so I offered to help a guy with his startup idea which is in the making for a year at least. (A telemetry data collection device, mind you). It's an unpaid internship with no strings attached, no contract, mind you.

I am nowhere near the programming pro like most of you guys here, so that's what I want to focus on improving.

First thing he tells me to do is a market research on competitors.... I thought I left that bullshit behind when I left business school..

If I want to work without getting paid, I'd rather stay at home and learn c++ and opencl, and work on the MSc thesis full time, thanks.

Do you think it's the right thing to do or should I give it time?

Fuck unpaid labor.

"No strings attached"? Meaning you don't even get equity (which, statistically, will probably be worthless anyway)?

Also, fuck him for not valuing you properly. You come in offering valuable, hard to acquire labor, and he assigns you a task which could be done for $10 by an online assistant service? I'm offended on your behalf.

@Christine it's not that. "No strings attached" in the sense that nothing about this was formal: no papers signed for this "internship".

The product is indeed a cool product. I accepted no salary because I consider myself not to be good enough to get paid. Remember, I'm not in the same tier as you are! I'm almost a complete beginner so I can not be seen as a business partner (nor do I want to).

I find it was more my fault: if I know I don't know enough I should just learn more before contacting companies. No one pays you to teach you the hard things you want to learn, I guess.

But thanks for the reply and feedback :)

My summer after my freshman year of college, I was doing and internship for more than double the state's minimum wage. Same with like everyone in my department. And I knew nothing, John Snow.

If you are doing anything that benefits the company, you are "good enough to get paid."

Unpaid internships are for liberal arts majors, and even then they are bullshit (and often illegal, but the laws aren't enforced).

Just because you aren't yet brilliant, doesn't mean you aren't valuable.

A couple of points:

1. Every time a company wants you to work for them for free it either means they don't have any funds or they don't value your skills. Both red flags. I have someone working for me for free and both those things are true.

2. Research is a HUGE part of building a startup. It isn't some academic exercise, it's fundamentally critical to the success of the company. As a developer not all of your time will be spent typing away on your computer. This is doubly true with startups.

3. @christine is correct - unpaid internships are for art majors, skills that are almost subjective. If you want to work for no money or equity it's your call but if you really believe in this project how would you feel if this ended up becoming a billion dollar company and the founders just cut you off after you built the whole thing for them?

All that being said if you really want to get into development this might be a good way to get your feet wet. Just don't expect anything from the current company

Should consider doing this free work part time. Allowing more time to hit some text books and get more comfortable with code. Full time unpaid is pretty weird...

@JavaRules I'll start with that :D

hey guys! For all you care, I finally got the balls to say something to the guy. Miscommunication aside, he only saw value in my time for market research, but fuck it I'm not a business student and I want to develop my technical skills because that's where the value is at and I want to be able to create my own shit - the very reason I picked up programming.

Now I can dedicate time to become smarter in algorithms and get the free time to learn whatever I feel like.

So happy!!!

oh and thank you guys for your time in ranting and sharing perspectives :)