1. Would this still be possible today? It's a certain timeframe (for software) where this was possible. Today it's things like SAP, integrated systems and DMCA on top of it (or Excel).
2. I did the menial route and am still happy for it. Flipping burgers, cleaning dishes, repairing truck tires and cleaning office buildings. It's a different sort of grit and stamina than the one that gets you far in your office career, but I still look back fondly on the lessons about hard work. It was also an introduction into diversity. I've met people on those jobs the 16-year old me never met before, and since. For me the lesson is: whatever my kids will do in jobs on the side, it pleases somebody enough to give them money and them enough to do the job it's a worthwhile lesson.
I run a "CTO-for-hire" service with about 25 devs, product managers, and designers. I'd say at least a quarter of what we do is dropping in to rescue projects that have gone bad.
We're often treated like gold just for showing up, doing decent work, and bailing them out of a problem.
There's tons of work out there like this if you grow a reputation for being good and trustworthy, and you're willing to work through those really hard moments of everything being broken with no reason why yet. I'm 40 years old, and still just got the rush of excitement last week as I solved a major production problem for a company after a string of late nights. It's just fun.
2. Totally agreed about the value of other types of jobs as well. I will treasure my teenage and early 20s experiences as a Pizza Hut cook, Grocery cashier, and bet-taker at a race track for what I learned about those industries, how people work together, and the differences between intellectual and manual labor. As a salesperson, I also STILL reference knowledge from my experience in those industries when talking about new projects.
> Would this still be possible today? It's a certain timeframe (for software) where this was possible. Today it's things like SAP, integrated systems and DMCA on top of it (or Excel).
There's still a lot of utterly awful, sloppy business software around, especially for SMBs.
1. Would this still be possible today? It's a certain timeframe (for software) where this was possible. Today it's things like SAP, integrated systems and DMCA on top of it (or Excel).
2. I did the menial route and am still happy for it. Flipping burgers, cleaning dishes, repairing truck tires and cleaning office buildings. It's a different sort of grit and stamina than the one that gets you far in your office career, but I still look back fondly on the lessons about hard work. It was also an introduction into diversity. I've met people on those jobs the 16-year old me never met before, and since. For me the lesson is: whatever my kids will do in jobs on the side, it pleases somebody enough to give them money and them enough to do the job it's a worthwhile lesson.