for that, uh, that you would need to be older
36:46
Speaker 1: and more experienced. In a former job, I used to
36:49
Speaker 1: interact with the security team who had been the presidential
36:52
Speaker 1: protective detail in the White House. They were the most
36:55
Speaker 1: stoic and tight lipped people I've ever met. Uh I
36:59
Speaker 1: can imagine, you know. But one of them did occasionally
37:03
Speaker 1: tell the story about a time where there was a
37:05
Speaker 1: credible threat when their team had to respond quickly. The
37:08
Speaker 1: upshot of the story was that in order to do
37:10
Speaker 1: their jobs, they had to take charge of the president,
37:12
Speaker 1: which meant getting him in a car rerouting the motorcade
37:15
Speaker 1: against his will. It's basically like, it doesn't matter what
37:19
Speaker 1: the president saying. Supersede that the president was furious and
37:23
Speaker 1: tried to order him to change course, but it later
37:25
Speaker 1: came out that the threat had been real. The decisive
37:28
Speaker 1: action had probably saved the president's life. I don't know
37:31
Speaker 1: many seven year old who would have the cajones. This
37:35
Speaker 1: is what Anonymous says. Did they use J yeah, oh,
37:40
Speaker 1: good going, anonymous instead of what an H yeah yeah
37:44
Speaker 1: spelled correctly? The cajones to stand up to a direct
37:47
Speaker 1: order from a sitting president or who would have enough
37:50
Speaker 1: experience to be able to convince the leader of the
37:52
Speaker 1: free world to shut up and get in the car.
37:55
Speaker 1: Don't forget the Presidential Protective Detail is responsible to save
37:58
Speaker 1: the president's life, which sometimes means saving it from his
38:02
Speaker 1: or her own bad judgment or ignorance. I love to
38:05
Speaker 1: all anonymous. Way to go Anonymous, and also way to
38:09
Speaker 1: go with that or her edition This person. This person
38:13
Speaker 1: is right up our alley. If you want to get
38:16
Speaker 1: in touch with this, like Anonymous did, you can join
38:18
Speaker 1: us on Twitter at s y s K podcast or
38:21
Speaker 1: Josh I'm Clark. Me and Chuck are both on Facebook
38:25
Speaker 1: and at Facebook dot com, slash stuff you Should Know.
38:27
Speaker 1: You can send us an email to Stuff Podcast, to
38:29
Speaker 1: how stuff Works dot com and as always, joined us
38:32
Speaker 1: our at home on the whim Stuff you Should Know
38:34
Speaker 1: dot com For more on this and thousands of other topics.
38:41
Speaker 1: Is that how Stuff Works dot com.