I’ve been having fun learning about different folks’ first seven jobs on twitter and their blogs, so this seems as good of a place as any for me to start posting again.
Here are my first seven jobs. They cover a period from around 1988 to 1999. Depending on how you count, I’ve had just over 7 more jobs since then, though they’ve been much less diverse than the list below.
Nursing Home Volunteer - not technically a job, as I didn’t get paid, but this was the first time I had to go do something every day that wasn’t school-related. I continued doing it as my required community service once I was in high school.
Yard Boy - on the same grounds as the nursing home was a home for retired priests. The groundskeepers would mow the lawns, and I’d do the edging with scissors, pull weeds, and paint benches.
Data Entry - still in the nursing home (my dad worked there), I don’t remember the specifics of this job except filling out spreadsheets on actual spreadsheet paper using a calculator, and then keying it into the “mainframe”. It was really cold in that room.
Photographer - this was an awesome job. I had just gotten a job offer as a dishwasher, and when I excitedly told my girlfriend’s mom, she asked me if I wouldn’t rather develop a skill that I was interested in. Well, of course I did, and she got me a gig as a photographer for the construction company where she worked. I spent the next year and later school breaks photographing job sites and events. This also has the distinction of being the only job I’ve ever be mugged at… #Baltimore
IT Guy - same company, different job. I worked on installing software off floppy disks, troubleshooting hardware, and maintaining the office network.
Forest Service Volunteer - another volunteer role, this one through SCA. I led hikes, gave talks, handed out flyers, and pressed the play button on the VCR in the visitor center at the Mendenhall Glacier in Juneau, Alaska. If it wasn’t for this position, I never would have moved out to Seattle.
Web Development Intern - I found this cool (for 1997) website full of VR photographs, and sent the webmaster an email asking how they did it, along with a link to my “portfolio”, which was a hodgepodge of HTML and an Flash 1.0 animation of my head bouncing around the screen. Next thing I knew I was getting paid $8.50/hr to build the entire backend for the American Basketball League’s websites. I learned a ton here, from development to sysadmin, was quickly promoted through the ranks, and the rest is, as they say, history.
