Hello. A reality check and advise from anyone in the field would be much appreciated.
Is finding a software development internship/job for a gap year before college a reasonable possibility with following details?
Job Experience: None
Programming Skill: Completed an Online Certificate for Beginning Python
Commitment: 1 Year 40+ Hours (Deferred College Admission)
Location & Pay & Housing: Unimportant
Requirement: Minimum 50% of schedule on some form of gainful experience. Not a typical high school summer camp or specifically designed gap year program.
Preferred: Data science / machine learning / artificial intelligence / robotics related position with occasional problem solving / brain stimulation opportunity.
Purpose: Gainful experience in CS field. Not for college admission or resume building.
Would it be a realistic goal for an motivated and bright high school senior? What would be the single best skill that can be added to basic Python by 5~10 hours / week self study of a year, to increase the chance? R? SQL? HTML/PHP? Linux? TensorFlow? Photoshop?(Art Background), More Python? Any recommendation of online programs?
Perhaps writing or making meaningful contributions to good quality open source software projects, or writing good quality phone apps would be a good way to show skill in software development that does not require crossing the usual barriers to entry into typical employment in the area, where they may be skepticism about a new high school graduate with just a beginning Python certificate and not much else to show in terms of experience. But obviously, that requires a strong ability and motivation to self-educate and do the work.
The research so far is directing to using personal connections to very small companies or using staffing service for very low paying jobs in software testing positions, which would be ideal for her. The job does not need to teach programming or pay well.
Contributing to quality open source projects or own phone apps would not be a reasonable expectation for her to self study while in high school.
Many software testing jobs have significant software development of test automation code.
One variety of software testing that seems desirable to some high school students is at video game companies… but playing the same game for longer than one could stay interested in it may not be that fun after a while.
I think the personal connections angle is the right way to go. FWIW I had a gap year before college and worked at an engineering company, doing a variety of jobs, but mostly programming (a recent article I saw about demand for COBOL programmers brought back memories of that gap year, which shows my age). I got it through a friend of my parents and it proved to be a very good opportunity - I worked for them every summer during college as well.
I also wouldn’t dismiss out of hand something broader than just a software job, especially if it’s at a very small company where you could be pulled into multiple different things, since at this stage a breadth of experiences might be more helpful in determining future career choices. In that role I think the best skill to learn might be Excel. Being a spreadsheet guru can take you a long way, and I’ve been astonished how truly dire many smart people at top Silicon Valley tech companies are at putting together good spreadsheets (and how easy it is to impress them in that area).
No, not really. Software development is about more than programming, and only knowing beginning programming will not make her competitive for these kinds of roles. She won’t know enough to actually do any of the work. I know a couple developers who don’t have bachelor’s degrees, but they usually worked their way into developer jobs over a long period of time. They usually started out in lower level jobs (like test). And they also usually had a much deeper knowledge of CS and programming - usually, equivalent to a bachelor’s degree graduate, just acquired over years of working.
As someone else mentioned, I’d be looking for testing jobs instead of software development. You can still learn a lot by working in test, and test is much more likely to hire a high schooler with no meaningful experience and very little computer science background.
If she’s interested in data science and AI/ML, SQL and R are very useful skills for her to learn. But you can’t just learn R by itself; you have to learn statistics first to make the R useful. If she only knows basic Python, probably the most useful thing she can do is to continue to learn more Python so she can actually build some stuff. It’d be better for her to master Python before moving onto something else than it would for her to know a little bit about a couple things (for a job, at least).
Why not a designated gap year program? Also, have you considered sending her to one of those accelerated boot camps for coding, like General Assembly? It still may be difficult for her to find a job without a bachelor’s degree, but at least she would have the skills.
Yes it is! Lots of high school students do this. You don’t have to make fancy phone apps like Snapchat or work on giant open-source projects like Firefox or anything. Lots of kids make things like simple calculators or really simple phone games, just to practice their skills. Lots of students also collaborate on smaller open-source projects. It helps you learn the programming language more deeply, because you’re actually building stuff and trying to figure out why it doesn’t work the way you expected.
@juliet Thanks for the ideas! Predesigned gap year or learning focused programs are not being considered because the purpose is experiencing real world day-to-day operation in the field, and not learning more coding before starting college.
Your advise of testing positions seems is the way to go. I was also told to use personal connections and/or temp job agencies for those testing/QA positions at an underfunded small start ups, learn to become an Excel guru as the most useful skill, and low bidding on upwork to get testing experience and recommendations.
You also have to deal with child labor laws. If I recall, your child will not be 18. In many states, she cannot work more than 6-8 hours per day, no overtime, no working (in an office) alone or closing the business. Often the rules are even stricter during the school year (relaxed for summer).
My daughter was also younger for her grade and there were some jobs she just couldn’t take. When she started college, some government jobs (and science internships and grants) required her to be 18 and she wasn’t. She couldn’t apply for those internships or scholarships.
I’ll also say that she was still a teen, and she needed her sleep, she needed her down time. She was too young for a 40 hour per week job with commuting time. I worked a 40 hour per week job at an office the summers I was 16 and 17, with commuting adding 2 hours per day. It’s exhausting. It’s grown up life.
@twoinanddone , I thought that a high school graduate (or equivalent) minor over age 16 can work full time in the most states. I will check state by state though. And I haven’t thought about overtime. Thank you for the point. I know it is unusual and will be very difficult, or else I wouldn’t have asked around.
40 hours per week job would be a lot less hours than many high school and college students’s class and study hours combined. Or at least a lot less than her current work load. At least she thinks so. Any job can be less stressful if you are not doing it for money or resume. Wouldn’t you agree?
I will get her a room as close as possible to the work. I do have a strong distaste for commuting. And my wife has already been well spoiled to not again have a child at home to care for. Many Asian women I know would rather not have a grandchild at all than being in a situation to help raising one. Times have changed.
BTW, this isn’t my plan and I am only helping her. I assured her that this is not necessary for successful college experience or career, and instead recommended a semester of well deserved vacation traveling around, frugally but still on my expense, or sculpting at an atelier somewhere far from home.
I’d say start college first. There is a risk if they do manage to find a job that they will never leave to go to college, and will eventually pay when that impacts pay scale or promotions down the raid.
@intparent, We are already considering deferral of her dream college acceptance for a term or two regardless of what she will do with it. There is no risk of not going back to the college.
But if that really happens, she can finish some bachelor’s degree at some California state university in a year of full time or two of evening part time enrollment.
Computer science is a very employable degree even without an internship. She’s just as well off just starting school and doing a summer internship or two during college.
@coolguy40, She was accepted by Colorado School of Mines yesterday. And if she is to do a gap semester or year, she genuinely wants to do an internship during the period instead of things that I think are more enjoyable. I was asked to help her to find one. Some kids are rather boring.
I’ll just relate my D’s experience. She was a rising college senior when applying for summer internships in software engineering/development but had only begun the CS major at the beginning of her junior year when she completed all her Applied Math requirements and was encouraged to either double in Statistics or CS. She was/is a top student at her school, 4.0 + in the Honors Forum. She attended AIT-Budapest spring of junior year and studied software engineering there, again completing near the top of her class. Ok, so that’s the background.
She ended up applying to a total of 122 summer internships as a rising college senior. She started with a dozen and when she got no response, she added another dozen, and so on and so on until she was so frustrated that she sat down and applied to nearly 50 spots. In the end, she interviewed with half a dozen big names, didn’t feel she did terribly well on a couple of the coding tests in a few, and then thought she had a couple wrapped up. In the end she did intern with a Fortune 100 company and just this month received an offer for them for employment after graduation.
Her experience tells me that internships in this field are not easily obtained. Of course, if you have a networking circle it will be that much easier. The other side of the coin is that she has been offered a great job a year before she will begin (if she decides to take it, she has until 10/15 to decide) so a college summer internship will open some doors for your D as well.
I would caution you also that kids often change their minds/majors even if you can’t perceive it. My D applied to colleges insisting she was going in to the Bio fields, probably some type of research. Within two semesters she knew she hated labs and had lost interest in science as a whole. Just food for thought. I would not put all my eggs in one basket.