Should Unemployed Youth Work For Free?

[TBFMentor]

“These would be wasted years for some.” -Peter Diamond, economics professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Is there value in working for free to gain experience and knowledge? Working for free is something that Robert Kiyosaki advocated in his bestseller "Rich Dad, Poor Dad." News Headlines

[tak]

I have worked for free. In the long run, I have found that you work for free with close people.

Example:
Neighbor had a few issues with Internet conncetion here and there. I helped the neighbor fix the Internet from time to time. It was a simple task. I didn't get paid much if you consider $20 being paid for the work I did. Anyway, I did a few more tasks and ended up getting a free netbook that had a minor issue. I fixed it, and made over $700.00.

So, if you do it right, working free can give you a lot in return.

[bond]

I worked for free my first summer in college. Not a lot of people found internships that paid well and did actual work. At the time, working for free for a startup was not a trend as it is now. Even though I worked for "free", I was able to get the time I spent to be applied to a full 4-credit class. So really, I got paid for it in the end. The amount came out to something like $3-4k because that's what a 4-credit class was worth.

The next summer, I got paid. Then also the next summer. And I did some cool work- building a simulation program for a professor who did a research thesis on sensors. I believe my name was mentioned on a research paper that he wrote. He had the theory down and I helped to make that theory a reality by making a program to show it.