
Interesting Reflections of an 18 year old Programmer - OoTheNigerian
http://wakecodesleep.com/post/1454678482/reflection
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heresy
Sounds very similar to my story, also left home and started work immediately,
only doing my degree in late 20s.

Now 30, I've worked in 8 countries, developed on Linux, OS X, Windows &
iPhone, for web, desktop and mobile.

First salary was $200/month (in South Africa) :) Happily, that has improved by
a few orders of magnitude.

It really is a great experience to have had, though sometimes I wish I had
gone down the academic route and aimed for some place like MIT/Stanford.

But fuck it, one life.

~~~
karmawhore
What are you doing now that earns $200000/month?

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swaits
I wondered the same. Or it may be a case of not knowing what "orders of
magnitude" means.

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mzl
Being a programmer one might like to think in base-2 orders :)

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eru
And as a physicist or mathematician, he would probably do base-e orders.

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robgough
I think it's worth pointing out that "high school" in the UK finishes at 16,
so he didn't so much as drop out of school as decide to not go to sixth-
form/college (which is optional - and is usually two years and fits between
high school and university).

Still it was a brave decision, and it obviously was the right one for him -
it's a very impressive story! Congrats!

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sim0n
Yeah, it was the choice between skipping further education or going straight
in to work that was my dilemma rather than "dropping out" of education as it
would be in the US, etc.

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djhworld
When I first saw the headline for this story my immediate thought was "What
does an 18 year old know!"

but it turned out to be a very interesting monologue about this guys
experiences in the trade. It also highlights the how fragile web companies can
be

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groaner
_After about 2 weeks (seriously!) in the job the new employee just got up and
left, never to be seen again. On the day he quit we were actually in a team
meeting and once it was over, the employee collected his things, called a taxi
and got a train back home to his parent’s house. The only reason Greg and I
were told as to why he decided to quit was apparently because “he’d rather
play video games than work”. No lie._

Excuse my ignorance, but just how exactly do these types of people get hired?
Nepotism?

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sim0n
I believe our boss was pretty desperate to hire another developer asap (I'm
not exactly sure why..) and we had known the guy for several months/year prior
to offering him the job (so yeah, he sort of got the job as he was close to
being a friend). We did interview him though and he was actually a fairly good
PHP coder just a bit socially awkward at times (which wasn't an issue). Oh and
he was also willing to work on a very low wage (something like £9k p/a) so
that was a big bonus for our boss. Thinking back, I'm not that surprised he
quit so soon considering he was only on £9k, lol. Thanks for reading the post
though by the way :-)

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shadowsun7
I read through the whole article, and I must say I'm really impressed with
what Simon's done in the few years after graduatiion. Question, though:
(Simon, if you're reading this) are you planning to go to university, say in a
year or two?

I'd imagine it'll be worth the experience!

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sim0n
If I'm not where I want to be in 2 years time then I'll most definitely
consider going to college/university to get a degree/qualification of some
sort :)

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faz
Really appreciate the post. Shows what it takes to take on something on your
own. And he's still a teenager!! Here in India people finish school when they
are 18 and go directly to college!

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moron4hire
As crazy as this time feels right now, it gets worse/better over time.
Whatever you're doing now, it will be more in 5 years time. You will look back
and ask yourself, "how could I have been so naive?" But at the same time, you
couldn't imagine what more you could have known. And this continues, it
develops and expands. If you take it for what it is, it's incredibly exciting,
because it means the best days are still to come.

