Ask HN: Tips for students before starting their first job • Hacker News Board

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

#31

Post by lnsru » Sat, Jun 13, 2020, 8:36 AM UTC

ergocoder wrote: post #20

adingus wrote: post #6

When 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)

Being fired is very normal procedure in current corporate world. You loose game of office politics and you are out. Maybe not immediately, but with next downsizing wave. Shouldn’t happen in decent company, but nobody is perfect.

Becoming millionaire as a salaried employee is a pipe dream. Company owner will become millionaire, salaried employee will get yearly 10% bonus. In decent company maybe 20%.

I agree on skill set, but I saw many different things like electrical engineers writing C# code because manager wanted this.

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

#32

Post by mattlondon » Sat, Jun 13, 2020, 8:37 AM UTC

Beat advice I can give you is to be endlessly positive and do whatever they ask you to do as well as you possibly can even if it is not what you want. If on your first day they give you a mop and a bucket and direct you to the toilets, then be damned sure you make those toilets the cleanest they've seen.

Silly example I agree (they won't ask you to clean the bathrooms... probably), but demonstrating a strong work ethic will get you noticed and earn you a good reputation that will pay back many times in the future.

I've had interns who get surly and moany when they don't get asked to work on machine learning to cure cancer and turn lead into gold, but got asked to fix some unit tests or something else unglamorous. They become a real pain to work with because you know they'll complain about whatever you give them so you end up just giving them scraps or at worst basically giving them nothong and letting them spend their time on tiktok or whatever because it's less hassle than trying to satisfy their ego. Don't be that person who makes a fuss for being asked to do real-world work and you'll go a long way.

Good luck

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

#33

Post by vaylian » Sat, Jun 13, 2020, 8:53 AM UTC

rdiddly wrote: post #7

Other than school, which is sort of an anomaly, I find that the only thing that prepares you to do something is actually doing it. So the corollary is, you're never actually prepared for anything ahead of time. Don't worry about it, just trust yourself to either know or figure out what to do when the time comes. We make the path by walking.

Plus, OP shouldn't expect that the tasks that they get are always well thought through. In school you get assignments where the teacher already knows that a clear solution exists. In the real world your supervisor might work on flawed assumptions when giving you a task.

Also: The amount of effort needed for a task does not always correlate with the importance of the outcome. Sometimes big wins come easy and sometimes small wins are expensive.

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

#34

Post by ergocoder » Sat, Jun 13, 2020, 8:58 AM UTC

lnsru wrote: post #31

ergocoder wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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)

Being fired is very normal procedure in current corporate world. You loose game of office politics and you are out. Maybe not immediately, but with next downsizing wave. Shouldn’t happen in decent company, but nobody is perfect. Becoming millionaire as a salaried employee is a pipe dream. Company owner will become millionaire, salaried employee will get yearly 10% bonus. In decent company maybe 20%. I agree on skill…

> Becoming millionaire as a salaried employee is a pipe dream. Company owner will become millionaire, salaried employee will get yearly 10% bonus. In decent company maybe 20%.

In a typical FAANG company, you can simply stick to a job for like 4 years to earn a million USD (before tax). If you do well on top of that + stock growth, your compensation will sky-rocket.

There are 10 of thousands of employees reaches $1m in earning. Maybe it probably takes 4-5 years to save $1m. But it's not hard.

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

#35

Post by choeger » Sat, Jun 13, 2020, 9:02 AM UTC

Learn the foundations. Linux/Unix shells, C programming, debugging, how linking works, how you can disassmble something, how strace works, networking, etc.

The reason here is that all this low level stuff is the literal foundation of whatever abstraction (python, JVM, C#) your company uses. And while it is not directly applicable it will help you a great deal when things do not work. Be not the guy that says "I did everything like it is written in the manual and it it does not work". Be the guy that says, "looks like libfoo.so on my system here is ABI incompatible to the libbbar.so I downloaded. I think we need to recompile libbar.so to make it work, where is the source?"

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

#36

Post by s1t5 » Sat, Jun 13, 2020, 9:05 AM UTC

mattlondon wrote: post #32

Beat advice I can give you is to be endlessly positive and do whatever they ask you to do as well as you possibly can even if it is not what you want. If on your first day they give you a mop and a bucket and direct you to the toilets, then be damned sure you make those toilets the cleanest they've seen. Silly example I agree (they won't ask you to clean the bathrooms... probably), but demonstrating a strong work eth…

I would like to give the opposite advice. Learn to tell the difference between doing unglamorous work (which you'll need to do) and being taken advantage of by your employer.

> demonstrating a strong work ethic will get you noticed and earn you a good reputation that will pay back many times in the future.

No, this is an exception rather than the rule. Depending on your employer/manager, a strong work ethic may or may not be noticed. If it's noticed, it might even impact you negatively since you'll be the guy who can be abused and overworked in the future especially if you can't speak up for yourself. The other options are that nothing changes with your work ethic or that you're rewarded in some way. In the cases that you are rewarded, it's more likely that your employer is giving you meaningless tokens, praise and/or more responsibility rather than actual perks or increased compensation.

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

#37

Post by mschwaig » Sat, Jun 13, 2020, 9:21 AM UTC

mattlondon wrote: post #32

Beat advice I can give you is to be endlessly positive and do whatever they ask you to do as well as you possibly can even if it is not what you want. If on your first day they give you a mop and a bucket and direct you to the toilets, then be damned sure you make those toilets the cleanest they've seen. Silly example I agree (they won't ask you to clean the bathrooms... probably), but demonstrating a strong work eth…

I think an organization should be able to deliver on what it promises when hiring someone even to an intern and both parties expectations should be expressed in good faith as clearly as possible. Frankly if someone told me they were cleaning toilets unexpectedly in their software development internship my advice would be to look for ways to get out of that internship if they can because engaging with that company is clearly a waste of time.

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

#38

Post by fsloth » Sat, Jun 13, 2020, 9:22 AM UTC

choeger wrote: post #35

Learn the foundations. Linux/Unix shells, C programming, debugging, how linking works, how you can disassmble something, how strace works, networking, etc. The reason here is that all this low level stuff is the literal foundation of whatever abstraction (python, JVM, C#) your company uses. And while it is not directly applicable it will help you a great deal when things do not work. Be not the guy that says "I did e…

"Linux/Unix shells,"

On the other hand if the work is done on Windows it's much better to learn that platform than pining for something else.

Go with whatever is platform specific, and available out of the box. Avoid complex configuration packages just to get the specific interface flavour to the computational substrate you would prefer to use privately.

The reason is, if there is specific computational platform that the employer is using, you are much more helpfull to all around you if you operate with the vanilla settings rather than try to find something more special.

Privately try to find the best methods that work for you, in public, collaborating, try to find the most simple and straighforward method of contributing. Simple in this case does not mean a kludge, but it may mean a few extra lines of code or configuration here and there.

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

#39

Post by bprieto » Sat, Jun 13, 2020, 9:23 AM UTC

1.choose jobs for their learning potential, not their earning potential for the first years. This will pay off later.

2.be willing to change jobs if you don't have a clear chance of promotion inside.

3.be a likable person. Have a coffee with your colleagues, make small chat with your boss, ask about their lives, remember their families' names... In office politics it doesn't matter how good you are as much as how much people like you.

4.be your own advertiser. Probably no other person will be. Make sure that when you have a success everybody knows it was yours and what you did.

5.be willing to do more than your job's description, but don't be a pushover. Ask for compensation or recognition every time you do something beyond your duties.

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

#40

Post by fsloth » Sat, Jun 13, 2020, 9:25 AM UTC

bprieto wrote: post #39

1.choose jobs for their learning potential, not their earning potential for the first years. This will pay off later. 2.be willing to change jobs if you don't have a clear chance of promotion inside. 3.be a likable person. Have a coffee with your colleagues, make small chat with your boss, ask about their lives, remember their families' names... In office politics it doesn't matter how good you are as much as how muc…

"4.be your own advertiser. Probably no other person will be. Make sure that when you have a success everybody knows it was yours and what you did."

Yes! This! This does not mean false promotion. It means being able to express succintly and understandably that what you are good at. The world is drowning in noise. You do a disservice to everyone, including yourself, if you don't create a "personal brand".

It does not mean being obnoxious or pushing yourself. It just means you can explain clearly - when the need is - what you are good at in as few words that are as effective as possible.