Slashdot Mirror
Internships for Talented High School Students?
xeon4life asks: "I'm an Austin, Texas area high school senior with a slight dilemma: I need a job, I don't want what's offered at my age, and internships are not quite open for kids like me. I've recently been reading essays by Paul Graham about creating your own startup and have been motivated enough to convince two of my good friends to go into business with me later, during college. Thus, an internship at this point would be the ideal solution for me now, but nobody is willing to take me as an intern because I'm still in high school. What am I to do?"
"People have suggested that I just do what every other good American high school citizen does and take a mediocre job. The problem is, I feel it would be a waste of my talents right now to be stuck folding shirts at the local mall or flipping cheeseburgers when I could be helping develop a cutting-edge game, the next-generation compiler, or even the Linux kernel as an intern. I have a higher than most college students' understanding of concepts, and some real programming experience in languages like assembly and C/C++, but that isn't going to amount to anything if I can never find an interviewer who will at least listen to me. I'd appreciate any input the Slashdot readership can give me."
You're in high school. Get a date for the prom, and get a job at McDonalds. Has your school taught you anything about being a cog?
Worry about an internship in 2009.
One future, two choices. Oppose them or let them destroy us.
I am an owner of a small software shop and would live to provide internships to capable students, since currently we have more projects than we can deal with, but I hate the hassle of doing all the paperwork required by state, and also don't like the concept of minimum wage enforced by the state. Would much rather pay by the project.
But you might want to check Rentacoder.com and similar places where you can make some money for doing programming assignments that you choose. You won't become rich there, the Indians and Canadians are probably going to outbeat you pricewise, but stuff like requirement specs, communicating with the customers and figuring out the "real-world" software needs would be helpful.
If you're so smart, figure it out yourself.
Graduate!
Ya, radical idea I know.
So you really want an internship?
"and internships are not quite open for kids"
awww but I really wanna!
Welcome ot the real world!
Now go do something usefull on your own. Contribute to an open source project if your too high up to flip burgers. Thats the best your gonna get unless you can modivate someone who is actually out of highschool.
Best bet is you get a job as a mail clerk, I dont know if temp agencies will touch you but part time is available with that stuff. At least with that you'll get a good idea of what work will be like.
Internships don't pay that much, and apparently either you or your two friends are incredibly rich anyway. So forget the internship, and spend your time and talent working on an open source project or two. If it's your friends that are rich and not you, convince them to set up the company now and hire you as an intern for a measly salary.
One of the hardest things to figure out when you are starting something new is how to eat while you are still making the new project work. Since you presumably still live at home, that's not a problem for you. And since you are still in high school, it's not a point of embarassment to be living with your parents.
That means that you can work for cheap, REAL cheap, gaining experience that will help you out in the future. So, get out there and help out as many people as you can with your skills, and to hell with a "regular" internship for now. If you do a good job, they will recommend you to others.
Fascism trolls keeping me up every night. When I starts a preachin', he HITS ME WITH HIS REICH!
You're in high school. Get a date for the prom, and get a job at McDonalds.
They don't have a Prom in Texas, they have a year-end Rodeo with square-dancing afterwards. And they don't have McDonald's down there. All eating establishments serve steak and baked potatoes. They don't allow some pinko-liberal clown with his hamburglar ex-con side-kick serve burgers to children in the heart of God's country down there. And Grimace? That purple motherfucker would be shot on sight down in Texas.
Customers are the most discerning employers. Remember, in the end, it's the customer that pays you. Your boss is simply redistributing that revenue amongst its employees (minus expenses and reinvestment).
But again, your customer just cares about the product. They don't care if it was made by a team of Nobel prize winners, a bunch of high school kids, or a golden retriever.
Business isn't rocket science. If you're of legal age in which you could form an LLC, do it. Maybe take a mediocre side job to cover your expenses, but aside from that, do as the man says and strike it out on your own. You're in high school, so there's no risk. You're not mortgaging your future, have financial liabilites, dependents to support. Plus you have an entire summer to do what you want.
So do what you want and get started.
You can gain other important skills by other ordinary high-school jobs. You don't have to work at a burger joint, there's libraries, and even good entry level jobs at factories. Working third shift at a factory can be loads of fun (kinda dark and mysterious).
Also, commitments among friends in high school often end at graduation. Life gets more complex, and you can find no fault in your friends if they get a significant other or decide to change their focus in education (what if they get into a different college from you).
Don't grow up too fast. You'll feel like you're 65 and ready to retire by the time you're 25, so be careful.
If you're as technically competent as you're making yourself out to be, I bet you get requests to "make the Internet work" and whatnot all the time.
My advice? Charge those people for tech support. Even if you charge half of what the cheapest shop in town charges, you'll be making mad bank, and have uber-happy customers.
At least, that's what I did before I got my internship.
Which I didn't get until my junior year of college after four years of applying, even though I was qualified for all of those four years. The truth of the matter is that it's just damned hard to get an internship as a high school student.
In summary: Charge for tech support, make mad bank, and hold off on the internship until you're an undergrad.
OMG! Wau!
I got my first internship at Applied Materials when I was sixteen and in High School, but that was only because they had a seed program for 16-18yr. olds of employees that worked there (my dad worked there as an electrical engineer).
I need a job, I don't want what's offered at my age, and internships are not quite open for kids like me.
Realise that a lot of qualified adults have difficulties finding work, and then understand why "I don't want what's offered" is arrogant.
I've recently been reading essays by Paul Graham about creating your own startup and have been motivated enough to convince two of my good friends to go into business with me later, during college.
People can change a lot during college. You are being naive if you think such plans are in any way dependable, and dishonest if you are just saying things like that to show off.
Thus, an internship at this point would be the ideal solution for me now, but nobody is willing to take me as an intern because I'm still in high school. What am I to do?"
Your first step is realising that nobody but you and your parents care what the ideal solution for you is. You need to look at what the ideal solution for employers is, and then fix what you are missing.
"People have suggested that I just do what every other good American high school citizen does and take a mediocre job. The problem is, I feel it would be a waste of my talents right now to be stuck folding shirts at the local mall or flipping cheeseburgers when I could be helping develop a cutting-edge game, the next-generation compiler, or even the Linux kernel as an intern.
If you don't want to waste your talents, then apply yourself to an open-source project instead of expecting to get paid for doing something in a professional capacity that you have no prior experience doing.
yea.... I wonder why they dont like to hire "talented high school" kids for internships.
Why is it that 90% of people responding to Ask Slashdot posts just slam the poster instead of providing any useful info? I was in Austin recently, and I did see some people that weren't wearing ten-gallon hats and spurs. Anyway, for the OP:
Are you sure that there are no suitable internships for you? I interned once a week during high school for three years. This was a program my school had in place for all students grades 10-12, but I didn't like any of the internships they already had to offer, so I sent a letter to a local government research organization, and they found me a spot. I would suggest treating this like a job hunt -- find places you'd like to intern and send letters asking if they've got anything. Also, assuming you're starting college next year, you may want to look into co-ops; most colleges have such programs as a way to allow students to gain experience before graduation.
Seriously, just go work at McDonalds or whatever. Many talented geeks suffer later in life because they don't build their interpersonal skills. Spend the summer doing something you aren't automatically good at - for me, that's anything involving actual physical work - with people you wouldn't otherwise interact with.
I promise you you'll gain enormously from this experience; first of all you'll come to respect the dignity of the average working joe, and secondly you'll get better at forming good relationships with the non-geeks of the world. This is a useful talent. They outnumber us.
If you're as smart and as driven as you sound, that won't wear off over the summer. I promise you the human skills you'll get from working a McJob for a while are a real benefit. And that won't hurt you when you come to apply for those internships in a few year's time.
Just go find a normal job in the field. It will be easier to find, and don't pay any attention to the other idiots on this posting (just this one idiot). Apparently, all they can do is offer meaningly words of criticism.
what makes you think you are talented?
if you are high school, why don't you go out and enjoy it?
-- Bryan
You're very young, live while you can! Otherwise, you may end up like Mr Gorsky:
On July 20, 1969, as Commander of the Apollo 11 Lunar module, Neil
Armstrong was the first man to set foot on the Moon. His first words
after stepping on the Moon were, "That's one small step for man, one
giant leap for mankind." The words were televised to Earth and heard by
millions around the world. But just before he re-entered the Lunar
lander, he made enigmatic remark, "Good luck, Mr. Gorsky."
Many people at NASA thought it was a casual remark concerning some
rival Soviet Cosmonaut. However, upon checking, there was no Gorsky in
either the Russian or the American space programs.
Over the years many people questioned Armstrong as to what the "Good
Luck, Mr. Gorsky" statement meant, but Armstrong always just smiled.
On July 5, 1995, in Tampa Bay, Florida, while answering questions
Armstrong following a speech, a reporter brought up the 26-year-old
question to Armstrong. This time he finally responded. Mr. Gorsky had
died, so Neil Armstrong felt he could answer the question.
In 1938, he said, when he was a kid in a small Midwest town, he was
playing baseball with a friend in the backyard. His friend hit the ball,
which landed in the neighbor's yard near the bedroom windows. His
neighbors were Mr. and Mrs. Gorsky.
As he leaned down to pick up the ball, young Armstrong heard Mrs.
Gorsky shouting at Mr. Gorsky.
"Sex, you want sex?! You'll get sex when the kid next door walks on
the Moon!"
When I was in high school I somehow avoided real jobs and got into early multimedia-type projects (mostly Hypercard... not sure how anyone made money doing that, but hey). I was actually more interested in programming and other hackery, but couldn't get a job doing that.
Eventually I got to work in video editing as people starting bringing computers into that realm, where I had the fantastic job of post-processing TV shows frame-by-frame to see if it was possible. The most computer-intensive work I did was writing scripts to rename large directories of files so they'd import into the video printer properly. Ugh.
Point being: you'll never get to do what you really want to do, but what you don't necessarily want to could be far more exciting than you realize. Get paid $10/hour doing low-level grunt work, just so long as you're NEAR a computer, you'll get bloody invaluable experience in real-world work.
I never did learn to be a real programmer, but I learned that I much prefer doing a mix of entertainment and coding anyway. Don't close any doors at this stage.
The world's only surviving livewriter.
almost all of the community colleges in my area (maricopa county, az) allow high school students (at least seniors) to sign up and take classes. i was taking classes through one as a high school junior. see if you can do that. boom, now you're in college
... imo, his 'success' has gone to his head and he now lives in a fantasy world. before i started working with computers, i painted houses and washed cars. both of those jobs taught me valuable life and career lessons a computer-related internship never would. plus, jobs like that are fun. you're still young ... have some fun before it's too late
as for joel's "advice"
vodka, straight up, thank you!
Most people doing internships do so because they plan to go into a field where experience is required to get a job that gets you the experience you need to be considered for the job (vicious how that works). If you are planning to go the startup route with a couple friends, you don't need an internship.
I'd say get together with those friends, figure out what you want to do, check to make sure you really can, and then if everything looks good, get that startup going now. If the problem is seed money (though if you can accept that your company will be paying you $0 until it has a revenue stream, you might not need it) you may want to consider something like http://www.rentacoder.com/ or some other means of getting both money and real world experience on smaller projects that you find interesting.
Remember RFC 873!
Do like everyone else does. Start at the bottom and WORK your way up. You can work for cheap. Cash too!
Get a summer job scratching a programmers back and fetching him coffee for $0.25/hr.
Ask plenty of questions and show him your crappy code. Next summer mabe you will get minimum wage.
And lie about your age and diploma. If you really want the experience that will make you a successfull entrepreneur in 21st century America, then this process will get you an internship at the type of company where you will be able to learn the most; both mistakes and solutions through bending the truth when it is profitable to do so.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
God created the universe in six days, not seven.
If you are really that talented you should have no problem doing this. This has several advantages over a real internship. For instance, most interns don't hack any kernels or optimize any compilers. With this though you've got some leeway and choice.
Why not fork?
Then he cracked open a beer and farted around on the seventh. (BTW, God isn't a 'he', even in the original language of the Bible! Take that Bushies!)
I started my internship at Intel during the last half of my sophomore year in high school. I was allowed one day a week to work at Intel during the school year. During summer that went up to a normal five days a week. This lasted until I finished high school and the summer after, total about 2.5 years. Quite frankly, I could not have cared less if I got paid, that was icing on the cake! I worked in customer support with the group that maintained (at the time) the BBS, the CompuServe forums and driver downloads, TalkBack, FaxBack and support.intel.com website (very primitive at the time).
I spent my time writing programs that would munch on log files from the website, test the BBS, TalkBack and FaxBack by dialing the direct hunt group numbers and see if the box answered. I learned so much so fast I felt like my head was going to explode. I learned the true horrors of cube life in my comfy 6x9 sometimes feeling like poor Milton. I had access to CD burners back when they were rack mountable 1x writers.
My grades in school were nothing special, okay in some classes, no problems in math. Flexible teachers/school and an Intel employee who was a friend willing to take a chance on me was all it took for this to happen for me. Once I established this at my school it became a normal thing, where anyone who could get/wanted an internship would be allowed to use that day.
Call the compan(y/ies) you want to work with, see if there is something that can be worked out. Talk with people at your school. You don't have to be in college to have an incredible internship.
First, I must apologize for the reception you've received to your question thus far. The ONE THING someone your age needs above all else is encouragement, which is something sorely lacking in most of the answers I've read. The fact that you stated your experience isn't bragging; you're trying to make it clear what direction you want to go in. I'm appalled at some of the things that have been said to someone who is actually going out and doing something with their life. (Jealousy that they did not, perhaps?) However... the silver lining is that such a response *will* help prepare you for the real world, which is unfortunately much like this at times. Don't let it discourage you; keep going anyway, and with just a little luck, you WILL succeed. Taking moronic insults and banter like this personally is pointless and a waste of time. File it away in the "This person is unreasonable and will waste my time" folder, and keep moving.
I can tell you from direct experience that there are MANY opportunities available to someone your age. I'm not familiar with the state of things in Texas, but everywhere I've tried (California, Florida, New York), there are always many people out there who see something of value in a kid with drive, and technical interest/ability. What I'm about to tell you about will work for getting you either a job or an internship (I've gotten many of both this way), though it may take a little tweaking based on your area and specific use. What it really boils down to is drive and determination, but some good planning beforehand can greatly reduce the amount of wasted time.
First, make a list of all of the different types of things you can think of that you might want to do, later in life. Obviously, you're going to want to make sure your internship matches your potential career(s), so this first step is important.
Next, come up with a list of ANY company in your area you can think of that might offer jobs in this same field. The fact that you're currently focussing on getting an internship instead of a job is irrelevant right now; a good internship requires the job that will support it to exist.
Now pull out a pencil, your computer, or whatever your favorite writing tool is and write yourself a script. Short, to the point, but cheerful and polite are the rules, here. "Hi, my name is Bob Smith, and I'm interested in interning/working for your company. May I speak with your hiring manager/HR department to discuss this?" Etc. Try it out on your parents, teachers, etc. Ask them to find ways to answer "No" and hang up on you, then eliminate those questions from your script. Remember that your script is just your plan, and that it will need to be flexible. You know, strategy vs. tactics. Testing it out on people will help show you which parts will likely progress normally, and which can go in any direction. Try to avoid questions that *can* be answered with a "No": "Hi, my name is Bob Smith, and I'm very interesting in interning in your department. I'd love to come in and chat with you about the possibility. I'm free this Thursday and Friday, anytime after 3:30 pm. When is best for you?" See? No way to say "No" without changing the conversation around.
Once you've got something that will allow you to get what you want without being too forceful, start calling up the companies on your list. It's fine to read from the script, though by now you'll probably have it memorized more than you'd ever want to anyway. Call, call, and call some more. If you get a nibble, don't go nuts and scare them off, but definitely show interest and drive. Remember, in their eyes, you're just an irresponsible kid. There's plenty of reasons NOT to hire you or take you on as an intern, so show them why they should. Don't be pushy, but show that you're not a flake, and that you have what it takes. If you get something good, congratulations! If not, don't give up. This WILL require many calls just to get the hang of it, and many more to be successful. Call the least
Cluestick 1:
Do some reading on how your favorite "hero" got started.
Did Michael Dell do internships?
Did Bill Gates?
What about Richard Stallman? Linus Torvalds?...etc.
Look at how others have succeeded and emulate.
Cluestick 2:
Do something you love passionately (irrespective of economic constraints), because whatever you succeed at doing, you will probably be doing for a long time (refer to bio of your preferred hero).
Cluestick 3:
Your parents are your allies and can provide much better advice for you than any of us know-it-alls on slashdot. Give them a shot.
If making money is not a necessity. Approach what you consider the "ideal" successful business (the one that would look good on your resume) in your area and offer to work for free if necessary. You might be suprised that after a while they might offer you employment, especially if you treat it like a real job despite the lack of pay. As in no showing up just when you feel like it or generally making a goof of yourself.
Regardless of the outcome, you will get to "hang around" and pick up valuable real world business knowledge. From the businesses perspective, it is a relatively low risk option to see if you are worth their time.
Logic is not Divine.
Some schools have a co-op program where you take classes one semester and work the next.
But, if you believe higher education really isn't in your best interest: I would say to get a day job as the others say (not too much, unless you have the kind of parents who will make you support yourself...), and to develop in some of your free time. If you are as skilled as you say you are, surely there is something that you can work on, some underdeveloped FOSS project somewhere that you can be of use on, or if you dare, start your own.
Now, here's the important part: document what you do. Again, if you say you can handle it, you should keep a list of features you implement, keep your patches, generally be able to demonstrate to an employer that you have a substantial understanding of what needs to be done to design and carry out a project.
(Disclaimer: I am taking the completely opposite road for myself. It is possible I am speaking out of my ass.)
Here's a kid who is a self proclaimed 'talented student' (perhaps he/she is parroting parents and teachers), and Slashdot calls him/her on it. It's a bit harsh, but I've grown weary about the sense of entitlement kids have. This isn't just a problem in the USA, either, as I've met people who taught in places like Korea, where families are widely becoming wealthier. Kids literally get by on nothing. People celebrate every little thing they do, reward them for every little thing they do, and it just turns them into worthless depressed blobs later in life. They find out that no one really cares about praising their trivial abilities that incur no real responsibility. People care about how other people can get shit done, on time, on budget, and with a smile no matter how crappy the work is. The projects where this isn't true are often doomed from the start, where the happy touchy-feely environment encourages malaise. I've been burned by this...and burned out because of it. Please, oh please, future generations, teach your kids how to be responsible adults!
I'm a high school student myself and I was faced with this same problem. However, I have decided that having money is better than no money at all, even if I'm doing something I hate--working at a Rite Aid for barely above minimum wage. However, I soon will have a great job at an IT company this summer if everything goes through. hahaha.
the Political Inquirer
I worked in a physics lab one summer and a chem.E lab the next. I got to play with computers, did useful work, and was offered a bunch of scholarships.
Lasers Controlled Games!
of course, I'm sure you know what that language is, right?
If you aren't desperate for a great paying job then volunteer (if you have to) somewhere. I am assuming you will be living with your parents which will give you some financial flexibility.
If there is a small College nearby, perhaps you can do some work for their computer services department. If not, there are other options such as consulting with local small businesses.
If you go in with the attitude that "I am smarter than most college students or graduates..." then most companies would be glad to show you the door. On the other hand, you could say "I need a job that challenges me, you don't have to pay me, and feel free to fire me if I let you down." If you are as intelligent as you claim to be, then they will see your worth and may make you a permanent fixture.
If money is an issue take a part-time menial job and do volunteer work part-time. You are young and can bounce back from being overworked (speaking from experience).
If you have exhausted all local brick and mortar possibilities there are other ways to get experience. I hate to sound like a broken record, but there are a lot of great (and not-so-great) open-source projects to get involved with. Start monitoring a project that interests you and lend a hand in whatever way you can. Even if you start out with something as simple as alpa or beta testing.
Hope that gives you some ideas. I wish you the best of luck.
/^([Ss]ame [Bb]at (time, |channel.)){2}$/
Get a crappy job (something hands-on with physical labor involved would be best - geeks don't get enough exercise, and it will do wonders for your sleep schedule and overall mental health). Whatever this big project is that you're envisioning founding a small company around with your two friends - do that on your own time while working at your crappy job.
Even if you don't succeed, you'll learn a lot. Assuming it's a pure software project and you've got some way of sleeping and eating (see crappy job above), you don't need an internship or any financial backing to get things going.
Since you're probably already good to go on your raw talents and skills, try to focus on the more businessy and/or professional areas of the project than you would naturally. By that what I mean is rather than just hack at it all day working in your head as it comes naturally to you, you should actually try do things like:
11*43+456^2
Note to self: don't skim next time.
It's your last chance (well, after college). Might as well enjoy it while you can.
My high school had an internship-like program.
Under capitalism man exploits man. Under communism it's the other way around.
I had the exact same problem when I was a senior in high school. I wanted to take a year off and intern at a university, but didn't know where to start. I had other friends who had interned over summers, but no one knew how I could get in for a year.
:)
I live in the Boston area, so I just started calling up universities. I was interested in physics, so I called up MIT, BU, Harvard, Tufts, Northeastern, etc. I made sure to talk with the chair of the department or someone high up. This is very important, otherwise you will become just another name on a secretary's post-it-note. You need to make sure that you sound interested, and talking to the chairman is the best way.
Some of the Universities were just looking for a way to say "no" to me nicely. Don't let that get you down though. Many of them wanted to help out but just didn't have the time/space.
I ended up interning at Tufts, and it was a wonderful experience. I was able to learn in a low pressure atmosphere, and it served as a great way of exposing myself to physics. I was a volunteer intern, but I could have gotten a $3000 grant or applied for credits, but I didn't. This reduced the stress and responsibility on me, which was exactly what I wanted
If you want to intern at a university I hope that what I said was helpful. However, If you go for a money making venture, all I can say is "good luck."
"Man, I am so unbelievably stupid."
Get a job at McDonald's, like everyone else. However don't treat it like a chore you need to get gas money. Work hard, and advance. They are always looking for management. Come home every weekend in college and to the Friday night, Saturday, and Sunday shifts. (Perhaps something in the middle of the week too, but don't put in too many hours) You need the experience of management, and McDonald's will give it to you.
While managing a restaurant is different from running your own business, you will learn some lessions that are important. You will learn to interview and hire people, you will learn how to keep customers happy after half the crew walks out, and you will learn how to make money (or at least not loose money) even on slow nights. When you go into business for yourself you will need to apply these lessions - though in a different way.
Once you get into the latter years of college you can get an intership, and quit McDonald's. Make sure you have learned the lessions they can teach first.
Internships cannot be had at your age. But for someone who wants to run his own business you get experience that a technical internship will never give you. You need both types of experience.
10 years latter I still get free meals when I go back. (Which isn't often, I'm still burned out on the food) I also know that there is a job waiting for me if I decide I hate programming. Sometimes I'm tempted to do it. (cute girls no longer have to talk to me, back then they did because I was the boss) Honestly, if I had stayed with McDonald's instead of going to college and getting a technical position, I would be making just as much now, and there is potential that I could advance even farther. Do not overlook these benefits. (Remember most companies fail in the first 5 years!)
First, I must apologize for the reception you've received to your question thus far. The ONE THING someone your age needs above all else is encouragement, which is something sorely lacking in most of the answers I've read
Nobody encouraged me and I went from poor white trash to upper middle class in less than ten years. I proved with code and hacks that I was a great programmer/technowiz.
Real geeks don't need external encouragment. Geeks hack and get things done for fun.
Instead of teaching humility with your reponse, you teach compassion. Good Job. A liberal reponse to a person who may not be qualified for the job at hand, but yet deserves one from your point of view.
FWI, compassion is for those who know and deserve another chance.
Another "I'm too good for just ANY job. I want a job that uses my skills." Usually you get this from a recent college grad. But hell, it's now being used by high school grads. What next? Pre-school grads complaining all they could do during the summer was help Mom water the garden?
Just because someone is in high school doesn't mean their code is crap. I'm in high school, and can easily program circles around guys who have been programming professionally for years. This isn't because I rock, but because overall I have more experience than they do. I've been programming since I was 8, and am now 17. Thats approximately 9 years of experience.
If you like what I've said here, and want to read more, go to http://www.krillrblog.com
The problem is, I feel it would be a waste of my talents right now to be stuck folding shirts at the local mall or flipping cheeseburgers when I could be helping develop a cutting-edge game, the next-generation compiler, or even the Linux kernel as an intern. I have a higher than most college students' understanding of concepts, and some real programming experience in languages like assembly and C/C++, but that isn't going to amount to anything if I can never find an interviewer who will at least listen to me. I'd appreciate any input the Slashdot readership can give me."
The problem is you think you need to ask slashdot what you should do? Your high school knowledge means squat. My son as a fith grader already outscored the nations eighth graders in all subjects by 110 percent. He is currently modding xchat to make it more secure/private for him and his friends.
What are you doing? If you have the knowlege to develop the next cutting-edge game or compiler wouldn't you be working on it now? A slashdot ID and your limited knowledge of C/C++/Assembler does not make you a technowiz. Knowledge without application has no value.
So go use your skills and build something. Theres plenty to do. Take the summer off and go code. I wish I could have when I was your age. I had to hack/build stuff in between flipping burgers and school. Whats your excuse for not doing so?
Congratulations. You bootstrapped yourself out of a situation that might have otherwise gone another way. But you missed my point entirely.
Bill Gates dropped out of high school to build a boat for sixty grand. He dropped out of college to found Microsoft. He did wonderfully, from a financial perspective, but I don't think that qualifies us to say that education isn't important to those who want to make it, out there in the real world. Gates got lucky, as you probably did to a certain extent as well.
My post wasn't intended to be compassionate. The point I was trying to make about encouragement was in response to many posts that ignored the topic entirely. There's a big difference between helping to find a solution and saying "Go find a prom date." or "People who live in Texas are idiots." I don't know whether or not the poster of this question is qualified or not, but knocking him down when he's genuinely asking for help is just plain stupid.
The fact that you did well in spite of your circumstances is great. But it sounds like you think everyone in your situation should be able to do the same thing. The world just doesn't work that way. If it did, poverty wouldn't exist. But it does, and not just for those who have no drive to succeed. MANY people out there are trying, and failing, because of bad luck, lack or available resources, and lack of support. Yes, one can make it without encouragement. But if you do any real research into child development, you'll learn that children (and teenagers and adults, for that matter) are simply more successful when given opportunities, and encouraged to use them. There's a reason why private schools with all the nice equipment and a lower student/teacher ratio are so expensive. It's because, with all of those resources, and the constant encouragement to take all of those things and USE them to make something of themselves, it's just more likely that they will succeed.
I hope you figure it out before you show your children that you care more about them being "real geeks" (or whatever) than you do about how well they actually do in life.
Yeah, if you're convincing, universities will hire you (sometimes). I'm doing an internship at UCSD this summer, and worked at SDSC (sdsc.edu) programming last year. If you're a convincing guy, you'll do fine :) University guys appreciate helpful high school kids.
- dshaw
Working a "regular" summer job will not help build interpersonal skills. Period. There is nothing about putting ona a fake smile while running the register or dropping a batch of fries in the deep fat fryer that will build you up as a character.
If you do not have decent interpersonal and social skills by the time you are in trouble all ready. If anything, i'd say "floating" aruond all summer would build better interpersonal skills. Not spending time in front of a deep fat fryer, but roaming around the area you live in, running into new people, taking risks, etc.
And if this kid _really_ wants something to do geek-related over the summer. Open source anybody? I had a meager contract job the summer after my senior year in high school, and just spent the entire summer fiddling around with various *BSDs.
The best opportunities you'll have out of high school you'll come across or even make yourself. (Social networking anybody?)
Error 407 - No creative sig found
Back in 1997 a (now) friend of mine started his own ISP at the age of 15. His family was poorer than dirt and his mom (only parent) was more dependent on him than he was on her. Even his brother and sister were down on their luck badly. He was determined and pulled it off. He colocated his equipment with my ISP for a fee and paid for phone lines to my building. Later when his business got bigger we even teamed up, running for many years before selling to a larger ISP/telecommunications company. We retain very nice jobs at this ISP to this day. It gave us a foot in the door, an opportunity we wouldn't have easily had for the lack of college experience. We have higher up jobs in the company than people with full college degrees.
I know a girl at 14 that started a website that within two years was bringing her in between $7000 and $11,000 a month. She had NO experience with programming or HTML, she used a program like Frontpage to do the design. By the time she finished high school she had college paid for, a nice new car, a nice expensive laptop, and money in the bank. Man I was jealous of her.
Why do you need to be an intern? If you have the will you can make something happen for yourself. There are many opportunities if you know where to look. You say you have c++ experience? Make a program, sell it or use it to show your abilities (I had a computer magazine publish a C64 program I wrote in high school.) Make a website to make money perhaps if you know how. Fix computers maybe (my high school paid me to fix their computers.)
I don't know your situation, but I assume you have a roof over your head that doesn't cost you money. Take this opportunity to start something of your own that may grow into something that does make money by the time you are out of high school. Why wait until college to do what you can do now?
That was a good thing you did dude. The poor kid was getting beat up by all the stupid jealous posts.
That was a nice gesture dude. The poor kid must have been disheartened by all the dumb posts out here. There should be more like you on /.
I think both sides of the coins are good to be heard though, the kid has to decide from himself. So I think the encouragement is good, but I side with the "go get that McDonald's job." Personally I don't speak from jealously. From the summer after my junior year all through senior year of high school and through my freshman year of college I worked as basically an intern (at least initially) for a web development shop. My initial position was like an intern, but from there I got my foot in and proved what an asset I was to the company. The biggest leg ups: it was in the early dot com days (getting tech jobs was easier), social network contact (how I found out about the position).
Looking back now I wish I had worked the dumb high school position. I was in too much of a rush to grow up and I missed out on a lot of things that I can't make up now cause of the money (it's a lot harder to get by on a little more than minimum wage even if it is possible when you've been making significantly more) and that time of life has passed me by for the most part. The peers your age are just doing less with their life than you are as opposed to being other high school students stuck getting typical high school student jobs. Additionally I remember applying for places that I saw a significant pool of the applicants and I knew that if I wasn't the most knowledgeable I was among them, I was among the most motivated, and being a high school student dirt cheap. However having taken a business law class and just being around I see why companies don't want to hire kids that are in high school and not 18 yet. It's nothing personal, but for the most part you are better off getting a college student to fill your intern needs. It sucks, but looking back now it makes a lot of sense.
I'm in college and I can't get a job that respects my intellect, either. During the summer I do construction.
I'm no good at making stuff at all. I come up with ideas that are brilliant but my boss is too scatter brained to implement them even though they'd save him lots of money.
You know what? I get paid $7.50 an hour to get the same job as the highschool dropouts I work with. That's more than any of my friends get paid. You know what else? The reason you get paid to do something is because it sucks so bad that almost nobody is willing to do it for free.
heres what i did.... I applied for a job at the school.
:)
Got to know the networking guy. I got into a work-study class that let you leave "school" for up to 2 periods a day. it was GREAT! I had free range to leave school grounds without getting harassed anytime. I somehow managed to get a faculty parking pass and my own office too
It wasnt the most exciting work ever, and the pay was obviously not that great (if any pay at all). but it was an awesome experience in managing a large network.
One place to check out is government labs, like Sandia National Labs, http://www.sandia.gov/ in Albuquerque New Mexico. I interned there starting my sophmore year in High School. Being a government lab rather than a corporation, they try to teach you rather than just squeeze as much work out of you as they can. They pay well too (7.75 per hour for High School and 13.00 for college freshman, going up by the year), and you can learn alot of useful things (I learned SQL, Java, and began programming there). There are other labs like it, Las Alamos and Lawrence Livermore being two. It is very competative, and if you don't get a chance, doing some form of volunteer work is probably a good alternative. Even if you don't get paid, it will look very well on your resume.
Are you sure that there are no suitable internships for you?
At this point, internships are all but gone. In fact, they ARE gone. Period. The OP really has no choice but to get a job and grab some supplemental income before he has to support himself fully. He could also volunteer to do some community work. Do THAT with some friends and then go out for lunch. There's your summer.
Other options: Start early on researching the business he's planning on entering, mow lawns, be a camp counselor.
And now, for a sig that's a complete copout.
More than likely you'll file them under "co-worker", "superior", "love interest", "employer", "friend", "mentor", ...
It's unwise to disregard what a person says just because it's negative. It's a good healthy dose of real life. Rejection is a part of it.
Furthermore; it's a horrible folley to scoff "jealousy" at others who don't share your life's goals or naivette.
Good post, I'm not entirely disagreeing with you, and it's good to see some positive feedback but I hope the submitter realizes that the world is a harsh place that does judge its inhabitants based on arbitrary factors rather than pure skills and abilities.
BD Phone Home!
Shameless plug. Like you weren't expecting it.
Most employers I know of are not interested in people who don't have (or haven't recently had) a job. It doesn't matter so much what the job is, just that you show that you're willing to work and that you aren't unemployable. Holding out for your ideal job just makes you look spoiled and unwilling to work. The few places that aren't like this are the places "you" start working at, flipping burgers and folding shirts, or at your parents' places of work.
.), you'll have a job, which is better than 50--100k (5--10% of the employable) people in this country.
I suggest you go out and get a job. Any job that you can get. Unemployment is currently high enough that you're lucky to get a job, much less something you really want to do. After you have your job, spend your free time looking for your ideal job. Do everything you can do to work where you want to work; apply for internships (Spacegrant comes immedietly to mind, if you are interested in science at all), apply for google jobs, whatever. But in the meantime, as you keep searching (and searching, and searching, and. .
I just finished my sophomore year at college and I consider myself fortunate to have an internship. Hell, I know people from my high school graduating class that go to UVA and are selling knives for the summer.
:D It's ironic how I'm not a business major yet I already have more experience than my table-busing business major friends.
This is my second year interning at a growing telecommunications company. How did I get the job? Connections (pun intended). I had met the CTO of the company before, and when I started looking for employment after freshman year, my dad reminded me of his position in the company. I emailed him asking if they had any kind of internship program, which they did not. He did however like the idea so much that he decided I would be their first intern.
Last summer I compiled various resources from various partnering companies for employees to use. This summer I'm doing things more meaningful to the company, such as cost analysis and some number crunching. Some of what I do actually influences big corporate decisions.
How is the pay? $18/hr, no joke. If I worked for that as a full time employee, that would be over $34,000/year. Many college graduates don't earn that much. Many of my PROFESSORS don't earn that much.
My Tips:
-PURSUE EARLY. Many internships fill up quickly.
-Call up companies in an industry related to what you might be interested in studying. Many companies may not have considered hiring interns before but will consider it once you bring it to their attention. It doesn't hurt to ask.
-Internships can be a win-win situation. You get experience and good pay (for your age) while the company sees you as cheap labor.
-Pursue your contacts until they hire you or turn you down. The business world is a busy place, and people have more urgent matters to attend. Pursue, but don't nag.
-If you do get an internship, be hesitant to tell people you're an intern or a student (other than your boss and people you work very closely with). They'll think you're not important and devote less time to working with you and put off any of your requests.
-Don't settle for working at McDonald's until exhausting every resource.
-Do a little investing during the school year with the money you've earned.
-If you aren't graduating from high school this year, I suggest dual-enrolling in a community college. You take high school classes in a community college and get both high school AND college credit; thus you graduate from high school already with some college credit. If you take enough classes you might even graduate from college early.
-Burn or discard all mail from a company called "Vector."
I've read quite a few articles in the past few weeks about internships. The Wall Street Journal runs them often. I get the impression that any of the larger existing internship programs, such as the ones through big-names like Microsoft, Dell, etc. have you working with other interns and trainers rather than real engineers/marketers/IT support/etc. Although this looks impressive on a resume, the quality of your experience may be poor. Bigger isn't necessarily better.
I am really enjoying my internship for the second summer now. I do REAL work rather than picking up my boss' poodle from the groomer and dropping off his shirts at the cleaners. I even got to fly on the corporate jet to attend a meeting last year. My boss now refuses to refer to me as an intern and has christened me an "independent consultant"
I hope this was more helpful than the previous 50 or so discouraging posts. Yes, working at McDonald's builds character, but internships build your resume. Good luck to you.
You could just take a job at the local mall or wherever sounds convienent. Consider it your last chance to study business from the ground, and how vital interpersonal skills are. Develop some leadership skills, and make friends with management and they'll make good references later if they're still around.
Or you can pursue a job in a dissolving technical field. Within this route, there are a couple of options; you can hunt down an internship, you can find a grunt level IT job (Typically helpdesk), or you can try your hand at good old entrepeneurship.
An internship is very unlikely for you. First off, it's way too late. Internships are planned out far in advance so waiting till basically May rules that out. Moreover, they aren't geared for someone like you. At an internship, the intern basically doesn't make the company much money, if any. The few IT companies that haven't cut back on staff reguard this as a test run for a full time job and as such are looking for people readying to graduate with a degree. So basically, there's people just like you (though I think you overstate your qualifications some) who also have the benefit of a degree and Professors who will vouch for them. It's not a game you're likely to win. It's gonna take a lot of person to person talking to convince someone to circumvent the braindead HR checkoff sheet and get you in an interview situation. And it will take even more communication skills to put you in front of the other candidates given your handicap.
Helpdesk and call center jobs is a lot more common, but so much more draining. Three months of that job should be enough to dissuade you from not getting a degree or falling into that trap again. Despite the rapid turnover on this kind of work, they probably won't hire you if you let word slip that you're headed for college soon. The pay isn't bad, but depending on the details of the job, you may have frustrated people yelling in your ear about how such and such service they're paying for is down and it should be fixes YESTERDAY. Of the three, this is the most likely to succeed, and they're willing to train you on their communication skills rather than pay extra for the people who come with that built in.
The other option is to start your own business. Starting your own business is risky, but you're in the perfect field for it. The cost of starting your own software business is basically the cost of ramen noodles and other living expenses. YOu can scour local tech mailing lists for postings and maybe find a short term contract. If you post a well written and well reasoned request (perhaps cleverly disguised as advice) you might turn something up. Or maybe write and sell a small game. I've been considering this myself because there's so many Community College junkies out there who want to make games that you could probably find a few talented gems out there who can make things happen. Just don't expect big money fast and remember that three months is really no time at all, so think small. Maybe if you really think you're all that, just find a decent artist and split the sales 50 / 50. But it's gonna take a lot of work and interpersonal skills to find someone and convince them you can keep up your half of the bargain.
Technically, I guess there's three options. You could do nothing all summer, and maybe contribute to one of those GPL'd projects you spoke of. But we both know that won't put food on the table today, and you won't be developing that crucial skill you probably think isn't important. The truth is, it's vitally important, whether you're convincing someone that the brand name really is worth the extra money, or if you're convincing your boss that your idea has merit and can save the company a good chunk of change. Programmers who's job description allows them to exist in a vacuum have long ago been replaced by small shell scripts. Any path you choose, I suggest you focus on opportunities that will exercise your talents of communication and persuasion.
I Browse at +4 Flamebait
Open Source Sysadmin
Interesting. I'm 17 (dropped out, goin for ged then a 2-year school) and am in a similar situation. I'm a good coder and know pretty much all the web technologies in and out, and have been trying to build a business taking outsourced jobs from sites like scriptlance and also developing a few good ideas that i know are in demand. I want to know what advice people have for me too, as i'd really not like to go back to being the dishbitch.
eBayDig 1s a typo saerch engien
There are many reasons why there aren't internships for High School students. One of them being that high school students should be out there having fun and enjoying the sunshine. Also labor laws for High Schoolers are different than for college students. If this guy was truly talented, he would have entered college in the various early entrance programs. I.E. Juliard for talented musicians.
9 years experience with codeing? Nice. How about cooperating within a team of coders? How about writing accurate requirements? Putting together an architecture that can handle changing requirements? Documenting your code (not just comments)? Writing test cases? Using debuggers, profilers, CVS and other CASE tools? Do you know UML? How about PDL? Can you make an estimation on time, memory consumption, other hardware requirements? Can you approximate a mathematical algorithm in an efficient manner?
Point is software development is more than just typing code. If you can answer yes on all of the above, then you're good on your way to become a professional programmer. (diving in a stack of books and answering in 6 months is acceptable too.)
Not to offend, but why would a company that offers X number of internships to develop software/hardware/ect spend time with a high school student(however bright they may be), when they probably have a huge selection of college juniors and seniors to pick from(with much more experience)? If you really just want to get in the field, find a company/project your interested in and offer to work there for free over the summer. Yeah there isn't any money, but you'll get experience to put on a resume later when you're fighting for an internship in college.
http://nj1015.com/personalities/jim_gearhart/bits/ real_world.htm
Rule 5
Flipping burgers is not beneath your dignity. Your grandparents had a different word for burger flipping; they called it opportunity.
you may think you're so incredibly talented, but trust me, there are a million other high school kids out there who think the same thing.
most places aren't even interested in college students with less than 60 credits for internships, let alone a high school student. no offense, but they're stereotypically unreliable, not to mention not fully mature yet.
suck it up, get a cushy job like i do at a water park (or a sucky job folding shirts at sears like i had before), enjoy it while you finish HS and college, then go look for a real job.
...and that's all there is to it.
Surely you must have some 1337 skillz.
Have you thought about contacting your HS guideance counselor and seeing if they can hook you up with someone at UT's Austin Technology Incubator? Or even plain ol' UT? Surely your guidance counselor would be the 1st step.
If school's out and the counselor's gone, then I guess my suggestions are out.
Sorry.
Religion is for people afraid of going to hell.
Dont go to fast. Your patience will be rewarded. We dont want you to turn out like Anakin.
Take the "mediocre" job for a while and learn to enjoy it. Later on, you will appreciate the value of "mediocre" jobs.
Almost every job at some point requires "mediocre" work tasks. Yes, even in high-paying tech-related jobs, you may find yourself having to do "mediocre" tasks like spending hours helping with monotonous data entry during a company-wide inventory, or crawling under desks pulling cables, or cleaning server room walls and floors that suffered water damage.
We all want the cushy jobs, and many in the tech world do get them, but everyone (especially those in startups where you can't afford to pay people to stuff envelopes or clean the bathrooms) must step up to the plate at some point or another and do the mediocre work. Learning to appreciate that at an early age will make the tasks much more enjoyable later on.
That said, what ever you do, don't lose your entrepreneurial enthusiasm. Just don't become so arrogant that you view mediocre jobs as being beneath you...
My mom always said, "Jim, you're 1 in a million." Given the current population, there are 7000 of me. God help us all!
Eloha is the plural form. I think that's what he means.
Hahahahahahahahaaaaa!!!! Oh my ribs! Gimme a break, kid. Computing is easy these days: you think dragging a file requester button on a form is programming? Child, I started with assembler and worked my way up. I know computers from the semiconductor junctions to the PCB to the monitor. Do you know what a Karnaugh map is?
If you have basic skills, put them to work on something you *want* to do, make a summer project (or two), web page, custom program or hardware, it may turn out lame, but it will give you the sort of experience outside of school and work that will make you more interesting to employers (or backers) in your carrer later on.
George Lucas, Rick Baker (the makeup guy), Steve Wozniac, Bill Gates, etc. All did their own thing and kept with it, and look where it got them stuff like that can be frustrating, but in the long run set you apart from the crowd. Think of where you want to go; to some wiring closet in a highrise or a game development ststion on some tech campus, or founding the company. Your young, it's still a lot up to you.
"Enjoy what you're doing! If it becomes drudgery, you're doing it wrong!" - Jim Butterfield
Hey, I go to UT in Austin and that is probably the main reason you cant find an internship since there are so many more just as, if not more so qualified applicants graduating out of there or intern/co-op ing from there.
Anyways I was pretty much hired at Sun Micro this spring except they instituted a hiring freeze company wide. I waas lucky to get a job with a place I interned with in High School in San Antonio. I went to one of the few high schools that have an active internship program. But there were a few things I did for extra money (just nice spending money nothing to live on) I got a regular job at the apt leasing office, which then turned into an on call tech support job after i left. I also used my connections there to get my flier in the move-in packet about the computer services I provide(networking, building comps, virus removal, etc...)got probably 20 satisfied customers out of that without even searching them out very much. I suggest you do the same for your neighborhood. Just look up bestbuy's price list (I think you might need to call to get it) and just divide everything in half. It's great to be able to say "I charge half of what you would pay with bestbuy"
Now on your resume you can put a whole slew of things including running that business, and all the different technical IT type things you did. It might impress some employers it might not, but its computer job experience and thats soemthign that looks good even to non tech companies. You would be surprised how most companies deal with computer problems, they just deal with it till the computer becomes un useable. If you can find some small businesses to help out, get interviews with them either for the tech position or a normal position. Once you are in you can show off your abilities with computers and then offer to take that on full time.
Also there are plenty of entry-level positions at non-burger flipping companies, get one like that and make a good impression on your boss and you now have a solid reference to list. Which is much better than listing teachers and family friends.
Three of the more interesting programs they offered were "interims","contracts" and "walkabouts".
Interims were available to Freshmen, Sophmores, and Juniors. You could take a week off once a year to do a independent education project of your own design. Some people taught themselves to sew, write programs, construct an electronics project or paint/draw/scuplt to fill their portfolio for acceptance to a college art programs. Other people would use their week for a mini intership.
Seniors that completed their graduation requirements could go on "Walkabout" which was two 9 week periods for independent study, like "Interims" could be used for independent study or interships.
We could also create our own programs for school credit, called "contracts", if you could find a teacher who would sign off on it. For you, you would find an unpaid internship with a company for a set number of hours a week, and at the end you would have to write a paper of what you learned.
A lot of large school districts have similiar programs in "magnet" schools. Ask you school counselor. You might even find that your school has the ability to do similiar projects, they just don't advertise it.
It used to be vocational school were descouraged for college bound students. I've been told that isn't as true any more. If you complete a vocational program and your college prep courses, colleges will take notice. (At least thats what I've heard from my wife, a high school teacher)
Our shool district now offers an I.T. vocational programs. I wish they had when I was in high school. What I've heard from vocational school students, you are required to work in your field and they have placement programs.
You really should talk to your counselor.
I wish I had your sense of direction at your age. Good luck!!
-blinks- I find it humorous that you all call me arrogant, and yet you are the ones unwilling to admit there may be a high schooler out there that does know what he's doing. Yes, I know what a Karnaugh map is. And for your information, I have recently gotten into assembly. Ever written an efficient path finding algorithm on a 68HC11E microcontroller? No? Didn't think so.
If you like what I've said here, and want to read more, go to http://www.krillrblog.com
Speaking as someone who was in that same situation a while ago, I can say this:
You are not better than anyone else because you can use a computer.
Work is more about social and interpersonal skills than it is about technical skills. You need to prove that you know how to show up to work on time, dressed and groomed appropriately, do what managers tell you to do, and interact with customers and coworkers.
You will never get a more advanced *job* without having those things.
I consider myself pretty good at technology, but I worked my way up. McDonalds at age 16, some odd jobs as a sound engineer/ITSA, a junior admin at a travel agency. Jobs that, more than anything, were less about technology and more about people.
Want to work in the tech field? Go apply at a place that *sells* tech, or *repairs* tech. Best Buy, Circuit City, CompUSA, Radio Shack, any of the various gaming stores, Fry's, etc.
No amount of "talent" will make up for the fact that there are some things you just need to do, to be taken seriously. Wanting a skilled job or internship right off the bat portrays you as arrogant, and it's all about how to be a team player these days.
I got my first internship after my last year of high-school. At a fortune 100 insurance company in Hartford, CT.
This marks my 4th summer returning to them. Get a bit agressive. Find what department in the company you want to work for, and call their HR generalist. Have him/her make the pitch to all the people that will listen (there will be a lot, listening to HR is good for business).
You can find internships... but if you're already into your summer (yeah, I barely RTFPost) after high school, you're boned, I started looking fall of Senior year, and the timing was still tight.
- Jonsey, back to work.
I assert that my comment is only my opinion, not that of any employer, past, present or future.
From the time I was 16, I always had a job working ISP tech support. Yes, it sucks, but at times it can be lots of fun. It should also pay slightly better than McDonald's or any other greasy fast food joint.
Work on getting some trim instead. You'll be able to slave away in an office for the rest of your life, but this is your last chance to bone 17 year olds.
-Peter
Best way to refine, show off, and use your talents for a good cause : start or participate actively in an useful open source project and become famous.
My website
nunchuck skills
bowhunting skills
computer hacking skills
Network with as many tech people as you can. This will be an important skill to develop when you plan to launch a successful tech startup later, and also help you learn about other interesting tech companies in your area.
Build a website listing all of your technical skills and interests, and mention this website to everyone you meet. Many people will judge you by your appearance, so dress conservatively and act maturely when you meet new people.
Attend local tech groups in Austin; there will be older tech people there who might have work for you. Mention to them that you're willing to work free, that you just want the experience. That way there's very little risk for them.
Introduce yourself to the computer science professors at the University of Texas there, and express interest in their research and offer to code anything they need for free. Consider taking a course from any of them that look interesting -- starting college early is very possible for mature high school students.
Another option would be to introduce yourself to local charities, and offer to develop anything they need for free.
Join an open source project that interests you. Work on developing a wide range of tech skills, and mention all of this on your website.
With determination, you will succeed.
"The problem is, I feel it would be a waste of my talents right now to be stuck folding shirts at the local mall or flipping cheeseburgers when I could be helping develop a cutting-edge game, the next-generation compiler, or even the Linux kernel as an intern. "
Ummmm... No..
You have no real experience, are in High School, and have an attitude problem. You may be as good as you say but your comments show a real lack of a willingness to learn from others.
I mean look at what you wrote. How much better you are than every one else. How Brilliant you are are. How you are too good to do this or that.
What would I want to hear from a high school kid that wants to work for me? I really want to learn, I am willing to start at the bottom.
What you should do is technical support. I do not care how good of a coder you are learning what the starfish will do to your program so you can make it as idiot proof as possible is a good thing.
You want to work on the Kernel or GCC. Grab the source and submit patches. See how many you get submitted before you tell me how brilliant you are.
Why hire an intern that already thinks he knows everything?
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
Start your startup now. Why wait? That's exactly what Paul Graham is talking about. You don't have to be qualified and you don't need a degree to start a business. You need an idea and a lot of trial and error. Oh, and the right people (this one is key, and is the hardest part).
Back in high school I did web design for local businesses instead of flipping burgers. Now I run a small software company for a living. And truth be told, I'm still one credit shy of graduating high school.
putfwd.com - 1GB Free file storage with a twist
Most smart people I know have a special knack for insulting the people around them when someone asks a dumb question. Similarly, they frequently have a superiority complex over the vast population of "normals" or whatever the heck they're calling them today. The fact is that most intelligent people don't understand how to act or speak around less intelligent people. This is a subtle skill that will get you far in life. I learned it working at a hardware store in Vicksburg, MS. Not exactly the peak of human civilization.
You will never live in a world of hyper-intelligent people. You will always need that guy in purchasing who watches sports obsessively. You will need techs with associate degrees to build samples. You will even need managers who never seem to get it. Learn this skill early, so you don't piss off any of these important people in your attempts to learn it later.
There are two types of people: those prepared for the zombie apocalypse and those who will be eaten.
That's the difference between thinking you wrote an "efficient path finding algorithm" (whatever the fuck that is) on a microcontroller, and the real world... The test isn't YOU, it's OTHER PEOPLE.
Um... actually, yes I have gotten a date. Many. Thanks.
If you like what I've said here, and want to read more, go to http://www.krillrblog.com
With a woman? That wasn't your Mom?
UML... Unified Modeling Language? I do not know UML, and I have no need for PDL. I know how to document my code, not just comments, but real documentation. I know how to write test cases, use debuggers, profilers, CVS is my friend (although recently I've been looking into SVN). I'm still learning, I admit that. However, I do most of the skills an average intern would be expected to have. Keep in mind interns aren't meant to know everything about their field... they are still learning.
If you like what I've said here, and want to read more, go to http://www.krillrblog.com
Yes, and as I said, many. Now stop being a geekist.
If you like what I've said here, and want to read more, go to http://www.krillrblog.com
So why should you get something extra?
You call me the arrogant little shit, and yet you have no idea what my true skills are. You seem believe that because I am in high school, I can't POSSIBLY have any good skills. This my friend, is where the true arrogance lies. I'm homeschooled. This has given me a major advantage over people my age, because I have more spare time and more control over my courses. Other than the core classes, I can study what I want. I've chosen programming/software engineering. Also, my dad is a programmer. He has taught me not only how to write code, but how to write it in a manner that can easily be debugged, understood by someone not previously familiar with it, and how to document it. He has taught me a lot of things that no intern would ever learn in school, because he's let me help him and work with him on his software projects. Real projects, for real companies. You may want to stop and think before calling someone an arrogant shit again, as the arrogant one may instead be yourself.
If you like what I've said here, and want to read more, go to http://www.krillrblog.com
"punboy.net This domain was recently acquired by Pool.com"
Its 9:56 am. I just got home from the ONE public school course I take, am eating breakfast, and will soon work on my other studies. I am only responding because I'm bored. And I'm not saying I should get anything extra, my parent post was simply stating that we high schoolers do not necessarily write crappy code.
If you like what I've said here, and want to read more, go to http://www.krillrblog.com
And if you can do all that, and don't have any luck picking employers- you'll get replaced by some code monkey in India who doesn't waste time with good software design and for that matter, even making sure their code runs correctly.
.COM boom to debug and rewrite all of that junk code that comes out of India.
And then, if you're like me, the product will hit the customer- who will then hire your sorry ass for 1/4th what you were making during the
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
look into your highschools IT department. I worked as a summer student every summer with my IT department and it was great. summer is the time for deployments at schools so you get to learn a lot and play with new hardware. It takes a year or so for them to build up trust (which is reasonable) so don't expect to get the admin pw's on the first day but its still a great place to start.
This just hit the lists...
The FreeBSD Project is happy to participate in Google's Summer of Code 2005 program. Basically, this program provides $4500 in funding to allow students to spend the summer writing open source software.....
http://www.freebsd.org/projects/summerofcode.html
Most corporate internships can really suck. It takes time and/or connections to get one where you won't be doing the crappiest work, and the glacial pace at which they do their hiring/decision making can be a death blow if you're looking for a short term summer gig.
If I were in your shoes I would:
Think of anyone you know that has influence. I know someone who called his company's legal firm and asked for an internship for their hs-aged kid. Any firm that bills tens of thousands of dollars annually would do this; it's cheaper and more legal than kickbacks. It also helped the kid get a little more meaningful work.
Check out sourceforge and see if you can contribute to something that interests you. You may not have much experience, but a typical company won't invest much in educating you if they know you'll be gone in a couple months. You can contribute to or develop your own project in that time.
Start a cheap business. Again, I don't know what your goals are, but if it's experience, you don't need to go corporate. Start a cheap service oriented business with a low barrier to entry. i.e. invest in $100 worth of premium supplies and start a car detailing business. You can pull $50/hour doing that kind of thing, if you can find the market...plus you get hands-on experience with all sorts of business concepts that you won't get in a cube farm: targeted marketing/segmentation (find out where the porsches live), sales, viral marketing, calculating competitive price points, market distinguishers, etc. That's just an example. You could do the same with window washing, PC/networking repair, etc. Though those things are commoditized. I don't know about Austin, but in Chicagoland there are plenty of people spending $100 every other week for someone to wash, wax, and detail their car. (Hint: they are not the ones pulling through the $3 car wash twice a year.)
Of course you might be looking to shovel shit onto your resume for college applications, and if that's the case, you might prefer being a toilet scrubber at Widget Inc. rather than pushing a low-level service oriented entrepreneurship.
There are plenty of other things you can do. Lots of folks wait around for someone to hand them a shot, and sometimes you're better off making your own thing happen.
I'm reminded of the story about the music student who asked his teacher for help in writing a symphony.
the teacher responded, "you're too young to write a symphony."
the student had a ready answer: "Mozart wrote a symphony at 6".
the teacher, too, had a ready reply: "yes; but, Mozart didn't have to ask."
Brett
Ok, I thought about it a while and I have your perfect solution. Get in on it now, before someone else does.
Step 1: Pick the company you want to intern for - presumedly some high-tech programming company.
Step 2: Go buy a red T-Shirt and a red baseball cap with no logo (unless you can find / steal a Domino's outfit.)
Step 3: Go buy a pizza from Dominos and take it to the tech company. Figure out where the hacker team is and just walk in and hand over the pizza.
Step 4: Tell them, over pizza, that you want to do the most fucked up work known to man : document their code, and write their end user / technical specification documentation for them, for free, for one month.
They will put you to work that very day writing technical documentation (which every 'real programmer' feels is beneath him, and would give anything in order to avoid doing it.) If you can be God's Gift to Documentation for one month you have secured your position as a paid intern starting the next month - and you will get a chance to display your leet haxor skills once you are on the inside.
You want in, there's your in. Enjoy. Heck, I would put you to work tomorrow if you agree to those terms, if I was in Austin.
In fact if you agree to those terms I will find someone in Austin to put you to work, pretty much guaranteed.
Glonoinha the MebiByte Slayer
A friend of mine from a while ago was fond of saying:
"The more you get paid, the more the stuff you have to do sucks."
ceci n'est pas un sig.
It's refreshing to see such a positive attitude on slashdot. Thank you for posting :)
Be relentless!
I work for a huge company, and our management can't even figure out how to hire college students as interns. We just string people around and never get around to obtaining permission through 3 levels of management to actually make the offer.
When I was in high school, I volunteered to build my city's first web site (this was ca. 1996). I had to coordinate with their ISP/IT consultant, which led to a summer job offer. I started at maybe 20% more than my friends were making flipping burgers, but I had nicer working conditions and more interesting work.
My hourly rate increased over the years. When I finished college, I got a salaried job equivalent to 1/4 my old consulting fee. So it can be pretty lucrative...
Good luck.
I couldn't agree more. I am (was) homeschooled as well, and that has helped me, as I could work part time (every other day) instead of just a summer job. I have worked for the same computer company for almost 2 years, and I have just graduated highschool. Having more free time allowed me to play around with new things, and learn many new technologies (Telco/asterisk, linux, VMware). I now hold certs in alot of those technologies, and I would bet that I am the youngest VMware Certified Professional. The way to get an intern job would be to get to know someone who works for a company. If you show that you are willing to learn new things, and not just 'exist', then they may hire you.
Bill Gates dropped out of high school to build a boat for sixty grand. He dropped out of college to found Microsoft. He did wonderfully, from a financial perspective, but I don't think that qualifies us to say that education isn't important to those who want to make it, out there in the real world. Gates got lucky, as you probably did to a certain extent as well.
Gates had rich parents, so he could afford to try and fail and try again until he succeeded. I don't say this to discount the Gates' intelligence, I think he was brilliant in many aspects. But I don't think it was so much luck as it was perserverence (which was facilitated by money). Now I don't know if the person asking slashdot has rich parents or not, but if not (and those two friends he's talking about aren't rich), I think trying to start a business from scratch straight out of high school is a horrible idea. Yes, it might succeed, but chances are it'll fail, and then you'll be in a really bad situation which it'll take a long time and a lot of work to get out of.
But the original poster isn't asking for advice about creating a startup right out of High School. He's asking for advice on how to best go about getting a better job than a burger joint, or about getting interviewers to consider him for intern positions.
He's not even planning to build his startup right after high school. He's speaking of creating one later, during college. He seems to have put some thought into this, based on the fact that he's doing his due diligence on getting a good internship, so that he can get a good job, so that he can get the experience necessary to create a startup and help it to succeed.
It's possible this is simply just a case of "I read Paul Graham, and now I want to be an IPO millionaire", but I don't think so. "Convincing friends" to go into business during college does not equal immature plans to build a condemned business plan. It just means he's beginning to develop an IDEA. Perhaps he and his friends *will* do such a thing, but it's a long way off. I think it's more likely that he'll meet people more suited for the idea later, during college, and that he and they will build a startup, or develop a business idea, or whatever. Hell, he may decide "Forget the startup idea; I'm going to take this job with XYZ Widgets, and see what happens." That's all a long way off, and he's got time. Regardless, all the guy said was (paraphrased) "I want to do something with my life. I've got some ideas, but my starting point is getting a good job or internship. What should I do?"
Given that, why are we spending so much time trying to knock down his apparent drive, instead telling him to work at a burger shop, or go party? I worked at a pizza place when I was 16, then found a local internet startup that later hired me, which became my first solid bit of experience. This kid's goals are right in line with that. Why dissuade him? Yes, many of the comments on here are accurate. Yes, there are social pros to working for a fast-food chain. But that's what people who don't know they have other options do. There are just as many social opportunities at an internet start-up, and those options allow for useful, professional networking later in life. This kid knows he's got options, and is following them up. Stop trying to convince him not to, and find a way to help him. Any other discussion is off-topic, immaterial and irrelevant.
Hey Greenhorn,
;-)
NO amount of IT talent will save your ass from the political character assassinations and corporate jostling, unless you learn LIFE first. The first time you are in a situation where you don't have the stomach or balls to get the job done, you will wish you had dropped a few burgers on the floor. On that note, if you are as good as you say you are, you will be managing the grunts that flip those burgers anyway. I also grew up in an university town,(never as cool as Austin) and I was the manager everywhere I worked... managed all the people who were supposed to be smart.
I attended a C.C where my mother is a programmer (nearly cost free!) and learned about life and the sharks and minnows along the way as well as business modeling yada yada.... all by 21 and was working then. From there life's adventure started.... give it some time
Sig Hansen?
Although it's definitely getting a bit late now, you should check with local businesses with offices in your town for any summer student jobs (not internships, just office type jobs).
I had a job once that wasn't an internship, my job description just had me doing clerk type work like data entry, filing, etc. However, after I'd been there for a while and automated some of my jobs via macros and helped my coworkers with some basic SQL queries, my boss realized some potential and let me do more advanced programming work.
The pay wasn't the best that summer (although it wasn't bad), and the next summer I got a real internship at the same company because of the experience I gained the previous summer, all when the job description was basic clerk work.
I'd suggest, assuming you're in a major metropolitan area, find someone doing research in a field that interests you (where I am, and considering you're posting to /., I'd look at the MIT Media Lab) and ask a PI or a Professor to take you on for the summer. I did that all through highschool, got a published paper out of it and am now spending my first collgiate summer working as a lab tech at BUMC.
The worst that can happen is that you get turned down. The best is that you spend 2+ months working hard and learning tons.
I will bet infinity dollars that anyone who has ever said the word geekist could not tell you what the inside of a pussy feels like.
The safest way to approach lava is to have another person with you and he goes first.
We have a few back burner projects that could be a summer project for a talented programmer. Send an email to slashjob@ticom.com
And I betcha all these people bashing the geeks for not "getting any" haven't gotten any themselves. And since when does it matter? And so you know, I can.
If you like what I've said here, and want to read more, go to http://www.krillrblog.com
As someone from texas:
Kid, you live in Austin - if you look up semiconductor in your local yellow pages, you'll see hundreds of pages (I found 166 searching on smartpages)
If you still have a year (or two or three) left, see if your high school has a "life skills" type program that lets you work for class credit - I know that there are a lot of large companies that work with high schools (I'm in Houston, but I think it's about the same in Austin) that have kids come in and work 3 2 hour shifts a week - it's unpaid some places, but a few years from now when you're applying for an internship (in college) that experience will make it that much easier for you to find one.
I don't know what you're trying to do for sure, but if it's technical, there are probably 2 dozen companies that do it. I know IBM, AMD, and Intel all have Design||Test||Fab facilities in the area.
The fact that as a high school student, you could potentially be around for a year or two (wouldn't hurt to mention that you're considering the University of Texas[if you are], which would stretch that out to 6 or seven years) would make most employers EXTREMELY eager to pick you up - the co-op programs at the big 3 that I mentioned would probably be able to find a place for you based simply off that fact.
The parent post is full of good advice, but you may want to contact the co-op/internship coordinator instead of the HR, it just depends on how the company is structured.
Another thing you might try [if you'll be attending U.T.] is find out when U.T. is having engineering job fairs, and go - give your resume to local employers, and explain your situation. The easiest way might just be to make it a point to meet people who know people - Austin is a fairly small city, surely you know someone who has a technically oriented parent - talk to them and find out who to talk to at their place of employ.
Just remember that you CAN do it, but that the only person who can do it is YOU - if you don't take the initiative, no one else will.
Good Luck