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Ask HN: How did you get to your current job/startup?

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Re: Ask HN: How did you get to your current job/startup?

#61

Post by robotnoises »

arsalanb wrote: post #59
robotnoises wrote: post #47

Lots 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 co…

Hey, come on, give yourself the due credit. You probably put in more hard work than you give yourself credit for :)

Perhaps, but honestly I doubt I would have considered this as a career path without the early "break."

Re: Ask HN: How did you get to your current job/startup?

#62

Post by bkjelden »

chrissnell wrote: post #25

41 years old now. Failed out of a top-ten college. Went to work assembling trophies for minimum wage. Lived in a shitty apartment and hung out with people going nowhere. Felt doomed. Got interested in Linux (early 94). Took a job as tech support at local ISP. Accepted back into same top-ten school. Dropped out a year later. Moved to SFBA and took low-wage job as a junior sysadmin with early cable ISP startup. Left af…

What do you think you've learned from living/working in so many different cities?

I love hearing advice and insight from people who've lived in a lot of different US cities. What similarities they've noticed, what differences, etc.

Re: Ask HN: How did you get to your current job/startup?

#63

Post by scottndecker »

hanniabu wrote: post #53
scottndecker wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I did. I was one of the youngest people in the company (250+ person company) and worked in the R&D department. There were several rounds of layoffs in the year I worked there and I survived them all and was given a raise. I simply found ME to be too slow on multiple dimensions.

I feel you. I had the same experience working as an ME in R&D and left for programming. What languages did you end up learning? What was your first?

I learned a little C in college, then taught myself Java in the evenings while working as a ME, then got the job and learned the C# .NET stack, and now my latest client is back to Java. I'm missing .NET terribly but luckily my startup uses it so I still get to stay up on it.

Re: Ask HN: How did you get to your current job/startup?

#64

Post by ryandrake »

totalrobe wrote: post #46
ryandrake wrote: post #40

"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?

LOL almost! Sometimes I stop and ponder that if I followed the exact same career path but offset by -4 years (start in tech ~1994, move to banking in ~2004), I'd probably be a multi-millionaire and retired at 40. Luck of the draw.

I'm certainly not destitute, but I feel my experiences have given me a more realistic understanding about the role luck plays in your career vs. hard work--certainly more than the average 20-something today who has never experienced a single career-crippling downturn let alone two.

Re: Ask HN: How did you get to your current job/startup?

#65

Post by arafalov »

My current status: About to drop a very well paying job to move countries (back to Australia) to become a consultant specializing in training, onboarding and POCs in Search Engine industry (primarily Solr and Elasticsearch). I am at the age of being "The Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything" (so, it is a good year to try to fulfill that destiny....)

Longer story:

- School in Soviet Union. Good student. Got some exposure to computers (Yamaha TRS!!!) and learned Basic, Assembler, game decompiling/modification, and bunch of other self-driven IT interests.

- Moved countries (to Australia), Computer Science degree in a new language in a new country. Did ok, helped that I was a full-geek back in Soviet Union already.

- Have been playing with Solr for many years on and off. Have recently found random unfinished projects going back to Solr 1.4

- Worked in a bunch of IT companies, mostly doing backend stuff with focus on Java https://twitter.com/arafalov/status/664874979775922176

- When the bubble burst, nearly accidentally, got hired to be a 3-rd tier technical support for BEA products (Weblogic, etc). Supported huge customers with multiple versions of multiple multi-million line Java products. Lost a lot of my hair, but gained troubleshooting skills normal developers do not have (e.g. Our bank is experiencing double transactions. Please solve in 3 minutes without seeing the live system. Ping me for the answer.....). Also learned to actually understand and guide semi-technical people in asking complicated technical questions. Learned to answer those questions. Learned to emphasize with their problems and translate them into possible technical solution. Turns out this was the BEST ever job for my career, even taking into account lost hair and probably a couple of years of my life expectancy. Presented at JavaONE twice based on the experience to an extremely interested audiences (400-600 people with 4+ overall reviews). Also, published in a couple of magazines (for free). Also, blogged, anonymously, then under my own name. Still do. http://blog.outerthoughts.com/

- Went off to do something completely different for a well-paid but highly-bureaucratic company (this is my views, not representing my company, etc). Moved countries a couple more times. Used my troubleshooting skills to build small projects for real non-IT audiences (e.g. translators). Discovered that outside of IT-heavy fields, a little bit of IT skills can go a very LONG way and makes people really happy. But it does require the full-stack skills of hearing the customer needs, converting them into IT issues, building the solution, and training the users in understanding them.

- At some point, got a project at work with Solr 3.x, started doing that and asking (and answering) questions on the Solr Users mailing list. Must have been pretty visible as I got contacted by Packt and asked to write an introductory book on Solr. Loved the idea (had a similar one myself) and jumped into it with two feet. Produced something nobody else in the market did (actually had to fight with Packt to let me), which proved very successful. The book still sells some copies despite being for Solr 3.x and quite out of date (don't buy it!).

- Writing the book and getting ever deeper into Solr community, realized that helping newbies in any systematic way (beyond mailing list) is a niche that is not served well. More than that, it was something I was enjoying doing as it allowed me to build various (open source) projects but around the same core technology/focus area. Created a resources site for Solr (http://www.solr-start.com/) which - behind the scenes - uses quite a large number of different projects and technologies, satisfying my itches and still with each project being useful immediately. The site is quite popular as it is the only place that lists and cross-references all available components of several types. Also, started a mailing list to track new Solr projects/articles/etc, my own and from others.

- Realized - by constantly thinking about Solr (and by then Elasticsearch) - that there is at least 20 times more absolutely exciting things I could be doing around the search engines and helping real people. And that I would never be able to achieve that in evenings and weekends. And that I could be doing most of that kind of work from anywhere in the world. And that there is demand for this kind of popularization/education/info-product material. Proven by two already ongoing projects for a large publisher, which we are both extremely excited about. And by presenting to Lucene/Solr Revolution twice to full rooms (slides/videos are online: http://www.slideshare.net/arafalov, one with 30K views )

- Decided to return back to Australia (where parents are) and see if I can help people to integrate search into their stacks from there. Early discussions with potential partners, customers and users proved very positive. The biggest challenge is figuring out what will be the best win/win/win combination (users' benefits/my income/cool projects). Looking forward to discovering the answer to that.

Oh, and if your team needs Solr training in Q1/Q2 of 2016, I still offer first customer rates and (business-) lifetime benefits.

Re: Ask HN: How did you get to your current job/startup?

#66

Post by isxek »

J-dawg wrote: post #2

I'm looking forward to the responses to this. I came to programming later than most (early 30s), and it's been a real struggle to break into it professionally. I have occasional low points when I wonder what I could have achieved if I'd started on this path in my teens or 20s. It's a waste of time and brain power to dwell on regrets, but it's hard not to sometimes. It would be cool to read some success stories from p…

You're not the only one, friend. :)

Re: Ask HN: How did you get to your current job/startup?

#67

Post by kamaal »

totalrobe wrote: post #43
shams93 wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Not sure why that is surprising to a lot of people. I have done near 18-20 hour work days(Sometimes going without sleep 2 days at a time), during many parts in my life(A few years at a time). In college, while at work, while building my own start up.

The last time I worked like that was when I was working on bootstrapping a start up while having a day job. I did close to a 20 hour schedule for around 4 years. This was only a year back, when I decided to take a break for an year or so.

Hardwork doesn't always give you results, But not working hard almost certainly doesn't. Well unless you have rich parents, or in-laws, or spouse or you inherit money someway- Or you are plain lucky to have god fathers in the industry bailing you out time to time, taking care of your career and financial growth.

For every body else its the plain old brutal torture.

Re: Ask HN: How did you get to your current job/startup?

#68

Post by frank-weindel »

Got a bachelors degree in CS from a university with a comprehensive co-op program. It was 5 years with three 6-month co-op opportunities. First worked in the law school's IT dept, then as a PHP dev for a local newspaper portal, and finally a defense contractor. Learned I wanted to distance myself from IT, and never to work for a defense contractor (they work everyone to the bone trying to bid as low as possible on contracts. The place I worked at, at least, was just depressing). The co-ops set me up with a nice resume after graduating but in the process got in a load of debt which would be REALLY nice not to have.

First real job was working for a company called Unisys, working on an antiquated mainframe operating system. The people we're really cool and supportive though there weren't too many young people around. They gave me many opportunities to try new things and sent me to some conferences. Problem was they paid horribly, as I found out, especially for all the proprietary unportable technology that I had to learn. I was writing applications via a homegrown text editor, in a homegrown terminal application, using homegrown compilers. All in ALGOL and various proprietary flavors of it. Thankfully they let me work on some ideas I had for applications to modernize things (writing in PHP and C#) but ultimately the low pay and lack of any bright future for the technology started getting to me (I was there for just under 3 years). Not to mention a 1 hour train commute each way (from downtown Philadelphia into the suburbs).

I started answering calls from recruiters and researching companies downtown. A recruiter told me about this place called OneTwoSee which does sport stat visualization/game trackers etc entirely using modern web technologies and node on the backend. The place was just a block away from my apartment. I shot out that I was looking for about $20k more than I was making at Unisys and the recruiter thought it was certainly reasonable. I wasn't a javascript expert at all, but I had been working an HTML5 app for fun to learn. I almost got turned away by the company after they saw a lack of modern web stuff on my resume. I e-mailed them back explaining what I had been up to in my spare time and they decided to give me a shot for an interview after all. Had two interviews, one was an intro and the other was more technical testing core javascript skills. Lo and behold I got the gig and have been working here for a year and a half. Great people (small team), great environment, great technology, great commute, great pay, great incentives (bonuses), great opportunity to grow. Couldn't ask for more.

If I hadn't been adamant about my skills and my personal project in the very beginning I would never have even gotten an interview. So don't be afraid to speak up! Find something you're really passionate about and develop it in your spare time. Don't be afraid to show it off at an interview.

Another tip: When talking to a recruiter, don't feel you need to expose your current salary to them. Just tell them how much you are looking for. I was pressured very much by the recruiter to expose that information. I did not want to set any baseline for them to consider other than what I thought I was worth. The pressure was high, to the point where she threatened I would not get the job unless I told her. Having a talk with my interviewer directly about it I was reassured that this would not be a problem and that they didn't like working with recruiters for reasons like this.

With a little effort, persistence and a lot of passion, you can do anything.

Re: Ask HN: How did you get to your current job/startup?

#70

Post by hookshot »

I started learning HTML / PHP when I was 14. It took me 10 years to get decent at it. I dropped out of school when I was 15. I worked odd jobs; settled on working as a bike mechanic. Did that while doing random programming gigs on the side.

A few years ago I worked at a bike shop where I was salaried and the owner wasn't paying overtime. After working way too many unpaid hours in a week, a pointed out that it was illegal. Ended in a 'well prove it' argument so I did. Got my overtime, then left the company since it was super stressful and uncomfortable after that.

After that I pushed shopping carts at Lowes all day, then came home and practiced programming and did random Odesk jobs. It sucked. At this point I finally learned enough OOP and Mysql that everything clicked and I started learning a lot faster from there.

Another bike shop finally had an opening, so I went there. I moved on to a sailboat and saved enough money to try freelancing. I did freelance work for a while. After that I tried to start an IoT startup. The stress totally destroyed me and I was broke. After our big contract fell through, I applied to a local software company and got the job. Did that for a while and now I write software for a startup in the bay area.

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