It sounds like you think that the other 19 employees of nonlinear had the same arrangement (travel with them and be paid $12k/year). I doubt this is true. Probably many of the 19 are being remotely employed.
They got to pocket $12k/year into savings and live like a king.
Many people spend money besides rent+food+travel, so this sounds exaggerated.
I can’t speak about the other interns, but I remotely interned at Nonlinear for free because of the potential to contribute/upskill/open up new opportunities. I was working 4 days/week at a programming job and 1-2 days/week at Nonlinear. My internship helped give me the confidence to organise the Sydney AI Safety Fellowship, which was the first thing I organised in terms of my AI Safety movement building.
My current understanding is that almost all employees who participated in this arrangement had a pretty bad time, but I am not confident of this. I am pretty confident it was >50% though (not counting Kat, Emerson or Drew, who were in positions of authority and so we should expect their experience to be quite different).
It sounds like you think that the other 19 employees of nonlinear had the same arrangement (travel with them and be paid $12k/year). I doubt this is true. Probably many of the 19 are being remotely employed.
Many people spend money besides rent+food+travel, so this sounds exaggerated.
Yeah I believe they were the only in person employees—so 0⁄2 not 19⁄21
I can’t speak about the other interns, but I remotely interned at Nonlinear for free because of the potential to contribute/upskill/open up new opportunities. I was working 4 days/week at a programming job and 1-2 days/week at Nonlinear. My internship helped give me the confidence to organise the Sydney AI Safety Fellowship, which was the first thing I organised in terms of my AI Safety movement building.
It looks like they are bought phones, laptops, SIM cards, productivity tools, etc.
I know of only two people who worked at Nonlinear. They were both in person. Both had good experiences.
My current understanding is that almost all employees who participated in this arrangement had a pretty bad time, but I am not confident of this. I am pretty confident it was >50% though (not counting Kat, Emerson or Drew, who were in positions of authority and so we should expect their experience to be quite different).