CAD Drones, LLC is searching for 20+ Volunteers!

Hello Diy Drones Universe,

This is Joshua Johnson CEO and Founder of CAD Drones, LLC and CADDrones.com "The Open Source website for CAD and Drones". We are 19-21 days away from having our Drone Product go LIVE on Kickstarter.com! Right now CADDrones.com is moving along but without the help and ideas of volunteers in the Drone Industry we don't know which direction we should go moving forward. Being a volunteer for CAD Drones, LLC and CADDrones.com will give you the opportunity and expirience in shaping our website into what you feel is best for the International Drone Community. Our website's focus is on CAD, 3D Printing, and Drones and meshing them together under one roof. We are trying to build an Open Source environment that will benefit the Drone Industry for decades to come! Once our Kickstarter Campaign is underway we are going full steam ahead with the consulting side of our Drone Tech Company and turning volunteer positions into paid positions. We are looking for volunteers with various expertise and strengths that believe they have what it takes to help build a Drone Product, Company, and website into a success! We can't unveil our product to the volunteers or public until we get closer to the Kickstarter Campaign Launch. Volunteers who we feel share our same passion to advance our website CADDrones.com and also to build a reliable resource for the Drone Industry will more than likely see their volunteer positions transition into paid positions after the launch of our Product on Kickstarter!

What Volunteer Positions We Need Filled:

1 Graphic Designer ( Someone who is willing to help us turn CADDrones.com into a visually appealing website and someone who is interested in using their Graphic Design talents to create information graphic pieces that can be used to educate our website members about various topics )
1 Wikipedia Administrator ( Someone who is good with organizing and structuring research and factual pieces/information from multiple sources under one depository in an organized, useful, and educational manner )
1 Lead Moderator ( Someone to build, manage, and organize a small team of volunteer moderators )
3 Moderators ( 3 Moderators besides the Lead Moderator who are willing to work as a team to decide on category names and organize and come up with a structured plan for the Forums, Blogs, Photos, and News Page so its a useful tool for our members )
5 Website Developers ( 5 Web Dev's willing to use their Programming skills to create HTML and code based features for CADDrones.com that will assist and educate the commercial and/or hobby Drone Community )
5 Business Advisors ( 5 people are willing to mentor me by sharing advice and ideas with me to help CAD Drones, LLC grow and prosper )
5 CAD/3D Printing Specialists ( 5 people with skills in CAD and/or 3D Printing who are willing to donate their time by creating blogs, forum posts, and assist our members who are using CAD and 3D Printing to help assist in their drone projects. You will be also be in charge of build up our CAD File Database with useful files for our community )

(**If you would like to volunteer for a position you feel is needed on CADDrones.com but is not listed below please email me your position idea and how you would fit the role**)

If helping the CAD Drones Community and joining an up and coming Drone Start-up Company as a volunteer and possible future employee is something that interests you please feel free to email a "creative resume" to me at: JoshuaAllenJohnson@Gmail.com or post it on our Volunteer Blog Post.

>When an Intern doesn't live locally in Minneapolis it's quite hard to be able to run an actual paid position.

I'm sorry, but that's just rubbish. What has living locally got to do with being paid. If you are gaining something from somebodies efforts, pay them. Open Source quite clearly states that is free as in freedom, not free beer. If you need to check if somebody is a suitable fit, pay them for a short period of time and then decide weather to take them on full time.

> Last time I checked their are all kinds of Interns helping startups get off the ground free of charge.

Its outrageous that companies are exploiting young people by making them do unpaid work. And just because others are doing it, it does not make it right.

>You have to remember I'm not forcing anyone to be an Intern and at the end of the day I truly feel

>I will be able to hire a majority of the Interns at the end of the tenure as long as we feel they are the

>right fit for the job.

This just another rubbish excuse not to pay young people for good work that they will do.

@Rob: the fact that they have now become common is not an excuse either (but I see you agree with me anyway)

I worked as an intern at a brewery many years ago, I was paid. The law was clear, if you work, you must be paid. I'm not sure how this whole interns are not paid law came about (Well I do know, it's for students, and the company must not benefit from hiring a intern, otherwise they must be paid. and the hire is short period ie. 3 months.)

I just think it sucks that people just want to exploit others for their own personal gain.

And to quote the article linked to by Alex.

The internship, even though it includes actual operation of the facilities of the employer, is similar to training which would be given in an educational environment;

The internship experience is for the benefit of the intern;

The intern does not displace regular employees, but works under close supervision of existing staff;

The employer that provides the training derives no immediate advantage from the activities of the intern; and on occasion its operations may actually be impeded;

The intern is not necessarily entitled to a job at the conclusion of the internship; and

The employer and the intern understand that the intern is not entitled to wages for the time spent in the internship.

Point 4: is the key point. What you have posted for interns for actually benefits your business. Therefore, they are not Interns.

For all means advertise for volunteers, but don't dangle the job carrot or use the word Intern when it does not apply. Its unfair, and just exploitative to do otherwise.

It beggars belief that after all the hard work done to stop worker exploitation, it's creeping back into the workforce. It's shameful.

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Comments

Joshua Johnson May 22, 2014 at 4:20pm

@Bill,

Our Company wont gain any money from the work that the interns will be undertaking. The goal here for us to provide the interns with experience in the CAD and Drone Industry if that is the field that they want to get into after school. Also we want to work with interns to educate them in CAD/3D Printing/UAS Operations. Their isn't a large list of colleges offering UAS/Drone Specific degrees. The people who get into the Drone Industry can be anybody from a Graphic Designer, CAD Engineer, Electrical Engineer, Accountant, Business Major, and much more. We're looking for students and qualified people in all different fields of expertise. The company in a whole isn't gaining any money from this so that's why I have a hard time understanding your rant against our Company Internship.
Nigel Cartwright May 22, 2014 at 4:12pm

Joshua - if there's a common thread running through all your posts its that you seem to want to run your business and develop your products off the back of other peoples efforts and money. If your product is good enough, go out and get the finance, set up the company properly, sell the product. Don't piggyback on other peoples goodwill...
Joshua Johnson May 22, 2014 at 4:08pm

Our intentions here isn't to find full time employees from this internship. But we are hoping that some of these interns will end up be needed for future paid positions. Right now I don't even pay myself let alone have the resources to pay interns at this time. The total number of people who actually get hired full time is going to depend on their fit but most importantly it's going to depend completely on the success of our Kickstarter Campaign. Any interns who end up not being hired for full time positions will most likely be added to our consulting team which will give them an opportunity to make money consulting on projects for us and outside consulting work. Like if we need graphic work done for a new product the interns that were here with us from the beginning will be the ones we go to first when we want to hire contractors.
Joshua Johnson May 22, 2014 at 3:56pm

@Jesse and Alex Chen

Thank you guys for providing me with that information and website link! I defiantly gained some more knowledge in the matter of internships from your comments.
Thomas Robinson May 22, 2014 at 3:34pm

I'm sorry but I have to agree with Bill on this one. I'm interested to hear how many 'interns' you hire after the probation is over.

Personally, I would be pretty angry if I contributed to a project providing good quality work and found out at the end that I was no longer required.

My advice is to talk to each individual intern from the outset and state how many possible interns will stay on after the probation period is finished. If it's only 10 that you will likely need, outline this from the beginning.

Other than that, if this is a genuine opportunity, thank you for providing it and giving back to the UAV community.
Developer
Bill Bonney May 22, 2014 at 2:07pm
>When an Intern doesn't live locally in Minneapolis it's quite hard to be able to run an actual paid position.

I'm sorry, but that's just rubbish. What has living locally got to do with being paid. If you are gaining something from somebodies efforts, pay them. Open Source quite clearly states that is free as in freedom, not free beer. If you need to check if somebody is a suitable fit, pay them for a short period of time and then decide weather to take them on full time.

> Last time I checked their are all kinds of Interns helping startups get off the ground free of charge.

Its outrageous that companies are exploiting young people by making them do unpaid work. And just because others are doing it, it does not make it right.

>You have to remember I'm not forcing anyone to be an Intern and at the end of the day I truly feel

>I will be able to hire a majority of the Interns at the end of the tenure as long as we feel they are the

>right fit for the job.

This just another rubbish excuse not to pay young people for good work that they will do.

@Rob: the fact that they have now become common is not an excuse either (but I see you agree with me anyway)

I worked as an intern at a brewery many years ago, I was paid. The law was clear, if you work, you must be paid. I'm not sure how this whole interns are not paid law came about (Well I do know, it's for students, and the company must not benefit from hiring a intern, otherwise they must be paid. and the hire is short period ie. 3 months.)

I just think it sucks that people just want to exploit others for their own personal gain.

And to quote the article linked to by Alex.
The internship, even though it includes actual operation of the facilities of the employer, is similar to training which would be given in an educational environment;

The internship experience is for the benefit of the intern;

The intern does not displace regular employees, but works under close supervision of existing staff;

The employer that provides the training derives no immediate advantage from the activities of the intern; and on occasion its operations may actually be impeded;

The intern is not necessarily entitled to a job at the conclusion of the internship; and

The employer and the intern understand that the intern is not entitled to wages for the time spent in the internship.
Point 4: is the key point. What you have posted for interns for actually benefits your business. Therefore, they are not Interns.

For all means advertise for volunteers, but don't dangle the job carrot or use the word Intern when it does not apply. Its unfair, and just exploitative to do otherwise.

It beggars belief that after all the hard work done to stop worker exploitation, it's creeping back into the workforce. It's shameful.
3D Robotics

Alex Chen May 22, 2014 at 1:31pm

http://www.dol.gov/whd/regs/compliance/whdfs71.pdf
Rob_Lefebvre May 22, 2014 at 12:46pm

Bill, while I agree very strongly that unpaid Internships should be illegal in most cases, the fact is they are very common.

It is possible that interns could get equal value for their labour, if the employer does provide them with training and experience in their field. Unfortunately in too many cases, there is no training and little experience gained, as the interns just end up doing "Joe Jobs" like fetching donuts or making photocopies. Maybe a little courier duty, or spell checking emails. That sort of thing. In these cases, the internships are really nothing more than slave labour, and is considered "paying your dues" to get into a field that is overcrowded with more students than jobs. Unfortunately, as jobs become more and more scarce generally, the field of employers who feel they can get away with it is widening.

ie: Where once you would have interns working for free at cool places like Formula 1 race teams, or Hollywood, now you even see them in accounting offices, etc.
Jesse May 22, 2014 at 12:10pm

"Internships exist in a wide variety of industries and settings. An internship may be paid, UNPAID or partially paid (in the form of a stipend)." ... Wikipedia. In the U.S., it's more common to be paid, while in Europe, mostly unpaid.

There are laws regarding internships. They're typically for degree-seeking students, with a few exceptions for recent grads. I'd make sure you're familiar with them.
Joshua Johnson May 22, 2014 at 11:48am

Hello Bill,

It would be one thing If I was gathering interns locally to work at the Office. When an Intern doesn't live locally in Minneapolis it's quite hard to be able to run an actual paid position. Last time I checked their are all kinds of Interns helping startups get off the ground free of charge. You have to remember I'm not forcing anyone to be an Intern and at the end of the day I truly feel I will be able to hire a majority of the Interns at the end of the tenure as long as we feel they are the right fit for the job.

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