So first of all I already have 5 years of working experience but during the pandemic I quit my job for grad school abroad looking for a career change, and now at the end of the last semester I need to do an unpaid internship and ended in a biotech startup. While being there I found out the project already failed and last year they were bought by another company. They are like 8 people only, all with “managerial” and “director” roles giving advice on what to do, but none of them perform actual work.
The CEO is a jerk an he hasn’t even signed my university agreement in two months. It’s a company in a field I want to know more about and ultimately I thought “ok… since it is an unpaid internship and I want to learn about this field I’m fine, it will be signed off eventually” and was actually thankful for them to let me in even if the agreement hasn’t been signed
A month ago they told me they wanted me to do alone, practically from scratch the dossier to re-apply for a R&D license (they have been rejected multiple times )…. So I was “great” and started working but since they are not paying me a dime, it is a ton of work and only go like 4 hours a day, I’m taking my time.
All great and since I was planning to stay with them for 6 months at least, I had no problem. But yesterday they told me it was urgent for me to finish the dossier because they needed to apply for the license… in three weeks!
So I was like “what? Not even a consulting company with multiple full time employees assigned to the project would get a dossier for a healthcare authority in that amount of time” but they insisted it was urgent.
So later I went to my home and wrote an email saying (much more politely, of course) “you know what’s urgent? My university agreement so I decided to start an internship with another company. Best of luck with the dossier!”
My supervisor called and asked me to reconsider staying and he would make sure the agreement would be signed immediately. But I was like “nah, I prefer to work freelance for you guys and finish that dossier” He of course got confused and wished me good luck with my projects.
Fuck unpaid internships