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What jobs did you have *before* software development?

Ben Halpern on April 08, 2022

Most of us probably had some sort of other jobs before getting into software as a career. I'd love to hear from the community on this matter!

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Lucia Cerchie • Edited

Since high school...

  • barista
  • waitress
  • light plumbing/electricity as part of a work study program
  • teacher's assistant for 4th grade
  • certified in-home nursing assistant
  • teacher's assisant for Montessori classrom 2-6 yrs old
  • summer literacy specialist
  • literacy coach for K-5
  • ran my own digital marketing agency

I tried a lot of things-- I'd really recommend the 'try it before you buy it' approach if you're going to have to invest in your education. That's why I became a CNA, and I realized that my proprioceptive difficulties would make nursing tough, so I saved myself a wasted investment in med school.

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Ben Halpern

ran my own digital marketing agency

Was this how you dipped your toes in before getting more directly involved in software development?

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Lucia Cerchie • Edited

yep! I had a contract with a SaaS and was like, I want to do what their engineers do. I still do dev-rel-y things all the time like content creation and documentation that I learned to do while writing my first technical pieces back then.

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Ben Halpern

Very similar to how I ultimately got into what I do.

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Lucia Cerchie

two members of brooklyn 99 high fiving

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Dhravya

damn, inspiring

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Ben Halpern

Here's my work background before this field:

Some of these are various jobs, but I've consolidated and didn't count brief stints.

  • Janitorial work/groundskeeping
  • Dishwashing/bus boy
  • Nightclub Security
  • Call center
  • Marketing

Basically, I did a lot of manual labor-type jobs and then got into marketing as my initial career before discovering my real interest in software development.

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Kaloy

Man, you're amazing!

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Lee

I fitted a lot windows, I also tried welding (I was really bad at that). It was either professional combat sports or tech for me, glad I chose the latter!

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David Teren

After school;

  • Army (2 years compulsory conscription at the time)
  • Junior Technical Assistant at a Media Production company. Audio recording on Reel-to-reel tape and video on massive Umatic Tapes.
  • Various stints in the restaurant industry as a waiter or assistant manager.
  • Aramis Consultant at a major retailer.
  • Car tyre salesperson
  • Product Specialist (Demonstrator)- Creative Labs
  • Category Manager (Sierra Interactive, Disney Interactive, Acclaim...)
  • Technical Product Specialist - Various Audio Studio Brands
  • Music Producer, Mixing & Mastering Engineer
  • Music Technology Lecturer
  • Sound Designer - Mostly Radio & TV. Was part of an international team doing sound design on a feature film.
  • Ran my own production company but lost it after 2008.
  • Moved to another city to start over and got a job as a Junior Audio Engineer.
  • Worked my way up. While working on a project where we sent the audio files to devs I got frustrated with waiting for the devs to do their thing and learn some scripting. Created (scripted) a solution that impressed the boss and making started scripts for the office peeps to automate their tasks. It was like I discovered my superpower ;)
  • Start as a junior DevOps engineer at a company thanks to a friend who had seen my newfound passion. We did a lot of Ruby scripting at this company. During this time I discovered Rails and wrote a tool that we used in the DevOps team.
  • Worked at a product company building all sorts of apps for clients
  • Worked at a startup with some of my heroes in the Rails community
  • Currently, I’m a Team Lead at a Fintech Company.

I switched careers at 47 and I turn 54 in a week. So grateful that I ended up in software development.

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Matthew Daly
  • Packing in a warehouse
  • Shelf stacking
  • Customer service rep for a life insurer for nearly 12 years
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Ben Halpern

Customer service rep for a life insurer for nearly 12 years

What led to the change?

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Matthew Daly

It was badly paid, boring and I was clearly not progressing - I was getting paid less than new starters. To make it worse, I got transferred to another area where none of my prior experience was any use at all.

Meanwhile I bought a Dummies book about Linux on a whim as I had a voucher for money off them and started messing around with Ubuntu in my spare time. That reignited my interest in computers in general and I wound up doing a correspondence course with the intention of changing career. Took four years, but in 2011 I started my first web dev job and never looked back.

Technically I've also been a mobile app dev in the time since then, but since that was Phonegap rather than native app development and I never did it exclusively, I don't really distinguish it as a different job.

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Heather Williams
  • Market research into chemicals industry (3 month internship)
  • Textbook editor
  • Technical content editor
  • Software dev

Not bad for someone with a chemistry degree. The technical content editor work really helped me figure out that I wanted to make the move to software dev and not just work with content.

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Shrikant Dhayje
  • Waiter at wedding
  • Customer Care Executive
  • Sr. Customer Care Executive
  • Box Packing Worker
  • Pseudo Accountant
  • Data Entry Operator
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Matt Ellen-Tsivintzeli

I always wanted to work in software, ever since I started programming as a hobby in my teens, but I didn't get a dev job straight out of uni.

I spent a year or so working in a call centre selling wine (inbound, not outbound calls). I'd had other summer jobs here and there, but this was my first actual job.

It was a nice company and for the most part the customers were nice. It did not cure me of my fear of phone calls, but having a script to follow made it a lot easier.

(I don't say this out loud often, but I don't like wine, and I really tried!)

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Cassio Freitas

Network and System Administration. Well, development is everywhere, right ? :-)

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Michael J Guillemette

I was a bartender for 5 years. Studied code and web applications, built the website for the restaurant I worked at, and made a ton of great connections. Talking with people from all walks of life really helped me to have confidence in interviews.

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Andrew Bone • Edited

I was quite lucky and managed to get into tech quite early but it wasn't until my late twenties where I became a Dev.

  • Picker in a warehouse (17 - 18)
  • Stock controller (18 - 20)
  • IT support Technician (20 - 27)
  • Web developer (27+)
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Ben Halpern

We have multiple warehouse pickers in the thread!

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Isaac Lyman
  • Dough boy (literally, I made the dough at a pizza place before I was of legal age to work)
  • Bused tables at a country club
  • Dishwasher at another pizza place
  • Phone technical support at an IT contractor (quit after one week, they were awful)
  • Waiter at two private clubs
  • On-campus technical support (university)
  • Technical writer, business-side documentation (university)
  • QA tester (university)
  • QA engineer (university)

I got the technical writing job because I had a background in tech and was pursuing an English degree. From there, I just kept scootching my way into more and more technical stuff until I qualified for a software development job.

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NamKata • Edited

In my country. To become a software development, you must study at universities and do internships in companies. When I was a student, I also worked in other industries such as banking, consulting and customer service

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Hamid Bluri

What is the name of your country?

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geraldew

My non-programming, non-database, non-IT-support jobs have (in chronological order) been:

  • Labourer - literally digging holes
  • Dogman - this is a person who runs around putting hooks on things for cranes
  • Labourer - sweeping around welding workers, filling pontoons with Polyurethane expanding foam etc
  • Draughtsman - pre-computing so this was with ink pens on a draughting board, and more than just the drawing I was required to design new items - e.g. an ore crusher, a conveyer belt etc - adapting from a single example image in a textbook
  • Labourer - miscellaneous things at a bakery repair workshop - as in: the commercial grade bakeries supplying loaf bread to supermarkets, where tasks would range from crawling into an oven to remove a bearing for repair, or breaking up cast iron equipment with a sledge hammer for disposal (so yes, quite physical work).
  • Circuit board construction - making high gain amplifiers (for a university gravity wave project)
  • Circuit board repairs - finding and fixing broken tracks and components
  • Computer sales / repairs / demonstrations / running the shop on Saturdays
  • Wrote and delivered introductory computing classes
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Ryan Winchester • Edited

Skipping a few short-term ones:

  • Hardware Store Associate
  • Caterer/Porter (in the monkey suit with bowtie)
  • Landscaper
  • Backhoe Spotter/Labourer
  • MDPE Gas Line Fuser
  • Electrician
  • Carpenter
  • General Contractor (my own business: building homes, renovations, decks)
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Stuart Jones

From 16 - mostly alongside college and university to be able to buy food:

  • Paper boy
  • Odd jobs in a garden centre
  • Temp cover - warehouse, deliveries, cleaning, loading, and all sorts of other things
  • Bartender
  • Support engineer for HVAC control hardware and software

The temp cover job was pretty good at times - even worked in a brewery for a couple of weeks. But I'd never know what I was doing from one day to the next, and some jobs were horrible (8 hour shifts testing imported smoke detectors or cutting off European plugs of off electric blenders and replacing them with UK plugs).

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James Perkins

My Career:

  • Worked at a supermarket stacking shelves
  • Managed the night crew at the supermarket
  • Moved to America
  • Worked at Gamestop
  • Worked at a small tech company as support.
  • Got my first break at the same tech company

The rest is history!

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Nick Taylor

For me:

  • newspaper delivery boy with my BMX and wagon
  • babysitter
  • odd jobs for a summer (mainly painting, mowing lawns)
  • dishwasher
  • line cook
  • bus boy
  • waiter
  • janitorial/warehouse work at a pharmaceutical company for a summer
  • bouncer/bus boy at the campus bar
  • internet technical support in a call center
  • administrative work at a financial planning company
  • installing software for car dealerships/garages to order car parts

That's me in a nutshell pre-programming.

South Park newspaper boy

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Vesa Piittinen

I had a sort of job as a computer handyman. And then I collected books and later operated a forklift in a books warehouse.

That is pretty much all you can rank as a job worth calling a job in my work history. If a full-time job ain't paying a wage one can live with without monetary government aid, then it is no job. It is capitalist slavery.

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Suzanne Aitchison

Skipping over part time work while I was at school/uni:

  • Cinema cashier/floor staff
  • Processing vehicle registrations/tax at the DVLA
  • Home learning customer support
  • English as a Foreign Language teacher
  • International student recruiter (travelling overseas to speak about studying in the UK)
  • International student support for a couple of different London universities (visa advice, qualification equivalencies, etc)
  • International services manager at a college
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Adam Crockett 🌀
  • Ice cream shop
  • corner shop (small store on the corner in the UK this is a type of store, dont ask me why) That is all
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Medea

Do corner shops actually sell alcohol to under 18 children or is that just a fantasy?

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Adam Crockett 🌀

Hmm I think we used to get told we would be in serious trouble if we did, and could loose job or be fined, that and the fact that there are secret shoppers, I did not ever do it... However I'm sure there are places.

We need digital identities if you ask me, no more IDing people

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Medea

Oh, that’s completely different from what people here say about alcohol and corner shops lol

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Jesper Høy

Professionally, I started out in freight forwarding (air cargo) - negotiating with airlines, filling out way bills etc. Soon started making small utility programs and scripts to automate / enhance workflow at the freight forwarding company. Gradually moved in to an IT support role, then IT management. Eventually started my own software development company...
However, I have been programming as a hobby since early teens :-)

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Oskar Pietrucha

In my short life I was working since I was 14, hence I already worked as a:

  • a kid's animator in a Tigger costume
  • a construction's site worker
  • selling fries and chicken nuggets in a foodtruck
  • handing out leaflets
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Toby Parent

Since high school:

  • Farm hand (first chicken farm, then cattle),
  • Short-order cook,
  • Radio Shack nerd,
  • Carpenter and rough framer,
  • Family entertainer (professional clown),
  • Graphic designer,
  • IT maintenance (later admin),
  • Teacher, GED adult-ed classes,
  • TA, Construction Tech voke classes,
  • Fine cabinetmaker,
  • Landscape crew (later foreman)

Been a long strange trip, and it ain't over yet.

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Richard Guay

Well, I started programming when I was 15. Since then, I’ve been a draftsman for a Electrical Engineer, ASIC design Engineer, Audio Engineer, embedded systems Engineer, etc. My formal training is Electrical Engineering, but I’ve done more programming than designing.

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Joe Mainwaring

I've had more technical roles than I've had non-technical, but of the few gigs I've taken:

  • Dishwasher/Waiter/Cook at a local restaurant where I grew up
  • Maintenance at a local Marina where I grew up
  • Sales rep at Express
  • Grip for ESPN
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Burt Macklin

At College/Uni I was working at Primark(a fairly cheap clothing store) and Currys/PC World!

After Uni I joined a sports betting company as a Software Support Engineer, as a way to get my foot in the door, then moved to the company I currently work at in the same role!

7 months back I was able to make the transition to a full time Software Engineer!! :D

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Alida W

Since high school graduation:

  • Pizzeria keyholder
  • Barista/Supervisor
  • Cafe Assistant Manager
  • Customer Service/Cash Manager at a popular Canadian department store
  • Cash Manager at a health food store
  • Customer Support at large tech company
  • Support Theme Specialist at same large tech company
  • Support Theme Specialist Manager at same large tech company

and then, Tier 3 Support Developer as my first developer job title.

Beyond Tier 3, I was:

  • New Grad Software Developer
  • Software Developer
  • Developer Advocate/Developer

and now:

  • Developer Advocate

It's been a really interesting, roller-coaster-esque 14 years since I graduated, but I use skills from each of those jobs nearly every day, and I wouldn't trade my experience for anything.

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Konnor Rogers
  • lifeguard (1yr)
  • army reserves (medic) (8yrs)
  • EMT (4yrs)
  • Paramedic (4yrs)
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webbureaucrat
  • Library aide
  • sacristan
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Lucas Reis

Salesman and taught me to learn a lot of soft skills.

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Medea

And there’s me who’s just 13…

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Isaac Lyman

Sounds like a bright future to me. :)

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Medea

Thanks for those words of positivity! :)

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Ellie • Edited
  • grew up on a sheep ranch, building fence, farming, caring for the sheep
  • (first programming was TI-Basic in middle school)
  • firefighting during summer in college
  • grad in EE, did some circuits and assembly type work
  • r&d engineer with lasers/lidar
  • manufacturing engineer
  • more lasers
  • more electronics
  • full time SW engineer 🎉
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Jon Randy 🎖️

My first real job was in software development, and I'm still in software development

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Javier Guerra

Not counting summer jobs as a teen

Pizza delivery
Printing press technic
Pre press technician
Desktop Publishing designer
Graphic Designer
Proof reader
Build custom PCs and sale them

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Ahmed Atalla

10 years as a rig electrician in the oil field since graduation as electrical engineer
I did the career shift in 2017 at age 36

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KileyZavala • Edited

An electrician can work with various electrical installations: electric motors, generators, automatic control systems, etc. Depending on the job, an electrician's duties may include the following: maintenance, installation, connection/disconnection, disassembly, and repair of electrical equipment. For example, a city electrician tidalelectricalservices.com may install street lighting systems, lay power lines, and maintain and repair them.

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Nadia Zhuk
  • Writing tutor
  • English tutor
  • Shop assistant at an occult shop 🔮
  • Hostess at an Italian restaurant
  • Translator / interpreter
  • Copywriter
  • Journalist / editor
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Emanuel Quimper
  • Farmer
  • Firefighter
  • Army infantry
  • Construction
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cuongnguyen11

waitor, customer support (for a internet service company)

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MariannaBr

Structural Engineer for 9 yrs

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Moza

Wow, this is inspiring...seen people from different background and all going into one direction! Great job!

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Souk Syp.

Used to work in small farm. Loads of manual work. I feel healthier back then…

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SVGator

So much untapped talent in the comments! Lovely to read all these origin stories

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Vytenis

Brand designer
Furniture designer
Interior designer

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Stephan Froede

Mechanical Engineer … discovered coding while writing code for a CAD drawing, it was a sine chart which was used to drill the sine chart into a Plexiglas block.

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Agik Setiawan

Before this field i worked as a Draftsman

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Scott Yeatts

Radio DJ, college tutor, theater stage carpenter for a repertory theater, Infantry soldier in the US Army, software engineer, in that order.

Those are the highlights.

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Mario Pereira • Edited
  • Fruit picking
  • Barista and cleaner in a disco
  • Construction worker
  • Computer Sales store
  • IT HelpDesk
  • System Administrator
  • Cloud Engineer
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Evgenii Gerasin

Engineer in milk factory

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cerchie profile image
Lucia Cerchie

I'm curious about this one-- what did you engineer?

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Evgenii Gerasin

Repaired cars and developed programs for them

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chrdek

Before/During Undergrad studies:

  • IT Inventory stock control for warehouse.
  • Assembly line technician.
  • IT RMA technician.
  • Land surveys.
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Tina Huynh

Teacher's assistant, coding instructor, and lead STEM instructor,

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Tawhid • Edited

Digital Artist
Streamer .-.
Pc Builder
Editor
Part time tutor

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leob

Haha nothing really, hopped straight out of college into software dev and never looked back. That was, how many years ago, you don't wanna know, haha.

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Jason Wadsworth

I worked at Pizza Hut for 10 years

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John Peters

4 years USCG
2 years Capenter
4 Years College working carpentry in summer.
Entry into IT in 1987
Still in IT 2022

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Conner

Farmer

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Brian Gaines
  1. Barback
  2. Asbestos remover
  3. Emissions Tester
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Rishi Khan
  • Microbiology Lab assisstant
  • Door to door lawn aeration sales
  • Boiler Mechanic/Engineer
  • High school tutor
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Aneeqa Khan

I only did one job before Software Engineer

  • Teaching at junior school
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Ricardo Sueiras

Van driver. Kitchen Porter.

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Rafael Pereira

wow, so many people with manual labor type work. Wasn't expecting that!
Well me, I'm not a developer yet, i'm still studying! I've been working as an auto glass technician for 13 years now.

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Garrett van Wageningen
  • Attorney
  • Financial Advisor
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Sherry Day
  • Hostess
  • Bartender
  • Customer service
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anton kristiono
  • Finance Staff
  • Marketing
  • HR
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Saeed
  • carpenter
  • barista
  • waitre
  • security man
  • Caregiver
  • seller many more but I don't remember them anymore. But the difficult job was geriatric nurse. I can't deal with people at all
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Lucas Faria

Waiter
Intern in Architecture
Barista

still searching for my first experience in tech :(