Contribute to an open source project. Drupal has had serious, valued contributors as young as nine and ten. One of them, Dmitri Gaskin, keynoted a Drupal conference where he talked about his experiences as a contributor. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TMJCOViG0jE
Ask HN: Internships for a 13-year-old?
61–70 of 85 posts
Re: Ask HN: Internships for a 13-year-old?
#62Maybe not the most popular opinion here, or maybe it will be, but advice from a father of two boys: Enjoy your childhood for the remaining 3-5 years before worrying so much about your professional career. You have decades of working in software ahead of you, if you continue on that path. Just enjoy your childhood, go out and play, or even just work on projects you enjoy. Once your childhood is gone, you'll regret not…
Not intending to be argumentative -- merely to present a countervailing perspective:
When I was 13, I was incredibly fortunate to land an internship at Marvel Comics in NY. For a teenage boy obsessed with the X-Men, this was like dying and going to heaven. I didn't even care that I was given menial tasks and paid entirely in comic books. I got to meet John Byrne, and that was enough.
The OP sounds like someone with enough interest in programming that an internship would be at least as much about "fun" as it is about "professional development".
I say, if it sounds like fun, go for it. If nothing else, it'll be an opportunity to meet software professionals with as much genuine interest in programming as you have, as well as some who are in the industry for other reasons. Both will be instructive.
Re: Ask HN: Internships for a 13-year-old?
#63Once you get to college, you're going to realize that you'll never have a vacation like you did when you were young. Real life starts and it never ends until you die. Spend your summer doing something that you love. If that's coding, do that, and don't worry about getting paid for it yet. Also don't worry about building your resume -- you can start doing that when you're 14, if your heart is really set on it. No one…
Counter-perspective: I do wish I'd spent more summers working in software. Going to camp and doing regular kid things made me miserable. Working for software companies as a teenager absolutely helped me in my career, and it was absolutely worth the time.
I completely agree with that. Normal kid things sound incredibly boring :)
Re: Ask HN: Internships for a 13-year-old?
#64There doesn't seem to be much in the way of real intership programs for your age group. However, your resume is super impressive, and you're clearly gifted. I'm going to bet that there will be people who will want to support your ambitions and create an ad-hoc internship for you. So here's my advice: Treat your internship search like a job search! Cold-call and cold-email CEOs of NYC-based startups that use Rails or…
Thanks joliss! That sounds great — I’m going to look around on StackShare and find some interesting companies.
About the labor laws: I’ll be turning 14 right before the internship could start (at the end of the school year), but that’s definitely true.
Re: Ask HN: Internships for a 13-year-old?
#65It'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 re…
That’s definitely true, jfoutz. I built Noodles because I wanted to, and I’m thinking about some more projects I might take on personally.
I’m also going to try and start writing tutorials to make learning things less painful for new folks, because with more recent frameworks like React there just aren’t a ton of articles out there yet.
Thanks!
Re: Ask HN: Internships for a 13-year-old?
#66I would ask you why you're looking for an internship. If it's for the cash, as people have mentioned, you're going to have a tough time due to legal issues. If you're just interested in getting more experience, I would try to find a mentor who could recommend potentially interesting projects to work on. There are a bunch of interesting computing technologies that are becoming more and more accessible to use (e.g. ima…
It’s not for the cash — I’m not even concerned that I’ll get paid at all. I more want it because endlessly building things on your own isn’t as challenging or as much fun as being with a team for a little while. I’d also like to meet some more new people along the way.
On security: I’ve emailed several companies about security bugs on their websites, but I hadn’t considered being paid for it. I’ll check that out!
Thanks.
Re: Ask HN: Internships for a 13-year-old?
#67[I am not a lawyer]
In the United States, Federal labor law limits the employment of children. The restrictions on employing people under age 14 are rather severe and would probably preclude any sort of internship:
http://www.youthrules.dol.gov/know-the-limits/under14.htm
This is probably the summer to work on side projects. Next year the rules allow a far wider range of employment opportunities:
http://www.youthrules.dol.gov/know-the-limits/14-15.htm
The fuller explanation is here:
http://www.dol.gov/whd/regs/compliance/whdfs43.htm
Good luck.
Re: Ask HN: Internships for a 13-year-old?
#68Earlier quoted context omitted.
Indeed, the best thing to do is to spend your time engaging in activities that someone else things is fun, instead of what you enjoy.
I already included in my answer the option that he genuinely enjoys programming, in which case he should self-start projects. You'd be surprised, however, at the amount of kids who go "professional" from a very early age because of parental pressure or something like that. All I said was that if that is the case, it is too early to go professional.
littletimmy: It’s not at all driven by my parents. I’m doing it only because I love it.
On self-started projects: Noodles was my first of them, and I’m working on some more. Side projects are great, but right now I’m looking for something bigger.
Re: Ask HN: Internships for a 13-year-old?
#69Why not just learn another language like C++, Java, C#, etc, and spend the summer making a video game? Sounds like your skills are mostly web-devy right now. Branch out?
newobj: I’m working on learning other languages/frameworks, but I’m really not interested at all in building or playing video games :)
Re: Ask HN: Internships for a 13-year-old?
#70No one is going to publicly solicit someone as young as you. If you really want to find work, you're going to have to hustle for it. Start tracking down emails and contacting people personally. Surely someone will appreciate your ambition and give you an opportunity, just don't expect it to fall into your lap. No one is listing internships with the expectation that someone pre-college will fill the opening but don't…
Don't go around asking companies to do something illegal for you. I agree that hustling is good, but not when you put the burden of your success on someone else.
Working on projects with people you meet/know isn’t illegal. Getting a real job would be, but not this :)