I thought the entire point of "interns" was to give young people (i.e. teenagers) the chance to work in a real company and get experience, usually over school holidays etc.
I think SV (and maybe modern capitalism) has corrupted the term "intern" to be "an excuse for us to not pay you" without the other benefits experienced by the "intern".
[EDIT] I should clarify that I am a Brit and never heard the term "intern" used outside of my above definition until I started reading US tech news where it seems to be applied to older people as well.
Isn't SV (i.e. the tech industry) one of the few places where interns do get paid (and paid well, to boot)? All of my buds in the social sciences (politics) and media industry (LA film industry) don't get paid or get paid very little.
Not really true. There is no corruption. White House internship doesn't pay anyone and is one of the hottest place to work for since days. It's entirely a decision people make. You don't want the money but the experience, you can go for it. No one is forcing you to take a job without salary.
Internships are also good at keeping out the wrong sort of people. Lets face it - if you can't afford to go to work and not get paid then you're not really from a good family, and we don't want the wrong sort of people invading our jobs. Someone with a few internships is obviously from the right stock and we can safely employ them, providing of course they go to our club.
Silicon Valley interns (in tech fields) are generally paid reasonably well. There may be some cases where tech companies here don't pay their interns but the majority certainly do. The cases of systemic intern non-payment seem to generally happen outside of the tech industry.
