Caterpillar Cowboy

A Federal District Court judge in Manhattan ruled on Tuesday that Fox Searchlight Pictures had violated federal and New York minimum wage laws by not paying production interns, a case that could upend the long-held practice of the film industry and other businesses that rely heavily on unpaid internships. In the decision, Judge William H. Pauley III ruled that Fox Searchlight should have paid two interns on the movie “Black Swan,” because they were essentially regular employees. The judge noted that these internships did not foster an educational environment and that the studio received the benefits of the work. The case could have broad implications. Young people have flocked to internships, especially against the backdrop of a weak job market. Employment experts estimate that undergraduates work in more than one million internships a year, an estimated half of which are unpaid, according to Intern Bridge, a research firm.

In fact, Snowden’s lack of formal credentials made him mainstream, and maybe even the wave of the future. The Brookings Institution reported in a paper titled “The Hidden STEM Economy” that half of the nation’s workers in the fields of science, technology, engineering, and math don’t have or need a bachelor’s degree. They do their work with an associate’s degree or even just on-the-job training. When you add in these less formally trained STEM specialists, you arrive at 26 million STEM workers, making up one-fifth of the U.S. workforce. The most common non-college STEM jobs include trades like auto mechanics, electricians, welders, and logistics supervisors, whose jobs all increasingly require a sophisticated mastery of both software and machinery. On average these workers earn 10% more than workers at a similar level of education who don’t have a mastery of any scientific or technical field.

Half.com founder and CEO Josh Kopelman once told me that the thing he hated most about being CEO was when two of his smartest people would disagree and he would have to come down on one side: “These decisions were usually 51/49% and I was left having to console the ‘loser’.” He’s right. Arbitrating these disagreements is one of the hardest and most emotionally draining parts of the job, but many CEOs just avoid it and nothing breeds a horrible culture like a CEO who puts offs decisions or, worse yet, makes too many compromises.