Just turned 33. Was a terrible High School student and a less than stellar college student. I have always been into computers minus a brief stint as a wannabee rockstar. Moved to NYC after a couple of software development jobs in Boston. Got a job for a startup as a Rails developer. Did some freelance. Joined another startup and moved into a Wework coworking building. Then more freelance. Met a guy with this crazy idea to start a company that allowed users to play the lottery on their phones. Became CTO of Jackpocket. It has been an interesting journey.
Ask HN: How did you get to your current job/startup?
41–50 of 82 posts
Re: Ask HN: How did you get to your current job/startup?
#42limped through high school (except math!). majored in psychology/neuroscience and philosophy. had no idea what i wanted as a career. knew i liked learning about stuff. did neuroscience internships, community mental health internships. thought i wanted to be a therapist. got a masters degree for that. taught myself programming to solve problems with progress notes and practice management in mental health. liked that more than doing mental health. swindled an internship in computer science as a data miner. talked to the right people to get a position as an entry web developer. did that and moved up 2 positions inside same company. did a lot of side projects and open source projects for fun, to build my resume and learn. left to be a consultant at a cut-throat startup building company. now i work at a startup inside a bigger company doing node.js backend + angular/react.
Re: Ask HN: How did you get to your current job/startup?
#43Earlier quoted context omitted.
Just curious, how old were you when you hit the 6 figure salary and which city was that in?
In Los Angeles most positions are really dead end, by the time 6 figures became the norm the housing market here plus the additional taxes on california for singles has turned 6 figures into bare survival money. The attitude of most employers in Los Angeles is that you're essentially a slave and as a tech person you're about as important to them as a maggot, your talents are taken for granted and yeah I have a job bu…
140 / 7 = 20. You eat sleep and shit for a combined 4 hours a day?
Re: Ask HN: How did you get to your current job/startup?
#44I was graduated from HS. I didn't graduate, they graduated me. You hear about people being graduated without the requisite credits in NY in the 80's and I was one of them.
My mom threw me out when I was 17 and I got into a lot of trouble.
I worked as a squid, a delivery person (when my car would work), and, finally I landed a real job as a data entry person.
I was the worst data entry person.
I have dysgraphia, cannot touch type, and am a world class champion of bad spelling. Not a good combination for transcribing acuities from intraocular lens follow ups.
My supervisor was on vacation and the manager needed a report for the FDA so, eager to help, I set about trying to convince paradox (a 4GL) to give me what was required.
I got the report to print but the sorting was all wrong. It was in date order and not grouped by model. Finally, by looking through the in-line help system (1992, no googling), I figured it out and got the report to my manager.
His reaction was not what I expected; he looked exceedingly perplexed.
"Something wrong?"
"It's grouped!", he replied.
"Isn't that the way it should be?", I responded.
He then proceeded to explain two things; he had been asking for the report this way for months, and I was going to be terminated that day.
The best part was that, unbeknownst to me, they were shipping the S/38 from Virginia and needed an operator to work from 12 noon till 3 am and—instead of being fired—I was just about to be offered a new job!
Re: Ask HN: How did you get to your current job/startup?
#45BS in Electrical and Computer Engineering in 2009 but the recession and my now wife convinced me to stick around for another year to get my masters. Got a job with a defense contractor which inflated my salary about ~15% compared to peers b/c I could get a security clearance. After 3 years of that I wasn't happy and posted resumes on Dice and flushed out my LinkedIn profile. Recruiters started banging down my door. It was just a matter of holding out until one that could meet my salary requirements (100k+) came along. Ended up doing cyber security at a telcom, but ended up unhappy with the culture there after about 9 months so I updated my resumes and profiles again and added the "will only work remotely" requirement. Took about 3 months of actively searching and talking to recruiters but one came along and after some aggressive salary negotiations I started working remotely full time for a nutrition supplement company doing DevOps.
Re: Ask HN: How did you get to your current job/startup?
#46"A" student in high school, "B" student in university, sent 100s of resumes and got one offer (programming), moved there to work, changed jobs to a tech start-up, DotCom Bubble 1.0 burst, unemployed for several months (low point #1), contracted a bit to get on my feet, went full-time with a client, left to get MBA, graduated MBA the same year the banks all exploded, unemployed for several months (low point #2), sent…
Talk about bad timing...did you get into real estate in 2006?
Re: Ask HN: How did you get to your current job/startup?
#47Lots of luck + some hard work.
Graduated from a decent state school with a degree in English and started working for a small publishing company as an "editor." The luck part was that the company was so incredibly cheap that rather than hiring a person with real programming skills, they opted to repurpose a young person (me) with some technology knowhow to do some programming for internal stuff at a fraction of the cost. Went back to college for a few semesters (on their dime) for a CS degree but never finished.
I built-up an okay portfolio + work experience and landed a job at a very small software company. Worked there for a while, landed a better job at a bigger company, rinse, repeat.
I'm making a good living now doing something that I really enjoy. I still can't believe this is how things turned out.
Re: Ask HN: How did you get to your current job/startup?
#4823 years old.
I graduated from a low income high school in 2010 with good enough grades and I took most of the AP courses that my school had to offer (which was not many). I frequently didn't go to school and most of the time would drive around during the day or hang out at a friend's house.
I went to a local community college (that offered free tuition to students at my HS) for journalism because I didn't know what else to do. It was too much like high school and I had classes with all the people I was trying to get away from. I stopped going, failed all my classes.
Worked at a electronics store for a a year while I figured out what I wanted to do.
Decided to go back to school without really knowing what I wanted to do. Enrolled in CS at like the 4th best university in the area, so not a great school - but I ended up liking it a lot. I didn't have much math in high school, so I didn't have the natural inclination, and I didn't put forth the effort so I did poorly. I failed Calc 1 and 2 and made a C in them and in Calc 3 when I passed. I did well in my CS courses, As and Bs.
I have about 6 classes left after this semester - I had trouble going full time because I am married and work ~40 hours a week fixing computers or waiting tables and don't work as hard as I should sometimes.
8 months ago I got an internship at a pretty big company that opened a branch in my city. The internship turned into a job. It's mostly SQL Server stuff, and a few small desktop apps. It's not my favorite but my bosses are nice and it's close to my house.
I recently got offered a job at a small web development company that I got in contact with through a friend. I start there in 2 weeks.
Re: Ask HN: How did you get to your current job/startup?
#49High school was hell to me, I would come home crying every night.
Things changed when I met the new physics teacher, a retiree from the Air Force, and even though I never took his class, I would spend study time at the lab repairing old hardware and doing experiments with them.
I went to New Mexico Tech which is an inexpensive state school that punches above it's weight, I think I was going to get a D in German once but I dropped the course.
I got into a Physics PhD program at Cornell, where I met my wife. Grad school was great fun, but somehow my working-class upbringings made me not fit in with academic culture. After a postdoc in Germany, wound up settling near Ithaca because my wife has family in Binghamton, and she now runs a busy but low key riding academy.
Since then I have alternated of times of W2 employment vs 1099 vs true self employment. Around 2000 to 2003 I was highly active in politics.
The overall trajectory has been up but definitely with setbacks. Along the way I have learned to love people, including myself, much more. My family is a joy and a challenge to be my best.
After chopping wood and carrying water in the web industry for almost a decade, I developed a specialty and have been turning it into a business.
Re: Ask HN: How did you get to your current job/startup?
#50I went to a Bible College for a year and a half before dropping out. The dropout was not really due to a lack of interest in the subjects, but just a really poor work ethic on my part.
I landed a job in medical magazine recruitment advertising sales after a friend referred me in. I had no idea what I was doing, but I did well after some sales training. Eventually I decided to change jobs when I discovered that the magazine distribution numbers were wildly lower than what I was quoting to my clients. My company was lying to the advertisers. I took a short term gig as a cold caller at a financial advisor firm, working for my father-in-law's team. I ended up staying there for 3 years, passing the 7 and learning that I have no passion for finance.
While I was at the firm, I attended a lot of networking events and hosted a few myself. I met many people in the Philadelphia area who were involved in the tech scene and discovered where my passion really lied. I tried to get a startup running, but I didn't have the technical chops yet. Eventually, I quit the financial job, took an all commission job selling credit card machines to brick&mortar stores, so I could find a job at a startup where I could learn. Side-note, it's not a great idea to quit your job 1 week before your twins are born. Even when it all works out in the end, the stress is unbearable.
After 6 months of selling and searching, I ended up working at an online ticketing company as a salesperson. I worked there for about 3 months, and became the top salesperson before they laid off the entire sales team, because it was an experiment that didn't work out. Startups, huh?
I was unemployed, with 3 kids, a mortgage and nowhere to earn. I started leaning on my contacts pretty heavily. Luckily, the CEO of the ticketing company wrote us all pretty great references, and reached out to his network to get us jobs. I ended up as an Analyst at RJMetrics, where I am currently. I've been here nearly 4 years now, and I've learned a lot being here. I've been able to build and launch multiple internal technical projects, while starting the sales organization here.