Do what you're doing right now — ask lots of questions! Especially if you get stuck!
Ask HN: Tips for students before starting their first job
11–20 of 179 posts
Re: Ask HN: Tips for students before starting their first job
#12> And whats your best tip for life in general?
This will sound snarky given the context, but my best tip is to stop looking for personalized advice for common problems.
You haven’t given enough details to for anyone to seriously tailor their advice to you. So it’s just going to be generic. And if you’re willing to go with generic, you can do better than what fits into a comment on HN.
You could get the same advice much faster by googling the same question and looking at threads. You could find authors that seem respected and find out what they say about the matter.
If you’re going to go for personalized, share as much as you can. Fit as many details as you can while still keeping it organized. If your question is worth asking, ask it all the way.
And, this applies a ton in programming. You’ll be much faster if you learn to do as much as you can pulling from resources, and then pushing a great question when you need to.
Re: Ask HN: Tips for students before starting their first job
#13Have an open mind to do work that's not your job by definition.
Those are the kind of people who become indispensable for a company and it'll help you when you become an entrepreneur.
Re: Ask HN: Tips for students before starting their first job
#14My pro-tip for when you land your first job:
You'll be tempted your first week to "clean up" the code you find there. Don't.
Re: Ask HN: Tips for students before starting their first job
#15You will be judged on how you look, how you speak, how well you write, and what you produce. You need to make an effort on all four. In every group, some will take advantage of you, some will sabotage you, some are bullies, and some you can trust. Your best strategy is to recognize them as early as possible.
[deleted]
Re: Ask HN: Tips for students before starting their first job
#16Find different ways to collaborate with others on software. Learn how to review code and how to respond when your code is critiqued. Contribute to medium-sized open source projects that are still maintained and have a fair number of users.
As for life in general: learn about personal finance. Once you’ve got a decent salary, you’ll need to know how to invest for retirement, save up for a house, pay down debt, etc.
Re: Ask HN: Tips for students before starting their first job
#17Figure out what other people are doing, and copy it. You might think they’re doing it wrong, or they’re inefficient, or whatever; just copy it and see if you can ask questions. Take a bit of time to get in the flow and understand the environment. You’ll find that together a lot of the strange decisions will make sense once you know the context. Some of them won’t, so when you have a little bit of clout try to politely suggest an alternative; if they listen to you that’s great! If not, see if they’ll let you document the rationale behind it. Overall, don’t come in pretending to be a know-it-all. Even if you are, it’ll hurt you either way.
Re: Ask HN: Tips for students before starting their first job
#18When you are new, say yes to everything. Stay busy, if you have nothing to do, ask for something. You want to take the load off your team members where you can to contribute & build some clout/respect. Find the most knowledgeable team member and shadow them. Real jobs are just college group projects that never end.
Except there's no recess and the grades count for more.
Re: Ask HN: Tips for students before starting their first job
#19You have about six weeks where you can ask otherwise outrageous questions and actually effect change. After that they will just think you are an idiot.
Re: Ask HN: Tips for students before starting their first job
#20When you are new, say yes to everything. Stay busy, if you have nothing to do, ask for something. You want to take the load off your team members where you can to contribute & build some clout/respect. Find the most knowledgeable team member and shadow them. Real jobs are just college group projects that never end.
> Real jobs are just college group projects that never end.
For a decent company, the differences are:
* The skill set of group members probably suits the tasks (e.g. some good at leading, some good at coordinating, some good at coding)
* The reward is real and can be life-changing. (e.g. becoming millionaires)
* The punishment is real (e.g. being fired)