Why I took an unpaid internship and my experience so far
I graduated from a coding Bootcamp (Flatiron School) ~4 months ago and have been applying to jobs.
Last week, I got an offer for an unpaid internship at a very early stage startup. Despite many of the posts I read on Reddit advising against taking an unpaid internship, I decided to take the position. I wanted to share why I decided it might be a good idea for me based on my professional experience and the current times. Also, the internship lasts for a little over four months.
Reasons why you shouldn’t take an unpaid internship
- Unpaid internships don’t lead to jobs according to “data”.
Looking at this chart, it doesn’t really look like unpaid internships lead to job offers. Also, apparently, the data shows that unpaid interns actually make less money when they do get jobs than people who never had internships…
However, one counterargument to this conclusion is that the study provided no information on the fields these students majored in. Certain majors are more likely to have unpaid internships and it could be that those fields just pay less (i.e. English and journalism fields) than fields that don’t have unpaid internships.
2. If a company can’t afford to pay for their interns then that means they won’t have good resources for developing their interns i.e. mentorships, transitioning into a paid position, etc…
3. It’s unpaid => negative cash flow… you can’t support yourself on an unpaid internship.
Why did I decide to take an unpaid internship?
1. I can afford to
I think the big thing is that the internship is unpaid. Other than that it can’t really hurt to have an internship on your resume. And so if you can afford not being paid for a couple of months, the professional experience you gain is beneficial.
My situation: my lease for the apartment that I’m staying at is ending in October, and I’m fortunate enough to be able to move back into my parent’s home so I decided I’ll just do that for the duration of the internship and until I find something afterward.
The primary reason why unpaid internships are looked down upon is that many people aren’t in the position where they can be “unpaid” for several months. If students keep taking unpaid internships, more companies will expect internships to be unpaid, which will make it harder for people who aren’t as economically fortunate to find their way into a profession.
If you can afford it and you need experience, it’s good. For people that can’t afford, bad.
2. Not much luck getting interviews and an empty resume.
If I had some success applying to jobs, I’d maybe hold off on taking an unpaid internship. But so far I’ve applied to about 130 companies and gotten 1 interview. And I didn’t really get too far in the one interview I had.
I talked to a recruiter at Air Table and she said that she really wanted me to have any sort of professional experience. She said that the biggest risk companies undergo when hiring entry-level employees is whether or not the person can work with other people. “Will the person fit the culture at our company?” She suggested that freelancing would be a great way I can show HR that I know how to deliver code in a professional, coordinated setting.
I think, similarly, an internship could show employers that I can work in a team setting.
3. I was genuinely interested in the company product I got an offer at
I actually was very interested in working on the company’s product. They’re a very early stage startup in “stealth mode” => In business, stealth mode is a company’s temporary state of secretiveness, usually undertaken to avoid alerting competitors to a pending product launch or another business initiative. <= so I can’t really say what the product is… But during our initial call, I was very curious about their product. I could actually see myself as well as other people using their product.
I think also what excited me about working for the company was because of how early-stage the startup is. It sounded very exciting being able to design the prototype for the core product!
Either way, if I did or didn’t take the job, I’d be spending the next couple of months building projects (either working on a side project to build up my portfolio or on the internship). Why not work for a startup that I’m very interested in working for and build up my resume? That’s kind of how I looked at it.
And once I settle in the internship, I can start applying to jobs again.
4. Finally, COVID = jobs and internships are more scarce.
Initial Thoughts about the internship
Realizing what kind of company I want to work for
I’m super happy I took the internship because it made me realize what kind of company I’m excited to work for. I think I’m super excited about working for very early-stage startups…
I like all the unknownness to it and all the figuring out we have to do. I feel like my boss and I are figuring out how to go about doing things on the fly. “What’s the best way we can integrate a feature? Should we try this API or another one? Do you have any suggestions for how to give you access to our Paypal account?”
I also like working for a small early-stage team because I feel a lot closer to the core product. I feel like if I worked at Amazon, I’ll be designing one of their several billion features. But if I worked at Amazon when there were like five or six employees, it’d be much more exciting because I was one of the few engineers that started what Amazon was…
Writing Code Professionally
I’m also enjoying writing code in a professional setting. After working for a couple of days, I like how much control I have over the thing that I’m designing. I really like the fact that I get to “own” the development of a feature. It just feels like I’m building out my own project, not building something for a company.
Drawbacks
One drawback to my current internship is that I don’t have many seniors in engineering that I can ask for help. So the mentoring is a little bit limited.
Boss / Company is cool
It’s also great because of how cool my boss is. He’s very personable and easy to talk to. He makes sure that I have everything that I need to create a feature. And yeah, he checks up on me every once in a while to make sure I’m on the right track. Very good communication. And they’re very supportive about the work I do, so it makes me feel good :).
So far what I’ve done at the internship
- Initial meeting with the team: introductions, weekly catching up, and first steps on my assignment
- Working with PayPal SDK/API and creating a test version of what I’m going to implement in the source code
- First update meeting with the boss, presenting and getting feedback for my test implementation of PayPal.
- Finished developing the payments feature I’ve been working on in a separate branch of the front end code
How do I mostly spend my time?
- Mostly coding (So far mostly React and JS, a little bit of Node/Express, and quite a bit of CSS to make my feature look good)
- Researching available APIs and SDKs for a payments feature
- Trying to figure out the code (patterns and logic) of source code
- Updating my boss on my work and figuring out the next steps
All meetings and interactions have been done on Slack and Zoom.
