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A teenager's guide to avoiding actual work

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Re: A teenager's guide to avoiding actual work

#191

Post by noobermin »

I feel like honestly these days it's very hard for a similar story to happen. Software and computing is both much more sophisticated and locked down that you can't just open something and flip a bit and fix the world's problems. Modern software is too complicated. That aside, cheap programmers are a dime a dozen assuming you even need one. No used car salesmen need a custom hacker, they'll just buy quickbooks and pay up the wazoo for subscriptions or whatever.

That said, it probably hasn't been ever easier for kids and young people to pick up programming in general.

Re: A teenager's guide to avoiding actual work

#192

Post by TheSpiciestDev »

brazzy wrote: post #73

Apparently this is the "story time" thread, so here's mine, of how I hacked the Linux kernel without ever having written more than maybe 50 lines of C code. This was in early 2001, I was an exchange student in Japan, and I'd bought a really cool gadget in Akihabara that almost nobody had heard about: a hardware MP3 player. For storage, it used MMCs (precursor of SD cards), affordable ones held 32MB. To get music onto…

"The best code is no code at all."

Re: A teenager's guide to avoiding actual work

#193

Post by koilke »

criddell wrote: post #89
Pasorrijer wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This. This is why I always encourage people who I mentor to have a skills section. My first job I got the interview because at the time I was attempting to turn a snowmobile into a hovercraft. I had plans and everything. I put this on the resume. The first question in the interview? "Look, if nothing else we had to bring you in to ask. How the hell are you planning on turning a snowmobile into a hovercraft?!?" The pr…

When you are involved in hiring, it's surprising just how bad most resumes are. Have a single page of highlights that are going to make me want to talk to you. The interview is the time to go deep on details, if that's how the conversation goes.

As an outsider how sends resumes, it is difficult to know what a good resume is because one has not had the on hands experience of actually knowing what others are doing. Some searching on the internet may be helpful in the end but the jobs I got so far felt like blackboxes in the hiring process.

Re: A teenager's guide to avoiding actual work

#194

Post by TheSpiciestDev »

jmmcd wrote: post #2

Key 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.

This part resonated with me and took me back to when I was picking up PHP on my own and breaking apart a Wordpress installation, file by file, line by line, method by method. Has some good "first principle" vibes to it.

Re: A teenager's guide to avoiding actual work

#195

Post by alternatetwo »

brazzy wrote: post #73

Apparently this is the "story time" thread, so here's mine, of how I hacked the Linux kernel without ever having written more than maybe 50 lines of C code. This was in early 2001, I was an exchange student in Japan, and I'd bought a really cool gadget in Akihabara that almost nobody had heard about: a hardware MP3 player. For storage, it used MMCs (precursor of SD cards), affordable ones held 32MB. To get music onto…

This reminds me of something, too. My siblings and me often play a (now) old RTS - Battle for Middle Earth II - against AI. When these matches go on a while, sometimes it crashes when defeating an AI.

Well I looked at where it crashes, and simply nopped out the code where it crashes (it was a null pointer access I think) ... and we haven't noticed any weird effects of that so far ... one of these days I'll get around to making it an if (ptr) fix and see that happens then, but it is not this day!

Re: A teenager's guide to avoiding actual work

#196

Post by alvah »

ergot_vacation wrote: post #112
lifeisstillgood wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its weird how luck plays a part in all this - I remember as a Student temping for the giant Audit firm, Arthur Andersen (become accenture eventually). I was doing something like typing from one system to another. I think I found VBA and demonstrated how I could do a weeks work in a lunch hour. My boss took one look, freaked out and I was back at the Temping agency. We are still very far from a Software Literate socie…

Your story is probably the more common one by far. Most employers and managers (especially for starter/entry-level jobs) are incredibly insecure, and any sign of intellect or creativity scares them. I've learned the hard way to never ruffle feathers by trying to think or solve problems at full power on a job. Just do what's expected and move on.

I'm doubt much of this behaviour is driven insecurity / fear of intellect and creativity - it's mainly an incentive problem IMO. If I'm incentivised to keep an inefficient manual system going, I'll fight for that inefficient manual system until the bitter end. Sending a smart but non-business-savvy temp back to the temp agency is small potatoes.

Re: A teenager's guide to avoiding actual work

#197

Post by bntyhntr »

sircastor wrote: post #138
arrozconcosas wrote: post #120

I had two jobs in high school and learned a lot from them. In the first, I was a temp worker for a P&G re-packaging facility. This means some temp agency was paid $12/hour and they passed on $9/hour to me. The job was backbreaking, in intense heat, and with very strict management rules (e.g. no lunch break, sitting down for even a moment was grounds for being fired). In the second, I did lawn mowing for individual fa…

>> should have taken a semester off college to just do this full time This is very adjacent to what you're saying, but every time I hear this idea, I can only think that it's really taking an entire year off. Most of my courses were structured in a way that if you took a term out of the normal hierarchy, you'd have to wait until that course came around again at the same time the next year.

It's definitely highly variable by university and major. I know all the chem e people I went to school with suffered through the same track together, for the most part. But the comp sci program was much bigger and most core courses were offered both semesters or weren't serious blockers for other courses. And there were plenty of non-core classes to choose from to satisfy the in-major credit requirement.

On the other hand a friend's brother had to do an extra semester at a state school because a class he needed to graduate filled up before he got a chance to register.

Re: A teenager's guide to avoiding actual work

#198

Post by dhosek »

jimmaswell wrote: post #181
WalterBright wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had a parking light burn out on my car. Went to the car store, and a replacement bulb was $$. Perused the lamps on tags in the aisles, and found one that looked the same but had different "ears" on the side. Bought it, and filed off the ears so it would fit in my car's socket. Worked perfectly, for a small fraction of the price. Of course, my car is full of aftermarket parts, so I am used to making "adjustments" to…

I had to look up what a parking light is. It sounds totally unnecessary to me, but I'd say that about a lot of things put in cars after the 90s. Probably not important in this case since it's just a light for parking, but lights for cars cost more due to having to meet exacting DOT standards/testing. I wouldn't do this with a brake light or real headlight.

Parking lights are a lot older than the 90s. In Riverside, IL, they have "historical" streetlights that inadequately illuminate the streets (or at least did in the 70s). As a result, it was required if you were parking on the street in Riverside after dark that you left your parking lights on.

Re: A teenager's guide to avoiding actual work

#199

Post by toadi »

Nice stories. I just did the physical labor and hacked on my C64 as a hobby. Luckily I did the "unpleasant" physical labor and I learned to push through hard work.

Actually after 20 years working in IT I hade some successful own companies worked as contractor for others. It was nice but now I'm longing back to a honest days of work. I'm preparing to retire soon and building out a self sustainable farm, providing most needs I have. Hope to go back to "hacking" stuff for fun.

Re: A teenager's guide to avoiding actual work

#200

Post by jumpedwire »

3pt14159 wrote: post #132
cmos wrote: post #64

It was 1992 and I was a high school senior. My teacher got me a job at the local DPW in the electical department. I was to work in the warehouse under a guy named Al who was an old timer and lost his hand in a forklift accident 30 years prior. My job was to clean the warehouse, and when I was done Al told me to 'go hide somewhere' which I did, at the top of the shelves 20' in the air, which I had also cleaned. This g…

> saved the town millions by siphoning power from the local college at peak power demand. I'd like to hear more about the details of how this worked. Did the college have its own power source like a research reactor? Was this technically legal or in some part of a grey area?

I think cogeneration (cogen) plants are fairly common for colleges / universities. In addition to generating electricity for the camps, they often generate heated and chilled water for building heating and cooling purposes. That water is pumped throughout the campus and into the HVAC system for individual buildings. I've worked for two of the larger universities in my state and both were largely dependent upon the local cogen plant for all of these services.
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