Here's how that happened:
We posted a job in an alumni group: "Looking for interns."
A dad saw it and thought, "You know what? My 15-year-old son could do this."
The kid's application was so well-written, we figured "What's the worst that could happen?"
ππ’π³π³π’π΅π°π³: ππ©π¦πΊ πΈπ¦π³π¦ π’π£π°πΆπ΅ π΅π° π§πͺπ―π₯ π°πΆπ΅.
Hiring a minor in India, is like adopting a corporate toddler:
- Can't work more than 6 hours/day (honestly, jealous)
- Needs parental permission
- Must have biriyani every Friday (I think he made that part up)
Interns are perfect for all the repetitive startup tasks that eats away productive time.
Customer migrations β Usually takes weeks of senior developer time
Setting up automation flows β Boring but essential
OTP verifications and account activations β Digital paperwork hell
Facebook account appeals β When Zuckerberg randomly decides your business doesn't exist
These tasks are crucial but don't need your senior talent.
We had 800+ customers who needed to migrate from our old system to the new one.
CTO estimate: "This'll take months."
The 15-year-old: "Hold my juice box."
He finished the entire project in a month. Then something magical happened.
When our MBA interns started, guess who trained them?
The teenager!
Picture this: The MBAs were taking notes. From a high schooler.
Your startup's biggest productivity hack might be sitting in someone's living room, doing homework between Twitch streams.
Stop filtering interns by university prestige. You're missing the generation that learned to OpenAI, before the started interview season.
They grew up with AI as a problem-solving tool, not a threat to their job security.
Last week, we rented an Airbnb in the mountains for a going-away party for all our interns.
Obviously, we couldn't invite the kid because there would be alcohol.
Big mistake.
This kid reminded us exactly why we hired him in the first place.
He created a series of memes about how unfair this was. Not angry emails. Not HR complaints. Memes!
Then he presented us with two perfectly reasonable solutions:
1. We could just pay for his ticket for his upcoming Switzerland trip (kid's got options. Arpit Joseph was it for studying or holidaying?) or
2. A separate celebration for him and his friends at the kind of restaurant where they charge $18 for avocado toast
We ended up going with option 2. It was too late by the time we realized he was using "price anchoring", tricks gleaned out of the MBAs
Definitely a better negotiator than our Head of Sales.
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The best employees come in unexpected packages. Sometimes they're not even old enough to buy lottery tickets.
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