Re: Where would you look for your first job?

Get ... inside. Anywhere at all.

My first job consisted of tearing paper off a line-printer and shoving it through the appropriate slot. I didn’t care, because it put me inside that computer center. (This was about half a dozen years before the first PC was invented.) I knew that this would put me into contact with people who were actually doing the work that so intensely interested me (and that still does ...), and that I could earn their trust and learn from them. (Which, I am very pleased now to say, I did.) I always asked first, and I never saw one single password over anyone’s shoulder. ;-) (Be that as it may, I truly never used them.) Go now and do the same. Find any job that puts you within shouting distance of the place where you think that you might one day wish to be. If that job merely consists of preparing coffee for the developers, “just the way they like it,” then make it your business to do just that ... and be a sponge in your spare time. Go into work every day knowing that you are being watched, even by people you do not know are doing it, and remember that staff selection and promotion usually happens from the inside. Therefore, be “inside.”

“Those who can be trusted with little, can be trusted with much.”

“By their fruits shall ye know them.”

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Re^2: Where would you look for your first job? by dwalin (Monk) on Jan 24, 2012 at 06:19 UTC
Ahem. It seems that I forgot to mention that it's going to be my first job as a software developer, not first job at all. I'm too old and bald for internship; I would rather skip all this romantic stuff and cut directly to the point. If you have more, um, practical advice I would really appreciate it. Regards, Alex.	[reply]
Re^3: Where would you look for your first job? by locked_user sundialsvc4 (Abbot) on Jan 24, 2012 at 14:26 UTC
I am not trying either to be romantic, nor insulting. (And if I did either, then I cordially and publicly apologize.) If this is your first job as a software developer, then, it is “your first job.” If you are, as you say, “old and bald,” then maybe it would be better to look for a slot in the industry that better leverages what you already know and have already done. Software development is, first of all, a very labor-intensive job that more and more is done in far-away places. If you go head-to-head with that, you aren’t applying the benefit of your many years of practical work experience, and you could easily wind up making considerably less money than you can command right now elsewhere. Perhaps you can find a role that is more tangental to the actual development process itself; one that does not demand that you be a nerd to be successful. Managing it, or helping companies select and use the technology, troubleshooting (administration), strategy, and so forth. These apply more of your life-experience (which is priceless because it takes a lifetime to obtain) and less esoterica. In short, I would choose a different target. The technology of computing is changing, once again, right under our feet. “Cloud computing” is coming fast, and people who right now are managing “corporate data centers” (even those who are very good at it...) just might find their jobs in jeopardy and/or radically changed, very soon. Now more than ever, you have to guess where the rabbit will go next.