The Internship
A short satirical play about startups, recruitment, artificial intelligence, and the continuing scientific investigation into what exactly an "intern" is.
Dramatis Personae
- Hiring Manager: Has a startup, a vision, and a budget that has seen better days.
- Recruiter: Junior recruiter. Smart, diligent, technically knowledgeable enough to understand job descriptions, and still innocent enough to believe words have meanings.
Part I: The Play
Act I: We Need an Intern
Monday morning.
The Recruiter enters a meeting room carrying a laptop, a notebook, and the optimism of a young professional who has not yet attended enough meetings.
The Hiring Manager is already seated.
HIRING MANAGER: Morning. We need to hire someone urgently.
RECRUITER: Sure. What role?
HIRING MANAGER: AI Backend Engineer.
RECRUITER: Nice. Junior, mid-level, or senior?
HIRING MANAGER: Intern.
RECRUITER: Ah. Okay. Student?
HIRING MANAGER: Not necessarily.
RECRUITER: Recent graduate?
HIRING MANAGER: Not necessarily.
RECRUITER: Career switcher?
HIRING MANAGER: Not necessarily.
RECRUITER: Someone with basic Python who wants professional experience?
HIRING MANAGER: Oh, no. They need to be very strong in Python.
RECRUITER: Okay.
He begins typing.
HIRING MANAGER: FastAPI too.
RECRUITER: Sure. Maybe someone who's built a few projects?
HIRING MANAGER: Production experience, preferably.
The Recruiter stops typing.
RECRUITER: Production?
HIRING MANAGER: Yes. REST APIs, asynchronous programming, databases, production-quality backend architecture. The usual.
RECRUITER: The usual for whom?
HIRING MANAGER: Backend engineers.
RECRUITER: I thought we were hiring an intern.
HIRING MANAGER: We are.
The Recruiter looks at his notes.
Then at the Hiring Manager.
Then back at his notes.
RECRUITER: Right.
He continues typing.
The meeting is four minutes old.
Something has already gone wrong.
Act II: The Intern Begins to Evolve
HIRING MANAGER: They'll also need LLM experience.
RECRUITER: Okay. Basic integrations?
HIRING MANAGER: Structured outputs, function calling, tool calling, agent workflows, context management, state management, reasoning loops, execution loops.
RECRUITER: I see.
HIRING MANAGER: And failure recovery.
RECRUITER: Naturally. We cannot have the intern's autonomous AI agents failing irresponsibly.
HIRING MANAGER: Exactly. You understand.
RECRUITER: Unfortunately, I do.
HIRING MANAGER: Add RAG.
RECRUITER: Retrieval-augmented generation?
HIRING MANAGER: PostgreSQL or Supabase. Embeddings. Vector search. Semantic search. Knowledge modelling. Provenance. Evidence handling. Structured data.
The Recruiter's fingers gradually stop moving.
RECRUITER: Sir?
HIRING MANAGER: Yes?
RECRUITER: Are we still describing the intern?
HIRING MANAGER: Of course.
RECRUITER: Because the intern is becoming very powerful.
HIRING MANAGER: We want ambitious people.
RECRUITER: Apparently.
HIRING MANAGER: Someone who can take ownership.
RECRUITER: Of what?
HIRING MANAGER: The work.
RECRUITER: Which work?
HIRING MANAGER: The AI backend.
RECRUITER: The whole backend?
HIRING MANAGER: Ownership mindset.
The Recruiter writes down:
Ownership mindset.
He stares at the phrase for a moment.
RECRUITER: Who will supervise them?
HIRING MANAGER: They should work quite independently.
RECRUITER: Of course they should.
HIRING MANAGER: We need someone who can turn ambiguous problems into working systems.
RECRUITER: So we provide the ambiguity.
HIRING MANAGER: Yes.
RECRUITER: And they provide the working system.
HIRING MANAGER: Exactly.
RECRUITER: That's a fantastic division of labour.
HIRING MANAGER: Thank you.
The Recruiter deletes "Intern" from the title and types:
MID-LEVEL AI BACKEND ENGINEER
HIRING MANAGER: Why did you change the title?
RECRUITER: Muscle memory.
He changes it back.
Act III: Three Years to Become a Beginner
RECRUITER: Let's discuss experience. Since this is an internship, I'm assuming we're flexible?
HIRING MANAGER: Absolutely.
The Recruiter relaxes.
HIRING MANAGER: Three-plus years.
The Recruiter becomes unrelaxed.
RECRUITER: Sorry?
HIRING MANAGER: Three-plus years' experience.
RECRUITER: In Python?
HIRING MANAGER: Yes.
RECRUITER: Okay.
HIRING MANAGER: Three-plus years FastAPI.
RECRUITER: Right.
HIRING MANAGER: Three-plus years Agentic AI development.
Silence.
RECRUITER: Sir.
HIRING MANAGER: Yes?
RECRUITER: Three years of experience.
HIRING MANAGER: Minimum.
RECRUITER: To become an intern.
HIRING MANAGER: Correct.
RECRUITER: So before candidates can come here to gain experience, they must first go somewhere else and gain experience.
HIRING MANAGER: Exactly.
RECRUITER: For three years.
HIRING MANAGER: Correct.
RECRUITER: Then bring the experience here.
HIRING MANAGER: Now you're getting it.
The Recruiter slowly puts down his pen.
RECRUITER: I have a question.
HIRING MANAGER: Go ahead.
RECRUITER: What exactly are we planning to teach this intern?
HIRING MANAGER: They'll learn a lot.
RECRUITER: Such as?
HIRING MANAGER: How startups work.
RECRUITER: They have three years of experience.
HIRING MANAGER: Every company is different.
RECRUITER: Python is still Python.
HIRING MANAGER: Culture.
RECRUITER: Ah.
HIRING MANAGER: They'll gain exposure.
RECRUITER: To what?
HIRING MANAGER: Us.
The Recruiter sits quietly.
There are moments in a man's career when education arrives unexpectedly.
This is one of them.
Act IV: The Tiger
RECRUITER: Sir, I think we're describing an experienced engineer.
HIRING MANAGER: We're describing an intern.
RECRUITER: We're asking for production architecture.
HIRING MANAGER: Yes.
RECRUITER: Advanced AI engineering.
HIRING MANAGER: Yes.
RECRUITER: Independent execution.
HIRING MANAGER: Yes.
RECRUITER: Reliability engineering.
HIRING MANAGER: Yes.
RECRUITER: Three years of experience.
HIRING MANAGER: Minimum.
RECRUITER: That's an experienced engineer.
HIRING MANAGER: It's an internship.
RECRUITER: Sir, we can call a tiger a house cat, but eventually somebody is going to notice the tiger.
HIRING MANAGER: What tiger?
RECRUITER: Never mind.
He looks again at the requirements.
RECRUITER: Why don't we just hire an experienced engineer?
The Hiring Manager says nothing.
For the first time that morning, the confidence disappears.
HIRING MANAGER: Because we can't afford one.
Silence.
The Recruiter doesn't laugh.
Neither does the Hiring Manager.
There it is.
Not villainy. Not stupidity. Not even ignorance.
Arithmetic.
RECRUITER: So we need an experienced engineer.
HIRING MANAGER: Yes.
RECRUITER: But we can't afford an experienced engineer.
HIRING MANAGER: Correct.
RECRUITER: So we're calling the experienced engineer an intern.
HIRING MANAGER: I wouldn't phrase it like that.
RECRUITER: How would you phrase it?
HIRING MANAGER: We're creating an opportunity for ambitious talent.
The Recruiter picks up his pen.
RECRUITER: Of course.
Corporate language has entered the room.
Everyone is safe again.
Act V: The Compensation Package
RECRUITER: Okay. What can we afford?
HIRING MANAGER: It's unpaid.
The Recruiter looks up.
RECRUITER: Sorry?
HIRING MANAGER: Three-month unpaid internship.
RECRUITER: Ah.
HIRING MANAGER: But if they perform well, we'll offer them a paid position afterward.
RECRUITER: That's good.
A small amount of hope enters the room.
RECRUITER: What's the salary for the paid position?
HIRING MANAGER: Nigerian salary scale.
Hope immediately leaves the room.
RECRUITER: Which Nigerian salary scale?
HIRING MANAGER: Nigerian salary scale.
RECRUITER: Yes, sir. I heard the individual words. I'm struggling with what they mean together.
HIRING MANAGER: Standard Nigerian salary.
RECRUITER: Federal civil service?
HIRING MANAGER: No.
RECRUITER: Banking?
HIRING MANAGER: No.
RECRUITER: Oil and gas?
HIRING MANAGER: Obviously not.
RECRUITER: Multinational?
HIRING MANAGER: No.
RECRUITER: Lagos startup?
HIRING MANAGER: Something like that.
RECRUITER: NYSC?
HIRING MANAGER: Be serious.
RECRUITER: My uncle's printing shop in Surulere?
HIRING MANAGER: Competitive salary.
RECRUITER: Competitive with whom?
HIRING MANAGER: The market.
RECRUITER: Which market?
HIRING MANAGER: Nigeria.
The Recruiter closes his laptop.
Not violently.
Carefully.
The way one closes a strange box after realizing the box probably shouldn't have been opened.
Act VI: The Market Has Spoken
The advert goes live.
It asks for Python, FastAPI, REST APIs, asynchronous programming, production architecture, LLM integrations, tool calling, agent workflows, RAG, PostgreSQL, embeddings, vector search, semantic search, testing, authentication, observability, retries, fallbacks, independent problem solving, and three-plus years of experience.
At the top are two words:
Remote.
Internship.
At the bottom is another important word:
Unpaid.
Seventeen hours later, the Recruiter walks into the Hiring Manager's office.
RECRUITER: Twenty-six applications.
HIRING MANAGER: Already?
RECRUITER: Already.
HIRING MANAGER: Excellent.
RECRUITER: Is it?
HIRING MANAGER: Twenty-six people applied. Clearly the market agrees with us.
RECRUITER: Or twenty-six people need jobs.
HIRING MANAGER: Same thing.
RECRUITER: I don't think those are the same thing.
HIRING MANAGER: If the offer were unreasonable, nobody would apply.
RECRUITER: Sir, people apply for jobs where the salary says "competitive."
HIRING MANAGER: Exactly.
RECRUITER: Nobody knows what they're competing for.
HIRING MANAGER: Yet they apply.
The Recruiter considers this.
RECRUITER: Hunger has excellent conversion rates.
HIRING MANAGER: What?
RECRUITER: Nothing.
HIRING MANAGER: Schedule interviews.
RECRUITER: Yes, sir.
He turns to leave.
HIRING MANAGER: And find someone passionate.
The Recruiter stops.
RECRUITER: How passionate?
HIRING MANAGER: Very.
RECRUITER: Three months without salary passionate?
HIRING MANAGER: Ideally.
RECRUITER: I'll add it to the technical requirements.
Act VII: The Successful Candidate
Eventually, someone is hired.
He is excellent.
Of course he is excellent.
He had to defeat twenty-five other applicants for the privilege of proving that three years of experience had adequately prepared him for an internship.
He builds APIs. He fixes bugs. He integrates models. He improves reliability. He solves ambiguous problems. He turns several of those ambiguous problems into considerably less ambiguous working systems.
Three months later, the Recruiter returns to the Hiring Manager.
RECRUITER: Good news. The intern performed brilliantly.
HIRING MANAGER: Excellent.
RECRUITER: Engineering loves him.
HIRING MANAGER: Excellent.
RECRUITER: He wants to know whether we're converting him to the paid role.
HIRING MANAGER: Absolutely.
RECRUITER: Great. He asked what the salary will be.
HIRING MANAGER: Nigerian salary scale.
The Recruiter closes his eyes.
Just briefly.
RECRUITER: Sir.
HIRING MANAGER: Hmm?
RECRUITER: One day I will understand what that means.
HIRING MANAGER: That's the spirit.
RECRUITER: He also asked whether the salary is negotiable.
HIRING MANAGER: Tell him we're a startup.
RECRUITER: Is that a number?
HIRING MANAGER: He'll understand.
And perhaps he will.
Part II: When Did "Intern" Become a Salary Band?
The funny thing is that internships are not the problem.
Internships make perfect sense. A person who lacks professional experience joins an organization to learn under people who have it. The intern contributes useful work, while the organization contributes mentorship, supervision, training, exposure, and room to make mistakes without immediately bringing down production at 2:17 a.m.
Even an unpaid internship can make sense in some circumstances, depending on the law, duration, structure, expectations, and value being exchanged. If I barely know FastAPI and your senior engineers spend three months teaching me how real backend systems are built, I may walk away considerably richer in knowledge even if my bank account remains tragically unchanged.
But something peculiar happens when we remove the training, remove most of the supervision, demand independent execution, add production responsibility, require advanced specialist knowledge, request several years of professional experience, and still leave "Internship" sitting at the top of the advert.
At that point, "intern" is no longer describing competence.
It is describing compensation.
And that's worth thinking about because the problem isn't always greed. Sometimes the Hiring Manager really cannot afford the engineer the business needs. Startups are not magical buildings where money appears whenever somebody says "innovation" three times. Cash constraints are real. Founders make difficult compromises. Early employees sometimes knowingly exchange salary for equity, flexibility, experience, future upside, or belief in the mission.
There is nothing shameful about saying:
We need an experienced engineer, but this is all we can afford.
That is an honest problem.
From there, adults can negotiate an honest solution.
Perhaps the work becomes part-time. Perhaps the scope shrinks. Perhaps compensation includes meaningful equity. Perhaps you hire someone less experienced and accept that you'll need to train them. Perhaps you find a contractor. Perhaps you delay the feature.
But your inability to afford a senior engineer does not magically transform senior engineering into an internship.
You may call the tiger a Junior House Cat.
You may put "entry-level" on its LinkedIn profile.
You may offer it exposure.
Eventually, however, somebody will notice the tiger.
Epilogue: Six Months Later
Monday morning.
The Recruiter walks into the office.
The Hiring Manager is smiling.
HIRING MANAGER: Congratulations.
RECRUITER: For what?
HIRING MANAGER: We're promoting you.
RECRUITER: Really?
HIRING MANAGER: Hiring Manager.
The Recruiter smiles.
He has worked hard for this.
He accepts.
Six months pass.
Another Monday morning.
A new Junior Recruiter enters the meeting room carrying a laptop, a notebook, and the optimism of a young professional who has not yet attended enough meetings.
The former Recruiter is already seated.
NEW RECRUITER: Morning, sir. What are we hiring?
FORMER RECRUITER: Junior backend developer.
NEW RECRUITER: Great. Experience?
FORMER RECRUITER: Seven years.
The Junior Recruiter stops typing.
NEW RECRUITER: Seven?
FORMER RECRUITER: Minimum.
NEW RECRUITER: Sir... wouldn't that make them a senior engineer?
The former Recruiter pauses.
For just a second, something old and almost forgotten moves behind his eyes.
A meeting room.
A laptop.
A tiger.
"Nigerian salary scale."
Somewhere, very faintly, a clock begins to tick.
NEW RECRUITER: Sir?
The former Recruiter looks at the budget.
Then at the job description.
Then at the young man sitting where he once sat.
FORMER RECRUITER: Make it an internship.
Curtain.