Twenty-five years ago this month I landed my first design internship. It was unpaid. It only lasted a few weeks and I wasn’t able to contribute much. From that, I learned a few skills that helped me land my next internship. It lasted about five months and was also unpaid. (Though they did something special for me at the end.)

The experience, skills, understanding and awareness I gained from those internships were pivotal in my next steps and sparked my career. The internships were possible because they were unpaid. The first agency had no ability to pay me. The second could have, but to be transparent, I didn’t meet the bar for interns (not enough education) so just being there was a privilege.

With a quarter century of hindsight, I’ve never thought those companies should have offered me cash compensation. I’m still very grateful for the opportunities they gave me.

So when I see these debates on if interns should be paid, my answer is: sometimes. There’s clearly times where companies take advantage of people. That’s not good. There’s also clearly times where the experience provided is very much worth it and wouldn’t occur if cash compensation was required.

Over the past year, I’ve had the opportunity to mediate an abnormally large amount of interpersonal conflict. The causes of conflict were typical, often including miscommunication and lack of alignment on expectations.

One common explanation was “I’m just being myself”, “I’m just being real”, “I’m just being candid” or similar. In some cases a referral to the book Radical Candor was in order, but often that wasn’t going to be well received.