Comment Re:Who's fault? Big Tech or the Graduates? (Score 1) 92
Nor is living when you are working for free.
AFAICT, approximately all software development internships are paid, most of them reasonably well. I have two insights into this, the first is as working SWE. My employers and all of the others around them pay interns pretty well. The second is as a member of the industry advisors board for my alma mater, a non-prestigious four-year state university. Talking to other industry reps and to professors and university job placement support staff, I've yet to encounter anyone who knows of any unpaid internships. The internships in the area where I live (Utah) are much less well-compensated than internships in the area where I work (Silicon Valley), but even the Utah internships are $15-30 per hour. Not great money, but not terrible for someone who doesn't have a degree or any work experience.
The closest thing to an unpaid internship I've seen in software is that my university has a grant program that will pay students to do internships at local companies, so the intern is free to the company they're doing work for, but the student is still getting paid $15/hour. This program exists mostly because it's been found that giving companies free interns helps them realize that hiring interns is a good idea, and nearly all of them go on to set up their own internship programs (funded by them, not the grant).
Other industries have unpaid internships, and it's certainly possible that as the software industry scales back its hiring of entry-level engineers, unpaid internships may become a thing, but AFAICT, this hasn't happened.