▲ 5 points

Ask HN: How to find a student job as a programmer?

by wofo·11y ago·10 comments·view on hn ↗

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.

After some searching and a couple of interviews, the main obstacles I found are:

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)

2. Big companies don't offer part-time jobs for professionals, let alone students.

3. Some companies have whole teams of incompetent people (e.g. a friend of mine gives lessons to one of those teams! Yes... it is the same one of #1)

4. Startups don't have the previous problems, but are often unable to offer a good salary.

5. Because I am a student, my network is pretty limited.

Should I just accept #1 and hope for an improvement in the future?

Do you think #5 could be solved by going to meetups or something like that?

10 comments

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/ (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.

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

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.

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

Awesome! Thanks!

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 :)

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.

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!

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.

I'll go with number 4