Summations Only

Please take complaints about discussion or discussion participants to the Report Discussion Problems Here 3.0 thread. Do not try to address any perceived problems yourself. Please keep the discussion's focus on the topic. The complaints of dishonesty remind me of times when I've felt someone was being dishonest, but I usually concluded that such feelings said more about me than it did about the other person.If I could interject an observation, I'm reminded of candy stripers, a term used for unpaid hospital volunteers here in the US. I don't know if this is as common a practice as it used to be, but high schools girls planning a career in nursing would frequently volunteer as candy stripers to gain familiarity with the tasks and routine of a hospital setting. Changing bedpans, helping patients into the bathroom, providing a friendly face, that was the kind of thing they used to do. It was the general opinion that the experience helped gain admittance to college nursing programs.This is just an observation. I will not be joining the discussion. Please, no replies to this message.AbE: Thanks to Chuck for the detailed attempt at clarifying the issues.Edited by Admin, : AbE.

Benefit in the sense of making the individual in question more employable. Particularly in the specific area in which they might hope to achieve long term gainful employment.Whilst I think there are major and fundamental flaws with the specific UK workfare scheme that inspired this thread I am slightly baffled by the discussion that has ensued.Unpaid work experience obviously can and does provide benefits to many of the the people that choose to undertake it. Otherwise nobody would ever do it without being forced to.Edited by Straggler, : No reason given.Edited by Straggler, : No reason given.

You raise some interesting questions (more interesting to see an outside perspective), and the answers to many of them exist in one form or another in the debate. But, as I wouldn't ask anybody to spend that amount of time trying to catch up, I thought I'd use answering your questions as a medium for summarizing my thoughts on this topic. So apologies for the length, but I wanted to try and answer as many of your questions as I could. I see Straggler has already answered the one directed at him. I'm not trying to speak for anyone here, what follows are my impressions only. Value doesn't come in 'kinds', as far as I can tell. Value is value. Things might be valued for different reasons. I might consider vaccine to be valuable. In which case I might walk 6 hours to get water that I can trade for the vaccine.I might consider The Spirit of de Grisogono to be very valuable. But if I'm on a deserted island with no hope of rescue, I'd consider 6 months supply of food to be more valuable.This means that there is no objective intrinsic 'value' to something. It depends on circumstance. But CF wants us to believe that there is no circumstances whatsoever in which one can obtain enough value in exchange for labour.So for instance, CF would not put a single item in the trash in exchange for anything (except perhaps, money), not even the best education money can buy or an exclusive trip, or time travel to a gig you want to see etc. I think he was talking about marketable experience, or something close enough to it. He is talking about 'work experience' which I would consider to be 'experience gained as a result of working in a particular vocation'. In most cases, this is marketable. Jon is talking generally about paying for something of value by working. It's the origins of trade.Bob is a good roofer. But a useless gas plumber.
Dave is a good gas plumber. But a hopeless roofer.Bob needs a new boiler. Dave needs roof work being done.Bob fixes Dave's roof. Bob installs a new boiler at Dave's house.That's the general principle. Now to the specifics of photography.Jane is a pro photographer. But hates having to stop working to get coffee.
Sarah is a photography student who has no work to be interrupted.So Sarah asks Jane if she can follow her around, if Jane will give her some advice on the business etc. And Jane asks Sarah if in exchange she will go get coffees a few times.Jane benefits in that she doesn't have to be interrupted by her caffeine addiction.
Sarah benefits as she learns stuff that can be slow/difficult/expensive to learn by practicing photography.CF seems to be arguing that it doesn't matter how much you are getting out of the exchange - it is irrational on two general grounds:a) Sarah could find a pro photographer to do it for free so she shouldn't 'pay' for it.
b) Sarah's time could be better spent taking photographs etc. Well, I think more specifically CF thinks that if you are not getting paid to do it, you aren't doing the job proper (that is, since you aren't displacing a paid worker, you can't be doing useful work because if it was useful work, the company would pay someone to do it) and so cannot call the experience marketable (or at least as marketable). In the quote you present that 'does not follow' I am in fact talking about marketable experience

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requires a certain level of competence

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That is, the kind of competence that can be gained through experience, which one can put on a CV/raise in an interview or whatever. And I agree that if you are in a position to do this, you should (unless you are trying to change career or something). But not everybody is in this position. I am in fact talking about that kind of experience in that quote:

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The fact is that having experience helps getting future jobs. Starting a new career track can be difficult if you are competing with people with even as little as 6 months experience.

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In what sense are they competing? In the job-marketplace of course. They are competing against people who have evidence of six months of experience (aka marketable experience).Now - as to crashfrog's particular point 'you'd be doing that job and they would be paying you' I thought the counterpoint was obvious and implied, but maybe I'm wrong. But what if you were doing that job and they weren't paying you? Why would they not pay you? Because you don't have the competency to justify paying you. Why have you not got that competency? Maybe you're long term unemployed or seeking a job in an unrelated field from one you are experienced in. So that you can Message 74

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observe setting up shots, trade tips for quick colour balancing, will ask questions about exposure settings and learning the justifications for each. They'll learn how to approach clients and drum up business, how to sell their work, what work sells quick, what work sells high.

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Message 111

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Start out by speaking to other professionals in the field. They are normally willing to give advice to individuals interested in their field. Besides if you speak to the right people they will tell you the pitfalls and upsides right from the start. Ask if you can follow them around for a day of work.

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And so on.Those are the kinds of reasons one might follow a photographer around. Crashfrog made a claim in Message 66:

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if you were getting experience that was relevant to a paid job, you'd be doing that job

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CS raised his example as an example of someone getting {an} experience relevant to a paid job - as an example of someone getting paid in something other than money.Now granted, CF says he was specifically talking about marketable experience in that instance. But CS is quite clear he is talking about another kind of valuable experience, the experience of seeing a pro at work.The discussion up that point was about the general principle of exchanging your labour for something that you value. Evidence for this is as follows: Message 39

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The business, for example, may be providing something of value to the unpaid worker, such as job training experience, chances to network with potential job references, etc.

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The person does work, but may be getting something of value in return for that work. Message 46

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We compensate employees in many different ways. Some employees are compensated with college credit and work experience. Some compensation is in healthcare benefits. Sometimes compensation is in the form of living quarters.

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The notion that compensation must be a $ amount is just thata notion.

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More about compensation in exchange for doing work. And the comment at the end there tells us explicitly that Jon is thinking of compensation in terms other than money. Message 61

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So long as the parties each get something of greater value to them out of the exchange than what they put in, they are both acting rationally.

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Message 65

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Because of the value of what they get in returnexperience, college credit, references, networking, information, etc.

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The reason to bring the photographer example up? As an example of someone doing work in exchange for something of value that is not money. My position is that it is perfectly rational to do work in exchange of something of value (goods or services) that is not money. That's my point in the photographer example. In the specific thread of the topic, my position is that marketable experience has a value of its own - and may be worth paying for that value in labour in some circumstances.Even more to the point of the thread: It is my position that the long term unemployed face a certain barrier to gaining employment. That barrier is 'lack of recent marketable experience'. They may be in a Catch-22 situation of 'can't get a job to get experience because I don't have experience'. It may be of assistance for the long term unemployed to give them marketable experience by way of certain workfare schemes. Workfare often fails on a number of grounds: requiring too much work (making paid job seeking difficult) or not taking into consideration the difficulties faced by those with multiple barriers to employment. Because it was in agreement with Jon but disagreement with crashfrog. I was talking to crash about marketable experience. See: Message 67
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Message 206But crashfrog abandoned that discussion in favour of discussinga) the photographer example
b) the dishonesty of myself and CS.I wasn't discussing the example at all initially. Crash brought it up in a reply to me:

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To riff off of CS's example, below, nobody's opinion of your photography skills is going to be improved by your "experience" of getting coffee for photographers.

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But nobody claimed that one's photography skills could be improved by getting coffee. When I tried to explain what the purpose of the example was, the resultant argument ensued which devolved into accusations of lies, equivocation, general rank dishonesty, misrepresentation and so on. We all started talking about marketable work experience. But crashfrog seemed to think we were proposing that the workers work for no compensation at all. So Jon mentioned some of the kinds of compensation the worker might receive.And CS came up with an example. It was in some ways a novel idea being introduced into the discussion. I'm even happy to provisionally operate under the notion that CS may have missed the mark he was aiming at. But whether CS successfully rebutted CF aside, CS was perfectly clear in his words.And somehow, biased by the idea of talking about marketable experience alone, he assumed when CS used the word 'experience' he was talking about 'marketable experience'. However, that kind of 'experience' is usually simply referred to as 'experience'. We say 'I gained experience', rather than 'I gained an experience' when we're talking about marketable experience type stuff.But CS was clearly referring to 'the experience', not 'gaining experience as a photograher'. Much of the debate has been about this, as crashfrog insists that CS was talking about 'marketable/practical type experience' when he was actually talking about a specific experience (of watching a pro). This was still within basic context, as this experience would be helpful in becoming a professional photographer and it was in exchange for labour.Edited by Modulous, : No reason given.

In fairness though - people could be overvaluing the benefits.

Value is not value. There are degrees to value. Value means different things to different people. An employer might be looking for a specific "value" in something while the job seeker places a certain "value" on his "experinces" that the emplyer may not.
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Hi mr employer, I have many valuable experiencesLike what?Well, I volunteered before in a mechanics garage.Great. Do you have any work experince?No, but my volunteering is valube to me, that's why I brought it up.Well, ok, but it's not valuable to me. The next guy applying for the position has actual work experience. Not even is this field, but it's work experince.But if I can't find a job without experince how can I ever get hired then?Good question. You might want to go get a job anywhere even if it's not in your field so you can atleast gain some work experince. Show that you can show up, do the job they ask you, excell at it, etc.
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There are two differnet types of value being talked about there. One might get you hired, the other might not.You may want to buy a house some day. You're not going to get financed without any credit. You don't just get financed because you aspire to. You go get a credit card. A real credit card. Not monoploy money. And from there, you build on it. With real things, that have real value.Value certainly is not just value. And if an employer is looking for a certain type of value then you better go get it or it's only valuable to you, and not the employer. A lot of people think their experinces are valuable, but it doesn't matter. If you want to buy that house, you need the kind of value the bank is looking for, not what you think is valuabe.You, Jon and Catholic Scientist' idea of value is being used to loosely.Here's what Jon said: Then crashfrog said: Then crashfrog said: So Jon thinks value comes in many forms. But just saying that doesn't make it true. What kind of experience? What kind of value?College credits? Where can you get college credits for doing unpaid work? You have to go to college. Then you have something valuable; a degree.References? What kind of references? You can't just say these things to employers. And you also can't just say "I have the valuable experience of following a photograper around" and think that is somehow valuable to employers when someone else might have a more valuable experience. If value was value then everyone would have a job.Information, etc? Is Jon saying information is valuable? In what sense? This is what needs clarifying. All of these things that are being said that somehow makes you more marletable. To who? Or, Sarah could always ask to be paid for helping Jane so then she has some real work experience. If Jane doesn't want to pay her, maybe Sarah should move on to the next photographer and stop wasting her time with Jane.There are more than a few photographers out there that i'm sure would be willing to put someone on the books for in trade of some good assiting skills. Keep looking until you find that photographer or else go about it on your own and start taking photos and getting paid for it yourself. Why waste your time being an errand runner for no pay or marketable experience?Why is this such a strange concept to you guys? Yeah, it can be raised in an interview, for a few moments. It can be put under the "volunteer" section of the resume.Hopefully, there is a "work experience" section on the resume too so the interview doesnt come to an abrupt halt at the idea of actually getting hired based on being competent enough to assist a photographer by volunteering to do so.I'd rather start at the bottom anywhere so I can have some real work experince than hope one day an employer looks past my non-work experience section of my resume and decide to hire me based soley on my "volunteer" work. It seems a little risky to me.

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The fact is that having experience helps getting future jobs. Starting a new career track can be difficult if you are competing with people with even as little as 6 months experience.

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Yeah, it's risky. It's not ideal. So why waste your time working for free for someone then when it wont help you in competing against the ones with marketable experience? Any work experince is better than no work experience. If someone wants to volunteer to try to get hired in a particular field then they are at a disadvantage. Do you agree?Then why do it? Because you're hoping that somehow the employer will put as much "value" in that experince that you put in it. Risky stuff and a possible big waste of time.

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observe setting up shots, trade tips for quick colour balancing, will ask questions about exposure settings and learning the justifications for each. They'll learn how to approach clients and drum up business, how to sell their work, what work sells quick, what work sells high.

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Start out by speaking to other professionals in the field. They are normally willing to give advice to individuals interested in their field. Besides if you speak to the right people they will tell you the pitfalls and upsides right from the start. Ask if you can follow them around for a day of work.

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Of course. If you are in the process of starting your own business this is valuable stuff. Tho if you are starting your own business you will need some finances. If you have those finances readily available then this will be no problem. If you don't, you will need to get a job, or ask the photographer to pay you for your services. Yes, crashfrog was talking about marketable experience to Jon and that is why it's a little perplexing what Catholic Scientist brought up about the photographer analogy that is not marketable experience. That's why it should be clarified as to why he brought it up to crashfrog as a counter point when it doesn't apply to what crashfrog was saying. The analogy had no place in the discussion and it took over most of the thread. Yes Modulous but why was it brought up? Because Jon said unpaid work experinces can be of "value". Great. Now what? Just like you said, you are competing possibly with someone who has six months work experience. Are you going to suggest to the one who doesn't to go about and apply Catholic Scientists analogy for themselves? Do you think the is good advice? Or should they seek a photographer that will pay them for the work they will be doing? Because like I said, if they are starting their own business, either they already have enough money, or they will need some.This is what I don't understand. You guys are being completley unrealistic and not thinking this whole thing thru, it seems. Some things are just not going to be resolved Modulous. People will be unemployed. But if we are going about the best way to try to gain employment I think it best to try to gain some sort of work experience whether it is for yourself or someone else that you can put somewhere on your resume other than the volunteer section or bringing it up in an interview how you gained a valuable experience, while doing work in exchange for something of value that is not money or marketable that might not be at all "valuable" to that employer.

Well yes, there are degrees, but I don't think there are kinds. Incidentally 'Value is not value' is making the assertion that 'P is not P', which is always false.Chuck, quick question, are you sure you read my post? I mean in the bit you quoted I said

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Things might be valued for different reasons...This means that there is no objective intrinsic 'value' to something.

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Did you not consider that this might also mean that what is valuable differs from person to person as the circumstances allow? Absolutely. Well in the photography example I've been quite clear that it is not necessarily marketable experience (ie valuable to an employer), what I have been saying is that it is valuable to the person that has that experience.It will be helpful to learn the tricks of the trade you are about to try and ply. It will be helpful to know which are the high risk/reward jobs, and which ones generate almost guaranteed money, but just not a lot of it. And so on. That is to say: There are many different things which are valuable to different people for different reasons. Marketable experience. It's valuable to you in persuading others to hire you. Random example. Whether the work was paid or not doesn't really matter in this case. References who will say that you are a good and reliable worker and all that jazz. Right, you can't (unless perhaps the photographer was well esteemed), it's not marketable. It is a useful experience to have if you want to turn pro, though. Well no. Different things have different value to different people in different circumstances. I'm just saying there are no 'kinds of value' as far as I can tell. Something is either valuable to you (for whatever reason) or its not.What kinds of value are there, if I am wrong? Information is very valuable Chuck. It's why spies exist. It's why Google is so big. It's why people pay thousands upon thousands on college courses. It's why people are able to sell books.{In before some gag about a creationist who doesn't understand the value of information} How does getting paid make it more 'real' or 'marketable'? Of course, Jane is paying her, in tuition. Most photographers are not in a position to employ an assistant for money. And those that are, don't need an assistant and would rather save their money.But even then, which of the options you list is going to be better actually depends on specific circumstances. You could end up wasting your time looking a photographer thata) Can pay for an assistant
b) Wants to pay for an assistant
c) Wants to pay you to be an assistant.Which could have been better spent, taking pictures etc. Following a photographer around is not something you would generally raise in an interview. I was not referring to the photography example in the section you quoted me - as that example had not been brought up in the discussion yet.(I mentioned the 'competence to do a job' argument in Message 67, the photographer example didn't come up until the next post, Message 68) Indeed - but its also risky to try finding a paid job with no relevant experience. Some circumstances mean you should take the unpaid work, others that you should not. Because working for free gives you marketable experience. For instance, if you do a 6 month stint as a till cashier you have now become an experienced cashier (not very experienced, but after 6 months you probably know most of the ins and outs).This would be useful in competing against others with a similar level of experience. If you didn't have this 6 months experience, most employers will prefer those that do, so you'll struggle to find work. Precisely my point, but CF seems to disagree with that for some reason. Again, don't get confused between 'work without pay but gain work experience' and the 'work as an assistant for an experience that will be valuable'. Exactly! Now we just have to persuade crash As an example of someone doing work in exchange for something of value that is not money.
As an example of someone gaining an experience that would be useful in their career.It was an on-topic point.What other reasons are required, Chuck? Well, I think that there's nothing controversial about it. But its crash that seems to be arguing against this so you'd probably be wise to ask him that. Remember: CS' example was not about competing against others with 6 months experience. They are two separate threads of discussion. What's unrealistic about exchanging labour for training? I'm definitely not suggesting we resolve unemployment. If anything, that's been crash's position.My position is that we should help those who have become long term unemployed who face certain barriers to getting employed such as no recent work experience. Exactly! Precisely! That's what I've been saying!But what if nobody wants to pay you to do the work without work experience because you are competing against those that do? Catch-22 right?The Workfare scheme is designed to tackle this Catch-22 - not solve unemployment.Edited by Modulous, : No reason given.Edited by Modulous, : No reason given.

Please stop misrepresenting my position.

They might well be. In terms of the workfare program under discussion I think the benefits are being hyped beyond justification in order to mask deeper and more fundamental problems with the UK job market (the sort of problems which - to be fair - Crash has highlighted)But to suggest that there are not, and never can be, any benefits to unpaid work experience... Just isn't true. As you and others in this thread have adequately detailed.

I didn't say there were no benefits to unpaid work experience. In fact, it's exactly my position that there are benefits to unpaid work experience.What nobody has been able to contradict is my position that, if you're going to work and not be paid, then there benefits are always greater when you work for yourself. You get all of the benefits from working for someone else plus you keep the results of the work.

I know we're not supposed to talk about this, and this message doesn't need a reply, but come the fuck on, Mod: You have to be fucking kidding me with this. Ok, no accusation of dishonesty. But surely you have to admit that you're being so careless with your words that misinterpretation is inevitable.

We're clear to talk about this. See Message 580. Percy 'didn't notice the move to Free For All'. If you want moderation, speak up over there. If you're happy without, come at me!Edited by Modulous, : No reason given.

Are you sure? What if everyone who stood to benefit from a lot of people working without pay - employers, let's say - agreed to tell the same lie that a period of working without pay would make you more "employable"? What if all the people who fell for the scam decided, as people in that situation usually do, to address the cognitive dissonance by asserting that the unpaid internship scam must have really helped them?See, the thing is, you can't really judge whether you've been made "more employable" until you're out there looking for work. In the meantime, you've already worked all that time for free and you can't go back and tell them they didn't hold up their end of the bargain.I think the evidence is pretty clear that the "unpaid internship" culture is basically a way to keep labor costs down in low-skill professional positions. One piece of this evidence is that thing I posted before that showed that, on average, graduates who worked unpaid internships started at lower wages than those who had worked no internships at all.I think if you really listen to what people say about their unpaid internships, they're not usually saying that the internship was an incredibly valuable opportunity that they were lucky to land. What they're usually saying is that the unpaid internship was an obligation they had to fulfill in order to make sure they didn't fall behind their peers.

Maybe you are, but I'm not. Message 587.

From Message 55It is this seemingly all-encompassing comment that led this thread down the garden path. Doing the same work, getting the same experience, whilst getting paid for it rather than not paid for it is obviously better for the individual concerned. If this is all your "position" amounts to then it scarcely even qualifies as a "position" because it is so self-evident that only an imbecile would disagree with you.But this isn't what you appeared to mean. Initially at least.

When Percy made that comment he was still unaware (as far as I can tell) that the discussion had been put in Free For All.I posted my 'request for clarification' after Percy had made the post you are referring to. I suppose you could give your preference over at the message I linked to, as Percy requested.And there's always the option of going back to discussing the topic, if you'd rather not discuss my various failings any further. I mean, I was kind of enjoying it - but it was at the expense of Straggler's thread...There was Message 147 or perhaps the more recent Message 206 which were on topic but which you (for whatever reason) declined to respond to. One of those could serve as a medium by which we could resume an ontopic discussion.