While in principle I understand the economics for that, Fog Creek doesn't use interns as gophers. They actually mentor them and, even rarer, expect them to ship meaningful software before their term is up. In addition to compensating them like they're doing meaningful work, Fog Creek does a large portion of new hires from previous interns. (Incidentally: it's all-around a great place to work.)

"expect them to ship meaningful software before their term is up"

is that rare? We expect any [programming] intern will be learning some part of the code base and making their first tiny improvements in the first week. Most of the interns have been quite productive by the end of their term... and I'm happy to say that our first intern-to-full-time-employee will be starting in a month or so.

There exist many, many internships where you're either Chief Coffee Delivery Technician or you spend all of your productive time on scutwork that no one could convince a FTE to do. Examples elided to protect the guilty.

I was an intern 20 years ago, then or now if someone told me to get coffee I'd probably throw it in their face. I've (thankfully) never seen that. Have seen em do data entry, but at our company they write production code. I've seen guys condescend to them. They should shut up. These kids are smart and would gladly do their job for half the salary starting tomorrow.

My point is, anyone making over 80k/$40 an hour making their own flight arrangements, filling out their own expense reports, is a waste of valuable time. If I have a guy billing out $200/hr - he's in the office 8 or 9 hours a day max - (most people start and end work the same time everyday) - I don't want him wasting time on that crap. Needs an AA to do it. (Note our expense system sucks and our requirements are exact - you can easily spend an hour on an expense report)..

I believe this was relatively rare before Joel started blogging about it. There's a lot of things that are now ubiquitous partially because of Joel on Software and what he did at Fog Creek.

I like Joel too, but that does not ring true to me. All our interns are helping with Real Work because we're a startup and there's lots of real work to do. Also, that's how you attract talented interns: but giving them an opportunity to work on stuff they find interesting.

I realize you're half joking but as a former six time intern, the quickest way to make me not want to join your company fulltime would be to use me as your assistant. Of course, that might be alright with you if you're not looking to hire your intern afterwards.