Good news for companies considering Lambda School Fellows: in California, if the project they do "displaces work typically performed by regular employees" they're required to be paid.

So if you're on the fence, ask your General Counsel their opinion and the decision is easy.

I'm quite sincere when I say this: "if you don't pay people for doing work, you are a garbage company."

Remember my Last Week in AWS guest authors for the past seven weeks? I paid them because I'm not garbage.

If you value people enough to have them in your environment, talking to your team, and creating work product that goes under your name, you need to value them enough to pay them. This shouldn't be controversial.

"Typical mentors spent between 2-4 hours a week with their fellow." Are you kitten me?!

Here at the Duckbill Group @mike_julian and I have been asked a few times if we'd consider an intern.

We decided no, on the grounds of "we wouldn't be able to devote enough time to really help mentor them properly."

"Do we pay them" was never discussed because REALLY?!

This pains me because there are things I deeply admire about @LambdaSchool. I had one of the founders on the podcast, I think their overall aim is just.

But "how do we weasel around getting our students paid" is a sad thing. I'm disheartened.

If you can't cut a check for, say, $4K for someone writing code for four weeks your company, you don't really have a company. You have something unsustainable. For a going concern, that's "lost in the couch" money. https://twitter.com/atleebreland/status/1329115984263868416

Let me take this a step further. Someone applied for a role here recently. I reached out to politely tell them to never, ever say such a thing again:

1. They weren't as under-qualified as they thought.
2. "I'll work for half of what you were planning to pay the person you hired" only appeals to horrible employers.

There are roles I'd love to hire for, but we can't justify a fair market salary for the work yet.

Our solution is to not hire for those things (or go part-time, etc.), not see who we can find willing to debase themselves to the bottom of the bargain bin. Ugh.

Running a business is full of hard decisions.

"Do we pay people fairly" was never one of those. I don't understand or have much in common with folks who feel otherwise.

And the first tweet in this thread is mistaken. That's a US Department of Labor requirement, not California.