your first programming gig
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Were you fairly compensated at your first programming job? Wwhat year was it?
That's called seagull management (or sometimes pigeon management)... Fly in, flap your arms and squawk a lot, crap all over everything and fly out again... by _Damian S_
Not at all, probably half of the going rate for an entry level programmer. I took the job just to get experience so I guess that would have been all the compensation I was looking for. Unfortunately the company I worked for was an internet start up in the year 2000, so when the bubble burst, so did that company. I was notified by a note on the door from the building owner that had confiscated everything for non payment of rent. The owner even tried to screw me by re-classifying me as a contractor because he didn't have the money to pay my taxes/deductions. The government didn't agree with him after he got audited because I complained (this was after the company went bust). I moved on to greener pastures after that however.
modified on Wednesday, June 2, 2010 10:25 AM
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wolfbinary wrote:
Were you fairly compensated at your first programming job? Wwhat year was it?
I guess that depends on what first job you want. After tech school my first official job was at Bar-F gasoline, an office that owned 22 gas-stations. I was hired at $5.25 an hour and 4 years later I got a "big" raise to salary.... of course it required 40-98 hours of work a week.... on the 98 hour week I made 3.75/hr.... I was hired in January of 1986, I was the only employee who moved when the office moved because I had nothing holding me there. However, there were two other jobs in high school that were complete failures for compensation (hey we were kids, you're supposed to take advantage of us right?). The first was the birth and death of "Keyboard Warrior Enterprises." One of my friends whom I taught programming to, bought a game for the TRS-80. That game was a real time scrolling text scrolling game. My friend called up the company who made the game with a great idea. How much would they give us to write a graphical interface for it? Since it was a bombing air-craft, complete with radar sweep and a few major controls (no cockpit view, just the heads down console). The company offered us half of what the original author made if we could follow through on ALL the things we mentioned, that would be 5% royalty. So Keyboard warrior Enterprises was formed. We had two programmers and two managers (and people are surprised I ended up in government work). Of the two programmers, since I taught my friend, I did over 75% of the programming. When it was done the radar display even had an animated sweeping arm and a zoom-able map. We offered it to the publisher, they said they approached the original author about it and the original author said all derivative works belong to him, there would be no compensation. The author demanded we hand over all copies of the game we had improved as they were now his property. We hung up the phone. We were later contacted by his lawyer who repeated the demands, we said all copies were destroyed by "accident" he said the word "sue." Some how I doubt he was referring to his significant other's name... so we were frank.... You can do what ever you want, just remember the headlines of the paper: "Author of Popular Game Sues Teenagers for Improving His Game." The lawyer hung up. :) The year was 1981, the summer between my freshman year and sophomore year in high school. A couple of years later in my senior year the first com
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Were you fairly compensated at your first programming job? Wwhat year was it?
That's called seagull management (or sometimes pigeon management)... Fly in, flap your arms and squawk a lot, crap all over everything and fly out again... by _Damian S_
Back in 1974 - summer job for Cdn dept of Agriculture - statistic and research services. Programmed a Univac 11 in Fortran to do matrix calculations subroutines. For Operations research programs. It paid my next years tuition and most of my living expenses and confirmed that statistics was NOT what i wanted to do and programming was much more fun. Plus it was a hell of better way to spend the summer then making rotors in a plastics factory. The office was air conditioned!
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Were you fairly compensated at your first programming job? Wwhat year was it?
That's called seagull management (or sometimes pigeon management)... Fly in, flap your arms and squawk a lot, crap all over everything and fly out again... by _Damian S_
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Were you fairly compensated at your first programming job? Wwhat year was it?
That's called seagull management (or sometimes pigeon management)... Fly in, flap your arms and squawk a lot, crap all over everything and fly out again... by _Damian S_
My first programming project was in high school in 1998 or 99 developing a program in VB6 to parse a text file exported from a database which was then used to create student and teacher accounts in a Novell Directory Services tree. You could also use one of the exported files to edit user accounts or delete user accounts. Along with creating accounts, it would create a directory structure and set up permissions for teachers and students where students could submit papers to an inbox and receive graded papers from an outbox. It took me about 3 weeks and I was paid $15/hr, a free hotel stay, and free steak dinners every night. Considering my programming skill then, I can say I was actually probably overpaid... I didn't complain about it though :)
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Were you fairly compensated at your first programming job? Wwhat year was it?
That's called seagull management (or sometimes pigeon management)... Fly in, flap your arms and squawk a lot, crap all over everything and fly out again... by _Damian S_
My first job was while I was still in college. I got a job as a "Software Tester" and as soon as I graduated, they made me a programmer. I was paid well enough at the time and was happy to join the programming team as an equal. I learned more about the programming process (design spec, test procedures, code reviews, etc.) then I ever expected and this was (and still is) worth more then the salary.
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I was more than fairly recompensed. It was about 1983/85 and COBOL.
Henry Minute Do not read medical books! You could die of a misprint. - Mark Twain Girl: (staring) "Why do you need an icy cucumber?" “I want to report a fraud. The government is lying to us all.” Why do programmers often confuse Halloween and Christmas? Because 31 Oct = 25 Dec.
It was 1988 and I was programming on a VAX/VMS in Fortran. The application was a lease/loan financial system. It was really fast on VT420 green screen terminals ... Those were the days.
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Why would I agree to be paid otherwise? Back then, we're talking salaries (for entry level) in the range of $16,000/year. Here I am, almost 30 years later, and still making less than five times that amount.
.45 ACP - because shooting twice is just silly
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"Why don't you tie a kerosene-soaked rag around your ankles so the ants won't climb up and eat your candy ass..." - Dale Earnhardt, 1997
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"The staggering layers of obscenity in your statement make it a work of art on so many levels." - J. Jystad, 2001My first gig was in RPGII in 1983 and my salary was in that range also. I remember switching company after a little less than 2 years for a 25% raise. Stopped programming for a living almost 15 years ago. Still coding as a hobby.
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No not fairly at all. I was hired in 1983 to work part time after school programming an accounting package at a business equipment store and one thing led to another and I ended up repairing and cleaning business equipment instead.
Yesterday they said today was tomorrow but today they know better. - Poul Anderson
I translated a hard-wired relay ladder logic control system, with all of the associated electro-mechanical timers, counters, etc., into a microprocessor based control system from the Eagle Signal Division of Gulf & Western. The control was named the Eptak if I recall and it was a first-generation device. I was well compensated, as I was working for a controls consultancy at that time. It must have been 1976, approximately. The expertise gained on that first jump-in-and-swim allowed me to do good work for Chevron Shipping , Anaconda Copper and many Bechtel Engineering projects. The most important aspect of that industrial controls programming experience, it would later turn out, was the time that I spent devising a way to use the controller to simulate a “Lunar Lander” for my own amusement. Goes to show that various experiences have a way of opening strange doors. Ah, the BAD old days! :)
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I translated a hard-wired relay ladder logic control system, with all of the associated electro-mechanical timers, counters, etc., into a microprocessor based control system from the Eagle Signal Division of Gulf & Western. The control was named the Eptak if I recall and it was a first-generation device. I was well compensated, as I was working for a controls consultancy at that time. It must have been 1976, approximately. The expertise gained on that first jump-in-and-swim allowed me to do good work for Chevron Shipping , Anaconda Copper and many Bechtel Engineering projects. The most important aspect of that industrial controls programming experience, it would later turn out, was the time that I spent devising a way to use the controller to simulate a “Lunar Lander” for my own amusement. Goes to show that various experiences have a way of opening strange doors. Ah, the BAD old days! :)
I wanted to clarify the compensation issue a little. I was well paid at that time but as time passed, I realized that I liked (don't want to call it “loved” for fear of being accused of hyperbole) programming so much that I would have done it for food, caffeine, cigarettes and a warm dry place to sleep and a daily shower. I know that it is not reasonable for most to live in that way, but you must admit that when ones luck and talent and happiness all happen to slam together, it is just magic. The money just seems to follow without effort or thought.
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Were you fairly compensated at your first programming job? Wwhat year was it?
That's called seagull management (or sometimes pigeon management)... Fly in, flap your arms and squawk a lot, crap all over everything and fly out again... by _Damian S_
I came into software through the back-door. I was a hardware engineer who needed to program as a subset of my job (microprocessors, microcontrollers, state machines, etc.). Of necessity I was paid at the rates of a hardware engineer. This was in 1972-3 time frame. Somewhere after 1986, it became my full-time profession.
Fletcher Glenn
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My first gig was in RPGII in 1983 and my salary was in that range also. I remember switching company after a little less than 2 years for a 25% raise. Stopped programming for a living almost 15 years ago. Still coding as a hobby.
1983, I believe that I was freezing my ass off in Chicago, IL. (Northbrook) (I lived in Los Angeles, CA), Installing my 23rd installation of a single product (RPG II System 36) that I developed. It was a nice period for me, 1983 - 2006..10 (36, 38, 400, ISeries, Windows 3.1, 95, 98, 2000, XP, 2003, 2008, Vista, Windows 7) (If you would like to go further back (System 3 Mod 6, mod 8, mod 10, mod 12, mod 15b, mod 15d, 32, 34), ever changing, evolutions of a system, although 90% of the business logic remains the same. Did I tell you that in 1983, I was 24? Did I tell you that when I was 21, I developed this product from scratch. Did I tell you that by the time I was 23 I had the F IRS after me?
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Were you fairly compensated at your first programming job? Wwhat year was it?
That's called seagull management (or sometimes pigeon management)... Fly in, flap your arms and squawk a lot, crap all over everything and fly out again... by _Damian S_
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Were you fairly compensated at your first programming job? Wwhat year was it?
That's called seagull management (or sometimes pigeon management)... Fly in, flap your arms and squawk a lot, crap all over everything and fly out again... by _Damian S_
In 1974 when I first got out of the army, I convinced the management at a huge manufacturing plant that I could learn the assembly language on a Quantel minicomputer, with NO documentation. I was given four dollars an hour, but not too bad then, especially for someone with no experience and little education. But, it was horrible for programming. Even then, programmers generally started at $15-25 hour. I was having an extremely difficult time until one day I discovered for some reason, the stack worked backwards. Then everything became crystal clear and I ended up working there for two years, never getting a raise. I was able to go to school full time during the day and work full time at night. I got a good invoicing and a very rudimentary inventory program done. I even started writing an RPG compiler. Imagine having to write your own data entry, database and reporting programs in ASM!
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Were you fairly compensated at your first programming job? Wwhat year was it?
That's called seagull management (or sometimes pigeon management)... Fly in, flap your arms and squawk a lot, crap all over everything and fly out again... by _Damian S_
1978 or 79; I was a college intern at Ford. Translating programs from Basic to FORTRAN for HP systems, which used mylar tape to boot strap! Simple FORTRAN which only had IF statements with goto's for the conditionals, I think: IF () , <= zero>, (But its been a long time ago!) Commuted from college a few times on Amtrak to work on occasional weekends. After that, worked on a FORTRAN compiler putting in FORTRAN 77 features... Fair wage for a kid at the time. Paid for my Sears stereo with 8 track player... ;P
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Were you fairly compensated at your first programming job? Wwhat year was it?
That's called seagull management (or sometimes pigeon management)... Fly in, flap your arms and squawk a lot, crap all over everything and fly out again... by _Damian S_
First useful program supplied to other was an IBM 7040 assembly language implementation of the random number function RANDU. It was written in 196X (X > 4). I gave it away to engineering students. It greatly sped up an assignment which was some sort of simulation. They had been using the FORTRAN equivalent library function which was written in FORTRAN and not optimized (FORTRAN compilers of that era didn't do optimization. JFW