Work, basically.

[daviddoran]

Hi everyone,
As some of you may now I'm 17 and currently in 5th year of secondary school. The end of the school year is coming up around May 30th and from then I'll have ~3 months holidays.

At the moment I'm looking into different temporary employment areas for summer and so I thought I'd bring it up here.

As I'm sure some of you know from my posting in reply to technical queries and from my other work I have a good knowledge of HTML/CSS/PHP/MySQL etc.
I have the ECDL Certificate and I am currently pursuing the Zend PHP Certification.

I am always looking to further my knowledge including learning other technologies for projects such as other databases (MSSQL/Firebird), other languages (ASP/Python) and I am expanding my expertise into C++/Perl.

I am looking for flexible, well-paying PHP/HTML development work in Meath or inner Dublin.

In summary, I would greatly appreciate some good employment leads, advice or other suggestions anyone has.

Thanks,
David

 

[paul]

did you read this post ? here maybe that would be a good lead.

 

[mneylon]

I am looking for flexible, well-paying PHP/HTML development work in Meath or inner Dublin.

I think you are asking too much.

You're only available for 3 months, so realistically you will only be useful for about 2 months or so.

 

[daviddoran]

@Paul: Thanks, though I am not a Web Designer.

I think you are asking too much.
You're only available for 3 months, so realistically you will only be useful for about 2 months or so.

Asking too much in what way? I realise that it is not the usual employment situation, but you never know what opportunities are out there.

 

[mneylon]

@Paul: Thanks, though I am not a Web Designer.



Asking too much in what way? I realise that it is not the usual employment situation, but you never know what opportunities are out there.

You're a secondary student with little or no commercial experience, yet you seem to think that you should have a well paying flexible job.

Maybe in your reality this is normal. In mine I would have been happy to get anything to build up professional experience at your age.

 

[paul]

David : What are you looking for in terms of work ? Are you expecting to get paid for your time or are you willing to take the hit and get some professional experience. The reason for the link is that maybe that guy is will to let you in on a project or two.

 

[daviddoran]

You're a secondary student with little or no commercial experience, yet you seem to think that you should have a well paying flexible job.

Maybe in your reality this is normal. In mine I would have been happy to get anything to build up professional experience at your age.

Sorry Michele, maybe it is a side-effect of written word but your posts come across as accusatory and snide.
Surely you must understand that my request is quite innocent; I am not looking to make it rich, take anyone's job or get $100K plus holidays.

I suppose (I would hope) it is that the web is rather impersonal, but I would have thought that you would have enough respect for me not to talk down to me as you do.

For the record, but not to argue I have freelanced for a number of people, done work experience in one of the most notable web design companies in Ireland and worked internally in a networks company for an on-going, extended period with many projects.

I do realise that it is not the usual request you would expect from "A 17 year-old" but I also believe that self-promotion is the key to success.

 

[cr8or]

OK, take a step back for a second and look at your situation. In my mind, age does not matter. As backnight said, a well paid job comes to you only because you can sell yourself on your experience. The more experience you have the more you can demand (or ask for).

At an age of 17, I would estimate that the maximum experience that you could have is 1-2 years. That experience may not however be commercial experience.

Your definition of a well paying job might be different to mine so it might be a good idea to clearly define what your looking for.

My advice would be...

Instead of trying to find a job in a highly experience and up-skilled market you should look at trying to build your experience. When I say experience, this could be in the form of work experience OR by going out and applying your skills to a project. The best way to build experience is to contact a friend or relative and offer your services for free or at a low cost. The free or low costs takes both the pressure and risk out equation.

This way you will find a job a lot easier down the road .. You can then show how you applied your knowledge to a project and what you learned. You will learn a lot by doing this.

 

[daviddoran]

Thanks for the response cr8or, I agree knowledge & experience are key.

Pay
I didn't put down a fixed amount because I chose not
set a minimum until I got the thoughts of the members here
and hopefully from employers that I know are present.

Experience
I know looking at my age it is very hard to believe I could
have a reasonable amount of experience. While I don't have 10 years, I have 5 years of HTML and 2 years of PHP.

• I have had board meetings with the "boss", the finance department and the technical department.
• I have taken briefs, built 5-table, 40-column database schemas and implemented secure GUIs.
• I have learnt on my feet including ASP for a public project, 3rd-party systems and building alternate GUIs based on only a database file.
• I created a full multi-account, multi-user, mass feedback system.
  Please take a look at (feedback freedom) Welcome! and login with username york and password iwf which I independently designed and developed.
  Bearing in mind I would never consider myself a web designer and have no art training the design is intuitive and usable.
  You will see that "FF" has secure multi-user authentication, automatic RSS Feeds, statistics, archiving, time zone correction etc. and behind the scenes it has detailed DB error reporting.
  I believe I designed this in such a way that it would stand up to peer-review and my error-reporting practices are sufficient for live, service-critical rollout.

Bottom Line
I have no problem with anyone regarding my request as over the top or even absurd, but I would still like your comments, and hopefully your respect.

 

[Cormac]

Instead of trying to find a job in a highly experience and up-skilled market you should look at trying to build your experience. When I say experience, this could be in the form of work experience OR by going out and applying your skills to a project. The best way to build experience is to contact a friend or relative and offer your services for free or at a low cost. The free or low costs takes both the pressure and risk out equation.

This is one of the routes I would consider. But be careful with doing work for free, it's sometimes hard to see the light at the end of tunnel. Because you are doing something for free you may not be fully commited to the cause and that can lead to its own problems....

Also you should contact some agencies around Dublin, you would be surprised at how many of them have positions available for work experience.

I think that we are taking on a secondary student for a few months in the summer for expierence. I recommend sending in your CV/Cover Letter to the companies based in the IFSC for starters. Info here - IFSC Online - International Financial Services Centre Dublin Ireland

 

[daviddoran]

I thank everyone who had constructive comments, I am taking them on board and will be considering my options.
For now I remain open and would like to keep this route an option and see if by chance anyone has any opportunities or leads.

 

[3rigena]

best of luck in your quest David - I do hope something challenging and fulfilling comes your way.

 

[fizzy]

hi david,

firstly, i'm really impressed by the extent of your experience at only 17. web dev is clearly something you take very seriously and have invested an awful lot of time in. i had not even switched on a computer at your age!

hopefully you will be able to find a challenging placement for the summer, but don't despair if you don't. as others have said, you could gain extremely valuable experience by taking on your own project for either one of your own ideas or a friend/relative (and you would still get a bit of a break over the summer instead of 9 to 5ing it!).

there do seem to be a fair few web dev vacancies cropping up these days which is a good sign, but i know where blacknight is coming from. unfortunately, given the low barriers to entry and the fact that loads of people are into web dev and it is a very small industry here, supply usually outweighs demand.

then, a lot of companies are not keen on taking on short term students like you, regardless of how talented or enthusiastic they are. teams are so tight these days, and it takes a company a fair investment of time to get you the way they want you for their setup, that you would probably be about to head back to school by the time that happened...

finally, i would not focus on the money. if you get an interesting offer for the summer, i'd grab it (once it was not financial suicide). you may have figured this out already, but unfortunately traditional web dev work in the small companies that are commonplace is generally not well paid for all that is required of you. in particular, entry level rates tend to be absolutely dire! they will start paying you more (although not necessarily that much more!) once you prove your worth...

good luck!

 

[Trojan]

Here's my own real numbers since no one has yet mentioned money.

Back in the day (ok, ok: 1997) when I was in college between 1st and 2nd year I worked in a Irish hardware company in their software (device drivers) department. I wrote a regression test harness and numerous tests in TCL/TK (for UNIX portability). I worked there 9-5 for 3 months and accomplished what would now take me a week or two of solid effort. For my troubles I earned the vast sum of £150 punts per week, which was pretty crap but the experience was gold.

Between 2nd and 3rd year I worked in Dell in Limerick, this time in "Software Validation". Again it was testing, but this was monkey work, monotonous, boring, and quite well paid. I did loads of overtime and although I can't remember exact amounts, I ended up with enough money to pay for a new top end PC and finance the guts of a year of socialising. The experience looked good on the CV but in terms of technical skills I had learned 1000 times more the first year.

And after 3rd year I got a full time job as a developer on solid wages with a software multinational. Somewhat based on my education, but the boss told me it was mainly that I had good experience for a 3rd year grad. I knew that on paper I did, but my Dell experience looked better than it actually had been. Swings and roundabouts.

I'd recommend you find a small company (or big company with a small team) and do a solid 9-5 for 2-3 months. It'll stand to you and you should get good experience - not all necessarily technical, mind! And after that who knows, you can go freelance full time or go to college or go into full employment.

 

[dude]

David, I have a non-paying "tidy up this script" job if you want some extra experience for your CV and possibly a reference. It's related to Dole.ie - Every job from every job website.

The non-paying bit is due to me being Mr. Poor at the moment.

 

[daviddoran]

Sure "dude", swing it this way over PM/email. (daviddoranmedia [@] gmail.com)
Provided it is not too long 1k/2k lines, I'll do it. (time is money)

@Trojan: Thanks for the personal insight there, it is very refreshing to get a real-world look into the college/job scene. I have all but decided to do work in a networks company as in-house programmer and router config for the 2/3 months which should be solid and pays pretty well for my age (€12/ph). Hopefully at the end of the summer I'll have the Zend PHP5 Cert and Cisco CCNA, which would be a great bonus on top of the experience and the money.

 

[louie]

hey, good luck to you, not that you are going to need it.
By the sound of it and seeing some work you have done, I could say you'll get far.
Don't let the age stop you. Indeed you might get peanuts for your work at the moment, but it will be well worth it in the end.

There is a good example from Trojan.
We all have to start somewhere, and it's always from the bottom unfortunately.

 

[TheMenace]

I am looking for flexible, well-paying... work

Aren't we all?

First things first - it's great to see you have a passion for the industry. It's refreshing to see someone so young (at the risk of sounding patronising) who is also enthusiastic, passionate and with a penchant for learning/not standing still on his laurels. Good for you, you'll go far!

Now, a quick reality check - you're only 17 and you'll need a good 3 or 4 years commercial experience before you can demand well-paying work. Obviously that depends on what your definition of that is of course. When you start paying for things like mortgages, a car, etc. then a well-paid post grad salary is really just pittance. The cold, hard fact is that most of us had to start on a rubbish salary just get experience. My first salary was IR£12,000 per annum. Crap money and just about enough to keep me going while living at home with my folks!

 

[ConorP]

I know I'm a little late to the party here but let me put in my 2 cent

Being a 6th year student who has done the whole looking for work thing I probably should be studying right now but I'll rattle off my story instead (hey, it's not the end of the world!)

From my (limited) experience its all about who you know.

Have you done 4th year? If so you are in a much better position then if you had not done it.

In my school we had two different one week work placements scheduled for us, for my first placement I went and worked in the IT department of company a where my dad works. I spent the week going through a checklist and installing and configuring pc's and plugging them in along with new IP phones

However for my second week, I went to a telco, got a name, pestered him a bit and eventually got a work placement in there. I did some basic tech support, answering phones etc.

That summer I was offered a summer job in both companies and I decided to head off to the telco (working with family is just down right painful) where I spent the summer doing tech support mainly and some writing of internal docs

Next summer then offered a position by boss I worked for in company a who now works in company b instead. Offered position in telco doing different project (cost analysis etc) went back to telco instead

This summer so far I've heard again from boss A in company B and we'll see what else comes up again (however with exams taking up pretty much all of June. I'm not sure if they'd be interested in the bones of two months)

 

[daviddoran]

Thanks Conor, I actually read your blog a while back and was astounded how similar are stories are. I was hoping to see you at Barcamp.

Yes, I did 4th year and the work experience and generally the extra time to work and learn was invaluable. I got work experience in a Web Design company and got some subsequent work.

I started doing work in the company my dad works in (Networks/VOIP) and now do internal systems and generally different bits and bobs integrating the systems. I've got quite a bit of work from just generally being there, because by word of mouth people hear what I can do and then they hear of those people etc..

Thanks for the perspective, I think my current decision to work in the Networks/VOIP company is the best available.