When we started this blog, we saw an email from a college asking if anyone could devise “summer projects” for students that had lost internships due to the pandemic. We were eager to help—casual blogging about intellectual topics is a perfect project for college students. We were also excited to broaden the perspective of the blog by adding a new voice. It felt like a win-win for both sides.
We quickly discovered, however, that it’s illegal to hire an intern without pay. And this “summer project,” as we were thinking of it, still felt a lot like an internship.
The law was passed mostly, I think, to equal the playing field for college students. College students with money could take cool unpaid internships while students without money from their parents could only accept jobs that paid. The gap between students with money and without would only grow larger. It made sense.
Unfortunately, we decided it was too much work to pick a quality intern that ensured we got our money’s worth, especially for a blog that is primarily intended as a way for old high school friends to keep in touch.
The experience did make me reflect though on jobs and what they offer. Why did we think it would be a win-win for a college student to work with us on a project in the first place? Sure, we knew they needed to put something on their resume. But that wasn’t it.
Instead, we realized we were offering knowledge in exchange for work.
Learning how to operate a website is a skill. So is writing. We aren’t the best at either—far from it. But practicing both skills on a real playing field is valuable. And learning from people that have already been practicing those skills can save you hours of your own time down the road. We thought that it would be a worthwhile experience for a college student to work with us to develop those skills and use us as mentors as they start to think about the start of their own careers.
The law is probably right. But hopefully this example can help us all reflect on the value that a job can provide beyond pay. Job knowledge is worth money.
That seems like an obvious statement. But if you’re honest with yourself, have you ever tried to value the knowledge you get from your job in dollar terms? My guess is no.
I hadn’t. Once we had this conversation, it made me think about one of my own jobs: I also work a side job for my friend that runs an online course. I often get questions from friends about why I bother having this job on the side, especially when it doesn’t pay quite as much as my full-time job. At first, I wasn’t sure. I thought of it more as just a hobby, and, to some extent, it is.
But when I reflected on it, I realized the knowledge I get out of my side job is worth more to me than my hourly wage.
Almost everything that we use to run this site—from WordPress Plugins down to our task manager software—is a direct result of the knowledge I’ve gained from my other job. And that’s not even scratching the surface. I’ve learned about affiliate marketing, online advertising, and video creation—skills that my friend has spent years perfecting. When he passes that job knowledge on to me, I avoid the hundreds of hours he invested trying out bad strategies and skip right to whatever works. Saving those hours is worth money to me. In fact, I get paid to learn those skills without all the difficulties.
It’s so much easier to learn from someone else than to try to figure out things on your own. I’ve spent a few months now learning search engine optimization for the same job, a field in which my friend has no experience. Through my own research and experimentation, I finally have a better idea of what I’m doing. I recently presented my findings to someone else and realized I can basically pass along the same information I spent months acquiring in about 15 minutes.
That’s not to say learning from others can replace the lessons learned from doing something yourself. But we are surrounded by people trying to teach us things and we should take advantage of it. Every book, podcast, and blog post is backed by years someone else has spent acquiring that knowledge. And you can pick up so much by spending a few hours or even minutes listening to what they have to say.
Socrates said, “Employ your time in improving yourself by other men’s writings, so that you shall gain easily what others have labored hard for.”
So seek out those mentors at your job. Read books. Listen to podcasts. Even in cold dollars terms, the resulting knowledge you will gain is probably more valuable than you think.
