So many job postings like this on Angel List. And most of these are by NRIs. Living in Bay Area for 10-20 years but don't want to pay a salary.

That doesn’t “don’t want to pay salary”, it means “don’t want to publicly commit to a salary”

Unfortunately, most of the time, it exactly means what it says. Many even explicitly state in the job posting - "This is an unpaid position and requires X months of commitment"

I have also been approached by college students (in the US) saying they will pay to take up an internship. Without having the data to back this up, I have to say that the US students are starved of internship roles and it does seem to be a buyers (companies’) market. There is a very clear ethical line, if an intern will contribute in any way to any of the work in a company, then they have to be compensated. There is a clear definition for uncompensated work: “slavery”. 🤬 All excuses for not doing this are BS. There is a case for someone coming, observing, learning and walking away; and it’s OK not to have compensation for that; but this “internship” and a million others are not that.

You will be surprised how much founders from around the world do not want to pay. Many are in tight spots, yes, but many simply label it is "experience" or glorify it some way. I am sorry about this state of affairs and being a founder multiple times I still can not agree to certain things about the general culture. Just choose the one who is willing to pay.

Lot of companies are doing some scam on angel.co I had interviewed with one remote company they selected me but at the time of offer they said you have to work first 6 months unpaid then company will raise some funds from series A,B,Crounds etc then position will become paid. 😅 Also they did not mentioned it was unpaid at last moment they came up with this scheme. Wasted lot of time in such shitty startup companies 😅

There was a thread about this on Twitter about a year ago - https://twitter.com/prajyotm/status/1287224750633152512 Unpaid internships are not worth it. But like someone said, it has always been a recruiters market when it comes to undergrads and freshers.

From the same twitter thread. Uncle was a vice president at Paytm. Lol 😂 Also the second - We pay shit salary and don't compensate our employees well so they switch for better compensation. Why can't they be my loyal slaves?

😂 Oh the superiority complex, the 'high and mighty' attitude. The replies to the first guy are even more fun. On an off topic, the problem is it is this same stale, outdated attitude that is preventing such founders, managers etc from adopting WFH permanently.

There will be some difference in salary range due to geography for sure, but overall I feel there are plenty of companies wanting to hire at a high experience level, not so many are willing to hire juniors (or pay for that). This is a big issue. I was trying consulting hiring and I really struggled to place candidates to any startup. So at the low to mid experience level there are a lot of "bad" actors - companies who do not want to pay well, etc.

As you sow, so you reap. If one is not paying, they can't expect anything meaningful. I tried some success based roles as part time but interest wanes over time.