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I'm 13 years old, and I'm not planning to apply for a job any time soon (after all, I'm still learning). However, in my late teens (before college) I may want to apply for a position as a programmer (perhaps as a summer job). Is it normal, or even possible for teenagers before college to get a job programming? Or am I making a bad decision by considering a job in my teens? |
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The earliest age where you can get a real job is 14 if you're in the US, but most companies wouldn't take on such a young person unless he or she was well qualified. I personally know people who have worked at tech companies since they were 16, and many places hire interns for the summer, so you can look for jobs as early as high school. Another great alternative is to work on open source projects. There's no age limit to contribute to open source projects, and you'll become familiar with things like version control and best practices, and make real contributions to a real project! Programming is one of the few professions where you can do meaningful work at a young age, and a great way to build experience is by contributing to open source projects. Lastly, I encourage you to work on your own side projects for fun. If/when you do apply for jobs, you can discuss the things you've worked on and what you learned out of it. Even if it's not official experience, interviewers love people who work on their own projects and are self motivated, and you'll be able to develop your skills. Hope it helps! |
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If you are old enough to legally work, then go for it! Don't worry about limits. Read the book, "Everything is Negotiable". Don't let anyone tell you you can't do anything. If our 1st Navy Admiral (Adm Farragut) can command a war ship at age 13, then you can get a job as a programmer if you put in the requisite effort. |
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Consider one of the freelance programmer websites. A friend of mine made 15k+ a year throughout highschool using these websites by coding in his freetime. |
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Enjoy your youth, there is plenty of time to work. |
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I will advice against getting a job at some company. Right now, time is your own. Take advantage of it. Once you finish college, unless you get a PhD, you will have to work or do a startup. Either of them will take up all (in the case of the startup) or a lot (in the case of some regular jobs) of your time and programming energy and you will never get these golden years of obligation-free time back. Use this time to learn whatever you want. Contribute to open source if you'd like. Make your own projects. Just focus on learning. The freedom to literally do whatever you want everyday and learn whatever you want, which you have a lot of right now, is a very valuable and short-lived opportunity. A regular job is not the only path. There are alternatives. Do not take this the wrong way, but don't blindly follow the obvious path, look at what the crazy people are doing. The crazy people usually have good ideas. |
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I am 15 and I am working for a startup. But it is kind of a summer thing because I still want to learn more and go to school. I'm in Michigan, youngest you can be is 15. I think most companies don't really care how old you are as long as you are good. My employer said he would hire me if I wanted to skip college, but I am not going to, because college is more important and then I have more options. |
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It's basically illegal to hire you in the US. So I'd recommend 'hiring yourself', and sell software to different people you meet. It's probable that your teachers have some hideous mechanism for keeping grades. Find out if that's so, and build a better solution... selling them the software. Work your contacts, figure out what they can do better with software you can write, and write it. Then sell it. Since you don't have a credit card, it'll be hard to get App Store stuff going, otherwise I'd recommend that. Boring software for niche areas is a good way to make money with less competition. Don't bite off more than you can chew. It's surprising how simple things can get complex. Good luck. |
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I did my first paid contract when I was about your age. It wasn't much money, but then it wasn't a terribly complicated project. It was probably technically illegal for me to do this, and some people might call it exploitation, but I didn't really care - it was fun to do and gave me more money in my pocket than the firewood chopping business I'd run when I was younger (not to mention much less hard work *8'). Then I got Vat registered when I was 16 and lots of people that I went to university with took a year out between A-Levels and first year of university (between 17 and 18) and spent that year (a gap-year in British English) working in an industrial placement. Some were lucky enough to get placements with IBM, others with Philips, others spent the time running their own business. One friends code, which she submitted as a patch for OS/2, was found still in the NT source code when it was released years later, it may even have made it into more recent versions of Windows. There is a long history of talented young programmers making significant contributions to serious projects and with the current open source movement, that's easier than ever. Don't let your studies slip, but don't close off your options either. If nothing else, your experiences will give you nice anecdotes to reel off in interviews when you're 40. *8') |
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You are at a very interesting crossroads here. You can either These are very good options. They do have some issues though. With 1 you have to find that employer, and you also run the risk of burning yourself out and possibly quitting programming or who knows what. With 2, you get some great experience, but I'm guessing from your question that you would like to make some money from this. If that is the case, I have a third option that I think you should consider. I think this is a really great option, because you are building experience, but you avoid the tendency to burn-out and you can potentially make some money. |
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The law would dictate the minimum possible. But as far as being a salaried employee at a company.... the youngest is usually a fresh college graduate. About 21. |
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I was hired as a full time developer at a startup when I was 17. I suspect startups are more willing to engage in unconventional hires -- younger people are (generally speaking) eschewed by larger corporations, which leads them to being a huge talent pool available to startups, who can't always offer as much money. Of course, startups are probably the only place a significantly junior programmer can be influential. This has several advantages, like helping you avoid becoming insane if you happen to care about the quality of the product. Perhaps another benefit of note would be that it helps with job prospects later -- "Junior Flunkie" isn't as helpful a job experience as managing a sub-project, even if you write almost all the code for it. That being said, I know my stuff pretty okay, and I had the nearly-unique advantage of already having an undergraduate degree in CS at the time. |
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I shoveled snow, dog crap and mowed lawns when I was 12. I would have preferred to get paid to program (not really an option in my case). You'll have to go the contractor route. There's probably laws about how long you can work (Makes me think about child actors.). If you can get paid to something you were going to do anyway, more power to you. |
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You should lie. I wrote device drivers in junior high, and surprise! Years later, I write device drivers and make 6 figures. I suggest getting real advice from a business consultant (unlikely your relatives will assist) on how to set up an LLC, and with some interesting techniques you can get work which never requires a phone call -- at least, not by you -- you can hire a temporary administrative assistant for that (again, get advice from a business consultant). I should have known this would get voted down regardless of correctness. Depending on who your techie hero is, there's a story exactly like this for how they made their bucks. Bill Gates? Told a company he had a Disk Operating System when really he didn't (before that, advertised himself as a company, when in fact he was a college kid); later Gates found someone to license it from and labelled it "Microsoft DOS". Steve Jobs? Told Woz he needed help with a design project and would split the bonus in half; Jobs kept the majority of the cash. Talk to any sales manager regarding how they exaggerate product claims or benefits.. or even the existence of the product itself. Vaporware is used because vaporware is profitable. Ask a VP, as a potential customer, how many engineers he has working on his protocol stack, and he will say he "has an entire team working on that" even if it is only one engineer playing with it part time. This is how business is done. |
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