Ask HN: I'm an 18 year old programmer; How do I get a job?

Re:Ask HN: I'm an 18 year old programmer; How do I get a job? by fleitz on Wednesday August 11, 2010 @02:10PM (#1595487)

If there is no work, then why are you worried about getting a job? It's impossible. You might as well give up now.

Just put yourself up on elance / rent-a-coder, use that to build a portfolio.

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Re:Ask HN: I'm an 18 year old programmer; How do I get a job? by dotBen on Wednesday August 11, 2010 @03:51PM (#1595854)

I wouldn't do elance or rent-a-coder for a few reasons:

Firstly, you might not be creating stuff that you will want to put on your resume/portfolio (my experience from that world is clients who want hacks and weird specs).

You will also find that going rates are pretty low because you are competing with off-shore labour (this is not a rant against off-shore, just an observation that this is how common markets work)

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Re:Ask HN: I'm an 18 year old programmer; How do I get a job? by mattm on Friday August 13, 2010 @12:32AM (#1600082)

I have done freelance work through oDesk and the longer projects were quite valuable. Rates are low but not that low. According to oDesk's stats, the average rate for a web developer is about $16/hr.

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Re:Ask HN: I'm an 18 year old programmer; How do I get a job? by dotBen on Friday August 13, 2010 @11:37PM (#1602894)

$16/hr for a developer is super low.

I guess you can't compare remote to local SF, but $100-$125/hr is a good rate for devs here.

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