Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The surreal experience of my first developer job

bennuttall.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

221–230 of 278 posts

Re: The surreal experience of my first developer job

#221

Post by KptMarchewa »

themolecularman wrote: post #207
selestify wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You continued to work for 3 months without getting paid?

To be honest I don't pay attention to my paychecks. I work in Silicon Valley and have things direct deposited into my bank account, which I never check. Theoretically, my current (and past) employers could have left out a dozen paychecks and I may not have noticed. I don't think it's that unusual. If he doesn't have any money in his bank account it may be more noticeable.

Don't you have any notifications for transfers? People could steal your identity or card details and you wouldn't even notice?

Re: The surreal experience of my first developer job

#222

Post by texasbigdata »

intrasight wrote: post #197

Mine was pretty surreal also. I wrote software for the control room of nuclear power plants. Went with the crew that installed the hardware and software in the first plant. Turned it on, and the first words out of the plant managers mouth was "that can't be right".

Did you fix it????

Re: The surreal experience of my first developer job

#223

Post by holografix »

I know I’m stating the obvious here and please believe me when I say I mean no disrespect to the stories shared.

If you’re working for a small/unknown/“shady” etc business demand frequent payment for work done.

Ask to receive payment every week or every fortnight.

Default to “no” for any promises of future payments or “options/equity” etc. If it’s not cash in your bank account you are trading an immediate tangible good (your service) for an intangible promise.

Be aware of short (3-6 months) contracts with an acceptance criteria and payment at the end. Stipulate fortnightly milestones that accommodate some variability in what you deliver and that are met with payment.

No payment then no more work until payment resumes.

Re: The surreal experience of my first developer job

#224

Post by Aeolun »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #92
Aeolun wrote: post #55

Contrary to most of the posts I read here, my first developer job was actually amazing. I just learned a bit of webdevelopment during my studies and liked it, then managed to get a part-time job while still at university. The company was started a few years before by 3 friends that studied physics and astronomy, but pivoted to software development for reasons I’m not sure about any more. Literally every employee ther…

Anecdotally, after participating in some mentoring programs I believe most junior developer jobs in 2021 are actually quite good. At least among the mentoring cohorts I’ve mentored. I think developer salaries have risen a lot since many of these negative anecdotes took place. The higher salary expectation for local developers has pushed a lot of the sketchy small shops to look for outsourcing opportunities for their…

> people who start in bad jobs tend to thrive when they’re hired into a normal, well-run company and realize just how much better it is.

There is something to be said for the amount of skills you get by running 12 hours a day.

Re: The surreal experience of my first developer job

#225

Post by Aeolun »

suction wrote: post #175
Aeolun wrote: post #55

Contrary to most of the posts I read here, my first developer job was actually amazing. I just learned a bit of webdevelopment during my studies and liked it, then managed to get a part-time job while still at university. The company was started a few years before by 3 friends that studied physics and astronomy, but pivoted to software development for reasons I’m not sure about any more. Literally every employee ther…

In Japan, the chance of working for a Yakuza front company are extremely high, unless it's really a multi-billion big corporation, organised crime is involved everywhere.

This one was a US company. Since I knew everyone involved, I’m fairly certain we weren’t a front for the Yakuza. It was fun though, had lots of freedom and could do anything I thought necessary.

Re: The surreal experience of my first developer job

#226

Post by dennis_jeeves »

voidfunc wrote: post #214
karmicthreat wrote: post #99

My first paid developer job was writing backend code for what I would later learn was the Canadian mafia. I was doing some backend and embedded work to build super shitty gambling kiosks for them. They already had some person "managing" project and the Indian contract house that was building flash games for the kiosk. He was useless, so I was stuck figuring everything out. Including getting things running on a then o…

Is the Canadian mob polite at least?

They will apologize for not robbing you ...

Re: The surreal experience of my first developer job

#227

Post by Izkata »

JohnBooty wrote: post #130
mrweasel wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There’s a Canadian mafia?

If you think the idea of a Canadian mafia is funny... You may be positively tickled by the fact that the maple syrup industry is controlled by a cartel like group that may be mafia-adjacent and there have been high-stakes maple syrup heists. https://www.google.com/search?&q=mafia+maple+syrup https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Canadian_Maple_Syrup_Hei... It's no joke, of course. That's precious stuff. And where there…

Black-market maple syrup made it into an episode of Elementary (5x13, "Over a Barrel" - while investigating a murder they find a street gang had switched from smuggling cocaine to smuggling syrup because it was more profitable)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elementary_(TV_series)

Re: The surreal experience of my first developer job

#228

Post by tintt »

karmicthreat wrote: post #99

My first paid developer job was writing backend code for what I would later learn was the Canadian mafia. I was doing some backend and embedded work to build super shitty gambling kiosks for them. They already had some person "managing" project and the Indian contract house that was building flash games for the kiosk. He was useless, so I was stuck figuring everything out. Including getting things running on a then o…

Mob is hiring backend guys now, brave new world

Re: The surreal experience of my first developer job

#230

Post by sombremesa »

holoduke wrote: post #135

My first job as a developer was a gift from heaven. I started as a non educated pho developer. I hardly knew the concept of OOP. A very talented smart colleague took care of me for about 4 years. He reached me everything. From PHP to C to high and low level programming. Without him I would be in a very different situation. After that first job I got a decent job at another company. Few years later I was able to start…

A pho developer? Hope they have you company hoisin.
Post reply on HN