Youth and Work Podcast Final MP3

The podcast discusses the topic of paid versus unpaid internships. The participants share their own experiences and opinions on the matter. Some believe that unpaid internships exploit younger generations and create socioeconomic gaps. Others argue that paid internships can also lead to exploitation and higher expectations. There is a discussion about the historical context of apprenticeships and how unpaid internships may not provide enough value for the work being done. The idea of government-regulated internships is also mentioned, with differing opinions on its potential impact. Overall, the participants highlight the importance of gaining valuable experience and the potential drawbacks of unpaid internships. All right, everybody. Welcome back to the Youth and Work podcast. Today, we'll be speaking about paid versus unpaid internships and all of our experiences within. My name is Dev Joshi. I'm a sophomore at Rutgers Business School, majoring in finance and economics. I'm pretty grateful to have some opportunity within both. I've had paid internship experience within investment banking, and I've had unpaid internship within private equity. And I'll give it up to one of my peers to introduce himself, Marko. Yeah, so thank you, Dev, for that beautiful introduction about himself. But, yeah, my name is Marko Gordil. I'm a sophomore at Rutgers, and I'm majoring in biology on the pre-med track. And I'm from Roxbury, New Jersey, originally, like an hour north, if anybody would like to know. But I actually have not had any internships, per se, because all of my relevant work experience has been either clinically related to what I want to do in the future. For example, right now, I'm working as a medical scribe at an urgent care, and that is a paid experience. I'm also volunteering at the hospital, going into patients' rooms and interacting with the patients at whatever they need. So I've not had any internships, per se, but these experiences have provided me with a lot of value for my future career. I'll give it up to Sayid. All right, thank you, Dev and Marko. My name is Sayid Khan. I'm a rising sophomore from Cereville, New Jersey. I'm a computer science major. And similar to Marko, I do not have any unpaid or paid internship experience, although I am actively looking for some. I have some prior work experiences, some support desk jobs, as well as some customer service jobs. So these have provided me with valuable experiences and have helped me shape opinions on topics such as unpaid and paid internships. I'll now pass it on to Michelle. Hi, my name is Michelle. I'm also a sophomore, and I am majoring in human resource management and thinking about majoring in psychology. I also haven't had any unpaid work experiences, but I have had jobs where I've gotten to kind of put myself, kind of understand, like, the exploitative nature that some jobs might have, especially with, like, younger adults and students. And I'm from Elizabeth, New Jersey, which has a demographic of mostly, like, Latinos and, like, undocumented people. So a lot of the jobs in the area have, like, a lot of the jobs that I've had in the area have kind of, like, allowed me to. Hi, everyone. I'm Natalie. Similar to some of my other peer wellness podcasts, I have never had an experience with an internship that being paid or unpaid. I have had a part-time job, though, growing up. Since the age of 16, I worked at a restaurant as a hostess and then started seeing on the server. So I have lots of experience with people skills. As for internships, definitely looking for an internship for this summer and for the future. And I definitely gained some experience just by having a part-time job. And, yeah, now we're going to get into what we're going to be talking about today in our podcast. Awesome. Thank you so much for everyone introducing themselves and providing some a little more insight about themselves. I think that was very great and very valuable for our viewers. But I guess to get right into it, a good question to start off is, where do you guys stand on unpaid versus paid internships, and do you believe that? I know we touched upon it briefly, but do you believe that unpaid internships really do exploit the younger generations, or are they providing that valuable experience that you need to really transition from college or high school to the real world and working a full-time job? So whoever would like to answer that. Yeah, thank you for that question, Deb. So I'm going to hop on a couple of the points that you mentioned, talking about do unpaid internships exploit the younger generation. And I honestly do believe it does, and the biggest reason is because it can create a socioeconomic gap between the different social classes. So this is why that happens. If you have individuals that are financially stable within their families, they are able to take these unpaid internships. And this is in contrast to those that cannot. Those that cannot cannot take these internships because they need to use their time wisely to make money for their families or for themselves to sustain themselves. But the people that have the financial support back home are able to take the unpaid internships, creating this further gap within the socioeconomic system. So for that reason, I do not think unpaid internships should be allowed in the United States of America, and I do believe they are unethical. That's a very interesting point, Marco. I definitely agree with what you said regarding the socioeconomic gap that it creates. However, I don't think that's a generalization we can make, and we can kind of constrain this entire argument, too. I would also mention that if a company is looking to exploit its workers, specifically interns, I believe they would do so regardless. Whether they are being paid or unpaid, say for example you have a situation where an intern is being paid and the management or the boss may be having higher expectations for the intern and may kind of dangle it above them and say, I'm paying you, I expect such and such. Well, such can be the case with unpaid interns as well. You know, they say, we're not paying you, we're providing you with experience, we expect a benchmark from you. However, when there's money involved, I would say that the exploitation could potentially be higher and the expectations could be higher through a paid internship compared to an unpaid internship. I understand what you're saying with that point, Sayim, but yesterday I was reading up on unpaid versus unpaid internships and came across an article about this guy, and he had to eat $2 ramen noodles every single meal for his 10 weeks of his unpaid internship just for the experience. So outside of the exploitative nature that the employer might put on to the employee, that employee that is taking on the unpaid internship oftentimes does not have the leverage to continue on in that internship. And it makes it harder, it gives them more stress than if they were getting paid and exploited at the same time. If you have an unpaid internship, then you have more stress put on to yourself by not being able to get paid. I think some of the points that Marco is saying, I'm completely with him on the side, that unpaid internships aren't likely a working utility for most people nowadays. You have to take a look back at what unpaid internships used to be equivalent to, which are apprenticeships. So that's what internships started out as back in the day. And so apprenticeships would be fully about the experience, giving people who actually didn't go to school the experiences they needed in order to set their foundations for their future, like knowing that this is the job they are 100% going into in their future most likely. Apprenticeships also gave housing equipment and other utilities that were beneficial to someone, so if they had it, whereas unpaid internships at this point, you're receiving this experience, but at the same time, is that experience enough to not be getting paid for the work you're putting in? I like the point you made, Natalie, specifically about apprenticeships. However, it seems like we're kind of approaching sort of a solution towards the unpaid internships. I would say we can explore the idea of there being, for example, we remove unpaid internships entirely, and now we have government-regulated internships and every internship being paid. Would that be more beneficial, or would we rather have the current state of unpaid internships? I think, yeah, that's a really great point. I'm not sure if the government really needs to get involved too much with paid versus unpaid internships and regulations and all that, but going on your point, if the government did decide to get involved and regulate that all internships do need to be paid at a certain amount, then I do think the demand for all internships in general would just completely spike. As of right now, the demand isn't high enough, but the scarcity of internships and places that are able to afford interns, paid interns, would just go down completely, and I think that this could have a negative effect on the experience that students could have before entering the real world by not being able to have that hands-on experience. And I want to touch on Natalie's point about apprenticeships because she mentioned that apprenticeships were for those that were uneducated, but right now I'm not specifically speaking about those that are uneducated or looking to go into that specific job market. These are people that, the people that are looking for these unpaid and paid internships are among all of us, college students, teenagers, and young adults, right? So these are people with some education behind them, so they have some value to the work that they put in. It's not like they're going to go in and not understand anything, although that might be the case. I'm sure many college students and young workers understand the basics behind computers, Microsoft Office, and the different intrinsic things that they would be put on to do at a paid versus unpaid internship. So I don't really understand where the apprenticeship correlation would tie in to an unpaid internship in this example. To kind of touch on that, I kind of wanted to add a little bit more regarding historical apprenticeships. I think that that's where unpaid internships kind of stem from. Back then, there's research that they were actually often reserved for individuals from privileged backgrounds, which kind of echoes a current trend where unpaid internships favor people with higher incomes, like people who have someone there to support them, people who don't really have to support themselves. It kind of emphasizes a lack of substantial change and, like, an ongoing social injustice. So coming from a lower-middle-class family, my mom has always supported me. And, you know, having to take on an unpaid internship would mean that I'd need her to support me financially, which would be a heavy burden on her. So, like, for me to take an unpaid internship, I really have to, like, think about it and, like, really see if it's worth the strain I'd be putting on my family and on myself. And I think that's the case for a lot of people. Like, unpaid internships, like, realistically, they favor, like, the affluent people. Yeah, no, for sure. That's a great point. And I think, you know, branching off some of the points that we've made, this kind of leads me to my next question for you all. Are there any certain conditions where you would accept an unpaid internship? I know, personally, from personal experience, the unpaid internship I did was remote. So there was really no money coming out of my pocket to do the internship outside of my time. So I was basically trading time for experience, which I was willing to do. Are there any other certain conditions that you guys would agree with that would allow you to do an unpaid internship or...? I like that you mentioned your personal experience with working remotely. That is a big condition when it comes to many internships in general, irrespective of the field. However, I would say that one of the biggest issues would be the work environment. And that is something you cannot necessarily prepare for or anticipate, especially going into something like an unpaid internship. So while there can be other conditions, I would say there's almost a constant that you really go in a little blindly to. That being, you know, the work environment and how your managers may treat you, how your fellow coworkers or fellow interns may treat you. Yeah, so going off of what Saeem just mentioned and Dev, I do believe that I would take an unpaid internship, but like they have mentioned, it would come with some, you know, different traits, such as Dev mentioned, the remote work. Yeah, I would take the remote work because then again, you are trading time for experience. But I do not believe that the unpaid internships should be unpaid at the end of the day because you are doing work for a company and you are getting experience, but experience does not correlate to money. You shouldn't be getting paid with experience. You shouldn't be getting paid in anything monetary, whether that be cash or check or whatever the employer has set out. So on your point, Marco, so you mentioned that experience is not necessarily, we are kind of treating it as a currency almost and many unpaid internships leverage that as a sort of currency. However, I will say specific to my field, I am a computer science major. It is a very competitive field. It has a very competitive nature and to gain even an interview at some of these top-level companies, as we all know, Google, Meta, Microsoft, you are, it is not required, but having these experiences, having these high-level internships will certainly put you above other candidates, whether they be paid or unpaid. That is respective of you specifically, but having these experiences are definitely valuable. I would say it is a little unfair to devalue them, if they are paid or unpaid. So as me, speaking from my field, it is obviously different for all different fields of study and education. Yeah, it is definitely a difficult point because you are going against yourself versus what you want to put on your resume, right? So basically, the more internships you have, the more experience you have in anything that goes towards those jobs, internships, clubs, extracurriculars. It is going to look better on your resume than your future employers and the people you are trying to impress ultimately, but for yourself growing up, students want money for whether they have to pay for little things themselves or pay for things that they need in life like car insurance or groceries or stuff like that. It really depends on what are you doing for yourself now versus what are you doing for yourself in the future and I think a big factor that goes into that is how would having an internship affect your education opportunities? Would it affect, do you guys feel that having an internship would disrupt your educational schedule or interrupt school? Even though this doesn't include money, there are other factors that go into it for sure. Kind of stemming off of that, there is about how it would influence your future. There is actually a study in 2014 where they looked at the starting salary of people who had unpaid internships in their experience versus people who had paid internships in their experience and people with paid internships started at a way higher starting salary compared to people with unpaid internships. Although there would be benefits with the experience that you'd be gaining in the long run. Yeah, no, for sure. I completely understand your point. That's a great study you brought up that I did not know about so that's something new I'm learning right now. But I guess something that fits in between of everything that we're saying would be college credits and credits that are offered through internships. So I know personally and I'm sure all of you have seen instead of being paid monetarily, you'll be paid, your time will be paid for through college credits which you can apply to your transcript. I had to graduate earlier. So what are you guys' opinion on that and would you prefer that or not? I believe this is equivalent to a paid internship because college, at the end of the day, costs money. So instead of getting paid in cash, that's almost like getting a scholarship to learn, for example. So right now I am in a research lab doing research in nutrition and I'm getting one credit for three to four hours a week. So although I am not gaining anything monetary from it, the experience that I'm gaining in the lab will help me in the future to understand further intrinsic ideas in medicine and in nutrition. But the experience that I'm getting, like I just mentioned, is not paid. It is counting towards my degree and my degree is also paid for. Can I just ask a quick question for clarification? Would this be considered a co-op or would it be considered an internship that's built in? This is not necessarily a co-op or an internship. It is me searching for research opportunity because in medicine there aren't too many internships per se. It's more experience-based. So this one credit counts towards my degree. I got you. Okay. It's my furthering of education. Okay. I would also agree on the fact that this is like the happy middle between unpaid and paid internships because you're getting the experience aspect of it. But like Marco was saying, education is money but it's also going in the same time as you're spending that money with an internship and you're getting the experience and you're learning and you're using that time that you would use for a class for that experience. So I think it makes it well worth it. So then do you think the system could be abused by college students where people now just take internships in lieu of classes as they receive credits in order to gain valuable experience in their necessary field while also completing their college degree? Not necessarily because at some point, I know that for my major, you can't access the internship credits until you've completed like a decent amount of other credits and it's most likely not going to happen until your end of sophomore year or junior year most probably. And you still have to get approved for those internships too by the curriculum. So I think that's a fair way of doing it honestly or at least that's how Rutgers does it and I think that's a pretty fair opportunity for all students. That's a good point. For sure. And that kind of leads me into my next point staying on the topic of education and colleges. Would you say that universities should have a larger role in giving you an internship or providing you with opportunities to receive an internship? Not even just an internship but a co-op. I know a lot of universities do this. For example, Northeastern allows you to take an entire semester where you're dedicated to a firm completing hands-on activity. So do you guys believe that universities should have a larger role in this and what do you guys think about Rutgers' role in it as it is today? I won't take a deliberate stance on that point but I will expand on it. I will say as well there's levels of colleges. There's tiers of colleges. Some colleges receive more funding. Some colleges specialize in different programs. So some colleges do have the resources to provide for their students. Whether they are doing that or not is a separate story but there are some universities that cannot afford to give their students as many opportunities as others like you mentioned Northeastern. They have a very expensive tuition. Students are paying to receive a very good education and very good opportunities. However, Rutgers does a very good job providing opportunities, in my personal experience, providing opportunities for their students. Again, I'm a computer science major. There's career fairs, there's hackathons, all kinds of things where you can at the very least network with others and gain valuable connections, speak with others and find internships, find experience and otherwise. Yeah, going off the point that Sayem just mentioned, yes, many different schools have different budgets and Rutgers does a great job at putting students in positions for their future careers to succeed. And I do believe that this is based on the major or the field you want to go into. For example, Rutgers is very good at engineering and in STEM, so all these different internships that they provide for the STEM classes and majors will be valuable for the students. And also the size of the school matters in providing for their students. Yeah, that's a great point you had, Marco. And I think that, just, like, lateraling a little bit into my personal experience, I know that, like you said, Sayem, Rutgers provides a lot of career fairs and all that, but would you say that that personal connection is lacking, where you're not really creating a formal bond with the hirer or the recruiting manager? So, like, what's your opinion on that? I would say it is difficult. Similar to what Marco mentioned, he said there's a lot of students. The size of students matters. There is quite a bit of saturation. You go to these career fairs, you feel like you're some other number. You hand your resume and it feels very robotic, very monotone. So it's not much you can do. However, if someone is really seeking these opportunities and are trying to make the most of it, there's plenty of other ways to go around. Just message a recruit on LinkedIn, find the company they work for, ask for recommendations, all kinds of different things you can do, but it also does come down to your field and specific opportunities you're finding in that field. Trying to connect the two points you were just talking about together. I was actually in my financial accounting class the other day, and they had people who now work for Deloitte come in. They were once previously interns as college students, and Rutgers brought them in to talk to my class. So that's Rutgers creating the opportunity once again. And they were just explaining that their in-person internships really developed what their job is today because they got to meet in person with who they were talking to. They had to go the extra mile, though. They could have been an intern that, when they were doing an unpaid internship, that could have just been getting coffee, like they said, or they were doing the simple tasks that they were the ones to set up meetings with other people. And those are the kind of connections that you look for with any internship, but you kind of have to make it your own. Do what you can with it, and it becomes the most for you. So I think it depends a lot on the type of person you are. Yeah, no, for sure. And going right into another point based off of Natalie's statement right there, what would you say is the most valuable part of internships, whether it's unpaid or unpaid, unpaid or paid, would you say the career trajectory is much different? Have you guys noticed any, done any research on that? I know Michelle stated some things earlier, but if you guys wanted to mention any resources you had on that or your opinions. Can you restate that question? Yeah, for sure. So, what would you say the impact unpaid versus paid internships have on your career trajectory in the long term? Okay, so for me, I haven't had any internships, as I mentioned already. And as someone going into medicine, internships aren't that big of a requirement. It's more experience-based on what type of interactions can you have with community, what interactions can you have with patients, and are you a very driven individual in your studies. That's honestly the core of getting into med school and becoming a doctor or a healthcare professional. So I can't really speak on whether internships can be beneficial for me, but I want to see if anybody else in the room can speak on the benefit of internships for themselves. Similarly, Marco has not had an internship paid or unpaid. However, I will say we can definitely make the generalization that experience, whether that be through, like you said, research, experience and the nature and the actual want of the student or the individual really matters. So we can generalize and say experience across all fields is valuable. All employers will look for some sort of experience, some sort of beneficial skills you picked up in these internships or these jobs. But I would say that for me specifically, in my field again, internships are quite valuable and they can help you in the long term. However, there was a stat that I read from CNBC, I believe. 43% of students who have unpaid internships actually make less than those who participated in paid internships. So there definitely is a correlation between having a paid and unpaid internship and there's certainly differences, whether that be through expectations and through your career in the long term. Now let me ask you, do you believe that this variable or this difference between the amount of students that are making more with paid internships post their internship, does that have to do with the barriers to entry for that paid internship? Like have these students already had paid internships before, before going on to these paid internships or do you not know? Okay, that's a good question. And I would like to retreat to the point of the individual's ability and the individual's drivability and want to really get there. Especially in my field, there's a lot of saturation. There's a lot of students who have very similar resumes. So if you don't want to stand out, if you don't want to work for or push yourself for, for example, a paid internship that will look better but may require some more qualifications, I would say that's, again, that falls onto the individual. Yeah, no, for sure. And leveraging off of Sayim's point and responding to Marco's great question, I think that within my field, finance specifically, you see that those summer internships, they really add up. They really mean a lot. And, you know, if you don't have internships, just to keep it blunt, you're not going to get that job that you want. So most importantly, the junior summer internship, which, like, recruiting starts now for, so what am I, am I a couple months into the sophomore year? I'm already looking forward, not this summer but next summer's internship. So it's very competitive for a reason, very well-paid but for a reason. And, you know, you need to have this past experience within, unpaid, paid, doesn't matter. You need to have experience on your resume to stand out. And I think that's the most important part to respond to Marco's question. Great responses. And I also wanted to add that employers actually seem to prefer hiring people with a paid internship experience as we've seen from surveys found that students who received a paid internship received on average 1.61 job offers after graduating while unpaid interns averaged 0.94. So if employers prefer, like, people that have a paid internship in their experience, why are unpaid internships, like, still so, Yeah, no, I completely understand. I think just to ask a question, because on your resume, you really don't write, like, in parentheses, paid versus unpaid. So where do you think that difference comes from and why do you think that leads them to ultimate career success? That's for anyone. I think it's just about, that's a really good point that they, you don't explicitly say on your resume, like, I got paid for this or I didn't. Or you could probably, like, mention that you could get paid for it so that they know that you have certain, I don't know, even, like, expectations for yourself overall. I think there's a way that they probably could see if it was paid or unpaid, but I think it goes back to, I think unpaid internships were the world we lived in, but in the present day and age, under the economy that the U.S. is currently in, under the amount of expenses students go through, their families, whoever, I don't think paid internships, I don't think it should be the student's problem anymore and it should be those companies that are providing paid internships as a standard for these people because it's unfair to have students or families, parents, pay for all this and then it just isn't realistic for the world that we live in today. So there's been many, we had to watch, we watched a video from the BBC about a company based in London. It was a fashion company and they interviewed the boss of this company where they, he described what the internship jobs were and he described them as doing proper work. When the interviewer asked what he, what, like, why they don't get paid for this, he was basically inferring that the company was trying to save money by not paying them and the boss, his name's Julius Vogel, completely, like, stuttered in an attempt to backtrack his steps and purely blame it on experience. I think now it's time to catch up to the day and age that we currently live in and have to accept that. I like the way you mentioned that and the interview was actually a, the interview, I viewed that interview as well and it definitely had a lot of power behind it. You could read through the emotions and sort of the mental that the, that CEO, I believe, was in. However, I do have sort of a counterpoint maybe, an argument you could say. Given the state of the current economy, I feel like we may be biased, as we are all students, you know, maybe actively seeking internships. Why is it that the company who is also trying to keep their company afloat, cut certain budget costs, meet certain goals, why is it that they have to pay us while they're also trying to save money, we're also trying to save money? So at the end of the day, who really should be the one paying who? Yeah, no, that's a great point. I think that goes back to what we were saying before about trading time for experience. These companies, at the end of the day, their ultimate goal is profit, whether they say it or not. The ultimate goal is profit. So why would they willingly hire, say, a freshman, a sophomore, who has absolutely zero experience within their field, and they're seeking more experience and just a learning curve. So I think that unpaid internships do still hold a valuable role in today's overall economy and in the internship market just because of that experience that they provide. And at the end of the day, like I said, companies are just looking out for themselves. They don't really care. All right, I'll pose a question. So do you guys believe that for companies to hire a paid intern who has not graduated college yet, do they need to have that unpaid experience first for them to be a competitive applicant for the paid internship, which is typically higher barriers to entry? So I keep relating to my personal experience, but the nature of your question is very fitting for me specifically. Like I mentioned before, having any sort of experience in general, whether it be paid or unpaid, really makes you a competitive applicant. Now, everyone nowadays can be considered a competitive applicant, so you really need that edge. You need to have that I work for company X, Y, Z that will allow employers overall and, you know, recruiting companies, recruiters in general to see you as a worthy intern. Like Dev mentioned, these companies have no incentive to hire a freshman or sophomore who has very little experience in the field who is still learning the very basics of the field. So having that, having a certain skill set would probably definitely, not probably, but definitely actually make you a competitive applicant. Now, pair that with a paid internship at a prestigious company or a well-known company, and you could find yourself being a very competitive applicant. Now, let me ask you this. Do you think that connections to people within a company help an intern get that, or not an intern, a student get this paid internship? Yeah, that's a great question. You know, from personal experience, trying to land a job on Wall Street is very difficult, especially from, like, a non-target school. For those who are not familiar, non-target means that these major companies or corporations do not look at Rutgers for applicants. And, you know, being able to be, have the opportunity to be in the Rutgers Student Managed Fund and the Rutgers Road to Wall Street program provides me access to certain connections that I'm able to leverage for my benefit. At the end of the day, if you don't have anyone backing you or pushing your resume, you're not going to get the job. No matter if you have a 4.0, every internship experience, if you're not at an Ivy League school, it does not matter. So I'd love to hear your guys' points on that. I think connections are the most valuable thing, if anything. That's how people get their, like Deb was saying, that's how people get their jobs in the first place. That's how I actually, I'm getting my internship next summer through my mom, who's worked for a company for years. So it's, even though that's my mother, people like, anyone you meet in life, if you have that networking connection, it is probably the most valuable thing as a person. Now, I have a question. Do you think this is unfair to other applicants? To other applicants who may be more qualified than the others who are getting the internship with a job based on connections? I do think it is unfair to some extent, because although that one applicant without the connection has more qualifications than the applicant that has the connection and that application with the connection might not have as much of qualifications as the one that does, this all comes down to politics when you're dealing with internships. Because, for example, if I know somebody at a medical school, because I'm pre-med, like I mentioned many times already, if I know somebody at a medical school, more often than not, they would put in a good word for me when my application goes to their school and that I might have a slight edge over some more qualified applicant. Although this is very unfair, it's the nature of the world and that's just how the society of America works. It's a harsh reality. It's a little unfortunate, but, yeah, that's how it works. No, to be blunt, that's a great point, Marco, but I don't really agree. I think it's completely fair, because at the end of the day, like, going to a school like Rutgers as I said is a non-target. None of us have the opportunity, the same opportunities to network and connect. Like, networking and connecting with people, it's like a part-time job. You're spending at least 20, 25 hours just sending them coffee calls, emailing, you send them calls. Like, it's not, it's not something that's taken lightly. And I'm sure Natalie will go in with her personal experience with it, but mine being, like, I have to schedule time to go to New York and meet with these people. And, you know, just to sit down and just get that face-to-face time is very valuable. And at the end of the day, these people do not want to work with someone that they don't know, because realistically, you're going to be in the office 15, 16 hours a day, and just being able to sit there grinding it out with someone that you're not completely weird of. And, you know, like, you learn these technical things over time, but I think that familiarity and that you're able to really connect with people, I think that goes a long way. So I think it's completely fair, because of how hard it is. Yeah, Jeff basically covered it all. I just have one little point to add. These people have their job probably, they've established their position in their careers and in these companies that they're working for. So they have their credibility. It's fair to them for doing that work for so long and to be able to recommend people to another position. Now, let me pose this question. How about those people that are first starting off or first generation college students that don't really have any connection to the field and need to find that connection? Like Dev mentioned, they might need to be able they might have to put in a little more work to connect with these people. And on top of that, they have to get an unpaid internship to get experience. So, just with these two different actions, they have two unpaid part-time jobs that they have to fulfill for them to go above and beyond the applicant that has a connection and a paid internship. So, what do you guys believe? So, I will say what you're saying makes sense. I don't disagree. However, there's a harsh reality to most things. Life is not rainbows and cupcakes, unfortunately. You have there's a statistic that I read that the highest paying majors that being typically of the STEM field, STEM major, STEM majors in college, they end up making the most money and they end up having the most internships compared to their peers. Therefore, you could say they are the ones working the most, working hard for their for their degrees and working hard for their connections like Dev mentioned. He's going to New York scheduling calls, meeting with people face-to-face. This is not for the weak. If you want to make it out, it's survival of the fittest. If you want to make it out, you have to put in the work, put in the hours and hopefully it pays off in the long run. Yeah, that's that's complete facts. I completely agree. I think going back off of Marco's point about where internships come into all these all these things, when you're sending out your resume, you don't want to have all these like elementary stuff like what that don't correlate at all to the person that you're you're reaching out to. They have to see that you're you're capable, you're qualified and you're willing to reach out. So whether it's unpaid, paid, you need to have something to talk about at the end of the day because what are you guys going to talk about if you don't have anything on your end? You guys are really busy and want to learn more about you and you want to learn a little bit more about them but there needs to be that connect. So I think that's where internships come in and that's where it's really valued. Yeah, and I yeah. Just to kind of go back to Marco's point though, I do believe that it's definitely a lot easier for some people to get those connections and you know, some people start from higher places than other people and it's like I think that shows that there's like a broader like issue. Like there's like systematic problems that persist and there's like intersessionality with like class and like you know who gets the opportunity to get a like who has the opportunity like who can access um like who like who has the ability to um have a paid internship versus who doesn't have the like who has the ability to have an unpaid internship versus someone who doesn't like have the the the resources to. Yeah, no, that's a great point and I guess we've had we've had really substantial conversation here guys and I think a great way to wrap it up would just be to go around and talk about like the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the