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Tech Jobs For a Student?
Nick Manley writes "I turned 17 back in August and have been fascinated with technology my entire life. I have a special interest in software and computer programming. I am really hoping to find a job, or at least an internship, where I can learn more about my field and expand my knowledge of software development. Does anyone have recommendations for someone like myself, without any college education, for ways to get a head start on my career? Preferably, one that doesn't include selling iPods to kids at Best Buy."
Hehe
The fastest way to get a head-start is to get an education.
You'd probably do best to start out working by yourself on projects that interest you, until you gain a thorough knowledge of whichever programming language(s) you will program in.
Once you have that, you can search for jobs with companies that do specialized software development for businesses and large corporations.
...Shouldn't this be "Tech Jobs for a Non-student"?
Get a computer science degree or a computer engineering degree.
A 4 year degree is sufficient if you want to have a career as a programmer.
See if you can do some coding for an open source project.
Just do like the other teenagers and troll Slashdot, pissing off the people who are older, wiser, and actually know what the hell they're talking about.
I hear the pay isn't too good, but you get tons of work experience!
Have you considered contacting professors at your local university? Plenty of research groups can use someone with coding skills, and you'll have a great experience. It might not be paid, but you're likely to find someone who'll take you and you'll be able to pick up letters of recommendation for future work.
You might also get to learn something about actual computer science (rather than simply programming or IT), and better yet, you might get to contribute to the development of cutting-edge technology.
As a warning, you may have to knock on a lot of doors before you find someone who thinks a high school student knows enough to contribute usefully to a project (many academics might just ask you to read a stack of books and come back in a few years), but there are those of us willing to take on a high school intern -- you'll just have to be persistent.
Go to college, take neat classes, be well rounded. Learn to read, learn to think, learn to write (English first, then C++/Python/Java, what-have you). All of that, plus enjoying these next few years of life is way way more important than an internship or being some Google-head's code slave for a summer. Plenty of time for work after you've had some fun. And yes, I'm completely serious about this.
.nosig
If you're looking to get a first taste of software development, you might want to do what many others without education and experience do: Try your hand and open source. You will learn a little bit about working as a team, a little about quality control and of course lots about programming and project management. Sure it's not making the big bucks creating professional quality software at Microsoft, but it's a good start and better than selling Ipods at best Buy.
because there is more than one way to do it.
memento mori
It's exactly like becoming an author:
Write Something.
Download Ruby, download eclipse, download visual studio express- they're all free. Play. Pick your favorite. Buy a few books. Spend some time each day doing it, pick the part that interests you, and do more of it.
When you've got some experience, volunteer for an open source project and keep learning- or find a job that offers training, and go to town. There's a million ways to do it...
but you have to start with step 1:
Write Something.
What a strange bird is the pelican, his beak can hold more than his belly can.
Go to school, you bum!
The place I work at is great at hiring interns and putting them to solving real problems instead of seeking out coffee. Seven months ago I started there as an intern, and now I'm managing the Systems Department. Get an internship at a good, fast moving company, and don't look back.
Jay | http://oldos.org
When I turned eighteen, I managed to get a job doing tech support for a large broadband ISP. That may be something to look into, because generally, 1st tier positions like that are entry level, and only require a high-school diploma and good scores on computer-based "tech" tests. A word of warning, though, if you do choose this route: 1st tier tech support is fucking stressful, and can result in premature balding, possible aneurysm, and loss of will to live :P
"We may face a scorched and lifeless earth, but they're accountable to their shareholders first."
it seems like it's pretty tough to get a job in tech without having some experience. it's also tough to get some experience without getting a job. my advice? really learn all you can about web development and put together a website with things you are working on. if you have a slick site with personal projects, companies will see your ambition and will be impressed. unfortunately it won't pay the bills... but best buy will ;)
Consider the situation from your potential employers perspective: how do they know whether you're any good? There are lots of people out there who think they are great programmers, but can't actually program their way out of a wet paper bag.
Networking/nepotism is the best way to overcome this. If you know someone who will stand up for you and say "even though this guy is a complete unknown, he's got a lot of potential and I think we should hire him."
If you can't get personal recommendations, institutional credentials are next best. The fact that you can get decent grades in some relevant classes at an accredited school is at least some evidence that you're not a complete poser.
No time for that? Try getting involved in an open source project. If you have the necessary asbestos underwear, you can make a reputation for yourself by contributing good stuff. This is hit or miss, however -- you might be the greatest programmer of all time, but if you're working on a project that nobody knows about, it's not as useful.
Internships -- around here, at least, internships are highly competitive and if you're not a student in a strong program, you might as well not even apply unless you already have a foot in the door.
Am I part of the core demographic for Swedish Fish?
If you want to learn how to program, start teaching yourself some C/C++ and Java. You might also want to look into .Net (I wouldn't but I know some of people that need to know that language). Go buy some book in one of those languages, work through it.
If you know of someone that is in a job and can mentor, grab them, and learn from them. Since you don't have a formal education, it will be hard, get some basic course first though. Books and basic knowledge will help. You can also start reading some open source sources, some are good some aren't.
If you can prove what you know, look at some of the local shops, if you can get a foot in the door even doing tech support via phone, many places have a career path to get into development.
I know of a technique I've seen work. Do a survey. Get in touch with the people in charge of the types of projects you would like to be on (not the personell department or something), and go interview them to find out what they want. You'll be surprised. Interview at least 10 people so you get a good base. I guarantee you'll know a lot more coming out than you did going in. I saw one young man, just out of high school, with no experience, try this and he had to stop because of the job offers--he had to decide on one. He took one that paid tuition and books so he could get his degree while he worked. I have programmed computers for 25 years and I know there are jobs out there, but you've got to do research to find out where they are and what they are. Don't job hunt, go hunting for information. It won't be what you expect it to be.
My advice, find a mentor and network like hell. Use your free time now to develop your skills and hone in on your interests. Try finding local tech companies around you and let them know that you have great interest in learning and are interested in seeing if they have any internships available. Once you get your foot in the door, meet people and stay in touch with them. It will come in handy once you graduate from college. I know it did with me.
You're seventeen? That's way too you to commit yourself to a career. ( Not meaning to imply that you're stupid or have poor judgement, just that you haven't had time to see a lot of the world and the different ways that it can be viewed ) If programming interests you, do it for fun.
Speaking as an employer, technical skills - beyond a bare minimum - are seldom the most important thing that you can bring to a job interview. Being articulate both verbal and written - helps a lot. Having a history of jobs ( even flipping burgers ) in which your former boss will give you a good recommendation - showed up on time, cooperated with fellow employees, didn't steal, didn't drink or toke on the job, etc - really may be the most important thing.
You're only seventeen and the world is your oyster. Don't commit too early. Try several jobs, try several majors, travel a bit; find out more about the world. Then choose.
Chances are you're going to be working retail or similar jobs until you're in your twenties. In the mean time you need to work on your own projects (and not stupid little hello world programs either) and make them resume quality. I've never gotten a programming job based on my formal education. I've been working as a programmer for most of the time I've been in college.
Once you have a resume worth looking at then you can go to software companies looking for a job.
It's hard to convince a company that "I like computers" is a good reason to hire you when you have nothing of even remote quality that would indicate you like computers.
I don't tell companies I like to code. I show them my personal projects. I demonstrate my knowledge of programming with examples. My latest job hired me based on the quantity of languages I know and what I have done with them even though I barely even heard of the language they wanted me to use. Since I've been there for a few months I've used PHP, Perl, Ruby and Javascript.
What have you done that would indicate that learning a language would not interfer significantly with the time it takes to complete a project? Companies can't wait months for you to learn a language before you start doing the work they want you to do.
Where are your demos to show companies what you know? If you have no education and no demos, you're going to get no job.
You need at least one or the other and the good programmers have both.
Work Safe Porn
If you look for a technical job at 17, you're likely to come up empty-handed. Just don't be so arrogant that you refuse to work below your technical skill level. Get some experience and some good references. 17 is young; focus on education and knowledge more than work now. You might be incredibly smart at 17, but you may not have the discipline and dependability of someone older. There's nothing wrong with selling iPods at Best Buy. I worked at a pizza place 2 years ago; now I'm an IT Coordinator at a university.
All programming will go to third world countries. Ya see, there's 6.5 Billion folks in this world and that means there's 650,000,000 folks who are smarter then all of us and they're cheap! (90th percentile of the human race - that's wher I got the 650,000,000 from)
GO into law or medicine kid, that'll keep you work'in until you're 40ish.
I went to a bunch of career councilors and they didn't do me any fucking good! Go for the money while you still can ge it! Trust me kid, money goes a long way in making you happy! The folks who say money can't buy you happiness are poor slobs! I use to make over 6 figures and I miss it!!! Money CAN buy happiness!
Just remember kid, the rich make the rules, and it's important to become one of them; otherwise, you're a memeber of the great unwashed and regardless of what you do you'll be miserable.
Money is everything -anyone who says different is a poor slob trying to suck you down into failure!!!
I'm 25, network engineer. I started as a tech at some local shop when I was 16. I just walked in all the computer-repair places and asked for a job. BestBuy also offered to hire me. Techwork is pretty terrible in my opinion, but looking back on it I think it was an amazing foundation and something you'll use forever. From there you can go on to explore any other area. A basic understanding of components and repair is an amazing framework for a career in technology. Phone-support is something most of us have done and I think its probably one of the only jobs you'll be able to land with no experience. They will train you and from there you can move into computer-repair. Computer Repair is a great framework that I think most /.'ers would agree on.
First, continue school. Get a good engineering degree. Don't stop school to work before you get one. Otherwise you'll be screwed into sucky jobs for the rest of your life.
.com craze, so I managed to find a summer job as a programmer through a friend in a sucky .com. I sucked really bad, the company sucked (they went bankrupt in months). I was payed badly (1$/h more than minimum wage), but I learned a lot. And starting early will really give you an edge over your peers when you graduate to get a real job, early experience looks good on a resume. That said, when you are 17, you have to find that kind of stuff through contacts, because no one sane will hire you because of your qualifications. Even a job as an junior sys-admin assistant can give you some useful experience.
Second, get involved in Free Software (Open Source). I became a core developer of GnomeICU (the Gnome ICQ client) when I was 17 and ICQ was still synonymous with IM. It got me into the Gnome community, I'm still reaping the benefits.
Third, when I was 17, it was the peak of the
"Best Buy" is a brand used in a major country that doesn't pay for four years of postsecondary education for all high school graduates. It could be that "Nick Manley", the submitter of this story, is looking to build-up a down payment for this education.
This is the reason that Google's Summer of Code exists. It's basically a summer scholarship so that Computer Science students do not have to flip burgers through the summer. There's nothing wrong with menial jobs when going through college. I worked at the University and moonlighted at various restaurants throughout my college years.
You get a paycheck with the Summer of Code. Whether you get paid depends on if you make sufficient progress in accordance with deadlines and to the satisfaction of the sponsoring organization. It gives you a chance to learn by doing, and you get real experience which you may use on your resume. You will get your name out there on a real software project, and if you do well you may get your foot in the door of a sponsoring corporation.
/^([Ss]ame [Bb]at (time, |channel.)){2}$/
Contact your local Microsoft partners and offer your help.
We are all listed here: http://directory.microsoft.com/
I can assure you that a lot of us have a ton of interesting projects that need a lot of research and we don't have the time to do it. You'll probably be interested in working with ISVs.
Leonid S. Knyshov
Find me on Quora
It takes a degree to get a job, but it takes a job to pay for a degree. It could be that the submitter or his family is too poor to pay for college but too rich to qualify for grants or for scholarships that consider financial need.
I read in the paper recently that Google hired a non-college graduate. If you think you are Googly enough, there is them. An internship, probably.
If history repeats itself, why can't we study the future?
I came in to offer a few suggestions, but they've already been made. You can't really expect to get a programming job at your age/experience even if you know how to program. Your best bet is to do open source development, try to get on a research project if you live near a university (professors love free labor), or to get a job at a computer repair shop. If you haven't had a job yet, working a "normal" job for someone your age is actually a good social experience that I would recommend. I used to want a technical job, but only worked at restaurants until the end of college. Looking back now, I value the social experience I had that I know I wouldn't have received doing tech work. I would recommend you get a regular job for someone your age and spend some of your free time doing open source work and/or learning more about programming on your own.
I work for a government research lab and all government facilities can hire you as an employee as long as you are 16. It is usually called Student Temporary Employment Program (STEP) or some similar name. If you live near a facility, go to the personnel or human resources office to inquire about the program. You will get paid about $10 and hour and hopefully will get to do something pretty interesting. I have two college and one high school students who work for me in this type of program. Once you get hired you can work full time in the summers and on breaks, and part time during school. An additional benefit is that the time you work counts toward retirement if you stay with the federal government. One of my wife's cousins has been working for the NSA for 26 years and he's only 42. Also if you get hired into a full time position after you are 18, they will pay for your school if you go part time.
Now, I'm being offered a job to install fiber-optic lines in the capital region of New York. $16 an hour over the summer, and when I'm done with school I'm sure I'll be qualified for a raise. Going to school is the smartest choice you can make. You're covered under your parents insurance while you're in school, the cops don't care what you do (as long as its not a felony), and you can make your own schedule. You'll have loans to pay back, but everyone does. Point is, once you start working you never stop, and you're chances of going back to school after that degrade rapidly over the months. Don't sell out your future just so you can start working 3-4 years early.
Heh. I've been trying to get a worthwhile job since I was 17. I'm currently 18 and both Firedog and Geek Squad don't even take me seriously enough to even bother hiring me. I think it's my age and young look that gets me really. No matter how thoroughly I explain myself at the interviews and how detailed I answer the questions correctly... You'll probably never get such a job unless you're a bit older. Good luck to you though.
Sorry, nerds have names like Melvin Punimeister. Perhaps you should consider the Chippendales or playing the young Bruce Willis in 'Die Hard: the Beginning'.
I started working pretty young, learning java and web programming. I've had a couple jobs at different departments of a state university, even while i was in highschool. There are a lot of state departments that want talented students they can pay a (relatively) small amount to learn on the job and take care of small tasks. Sometimes you can try starting out data entry and express interest in doing more interesting stuff.
It's happened for me and a friend of mine. It may not work the same everywhere, I'm in Tallahassee, FL.
"how can they call it a MINE if everything here is THEIRS?!?!" -Straight Jacket
both dialects of Chinese and as many dialects of Hindi as possible.
Also consider working at Best Buy if for nothing else but to get money to move to a fashionable part of Bangalore, India.
Any job you are thinking of getting training for now, will be gone by the time you get out.
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
I too am looking for a job, and I have obligations to my family that prevent me from moving far from my home town. However, even with a B.Sc. in computer science, I can't even get an interview in my home town because I lack recent paid experience. In order to make my resume more appealing, where can I get this "professional training" you speak of? Or am I supposed to go the fast food/retail cashier (for cash handling experience) to bank teller (for banking industry experience) to bank IT route?
I may be comitting a major violation of the groupthink here, but if you are a U.S. citizen, the Air Force or even Air National Guard is a good way to get a jumpstart on an IT career, especially if you can get into a combat comm squadron. Our current comm suite is pretty modern, with Cisco routers and switches, Sidewinder firewalls, Red Data Modules, etc. You will also qualify for some decent educational benefits, such as the G.I. Bill, tuition assistance, and if you go Guard and depending on what state you are in, stuff like student loan repayment and scholarships.
If you want to consider this route, especially ANG, send a message my way, and I'll send you some more info.
This space unintentionally left blank.
If you haven't already decided on a college, you should check out Kettering University (formerly GMI Engineering and Management Institute, formerly General Moters Institute, no longer associated with GM). School is 6 months out of the year (split into 3 month semesters), and you're required to have a co-op job for the other 6 months. While the school's largest major is Mechanical Engineering and it's top rated major is Industrial Engineering, it has a great Computer Science department.
I am a Junior there now, working on my Computer Engineering degree and an Applied Mathematics minor. It's a pretty good school and has only been getting better with the new President. The school has excellent resources for finding a job, along with all the help you could need in making a proper resume and improving your interviewing skills. Kettering is definitely worth a look.
At 17 I received a job as a UNIX Systems Admin for a local ISP. I went in one day and asked cold if they were hiring at all. I had a resume with no actual work experience in computers, but it had all the various things I had been working with at home for the last 6 years. You can get a job, just be professional and confident.
...and go talk to them. I got my start when I was 16 at a small business that built systems and networks. I was able to gain a great foundation there, and would recommend it to anyone wanting to get a taste.
If you have to, volunteer to work for cheap. When I think back, I'm pretty sure I was making just above minimum wage at my first job. Of course, I was billing at over $125 / hour to the company's clients... but hey, you gotta start somewhere.
Anyway, just be enthusiastic, and show them that you do your homework. Get a feel for what the company does, and show them that you at least know the basics.
Concentrate on getting into college and earning money if needed. Absolutely continue to dabble in programming...teach yourself Java, Python, C++, or whatever floats your boat, but only in your free time. Until you are accepted into a college that satisfies your goals, don't put a lot of time into anything that doesn't help this effort.
Do not be tempted to bypass college. It would be a huge mistake.
Contrary to what many people believe, a college education is not meant to teach you practical job skills. It is meant to educate you about life. It is a way for employers to weed people out and to put yourself in a better pool. If you don't have a B.S., 9/10 places will throw away your resume.
College is important. It will teach and educate you on many skills you will need in life.
However, internships and other summer jobs are the best networking opportunities that exist. They will help you get job when college is done. Please don't write them off. If you intern wisely (on your summers off), with the right people, you can walk right out of college into a nice job or have a resume that has an excellent combination of experience and education (and quite possibly earn a fair amount of money).
There is always a frontier where there is an open and willing mind
I started out by getting an associates in accounting, which took less than a year. I then used that knowledge to start a computer consulting business, specializing in small business accounting.
By catering to small businesses, you will gain a lot of word-of-mouth advertising for free (if you're good). Link up with a local computer store for hardware, or go through a big mail order place like Dell. Don't try to do both custom hardware and consulting sales, as you'll spread yourself thin very quickly.
Later, if you decide to further your career, you'll want to get a full degree. Lately, even a BS in Computer Science will barely get you in the door for large corporations.
Also, try to spread your knowledge around a bit. As a consultant, you'll need to know Windows systems, but also knowing Linux systems will give you an edge, as you can undercut competative bids by placing Linux in areas where it works best and costs the least, in the server rooms.
Good Luck!
How about selling iRivers to young adults @ Circuit City. ;-)
-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+ *** http://www.mountainfort.com *** +-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-
is sit down and learn all the stuff they dont teach in (most) college(s), this means assembly, low level C, learn how traditional data structures work (i.e. linked lists/queues/et cetera without things like the STL), learn how dynamic memory allocation works, and study math study math study math. If you get good at all of the above, while college is still good and it makes you more rounded, it isn't necessary.
Hey bud.. I remember how it was when I was 17... I used to ask the same questions.. and the w/o college part come to find out seriously gets you much of nowhere... While it is a sad fact in the world we live in, that piece of paper or at least the attempt to receive it is the easiest thing you can do to get a job in the tech world. At the age of 15 I LUCKILY got my first job at a small mom & pop (literally speaking) computer store, making and selling computers for the local public offices (only because my boss was also the local sheriffs deputy). That job was received only out of the sheer generosity of a good man. Since that job I have had nothing but crappy retail job experiences (IE. Target(electronics dept.), Staples, and Rex TV & Appliance to name just a few), a t-shirt company, and a crappy cologne and perfume job that landed me in jail for a night for selling w/o a business license. You seriously should look into going to college or at least a tech school as did myself for a really good tech job. At the moment I have the best job of my life working for EATON corporation as an IT Analyst. I as well as my co-workers would have never gotten this far without some sort of extra education. I know it sucks, and I know the thought of having the knowledge to work the field w/o the education seems like it should land you a great position somewhere is lingering in your head, but seriously.. it won't happen without that piece of paper (IE. at the least an AS in Computer Tech.). Look into your local tech college or vocational school, I promise its not as hard as you might think it is. If you truly have the intelligence to work the field then receiving the documentation will be a piece of cake. I went from making a crappy hourly wage before college to making a very nice 5 figure salary afterward working a job that I hope to whatever deity there might exist that I can keep till retirement. I love my job and I know if you make that slight effort you'll find a job doing the same as what you desire. College isn't as bad as you might think it is.. even though it was only less than a year ago, I miss the days of hacking into a cute nerdy female students computer in Linux class, editing her Apache hosted website to say "I PWNED YOU!" and ask her out on a date. If you have the pre-requisite knowledge it'll be a blast I assure you. I wish you the best my friend.. now I'm off to get drunk and remember the glory days while I can enjoy the weekend before getting back to the grinding board of the repetitive strain of adult job-hood... GOOD LUCK!
Sincerely,
Robb (aka. Wyt3dr4g0n)
Find a non profit organization that needs a tech guy. A lot of your work will involve boring user support (still good experience), but you should be able to find some database/web app development opportunities too.
Might not make you any money, but it's good for both resume filling and on a university application.
I got my first gig "hacking" passswords and writing spam scripts for Pegasus mail at local college... the network admin caught me, was pissed at first and then hired me 6 weeks later. I worked there for about 2.5 years and got my next job through the work I did there.
Welcome, you're now competing with BS. MS and PhD from India, China, Russia and every where else.
A buddy told me a few years back a group of science school kids were invited to Clemson University to work on a visualization cluster. Most of the students had little to no programming experience at all, but after a few weeks, everyone was able to write a basic c/python program and touch on how to write parallel code. As a young student, you probably won't have the oppertunity to write linux kernel code, but if you scan the web for REU programs, you may find a few that allow even a prospective college student (I'd write that in a letter) to participate. With so many student defecting from the sciences (at least in the US. no I do not have a citation) I'm sure the interest of a young mind would motivate any program director to include you in a research experience. Would you guys agree?
my mom posts on slashdot.
If you're going to college, look around campus for a part-time coding job. Don't go to the CS department, but look at the schools of education, the humanities, etc. A lot of these schools do computer projects, but lack the skills to write their own apps or admin their own systems.
I know one CS major who will have grad school offering all sorts of assistantships because he's gotten into coding applications for foreign language systems.
You can also watch the local *nix Users Group lists for job offers to students. I see two a week.
One caveat: You will not make bank through these jobs. I didn't as an undergrad, and I haven't as a graduate student. What I did was build a a ton of marketable skills that have now started to pan out in major contracts with research groups all over the country.
I'd rather have someone respond than be modded up.
See if there are any ISPs in your area that are looking for interns. You can get a lot of experience (some of it dealing with customers which can be a negative) and you can see a wide range of different roles you could step into one day. I had a lot of fun working at an ISP. The biggest bonus was working with a bunch of other geeks.
The college professor route would also work but you might end up learning some interesting skills that only apply in that context that are fairly useless otherwise. Like some specific programming language or poor methods of doing things. Even with those caveats it can still be a very good experience as there is a lot to be said for learning principles and observing how people do things.
If you go the ISP route my one bit of advice is that there are crazy people out there and you may get a call from one. If someone starts yelling hangup on them.
I believe co-operative education (coop) is an excellent way for young people to get a head start in their careers.
I'm enrolled in a coop program (Software Engineering at the University of Waterloo). Although I'm only in my third year of studies, I have accumulated 12 months of software-development work experience (working for General Electric Healthcare and Autodesk M&E).
Certainly students enrolled in non-coop programs can graduate with relevant work experience (e.g., summer internships). Schools with coop programs, however, tend to facilitate the job-finding and job-application processes.
In Canada, some schools with well-known coop programs are the University of Waterloo, École de Technologie Supérieure, and Université de Sherbrooke. I'm sure there are many such schools in the United States.
and get into it. Start off with the simple things, but get into the lower level engine behind the actual application. Or better yet, get involved with the kernel. But don't do mundane programming; get into the algorithms, and find out "why" certain things are done certain ways. Figure out how to optimize algorithms in C, and not in assembly (also figure out how to do it in assembly too). I was recently interviewed for an internship (which I got and am currently doing) and the sole reason that I was offered the job was due to experience with an OSS project; and not just doing website stuff or administration, or GUI work. It's about getting down into the technical stuff, and really understanding what is going on. If you can find a project that you can do that on, you're golden.
Baver
So you like technology do you? Had an interest in it all your life? Thats nice. All you have to do is this: Go to a tech school, study for two or more years. Then get a job in it no matter how demeaning, and how little pay (you may even have to pay them). Do that for several years. Then, go on to university. Study for four years (or more). Take the coop program, study hard, get good grades and graduate. Then, prepare yourself for the REAL WORLD. Its nice that you have an interest. Go back to square one. Get yourself a demeaning, entry level job (likely sub-minimum wage if there is such a thing where you live). You may have some piece of paper from a university, and several more from colleges (and some work experience), but that means absolutely nothing to the head hunters. Be prepared to spend several years working very long hours at poverty wages in order to be considered experienced enough to get an entry-entry level job (8-10 dollars per hour). Ten to fifteen years of this, and you might move up (although it would be better if you went to India or China). Its also better if you speak mandarin or hindi. I'm not saying that that a career in technology is impossible in North America, its just that people with masters degrees and higher are having a difficult time getting work. Mere interest won't even get you the horse laugh from employers. I don't mean to change your mind, but seriously, you really want to think about something that pays money before you turn 50 (you said you were 17 years old, didn't you?) Change your mind. I don't care what the employment people tell you. Getting a career in computers is as promising a future as getting a career operating elevators, or selling rolls of camera film.
The first thing you should do is talk to the college advisor at your school and start deciding on what schools your interested in, and when the applications are due. If your sure you want to study computer science, you should start looking at schools that will interest you and can provide you with courses/experience in fields you might be interested in. If your HS school offers it, taking a programming course or AP Computer Science Class is a good start.
Just as importantly, find something that your interested in.
Is there an open source program that you like using? Perhaps some feature that you'd like see added to one. If so, go to the site's forums or mailing list (sourceforge has a lot of these products) and introduce yourself. Ask for some advise on what you should try and learn, and what you can contribute.
Are you interested in any specific games? If so, particularly for FPS games, try working on or making your own modifications or maps for the game. It doesn't have to be actual programming, but it will give you experience.
Are there any other subjects your interested in? Does your school have a website? If so, try making your own site. Along the way, pick up a book and start learning HTML, Javascript, and/or PHP to make a more dynamic site.
The most important thing is to find something your interest in, and then learn how to write a program to match your interests.
Learning to use UNIX/Linux is also a good place to start. You will learn a lot installing, exploring (and toubleshooting) with a distribution such as Gentoo. It will also give you the development tools to use when you start coding. Alternatively, if you don't have a system that you can install Linux on, you can try a LiveCD distribution such as Knoppix that has many of the same features, but won't have any lasting affect on your computer.
Don't be afraid to ask questions, and always remember Google is your friend in finding solutions to most issues.
go for any job related to computers you can get. there wont be many places that want to take you on as a developer, not even a junior one, at 17, unless you can easily prove you have the skills.
any tech job, even if you're just making the coffee part time at a computer retailer will help you. obviously, the closer you get to development, the better, but you're only 17, don't worry, plenty of time to find a better job.
continue development as a hobby, until you have the skills needed to get a development job, sharpen your skills on the net, contribute to open source projects, etc. In 2 years you could be a really good developer & have a head start on your peers that went to college, if you work for it.
Web Design
It may be too late - you are already reading slashdot! Go to school, work flipping burgers, be a bum, but don't get involved in the tech world! Look at all the answers posted here - on a Sat night! Is this what you want to end up as? Some friendless nerd with nothing to do on Saturday but read slashdot and give advice rather than be out partying?
Find an interesting Open Source project to attach yourself to. Or think up some project you've always wanted to see done and do it yourself. Many great things have been accomplished by people with a little free time and an itch they just gotta scratch. You may be able to leverage off of, or extend, an existing tool, or find a tool that works like you want and pick it apart to see how it's done.
But I worry that the kinds of jobs you'll be offered at this point will be disgusting, to the point you'll be turned off from any further career. This happened to me with biotech lab work. In high-school I excelled in chemistry and biology, so I landed a job at a snappy little biotech firm that was developing a test for Legionnaire's disease. My job? Weighing toothpicks and putting exactly 20 in each little plastic envelope. And using a pump to put exactly 50ml of solution into little plastic bottles. It was tedious and taxing. The next summer I worked in a car wash, made good tip money and had enough brain left at the end of the day to get a little reading and writing done and enough money at the end of the summer to buy my first PC complete with Turbo Pascal and the Zork Trilogy.
This is not my sandwich.
Nick,
Good job, motivation is a big one, you appear to be motivated. Thats 15% for a good start. A lot of the people I work with are not motivated to learn, don't get complacent. Everyone in the forum has already waxed poetic about school and what do do over the next 5 years.
Next week, go to the local community college or closest university and bang on doors and beg.
Good luck.
Post back telling us what you do.
I've taken interns and hired people with only hs - it's a start and a way to build experiences for your resume. Good Luck!
During my senior year of HS, I was just like you. Very interested in computers, enjoyed programming, and looking for a job. The one thing about me that may be different than you, is that I really wanted to go to school. So in about March of 05, I sent an email to the Comp Sci professor at my local university, and arranged a meeting with him. At the end of the meeting, he introduced me to another person at the university, who was the web master. She told me to apply for a Student IT job on campus, which I did. About 2 months later I went in for an interview, and ended up getting the job. I worked in the IT office all summer, and have been working there ever since. It's not much programming job, but it provides me with money while I am in school, gets me in good with all the professors there as I fix their computers, and most importantly, provides me with 2 years of experience in an IT office. I have phone experience, Hardware troubleshooting, software troubleshooting, and help desk experience. All of these have taught me a lot, and provided me with a (higher paying)job offer at another university which I will be transferring to next semester. So after that long story, my advice, the same as everyone's else, is to GO TO SCHOOL!!!!!!!!!!! Just try and get a job on campus, there are tons of them. I am also doing and Independent Study for Comp Sci too, which rocks. So, GO TO SCHOOL!!!!!!!!
arrrg, (like a pirate)
I started working for a public school as a computer tech when I was 16. Since public schools are usually on a pretty tight budget, I've found a lot of them have no problem hiring younger people as long as they are capable. I worked at a smaller school and I learned quite a few things. My jobs included server maintenance, computer repair, network troubleshooting, server/client installs, running cable, working with projectors/scanners/printers, some light coding, and pretty much everything else you can imagine a school district would need. When I was 18, I was even promoted to Technology Coordinator for about 6 months until I went off to college. Not a bad wage for someone who literally just graduated from high school. The wages for a tech, while not usually outstanding, are probably a bit more lucrative than the ones most of your friends will have. In addition, you can make some pretty good contacts. Befriending the superintendent has proved useful many times, as his references are excellent. You may not want to end up in this area, but it's not a bad place to start.
I got my first real job in the IT field right after I turned 17. I think you'll find that the people who climb the ladder the fastest were in similar situations. In my case, I had repaired computers for a number of the teachers at my high school, and one of them referred me to the supervisor of an IT department at a fairly large local business. I ended up getting an internship, in spite of the lack of certifications, or, for that matter, a completed high school diploma. My work for them lasted well into my college degree. The key to getting that job was networking - leveraging the relationships I had to find a good job opportunity. If you can successfully network, having less experience than other job candidates isn't going to be a hindrance. Once you get your foot in the door, you'll start getting job experience, and you'll have something to show on your resume.
If you want to get a good job while still in high school, there are a few things you should do:
(1) Self-study: Go to Borders and read some books, or do some research online. Take one of your old computers and load *nix on it. Install and reinstall Windows. Go to Microsoft's website and take advantage of the Virtual Labs. Add SecurityFocus (and more importantly, BugTraq) to your daily list of websites. Become passionate (and well-read) about computer security. You get the drift. The point is, at the age of 17, you don't have much practical experience in the job world yet, so you need to make up for that in part by building a strong knowledge base, and that knowledge base needs to be fairly diversified.
(2) Build some business relationships: When someone has a computer problem, be willing to give them a hand - provided you don't get yourself in over your head. By the same token, don't take on a task that you won't be able to complete to someone's satisfaction. By (effectively) showing off your skills, you create a base of potential references that will be able to give you recommendations when a job opportunity comes up
(3) Take some tech classes at the local community college: Enroll in classes that provide you with resources that you wouldn't have access to in your own home. Talk to your parents and work out a deal with them to cover your tuition for the classes. For instance, while you may be able to set up some cheap Linksys routers and switches at your house, you're probably not going to have access to enterprise-grade equipment. The Cisco Academy program is an amazing asset to learn about networking. The CCNA program through the Cisco Academy has 4 semesters, each of which can usually be taken on Saturdays over the course of 8 weeks. After you complete the CCNA classes, you'll have the skills necessary to pass the CCNA Exam, which will put you ahead of most entry-level IT workers. Oracle database classes also come to mind; while you can learn the basics of SQL from simply installing MySQL or MSDE on an old computer at home, having successfully completed an Oracle class will add some real bragging rights to your resume.
I realize that a lot of developers focus more on learning languages than building diverse skills, but if you can learn programming skills as well as networking and system/application skills, you'll be able to carve out a good place in the market. I chose the system and network administration route for my career, and I've always regretted not being able to code anything beyond the simplest and most mundane tasks. Most successful IT people aren't know-it-alls by any means, but they do tend to be (close to) do-it-alls, and that makes them incredibly lucrative...and while they can't do EVERYTHING themselves, they are resourceful enough to either know someone who can do it, or to have enough knowledge to know what they need to learn to get the job done.
(4) Join your school computer club: Hang out with other up and coming geeks. To a certain degree, you'll be scoping out the competition, but more importantly, you'll benefit from their company by learning some skill-sets that they mi
Many universities support a Co-op program where you go to school a semester and then work for a semester. There may be limitations on this, such as you can only coop starting your junior year or something, though. The advantage of this is that you go to school *and* you get a *real* job (with not-so-bad pay) that can definitely lead into a real job after you graduate. If nothing else, you get experience while you're in school as an undergraduate at the expense of taking longer to graduate. I know that in the past, companies like IBM, Lockheed-Martin, General Dynamics, and a host of others have had such programs with the university that I attended, to give examples.
These days, you'll hear all about how college will get you better pay and better jobs, but that's only true in the long run and only true once you've got the degree. The problem is, most 4 year degrees now take 5 or 6 years and tuition and costs in general keep going up, not down. Go out and get yourself a job that you enjoy doing and that has some relevance to what you want to do. Then use the time you take at the job to learn the most vital things you need to know BEFORE you get to college: 1) What exactly you want to do and 2) Time management. Without either of those two in place BEFORE college, you will just waste your money. College will very easily put you and your family into debts that can easily be avoided by buttoning down and getting yourself a real job in the first place. Most companies these days will offer tuition assistance for most college or professional development and with a steady job and income, you can build up work experience while finding your place in life. And if you're working and going to school, not only will you have less debt when you get out, but you'll have a leg up on other grads because not only will you have work experience, you will have a job that you're already established in.
I'm not saying don't go to school and don't get an education, I'm saying put it off until you know what you want to be educated about. The first two years are like highschool anyway except you pay for it and the teachers are a lot worse. And worst of all, as more graduates are finding out, today's BA is yesterdays highschool diploma. You need a masters to get anywhere good these days.
That isn't to say all of college is bad. I will be the first to admit that college was some of the best part of my life, but everything that was good was everything OUTSIDE the education. All the life experiences I got in college I could have done without racking up over $30,000 in personal debt. 2 years of real working did far more for me than 4 years of college ever did in terms of my professional development, and I got the job without the degree.
T Money
World Domination with a plastic spoon since 1984
I went into the workforce from high school. My friends went to college. When they got out of college, they found that they were far to educated to get an entry level position, and lacking enough experience to get anything higher. One of which became a janitor at the company I work for... So my recomendation is somewhere in between. Get as much experience as you can for a few years, then go to college. That way you will be able to get a higher position then entry level, and sometimes you can get the company you work for to pay for classes.
I got into my high-tech career by answering a job ad at my university for a student computer workshop instructor. Due to my own fascination with technology, I knew enough about basic computing to teach anyone how to use them. I started as a student employee, and worked my way up to teaching Unix courses, networking courses, etc. I changed my major to computer science and my next job was straight into the corporate high-tech world. It's worked out very well for me so far.
Try looking for a similar opportunity when you get to college, or start right now by asking if you can help with your school's computer labs.
Best of luck!
... I've received 6 months so far of work experience as an intern at IBM in their Rational department, and I have another 6 months coming up this April with a company I'm not sure of yet.
My particular university has a co-op program that will net you both college credit (if you want) and a paid internship. You receive 2 6-month paid internships over a two year period, and in return you write a few papers, give a few presentations, and go to a few classes. Of course you have to do reasonably well in your classes to participate in the program, but my particular university (Oregon State) accepts about 60 or 70 computer science students into the program every year.
If this interests you, I strongly suggest looking into the university's computer science/software engineering program and see if a co-op program like this exists. A simple phone call to the department could probably answer it for you.
Selling Ipods may not be your thing but you might be able to get a job as a repair tech in a computer store.
If you have A+ certification or equivalent training then apply.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
two words..
Civil Engineering
I'm still amazed at how much more fun it is than being a code monkey
See if you can get an internship in India. That is where the industry is moving; might as well get a feel for it.
Table-ized A.I.
Low level programming isn't for everyone, but I really enjoy writing simple hardware specific code.
Some companies, especially in the hardware automation areas, are always on the lookout for new employees.
As the IT Director in a high school district, I am always happy to hear about students who want to help keep systems up and running. Often there are union issues to work around (not always as excited about internships as you'd like to think), but there are creative solutions to this that can have you doing anything from PC repair to teacher application support to (probably limited) network support. It's a great way to do something meaningful for your school and to get some experience in a location that probably really needs your help.
When I was a bit younger than you, I started working for a very cool technology company in my city. They weren't huge, but had some very smart people, and were doing very interesting things at the time. I had a great time working for them, and learned a TON, which translated later into a great job in the field - with them, when they got bought up by a larger, more established company. The first thing that I tell people your age who are interested in computers - specifically programming - is to program. There is no better way to learn how to do it than actually doing it. Find something that you'd like your computer to do which it's not doing now, and make it do it - like a script that pings your website every 10 minutes to see that it's up, or some code that organizes all of your website logins and logs you in from a central homepage through a simple link. All of these program would be easy, and get you going in your selected field.
Well, it worked for Linus. At least he was invited all over the world. I propose a namecombination of Manley and Unix: Manix.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
You are 17 years old and there is reason to jump start yourself into a career lifestyle. My advice is to take a variety of different classes your first few semesters of college courses to get an idea of what you really want to do. There is a pretty good chance you may end up wanting to do something completely different. From my personal experience, I started off wanting to do programming and a few classes later decided I never wanted to write code for a program again, despite being an A student in those courses. I found that I get quite a headache from programming and to think that could possibly be the next 40 years or so of my life was not something I wanted. Although thanks to having taken other classes, such those for information systems and history, I found two areas that really interested me a great deal and gave me something to pursue I actually enjoy. You have the rest of your life to work your ass off once you get out of the school systems. Just sit back and enjoy life as much as you can before you reach a point where aiming for a career actually makes sense, which is quite a few years away for you yet.
As a coder turned sales rep, I'd say to get a head start by getting some sales experience.
Knowing how to meet people and develop contacts, sell a product, (e.g., you and your resume) and simply how to communicate effectively gives a huge advantage over the masses of introverted and pasty CS grads and imported indian geniuses competing for the dwindling good jobs that are being sent overseas. Business/life has always been about people; being likeable, and having the biggest network will always return more than just more technical knowledge than the next guy, and/or a fancy college degree.
I'd recommend Tim Sanders' Love is the Killer App is an excellent how-to on acquiring a crucial edge.
Ok, I did a little bit of system building and networking for some older friends with their own business back the the mid 90's while I was in high school. It was pretty nice, but I didn't want to end up spending all my time building gaming systems or running networks through local grocery stores. Eventually I hit paydirt when I was built one of the tech guys at a local factory a custom gaming rig.
I was offered a position as a "Weekend Mainframe Operator." The job, as I remember, required that you be 18 years old (factory regulations that no employee could be under 18, ymmv). Basically what happened was that factory ran 24 hours a day 7 days a week. The mainframe had to be up and running for the factory to work. There are three shifts in a day, weekends or not. One person in the computer room each shift, but to avoid massive amounts of overtime, on the weekends it wasn't staffed by regular full timers. They pulled kids from the local high school and community college to come in and work 12 hour shifts over the weekend. That's where I came in. I would go in for 12 hour shifts on weekends, alternating with another guy. We watched the mainframes, made sure they kept up and running, handled reports, and on Sundays we'd make backups and take them to off-site storage. It was a little boring at times, but it was great for several reasons. I got to see tech I never would have touched otherwise: Old IBM mainframes, brand spanking new (at the time) IRIX servers, OS/2 servers, and the occasional NT box - very little Windows used there, mainly it was Sun and SGI boxes, hooked up to and ancient (and now dead due to the Y2K problem) 1960's era mainframe. I learned a good bit about COBOL, FORTRAN, Visual BASIC and C (pretty much in that order). Got to experience the corporate bureaucracy (which does suck, but it was nice to get introduced to that at a young age). Networked in the tech field quite a bit, and set up connections that I still have with relatively influential people.
Check around and see what there might be like this for you, it was a good learning experience and the pay was good. Downside was that the work was from all on weekend nights (11PM-11AM or 11AM-11PM), but still it was worth the eight months I spent doing it.
You have the right idea starting young. Your brain is much easier to train the younger you start. Personally I started coding at fourteen. My first job was in a computer store--before there was ever a Best Buy. Working in the computer store was a summer job. Once school started (sophmore year) quit the lame computer store and started working for an accountant with an IBM System34 (big woot for RPG). By December of my junior year I was hired to work at the IBM TJ Watson Research Center. The experiences were priceless. By the time I entered college I had five computer languages under my belt. When I gradutated from college I was able to list twelve languages on my resume.
:)
Not sure what the labor laws are like now. I was able to start working part time at 14 and full time at 16. Working actually helped my school studies--taught me how to manage time very well. Finished school with top grades and was a national merit scholar.
Just be careful coding doesn't become your life. Very easy to get sucked in and burn out before you are 30. Learn an instrument and join a band. (Music and coding seem to go hand in hand--logical progression) Do something that gets you away from the computer--socializing with people is important if you don't want to become a smelly nerd.
Nick, when I was 17, there were no computers that you could get near. The
year was 1955, and I was just as eager as you seem to be to prepare for what
I saw as the coming computer age. I had a part time job in a shoe store, and
was 2 years away from university. The store was small in a small town, and
the owner was a proud man, proud of the students he had working there who
had gon on to be judges, lawyers, politicians and such.
At the time I didn't think I would ever live up to his hopes for me, but I
tried my best and I learned a lot. A few years later, I realized that the
University education that I could get would not take me where I wanted to
go, so I left before graduation. Meanwhile I had done many jobs in
mechanical engineering, electronics manufacturing, and even forestry
research, always looking for employers and supervisors who were mentors for
their employees, and who helped them proceed.
It was not until 1965, when I was 27, that I found the job I was looking
for, as a computer hardware technician. Computers were just exiting from the
vacuum tube age, and the germanium switching transistors of the time were
considerably less reliable that today's high performance silicon; but the
time was short -- reliability improved, the fun was out of it, and by 1973 I
went on to different things, things that built on some of the other jobs I
had and people who trained me in the work that they loved to do and were
proud of doing.
My advice is that when you look for work while you continue your education
look for an employer who wants you to learn what he knows. My love affair
with the nuts and bolts of digital hardware was only 8 years, and 10 years
after I was 17. The people who taught me and the jobs that I had in that 10
year period, have been invaluable through the succeeding years. Don't focus
too narrowly on your chosen career, but do something that's fun for the
people you are working with. It will be fun for you and you'll learn a lot,
and some day it may be very useful to you. There'll be time for that narrow
focus on your chosen path, but meanwhile keep an eye on the big picture. You
never know when you may have to advance to something different.
These guys are always recruiting: http://www.selinc.com/careers/index.html
I had the luck to go to college near a high tech center: Northern Virginia. I won't lie, I had some connections, but I landed a job working at a DARPA spin-off. Didn't do anything interesting in particular--certainly nothing that significantly added to my skills--but I did get to sit in the same work area as about a dozen PhDs. I got to see their workspaces, watch them interact with their code and their computers, and got to chat with them in the cafeteria. Got $15/hr to boot.
My advice is to look hard in your area for companies making complex, IT-intensive products. Scan the newspaper for anything in your area attracting VC money. Then, put together a resume (get help from someone), and sell yourself like crazy. Be a persistent little fucker willing to work for nothing. You'll land something cool that will look awesome on your resume later, and you'll get to hang out with really smart people along the way.
The Rise and Fall of Online Community
Start working for your local school district's tech department as a student worker. They'll typically give you class credit for it, plus you'll make a few bucks. Being a student worker, they won't expect you to be a tech god. You can just show up and learn all about what they're doing and why.
You don't specify where you live, but several very large corporations will hire highly motivated, well qualified high school students for internships. For example Intel will offer summer internships to high school students local to one of their major US campuses (Portland, OR; Santa Clara, CA; Chandler, AZ; Folsom, CA; etc.) If you are not local to a tech giant, you will have to beat the pavement and beg a smaller employer.
When I was about your age I wrote an animation program in assembly on my Amiga 500 and showed it at my local Amiga User's Group. This got me noticed by several people who mentored me and got me a job. What stood out then and will stand out now is: can you dig through the documentation and figure it out yourself? You'd be amazed how many professionals there are out there who need substantial hand holding on any new technology. Self-learners are worth their weight in $100 bills. You want to be one of those.
Here's a good self-learner exercise: When I wanted to learn python, I went to an irc Python channel and found The Python Challenge. It is a series of puzzles to solve by writing python programs to figure out the clue to get you to the next puzzle/web page. This worked very well because the puzzles were small enough that you get that "Yes! I did it!" rush every few hours. Don't be afraid to go to the forums for spoilers.
Education is a better safeguard of liberty than a standing army.
Edward Everett (1794 - 1865)
Contribute to an open source project of your choice. If you're good then people involved in the project will gladly spread your name around and get you a paying job at MIT or Google between semesters. At the very worst you can do Summer of Code.
When I was in college, part of our final grade in our second databases course came from a database app we had to design and implement for a real-life organization. We didn't plan it properly from the start, didn't follow up like we should have with the organization, and ended up not turning it in; but, the experience was very valuable to me because I learned a lot because I wanted to keep working on that project, even after the due date had passed. Since it was (supposed to be) a web app, I learned a fair bit about CSS, Javascript, PHP, and MySQL. That knowledge is now coming in quite handy in my current job, where I'm working on another web application.
Working on a web app exposes you to a wide variety of programming aspects. You'll learn about web standards, which will be good knowledge to have as standards gain more widespread support among browsers and web services become more prevalent. You'll learn at least a couple of languages, like Javascript and whatever server-side scripting language you want to use. You'll learn the importance of separating your code (CSS/Javascript/PHP/whatever) from your presentation (HTML/XHTML), which relates to good modularizing practices in other programming languages. (Hint: when you get tired of mixing server-side code in your HTML pages, do a search for "template" software.) You'll learn the importance of validating user-submitted data. You'll learn a bit about server and database administration if you host the application on your own computer. If you stick with the application for a significant length of time, you'll learn the important of properly commenting your code so you can understand what you yourself wrote two months ago. (Okay, that one can apply to any kind of application, not just web apps.) In summary, it'll make you a well-rounded programmer with a definite edge over your peers when you start college.
What web app should you work on? Well, first make sure you had a good grasp on programming fundamentals: variables, loops, basic data structures, etc. Then, you could start with something like a message board or a blog where your friends can post. Eventually, you may start getting feature requests or want to add features of your own, and it'll give you a chance to code them. You'll be re-inventing the wheel most of the time, to be honest, but it's good exercise so *you* understand how something works, even if in the future you can just grab a pre-made component that does the same thing. Existing languages and applications are nice, but you may have to hack their code yourself someday to get them to do something *you* (or your employer) want. Don't cheat yourself by using a click-and-drag IDE that hides or automates the code-generation for you; find a text editor you like, and start tapping out the code yourself.
Best of luck.
I don't want to get blasted for knocking college, but I think its best to consider every option. At 18 I left school and started working in the tech sector. I went to an area in the country where tech was doing well, and got a job making a little less than what the average fresh out of college CS graduate would make. My parents were disappointed, but understanding and supportive. At my first job I had oppurtunities to branch out to many areas of the field, and went from being a Linux Admin / Programmer to understanding and becoming capable in data center design, disaster recovery planning, I soon came to a much better understanding of the technology industry and of my niches in it. Also, my first company paid for me to become Cisco and Citrix certified. A few years later I left that company and I have been either independantly consulting or working for tech consulting companies ever since. I had my first 100k+ year at 21 years old. What I learned by actually being in the field is more significant than what I would have learned if I had stayed at my 'top 40' computer science university, and I am very proud of my resume so far. If you have the skills, the good managers will recognize you, and the lack of a degree won't hurt you as badly as most people believe. I'm 23 now, and even though some companies won't hire me because I don't have a degree, I find myself with ample oppurtunities and with greater satisfaction than I think I would have if I were just graduating. Now I'm considering going back to college to aquire the coveted degree, but it would be on my terms. I feel my experience so far will help me chose a better curriculum than I would have at 18, and some schools are actually offering me credit for my work experience.
I want to clarify, I'm not advising that you discontinue your higher education, but I would recommend that you feel out the job market and make the most informed choice you can. Taking a year off from school to dabble in the field might also be a good option for you.
In terms of getting ahead, I'd say practice your interview skills as much as possible. At my first interview I was very nervous and I'm pretty sure it cost me 10k a year. My interview was brief and went something like this:
Company: How long have you been working with computers?
Me: Since I was five. My dad was a programmer, I started GW-Basic on my commodore when I was five, and moved to other languages as I got older.
Company: Wow, that's great, but why should we pick you when there is a sea of fresh graduates who want about the same pay as you?
Me: You've seen my work (I had already done a few contracts for this company) and know that I'm compitent. Plus, I live, breath and sleep technology. In this field, if you don't, get out of the way because you're going to fail.
Company: We couldn't agree more.
I was able to get my foot halfway in the door with that company by doing a couple of consulting projects for them before applying for a job. I met them through a chain of events which started with answering someone's visual basic question on a message board. They liked my solution and asked me to help integrate it into their commercial product and offered me compensation as a contractor to do it. I agreed and started a great relationship with that company, who I never worked full time for. A couple years later that company got sub'ed out by another company (lets call them company B for now) to write a home automation driver. The hardware didn't obey the white paper documentation, and I was never able to get it to work. I did the best I could and showed where the hardware was inconsistent. I got paid, but I still felt like I had failed. A year later company B, who had supplied the original hardware, called me to ask for its return. I didn't know it, but in the meantime they had tested the hardware themselves and found the same issues I had. They pursued the issue at great length with the manufacturer and were finally given a new set of documentation which made sense out of the chaos. At that point, company B
take it from me kid IT is not a good industry to work in. the hours are shit, the pressure is huge, the pay is lousy and the job security is nonexistent. go do an electrical trade. that way your job title is protected under law and no one can replace your qualifications with cheap fakes. you can also work off the job at 5pm and completely forget about work. If after a few years in the trade you still feel you want to work in IT, then an electrical cert if a great bonus for an employeer, you would be legally be able to do cabling and all kinds of jobs.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
As someone that is looking for people like you, I recommend you check with your local college and see what student assistant positions are available. Especially since local government organizations are clamoring for good people at cheap rates (student assistant = slave labor in many cases). Locally, Sacramento State has a foundation that serves as a clearing house for student employment across the region.
For example, we are looking for someone to help put together an OSSIM installation. The only real requirement is that the person has a reasonable understanding of a Posix compliant OS and basic scripting skills. (Sadly, it is very painful to find someone that can spell OS, let alone understand how to work in one). In exchange for that knowledge they will get an opportunity for a great resume' builder and real-world experience, on an extremely flexible schedule, while getting paid.
The difference between students and consultants is that we expect the students to be learning on our dime (which is why we pay them less)
- Mo
You want some advice???? Stop reading Slashdot and get a girlfriend.
Fast Federal Court and I.T.C. updates
Don't write off college. I don't have a college degree but I'm damned lucky. I came into college with a wealth of IT experience behind me, not to mention what I got while I was there. The right opportunities opened up for me at the right times after I got booted from my university. The odds of lightning striking twice are pretty slim my friend. Get your ass in college and stick with it. Yes the first 2 years will most likely be filled with boring theory and other bullshit. That's the price you'll have to pay to reach the latter college years where you actually get to apply what you learned. IMHO this method of education is jacked up. Few people learn from textbooks and classroom instruction. The vast majority of human beings learn from actual hands-on, practial experience. Teach people how to apply what they're learning as they learn it. Don't expect them to do anything other than memorize the answers if you want to teach theory. That's just my opinion. Back on topic though, get your damned degree. I would recommend against a CS major unless you really want to code the rest of your life. I would highly recommend an actual engineering degree of some sort. This will give you the widest possible array of good jobs in the long-run. As an engineer you'll be able to apply for damn near any job that requires highly skilled people simply because the employers want people with an engineering background. The sky is the limit with an engineering degree. Pounding out code is usually the limit with a CS degree. I know a lot of people with CS degrees that aren't even in the IT industry anymore. Also, in this day and age it doesn't hurt to get a minor in business. This will also set you apart from the rest of the field. No, you probably don't want to be an MBA but to be able to understand business models and what your employer and their customers need will quickly run you up the employement food chain. I would also highly recommend any sort of project management and Engineering Process or Ethics courses you can get your hands on. Force yourself to work with others. It's worth it in the long run, especially in our field. Best of luck.
Personally when hiring for a developer position, normally there are so many applicants that we throw out all the no (4 year) degree resumes or non related degrees (a degree in history doesn't help). That is simply a numbers game, we receive 200 resumes per day that a given position is advertised (online only at a single job web site). Last time we had about 400 potential applicants, and that is a small a pool of resumes. While we might be able to find an exceptional candidate without a degree, but the chances are so slim it isn't worth the time to look through every piece of garbage resume and interview the many very unlikely candidates to find a hidden gem.
A few things I expect a good candidate to learn from their education are:
I also like employees who can work well with others, can communicate - both ask questions and answer them, and mature enough and socially well adjusted to realize there is more to life than just computers.
I would hesitate to hire someone right from high school, that does not plan to take their education further. There is too much to learn about in order to be a good, well-rounded software developer to get it all from reading a few books or simply contributing to an open source project (though that can be a big plus on someone's resume IMHO).
We do hire summer students who are in (or plan to enter, in one case) Computer Science (or related such as Computer Engineering) 4 year university degree programs. Often CS students can find part-time work on campus, from being computer lab assistances, to support and PC technician for the university's computing services, to programming for professors doing research (in CS and other fields).
If you cannot afford to go to school full-time, then go part-time and find a job as well. Education combined with experience is a great mix.
In 2000 i gained a traineeship in Software Engineering. The traineeship was terminated three years later which left me with out a job and although i had completed two TAFE courses (Cert III & IV info tech) i had only a half completed three year uni course.
I looked for work for 6 months, applying for upto 6-10 jobs a fortnight. I didn't get a job, so i went back to uni. Only a month after finishing my computer science course i was well on my way to obtaining my current job as Software Engineer with BAE Systems Australia.
I have the thought that it depends on what your looking for. If you want to purley a coder/programmer/analysis, then you dont need a university or graduate education - although having one will no doubt attract larger corporations to you. With out a higher education, you are more than likely to get jobs as Web developer, application developer, mobile developer etc. Look for where technical skills are more important than say, engineering. Engineering requires a lot of over head to gaureentee a product is of some quality... So look for smaller firms in who have a focus on bringing technology to individual consumers.
Giving IE users a taste of their own medicine since 2005 - http://pods.-is-a-geek.net/
You said you were interested in Technology, but to me this tends to break down atleast somewhat between networking, programming, and databases. I would suggest you pick a program, likely a degree to get the well roundedness and these days the respect required. Then I would apply at the schools tech department if you want to become a network admin.
You'll learn alot just because your administering a school network, and nothing gets abused like school computers. It is also good preperation for business like administrative / support roles where you need to go in and troubleshoot a networking problem. Or the common stuff such as deploying images, rolling out updates, etc.
Secondly, if your more interested in Programming / Database type stuff, become a tutor. As a tutor you generally get paid, but it's not necassarily a stead job. However, if your at a university which has good IT programs, Programming is one of those murderous courses where there will be lots of people needing tutoring. And you will learn so much about this field just because you now have to relay information onto other students who may be struggling alot.
I am currently in my last 8 months for my degree, and I do both of these on top of a third job of which I've just been promoted to a team leader. I'd say both the network admin and programming tutor have been invaluable experience, related to two potential fields I can enter after I've completed my program.
As always, this is what has worked for me, your mileage may vary.
Back when I was in high school (1982-1986), I scored a job as a computer operator. The company provided stock quotes, and needed a computer operator for nightly refresh jobs (press a button here, change a backup tape there). It was a heaven-sent job as I got to sit in front of a pretty advanced computer system (Data Generals running AOS). For you, I'd advise keeping your eyes opened for opportunities like these. Look at small offices and businesses that may need a computer handy-man. These little computer jobs are out there. They're a great start!
rickumali@gmail
I run a computer shop (co-owner) and would be thrilled to have a tech oriented youth working with me. Even if it were just for a day or two a week, that would work out great. I'm sure your small computer shops would be happy to at least offer you a one day a week internship in the least! These kind of places are where you'll learn the real hands on stuff--unlike your Best Buy's and CompUSA's like you indicated with the iPod comment. Of course, this only deals with troubleshooting and building computers, but it is a definite addition to your resume! ps--If you're going to be in the triad of NC (plenty of good schools here, Wake Forest, NC A&T, UNC-Greensboro) feel free to contact me, I'll have something for ya!
Go to college and get a degree in Computer Science.
Save your money. You will spend years paying back the "financial aid" and most of the course work is/will be irrelevant. USA model is start putting them in debt right out of high school.
Party with your friends and start a band or something. Just learn to code in C, read a good software engineering book then build a medium-complex application on a linux box, all on your own. I just saved you thousands of dollars.
Believe it.
Seventeen year olds, rightly or wrongly, get a bad rep: They're perceived as needing a lot of supervision and as not very hard workers.
The question you've got to answer is why a manager would first want an intern rather than an employee (OK, the unpaid bit is nice), why they would choose a seventeen year old (when they could have a more qualified student who likely needs less supervision and gets more done) and why they'd choose you out of all the other seventeen year olds out there?
The easiest way is to have a parent with connections already established. I heard there were SGI machines at my local university, my dad knew a guy who used them, he offered my time for free, I worked a one week vacation and managed to prove myself enough that I got asked back every vacation afterwards.
If that avenue isn't open to you, it becomes a case of finding a way to prove yourself so you can get a potential employer's interest. The huge advantage you have here is that most of the tools you need to get started in a variety of tech fields are totally (or near) free:
Game level design: Get Unreal, Doom, Half Life, any of the games that are built on major engines. They tend to have toolsets shipped with them. Join the mod community, get good at building interesting level designs. Then test the hell out of them. Present that well and you'll likely get a start on game QA.
3D Art: Sadly photoshop will cost you and it really does make life a lot easier. Still, paint shop pro is an option as is gimp (though you'll likely want a second PC if your 3D packages are all on Windows). 3D packages themselves have a tendency to have free trial/learning versions. If you can't find downloads, watch the cover of ComputerArts and 3D World (both British imports to the states but pretty widely available) as they tend to have a lot of complete older versions of software on their covers. Get really good with them and a resume can handle the watermark "Demo Version" over all of your images. One note for 3D graphics - focus on one area (be that IK chains, lighting scenes, texturing, animation or the models in the first place). Most graphics shops dedicate people to specific areas and being great at one tends to be more valuable than decent all around. Burn your work on the CD (or pay to get some really good quality prints) and mail it to every studio you admire along with why you admire them. With luck, it'll lead to getting the interest of at least one or two of them.
Web Development: Again, Photoshop's your burden here. You don't need Dreamweaver (though the 30 day trial is free, as is PhotoShop's and, if you're willing to reinstall your OS every month, that can be an option). Again, focus on one aspect (I'm a director of web development for an agency and I'd rather hire a great designer or a great HTML coder than someone who does both passably). I can speak more to coding: learn standards, clean code structure, to write logical comments, to use CSS efficiently over the latest DHTML trick (I swear I'll never hire anyone whose resume includes making text chase the mouse). Remember that one of the first things someone like me will do is view the source code - your end result may be impressive but if I don't think you can write something the rest of my team can use quickly, it's of little use. Once you have the basic skillset and personal pages down, volunteer to redo your school, a local charity, etc. If you can show evidence of how you gathered requirements, itterated designs with the client and came out with what they want rather than what you thought they wanted, that's another great skill to show. Once you have a list of sites you can be proud of, check the Monster.coms and Dice.coms of the world and look for local (as no one will pay to relocate a kid) internships. Send a resume over, listing each project as work experience and make sure links to all of that portfolio are present.
Server side coding: Apache is free, tomcat is free, mod-php and mod-perl are free. Pretty much so long as you're not hu
START at a best buy, or in my case, a Circuit City. Managers notice technical skills. Right before I was promoted to technician, I was the MP3 Specialist. I started at a Circuit City at 16 years old. I an 19 now nad was just promoted to the Lead PC Technician at my store. Circuit City even just paid for the training and test to be a Microsoft Certified Technician. In addition, help people whenever you can with your specialty, even if it is for free. I helped teachers at my school (high school) with their computers, and a couple months later I was hired as an assistant to the technology coordinator, which was a paid position during school hours!
One of the most important skills you can learn is how to sell. It doesn't matter if you're operating as an independent consultant or as a wage slave in a rat cage, you have to sell the services you offer to another. Whether to your client or to your boss, the ability to sell yourself, your services, and communicate your value effectively is critical to getting paid what you're worth.
Yeah, it's important that you know your stuff, that you know how to write decent code, and that you continually strive to improve your skillz, but you'll get that advice from plenty of others.
But when you read the stories about how underpaid people are while their idiotic bosses get promoted, realize that what you're really reading is the story of somebody who doesn't know how to effectively market their real value to those around them!
You can start with the iPods to kids at Best Buy, but learn to sell items of value. Move into auto sales, and/or insurance sales. Or, run a computer store and man the floor for a while. Just a year or two of good sales experience will likely improve your income by 50% or more for the rest of your life.
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
Best place to get some experience is with a small local tech company. I am the lead programmer and PBX admin for a small consulting company, located in a small town north of Nashville, TN. We recently had a longtime (2 years, off and on) intern/employee who graduated high school and now is going to college. I trained him myself in Perl, and he worked on a project which scripted Scribus. During the summer he worked full time, and during the school year, he came in on some afternoons after school (although schoolwork always came first).
The key here is that a small local company is the one that will be most likely to let you soar to new heights. Larger companies are going to confine you to largely menial labor helping other tech professionals, which, while it may help you find menial jobs in the future, is not a great experience and doesn't give you good experience that you can put on your resume. (Being a summer copy and errand boy for <insert-company-here> doesn't really speak to your technical qualifications.) A small company is also more likely to be flexible, including letting you stay on part time while school is in session.
I'm a first-semester freshman, and I always thought my skillset was pretty damn nice for being 18. I went to college and got offered a job working for the campus right off. Keep in mind this required no work on my part, but it was only an entry level job. I kept it for about two weeks before they realized that I knew more about PHP than some of the students that maintain the website for the college. Now I make tons of money, my college is pretty much paid for, and I have something thats pretty impressive to put on a resume.
Bottom line? You can't say "trust me I know what I'm talking about" and expect to get a job. If you really know as much as you think, just keep it up and good things will come your way. If no good things come your way, I bet you don't really know as much as you think.
I can't tell from your request on whether you're just looking for something to bide you over until college, something to do during your college career, or something that would let you completely skip the college experience.
If the first, I have little in the way of advice aside from trying to do your own projects on the side of whatever else you do, and get noticed from there.
If the last, bad idea. You won't get very far without at least a bachelor's unless you're very lucky, very connected, or very, very good. Not everyone can be the next Bill Gates, and unless you want to waste four years figuring that out, I suggest you start looking at colleges. There are many different ways to pay- some you have to pay back, some you don't.
If the middle, may I make a college/university suggestion (and self-college plug)? Kettering University (formerly GM Institute). The per-week tuition is something like the second highest in the country, the location is horrible (ask anyone who knows of it what Flint, MI is like), and we have to take more credits than most "regular" places, but damn if you won't have opportunity out the wazoo.
Kettering is different from your regular college experience. First, we don't have spring or summer break, so don't come here if you're lazy. Second, Kettering has a co-operative system where you are hired as basically a paid intern with a company in a position relating to your major, and you stay with them your entire college career. And no, this isn't "We could use some coffee" internships- you'll actually work on projects related to your major, and gain great experience. By the time you graduate, unless you have a hard time finding a job (the college is mainly Engineering, so us CSs get the short stick at times), you'll have a full two years of work experience. The wages are fairly decent, too.
Plus, depending on the place you work and what openings they have, you might stay on full time after you graduate. Even if you don't, you'll have a leg up on almost every other graduate in the country when you finally get your diploma, making it much easier to find a job.
Work at a computer lab. A commercial internet gaming shop is ok too. The amount of viruses and volume of stupid questions, as well as the wide range of dysfunctional to completely normal computer users will give you a good idea of what you will become if you get into "technology" (since I can't tell if you're going to be a programmer or IT consultant). If a year doing that doesn't sour you, you're a geek and we're glad to have ya.
Often wrong but never in doubt.
I am Jack9.
Everyone knows me.
Does it have to be a job? If you don't need the extra cash, you might consider exploring free software projects out there. There are many needs (and some of them require repetitive tasks). You may consider doing internationalization, documentation, and all that stuff first for a project you like. Suppose you are attracted to Wb browsing technology. Get in touch with the Firefox community! See if there are some tasks you may heko with. This will give you project skills, people skills, and what not. You will also get familiar with developing free software, and after a while you may even start playing around with code. It'l take time before you start doing some "big" tasks (there's a lot of learning to do, but then again, you're 17!), but it'll sure be fun and educational. And it'll look good in your CV if you are an active member of a community. Plus, you get the satisfaction of helping make free software even better :-)
Get a job somewhere where you have to sell yourself. A restaurant, a car lot, some sales job in a store (best buy pays ok and you get discounts that aren't too shabby).
Anything you do, make your first one about selling yourself. It doesn't matter if it's relevant to your career, it only matters that you know how to get yourself out there.
I worked at a restaurant for 2 years, and 4 years I'm working at a nice place and making good money. My belief is that the lessons I learned at the restaurant were worth far more than anything I have learned at other jobs.
Plus you figure out how to talk to people outside of IT. IT folks aren't the most sociable. But getting into higher scale pay locations means you need to get past more normal people sometimes, which means figuring out how to interact with business folks without getting past "normals".
In my experience, a range of personal skills focused on the workplace is something you won't see at College, or a IT job. And those are the skills that will get you the furthest in a lot of cases.
About the only drawback is that you'll have to survive basic training.
From what I've been reading, the "kinder, gentler" Basic Training has been becoming even kinder and gentler of late. Air Force Basic Training has never been known as a real ass-kicker anyway.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
If you can get in from the very beginning, work for their Geek Squads, or the guys doing hardware installs and computer repairs. If you can't do that, get a sales job, take their training and work your way up into the Geek Squad position or become a manager. That will certainly look better on a resume for most second jobs than contributing to an open source project (not that that's not a valuable thing to do in your free time).
Otherwise, try a temp agency or something like that with a company that could potentially offer you a long-term job.
- Smalltalk - The original OO language and programming environment
- The Smalltalk Portal
- For a bit Free of fun and games
- Gratis Very Fast - Recommended
- Gratis non-commercial version of the top-shelf product
- The online Smalltalk library - gratis
- Ruby - OO in a sane file oriented environment
- The Ruby Portal
- Buy the best of the books. Only $25 for a pdf download.
- The gratis first edition as a WWW site
- SQL - You'll need to store your data somehow
- PostgreSQL - The Free Relational Database off the top-shelf
- MySQL - The fast, and most popular, one for Web use
- Gratis book - PostgreSQL Introduction and Concepts as a WWW site
- C and C++ - Get these downloadable books FAQ & Tutorial.
- The New C Standard - A huge well written book
- comp.lang.c FAQ'
- My own modest contribution
Get your head around that lot, toss in a sprinkling of accountancy, and you will be a very valuable item, but don't forget to have a bit of fun on the side.You live that long, and they don't decide to keep you after the 4 years.
Then you have to deal with being viewed with suspicion in some circles. I would certainly doubt the moral fiber of someone who enlisted at this point in history.
While the idea of selling iPods wouldn't thrill me either, you've gotta start somewhere. At the very least, holding a job (especially a customer service job) for a decent amount of time shows that you're capable of dealing with people, and didn't do badly enough to get fired. At the very best, you've got promotions/performance reviews/references for resumes.
:P
:)
Now for my story.
I started work as a cashier at Eckerd (a pharmacy) a few months after I turned 16. Half a year later, I requested (and received) a transfer to the photo lab. Another half year later, I was the senior photo tech at the age of 17 - they made an exception to the rule that requires you to be 18 for that job.
Moral of the story: Work hard no matter what you're doing - it'll look good on a resume later.
Another half-year later, I was applying for a full-time (non-technical) job at a major media information company nearby - and as luck would have it, the recruiter for the job was one of my photo lab customers.
Moral of this story: No matter how trivial a job seems, you can never tell when your performance will count for something.
After a year there, I decided I needed to get to college. I got here, got to know my professors, and was asked if I was interested in helping run the videoconferencing of classes between main campus and our satellite campus.
Moral of the story: Get to know the people who do stuff you're interested in. It always helps to have friends in those places.
I set up an arrangement before leaving for college where I'd still work for my employer on summer/Christmas break. Last winter, I talked with my department manager about what I was doing at school project-wise, and asked if she knew who I could talk to about related things in the company. A couple weeks later, I was sitting down with our datacenter manager (who I hope to work for after this May!) interviewing him to get insight into datacenter operations.
Moral of the story: Even the non-technical jobs can help get you in touch with the right people.
Here at college, we have an "interesting" network. It lags like no other, and there's frequent periods when people can't login at all. After pursuing a student-netadmin-type job to no avail for about a month, I caved and went to work the helpdesk. A few weeks after asking if there was anything I could do to help, I have my own shell on the RESNET server, write scripts to help improve the network QoS, and have been mentioned favorably in department meetings by the IT director.
Moral of the story: Settle for less if you have to - there are always ways to work your way up.
Good luck with your future career, I hope someone found this story useful.
Yeah, make no excuses. Sounds like you have a reasonable idea of what you want to do, so follow the path. Need experience? Go to College. I grew up on Welfare and paid for College on my own. I worked my way through it. It's possible to put yourself through College, believe it or not. I have so far been making a good living, too. It sounds like you know what you want to do. The keyword is "want". I would not advise anyone to become a programmer unless they enjoy programming and have a curious mind. Intelligence is fine, but I've found the successful programmers have a passion. Then again, it all depends on how you define success. Good luck.
I started programming at 6 years old (TSR-80 Basic), then later moved to Pascal, Perl, Java, C, C++ and such. C and C++ came in my college experience. At age 16 I was a sys admin for a web hosting company that was getting some pretty large contracts at the time. I did contract work for banks setting up servers by age 17, then moved on to a development job creating predictive internet caching software just before starting college. By age 20, 2 years into school, I had almost all of my Comp Sci core completed with all the senior level courses out of the way (who needs general ed right?...). After 2 years of college, I dropped out and took a mid-level UNIX engineering job at a Fortune 50 retailer and created a Linux distro that has a 70,000 client install base to run devices throughout the store. I have written credit/debit card processesing code, backup software, high availability suites to allow for minimal/no downtime, scripts galore, etc.... I am currently in a senior level position at a top medical software company working on improving systems that peoples lives depend on (high availibility beyond what I once did).
So what does this all mean? Yes, it is possible to go somewhere without a college degree. It is possible to accomplish great things and prove yourself as a critical resource to companies without the piece of paper. The drawback? You may be limited in your career without the degree. Most of the co-workers I work with have at least 1 degree. About 40% of them have more than one batchelors or masters degrees. They are intelligent, well spoken and have very impressive backgrounds. In comparison on educational requirements, I'm not to their level with educational qualifications, yet in many ways, my creativity and out of the box thinking has proven that I can easily meet or exceed what they can in performance. When going for the top teir of tech positions, those hot jobs with high pay, management/potential employers will often hold you back due to the lack of a degree. For instance, when I interviewed with Google, a degree was pretty important to them and I never got past the technical phone interviews. Electronic Arts seemed to have a similar position on things. Most companies tend to have that position these days. Others look at technical qualifications alone and what you bring to the table.
In conclusion, here is what I can suggest:
1. Work on your social skills and social contacts. Without those, it can be hard to get a foot in the door.
2. Find projects that will improve your technical knowledge. Study, learn, and motivate yourself to be great.
3. Find, develop and maintain that interest in technology that will keep you on the edge and interested. Burning out is bad when you are going to the long haul in a tech career.
4. Think outside the box. Learn ways to make your work easier and look at things as if its a puzzle that will interest you. That way you constantly grow in efficiency and still find things intriguing.
5. Try and look at technologies that companies use and learn them. For instance, not many people have touched AIX (IBMs UNIX), but the jobs for skilled AIX admins and programmers are numerous and large companies NEED them badly. Most companies offer documentation or even trial/test versions of products. An example would be downloading a eval of Oracle to learn PL/SQL and some in depth topics on RDBMS. This would give you an edge with a larger company that is likely using Oracle or similar (DB2, Sybase, etc...) Free software mindset is great, but there are a lot of very good jobs that demand experience with those commercial products, so don't exclude them.
6. Never give up. A friend of mine who graduated 2nd in his class from a top software engineering school about gave up after the hundreds of regection letters he got. I encouraged him to keep pushing and he finally found a job in his field (better than the 3 year stent as a cashier at Wally World). No matter what you do, keep at it and
Honestly you're a dinosaur at 17 if you're just seriously getting into this business now. I mean I was developing web sites when I was 11 and that was more than a decade ago, today there's 7 y/o's that have a basic understanding of HTML, and a fair number of 12/13 y/o's who have a vague understanding of OO programming.
At this point you're going to have to go to college for anyone to take you seriously, but be for warned CS and Computer Engineering, to a lesser extent, are NOT going to teach you what you need to know to survive in the business. I would highly recommend finding a small open source / hobby project to work on. Learn an OO language, mess around with some databases, and take it from there. Also remember that pure software development is not for everyone, right now IT is a middle of the second bubble, that's going to burst in a few years and afterwards a good deal of the low end entry level work is going to end up over seas. So by the time you get out of college, you better not need hand holding otherwise you're not going to find work, its that simple.
Good luck.
Chances are it will be very hard for you to find a job at your age and experience level that will really advance your knowledge. You might be able to get a data entry job... if you can call that technical. So really your best bet would be learning programming on your own time. With the knowledge you get from that you will be well prepared to grasp the more complex topics during your college/university education. If you need the money, I personally suggest going into retail. You may not think coding and retail would have anything in common but the key to any job is the ability to communicate. If you are not able to 'sell' your ideas or even yourself to your clients/manager/coworkers/potential employers you will not get very far in this industry. Worst case scenario, you gain essential communication skills that will help you in any job you pursue afterwards. Someone has to sell those ipods.
There are so many different "Tech Jobs" that you should first have an idea of what you want to do. There certainly is the Best Buy "selling computers tech", but there's also the "computer repair tech", or "corporate computer/printer/network/etc. tech", and that's just the beginning of careers where you wouldn't be required to go to any kind of school (just be very self-starting). Then there's the whole range of computer science/engineering related "tech" positions, from programmer to software engineer to security researcher to theorist to cryptographer to data mining to just about anything you can imagine.
What do you want to do? When you can answer that, come back and ask about what steps would be needed to get you there.
When I was a founder of a startup back in 1999 I had the opportunity to hire a 16 year old as an intern. (We also hired a 17 year old). Being a startup company in silicon valley we tried to get the most for our money, and these two certainly provided. I was able to lay out a very clear project description that was not too large, nor too small, along with a lot of strategy for implementation. The guy coded it up quite nicely, though I found myself lecturing him about coding style. Note that now he works at google and codes rings around me. We found out about him simply because his father knew a guy in our company. When I interviewed the kid he showed a 3D visualization program he'd written in C++. I checked out the code and it looked good enough. I had been a high school teacher (briefly) and could tell he was smart, and thought he'd be trainable, so we went for it. It was amazing what a good decision that turned out to be.
Interestingly, having been a teacher, I have very mixed feelings about education. I don't have a lot of faith in the educational system. See for instance "An Underground History of American Education" by John Taylor Gatto http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/chapters/ for a critique. In regards to college, my advice is: if you want to go and you know what to focus on, then go. If you're not sure, or you'd like to take some time off to do something else for a while, then that is a much better choice. That's the route my daughter (now 21) took, and I think it served her as she is able to treat study more like a job, and less like high school with ashtrays.
And as to the military (as another poster mentioned): recruiters will tell you anything to lure you in and then you're a slave to the system--you have to do whatever they tell you to, and it's not usually what you want to do. Don't go over to the dark side; you'll do much better in civilian life.
Nick, ;-) "Where have the days gone?". I did not have any university background, which is not so strange on a age of 17. However I did a lot of things just from my home computer. That was giving me a head start when I applied for my first job.
;-). In a previous company I myself even hired some guys from the age of 16 and 17 who liked to come to work during the summer period and they turned out to be quite good. Just go on to the web and select some interesting companies that are close to your home and just give them a call. Do not ask for the HR department but just ask for the head of IT. Explain you "problem" and ask him for a job or to offer you an internship.
./ community know how things went.
Let me be honest with you, I also started around the age of 17 with my first job in IT. This was however some years ago...
A little advise to you, be honest, and just tell them you did not have a job in IT before but that you are more than average keen on learning new stuff. Looking at the fact that you are reading and posting on this website is already giving something away about your interest in IT.
However, the market has settle a little at this moment and the crazy days are mostly gone now. So do not expect to be given a very good paying job at your first interview. The days you could walk in to the office of a IT company, ask for some manager to talk to and offer your service and be able to start working there in less than a hour,.... those days are over.
But,... there is still enough to find even for people of the age of 17. And I am not talking about selling iPod's
Remember, not only big IT companies have interesting IT departments, also smaller companies who have nothing to do with IT as a "product" or service they sell have a IT department. And a lot of those smaller and not IT companies have very interesting IT departments.
The best thing however is to try and get a job or internship at some IT department on a university. They can learn you a lot, the pressure is not that big and it is very very much appreciated when you have something like that to show on your resume.
Just keep looking and just pick up the phone and start calling people and companies. If you are really devoted I think you will find yourself having a job / internship in almost no time.
One last thing, you might want to post the city where you live here and some of the things you do and like to do... you might try to turn this into a request for a job. A lot of the people here are working in IT and they might even be able to help you find a job.
Good luck. And let the
Regards, Johan Louwers.
I just turned 20. I am an undergraduate in college (at UC Berkeley) where I am studying math.
The previous two summers I had crappy jobs working at retail stores. This summer I wanted to do something more fulfilling. So I wrote an email to a local LUG describing my Linux experience and an informal sort of resume. A Linux sysadmin at a startup saw my email and got in touch with me. I did some interviews, and got the job, even though I don't have any previous job experience with Linux, am not a CS major, etc. Now thaqt school is in session I am still woring for them, connecting to work though a VPN when I have spare time and coming in on Fridays.
The lesson I got from this is that if you are a student and don't have any work experience, you need to get in touch with the people you want to work for directly. In my case, it was by emailing a list that I know sysadmins would be reading. My boss knew what kind of work he wanted to hand off to someone else, saw that I was capable of doing it, and got in touch with me. If I had sent a resume to this company, there is no way that he would have seen it.
#include ".signature"
The kind of crap job you can get won't help you to learn anything and will just show you that coding in the real world is working in a cyber sweatshop. No one care if you have an item on your resume that says that your hacked html and javascript for some random company website. And the random company won't pay someone to be with you and teach you the important things about programming that you won't learn in school.
/etc/hosts
Instead you should join a free software project that you like. Ideally something that you use yourself. Once you've contributed something significant other project members will take time to explain anything you want to know and before that they will tell you what you should read and how you can learn the skills required to implement your desired feature. If your resume says that you improved the pathfinding code in Battle for Wesnoth a future employer will be able to look at the code and see how you work. You won't have anything to show if you waste your summer re-indenting java code. By joining a free software project you will learn how to work with other people, you don't learn this in school. If you go for a company they'll put on something self contained and irelevant so you never bother more than one person.
But, if you go for a company you might find out early that you don't want to do this for the rest of your life. Its better to find this out now than after you graduate. It doesn't mean that you can't hack code, There was this taxi driver who contributed to KDE in his spare time, He made pretty good stuff. I can't recall his name... You can also start your own startup which is probably as painfull but will pay a lot more if you succeed. Working in a university is much better but it pay less and you'll have a hard time to do it without a degree. Universities _really_ want to believe that the degrees they sell are important.
Do a partime job that pays well, that way you'll have more free time to hack. Look for ultra unionized place like your municipality. The people who but the grass in city parks really earn a lot of money. You will meet a lot of lazy people, don't ever be tempted to do as they do. Laziness is the little death that brings total oblivion. Oh, and type something like this as root
echo "127.0.0.1 slashdot.org" >>
I turned 18 on October 7th- just a few weeks ago. I'm a senior in high school, and I've worked as a programmer at the San Diego Supercomputer interfacing the Open Croquet 3D operating system to their GIS servers, a database engineer at the University of California, San Diego, a researcher at Calit2, and lastly a network security analyst for Softwink, Inc.
I have no special contacts, no utterly unremarkable skill- I'm not trying to show off. My point is that if you can take the initiative to teach things to yourself so much as to qualify for a job (by the fact that you're asking for one, I can assume that you have), you need to put yourself out there and get one. It's not that hard- people are hiring, and if you're qualified, there's really not that much to stop them from letting you be an employee- or at least an intern.
Sorry for this horribly long-winded post. To summarize: just put yourself out there; don't ask slashdot.
- dshaw
How good the tech market is depends much on where you are located.
In the midwest US for example, it's still a shambles. The only places still saying "there's lots of opportunity" are the schools that want you to pay them to learn this stuff.
If you lived near me, I'd tell you not to bother with continuing school at all for a tech career. As I've seen it, what you know (or how well you do in school) doesn't matter anywhere near as much as WHO you know. If you know someone high up in a BIG company who can push your resume, then go for some schooling. If you don't have anyone like that but you have your heart set on a tech career anyway, then mod games (or write whatever it is you like) for fun and post them online, sell iPods at Best Buy and try to bullshit your way into a job you'll like. You'll have more fun than the people cracking books in college, you'll have about a good a chance of landing a job as most of them do, you might even get that job faster than they do and the entire attempt will cost you a lot less money.
There once was a time when going to school in some capacity would make it pretty easy to find some kind of tech job, but those days are gone for most of the US. Unless you get a masters' in math, then most of the "tech" jobs you find will want you to do 10-key entry, and it's stupid to ruin your hands for what is often only a part-time minimum/wage position.
~
While most corporations don't have big positions for high school students, you can usually get in the door and start learning. Try some local companies and offer to work cheap. The smaller the company, the more likely they are to accept you.
h tm
For better opportunities, the National Labs and assorted government research facilities almost all have high school internship programs. Some examples:
DOE Labs: http://www.doe.gov/organization/labs-techcenters.
Apprentice Programs: http://www.gwseap.net/default.asp, http://www.asee.org/seap/index.cfm
FFRDCs: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FFRDC
These can often turn into college scholarships (partial or full), guaranteed job when you graduate, etc. And if you do go work there, your years of service will be from your first day of internship. Can get you better benefits and perks later on in your career. Clearances may also be issued.
If you want a part-time job that won't eat into the US college experience (as seen on many movies), try getting a tech support job. Working a help desk is a good way of looking at the mindset of a user from the outside-in. Something which I consider critical in developing software. Once you know what end-users do and do not consider logical, you can greatly enhance the usability of your software.
And usability is not trivial, nor is it easy, if you don't have any experience (either formal, or informal as by talking to users hours on end). Nothing teaches you about developing for end-users as having to work a user through a crappily designed program over the phone.
Keep in mind that you will want to work at a helpdesk, not a call center. Primary difference: A call center is there to stop the phone from ringing, a helpdesk is there to help end-users. The latter is the place you'd want to be.
There is a lot you can do to get a head start. Try making a website. Dabble with that technology. Go from simple html to more advanced technologies such as servlets and finally database connectivity. This will allow you to learn the technology and to be creative. if you were to design a nice site which received a few thousand hits per day, you'd make some money and have somthing to place on your resume. Note that business drives technology, not the other way around. The technology itself albeit it interesting is not where the money lies. Come up with an idea, and then learn the technology necessary to implement that idea. Do not simply learn C/C++ just for the purpose of learning the language itself; you will find that will be painstakingly slow, and you'll lose focus of the bigger picture let alone being stuck writing stupid hello world programs. I would also not recommend against doing any internships not until you are midway in college and are looking for work experience. Companies are not in business to teach -- and putting yourself in the position of doing an internship when you are "completely green" -- well they will exploit you. But yeah when you do internships. Try to work alongside with programmers, programmer/analysts, and system analysts. Stay away from testers and help desk. For companies, scout around. Be careful for what you wish for. Some companies like google are excellent ones to work for. Other companies such as Microsoft and EA are terrible; they will essentially turn you into a white collar slave and try to suck your life from you by forcing you to work 50+ hours per week. In fact there was/is a class action lawsuit against EA by its employees for the terrible working conditions.
I'm sick of trying to make sense out of half-sentences on here. Small hint: the box that says "Subject" - that's for a subject, not for a first half of a sentence. Dumbass.
My first year of college as an art student, I realized that I liked computer graphics/animation and wanted to learn programming. I had zero experience programming and knew nothing about what it was. I had an animation package that I was using (great little piece of software), and I called up the vendor. I found my way through the phone bureaucracy to the Project Manager for the software that I liked. (this took a bit of time) Once I found him, I told him about my background and ambitions and asked if I could come out for an internship (they were 1700 miles away from where I called home). The project manager told me that I could come out if I took a C, C++ and advanced OO class. I told the guy to consider it done, and we booked a date for me to get out there and a (small) pay scale. I HAD my internship!
I then went to night school (I was in college for art remember) and took all three computer programming classes. I had to do this at a different school, b/c at the time I could not take the CS classes without being a c/s major at my college.
I did this internship every summer until I graduated school. When I graduated, they offered me a job but I also had a killer resume and was able to land a much better job on the west coast with a much larger software developer.
I am sure there is some dumb luck in there - but I was a persistent little bastard and I think that helped too.
Good Luck!
I'm in the second year of university where I study physics. Less than a week ago I was offered a great job at a research institute connected to the university. There are a few things you can do to increase your chance of getting such a job (based on my experience). - Get to know some people at the institute (or company). - Familiarize yourself with at least one cool or interesting project they are working on. - Offer your help. Go to the people doing the research you like and talk with them and find out what little things you could start with. These three points are what I think got me my job, but with one big difference: I was not looking for a job. I just wanted to work with cool things and friendly people.
Enthusiasm is good, but instead of looking for shortcuts time might be better-spent taking a few college courses, even if not pursuing a full degree. Universities also have established internship or mentorship programs. Tech fields tend to be hyper-competitive. Personally, I never would have broken into my field without a Masters degree.
Go to school and get educated before attempting to get a job in this field (unless you go for phone tech support - that would be fine for the rest of us). I am so tired of people without any education coming in and screwing everything up that the rest of us work hard to create. We have to clean up after your type AND try to keep the companies moving forward. Here is my advise GO TO SCHOOL or find another field. We don't need any more people to jack up code, or cause a 3am system outage call. I'd rather spend time doing other things than fixing munged code or having to wake up and fix a system at 3 in the morning.
- Problem Solving
- People Skills
- Wider range of experience/exposure
- Practical knowledge
Tech Support is an entry-level job that a high school kid can get without college or too much experience. You'll learn a great deal very quickly that will provide you with a strong base of skills (both technical and inter-personal) that will help make subsequent jobs much easier to get. Don't turn your nose up at it just because it's not as glamorous as creating applications (depending on where you eventually end up, coding can be extremely mundane). Everyone has to start somewhere.While most problems will be simple, no-brainers, others will be devilishly tricky, especially when you're working under all sorts of odd restrictions (reformatting is actually a last-resort effort, most users will not accept this as a method of fixing). It's about giving sound advice with limited information (they'll never tell you what they did that broke the machine) as quickly as possible.
Some users are just dumb. What makes some of these people worse is they don't realize it, and will proceed to ignore everything you tell them, go do something else, break it worse, then come back to blame you. This will be especially common since you're 17 and people will discount you for your age. If you can learn to handle these people gracefully, you will have gained possibly the most valuable job skill there is; dealing with difficult people
Tinkering with your home PC is one thing, having to work on a variety of systems ranging from Windows98 to Linux to MacOS (depending on where you work) and soon Vista will expose you to systems and issues you might not have otherwise encountered. Also, you don't have first-hand knowledge of how the system was setup, so you'll be forced to learn quickly what is going on, on a given system. This will force you to have a much broader understanding of operating systems from a user and support perspective.
Many of the folks I went to college with who were coders, or who I've worked with since college have great theoretical knowledge of systems. They know how things SHOULD work, but toss a wrench in the gearbox by installing some software on a system they weren't counting on, and you can throw some of them for quite a loop. Working in the trenches will give you a very practical understanding of the user environment that will be very helpful when you start coding applications for that environment.
Concentrate on getting into the best college you can get into. In addition to math and science grades, that means good grades in English, etc. too, because top performers have to think in large terms and communicate. In the summer, volunteer at a local museum, historical society, etc. to help them with IT tasks. You'll get a more challenging assignment than you can get at most businesses - at this stage in your development. But be prepared to do it without much technical help from them. Work hard, and good luck.
Keep in mind most kids straight out of college have a lot less skills than they think. Most good companies know this. Along with the tech foundation the education should give you (allthough I still have my doubs if I compare CS graduates to for examlpe mechanical engineers). One of the big differences is in the other areas, being able to deal with people, situations etc. This will allow you to sell yourself and to grow because you have the social skills (among others like an idea of what doing a job acuall means, and that all jobs have a downside etc. etc.).
This growth will not nly help you getting a good position once yo get out of college, but also will allow you to grow into more interresting places.
The Parent probably gives the best advice ou can get.
It worked for me, I followed the following advice, no CS degree, but something more mature (went for mechanical engneering, and work outside of IT, did some sales, worked at a gas station, organised events for performance artists and did some organisational work for my college, this work made me spent 2 year longer than planned in college)later on it turned out I could quite quickly pretty much chose what wanted to do and where. I found that the hardcore IT guys would be stuck in their careers while I pretty much picked the projects I wanted to work on (including ones o the other side of the globe)...
itsatrap - marry into money instead!
Get involved in your local user groups. Java, Ruby, Linux, and others have huge communities out there. There are opportunities to learn, to present, and to volunteer. The work you do there can be high profile, good for references, and good for finding job leads.
I recommend you try to teach yourself as much as you can before and during college/university. I've taught myself everything I know about computers and programming and am still going to university because I know there's a lot more to learn. If you want to get a little money out of what you can do right now, try building custom PCs, and writing general utility software (versatile notebooks, simple spreadsheet software, etc.) and sell it as shareware. The money won't be the greatest, but it'll look pretty good on a resume. Remember that software development can be a risky area of work depending on what you are into (game development is very demanding and competitive while working at your local telephone company developing web site software is not as much so). No matter what, you have to apply yourself to what you are learning and keep focused on the task at hand. Never let a design flaw, or some stupid mistake give you a headache. Just keep ploughing at it. And as a general tip, buy lots of books and read them cover to cover.
Cheers, DH.
Everything you think you can do to make yourself more valuable and to provide that extra 'something', the guy in India can duplicate for less.
...
Then his home grown management will do the same for pennies on the dollar, and soon after that their home grown CEO will as well. They'll undercut America from the worker level to the officer level and
well...
Look at what Toyota did to Chrysler, GM and Ford: the big Three are on life support now, and Japan, the world's first offshore beneficiary and global undercutter of auto prices, now effectively dominates the market.
What happened in the auto industry will happen to tech, too.
Mind you, these are historical facts, not head-in-the-sand denialism by the globalist ostriches.
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
Sign up for an undergraduate research position - start a group at your school. I work at a place at BGSU known as Digital Media Research Group (http://thedmrg.com) and it's wonderful. Check it out!
-- www.kiwicommunications.com --
Here is my story, I am 10 years older then you.
During my last two years of high school I worked at Best Buy mostly selling computers and Audio/Video. Don't knock it, don't act like you above it, you come off as being a whiny kid especially since you are a teenager and talking about not wanting to sell iPods to kids you may think that but don't say it, it will not serve you well. You have to be willing to work and having a part position like that shows two things, one you are not a total idiot and you have at least passable people skills, so if there is a job at best buy put in an app. and hope to get hired.
After I graduated high school I went to the local community college to got my Associates of Science. I got a job with the college help desk.
Answer in coming help desk calls and use a remote access system to help faculty and staff with basic software how to and software problems. I also did office tasks making photo copies, faxing, assembling training materials, making fliers, stuff like that. For the technical problems that could not be solved of the phone I would dispatch a technician to fix it. I also did a little bit a VB and VB Script programming for occasional modification to the help desk system.
After I graduated from community college after 2 years I when to the local university for a bachelors degree. I was still working for the community college on help desk.
Then there was an advertisement from the local k-12 school district looking for a network technician for just the summer. They were doing a hardware upgrade from 10Mb Ethernet switches to 10/100 Mb managed switches. The pay was $12/hr 40 hour weeks for 6 weeks. My job was to un-box the new switches and install them in the wiring closets at each school and load a pre-written configuration for each one.
After that summer I did a lab technician job for the university fixing lab workstations and loading software. during this time i received a grant from the university for $1000.00 for professional training / certification. I got the books and studied for a passes the Network+, CCNA, MCSA.
At the time of graduating from the university I had a Network installation specialist position lined up with a local ISP / IT services. I was started with a 6 small business networks, 10 workstations, 1 server, switches, router, DSL, we host their web services on our servers at the ISP datacenter. This is what I stated with figure out what then needed to do, what hardware they needed, and build the network including pulling cat5 in the walls.
I currently design and manage networks for several 300+ node clients, as a Network Operations Engineer for the same ISP going from hourly to 50K was very nice. My next step is I want to find a position where I am in charge of department/sub unit of a large department.
the key is start small and work up.
Pick a project that you find interesting and build (i.e., code) something. Anything. No matter what it is... If it's something brand new or something that's been done before. You will gain knowledge in that experience. If it's an interesting project, this is something that can go on your resume, especially if it's an open source project. Tinkering is one of the best ways to become fluent in a particular technology as you can persue it at a relaxed pace. On-the-job training is not always best because you're often fighting a deadline and sometimes you have to do what is necessary to hit a deadline (not a recipe for doing the right thing with the technology). Same with school projects.
That said, College(tm) is an important addition to this experience. It's also important to realize what a college degree will get you (and what it won't):
I think alot of people are missing this guy's point. He isn't saying he doesn't want or intend to go to college, just that maybe over the summer before college he'd like to get a better idea of what he's getting into or get a head start.
A head start is a great idea. College is not where you should learn what you want to do. You should know that before choosing your classes. It's a no brainer.
If you can find an internship go for it, but do also spend some time educating yourself. Read a few books on programming or whatever and actually play around with code. Write, write, write. Nothing will teach you faster than actually coding. I had a professor once who said you learn to code through your fingers not by sitting in his class. If you knock out a few pet projects you not only learn a lot but you'll demonstrate to future potential employers/internship sponsors that you have the drive and interest to code in your spare time. If someone ever came to me wanting to be a programmer I'd ask them what hobby experience they have. If they say none, but show me a college degree I'd seriously doubt their ability to be any good. I graduated from college with a whole class who were, in my humble estimation, incapable of coding. Some of them never wrote a single line of code at home unless it was for a class project.
Coders code. All the time.
Of course this could go for any technology field: graphics, layout and design, networking, engineering, etc.
For those at a college/university there's a program called Space Scholars and Directed Energy Scholars for those interested in space vehicles and lasers. Plusses: Interesting work, laid back atmosphere, better paying than school jobs. Minuses: It's gov't work, doesn't pay as well as some private internships, and it usually takes a while to get back to you if you've been selected (late April/early May for a late May/early June start). There's some preference for graduate students, but there are always a few projects for undergrads. But the government workforce is desparate for fresh blood, or will be in a few years, so it might be a good way to see if you can deal with it.
Going to college is not a job. The poster is specifically asking for jobs for a student, that implies that he is a student already and is seeking a job in his chosen field, perhaps to even fund going to school in the first place.
I was in a similar situation a few years ago, and here is my advice. Get yourself an unpaid position with a well established company doing whatever small programming projects they don't have anyone else working on. Call around to the largest employers in your area and see if someone is up for managing an unpaid intern, or see if anyone you or your parents know works at a software company near you. You will be hard-pressed to find a paid position before college, but believe me, having a legitimate internship at this stage in your life will definitely pay off. In high school I took an unpaid position at a defense contractor in my area, doing programming in Coldfusion for an internal communications form that my manager just didn't have time to finish. Although it made my schedule pretty hectic, it definitely made finding a good job in college about ten times easier. A lot of employers are only interested in interns from their third or fourth year in college, but if you are able to tell them that you worked at x company who's name they recognize doing a programming project, they will listen to you and take you seriously.
I am 21 years old, and i have worked in the tech industry for 6 years. I was more interested in the hardware and network side of computers then programming. However one great way i found when i was 15 to get in to this kind of work, was to hook up with a small non profit company in town. in my opinion it is the best thing you can do to get in to this industry. the only major down side is would need to stay there for a year or 2 for little or no pay, for the experience and for the reference. However non profits usually are very great full to have help and take people with little experience. Also they make a great reference when you are ready to find a real job. Non profits usually have many contacts.
That would be a good title, except that you need money to get into college. How do you get money? With a job. A job in your chosen field would probably have advantages over having a floor job at Best Buy or whatever.
Even then, you pose a valid point. Many techies do not have a college education, much less one in computers as most are self-taught (almost a pre-requisite for being a techie). What jobs could these people get?
join user groups in your area. see if anyone has any work. volunteer for the groups (meaning learn your stuff and present it). learn Linux. get involved in an open source project.
I'd recommend you try places like your local public library, charities, or religious institutions. I know that all of these locations have a hard time getting tech savvy individuals because they typically cannot pay market prices. Not all of the work will be programming related, and not all of them pay, but if it is experience you want even volunteer work will do. Even if you do just volunteer to write some macros, as most non-for-profits do not have anyone on staff who is able to accomplish this, you will be gaining experience. This also will help you make connections - which may lead to a job in your field. Good Luck!
I'm 23 now. I have worked in software development since I was 15. The trick is to stick to start-ups. They are willing to take extra risk to save money, and once you prove yourself, you can gain responsibility quickly.
You will need to have the skills of a $20/hr college intern but be willing do the same work for $10/hr. And when you get more experience, you will need to be as good as a $60/hr college grad but be willing to do the same work for $35/hr.
Don't whine about this. This is your mark in the 'pro' column. And you have few expenses. Thank Zeus that you can market yourself to tightwads.
The hardest job you get will be the first one. You'll need to know someone. I did it by being pro-active, emailing webmasters of sites where I noticed potential UI improvements. I offered the advice for free, and eventually it paid off. Expect it to take 6+ months.
Write articles. Do anything that proves you have something to offer. You'll have to create this proof for free at first.
Don't bother applying to positions through job sites like monster. You won't get anything posted there.
Be realistic in your expectations, but don't be satisfied with them. Take all the opportunities that come your way, even if they don't lead immediately to anything beneficial. You will have a tough time all the way until you graduate from college, so you will need longer-term plans.
Since I've done this successfully, I'd be happy to answer any further questions you have, or provide further advice in specific area.
Until you have that knowledge certified - in the form of a degree - it doesn't mean jack.
I worked in the tech field without a degree. Here is my advice. Get one. Thank you.
In God we trust, all others require data.
Do your research and look into what the current trends are with software development. Probably the best thing to do is look into web application development. That seems to be where many things are heading. hell as a system admin, I would love to see more web based apps. They tend to not be OS dependent or even hardware dependent.
Anyway you may find it hard to find something prior to college. Definitely plan on going to college, you will have a much better chance finding something through their career centers. You may also want to get a portfolio together so you have something to show.
Good luck!
Dewser - all around techy "In the immortal words of Socrates - 'I drank what?'"
A 17 year-old who really was interested in programming would have that stuff figured out already, ie be involved in open source projects, have internships lined up, etc.
You're right to want to avoid working in retail. And from what I've seen, your having actual technical experience actually makes it harder to get a retail job!
You're probably not going to get a real job with your limited experience. There are already experienced folks begging for work. But there's always volunteer and internship openings, which give you experience that looks good on your resume. Plus they're good for makign contacts. Suggestions:
I knew a guy back in college whose parents were engineers. They got him into a Cisco certification program BEFORE he got out of High School.
Long short of it. He had a very well paying part time job maintaining networks while going to school full time. Maybe it isn't as brilliant a move today as it was back then but it worked for him.
Another thing you can do is buy a home on/near campus to live in and get some roommates you like for four years and plow your rent money into an investement and sell it four or six years later when you are all done.
Good luck!
TopCoder Inc. offers a ton of money each week for design and development competitions. Non-US citizenship is alright, and they could care less about your background, as it is all competition based. It takes awhile to get used to what is required for both the design and development competitions, but the possibility of making quite a bit of money, without needing a "real" job might be preferential. It will also force you to learn quality software development methodologies quickly, to be competitive.
Unfortunately, if you're a very good geek, you probably already know more after high-school than you'd learn for a BS CS degree. Getting a degree is mostly just something to do to get past the HR jerks. I'd suggest going to college but majoring in something other than computers. You'll have better paying and more interesting job openings later if you are good with computers and have a degree in science or engineering.
In the meantime I suggest starting your own business that shows off your tech skills and that will let you develop those people skills. Geeks that have good people skills are very valuable and if you have a good foundation in business you'll have a lot better chance of not being a cubicle monkey later.
At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.
If you can get a job doing QA work for a software company, that can be an excellent education. In your interview when you discuss your interests/ambitions, let it be known that you are interested in learning as much as you possibly can about the overrall process of software developement.
If you can prove yourself a capable technology team member, you may get tapped to entry level development work (possibly at the same pay initially as QA, and done as ancillary work to your core work). You'll already be familiar with the project, the process, and the players. If you've got the curiosity, creativity, and drive, your value should increase. You'll be making less than industry average likely (cheaper, talented labor is an incentive for the company), but you'll also be paid for your education instead of the other way around.
This assumes you can find a company that has a culture that fosters this sort of thing. Remember that when you interview you are interviewing them as well; ask questions about opportunities to pursue this sort of strategy.
Good luck!
The big benefits of college (assuming you apply yourself) are:
...my faculty advisor was adamant in calling 4 year degrees "union cards". After more than 20 years in th
(1) You lean how to think
Most people don't know how to think; they don't know how to think about solving problems, minimally, or, worse, they actually don't know how to think logically at all.
In college, you can fix the second by taking logic, philosopy, criminal law, mathematics, and other clasess.
The only classes I've seen be effective at fixing the second are hard science classes, particularly physics, but also electrical engineering, and some types of chemistry. Other classes can help, but the softer the science, the less likely there is to be a single correct answer to a question, so the less likely you are to hone your skills at getting from the question to the answer. Physics tends to be particularly good, since you start with the answer you intuit, and then come up with questions to determine whether or not the answer is right - this builds both your reasoning/critical thinking skills and your intuition.
(2) You learn the terminology necessary to talk to peers in a technical field
I work as core kernel engineer for the second largest OS company on the planet. There are maybe two dozen of us at this level, depending on how widely you interpret the team.
There are people who would be involved in your interview process here which, if you couldn't use/regcognize proper terminology for even trivial data structures (what's a B-tree, what's a splay tree, what's a trie, what's a skiplist, what's a doubly linked list, etc.) would be happy to walk you to the door. And that's just getting your feet wet in the interview.
Yes, it's possible to pick some/most of this up by being an apprentice somewhere, but doing that, you're going to get local jargon as well, and you aren't going to be able to distinguish it from the real thing, which is going to make you hard to talk to about complex problems. This factors into your team fit (which is ~80% of getting hired, if you haven't lied on your resume, and you got an interview in the first place).
(3) You learn different ways to solve the same problem
One of my favorite interview situations is to ask someone how they've solved a particularly difficult problem in the past, and then poke at it to see if they've been able to come up with some other ways to solve the problem than I did, just thinking about it from their explanation of things. If I can come up with a dozen ways to solve the same problem, and they can't justify why they didn't think of them, or why those approaches would have been less optimal, I'm not very impressed.
You aren't going to get the ability to do this without either a lot of experience, or the exposure to different teaching approaches and approaches of different teachers to solving problems. You can build this over a large number of years of experience, or you can bootstrap your thinking by going to college (and applying yourself).
(4) You establish contacts with people you will meet again and again throughout your life
Do not understimate the value of this. My first job in my college career was a workstudy job. My next job was a lab aide, helping other people solve their problems (or, more generally, helping them arrive at a workable solution on their own). My next job was a series of contract jobs outside the college, for a person I'd met there (also a student), with a less technical and more business bent. I had other work-stuudy jobs, and I did some introductory lectures on various things like how to use the editors, etc.), but my first post-college job was at a company that was owned by a friend of one of the procefessors there.
Never, never, underestimate the value of the contacts you will make, and the personal network you will build, while going to college.
(5) And even if you only apply yourself enough to get the certificate... you get your union card
Go to college and get paid several thousand dollars to do a Research Experience for Undergraduates program each summer. Or do a coop program with a tech company. If you go the REU route, you can try a different type of research in a different location each summer. If only there were more students like you in the United States. I find that most of my students are anything but motivated. Despite what the REU application forms say, they sometimes do take people after their freshman year, especially in the less exotic locations like Oklahoma, Kansas, and upstate New York. The culture of academic work is very different from industry work. You should get a feel for both.
agreed. if you have to ask how to get a cool programming job, you've already lost.
1) Name one adaptation that you can do that the East Indians can't eventually do ahead of you;
2) Why didn't this work for the auto industry;
3) Do you even know what happened to the auto industry?
You can adapt all you want to, and innovate until your face turns blue, but one day the offshore people will acquire enough experience that they'll be running neck and neck with your innovations at cheaper prices. This is exactly what happened to the auto industry.
Also, the "outsourcing bogeyman" does not address the fact that there will never be a new industry to replace the ones that are going overseas now. Until we go into outerspace, biotech is the limit of technological progress. Disagree? Fine. Show me. Until then, don't even bother wasting my time with your speculations. Our best jobs are going overseas and nothing is coming to replace them.
PS: Your "Outsourcing Bogeyman" article is written by the Council on Foreign Relations, a corporate think tank comprised by the very people who BENEFIT from offshoring. To put the dishonesty of your "documentation" into proper perspective, it would be no more dishonest for me to counter you with something from moveon.org.
Next?
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
Forget tech, get a summer job at a bank or a investment firm. By the time you finish your CS degree, you'll have to move to India to get a job. Re-focus your career into something commerce related. Otherwise you'll spend most of your career just hoping not to get laid off by the MBAs that make more money than you and won't hesitate to lay you off to raise the share price by 10 cents.
You can always just advertise yourself at Slashdot using a faintly-veiled request for suggestions. That might work.
-MJ
I currently attend Virginia Tech for computer engineering and i'm taking a simester off to earn some extra cash and get some experience. I havent yet earned any certifications (A+, Linux+, MSC, etc...) but i do have serveral years of experience of trouble shooting PCs and what not. So i tried to go for geek squad, Circuit City's equivalent and some other places. Never heard anything back. I finally hit a break and got an interview with this company (who im currently still working for) called Centuric ( www.centuric.com ). I was hired as a help desk support tech. At first i dint think i was really going to get any xp in my desired field. Turned out i was wrong. After a few weeks i was doing all the tasks all the vets didnt want, reformatting, software installs, etc... It was still cool though cause in my between time i got to spend alot of time in the server room. I learned alout about diffrent server hardware we ran and why. after about a month, my boss/ceo (company is less than 20 people) gives me a project. Install and set up Nagios on one of the servers. Since im the only person other than my boss who knows anything about linux, i was the only one who could do it. He had a copy of SUSE 10.1 installed. Due to the graphic drivers being broken (and the fact i just dont care fore kde ;-p I put ubuntu server on it and now am in the process of getting nagios up and running.
Any way, my point is, even if you pick something that is not exactly what you want to do, as long as you can keep an open mind, youll find what your looking for.
Go on for college now, but if you want to earn money i'd recommend you to learn some web programming (php,xhmlt,css,xml,python maybe) and some yourself advertising tricks :D then you could easily find a job, i am 17 too and working a lot with those web systems at my holidays
I'm assuming you still live at home. My suggestion would be to use this time to absorb as much as you can about current languages (those you'll probably use in the next several years), but also to spend some time discovering past, lesser-used systems (logic is logic, the words may change but the ideas remain constant).
:)
Use the 'net, it is a fantastic research tool. Think of an app you'd like to see, and turn it into a reality, even if no one but your dog and your coffee cup ever sees it run.
I'm also assuming you don't have any scholarships lined up, or you wouldn't be asking this question. While things are certainly different today than 25 years ago when I enlisted, a hitch with the military is not out of the question. You'd have to check, but back when I went in you could decide what you were going to do, or where you wanted to be stationed. I ended up where they write all the code for the Air Force (in Alabama). Not at all saying that I would have been unwilling to pick up a gun if that's what was necessary, but as it turned out it was not. Depending on whether or not you passed the AFEES tests and got in as a programmer, there's a pretty solid chance you'd never get deployed overseas, and could serve your country while polishing your coding skills at the same time. You'd also be able to save a good chunk of money toward college if that's something you wanted to pursue later.
Lastly, programming, like any other profession, has a hierarchy. You would probably start out doing grunt work, coding designs that had already been decided on, with little chance to exhibit your own creative input. But if you're good, have faith in yourself and your abilities, and retain the passion for solving endless logic puzzles, you may find that a career in programming suits you.
If not, hopefully you'll figure out what you *really* want to do before you run out of days.
Whatever you decide, good luck!
Forget the non-sense about college or no college. Invest time in what you love. If you can do that while going to college, go -- you'll benefit from meaning more people like yourself.
But before any of that, realize that you don't need a job or an internship to find out if IT is for you. Write some programs, make a website, and read some books. If you find it interesting, do a side job for somebody you know. Do it for free even. You can start building your resume right now.
I'm sure many people have given good advice already, but let me relate a bit from my perspective.
I'm 24, I have a 401k, stocks, bonds, an IRA, 2 cars, and I'm about to buy a house. I've been to 6 different countries, and I work in IT.
When I was in highschool I bought as many cheap computers as I could afford and tested/broke/fixed many OS's. I poured over tech manuals and such, and found other kids that were into computers as much as I was (beond games). We studied and worked together to build networks, break them, then try to fix them. We ran a small computer repair company for side money wiring networks for small shops that needed 2-3 computers to talk, share a printer, and reach the net (it was a bit harder back then with Win95 and dialup).
After that I joined the Navy (prior to 9/11. I still would suggest the Navy cause very few actually see the sand. And if you do, it's from a boat 20 miles out or more. There I applied myself and pushed very hard commonly working 90 hours a week to get more training from the senior people and to get involved with the hard projects.
Now that I'm out, I make a wage that can afford me a comfortable lifestyle, a house, investments, and hobbies. I'm also going to school which my company is paying for, and I collect military education benifits to the tune of 1600 a month.
So, what did I miss? A social life. Pursue at your own speed, but don't let anyone talk you down from you goals. Research and find the best options for you and go after them like a fish trying to find water. Thats the best way to get what you want in life. Motivation and determination. Anyone can succeed in whatever they want, outsourcing or not. Just remember to be realistic and stay on track.
http://www.randsworld.blogspot.com/
At 17, I would suggest trying instead to find a job that hits the sweet spot between slackness and good pay, and then spend all the new-found free time chasing members of the opposite, (or same?) sex. You won't regret it, but you may regret becoming an overworked IT lackey and then realizing when you're 35 that you've missed the prime of your life. But I'm not bitter :)
Well I started out in high school working for the school district doing Computer installation and repair. Took a Networking / Windows NT class they offered at a vocational school and got my MCSE in NT 4.0. At that point I could have gotten a job at the district making 40k/year right outta highschool. Sounded great but my parents both went to college and had ingrained in me how important it was to get an education.
So I got my BS in CS in 5 years at a Univ. During my student years I worked at the Univ doing Server Administration for many popular Network OSes and scripting to go along with.
Now I make much more than 40k/year doing Linux Server Administration and Programming.
Guess my point is, try to learn what you can on the side (read books, play around with stuff in your free time, side jobs)...but in the meantime, get that education. You not only learn a ton but also it gives you an easy step up when it comes to you and another guy with no college education. Not to mention it's a good experience to go through IMHO.
Why don't you try web design? It's relatively easy to break into, you just need a few clients/friends to start with. You may want to seek better advice.
Need a color? Try 100 random colors
I run the risk of getting people worked up, but college doesn't always mean you're going to fast-track into the tech industry. I went to college for 3 years, then decided to join the Army. During my time in, I got to become a satellite network controller. Ever since, I've had what I consider the "holy trinity" of tech traits: a security clearance, a military background, and the Montgomery GI Bill. Now, I can go to school as much as I like on the government dime, and I have a segment of jobs available to me that the average Joe can't even apply to. Best of all, if I go up against a guy with a PhD in computer science, and yet he isn't cleared, I get the job every single time. The government isn't going to waste a year and $75k trying to get some guy cleared, while he wastes away on overhead. Look into the Army or Air Force. The Army is the only branch where you can truly choose your job, and you'll make a little money, see the world, and play with big toys.
Vocal minorities are often confused with silent majorities.
Self-educate and self-employ. Read the relevant industry magazines and journals. Read the important (current AND classic) books in the tech you're interested in working with. Most importantly, and perhaps most difficulty, WORK WITH THOSE TECHNOLOGIES. Linux is fairly cheap to step into as a hobbyist ... Windows/MS technologies, not so cheap, but with BitTorrent, anything is possible. (I don't advocate piracy, but I also don't advocate an industry or field pricing itself beyond being learned by a hobbyist or amateur.) Run a database server. Run a web server. Run a network with as much stuff, as many devices, as you can afford to put on it. Write applications for your desktop, your mobile phone, your toaster, or anything else you can slap code on. Do the IT support thing, as a sideline, if nothing else ... however, doing IT support usually, in my experience, can lead to bigger and better things, like solving a company's problems with a new server environment or a custom application. Once you've got some actual experience, it's pretty easy, in the economy of the moment, to get an interview -- if HR blows you off because you don't have a degree, the company wasn't worth your time anyways. Market yourself. Also, try using a recruiter.
I am, therefore you think.
Awesome. I went to school at a medium-sized Midwestern University. It wasn't the best school, but it certainly wasn't the worst school. I was told that an undergraduate could expect to make at least $50,000/year upon graduation (which was a significant amount for an entry-level graduate of the Midwest in 2000). I wasn't too worried as graduation approached and assumed I would have a job that I could walk into. I applied for every job that I could find that was moderately relevant to my studies and then some. My arrogance led me to be unemployed for 6 months before I got desperate and eventually took jobs like delivering phone books, swapping tapes at a local TV station for minimum wage, and eventually working at Worst Buy. I had a bachelors degree in MIS from an accredited university and I got rejection letters from everything from video store rental clerk to secretary positions (and, yes, I obviously also applied extensively to jobs that were relevant to my education).
Don't believe the hype.
And now, queue replies to my post that suggest I must have been some sort of moron for not being able to do better.
(For the record, I currently have a swank position at a Fortune 500 company, and I couldn't be happier. I get paid way more than I deserve, and I attribute none of my current success to my degree.)
You can work for me, for a limited time only, for the low-low price of $2.50 per hour. Quick, time is running out!
How about:
BTW, as someone else pointed out, your solution is wrong. There's clearly only one thing for you to do now: hire me, and fire yourself.
What is that suppossed to mean?
It would be more useful to the intial poster and the original discussion if you explain how you landed those gigs.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Very often we try to hire and we don't find qualified people (in the sense of people knowing their stuff, we look at official papers only after the candidate has probed that he knows what he is talking about).
Many people in IT joined the profession to earn a good living but do not want to pay their dues (as in any other profession) and to climb the ladder.
FOr those that enojy IT and are ready to persevere the rewards can be quite satisfying, outsourcing or not.
Having said that, outsourcing hotspots revolv around English, so your half assed joke falls flat since no Mandarin or Hindi is really necessary if you want to try your luck working on those countries.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
http://www.toyota.co.jp/en/about_toyota/manufactur ing/worldwide.html
really, you can't have it both ways.
If you don't want jobs to go overseas then be consistent and complain when foreign companies create jobs that were not there in your own country...
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
When are you starting to whine about all the jobs created by Japanese car companies in the US?
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
The Education you get in college provides you with a full context of your profession.
In many circumstances it stops you in your track when you are trying to reinvent the wheel.
And in good Universities you learn about topics that, although not directly related to your profession, are of importance (Economics and some Project Management and Accountancy come to mind).
The golden dropouts we all know about, are the rarest of exceptions. Most people that progress know where they are going because their education broadened thir horizons.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Consider joining the Navy... I was in the same boat (no pun intended) and did just that.. I joined the Navy and got exceelent schools and opportunites to educate myself both in a class room and on the job... The Navy as well as the other armed forces offer lots of different enlistment options and programs.. One particular one is in the Navy where you sign up for 2 years you go to basic training and then A-school training in your case IT school and then you go home and you are required to serve 15 months on reserve duty. On top of this you get a $20,000 cash bonus...Less taxes ofcourse. Its worth a trip down to your local recruiter just ask the questions they won't lie to you aslong as you ask all the right questions..