
Ask HN: How to find a student job as a programmer? - wofo
I am a CS student in The Netherlands. Here it is pretty common for students to have a part-time job. Most of them just work in the supermarket or in a restaurant, but I thought it would be nice to put my programming skills to good use.<p>After some searching and a couple of interviews, the main obstacles I found are:<p>1. Many companies underestimate your skills and want to give you trivial and boring tasks (e.g. find and escape all SQL queries in an ASP codebase, ugh)<p>2. Big companies don&#x27;t offer part-time jobs for professionals, let alone students.<p>3. Some companies have whole teams of incompetent people (e.g. a friend of mine gives <i></i>lessons<i></i> to one of those teams! Yes... it is the same one of #1)<p>4. Startups don&#x27;t have the previous problems, but are often unable to offer a good salary.<p>5. Because I am a student, my network is pretty limited.<p>Should I just accept #1 and hope for an improvement in the future?<p>Do you think #5 could be solved by going to meetups or something like that?
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onion2k
To answer each point in turn;

1\. You're a new developer with no professional experience who wants a
reasonably well-paid job on your terms rather than an internship/junior role.
You're going to end up doing the boring stuff. On the specific task you
mention - that's either a fairly trivial exercise in regular expressions or a
reasonably interesting task refactoring a codebase to use a proper database
abstraction. Either way it's not _that_ boring. I can think of much more
boring coding things.

2\. Don't look for roles at big companies then.

3\. Every company has things that look bad from the outside but there's
usually a reason for it. Don't judge. You'll be responsible for writing some
pretty horrible code during your career. I guarantee it.

4\. Some startups have plenty of cash and are absolutely desperate for
developers. Look here:
[http://workinstartups.com/](http://workinstartups.com/) (if not there, there
might be a more Netherlands specific version somewhere.)

5\. Yes, you can network. Finding events is easy (Google, Meetup.com, etc).
There's loads of them everywhere. Also, ask your tutors/professors. They'll be
pretty well connected. And go old school - Google for local software
companies, find their email addresses/phone numbers, and reach out to them.
You will be _amazed_ how happy people are to help you.

EDIT: One more thing.. don't underestimate the value in getting a job that
isn't anything to do with coding. For example, working in a restaurant would
give you plenty of 'soft skills' experience dealing with people. Being a
'people person' will set you apart from other developers later in your career.
It's worth thinking about.

~~~
wofo
Great answer! Thanks! It gives me a lot of stuff to think about.

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trcollinson
That was a fantastic answer. Just to add a bit to onion2k's excellent
response:

1) You have a lot to learn about refactoring and working in codebases that
aren't great. I have never once been upset with a junior developer who went
above and beyond a task to try to make something better, especially those who
ask questions along the way. Don't do the tasks they are for. Do accomplish
the same result they are hoping for in a better way! And learn from it.
(Refactoring, better tests, better OO or functional principles).

2) I have worked in very very large companies which have part time intern
spots that pay much better than restaurants and grocery stores.

3), 4), 5) here here! Well said.

On the Edit note: I want to point out that three of my very best software
engineer colleagues started their careers in construction. One moved rocks at
a quarry, one was a roofing and framing assistant, one did concrete
contracting. All have a work ethic unlike any I have seen in a life long
engineer. Not only are they brilliant coders, they have immense problem
solving skills, fantastic people skills, and they don't complain nearly as
much as everyone else.

~~~
jhildings
Regarding 1) so it is a very good way to learn how to NOT do things, and will
make the "proper" ways more understandable

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ruigomes
I'm in a very similar situation and about a month ago I posted this exact same
question here on HN.

Since then, I went ahead and built a functional job board for part-time jobs
for students/parents/etc.

I'm currently looking for some early adopters who have part-time jobs to post
(for free!), so if any readers have part-time jobs to fulfil, email me at
hello@ruigomes.me. Even though I'm currently booked for months, it'll help
people in the same situation I was a month ago, and in the situation the OP is
now :)

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nickysielicki
Does your university have a job posting site?

I found my student job out of sheer luck, mucking around in bash before an
exam and suddenly someone was peering over my shoulder and gave me an email
address for their boss, I had a job interview a week later as a junior *nix
sysadmin for my university.

You might not find the same luck, but you should definitely try to find
something on campus. My boss is very flexible around exam time, and it's just
a laid back atmosphere where you learn a lot.

~~~
wofo
There is a job posting site... However, no technical jobs are posted there. I
guess I will have to try somewhere else. Thanks anyway for your suggestion!

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Zekio
you could choose a low salary and work with a start up for experience, unless
you need the money. personally i would go with a start up with a low salary
since my country pays students and don't care if you have a job on the side.

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ichramm
I'll go with number 4

