Ask HN: Internships for a 13-year-old?

I think it depends more on why he wants the internship, and what his situation is.

This. I'd suggest making his own stuff instead of getting into an internship, maybe building some small apps he could even charge for and make some side money. Start at 13 and build enough of those, and he might never need a job. I wish I'd done something like that in college, when I had plenty of free time.

Plus, that was what always impressed the most during job interviews. I was generally one of the top prospects in the interviews I did -- not because of my GPA, or the school I went to, or past job experience, but because of some of the interesting projects I'd done either on my own or to help out my father with his businesses. It shows not just skill (which lots of other people have, even if it might be a bit less than you) but ambition and drive (which, it seems, not many others have).

Hey Lachlan,

I'm a 19-year-old software engineer for Barracuda Networks. When I was about your age, I was very interested in programming and computers as well. :) (You can actually find screenshots all the way back to the very embarrassing beginning where I tried to figure out how fonts + iframes worked here: http://www.screenshots.com/ghostlypets.com/2005-12-15)

Like you, I spent a lot of time wishing I could just "be at MIT already" or "just get hired to do some work." As most people have said here, however, in the US, you can't legally be hired, as much as this sucks.

However, you should check whether the high school you're soon to be attending has a FIRST Robotics program. You'll get to work on a team, similar to a small startup company, to build a robot (and a website, and a business plan, etc.)

Additionally, one thing that I found was pretty helpful to me was to find some small niches that needed devs (when I started, I used virtual pet sites as this niche, being a Neopets fan, and later moved to Bitcoin when that got popular.)

I got recruited when I was 18 because the company saw me on LinkedIn, saw my Github, and was already interested in me. It was awesome. I'm glad I'm here, it's what I always wanted. But I also have less time to work on "side projects" (i.e. the type of projects you get to work on right now), which means less time to learn what I want to learn and more time to learn what the company needs.

So my advice to you would be to find some niches you're particularly interested in and explore them to the fullest extent you can. Learn multiple languages, learn multiple paradigms, learn multiple architectures.

The web and computers are more complex now than they were when I was young, and they are going to continue to get more complex. The more abstractions you create, the more there is to learn in the entire field of programming. But when you get into a business role, you have to focus on what makes something work, rather than what's new, what's interesting, or what you don't already know. Now is the time to keep doing that sort of thing, and figure out what you really like about programming.

P.S. Looking at you and your friend's sites and blogs, you are the kind of devs companies will be trying to hire. :) When I was young I spent a lot of my time "looking up" to a lot of devs with jobs. Having a job isn't the end-all-be-all to being a dev. It's not even close. There is so much to learn, and so much to do, that nobody will ever be a "better" dev than another. Just stronger knowledge in certain areas. :)

P.P.S. I focused too much on web dev when I was young. You can learn a lot about languages, and it's awesome because you get immediate results. But frameworks like Rails provide a lot of abstractions, and if you want to learn the core concepts behind computer science, using them isn't the best way to learn. Try writing your own framework, try writing a game (command-line if graphics is too daunting). You'll learn algorithms, data structures, and paradigms. That's the type of thing that translates between languages. :)

Getting an internship is certainly not just "getting paid to play" in my experience. I loved working on computers as well, but working is sadly not the same as playing in your free time. The main difference of course is that you don't necessarily choose what you work on or when you work on it.

I remember asking someone why she would choose not to do something she loves for a living if she could get paid to do it. Her response, "Because I don't want to end up hating it."

That being said, I do like my job. Still, there are other things I would work on if I didn't need to get paid, even beyond the non work related things I already work on.

It's going to be hard to find someone to trust you. Going into the office, people are going to treat you like a 13 year old and expect you to do boring stuff, because they can glance at your work and tell if you're doing it correctly - or at least the way you want them to.

On the internet, no one knows your web server is running lisp. On the internet, no one knows you are 13. Refuse to do video calls, but be super responsive to email and IMs. You'll miss out on jobs, but there are a zillion out there.

I'd suggest, you build something you want. You're in a unique position to spend years building something amazing, that could make you some money. Work is essentially building someone else's dream. If your dream and their dream align, it's great. But for most people, most of the time, work sucks.

Heck, blog about react techniques. make awesome tutorials. I'm 3x your age and just started learning how to make minecraft mods. I'd suggest that, not because you're 13, but because it's kind of cool.