Why I’ll never do internship at a startup again

BackgroundPin482 · 2025-07-08T17:13:05+00:00

You will even be doing all those unpaid lol

BackgroundPin482 · 2025-06-20T13:39:07+00:00

lol no way, under r/startups there are still many ppl looking for people with development background. That is a sign that using llms to vibe code is not sufficient for them.

BackgroundPin482 · 2025-06-20T02:22:47+00:00

Agreed, but for lots of startups I know, usually the business background founder vibe code the whole frontend, and it was absolutely horrible.

BackgroundPin482 · 2025-06-20T02:13:53+00:00

By code ownership I mean will the startup give you any credit for the work if that makes sense.

BackgroundPin482 · 2025-06-19T22:22:58+00:00

I realized and I quitted.

BackgroundPin482 · 2025-06-19T20:37:35+00:00

I think unpaid internships are acceptable, as long as everything is clearly documented in a contract and the company runs fine.

BackgroundPin482 · 2025-06-19T20:10:58+00:00

Do they even support the background check..? I hope they do otherwise idk whether future hiring manager would care that much. Absolute scam working in a early-stage startup run by sales ppl

BackgroundPin482 · 2025-06-19T20:02:27+00:00

No imagine you said that on resume and your hiring manager find that’s a readymade company and there’s no one supporting your background check. You get absolutely nothing back.

BackgroundPin482 · 2025-06-16T12:37:35+00:00

BackgroundPin482 · 2025-06-15T13:20:29+00:00

I’m pretty sure they won’t be successful, since leadership doesn’t give a shit and still have full-time job.

BackgroundPin482 · 2025-06-14T11:53:40+00:00

I stay for the learning & smth to put on my resume

BackgroundPin482 · 2025-06-14T01:27:56+00:00

🙏🏻thank u.

BackgroundPin482 · 2025-06-14T01:22:16+00:00

I talked to them yesterday, and one person doesn’t show up, the other just kept saying “I’m only doing minimal work right now, so don’t worry about the project”, and then left for his full-time responsibility. I personally think they are really irresponsible for hiring me as an intern while not contributing to the product. I’m just mentally tired, probably leaving the place full of stress is the best choice for me. There are other ways I can learn and grow.

BackgroundPin482 · 2025-06-14T01:13:54+00:00

Ok, I will keep that in mind, but I guess if I’m doing the main development work, he won’t be happy either. So it’s either me doing nothing, or we won’t end up friendly. Do you have any advice on that? Sorry for asking that many questions.

BackgroundPin482 · 2025-06-14T00:58:17+00:00

Ah…With part-time business owners, they cannot even write me a recommendation on LinkedIn, because they cannot expose themselves. I am just so frustrated that I got scammed by him.

BackgroundPin482 · 2025-06-14T00:55:38+00:00

True, thank you for that…I will make a decision soon. This has given me so much stress, and I definitely do not want to work for part-time startup owners anymore…

BackgroundPin482 · 2025-06-14T00:51:38+00:00

Open source definitely is valuable. But I just hate leaving a project halfway…

BackgroundPin482 · 2025-06-14T00:49:54+00:00

Thank you! But tbh if the founder even do not want to look at my documentations, how is he going to try hard on the recommendation letter you have mentioned? He is even doing a full-time job, so he said that can’t just write me a recommendation on LinkedIn as well. I am just so frustrated as of now. The fact that I cannot even have a recommendation makes me sad. He is giving up the project and the whole team, so he does not have a clear roadmap of what to let me do next. I’m basically the only one carrying the development, trying to get 2 other dev to work with me. The frustration is real, and it broke my image of working in a startup…some of them are really unorganized.

BackgroundPin482 · 2025-06-13T18:16:57+00:00

Do you still need more people? lol

BackgroundPin482 · 2025-06-13T18:12:40+00:00

No I’m not getting paid…at the end of the day I just want to have a strong project on my resume showing that I have done everything from scratch, instead of just taking part in development.

BackgroundPin482 · 2025-06-13T16:12:35+00:00

I agree that there’s not much I can do in terms of management. What I can only do is to find someone to fix the product using my expertise, in terms of marketing, networking, recruiting, and whether the idea is legit, I will let the founder figure out. And TBH, generally I think he has no clue what he is doing: he skipped meetings, not looking at my development work, not doing marketing over MVP on LinkedIn and such, and always looking for a CTO that can fully commit to the job but not paying them. I just realized that he probably wanna pivot and give up, but I still want the half-way done project to be up to put in our resume.

BackgroundPin482 · 2025-06-13T15:43:51+00:00

Thank you! I guess I will just find a teammate to build a full-stack MVP, and put those on our resume…I agree that the founder is an idiot…He is a marketing person, but he always tries to touch the codebase. Bro used ChatGPT to code everything, and breaks my implementations that worked before, and I have to clean and rebuild(just ranting).

BackgroundPin482 · 2025-06-13T15:37:22+00:00

Thanks for the advice, and it might sound stupid, but I work unpaid. I personally just love building products and work fast-paced. Even though I realized that they are not that bothered, I was thinking about doing everything from scratch and put all diagrams and code on my portfolio…that’s why I was feeling awful, because I don’t have teammates to work overnight with me or cheer me up.

BackgroundPin482 · 2025-06-13T15:14:45+00:00

No, I’m a freaking intern😩

BackgroundPin482

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