22 and no life
I'm 22 and have no life. No car, no job, no money, and no future as I can see. I'm stuck in a rut and don't know how to get out. I'm really tech savvy (no degree unfortunately; money took care of that one for me; I seriously tried and tried and tried.)and i'm an aspiring programmer and producer/audio engineer and I can't find work ANYWHERE. I live in a town called Yakima, WA. and all it consists of is fast food chains, big box retail stores and the extreme use of drugs. I've tried over and over again to find a job and save some money so I can move or get out of this hell hole; but to no avail have I come closer to what I want. To just be O.K. for once. The last two years of my life have been hell and I can't seem to straighten things out. I've moved across the country only to be taken advantage of by family, I've been homeless, and I'm scared. I don't exactly know why i'm posting this, in all honesty I don't really have that many friends or people to talk to. I just don't know what to do anymore.
192 comments
[ 2.7 ms ] story [ 218 ms ] threadYou don't need money to get a degree. That's the point of student loans. Are you in-state in Washington? If you can take the SAT's you should be able to get into a decent, cheap state school. You can get a fee waiver for that, btw.
I'm personally a high school drop out and work as a developer in an up and coming startup. Prove that you're a good developer and you don't need a degree.
1) Get a job at a call center, this will suck but you can at least pay for rent off of this.
2) Make flyers and/or find a place that will hire you on to clean Bonsai Buddy off of grandmas computer. If the job pans out enough you can quit the call center.
3) Save up all the money you can.
4) Move to Southern California or anywhere with a growing tech scene. Rent an apartment / room in a cheap part of town (Oakland, parts of LA) that you can use public transit initially.
5) If necessary repeat steps 1 or 2 until you can get a job doing something more. In this time attend meetups to meet other people in the industry you want to be in.
You list your tangible skills here and ask for work - anywhere but Yakima. I hear that there are some great startups in Chicago, Detroit, etc - much lower cost of living than CA or NY. BTW where did you move from? Is it an option to return there??
I've heard Chattanooga is an option for tech jobs, and Tennessee is supposed to be pretty. Cost of living should be relatively low, if you can get there. Once you get there, or anywhere, do what you would do anywhere: find anyjob and work on moving up from there.
Consider local government for work.
Best of luck to you.
The above works best in conjunction with the other advice here: get into the open source software world. Hang out on IRC while you're working. Read the documentation. Blog what you're learning. Make the most of free resources. Go to meetups related to technologies you're learning if you can.
Embrace this. You'll (ideally) never be here again.
Is there somewhere you've always wanted to live? Move there. I'm sure there's an airbnb for ridesharing to get there. If not, start building it.
Once you're there you need to find work. Working fast food? That's cash. That's not equity somewhere, that's immediate rent paying and food buying cash. You want this.
When you're not flipping burgers, try and find work that is at your technical level. Startups, firms, etc. You probably won't find any at the get go. That's fine. Put an hour a day into this search. The rest of it? Start fleshing out stuff on Github.
Don't necessarily take the first job that comes up; flipping burgers and waiting for the right job is better than a sucky job.
Final step, start living life.
Like I said, I've never been in the situation, but that's the advice I would give myself.
Good luck.
Doing that in a year or even six months is plausible, depending on how lucky his circumstances are, but three months strikes me as a bit of a stretch. At $10/hr * 40 hr/week * 12 week = $4800, ignoring rent, food, incidentals, and taxes.
If that were to become an obstacle, one solution may be to get a second job.
And yet the OP writes that he's having trouble getting even one of these jobs. It may be hard to believe, but some small towns have a vast, vast excess of people wanting these jobs.
I could also suggest he goes off to western north dakota to work in the oil field, but I don't know if that's such a great idea. I have some friends that have done that. It sounds horrible, and they look like they are about 15 years older than they actually are. Plus you need the money to get there, and need a car, all of which is probably $5K+ anyway.
How in the world could anyone save $5,000 in a summer when they're not even pulling in that amount?
EDIT: Even working 80 per week only brings in $7,680. Factor in bills and you're still not hitting 5k, guy.
Edit: What bills does he have? Food is free, because you work in food service. Rent in a place like Yakima is < $400/m. Summer starts in May. Also, after 40 hours a week you get overtime.
I've never heard of a food server job that hired fulltime workers or allowed those reaching 40 hours to go beyond that.
I'm a developer today, and do ok by industry standards (not great, just okay, for now). However, I grew up in a less than trailer trash home, my dad was a janitor, my mom was nuts (I used to watch her talk to invisible people in a roach infested kitchen), my siblings were sucked into the poverty mindset. I was born with a serious medical condition. I've had some other crap go down that I'll barely tell my close friends, let alone an Internet of strangers, but trust me when I said I've had to rebuild areas of my life more than once. So what. I won't tell I have it all figured out, but I will tell you I will not be defeated. And I have little sympathy for those who tell me the horrible hand they've been dealt.
I realize that we live in a world where only the kids of the rich get to succeed, and the only way to start up your own business is to join an incubator. If you believe that, then you will be taken advantage of. Either push to be successful, or be the kind of person that the successful use to get there. They're more than happy to take your money and your spirit.
These figures sound good compared to US min. wages, but given the (substantially) increased cost of living I'm not sure this is good advice.
I do second the concern that Australia is expensive though. But there's no language barrier, work around and lots to see.
If you're lucky and social, you can find your way onto a fishing boat; deckhands will usually get a percentage of the catch ($$$), and the work is easier.
I've been through Yakima a time or two before. A gritty wind blew continually -- it seemed like the kind of place where not even the dust wanted to settle. My sympathies to the poster.
I spent 9 months in OZ, most of the time in northern Queensland working at a lime/lychee farm and some time at a banana farm. Since you are not in OZ yet, I doubt you will have any luck with gumtree/craigslist. Even if you are there it's pretty hard to get the job that way - the farmers really like to make sure you WANT to work and can physically do the work (at least I didn't manage to find work via gumtree).
The thing you have to do is go to the farms directly and talk to the owners/recruiters face-to-face. We bought a cheap 2500$ car between 3 people from Sydney and started driving north along the coast. There's quite a bit of work in the tropical areas during the summer months - bananas, mangoes, limes, lychees, avocados in late summer etc.
So my advice would be - get a cheap car, travel and work at the same time! (some farms hire only for the harvest period which for some produce isn't very long!)
Hope this helps a bit
By moving to a lower cost area than Australia you still get a little of the "awesome, I'm traveling!" thing with low enough costs that you can try to do work that is relevant to your ultimate goal of getting a career in technology.
Stay in the U.S. and try to keep in touch with the comunity.
Also, if he finds Yakima "hell", being very close to tech centers, how can you expect him to adjust to somewhere that's REALLY in the middle of nowhere in tech terms - and, while you might think it's easy not to get sucked into local wages, he's unable to make US wages living in the US. In my country, a US McDonalds wage (8 dollars an hour) is much higher than most midlevel manager positions, and higher than standard developer wages.
I suggest to find some freelance programming jobs online. He could make some money writing articles about the stock market for SeekingAlpha.com.
In terms of education, I think he should do some courses with Coursera or one of the other free online institutions.
Also getting a rental unit without previous references from Australian landlords/agents is particularly difficult.
Be prepared to spend out a lot of $$$ getting set up.
Yes you'd be looking to pay that for a nice, new or renovated single bed apartment in the middle of the city or an expensive area. As hinted at though, as someone with $5-10k in the bank coming here to be a barista there's no way you'd be able to get a lease for one of them anyway.
Head even a 20 minute tram ride out from the city, however, and suddenly you can pay AU$1,400/mth for a 1 or 2 bedroom place in an older building. (Though you may struggle to get a lease anyway...)
If you were on a working holiday you would likely be better off finding a shared place with some like-minded souls, and end up somewhere around $1,000 for rent + all your bills and such to live somewhere pretty nice.
You might look for jobs on Craigslist. It sounds like right now you're looking for anyjob, for cash/rent. Be willing to do about anything, you're not choosing a career right now you're just taking money from people without stealing. Depending on who you work for, some of them might have interesting ideas or contacts.
If you can get to North Dakota you might work in the oil fields, but I hear it's hard to find a place to stay; boom times and all.
I don't know the producer business, I'm guessing there's much more opportunity programming. Don't know your experience. Pick a language, start making stupid little things and put them on github. The first stuff doesn't have to be impressive, doesn't have to be web whiz bang, just anything that gets you thinking in the language. If you get far enough along before you get an interview you can take the earlier ones down. If you're lucky enough for someone to consider you earlier, for the type of job you might be talking about, you can point to even your small silly projects and say "hey, this is what I've been doing to build my skills."
Whatever language you pick, learn the debugger, it will teach you more than the debugger.
Read something enjoyable, it's a cheap way to do something good for yourself and to get your mind off your troubles. Make it non-career oriented at least some of the time. You can get things at the library, or a used book store. Finding a good, old, funky used book store is a delight.
Your health matters. Exercise as well as you're able. Challenge yourself to eat as well as you can on the least amount of money. Beans and such go a long way for very cheap. These two things can be some of your reading. Learn as much as you can practically use about them.
Help someone.
Summer is rolling around so make sure to be there before all the southern guys come back up after leaving for the winter. I plan on looking for a oil field job soon. After years in college, grad school, working at a corp job doing ASICs/FPGAs paying less than 70k, I hear its pretty easy to make +100k in the oil fields. Just make sure you are "mobile". I won't be slack work but you will be able to bank enough money to go to school. I hear of plenty of college age kids working the summer in the fields and end up staying in the fields( not going back to college). If I where you, plan on working a year or two, saving up a "pile of money", and then working on some degree. Remember, you will be a old man in tech by the time you get your degree and what will reduce your chances for employment. Tech is a wicked mistress!
.... If not, look at Udacity and the other MOOCs.
I say that, having joined the military after high school because I had no clue what to do with myself. And for me, at that time, it turned out well.
However, the US hasn't used its military for anything good or honorable since World War II, except possibly the first six to nine months of Afghanistan. If you join the military you'll likely have to kill someone for no worthy reason, or you'll have to order someone to do it. For fucking Wall Street, and so whoever's President at the time doesn't have to take Viagra.
Fuck. That. Shit.
Don't waste your soul.
(Apologies to any veterans or family.)
Too many people what to live the Silicon Valley lifestyle. If you can get into a top 50 school and are backed with some family wealth, you to could do it. But if you think you are going to be the next 'zuck'... you are going to be in for a rude awaking. Remember that zuck was from a well to do family, super smart, and went to an ivy league school. Most Silicon Valley companies only want people like him. The rest of us do not get to play in the big game... Life is tough. Get use to it. You will be happier.
It actually free and you only have to pay them once you get a job after graduating from their program. Plus the job will be in San Francisco area and will pay well like about 80K which will help you get out of your current situation and then you can decide what to do with your life after that.
What I did:
1) found the first job I could in the Seattle area (it was a call center job)
2) attended tech / startup community events (meetups, hack days, etc)
3) got lucky by meeting helpful folks in the tech community
4) worked on side projects on nights and weekends to grow my web development skills
5) found my first paying freelance dev work
6) found more paying freelance dev work
7) took a webdev job at a startup
From there a lot more has happened, but I've been in a webdev role ever since and continued learning new skills and taking opportunities to grow and contribute.
This is only one story and one perspective, but I hope you find a way out of the problems you're facing.
This really is the key to doing what you love. "Hanging around" leads to opportunities, whether it's through open source contributions to a project you like, pestering people at meetups, being a particularly keen and vocal user of a product you love.
(Speaking of which, we should probably organize HN meet ups more often)
* ANY job, if you can pare down/get help with your living expenses, is a plus, especially now. Discipline yourself to save to go to the place where your best chances are. Leave no stone unturned.
* Get help! College environments have lots of services and opportunities for people your age - counselling, jobs lists, ride boards, tutoring opportunities. If you've gone to a college, go there. Don't be shy about spelling out your predicament. Someone may hear you who's been there.
* Avoid the drugs, make sure your personal appearance and demeanor is as good as you can make it. Don't give them any excuses to overlook what you know how to do. Doesn't matter whether you score high on their tests if they don't like your look. "Really tech savvy" is NOT easy to find these days, if by that you mean MAD SKILLS. Sell that hard. If you mean "learn fast and will study hard", sell that. And mean it.
1) Spanish only 2) you need money for textbooks and such 3) really bad hours for those who need to work
Rent varies by country, but you'll find that an US equivalent is shockingly expensive - unless you think that you can live by without a fridge or other essentials (remember, in most of Latin America, rent only includes the four walls and a roof, forget about utilities, appliances, etc, unless you explicitly pay for those).
I've found that culture shock means that only people that are NOT in the situation this person is in are able to adapt to the local conditions.
My mother moved back from Canada to Uruguay, and she's shocked by the cultural differences (she lived abroad for 20 years). You won't believe how many things you take for granted that simply don't exist in a 3rd world country.
I don't know what your exact circumstances are but here is how I went from there to working for Google.
1. I got exposure. I hung out online with open source developers and participated. I did stuff in perl and blogged about it.
2. I did whatever I needed to to survive and support my family while doing the above. For awhile I worked as temp manual labor for Labor Ready. It was first come first served but if you did a good job companies would request you and you would have a job any time you stepped in the door.
3. I eventually managed to get contract work and continued to hone my skills and ability as a coder.
4. Finally I got noticed and was recruited by a company in chicago that later got bought by Google. I survived the transition and have been working at Google ever since.
You're path might not be exactly the same as mine but there are two key parts of my experience that you can learn from. Fisrt OpenSource gives you Exposure and Skill building that you can leverage. Second that menial jobs are a sometimes a necessary stepping stone but that they can be temporary.
Good Luck and don't give up.
There 18k+ open source repos on github for c#: https://github.com/search?l=C%23&q=c&type=Repositori...
There are 44k+ open source repos on github for java: https://github.com/search?l=Java&q=c&type=Repositori...
I'm not even gonna bother for Asp.Net.
Now, for some real advice. 'Open Source' and microsoft don't exactly go together like peanut butter and jelly. Yes, there are some open source projects for the MS ecosystem but it's just not in the culture.
If you don't want to transfer your current skills to the Linux world, you should find a large, open source c# project and just run with it.
Good luck.
There are lots of opportunities for addons/etc, and it's reasonably extensible. Could be a great first project.
It appears that the op may have had a stroke of good luck by picking the perfect OS projects. It would be a bummer to extend yourself in an area that nobody cares about if the whole purpose were to get noticed.
If using Open Source as a self-promotion tool, it's important to choose wisely.
I want to hear about the decision process behind how or why Zaphar chose the open source project he did, and how others here choose their open source projects?
Just a little advice, so that I too (and others reading), can (wisely) choose our first open source project to contribute to.
There is no reason you can't move platforms or languages though. If you know C# or Asp.Net you know enough to get started in ruby, python, perl, or any other language. You don't have to limit yourself in this industry.
However, how could I make any particularly meaningful contribution in a language I am just learning? I feel that any issues or new features in an open source project probably require some fairly advanced knowledge, no?
Blog about what you are learning. Your contribution will be helping others learn from your experiences.
http://paulsantana.wordpress.com/2013/03/30/the-effects-of-a...
You're most valuable contribution will be time and willingness to tackle something.
What is you blog BTW? It's not listed on your profile or twitter.
1. Hanging out in tech channels on IRC
2. Teaching myself to program C with the GNU toolchain
3. Getting a 2nd job doing 1st level remote tech support (my first tech job) in addition to a full time job driving a forklift to save money for books/computer equipment while I lived with family/friends and slept on couches.
4. Joining open source programming projects and reading tons of other people's code.
5. Going to a programming job interview and beating all the other more experienced and formally educated candidates by walking into the interview with a working demo I wrote in the weeks before of what they wanted to hire a programmer to build running on my laptop.
6. Realizing a lot of programming was going to be outsourced and teaching myself sysadmin work so I could pivot.
7. Working as a sales engineer for an IBM BP to get corporate formal sysadmin "education" (certifications).
8. Applying for an MIT sysadmin job based on my IBM certifications. And, getting the job because I was better educated than the other applicants.
Obviously, a lot of that took years and there were other jobs (construction, concrete, moving furniture, factory work, etc) and stuff in between and countless set backs. That included tons of people that wouldn't even talk to me because I was a drop out. I did eventually get a GED and an AA degree from a community college (night school). But, the points listed really were the important events.
You need to treat your career like a start-up or any big goal. Decide what you want your life to be like and think of every possible way to get to that point. Then go. Be aggressive and relentless in getting there. There's going to be tons of failures and setbacks. Don't look at them as something that stops you or traps you. Look at them as pivots, as steps in the iteration that will get you where you want to be.
I wanted to be a part of MIT since I was a kid (because that's where the GNU software that gave me a chance came from). Here I am. There are plenty of people here that followed an ideal path to get to their current place in life (best wealthy families, best private schools, scholarships, mentoring programs, best research groups, etc). But, there are also plenty of people like me that can look back on the same kind of crazy path of "anything and everything necessary".
Like zaphar said, don't give up. Be dedicated, aggressive, and relentless in discovering the path to what you want to accomplish. That's the most important thing.
Seriously you're less then 40 miles away from tons of people going through the same thing trying to get themselves together. Even if you end up doing something completely different, it's a place to start and it's just a hitchhike with a bunch of people you'll probably want to meet anyways away.
In life it is important to have the right perspective as this shapes your attitude and attitude is everything.
I am 32 now but in around 2001 I was about your age and I had an associate degree(CS), but the job situation sucked. The unemployment rate back then was much lower than it is today....perspective.
I think you need to consider taking any job until you can get on your feet. When I was 22 I was working at a call center taking 50+ abusive phone calls everyday, as I stated above I already had an associate degree...so again adjust your attitude.
Lastly, you may have hung around HN long enough to get the vibe that college isn't necessary, nothing could be farther from the truth.
Peter Thiel may tell kids already on their way to Harvard, Stanford et al to drop out and start a company, that advice is the absolute worse advice for 99.9% of kids....again perspective shapes attitude and attitude determines outcome... seriously figure out a way to enroll in college and get a degree....
hope this helps.
founder @APPYnotebook (www.appynotebook.com)