from Hacker News

Ask HN: Are internships affected by recent layoffs?

by ssttoo on 1/16/24, 10:36 PM with 8 comments

If your company had layoffs, in your experience are potential internships also reduced? Or increased (no employee benefits etc)?

  • by azornathogron on 1/17/24, 12:13 AM

    Where I work, yes, internship places have been massively reduced. Internships feed into the hiring pipeline: no hiring, no internships.

    They're not a way to get low cost employees, since even very adept interns need a ton of guidance and help from the people around them, and that takes time from the full time employees hosting the interns.

  • by Our_Benefactors on 1/16/24, 10:44 PM

    Multiple cycles of interns were skipped prior to the company performing layoffs. So it was more of a leading indicator.

  • by mesozoic on 1/17/24, 12:27 AM

    Yeah. At my work we stopped taking on interns for the most part and declined most interns that were current any return offers.

  • by CM30 on 1/18/24, 12:07 PM

    From what I've experienced yes. The teams suffering from layoffs where I've worked haven't had any interns assigned to them, and it seems like the number of people taken on as interns in general has been significantly reduced as well.

  • by pers0n on 1/16/24, 10:49 PM

    I doubt it, most companies use interns illegally for free work, they are not supposed to replace regular workers or do work that generates money but as mostly a benefit for the intern