It's all about the connections. One of my friends got hooked up with an internship by one of the professors at my college, and she's now making close to 85k per year after interning for 2 years (at which time they paid her $25 per hour).

I'm nowhere near that lucky, but right after graduation, one of the IT bosses at my college asked if I was interested in a full time position. Right now I just work part time and I've said hi to the bosses whenever I saw them (and thus they knew me). I said yes, and now got an interview which will hopefully go well. It's a civil service job (city university), and an entry level position so the pay is not great (42-46k), but at least that will give me a foothold.

Last Summer my Uncle shipped me out to Texas to do a few months of engineering. I made a few thousand, it wasn't bad. Now I'm just working at that spic restaurant "On the Border", but it's better than nothing right? Just ask people you know if they have any relatives/friends that have space for you.

First job I ever had was as a dishwasher at the local bowling alley coffee shop. Found that job by asking around at every business in town until someone said they needed help.

The rest of my jobs came by taking opportunities as they came along...life is like a connect the dots drawing, except its only easy to connect them in reverse. Here's the list of jobs I have held in sequential order:

Dishwasher
Construction Laborer
Carpenter
Construction Estimator
IT Helpdesk Assistant
QA Tester
Integration Engineer
QA Manager
Software Developer
Director Engineering Services
Venture Partner (boutique Silicon Valley Venture Capital firm)
VP Software Engineering (startup/small company)
CTO (startup acquired by major company)
Platform Architect/Senior Technical Staff Member (major company)

I am an anomaly in my industry in that I never went to college yet I have had some significant success in a technical field. It was a long and winding road to get where I am today, but it was always a matter of recognizing an opportunity at any given time and not hesitating to seize it.

Professional success is about confidence and attitude. If you come across as someone who believes in themself then it is easy for other people to believe in you as well. When interviewing emphasize your ability to learn quickly and make good decisions, and educate yourself on the position you are interviewing for before you show up. Hiring managers like candidates who know what the company does and have an idea of what the job responsibilities will be.

Remember to be professional. Dress appropriately for an interview and do not be afraid to admit it if you do not know the answer to a specific question. Interviewers hate it when candidates try and fake it, and they are not asking you specific questions because they do not know the answer.

when i was about to graduate from college, i missed the online sign up for an interview for one of the companies i wanted to interview with. so i went to the career center and waited for the guy to go on his lunch break and i took him to lunch to squeeze in an interview. earned me 2 follow up interviews until they found a guy with 5 years experience. however, they brought me back and hired me 6 months later. worked there for about 5 years.

I work at a dildo factory making dildos.
I specialize in duel headed vibrating flexi dongs !

This job is so awesome because I get to play with dildos all day!

I test them out on my anus before shipping.

EVIL-PIE!!!!

I made it through the second sentence until I saw it was you!!

Where ya been?

Lol vision...anyways wow Shredder long list and good background tho into those fields atleast you knew what you wanted to do pretty much when you started out and worked towards that goal by any means.

Ya, when I started out I thought construction was pretty much going to be my thing until I shattered a foot when some idiot forgot to brace a wall as we were laying floor joists for a second floor addition. Another guy stepped on the top plate of the wall to nail off a the rim joist and when the wall kicked out I basically caught about 500 pounds of 2x10 with the top of my foot after it had finished falling 8 feet. That kind of drove me into estimating since it was about a year or so until I could walk right again.

As an estimator I rediscovered one of the things I enjoyed most in high school which was computers and the rest was history. I did get a bit lucky by getting my CNE certification right before the dot com boom hit, so there were plenty of tech jobs around and the switch was painless. After that I just started doing whatever the company I was working for at the time needed and before I knew it I was a domain expert in server virtualization technology.

Today I have authored 8 patents in the area of Virtual Partition Mobility and Virtualized Infrastructure Management and I absolutely love my freaking job because I basically get to work from home about 50% of the time and tell other people what to do. I still contribute code to my projects to keep the tools sharp, but I get to cherry pick what I work on so its always the cool stuff.

soooo...Shredder...Wanna give me a job? haha


but in all seriousness impressive resume

Hah, I can't even interview candidates at the moment...I have 3 hot reqs open on my project but the boys in Armonk won't authorize the hires. IBM is so tight right now they won't even let me reorder business cards.

she's still hot...and I harass her all the time

Make me a sammich!!!

wow looks like pink is the one that wears the pants around the house

awe how cute