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Comment by devin | Hacker News Reader

I have a feeling this will get me a downvote, but I grew up in a very blue collar town and the idea of paying one's dues is not crazy to me. I see a lot of people entering the tech market as if they don't have anything to prove, like their degree says it all. In any industry, you shovel some shit early on, IMO. I was a good programmer, but I got my start racking servers in a data center. I crawled under raised floor to run cable, replaced batteries, worried about cooling, and generally did a lot of work no one else wanted to do. I was a programmer already, and I think it was a waste of my ambition for $COMPANY to not give me a job writing software, but I don't mind the idea of people paying their dues, and I think I'm better for my experience. Careers aren't supposed to start with you having a big corner office. It is surprising to me how many people feel entitled enough that they truly believe they ought to start at the top.

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>I don't mind the idea of people paying their dues, and I think I'm better for my experience. Careers aren't supposed to start with you having a big corner office. It is surprising to me how many people feel entitled enough that they truly believe they ought to start at the top.

he is trying to pay his dues. its an intern position. at the very low level.

As usual - it depends. FAANG internship is way more valuable than other big names and big names are much more valuable than anonymous web shop hiring 3 people.

So if they went directly for big name that isn’t exactly paying their dues.

FAANGs have massive intern support programs and their interviews aren’t usually like this. Interns are the ultimate try before you buy so for orgs with the ability they’re worth it.

It’s not like you’re supposed to work your way up the internship ladder.

That's not paying your dues. Being a software engineer forced to work as a network technician (not even a network engineer) is akin to having the junior accountant just get everyone coffee.

Maybe writing tests is paying your dues, because it often feels like a thankless job. Building UIs in a JS framework... Those could be "paying your dues", or more precise getting real world development experience.

But there's a lower limit to that "paying your dues", when it comes to educated professions.

It also sounds like an incredibly bad idea to put a junior engineer with no network technician experience in a network technician role. Have fun when your server goes down at 2am because something is fried, somewhere!

In mechanical engineering, it's considered good practice to make recently-hired engineers work as blue-collar operator in the shop for a while. When it's proposed it's even usually appreciated by the engineer as a rare opportunity to learn.

Ye you need oil and saw dust on your hands to design machines properly. In a SWE analogue running the milling machine would be ... using computers? Workshop experience is harder to come by than computer dito.

Does this have anything to with what the parent comment even described? Expecting someone to apply for an internship with extensive iOS skills is a bit of a joke.

It kind of reminds me when I got asked for an internship experience if I had any experience doing large Python 2 to 3 migrations. The job description didn't even use the word Python. (I later found out through Glassdoor that this company paid interns about the same rate as the entry rate for the H&M down the block.)

I'm not sure I understand your argument. Are you implying that in the end, I did the least amount of work to get an internship?

If so, that's awfully wrong. I still had an interview loop and all at the company I joined. All he really did was refer me to a recruiter and matched me up with a team that he knew needed an intern. I'm sure his referral meant something but it wasn't an automatic job offer at all.

Seems like an unfortunately odd leap to consider that not doing the work to get the job.

I really don’t see what you went through as “paying your dues”. Would it be normal for a doctor to start their career as a vet, and work their way up to humans? Would it be normal for a car mechanic to be asked to start on lawnmowers and work up? Not really

And being a junior programmer isn’t “having a big corner office” or “being at the top”. It’s literally the bottom of the software engineering ladder

The doctor analogy doesn't quite make sense, since doctors do have to complete residency.

that would be the equivalent of a developer internship i guess? they're still doing a doctor's job in residency, they're not wiping arses or manning the reception desk

I think you are talking over the post. Interns do the grunt work no one else wants to touch, up to and including making coffee.

No one really expects much from them.

But I personally like that blue collar work ethic.

> No one really expects much from them.

I think it’s really easy for people to accidentally have a net negative impact on the productivity of a team. Especially early in their career, especially if they’re only there for a few months.

Having interns is probably still worth risking that - they bring some life and variety into an office and they’re only around for a few months anyway. But I would be leery about adding a junior engineer to my team if we’re using manual memory management and they don’t get it. You might have to obsessively code review all their stuff to make sure they don’t introduce memory bugs. Memory correctness in iOS programming probably usually doesn’t matter that much, but a bit of wariness is reasonable and understandable.

Overworked engineers might also not want to spend their time handholding an intern if its not in their KPIs to do so, and they don’t consider that to be part of their role. This is a cultural thing as much as anything else.

When I was at Amazon, interns got to do greenfield work because that was how senior engineers got their projects off the ground without a six pager.

As long as that same company doesn't complain about are shortage while they have their talent crawling in the crouch space it's ok

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