The word internship is meant to suggest learning: a first honest step into working life and growth. But for many young employees, it now poses a harder question. Is this a career, or is it even respectable paid work? When you are putting in full eight-hour days, staying on into the evening and struggling to cover the daily commute on a meagre stipend, the disconnect becomes difficult to ignore.
The move from university to work is challenging enough on its own, and interns arrive with high expectations, polished and eager to learn. Too many of them come away exhausted, disheartened and underpaid, telling themselves in private that this is what the market pays, when the rate is plainly unfair.
When learning comes at a price: A fair internship should compensate a person for their time, effort and willingness, even if the pay is modest. In many offices, though, a stipend of Tk 5,000 to Tk 15,000 is treated as a windfall, whatever the extra workload or overtime involved, and that money disappears quickly when the daily commute is a long one.
Mahmud, 26, says he was frustrated by his time at a mid-sized private commercial bank, where there was no proper compensation system for interns. "My travel expenses and lunch alone come to nearly Tk 5,000, which is my entire monthly package," he says. "They don't even provide any conveyance or lunch benefits." He is describing a problem that wears down a great many young employees, because when the stipend is less than the cost of turning up to the office each day, the internship becomes a matter of survival.
Overtime without recognition: Low pay is only half of the trouble, because in many workplaces interns are also expected to stay late, take on tasks well outside their remit and "fit in" with office hours without asking too many questions. What replaces formal support, in these cases, is anxiety about overtime that will never be paid and informal pressure that is never acknowledged.
That imbalance is clear in Fatema's internship in the legal department of one of the country's leading non-bank financial institutions (NBFIs), which she describes as a difficult stint to get through. "Some of my colleagues were rude to me personally, and I regularly worked well beyond office hours without extra pay," she says. "My monthly remuneration was TK 10,000, and that barely covered my meals (lunch and evening snacks) and my travel costs on ride-sharing apps, with most of it going on travel." Her account describes more than a money problem, taking in dignity, the culture of the office and the cost of being expected to keep quiet.
Internships vary from one organisation to the next, and some industries draw clearer lines than others. Articleship pay for freshers at chartered accountancy firms in Bangladesh, differs from firm to firm but generally falls between Tk 8,000 and Tk 15,000 a month. That range is hardly luxurious, but it can feel more manageable than the alternatives, particularly where there is real hands-on exposure, proper learning and a formal career pathway at the end of it.
The work itself is demanding, though Rakib( 25) is grateful for the additional pay he earns auditing different companies; most of the time accommodation, travel and food are covered by the client company, and where they are not, the chartered accountancy firm picks up the bill. He is sent on auditing trips almost every week. "The articleship is physically and mentally demanding, but I'm content with the extra wages for the extra auditing," he says. His experience suggests a simple rule: when hard work comes with adequate if unspectacular pay and real learning, people are much more willing to do it.
The hidden cost of "experience": Stipends that barely cover an intern's basic needs are an understandable starting point for a small organisation, but elsewhere they have become an excuse for poor corporate practice. Employers hand interns the printing, the photocopying and the arranging of documents rather than real problems and real responsibility, as though an intern's time were worth less than anyone else's in the office.
Underpayment becomes the norm this way, because once a generation grows accustomed to a low bar, the market lowers it again for the next. And when a company is no longer willing to pay fairly, the message it leaves with young professionals is one they do not forget.
Why does underpayment feel so normal to companies?: The problem runs deeper than any individual employer, because it sits within a wider employment culture that teaches young people to feel grateful for any position at all, paid or unpaid, poorly compensated, emotionally draining or restrictive. Within that culture, interns hesitate to complain for fear of being seen as a nuisance, as unprofessional, or as easily replaced.
Silence carries a price of its own, because where long unpaid hours are normal, where rudeness goes unchallenged and where the allowance is barely enough to live on, the internship slides away from education and towards exploitation. A healthy labour market should create decent jobs, not teach young people that exhaustion is the price of entry.
A fair benchmark for young employees: Internships become worth something once we agree on what fairness actually means. At a minimum, it means a transport allowance or company transport, a meal during working hours, hours that do not stretch without the intern noticing, and an office culture that treats interns as learners rather than disposable labour. It also means employers giving up "exposure" as a substitute for basic respect.
Young people are not asking for luxury but for enough to travel, enough to eat, a practical education and the dignity of leaving the office at a reasonable hour. It is a reasonable request rather than a revolutionary one, though today's internship market too often treats it as the latter.
The cost of staying quiet: Many interns put up with all of these because they have no other option. What they need is the line on their CV, the reference, the contact, the opening, and they need it badly enough that the market has learnt it can offer less and still be taken up.
This is not, then, a matter of one office or one company, but a question of the professional culture this country wants to build for the generations coming after. If the first lesson a young employee learns is long hours for low pay, the system is not training talent— it is training resignation.
Samiha Mamun is a graduate student at the Army Institute
of Business Administration (Army IBA), affiliated with
the Bangladesh University of Professionals, in Savar, Dhaka.
samihamamunmeem@gmail.com