I was scrolling through a job board last week. Standard research for what companies are actually looking for. (Also: morbid curiosity about how bad it’s gotten.)
Saw this:
“UX Design Internship – Summer 2025
Requirements:
- 2+ years experience in UX/UI design
- Portfolio demonstrating shipped products
- Proficiency in Figma, Sketch, Adobe XD
- Experience conducting user research and usability testing
- Understanding of design systems and component libraries
- Available 40 hours/week
- Compensation: Unpaid (college credit available)”
That’s not an internship. That’s a junior designer role you don’t want to pay for.
I don’t take these calls anymore. Not because I hire interns (I don’t). Because when companies call asking why they can’t find anyone for their “internship,” this is usually why.
What’s Actually Happening Here
You want someone who can do UX design work. But you don’t want to pay junior designer rates ($50-70K). So you call it an internship ($0-20/hr, or free with “great exposure”).
The requirements give it away. Let’s decode:
“2+ years experience”
Translation: We need someone who can work independently because we have no one to mentor them.
“Portfolio demonstrating shipped products”
Translation: We need production-ready work immediately, not someone learning the craft.
“Proficiency in Figma, Sketch, Adobe XD”
Translation: We expect professional tool fluency from day one.
“Experience conducting user research”
Translation: We’re understaffed and need this person to run entire research initiatives alone.
If you need all that, you need a junior designer. Not an intern. And junior designers cost money.
The Three Versions of This
“Unpaid Internship” at a Profitable Company
The post says: “Unpaid UX design internship. Great opportunity to work on real products at a growing startup.”
The reality: You’re Series B. You raised $12M last year. Your engineers make $140K. Your PM makes $120K. Your office has a fancy espresso machine and catered lunch on Thursdays.
But design? That’s “nice to have” so we’ll get a student to do it for free.
If you can’t budget $18/hr for an intern ($14,400 for a summer) while paying everyone else six figures, you don’t value design. You want free mockups.
“Internship” with Full Product Ownership
The post says: “UX design internship. You’ll own the entire [product area] redesign from research through implementation.”
Translation: We’re giving an intern the scope of a mid-level designer role. They’ll carry this alone. If it fails, well, they were just an intern.
Real internships involve structured learning, shadowing senior designers, working on parts of projects with heavy oversight. Not solo ownership of critical product areas.
“Experience Required” Internship
The post says: “Seeking UX design intern with 1-2 years professional experience.”
The math: If someone has 1-2 years professional experience, they’re not an intern. They’re a junior designer having a bad year in the job market. And you’re exploiting that.
(Also: where did you expect them to get that 1-2 years? From internships that required… 1-2 years experience? The math doesn’t work.)
What This Actually Costs
Not me – I learned this watching what happened to someone I knew.
Design student. Smart. Good portfolio from school projects. Applied to 47 “UX design internships” over four months. Got three responses. One offer.
Requirements in the posting:
- “Some UX experience preferred”
- “Self-starter who thrives with minimal direction”
- “Fast-paced startup environment”
Red flags in hindsight. But when you’ve sent 47 applications, you take what you get.
Unpaid, but “great for portfolio and potential full-time conversion.”
Week one: Thrown onto a dashboard redesign. Solo. No design lead. PM said “make it look modern, something like Stripe” and expected mockups by Friday.
No design brief. No user research. No understanding of what “modern” meant to anyone.
Week four: Asked for feedback on their research approach. PM said “we don’t really have budget for research right now, just use your best judgment.”
Week eight: Redesign shipped. PM presented it at the all-hands as “the new direction we’re taking.” Student watched from the back. Their name wasn’t mentioned. (The screenshots were though.)
Week twelve: “Thanks for your contribution this summer. We’ve decided not to create a junior design role right now, but you have great work for your portfolio.”
They left with:
- 480 hours of work (12 weeks à— 40 hours)
- $0 compensation
- An NDA preventing them from discussing specifics
- No mentor, no feedback, no professional development
- A dashboard in production they can’t even put in their portfolio properly
The company? Posted another “UX design internship” opening six weeks later. Same requirements. Still unpaid. Still “great opportunity for the right candidate.”
(The right candidate apparently being someone who doesn’t need to eat.)
Why This Keeps Happening
Design is still seen as nice-to-have
Engineering is infrastructure. Sales is revenue. Marketing is growth. Design is… making things pretty? So it gets the intern budget. Or no budget at all.
When you’re not sure design matters enough to pay for it, you test it with an intern first. If it works, maybe you hire someone real. If it doesn’t, well, it was just an intern project anyway.
Junior designer salaries are real money
$55-65K minimum for someone with 1-2 years experience. Plus benefits (add another $12-15K). Plus payroll taxes. Plus the manager time to actually oversee them.
An “intern” sounds temporary. Cheap. Flexible. Like hiring a freelancer to avoid committing to full-time design.
$18/hr for 12 weeks? That’s $8,640. Much easier to get approved than a $65K headcount.
Someone will always take it
30 applicants for every underpaid, under-mentored “internship.” Because students need portfolio work. Recent grads are desperate for experience. The market is brutal and they know it.
Someone will always say yes. Someone always needs it badly enough to accept $0/hr or $12/hr for work that should pay $25/hr minimum.
So why pay more? Why provide actual mentorship? The market isn’t forcing you to.
(Until all your “interns” quit after 11 weeks and you’re back to posting the same role. The cycle continues. Your Glassdoor reviews start to reflect this. But that’s a problem for later.)
What Changed for Me
I stopped taking calls from companies asking if I could “mentor their UX design intern for a few hours a week.”
The conversation always goes the same way:
Them: “We hired an intern for the summer. Smart kid. But we don’t have a senior designer on staff. Could you do some mentorship sessions? Maybe 2-3 hours a week? We can pay your hourly.”
Me: “What are you paying them?”
Them: “Well, it’s unpaid right now, but if they’re good we might bring them on part-time after the internship.”
Me: “So you want me to train someone for free so they can work for you for free, while you pay me $150/hr for the training?”
[Awkward pause]
I don’t do this anymore. Not because I don’t believe in mentoring. Because I’m not helping you avoid paying someone while they learn to do work you’ll profit from.
Same way I learned to spot companies with 17 stakeholders who can’t make decisions. Same way I figured out that spiritual LinkedIn pitches mean someone can’t explain their job.
These are all versions of the same thing: wanting professional work without professional investment.
Now when someone asks about “mentoring their intern,” I ask different questions:
What are you paying them?
If it’s unpaid: “Pay them at least minimum wage first. Then we can talk about mentorship.”
If it’s $12-14/hr: “That’s what they’d make at Starbucks. With better benefits and free coffee. You want me to help train someone you’re undervaluing?”
If it’s $18-25/hr: “Okay. That’s approaching reasonable. Now we can discuss how I might help.”
They have rent to pay. Student loans. Groceries. If you’re not covering basic living expenses while they learn your business, you’re not serious about developing talent.
Do you plan to hire them?
Not “maybe if they’re good.” Do you have an actual plan and budget to convert this internship to a junior role?
If no: You’re using someone for 3-6 months of cheap labor, then discarding them. I’m not helping with that.
If yes: Show me the budget approval. The timeline. The role description for after the internship.
Why are you hiring an intern if you can’t mentor them yourself?
Usually the answer is some version of: “We know we need design but don’t have senior design capacity yet.”
Then you need a junior designer who can work independently. Not an intern. And definitely not an intern plus me doing the mentorship you should be providing.
You can’t outsource the mentorship while keeping the cheap labor. That’s not how this works.
Look
I’m not here to tell you how to run your hiring. That’s your budget and your decision.
But if you’re posting UX design internships with 2 years experience required, unpaid compensation at a profitable company, or full product ownership with zero mentorship, just know what you’re doing.
You’re not offering an opportunity. You’re offering exploitation with a friendly name.
And students see it. Junior designers see it. They take the roles anyway because the market is tough and they need experience. But they’re not learning anything except that design work is valued so little you won’t pay for it.
Six months later, they quit. Or worse, they stay and internalize that this is how design works – undervalued, under resourced, blamed when things fail.
Then you wonder why you can’t retain design talent. Why designers seem jaded. Why good people keep leaving.
It started with the “internship” that asked for professional experience and offered nothing in return.
Call it what it is. If you need someone with experience who can own projects, you need a junior designer. Pay them accordingly. Give them actual mentorship and process.
If you genuinely want to offer an internship – someone learning the craft, working on parts of projects with heavy oversight, getting structured feedback – then structure it like that. And pay them at least minimum wage.
But don’t post for experienced designers and call it an internship because you’re too cheap to pay junior rates.
The students know. The junior designers know. The design community talks about which companies do this. And those of us who’ve been around long enough to watch this pattern repeat? We’re not helping you exploit them.
(They’ll figure it out after their fourth “intern” quits mid-project and the PM is asking why design work keeps stalling. Usually around week 11 of internship #4.)