It's been a decade since I worked in a taco joint with a BS in comp
sci because I was clueless about job hunting.
> @shekkiesqueaks@computerfairi.es asks... what got you out of the
taco place?
So... my DREAM had been to go to grad school. I had gotten the
materials together in 2006 when I was finishing my BS. I didn't fill
out the paperwork to send them in, because my (future gf/fiance/ex)
had broken my heart and I walked around in a depressive fog for 6
weeks and blew out the deadlines and 2 letter grades of my courses
that semester (last semester of school).
After graduation, I fart around for a month or two, spending first 2
weeks on WoW about 18 hours per day, then going and doing some random
desultory looking for work. Can't get any bites. No industry contacts
whatsoever. Career services was a redirect to monster.com (I hear it's
better these days). I know a guy who works at the fast food taco
joint, and they are hiring. Now, this ain't glamorous work, but The
Rent Is Coming Due. It was a hard thing to mop up floors when a year
ago you expected it'd be easy to get a decent job that, IDK, paid
enough.
So come 2007 spring, I've not been able to get a job in the software
industry (because I was TOTALLY IGNORANT because Reasons), and I'm
getting desperate, and my money is running out. I was paid 700/mo, and
my expenses were 800/mo. Or, you know, something about like that. It's
been a decade.
I go to my old advisor and say, look, I'm happy to do scut work
programming, whatever, I'd like to go do grad school someday. He's a
professor, so he takes FOREVER to get back to me but... everything is
super slow-mo and I'm running out of money. The (now fiance) is
staying with me in the cheapest 1-room apt in town, has no job (I
found out later she didn't bother looking for work, just wandered
around to parks. WHATEVER.). I have $50 in the bank that June week and
I'm just WAITING for this prof to get back to me. He does so, 1-2?
weeks before I go talk to the landlord and ask for an extension so I
don't become homeless. I was SERIOUSLY contemplating a tent in the
woods. The next step cheaper of housing was a *nasty* semi-dorm situation.
I had very few solid friends at that time, and no local network - I
hadn't plugged into any social organizations as a student. For reasons
I'll get into later, I "had no time", which was both true and false.
So... I get this job as a University programmer being paid $19/hr,
only allowed to work 19/hr/wk (so they didn't have to do benefits YAY
BEING YOUNG AND HEALTHY). This got me out of the immediate hole. I
applied for grad school Fall 07, got in probationally or w/e, and was
fully admitted S08. I worked with the chair, great old guy, then in
Spring 2009, I was able to snag an industry internship, which was
*about* the time StackOverflow came to be. I studied hard, spent time
reading it, and around that time I started seriously doing open source
contributions and programming at home instead of WoW.
I'd always been a *talented* programmer and had done a slew of fun
small projects over the years, but the three-way combination of
graduate school, TA'ing classes, and getting an internship skilled me
up fast and let me deliver results in ways that actually looked highly
competent. That internship lead to my current nice job at a different
company, everything hunkydory.
Summer 2009 my advisor died, which threw my graduate school into a
tailspin, yeah, let's not talk about that. Let's talk about some
lessons learned.
Dropping the gaming and seriously engaging with programming at home &
doing open source skilled me up very fast; getting into the interview
was done initially via a "weak link" connection - a friend of a friend
(I had improved my social relationships in graduate school. THIS WAS A
BIG DEAL) - and I was able to blow away the interview. Once I was
*in*, I got the magic sparkles of "a desirable person", and I tried to
sponge up as much information as I could, leading to a Comfortable
Career.
SO LESSONS to ME, 15 years ago.
LESSON ONE Get out there and network. Meet people, the same people, on
a regular basis. Figure out how to get coffee with people.
LESSON TWO. Video games are a TERRIBLE WAY TO DO LIFE. They provide
illusions of success and tickle you into thinking things are
well. THEY AREN'T WELL, DIMWIT. Go out and get on an Ultimate Frisbee
team - you like it!
TWO, SUBPART ONE: You are putting 30+ hours a WEEK into WoW. Use that
time to get on IRC and network in programming channels. Do open source
to build a portfolio.
TWO, TO DEAR READER: games are quiet, cheap, and a good way to
unwind. I wanted that, since I was BROKE. This helped lead to really
bad places. I should have done pencil art. Unwinds, quiet, cheap, but
not addictive like WoW (which is a FINELY TUNED MACHINE TO EAT YOUR
LIFE).
LESSON THREE. Get internships, if at all possible. Meet people at
companies. Take risks and visit San Francisco by greyhound. Go to
Seattle and do the same thing. DO NOT GO TO YOUR PARENTS EVERY SINGLE
BIG BREAK. GROW UP.
LESSON FOUR: Get a car ASAP. It'll help finding a job. Yeah, it's a
pain. But there's that engineering company 7 miles away, and if you
can commute there...
LESSON FIVE. Magically figure out how to present yourself as a
successful white-collar person.
Dear reader. About HALF of these failures came about because I DID NOT
KNOW how to network with white collar professionals, OR present myself
as a successful member of the white collar professional tribe.
For all the whaaarghble about how programming accepts everyone, etc,
it's a white collar job with expectations of college education. If you
can pull that "look like a tribal member" off, you immediately
increase your chances 10x or more of getting hired at a reputable firm
( I suspect looking white and male /also/ boosts your chances. But I'm
only talking about class right now ).
I did not dress tribally. I did not talk tribally. I did not know how
to compose emails tribally. I did not know how to network tribally. I
didn't know how to make small talk and present myself in the proper
tribal fashion.
This meant that when 2006 and graduation rolled around, I had no
ability to confidently deliver a message of "hire me" to the right
person (I didn't know who that even was, for one thing). So resume
sending to HR, who blackholed me for some reason.
I don't have a clear solution to that for 20 year old me. You see,
growing up poor blue collar means that you don't learn most of these
things. If your dad is financially successful in your teen years, you
don't get that polish - it starts when you're 4, 5, 6, 7, when you are
learning how to engage the world with your parents as model. Your
parents _don't_ network. Job hunting was often literally walking up to
the supervisor on the job and asking if he needed a worker. Reader, it
doesn't work like that in most of the white collar world. (n.b, My
dad's established now, he networks, he has a much more polished
approach to business, he's self-employed and /not/ nearly as scraping
by as when I was young - I'd have a far different story today if I was
15 years younger). Class shift...
So looking back: NUMBER ONE I should have sought an internship
aggressively in my junior year, regardless of graduate school
aspirations. Any internship. Anywhere. No fear of "the big city"
allowed (that was a thing too...). This would have jumped polish and
presentation levels, since interns are known to be a bit rough. Then,
NUMBER TWO structured collegiate social groups to help improve your
socialability. NUMBER THREE find a professional watering hole
online. SOAK THAT STUFF UP. Interact with successful software
engineers who can forward you to their managers. Learn how they talk.
These three things would have bigly helped my class mobility.
but hey, me in 2004? he was a clueless dude. he might have been a
homeless dude in a park if things hadn't come together the right
way. I caught the breaks just right and I'm ok now, but it was real
close for a few years.
sci because I was clueless about job hunting.
> @shekkiesqueaks@computerfairi.es asks... what got you out of the
taco place?
So... my DREAM had been to go to grad school. I had gotten the
materials together in 2006 when I was finishing my BS. I didn't fill
out the paperwork to send them in, because my (future gf/fiance/ex)
had broken my heart and I walked around in a depressive fog for 6
weeks and blew out the deadlines and 2 letter grades of my courses
that semester (last semester of school).
After graduation, I fart around for a month or two, spending first 2
weeks on WoW about 18 hours per day, then going and doing some random
desultory looking for work. Can't get any bites. No industry contacts
whatsoever. Career services was a redirect to monster.com (I hear it's
better these days). I know a guy who works at the fast food taco
joint, and they are hiring. Now, this ain't glamorous work, but The
Rent Is Coming Due. It was a hard thing to mop up floors when a year
ago you expected it'd be easy to get a decent job that, IDK, paid
enough.
So come 2007 spring, I've not been able to get a job in the software
industry (because I was TOTALLY IGNORANT because Reasons), and I'm
getting desperate, and my money is running out. I was paid 700/mo, and
my expenses were 800/mo. Or, you know, something about like that. It's
been a decade.
I go to my old advisor and say, look, I'm happy to do scut work
programming, whatever, I'd like to go do grad school someday. He's a
professor, so he takes FOREVER to get back to me but... everything is
super slow-mo and I'm running out of money. The (now fiance) is
staying with me in the cheapest 1-room apt in town, has no job (I
found out later she didn't bother looking for work, just wandered
around to parks. WHATEVER.). I have $50 in the bank that June week and
I'm just WAITING for this prof to get back to me. He does so, 1-2?
weeks before I go talk to the landlord and ask for an extension so I
don't become homeless. I was SERIOUSLY contemplating a tent in the
woods. The next step cheaper of housing was a *nasty* semi-dorm situation.
I had very few solid friends at that time, and no local network - I
hadn't plugged into any social organizations as a student. For reasons
I'll get into later, I "had no time", which was both true and false.
So... I get this job as a University programmer being paid $19/hr,
only allowed to work 19/hr/wk (so they didn't have to do benefits YAY
BEING YOUNG AND HEALTHY). This got me out of the immediate hole. I
applied for grad school Fall 07, got in probationally or w/e, and was
fully admitted S08. I worked with the chair, great old guy, then in
Spring 2009, I was able to snag an industry internship, which was
*about* the time StackOverflow came to be. I studied hard, spent time
reading it, and around that time I started seriously doing open source
contributions and programming at home instead of WoW.
I'd always been a *talented* programmer and had done a slew of fun
small projects over the years, but the three-way combination of
graduate school, TA'ing classes, and getting an internship skilled me
up fast and let me deliver results in ways that actually looked highly
competent. That internship lead to my current nice job at a different
company, everything hunkydory.
Summer 2009 my advisor died, which threw my graduate school into a
tailspin, yeah, let's not talk about that. Let's talk about some
lessons learned.
Dropping the gaming and seriously engaging with programming at home &
doing open source skilled me up very fast; getting into the interview
was done initially via a "weak link" connection - a friend of a friend
(I had improved my social relationships in graduate school. THIS WAS A
BIG DEAL) - and I was able to blow away the interview. Once I was
*in*, I got the magic sparkles of "a desirable person", and I tried to
sponge up as much information as I could, leading to a Comfortable
Career.
SO LESSONS to ME, 15 years ago.
LESSON ONE Get out there and network. Meet people, the same people, on
a regular basis. Figure out how to get coffee with people.
LESSON TWO. Video games are a TERRIBLE WAY TO DO LIFE. They provide
illusions of success and tickle you into thinking things are
well. THEY AREN'T WELL, DIMWIT. Go out and get on an Ultimate Frisbee
team - you like it!
TWO, SUBPART ONE: You are putting 30+ hours a WEEK into WoW. Use that
time to get on IRC and network in programming channels. Do open source
to build a portfolio.
TWO, TO DEAR READER: games are quiet, cheap, and a good way to
unwind. I wanted that, since I was BROKE. This helped lead to really
bad places. I should have done pencil art. Unwinds, quiet, cheap, but
not addictive like WoW (which is a FINELY TUNED MACHINE TO EAT YOUR
LIFE).
LESSON THREE. Get internships, if at all possible. Meet people at
companies. Take risks and visit San Francisco by greyhound. Go to
Seattle and do the same thing. DO NOT GO TO YOUR PARENTS EVERY SINGLE
BIG BREAK. GROW UP.
LESSON FOUR: Get a car ASAP. It'll help finding a job. Yeah, it's a
pain. But there's that engineering company 7 miles away, and if you
can commute there...
LESSON FIVE. Magically figure out how to present yourself as a
successful white-collar person.
Dear reader. About HALF of these failures came about because I DID NOT
KNOW how to network with white collar professionals, OR present myself
as a successful member of the white collar professional tribe.
For all the whaaarghble about how programming accepts everyone, etc,
it's a white collar job with expectations of college education. If you
can pull that "look like a tribal member" off, you immediately
increase your chances 10x or more of getting hired at a reputable firm
( I suspect looking white and male /also/ boosts your chances. But I'm
only talking about class right now ).
I did not dress tribally. I did not talk tribally. I did not know how
to compose emails tribally. I did not know how to network tribally. I
didn't know how to make small talk and present myself in the proper
tribal fashion.
This meant that when 2006 and graduation rolled around, I had no
ability to confidently deliver a message of "hire me" to the right
person (I didn't know who that even was, for one thing). So resume
sending to HR, who blackholed me for some reason.
I don't have a clear solution to that for 20 year old me. You see,
growing up poor blue collar means that you don't learn most of these
things. If your dad is financially successful in your teen years, you
don't get that polish - it starts when you're 4, 5, 6, 7, when you are
learning how to engage the world with your parents as model. Your
parents _don't_ network. Job hunting was often literally walking up to
the supervisor on the job and asking if he needed a worker. Reader, it
doesn't work like that in most of the white collar world. (n.b, My
dad's established now, he networks, he has a much more polished
approach to business, he's self-employed and /not/ nearly as scraping
by as when I was young - I'd have a far different story today if I was
15 years younger). Class shift...
So looking back: NUMBER ONE I should have sought an internship
aggressively in my junior year, regardless of graduate school
aspirations. Any internship. Anywhere. No fear of "the big city"
allowed (that was a thing too...). This would have jumped polish and
presentation levels, since interns are known to be a bit rough. Then,
NUMBER TWO structured collegiate social groups to help improve your
socialability. NUMBER THREE find a professional watering hole
online. SOAK THAT STUFF UP. Interact with successful software
engineers who can forward you to their managers. Learn how they talk.
These three things would have bigly helped my class mobility.
but hey, me in 2004? he was a clueless dude. he might have been a
homeless dude in a park if things hadn't come together the right
way. I caught the breaks just right and I'm ok now, but it was real
close for a few years.
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