Ask HN: Making money as an undergrad | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Making money as an undergrad

9 pointsandbberger5 comments

I have been experiencing trouble securing a summer internship. I've been looking for something in the general purview of my machine learning and statistical analysis but the offerings to undergrads aren't great for such things.

I've had thoughts of freelancing, app development, or some small SaaS venture, but all seem risky. Any tips how I might go about putting my skills to use?

Background: I can program pretty much anything in Java and Python (and other languages). The bulk of my experiences and interests lie involve machine learning in the context of bioinformatics and model development.

Alternatively, if someone just wants to hire me, shoot me an email and I'll send you a copy of my resume.

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Worth noting: There are no jobs in machine learning and statistical analysis.

Jobs come in the flavor of Web Developer in Ruby on Rails, Web Developer in PHP, and occasionally Web Developer in ASP.NET or Enterprise Java. That's 98% of the market, with everything else from finance to space probes to self driving cars and those things you're looking for crammed into the remaining 2% (none of which will be advertised as positions on Monster.com).

Expecting to find a machine learning job with your machine learning degree is akin to expecting to score an internship at Indiana Jones & Co. with your archaeology degree.

I have a degree in Mechanical Engineering specialized in Robotics. Care to guess what I actually do for a living?

Two things:

1. Sometimes you just have to take work that isn't ideal to pay the bills. I worked a full time job doing nights as an ecological surveyor on building projects during the second year of my undergrad. I didn't go to lectures, just had to keep up with the work on my own time. Then I took on extra work doing freelance iOS development on top of that in my final year. I worked like a dog but it was worth it (not least because it paid for me to live and study). Don't have your heart set on getting a job that uses all your skills - you have to hustle.

2. I have a ton of spare projects ranging from exploratory data analysis to computational biology software development, and from hardcore pure bioinformatics through to applied crop engineering for food security. I've never supervised a student working remotely before, but I'd be willing to give it a shot if it's a good fit. I can usually find money to pay my students (nothing huge, but living plus a bit money), though again I've never done it internationally. Shoot me an email: rds45@cam.ac.uk. Same goes for any other similarly placed students reading this.

From your profile I see you're a physics major. Which year of your undergrad are you in?

Being a physics major myself, my advice is probably reasonable. In applying to internships make sure your skills are clearly displayed, applying for jobs with professors is probably the best thing for a freshman or sophmore.

If you haven't done any major programming, I'd suggest contributing to open source projects or building something that takes concerted, consistent effort, to show companies that they can actually use you.

Work of choice will be really hard to come by, unless you're really lucky; happy hunting!

I'm a sophomore and a very capable programmer. Physics is beautiful, but I don't expect to be getting paid to lose my head in the clouds anytime soon. Much easier to secure employment doing something in the realm of software development

Hey, I'm a 21 year old undergrad who's been freelancing part time. I primarily use oDesk and as long as you have a good understanding of english you've pretty much got most jobs under your belt. Execution, however depends on your skillset. I started out at $5 per hour back in 2011. These days I make(on average) $100/hour working on small-medium tier Ruby on Rails and general front-end projects.

Good luck and I hope you find what you're looking for!

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