I found my first job by going to my highschool job fair and begging a guy from Boeing to let me work as a programmer. He told me I was too young (just turned 17 at the time) but since I was "highly motivated" he would call some friends on my behalf. He referred me to a local business that develops frimware. After I explained that I had been developing game development skills for years using C++, they said I'd probably be a better fit at Ageia (a St Louis company that developed physics middleware called PhysX, and was recently acquired by nVidia).
I thought, "How am I going to get the attention of the executives? I'm 17, there's no way I can just submit a resume and get hired." So I scoured the internet for any Ageia phone numbers I could find. I called one of them, and a guy who spoke Chinese picked up. "Um... hello?" and he hung up. But I noticed a pattern in all of the numbers I found. They all started with the same 5 digits (for example, 555-1212, 555-1286, etc). So I changed the last two digits to 01 and tried, and nobody picked up. Then I tried 02 and got one of the top execs on the phone. I convinced him to let me show him some of my gamedev demos the following day. After that, he told me that he was impressed, but to prove my skills, I had two weeks to create a demo using PhysX. Two weeks later, I had created three simple but effective demos.
He seemed pretty impressed at that point, and even told me "you definitely have a job here". Then I didn't. He couldn't get special permission to hire a 17-year old, because I couldn't sign the NDA. But he asked John Ratcliff (who worked at Ageia at the time) if he knew of any local companies I'd be a good fit at. He did, and it turned out that there was a gamedev studio about 30 minutes away from where I lived. I was really excited, and they invited me to take their programmer test.
The guy who handed me the test said "I hope you know your C++"... he wasn't exactly confident in me, apparently. (I don't blame him, most candidates suck.) But I took the test and got a decent score. Up next was the interview phase, where around 8 programmers came in and sat at a large table in the conference room. I presented my demos to them (including my three previous Ageia demos).
I dropped out of high school and worked there as an unpaid intern for about 8 months, at which point I was hired and worked there for three years. Also, the time between the job fair and my first day on the job was several months, so the whole process took a lot of effort.
So my advice is, demos are key; talk to the decision-makers, not the middlemen; and demonstrate your skill in every other possible way (but mostly shut up and let other people talk, because you don't know 1/10th of what you think you know).
Also, be genuinely interested in other people. Almost everyone likes the idea of being a mentor.
Ok, so demos are great to have. As a person in charge of hiring, what kind of demos would you like to see in a candidate? What kind of portfolio should a person without demos try to develop for the purpose of trying to get a job?
It depends on the job. I'm hiring web devs at the moment so cool functioning sites are great(but rare). I'm certain a few little games I wrote in javascript(blackjack, and copies of a few of the games from kde games) got me my first job in web development. The CTO loved the blackjack game in particular.
I guess the best advice would just be anything interesting that shows off your skills.
Thanks for asking! It's coming. We had a recent setback due to the current economic problems. My partner lives in an apartment with his girlfriend. She had a full-time job at a large company doing quality assurance testing (finding bugs), so she offered him the opportunity of leaving his full-time job while she paid the bills. Just a couple months after he did that, the recession hit, and she was laid off. So our startup is somewhat inactive for a couple months while my partner saves up money doing contract work.
I thought, "How am I going to get the attention of the executives? I'm 17, there's no way I can just submit a resume and get hired." So I scoured the internet for any Ageia phone numbers I could find. I called one of them, and a guy who spoke Chinese picked up. "Um... hello?" and he hung up. But I noticed a pattern in all of the numbers I found. They all started with the same 5 digits (for example, 555-1212, 555-1286, etc). So I changed the last two digits to 01 and tried, and nobody picked up. Then I tried 02 and got one of the top execs on the phone. I convinced him to let me show him some of my gamedev demos the following day. After that, he told me that he was impressed, but to prove my skills, I had two weeks to create a demo using PhysX. Two weeks later, I had created three simple but effective demos.
He seemed pretty impressed at that point, and even told me "you definitely have a job here". Then I didn't. He couldn't get special permission to hire a 17-year old, because I couldn't sign the NDA. But he asked John Ratcliff (who worked at Ageia at the time) if he knew of any local companies I'd be a good fit at. He did, and it turned out that there was a gamedev studio about 30 minutes away from where I lived. I was really excited, and they invited me to take their programmer test.
The guy who handed me the test said "I hope you know your C++"... he wasn't exactly confident in me, apparently. (I don't blame him, most candidates suck.) But I took the test and got a decent score. Up next was the interview phase, where around 8 programmers came in and sat at a large table in the conference room. I presented my demos to them (including my three previous Ageia demos).
I dropped out of high school and worked there as an unpaid intern for about 8 months, at which point I was hired and worked there for three years. Also, the time between the job fair and my first day on the job was several months, so the whole process took a lot of effort.
So my advice is, demos are key; talk to the decision-makers, not the middlemen; and demonstrate your skill in every other possible way (but mostly shut up and let other people talk, because you don't know 1/10th of what you think you know).
Also, be genuinely interested in other people. Almost everyone likes the idea of being a mentor.