Ask HN: What was your first job?

16, martial arts instructor.

My first job was picking rocks out of the wheat field when I was 11 on our wheat farm. At 12, I was pretty much doing all the work for the dryland part of the farm. But being the family farm, that didn't directly pay.

After senior year of high school I worked on a wheat farm owned by a friend of my Dad and was paid $1.25/hr.

Lots of long days, hours wise. Carried that into computer profession.

However, at the end of the summer, farming was done. In this business, it is never done and there is no natural downtime.

Paperboy.

17, I worked for a local family owned ice cream shop of course! $6.75/hr.

Unsoldering resistors, capacitors, etc from old VCR mainboards. 1 cent per part; 1.5 cents if I sorted them by spec. My family had an electronics repair shop. I think I was eight or nine. (Back then components were about the size of a large ant, not stuffed in by the billion)

I've been thinking about this lately -- giving kids work gives them skills and I think people would be surprised what they can handle.

18, selling knives for CUTCO, commission only. And I freakin loved it.

Helped write mapping software for the US Army Corps of Engineers. Yeah, I guess I've never had a real job.

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 an hour.

After a summer of drama he became incensed that one of my pipes, which I had been cleaning of oil residue by means of scrubbing with a solvent and a toothbrush (it is exactly as fun as it sounds), was insufficiently clean. He attempted to demonstrate his displeasure by throwing the ~20 pound pipe at me. It passed close enough to my ear that I felt the breeze.

Thus ended my involvement in the informal labor market.

13; personal tutor for another student at $20/hour.

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.

Data entry. Ten hour shifts. At night.

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).

Bagger at Albertsons ("courtesy clerk") at $5.15/hr, during high school. I've never had so much financial freedom in my life.

15 y.o., life guard at a pool. Minimum wage @ $5.00/hr. Ouch!

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.

A summertime gig doing FoxPro database programming for $17.50/hour.

Around 9 years old, I was weighing people for money (~5 cents converted to USD in that time) on local markets.

Picking dandelions, $0.01 for each stem, $0.02 if it included the root.

I was 4 at the time.

delivering papers, $0.04 a paper, up at 5am 6 days a week.

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.

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.

16, Dominos pizza, taking orders and making them at $4.75 per hour.

Quit that job to become an asp developer :(

13 in 1994, packing up groceries at the local supermarket. Tips only, made about $2/hour (yea, it was a bad deal)

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 realized that different people could have dramatically different work ethics. Some people spent more time and effort figuring out how to cheat and goof off than it would've taken to just do the job properly.

I worked before that, chopping wood and the like, but just "to earn my keep" and not for payment. Around 15, I started giving lessons at the YMCA (swim lessons, horseback riding lessons, guitar lessons, and martial arts lessons) and cutting grass for elderly neighbors. Cutting grass I averaged $5-7 an hour, and giving lessons I averaged between $15-20 an hour, which taught me the benefits of 'specialized' knowledge and skills.

The first time I had any idea about a business model was in middle school. Most middle school kids couldn't go into our high school without getting into trouble, but I could because I was the editor of the newspaper and yearbook. Economic moat ;-) I used my "special hall privileges" to buy candy from the high school, which had a concession/vending stand, and resell them to the middle school kids, who had no junk food outlet of their own. I usually marked things up between 25-100%.

16, SAT instructor at Kaplan. I hated my life that summer.