Let Me Be Your Intern | Hacker News Reader

Let Me Be Your Intern

7 pointsDanSims4 comments

Hey Everyone! I am a business student currently enrolled at Babson College. I've fallen in love with startup companies and would love the opportunity to work with one over the summer! My concentration is in marketing and I would be down to help with any brand management, marketing, product management or business development projects you are working on...Hell, I'll even get you coffee! Attached is my resume and a variation of a cover letter that I wrote for a venture capital firm: Resume- http://ow.ly/d/2aB Cover Letter- http://ow.ly/d/2aD Thanks for taking the time to look!Dan Simerman Babson 2011 flavors.me/dansims

View on HN

Working for free is a bad idea. It encourages both the "employer" (if you want to call them that) and you to think in sloppy ways not focused on doing things to make money.

The idea that a person can be appropriately compensated just by the presense of others is a creepy feudal notion that has no place in the modern world, and should be left in the ages that allowed the divine right of kings and other nonsense.

I like the idea of apprenticeships; I think more learning is done on the job in aprenticeship type relationships than we acknowledge. However if a Master can't direct an apprentice in such a way that at least produces a minimum wage, he is not a Master. Any fool can glean some small advantage to free labor; why start out your career under the direction of fools ?

Finally, such a relationship is especially unsuited to startups. By their nature your internship will be supervised by people who have about your own level of experience, and thus have no more to contribute to teaching you than you have to teaching them.

Where does it say he'll work for free??

It's a nitpick, and it might be just me, but I find "business student" a slightly misleading way to identify yourself as an undergraduate business major.

EDIT: Also, if I was interviewing you, I would push you pretty hard on some of your "interests". Quantum physics? Awesome demonstration of well-roundedness if true, but... could you walk me through (e.g.) the time-independent Schrodinger equation?

FURTHER EDIT: I think there are a couple punctuation issues in this sentence: "I have held an interest in marketing since high school when I founded my cities first youth filmmaker’s festival." I know these are all minor points, but I'm hoping you'll find them helpful.

Dan, you should watch out for the spacing in your post (and other minor issues). Try to convey attention to detail.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com