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What was your first job? | dangrover: Helped write mapping software for the US Army Corps of Engineers. Yeah, I guess I've never had a real job. |
What was your first job? | patio11: My first real job was cleaning electronic and pipe components, typically of the sort which were used underwater for delivering oil. This was a somewhat under-the-table employment, probably because the owner of the company didn't want to deal with OSHA. As I recall I was 16 and the pay was an impressive $6.75... |
What was your first job? | gambling8nt: 13; personal tutor for another student at $20/hour. |
What was your first job? | TechWriter: Guide (they called us 'explainers') at the Exploratorium, a science museum in San Francisco. I was paid minimum wage - then about $5.50 an hour, I think. |
What was your first job? | sneakums: Data entry. Ten hour shifts. At night. |
What was your first job? | walesmd: Cook at Hardee's - it wasn't that bad, lots of free food. Definitely didn't do anything to contribute to my current career (Sr. Developer). |
What was your first job? | sofal: Bagger at Albertsons ("courtesy clerk") at $5.15/hr, during high school. I've never had so much financial freedom in my life. |
What was your first job? | biotech: 15 y.o., life guard at a pool. Minimum wage @ $5.00/hr. Ouch! |
What was your first job? | saturdayplace: 16, doing Telephone surveys. Lasted for 2.5 years through high-school. Minimum wage, but I was pretty good so I could get the volume bonuses a lot of time. Hated the work. Loved the schedule. |
What was your first job? | joechung: A summertime gig doing FoxPro database programming for $17.50/hour. |
What was your first job? | mannicken: Around 9 years old, I was weighing people for money (~5 cents converted to USD in that time) on local markets. |
What was your first job? | ramidarigaz: Picking dandelions, $0.01 for each stem, $0.02 if it included the root.I was 4 at the time. |
What was your first job? | matth2: delivering papers, $0.04 a paper, up at 5am 6 days a week. |
What was your first job? | bkrausz: 15, working at Burger King. I remember getting my first web development job a few months later that paid less than my job at BK.No, my initials had nothing to do with my choice to work there...they were the only ones who would hire a 15 year old. |
What was your first job? | tjmc: I worked as a carny at the Perth Royal Show for 2 weeks when I was 15. Pay was peanuts, but part of the job involved wearing a horror mask and jumping out at people from the dark with a pitchfork, scaring them senseless.Not sure I've ever achieved the same level of job satisfaction. |
What was your first job? | rsayers: 16, Dominos pizza, taking orders and making them at $4.75 per hour.Quit that job to become an asp developer :( |
What was your first job? | YuriNiyazov: 13 in 1994, packing up groceries at the local supermarket. Tips only, made about $2/hour (yea, it was a bad deal) |
What was your first job? | Shooter: Baling hay and detassling corn for about $4.50/hr. I think I was about 12. The bales of hay were heavier than I was, so I had to use leverage to stack them and always ended up completely covered in debris. The cornfield job was easy...but it was really hot, so most of my peers quit. That's the first time I... |
What was your first job? | blader: 16, SAT instructor at Kaplan. I hated my life that summer. |
What was your first job? | newy: 18, bussing at Thai restaraunt. $2 something and tips. Learned then that tips made up part of the minimum wage. |
What was your first job? | dryicerx: 16, autocad drafting and tech guy for a small surveying company in town. $8/hr |
What was your first job? | jonnycoder: I kind of feel ashamed of it, but my very first job was a game tester for online flash games, made $8/hr back around 1998. |
What was your first job? | vollmond: Cashier at ShopKo when I was 16 - pay was a little over minimum wage. First interesting job was teaching horseback riding at a youth camp for $8-9/hr. |
What was your first job? | chops: Other than helping my dad at work getting paid under the table, my first job was as a movie theater employee (vendor and usher).We had a process called "counts", which was just the daily inventory, that everyone hated except for us few math-minded folks. The fun part of this was that all the vending terminals w... |
Learning RoR, Books & Tutorials? | slig: Since you don't have a Ruby background, I'd recommend you to check django. The documentation is very complete and well written and you can read a complete book about it for free[1]. It's a Python framework, though.[1] http://www.djangobook.com/en/2.0/ |
What was your first job? | callmeed: Foot Locker, age 16 ... the striped nylon shirt was itchy ... |
What was your first job? | grandalf: newspaper route at age 10. |
What was your first job? | ericb: 14, at The Fish Cove, a tiny fried fish joint. Summer, 6 deep fryers and no AC. And I had to "clean the trap" of the drain, which had rotten fish guts in it. On the ride home, dad made me sit in the back seat. The smell didn't wash off for 2 days.Every job since has been better than the last, starting from that ... |
Learning RoR, Books & Tutorials? | mr_luc: That's tough.Javascript is powerful, but you don't get exposed to its power unless you want to, and it's not on the server, so most people don't have the opportunity to really get into it.That means you'll probably be learning the most powerful language you've learned so far. Things like ruby blocks, mixins, an... |
What was your first job? | ojbyrne: My ancient experiences with the underclasses (summer jobs) and the first out of school job:Flagman, turning a stop/yield sign around to let traffic through a construction area. Boring as hell.Graduated to: laborer, basically using a giant heavy metal rod to tamp down earth around power poles we'd just dug a ho... |
What was your first job? | abecedarius: A summer job as code janitor at FORTH, Inc., age 16, $5/hour (80s dollars). While this was after Chuck Moore had left, it was still kind of educational. |
What was your first job? | bayareaguy: In my senior year in high school I earned $20 an evening twice a week helping someone I met in a COBOL course write DEC BASIC programs to compute ACRS depreciation schedules. |
What was your first job? | jk4930: My real first paid job with contract and stuff was as a cashier for a grocery chain. That was in 1995 (I was 17) and I financed with this job my first trip to an island in Northern Germany. Then my first real independent thing with license and stuff was selling soft drinks at the Berlin Love Parade in 1996. I m... |
What was your first job? | SwellJoe: I had two:I helped my mom load and unload furniture. She owned an antiques, used furniture and collectibles shop, and I would go to garage sales and flea markets on the weekend with her to help with the big stuff.Consequently, I had the opportunity to buy a lot of old computer junk for cheap at said garage s... |
What was your first job? | cmars232: Washing dishes at a steakhouse/buffet family trough at 16. Got in a knife fight one time with a mentally challenged but belligerent coworker. Avoid these places, but if you can't, avoid the bread pudding & ranch dressing. You really don't wanna know. |
What was your first job? | travisjeffery: I grew up on a farm to a lot chores that I were things that other would consider jobs.But I would consider hard wood flooring my first job. Hard as f--- work, and the employer I worked for was known for being one of the hardest working men in his profession around, him being my dad. |
What was your first job? | mallipeddi: 19, wrote some Javascript for a travel search engine, $1000/mo (I grew up in India - there were no summer jobs worth doing because you can't compete with the cheap labour in India). |
What was your first job? | Xichekolas: 14. Farmers market... about $50/week. 3am on a Saturday is early. |
What was your first job? | jackowayed: Am I the only one who started with a realish job?Other than a 1-time thing here and there, probably less than 10 times in my life, my first job is right now. I'm coding for a small Rails company in Seattle for a realish salary (bad for coding, great for being 16). We do some consulting work and some of our ... |
What was your first job? | emontero1: I'm not sure if this would qualify as my first job, but here I go: I used to run errands for my cousin at his car shop when I was 10-11 years old. I did a bit of everything: cleaning, moving/relocating car parts, and even painting at times. I used to get a tad more than $1 dollar a day, sometimes even less.M... |
What was your first job? | lux: Officially, my uncle's tobacco farm when I was 13. I was the stick shaker and I suckered and picked a bit too on my days off. Made a few grand that summer, which bought me my first guitar :)Unofficially, before that a couple friends and I used to steal CDs and tapes from Zellers back before they had security senso... |
What was your first job? | siong1987: My first job was basically a part time developer for one of my school open source project - Archon. It was like half a year ago. And, my second job now is really amazing. |
What was your first job? | Huppie: I think I was about 8 years old when I started cleaning pet's cages and fish tanks in the family pet store. I think I made about 2 guilders an hour (which will be about $0.80 I guess). |
What was your first job? | jonah: 14. Construction. $15-$20/hr. Planning, wiring, roofing were pretty fun. Digging foundation trenches in clay was not. |
What was your first job? | jhaddon: My first job was a CVS cashier, for about two or three weeks, before being offered a sales job at CompUSA.It bothers me that I made more at 17/18 then any year since (I'm currently 22). I miss commission sales. |
how productive and resource are you? | vaksel: divide your goals into smaller sub-goals, that way it'll be easier to manage and finish them, don't bite off more than you can chew |
What was your first job? | tallanvor: My first job was at a national lab when I was 17. I was paid to write FORTRAN code to help with data mining. Not the best use of FORTRAN, let me tell you. |
What was your first job? | sarvesh: I sold my website, which I created for fun, to a company in 1998 and continued to work for them, that was the first time earned a paycheck and I was still in college. Never in my wildest dreams did I think what I made would make money with it. It wasn't a lot but it covered my expenses for most of my college (... |
What was your first job? | enra: 15, doing web designing/prototyping to a local software company. Got paid something like 10€/hour even I didn't care about the money that much. I was just happy to work with web and being treated as equal member of a dev team. Learned quite a lot about web dev and business back then and I think it shaped me a lot... |
What was your first job? | uuilly: Bike Messenger in DC.Made great money for a HS student. Got to ride bikes all day and use my middle finger a lot. And my boss was just a voice on a walkie talkie. It was one of the best jobs I've ever had.Almost everyone I worked with was an ex-con. Crack, stealing assault you name it. I worked for one comp... |
What was your first job? | electronslave: First "job"? Hmm, probably one of those phone book delivery schemes at the age of 13 in rural Virginia. Paid $7/hr, all said. I split the take with a few car-owning friends and paid them less of the commission than I got ($5/hr, maybe?)First business venture was selling polished salt crystals (that I'... |
What was your first job? | voldern: My first real job was as a telemarketer/telephone salesman at age 16. |
opensource solution for URL shorter? | dotcoma: is it something interesting to do for a hacker?who pays the bandwidth bills?what do you get out of it? |
What was your first job? | bemmu: I noticed that there was a nice discount for large bundles of pencils, so I bought one and then went door to door selling them. Not sure how old I was, but this was during elementary school. I think one pencil cost 2 cents, and I would sell them for 16 cents. Then a friend came along, and I hired him to join me ... |
What was your first job? | pjhyett: Imagine Caddyshack minus all of the hilarity and sex, just the dragging golf clubs around for rich people part.Pay always depended on how well the golfer did (better score, better tip) but it was normally around $25 for about 4 hours of work. I did that for a couple of years starting around 14.It was a good jo... |
opensource solution for URL shorter? | digamber_kamat: Since you just want to know the challenges and are not really concerned about "whether url shortening is a good thing" I will put one challenge here. I am sure there will be many more.At a higher level there is nothing difficult. you have to only maintain a table with shortened code to actual url mappin... |
How to sell a start up. | davidw: You could sell it on sitepoint or eBay.> But i am not interested in a high value. Do you think with a reasonable product I will be able to sell it for say a $100k ?How much is it currently earning? What future earnings potential does it have? |
What happens to your consciousness/self-awareness as you age? | crocowhile: The general rule in the field is that it is impossible to answer about other people/beings consciousness. Among scholars, this is known as the "what is like to be a bat" rule, after a seminal 1974 paper by Thomas Nagel (see http://www.clarku.edu/students/philosophyclub/docs/nagel.pdf ) |
What was your first job? | RiderOfGiraffes: 1974: I was 12 rising 13 and my dad was fired (later it turned out that his boss was embezzling and was worried that dad would find out.)My sister got a Saturday job in a corner store, and I got a paper round. 6 days a week, 05:15 start, 120 papers delivered before 07:00. I don't remember the pay, bu... |
How to sell a start up. | jlangenauer: The thing to remember, is that unless you have _actually_ proven that people want to use it, and are doing so, then any value that might be attached to the software is hypothetical.If an investor had $100k, they could put it in the bank, and with no work and no risk whatsoever, they would earn $3K to $5K i... |
how productive and resource are you? | csbartus: You should focus on your I/O ratio, the balance between getting input (learning) and producing output (creating new knowledge).I've found when there is no balance there is no productivity: if you read too much without writing you'll get frustrated by not producing anything; when just writing code without read... |
Learning RoR, Books & Tutorials? | csbartus: Learning RoR -- and maybe other web frameworks too -- is not easy.
There are at least two phases of the learning process: learning Ruby as a language and Rails as a framework, then get acquainted with the RoR ecosystem -- github, deployment, existing reusable projects and components, best development environm... |
How to sell a start up. | wheels: The chance of finding someone who just wants the code for a site that isn't already popular is very small. Not impossibly small, but small. The converse is much easier: if you've got a lot of traffic, people will throw a lot of money at a URL shortener. |
What was your first job? | antdaddy: 17, Digitizing printed circuit board designs. It was basically tracing with a computerized drafting table. |
Whatever happened to Internet anonymity? | ErrantX: I think people realised that trust was intrinsically linked to identity (im a big fan of this idea btw).The idea that you can be anonymous online and say what you like is tied really closely to trolling and rudeness now. I think people have realised that you dont have to be anonymous to be "different" :)For ex... |
Is there any one book or resource on search engine development & theory? | rmobin: Gred Linden likes Introduction to Information Retrieval: http://www-csli.stanford.edu/~hinrich/information-retrieval-... (free online). |
Whatever happened to Internet anonymity? | khafra: The internet's mostly been about psuedonymity; the *chans have been the main bastions of full anonymity. There's still a place for establishing a psuedonym disconnected from your offline identity to various degrees, but with a history and a reputation of its own.(viz. me; I have a comment history and a karma s... |
How to sell a start up. | anamax: > I know that if I put it in public domain and it gets millions users it is a successful venture and hence will get sold for a high value.Huh? There are lots of things in the public domain with millions of users that haven't been sold for a high value."In the public domain" means that folks can pay virtually n... |
Is there any one book or resource on search engine development & theory? | michael_dorfman: There are some ACM/IEEE journals that have relevant papers, but you have to ask yourself: is reinventing the wheel what you really want to be doing? Given that there are lots of available COTS solutions, shouldn't you be focusing on things that are unique to your app?(Needless to say, if the search en... |
How to start a startup where team members required salaries to survive? | ScottWhigham: First thing - congrats for even getting this far; most people don't.Second - we can't tell you what to do; we can offer opinions though. Just keep in mind that our opinions, while well-intentioned, come from our own experiences and as such will be what we would do in that situation. We aren't you and so t... |
What was your first job? | mwbuksas: Cleaning horse stables. Must have been about 10. Not sure what I was paid, probably a few bucks an hour. Worst part was in the winter when you had to carry a screwdriver to break the ice off the water bucket.The radio in one barn was going all the time on the top 40 station. There are still songs that bring b... |
Canadian developers/consultants and Ontario's crazy RST/PST rules | tuukkah: From the document you link: "Goods for Resale: Computer programs purchased for the purpose of resale (e.g., computer programs that will become "part of" another program, etc.) can be purchased exempt from RST. This exemption is not limited to manufacturers." |
What was your first job? | bobochan: Scraping and painting a greenhouse at a farm for $3.50 an hour when I was 16. It was actually a great job, except when we were painting the inside. Once my back was hurting from painting some trim and I stood up too quickly and put by head right through one of the panes of glass. Fortunately not even a scr... |
How to start a startup where team members required salaries to survive? | michael_dorfman: Are VCs your only funding option?I bootstrapped my company (with some help from the local bank, and a government small-business program)-- we hacked together some prototypes that were enough to show to potential customers, and with sufficient customer interest, there was money available (including enou... |
How best to sell used server hardware? | Kadin: I think because of moves just like yours, server hardware isn't worth what you think it is. Go lower.I'm down in the DC area rather than NYC, but I've sold old tech assets on CL with regularity -- there are lots of buyers out there. It's just that sometimes it's hard to swallow the prices that people are willi... |
How best to sell used server hardware? | toddml: I'm interested. Toss an email to todd at bit.ly |
How best to sell used server hardware? | rickharrison: I would also be interested. Shoot an email to rah5051 at gmail |
How to start a startup where team members required salaries to survive? | pclark: if you're both earning decent salaries start saving.You should absolutely be gusting a gut in evenings/weekends building your project.Build a deck [venturehacks.com] and go to a local open coffee and target seed investors and blow them away.It'll take you 6 months to raise money, so by then you'll have a produc... |
What was your first job? | sid: this is fun ! let me thinkI had a job as a cleaner at a shopping centre which i did at night times, i had a friend who was doing that full time and he asked me if i wanted to help, pay was good cause i was 13 so any money was good :P I first used those scissor sweeps, then i did some of the mopping then finally i ... |
How best to sell used server hardware? | tsbardella: State surplus in south carolina does not take servers any more. they are junked even if they have warranty on them. They cant sell them to other agencies much less the public |
Sites using pop-up login windows without HTTPS? (e.g. Digg) | richesh: Click-able link to the picture: http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2488/3674881101_b946ecf39f_o.... |
Virtual PBX recommendations? | xinsight: Since your posting this on HN, you might be interested in rolling your own. This site outlines how to setup a VPS with asterisk and connect it to a VOIP provider:http://www.pbxer.com/ |
Sites using pop-up login windows without HTTPS? (e.g. Digg) | aditya: Not many people use https (security certificate hassles, etc.) for login, unless you really need it. Depends on the app right? For a bank it makes sense, for HN/Digg not so much. |
How do you evaluate web design firms? | vaksel: Look at their portfolio to make sure they are capable of doing the functions you need. You'd be surprised how many of "web design" firms can only do very basic things. |
Sites using pop-up login windows without HTTPS? (e.g. Digg) | jm4: You're not technically required to use SSL for login forms, but it's a terrible idea not to. To say it's trivial to capture plain text login information might be the understatement of the millennium. It's basically a step up from not using any password at all. It can be tempting not to bother with an SSL certifica... |
Sites using pop-up login windows without HTTPS? (e.g. Digg) | unfug: I haven't verified that Digg does this, but most big sites that do logins over http do some sort of hashing on the client side so that the actual password isn't sent plaintext.As has been mentioned, there are all sorts of issues with using https, and for sites where security isn't a huge concern (it's always imp... |
What was your first job? | jamesbritt: During my high school years I delivered dry cleaning in my neighborhood in upper Manhattan. Great exercise. :)I learned a few things about business, also learned how to use a steam presser for assorted fabrics. (Watch out for silk!)Tried to learn some Chinese from the owner, but I failed big time. :(I got... |
Canadian developers/consultants and Ontario's crazy RST/PST rules | xinsight: There are some hilarious tax laws. I remember reading that PST was required to be charged if a web site was delivered on CDROM. If you delivered it digitally there was no PST.The distinction here is whether you are selling software or working to build custom software. Clearly your clients are involved in the ... |
What was your first job? | arantius: High school (16 or so): McDonalds
College (18-20 or so): summer internships at Johnson and Johnson |
What was your first job? | abyssknight: I was a sophomore in college. I took a job at a small web development company writing PHP. I made minimum wage, about $7.25 at the time.Not the greatest story to tell, but those roots got me where I am today.:) |
Why aren't we spending more time to research harnessing solar energy? | noodle: yes, we should. the issue is that its not just one technology that needs to improve for making solar energy viable to become the serious heavy power provider, but many different interlocking technologies. batteries, for example. |
Why aren't we spending more time to research harnessing solar energy? | khafra: The trouble with your example is that a car is not a dyson sphere. A car is a few square meters, which means that with a 30% efficient pv panel (double the efficiency of the current standard), you'd only be getting around 15hp at noon. That's enough to toddle around a closed track at 30mph in a carbon fiber f... |
learning Basic Math, Reading Math | RiderOfGiraffes: One person's opinion ...You will never read math like English. I'm a Ph.D., I've had this discussion with many other graduates and post-graduates. Math is different from English (or any other natural language).In my circles of math, programming and education there is even a phrase "Read like Math" as... |
learning Basic Math, Reading Math | michael_dorfman: First, regarding CLRS: have you looked at the videos of Leiserson & Demaine's MIT course on the subject? Watching video lectures might get through where the book doesn't.I was going to recommend the Knuth book, so I'm trying to better understand your problem. Where, in the first chapter, did your "la... |
learning Basic Math, Reading Math | yequalsx: I agree with RiderOfGiraffes. You must do. Reading alone won't do the trick but I'm sure you know this. I have found that there are two types of mathematicians.1. Can not read a theorem without knowing every little detail.2. Can read a theorem, accept that it is true without knowing every little detail a... |
Sites using pop-up login windows without HTTPS? (e.g. Digg) | ScottWhigham: When we designed our new layout, we looked around and saw that many sites who do the ajax login have a link to an ssl page - like this: http://www.flickr.com/photos/39989785@N07/3675346915/We chose "Standard form | Secure form" as the verbiage but I've seen it several ways. |
learning Basic Math, Reading Math | vomjom: Frankly, CLRS goes over a lot of the basic knowledge you need to get through the book. I don't think a discrete math textbook will help you if your main goal is to get through CLRS; the math in that book isn't that dense. Like all things, it just takes practice. Spend a lot of time on sections that are hard ... |
How best to sell used server hardware? | chrisbolt: If 1 year old 8 core 8GB boxes are only going for $400, what can I do with a bunch of 3 year old 2 core 4GB boxes, where it's making more sense for me to replace them with newer boxes that use less power and space? |
Why aren't we spending more time to research harnessing solar energy? | papaf: The amount of energy we can usably harness from the sun is a lot less than is radiated to the earth. Its useful to drive at night and on cloudy days. People also demand similar performance from their future vehicles as they get now.If you're interested in these sort of questions, I highly recommend the following... |
Best way or place to sell domain names? | bjplink: Here's a few of the more common places to buy and sell domain names:http://www.dnforum.com
http://flippa.com/buy-websites?filterby=domains
http://www.sedo.com
http://forums.digitalpoint.com/forumdisplay.php?f=59That should be enough to get you started at least. |
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