Career Month discussion: What was your first job?

[Kristen Roth]

Did your first job help shape you into the professional you are today? We'd love to hear about your first job experience as a teen or young adult!

What was the job, and how do your memories make you feel? Do you look back and think fondly of the experience? Can you remember a few moments that taught you lessons you'd never forget? Or maybe thinking back to those days makes you laugh out loud! Tell us about your first job and some things that still stick with you today.

[Benjamin]

It was in support. It was tough at times dealing with negative people. Learn a lot from it because it help to learn how to handle difficult people and situations. Fast forward today, those situation are still challenging but better equipped to handle them based on those lessons.  

Of course there was those laughable moments like the power plug or monitor wasn't plugged in. Or mistaken the power button for an emergency button so called in to see how to turn it on. 

-Ben

[Kristen Roth]

Working in any type of support role gives us so much valuable experience - especially at a young age! 

Haha! Gotta love and appreciate all of those laughable moments, too! 

[Summer Hogan]

My first job was when I was 13 years old. On the Air Force Base I lived on, they offered part-time Summer jobs for 3 months for young adults. The first one I had was working in MWR, which is MWR which stands for Morale, Welfare and Recreation. I worked in Recreation and helped do filing and simple clerical work. This was the first time I got to type on a computer, if that is what you can call it. I had some tough moment just not knowing how to act at a job and not knowing what I could and could not talk about. I remember I told a story about my brother beating me up, which was an over exaggeration and my boss told me that is not appropriate talk for work. I learned a lot at that job that I took into all my other Summer jobs and while I still feel as though my father was torturing me for making me take these Summer jobs, I loved having my own money for the first time and I love the experience I garnered from each of them! 

[Kristen Roth]

Isn't it funny to look back and realize how much (outside of the actual job duties themselves) we actually learned during those first work experiences? How to simply conduct ourselves in the workplace is such a big one! I know my early jobs also taught me a lot about how and how not to act. Thank you for sharing, Summer! 

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

My first real job (meaning I applied for it and did all the work, rather than my relatives handing me things that I consider to be internships or one-offs as a favour), was a retail job.  I stood behind a till for a month, taking money from people for goods.

It suited me well at the time.  I got to talk to lots of different people; I spent most of my time at work reading through books like Horowitz's "the art of electronics" (if you understand that book, you're automatically a mathematician and an electronic engineer), Hogben's "mathematics for the million", and Huff's "how to lie with statistics". The last two should be required reading before people are allowed to vote.

My second job was a lot of voluntary work, mostly as a counsellor.  It's probably what I will return to if I ever find the time to retire!

My third job was as a developer, and I've not moved on a lot - I moved from development to environment management and support, and haven't moved again - the environments I started with were Jira 2 and Confluence 1. I've just carried on looking after a lot of them.

[Kristen Roth]

Thank you for sharing, Nic! You've had a really great range of experiences from a retail job, to counseling, to tech. 

[Andrés Sabatini]

My first job as many of us, was in IT support.
I worked at a retail store and besides further developing the knowledge I could have beforehand and learning about technical aspects as learning about Linux I learned a lot, mostly related on how to deal with people.

I remember the store owner being weird in a friendly way so he often made some random calls asking for nonsense in order to make us laugh, came oddly clothed and sometimes we would close the store one or even two hours before so we can have some LAN parties. We mostly played Medal of Honor, in which he was pretty good at.

To this day I carry on with the idea that a happy and synched team makes all the difference, even through hardships.

[Kristen Roth]

That store owner sure sounds like a character! 

What a great idea to have learned so early on in your career. I absolutely, agree, 

Andrés -- a happy and synched team makes all the difference in the world. 

[Dave Liao]

Had a few summer jobs - I worked as a lone developer, and a lone support tech for a computer lab.

Both taught me that I needed TLC at this point in my career, but also taught me independence.

Loved working support, and I still do - my co-workers wonder how I deal with irate people. "Tech is hard!" I say.

[Kristen Roth]

You must also have a lot of patience, Dave! 😉 Thank you for sharing!

[Dave Liao]

I've been told that! 🙃

[Elizabeth Jones]

My first job was working at a local farmer's market at 12 years old. I sat in a little trailer selling cotton candy and hot dogs. I made very little money, but I could eat as many hot dogs and cotton candy as I wanted and it gave me something to do as an only child home for the summer in a rural area. It was super fun and I learned a few lessons, like there is more to life than money. I was so happy eating my daily junk food lol. So, don't worry about what you think you should get out of a job and search for a job that provides you with the things that truly make you happy. 

[Kristen Roth]

"Don't worry about what you think you should get out of a job and search for a job that provides you with the things that truly make you happy."

I couldn't love this advice more, Elizabeth! Thank you for sharing your first job story! Sounds like such a wonderful childhood memory. ❤️

[Vikrant Yadav]

I started my first job in 2014 with GE as Desktop Support Engineer. Providing new desktop/laptop to the users, configure laptops, fix hardware and software issues. Learn a lot about computers and software along with handling customers. 

After 1 year, I moved to remote support and instead of hello we say "How can I help you, today" and at the end of the conversation Ask the user to submit feedback. Here I learned about software troubleshooting and came to know about Atlassian tools. 

From here I started learning JIRA and change my journey from IT Support to Jira Admin( my 3rd Job). Jira boosted my career a lot and I love solving users requests and providing them workaround. 

[Kristen Roth]

What a journey, Vikrant! It sounds like you were meant to be in these super helpful and supportive roles. I can't imagine how many people you've helped over the years! 

[Trudy Claspill]

My first job was as a teenager in a county-sponsored summer youth employment program. I worked at the city library. I loved to read, so that job was perfect for me. I thought I might want to be a librarian someday, though I had no idea what was involved in achieving that.

I had very typical teenager jobs after that working in restaurants. It wasn't until I was a year into college that I decided to pursue Computer Science as a career.

My first professional job after that was at a blood bank that had a small in-house tech team writing their own custom software for managing all the data. The US government had recently decided the software needed to meet quality standards, similar to medical devices. The blood bank needed to get somebody who could help them pass the audits for their software. They were very "wild west". Nothing was documented. There was no testing. There was no version control of the code. They had looked at the ISO standards used by the military and were overwhelmed with the requirements.

The didn't really know what they needed, so they were interviewing like they needed a developer. They tried to give me a coding test with questions that had very vague requirements. I asked so many questions about their test and showed such a penchant for details that they decided I would be the right kind of person to help them pass government audits on their software development process.

[Kristen Roth]

I love this story, Trudy, and am glad to hear they recognized the importance of curiosity! It's so important. Thank you for sharing! 

[Andy Gladstone]

Well, there is my first job and my first REAL job. 

My first job was as a paperboy. 12 years old and already getting the experience of child labor. My route was a few blocks from my home and had 60 subscribers on it. The papers would be dropped off, all bundled up, each morning. I had to have them on people's front porches or in mailboxes by 10AM each morning. 60 newspapers is a pretty hefty bundle. I tried everything - cycling with them, pushing a laundry with them, getting a specialty bag. No matter what the max I could take on any run was 15, so I learned to plan my route to get me back home to refill and get back out. I never really though about it, but looking back it taught me the need to plan ahead, create efficiency in an inefficient system and solve problems creatively. I use each of those skills daily.

My first REAL job was an an Operations Manager in a Real Estate Investment firm. What I learned there was A LOT different.

The best GIF I could find to describe it is...

Except it was one person that had 8 different personality (disorders). I learned exactly how NOT to:

• Treat people 
• Micromanage
• Create a toxic culture
• Be hated and reviled

 The only thing I can be thankful for from the experience is 18 months of resume building and learning exactly how I never wanted to be treated or treat people ever again. I hope I would never have treated people that way without the lesson, but I know I never will as a result.

[Dave Liao]

Hope vs know - love it!

Some lessons are more easily learned through experience! 🥲

[Kristen Roth]

Loved hearing about the lessons you learned while tackling your newspaper route. I can absolutely see how it would have helped teach you to plan ahead and create operational efficiencies — who would've thought?!

And oof, while not quite as pleasant of a story, thanks for sharing about how you learned what NOT to do during your first "real" job. Sometimes learning those things is just as (if not more) important! 

[Dave Mathijs]

My first "non-student" job was at a credit and savings bank in Liège, Belgium.

I started as an assistant in the legal/litigation department for debt collection. After a couple of months, I was offered a sales representative position followed by an internal position again in the credit approval department.

The switch to IT came in 1998 when I joined Cegeka as a service desk agent for IBM who worked together with Belgian banks to offer online banking internet services via AT&T. This included a subscription to online banking together with ISP connection via dial-up access on a 56 kbit/s modem.

[Kristen Roth]

Thanks for sharing, Dave! It's been so interesting to hear all of these stories.

[Amanda Barber]

My first job was at a restaurant...I was not very good at it, ha!

Out of school, my first job was a substitute teacher before landing my own classroom job. It certainly shaped a lot of who I am today as a professional, as well as a parent. I'm so grateful for the time I spent teaching and shaping little minds - over the course of 12 years, it was a lot of little kiddos! 💜

[Tsoisnk roejb]

Absolutely! My first job was as a cashier at a local grocery store. It taught me valuable lessons in responsibility, customer service, and teamwork. While some moments were challenging, like handling difficult customers or busy rushes, I look back fondly on the experience. It definitely shaped me into the professional I am today, and I'm grateful for the skills I gained. I think they will be useful when I start working at HR. Speaking of HR, let's Choose A Good Human Resources Management Degree Program for me. If there are any experienced workers, please advise me!