My real first paid job with contract and stuff was as a cashier for a grocery chain. That was in 1995 (I was 17) and I financed with this job my first trip to an island in Northern Germany. Then my first real independent thing with license and stuff was selling soft drinks at the Berlin Love Parade in 1996. I made on this one day four times what I got for working as a teller. That was convincing enough...
Ask HN: What was your first job?
41–50 of 77 posts
Re: Ask HN: What was your first job?
#42I had two:
I helped my mom load and unload furniture. She owned an antiques, used furniture and collectibles shop, and I would go to garage sales and flea markets on the weekend with her to help with the big stuff.
Consequently, I had the opportunity to buy a lot of old computer junk for cheap at said garage sales and flea markets. I bought and rebuilt Commodore 64, Apple IIe, TI 99/4a, etc. machines for resale at $40-$100 (depending on disk drives, printer, etc.). One time I found an Apple Lisa, with original receipts and in perfectly working order for about 25 bucks. I was stunned that the 10MB hard disk had cost something like $5495, and the 5MB one $3495. The Lisa itself was, I think, $9995.
Re: Ask HN: What was your first job?
#43Baling hay and detassling corn for about $4.50/hr. I think I was about 12. The bales of hay were heavier than I was, so I had to use leverage to stack them and always ended up completely covered in debris. The cornfield job was easy...but it was really hot, so most of my peers quit. That's the first time I realized that different people could have dramatically different work ethics. Some people spent more time and ef…
My first was 4:30am, dragging a giant basket down rows of sweetcorn, hand-picking at age 10. Got paid with a bag of sweetcorn and what I was told was "character".
Ahh, the innocence of being a stereotypical Iowan. In hindsight, the character built was worth every bead of sweat.
Re: Ask HN: What was your first job?
#44delivering papers, $0.04 a paper, up at 5am 6 days a week.
someone gave me a sympathy vote! I just realized it wasn't quit this bad - it was more on Saturdays ( $0.06 a paper! )
Re: Ask HN: What was your first job?
#45Washing dishes at a steakhouse/buffet family trough at 16. Got in a knife fight one time with a mentally challenged but belligerent coworker. Avoid these places, but if you can't, avoid the bread pudding & ranch dressing. You really don't wanna know.
Re: Ask HN: What was your first job?
#46I grew up on a farm to a lot chores that I were things that other would consider jobs.
But I would consider hard wood flooring my first job. Hard as f--- work, and the employer I worked for was known for being one of the hardest working men in his profession around, him being my dad.
Re: Ask HN: What was your first job?
#4719, wrote some Javascript for a travel search engine, $1000/mo (I grew up in India - there were no summer jobs worth doing because you can't compete with the cheap labour in India).
Re: Ask HN: What was your first job?
#4814. Farmers market... about $50/week. 3am on a Saturday is early.
Re: Ask HN: What was your first job?
#49Am I the only one who started with a realish job?
Other than a 1-time thing here and there, probably less than 10 times in my life, my first job is right now. I'm coding for a small Rails company in Seattle for a realish salary (bad for coding, great for being 16). We do some consulting work and some of our own products.
Re: Ask HN: What was your first job?
#50I'm not sure if this would qualify as my first job, but here I go: I used to run errands for my cousin at his car shop when I was 10-11 years old. I did a bit of everything: cleaning, moving/relocating car parts, and even painting at times. I used to get a tad more than $1 dollar a day, sometimes even less.
My first (second?) "real" job, however, was vastly more suitable for what would later become my passion in life: non-linear editor (yes, that was the official title). I was 18 when I landed the position. I was basically editing the news for a local TV channel in Dominican Republic. I was using a digital, Leitch editing panel attached to a PC running Windows NT. The paid was roughly $100 dollars a month. I've never wanted to work in anything that does not involve a computer ever since.