Thanks for this post, as others commenters said, it really resonated with me.
A teenager's guide to avoiding actual work
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Re: A teenager's guide to avoiding actual work
#22I’d be curious to hear opinions on how much he should have asked for—what could he have gotten away with and still landed the job? Would $1,000 (in 1982 money) have been too much?
I think he picked a good number. It clearly wasn't $1000 of effort. Jim may not have been interested in hiring someone who, like his previous software guy, was looking to shake him down for as much as possible.
Re: A teenager's guide to avoiding actual work
#23I love stories like this. I have one of my own, actually.
When I was first getting into IT I started sending out CVs. Mine was terrible. I had been working in call centres for years at this point and all my "experience" was basically self-taught, so not really experience at all. As a result my CV was void of any actual content a hiring manager in IT would want to read, thus it was binned a lot.
I applied for a job at a nearby network hardware repair place. They needed someone to look after their Cisco kit and about 30 Debian Linux systems. I was attracted to the mix of responsibilities so I applied, sending in me not-so-good CV. I was eventually asked to come in to have a chat after waiting about a week to hear back from the place.
At the end of the interview, Bob (let's call him), said I was more knowledgeable than the RHCEs that were coming through his door. This was nice to hear, but then he said something that really made me smile...
Apparently my CV was worse than I thought. It was so bad, that Bob literally put it in the bin under his desk. About four days later, Bob was reading through a local Linux User Group (LUG) mailing list and he saw a name he recognised: mine. So he opens the email and reads the thread in which I helped another LUG member compile a sound driver for their kernel. The instructions I gave worked.
Bob was impressed but he couldn't quite remember where he had seen the name. At this point the business owner, John (heh...), was standing besides Bob's desk and noticed my CV in the bin. He pulls it out and reads my name across the top. The penny drops for Bob and I get the call to come in and have a chat.
I got the job.
Re: A teenager's guide to avoiding actual work
#24Loved this one. When I was mid-20’s I found myself in a “how much” situation as well. Thankfully I had the gumption to “go for it.” I had found a solution to save the business 100k+ when another contractor charged 10k+ and failed to complete a job because the business couldn’t pay them any more. The thing is, once I started digging into it, the other contractor had done 95% of the work; It just needed a nudge to get…
That's just economics. It's just like Apple or Samsung "magically" deciding that the price to fix your broken screen is just slightly under what it costs to buy the same phone used.
Old fashioned economics ;) http://happyplanetindex.org/
Re: A teenager's guide to avoiding actual work
#25Key quote which shows that this young person was a problem-solver, even if his computer skills weren't elite: > I created a “good” BASIC file from scratch [...] Then I compared it to one of the “bad” ones.
I was GOING TO comment this. He was a teenager and found a solution no one else has found. That's some great problem-solving skills if you ask me.
> GOING TO
... mate :P
Re: A teenager's guide to avoiding actual work
#26Brings back the days of my youth in about the same era. We had a recession on in my country at the time that made student jobs in the tech industry scarce and I ended up working in landscaping during the summer to try to meet the tuition bills. One of our jobs was at the site of a rapidly expanding local tech firm (the telecom monopoly had just been forced to open the market to allow competition and the industry was beginning to boom). I remember digging holes for planting trees and looking through the tinted glass windows at a couple of guys in their white shirts and ties sitting at a terminal and thinking "some day I'll be on that side of the glass". Sure enough, after 40 years, I work for a company with offices that overlook that same building. The trees I planted are large and mature, I managed to eventually pay for my education, and I never forget my roots as I sit down at a terminal window.
Re: A teenager's guide to avoiding actual work
#27I’d be curious to hear opinions on how much he should have asked for—what could he have gotten away with and still landed the job? Would $1,000 (in 1982 money) have been too much?
I think he picked a good number. It clearly wasn't $1000 of effort. Jim may not have been interested in hiring someone who, like his previous software guy, was looking to shake him down for as much as possible.
I agree. Anything higher and he might have got paid, but not got offered the job.
The fact he DID get the job means he got the better deal in the long run.
Re: A teenager's guide to avoiding actual work
#28The luck and the postscript really resonated with me. For more than 30 years now, I've been telling people I hit the jackpot: Computer programming is something I'm really good at, that I enjoy doing and that pays really well. Very few people get all three. I had to work summer jobs though, starting at 15: road crew, pounding spikes on the railway, lumberjack. I'm not sure I would have been better off for not having t…
The author said in a postscript that he was worried about seeming elitist. I didn't think it was elitist at all, and I completely understand why it was a good choice for him to write BASIC code.
However, I also did manual labour in the summer when I was ~20. There was nothing wrong with it. I would certainly recommend a brief stint of it to a young person, especially if you are training towards a sitting down/talking type job.
You are outdoors, you end the day physically tired but with mental and emotional energy for other things. You gain skills and improve your health and fitness. There's usually a good atmosphere among the workers. And you get to point at something concrete and say 'I helped put that up/knock that down/repair that'.
Re: A teenager's guide to avoiding actual work
#29Ok but… why? Does anyone have enough knowledge to speculate why that bit would prevent you from reading the code?
Re: A teenager's guide to avoiding actual work
#30I really liked this story, and it resonated with me. My programming career began in much the same way, at about the same time. The only non-computer job I've ever had was my first, a six-week stint at a Burger King, and I was desperate to never do that again. I undersold my skills often, and got in over my head just as often. It was a great, if sometimes painful, learning experience.
When and how did things change, if I may ask?
If by "change" you're asking, "when did I stop underselling myself and getting in over my head" then I am not sure I could identify a single point in time where that happened. It's been an improvement on a continuum.
Those early years certainly felt painful but in retrospect provided valuable concrete experience in negotiating, marketing, and self-assessment. I learned how to figure out what others really wanted, how much they should be willing to pay to achieve their goals, and (probably most importantly) whether or not I could deliver. That period of time, when computers were exploding into small businesses, was a little magical when it came to freelance programming.
Now, ~40 years later, I find myself applying those learned skills at my current job every day. I got lucky.
My apologies if I misunderstood your question and blathered on about something else.