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Ask HN: Tips for students before starting their first job

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Re: Ask HN: Tips for students before starting their first job

#171

Post by alexmingoia »

gfodor wrote: post #166
alexmingoia wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Starting a business can be a great way to earn more income, and the income potential is unlimited. My advice applies to whether one chooses to start a business or not.

Your advice is to use your savings to generate capital growth via the stock market via index funds. This isn't necessarily good advice. It may be, and it's common advice, but the books I mentioned explicitly advise against doing that.

My advice is living on 50% of income, and saving. It doesn’t matter if income comes from business or a job. Even if you don’t think index funds will grow, which is going against 100+ years of historical returns, you have to park money somewhere for capital preservation.

After saving one year’s expenses as cash in the bank, where would you park savings for low-risk passive capital preservation? Cash gets destroyed by inflation. Bond yields are too low. The historical track record of 20 years in a good stock index is unbeatable, no matter what year you started.

Where do you keep your savings, right now?

Even if you focus on growing capital by starting a business (what The Millionaire Fastlane recommends), you still have to park the profit somewhere.

Re: Ask HN: Tips for students before starting their first job

#172

Post by gfodor »

alexmingoia wrote: post #171
gfodor wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your advice is to use your savings to generate capital growth via the stock market via index funds. This isn't necessarily good advice. It may be, and it's common advice, but the books I mentioned explicitly advise against doing that.

My advice is living on 50% of income, and saving. It doesn’t matter if income comes from business or a job. Even if you don’t think index funds will grow, which is going against 100+ years of historical returns, you have to park money somewhere for capital preservation. After saving one year’s expenses as cash in the bank, where would you park savings for low-risk passive capital preservation? Cash gets destroyed by…

One of the points of the book is you aren’t going to “park” capital but instead hand it over to income generating investments.

Also, I’m in cash and private equity, whatever that’s worth. Have never owned an index fund.

Re: Ask HN: Tips for students before starting their first job

#173

Post by qntty »

learnstats2 wrote: post #101
qntty wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is all bad advice for this kid IMO. He's 19 and working as a research assistant, presumably part-time. I did that in college too. The people were nice and there was never a need to be at all guarded. The best thing he can do is get used to working on a schedule and try to figure out what interests him.

Has the parent post been edited? Because I don't see what bad advice you are referring to here. If you are working among people you trust, then this is all the better for learning an effective communication style, including saying 'no' or standing your ground. It's a safer environment than you will encounter later. In my experience, 'nice' and 'not guarded' people in modern academia might only be like that because th…

Unless the stakes are so high that you can't afford to mess up, the best way to "learn a communication style" is to do whatever comes naturally and wait to see what kinds of problems come up. Since the stakes are as low as they can be, I think a 19 year old's energy would be better spent on the sorts of things that will naturally draw their attention, namely the challenges of doing knowledge work on demand and the learning associated with the job itself.

This is just my take. I can say for sure that trying to learn about office politics would have been a terrible way for me to spend my time at 19. YMMV.

Re: Ask HN: Tips for students before starting their first job

#174

Post by szaroubi »

rschapman wrote: post #157

- Until you build a network job hunting is a numbers game. Be ready to apply to hundreds of places. - Be willing to move. During the great recession a lot of my buddies wanted to stay near home and it hurt them a lot. I moved across the country and have been the better for it. - Be thoughtful about your partner/spouse choices. I married admittedly younger than most do now but your long term partners/spouse will have…

- Be nice to as many people as you can. Your interviews start when you communicate to HR, walk thru the door and talk to the receptionist/ security guys. I used to ask them how potential hires treated them.

- Softskill are important, learn how to explain technical problems to non technical people. Try explaining CI/CD pipelines to your non tech friends and see if they understand.

- don't focus on tech all the time, try to understand why people around you are pushing for certain things that "don't make sense" ( there is usually a valid business reason).

- collaborate, don't say no, say "yes but here are the impacts" (it is not up to you/me/or a single person other than the CEO, to know if it is worth it to invest 2 months in what seems like a useless task).

Re: Ask HN: Tips for students before starting their first job

#175

Post by ivan1783 »

What worked for me: I got an internship at a big company in the field I wanted to work in. I stayed with that company throughout the entirety of my studies, I knew just about everybody in the company and had a list of job offers to choose from when I graduated. I declined all of them and moved overseas with the same company - was difficult to find but I managed it in the end. Had I wanted to stay in the US it would have been very easy to find work. Also, I graduated in a not so bad economic time - so I guess luck was part of it as well.

Re: Ask HN: Tips for students before starting their first job

#176

Post by paradox242 »

KineticLensman wrote: post #76
noir_lord wrote: post #56

> And whats your best tip for life in general? 1) Take copious notes (in whatever format works for you). 2) Confirm managers decisions with a recap email (especially when you disagree with them). 3) Understand that while you may not like politics (I don't) knowing how the game is played allows you to mostly stay out of it. 4) Work time is work time, learn to be productive and then go home and switch off . 5) Work fri…

> 5) Work friends are NOT friends. I have made some extremely good friends through work, including the individual who, outside my family, is the person who I still see that I have known the longest in my life (we started our new jobs at the same company on the same day, approx 35 years ago). The mistake is when your colleagues become your only friends. Changing jobs can see you lose your entire 'support network'. Alw…

I read this as a warning that while people at work may be "friendly" with you, they are not "friends", necessarily, though they certainly can become them. This means that one must be careful confiding certain comments or thoughts with people who are friendly, or you may find yourself thrown under the bus or find this information enter the public domain at your workplace. Young people may be particularly primed for this oversharing, and I think the warning is that it should always be carefully considered.

Re: Ask HN: Tips for students before starting their first job

#177

Post by Perenti »

Despite what courses you did, or how great your grades were, when it comes to working in the Real World, you know very little. I know that sounds really arrogant, but experience trumps qualifications. By showing that you know you have a lot to learn, and are willing to take the advice of the more experienced, you'll get on much better with your team.

This probably applies to any profession.

Re: Ask HN: Tips for students before starting their first job

#178

Post by pdm55 »

qntty wrote: post #90
noir_lord wrote: post #56

> And whats your best tip for life in general? 1) Take copious notes (in whatever format works for you). 2) Confirm managers decisions with a recap email (especially when you disagree with them). 3) Understand that while you may not like politics (I don't) knowing how the game is played allows you to mostly stay out of it. 4) Work time is work time, learn to be productive and then go home and switch off . 5) Work fri…

This is all bad advice for this kid IMO. He's 19 and working as a research assistant, presumably part-time. I did that in college too. The people were nice and there was never a need to be at all guarded. The best thing he can do is get used to working on a schedule and try to figure out what interests him.

Agree. The key skillset I needed to learn was to get along with people. Being nerds, we think we are always right. Hello! The truth is that there is often no one true answer. Learn to bite one's tongue. Still hard for me to do - but I look at my easy-going my friends and see that they have had a smoother journey through life, maintaining their jobs for much longer than me.

Re: Ask HN: Tips for students before starting their first job

#179

Post by SuoDuanDao »

DonHopkins wrote: post #139
KineticLensman wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 5) Work friends are NOT friends. I have made some extremely good friends through work, including the individual who, outside my family, is the person who I still see that I have known the longest in my life (we started our new jobs at the same company on the same day, approx 35 years ago). The mistake is when your colleagues become your only friends. Changing jobs can see you lose your entire 'support network'. Alw…

That's a good point. Here's an important corollary: Don't shit where you eat. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/don%27t_shit_where_you_eat That is, avoid getting into romantic relationships with people at work. And for God's sake don't think of work as a cruising ground for members of the appropriate sex(es). Sure, there's a chance both of you might simultaneously be two of the lucky ones for whom everything always goes…

I'm sure there is a connection to the Franklin quote, but I surely can't see it.
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