Launching Living Wage Interns
I recently started a website, Living Wage Interns, which shows internships that pay the real living wage e.g. a salary that reflects living costs and is above the minimum wage. In most of the UK this is £8.75 and in London it’s higher at £10.20. It is calculated by an independent body the Living Wage Foundation which I have no connection to.
I was one of the unlucky graduates who left university in 2008 just before the banks collapsed. I had countless internships, some paid, some very much unpaid, before I was able to get a graduate level job. Ten years after I had graduated, I had blithely assumed that with unemployment falling and the economy in better shape that employers would be willing to invest in young people and offer fairly paid internships.
However, about a month ago I caught a debate on the BBC Daily Politics programme on whether interns should be paid or not. I was astonished that such a question was still being asked. Given that nowadays interns do the work of an employee, rather than making cups of tea as is the popular myth, they have every right to be paid. Most internships now are in actual fact junior positions and the first rung on the career ladder. And yet I see employers wanting highly qualified young people that are job-ready to work for nothing.
It seems counter-intuitive that young people are told they should study in order to get a better job and then told once they have done this that they should work for free. The argument that young people need to prove themselves doesn’t stack up either; CEOs with vastly higher amounts of responsibility aren’t expected to work for nothing until they can show they are any good. If a company hires a bad CEO that could lead to a fall in share price, a loss of market share and even a collapse of the whole company. A CEO appointment is high stakes. An intern, on the other hand, isn’t going to crash a company. So it’s bizarre that the intern, who poses very little risk to the company, should have to work for free to prove themselves but the CEO, who could break the company, shouldn’t.
Inspired by the debate, I decided to set up a website that showcases internships paying the Living Wage. I’ve always been a big supporter of this initiative since it seems to be common-sense that someone working is paid enough to live on. I wanted to make the website unambiguous; if companies don’t pay the real living wage, they don’t get featured. I see so many intern adverts with euphemisms such as “expenses”. Does rent in London count as “expenses”? Other employers often neglect to mention pay or simply state they do not pay interns at all. I want to change this.
I had been interested in coding for a while and I figured picking a passion project would help me learn faster. I had done started lots of online courses on Udemy etc but honestly I obviously found them incredibly dry. I want to learn coding in order to make things I like. I don’t want to learn theory just for the sake of it.
I was able to put together a basic site where people can filter through different positions by sector. The site is heavily inspired by Pieter Level’s Remote OK website for remote jobs. I copied the “typing out words” script that Pieter uses. Well, actually I copied from Andrey Azimov who copied it from Pieter. I then gave Andrey $10.
I still have some work to do with the website design. Harry Dry, creator of the Yeezy Dating website, remarked that he didn’t know anyone that shipped websites as early as I do. I take it as a compliment. Yes, they could probably look a little nicer but they work! And I can make more improvement by asking for tips from the excellent WIP telegram group!
I had had a look online and I couldn’t find any website which showed internships paying the Living Wage. Instead such positions are scattered across lots of websites and aren’t at all easy to find. Some companies even pay their interns the Living Wage but neglect to add this to adverts. After a few weeks I was able to come up with a website where people can filter for internships by sectors such as politics, tech, media and charities. I’ve been busy finding companies to add their internships and I send out a weekly newsletter so people can stay informed of the latest positions.
My plan for the future is to keep making improvements to the website, gain more interest from employers and get the word out to young people seeking internships. I’ve had a few sales now and companies can place an advert for an internship for £49. I’ve had a few other websites which I started but in the end I just didn’t have that much passion for but I’m really enjoying making this site.
I think a good test for making a website or a startup is thinking whether you are willing to work on this for free for a year. I’ve already started making some revenue but for the first month I was working flat out for free. I’ve put a lot of hours into the website already but it’s a cause that really matters so it’s worth it at the end of the day. And it’s a lot more satisfying that making something I’m not really interested in but which makes money.
