17 & Employed

It was the summer between my junior and senior year of high school and I needed a job ... badly. My life started becoming very social. Instead of spending weekends hanging out at a friend's place playing video games, I was now busy dating. And I was soon to discover what every young man eventually discovers -- having a girlfriend isn't cheap.

So here I am, young, broke, and in-love. This isn't to say all my money problems stemmed from my girlfriend. Eventually you get to an age where you want to become financially independent from your parents for a multitude of reasons. For me, that age was seventeen.

I didn't have a clue about where I wanted to work, so impulsively I applied to the two places I frequented the most -- Albertson's and Blockbuster. It wasn't until later in the week that I randomly thought to myself, "Hey, my Dad works at Palm, maybe they have internships?". So on whim I sent my résumé to Palm not really expecting them to even consider a high school student for an internship.

As luck would have it, they were interested! They were particularly impressed with my experience with web development and passion for building PCs, especially for my age. (The latter was a necessity for any real PC gamer). I met with the Engineering Services team and was given offer. I vividly remember the HR recruiter saying to me, "We can't pay you a regular intern's salary because you're in high school, so we looked at average salaries for someone your age and we're prepared to offer you $11 per hour."

I was ecstatic. This was almost double what I would've made bagging groceries or renting VHS tapes! I accepted the offer and became Palm's youngest employee. Thus began my 11-year long on-off-on-off career at Palm (then PalmSource, then PalmOne, then Palm, then HP).

I was a software engineer at one of the hottest pre-IPO companies in the Valley before I could legally even sign my own name!

Working at a tech company at such a young age lent itself to two very fond memories...

The first was when I received my first paycheck. I'm not sure why (perhaps it was because I was a minor), but I didn't have a bank account at the time. I remember the first check I ever got was for around $700 bucks and I didn't know what to do with it. So one day I went to the bank and cashed it. Imagine giving a seventeen year-old $700 in cash! Yeah, I felt like I hit the lottery. I remember thinking to myself, "Holy crap, I get this every two weeks? I'm rich!". Ever since then I've always been tempted to cash a paycheck just to relive that naive moment of feeling rich.

The second memory was in true Silicon Valley style. The department I was working with at the time was going to Mexico on an off-site. (For those of you unfamiliar, an "off-site" is basically an all-expenses paid trip to some destination away from the office, usually like the restaurant across the street.). I couldn't believe the company was going to pay for all these people to go to Mexico (for no apparent reason at all). And then I learned that the marketing department was going to Hawaii and the operations department was going to Las Vegas. Then suddenly Mexico didn't seem like that big of a deal and I couldn't wait to go. Just one thing ... I was a minor.

That's right, I couldn't go. I couldn't legally sign my "trip papers" and HR thought I might be too much of a liability. Bummer.

It was still an amazing memory and an amazing time. Starting my career during the dot-com boom definitely had it's perks. I eventually did end up traveling to many places on Palm's dime, but those stories shall be shared in due time.

For now, I was seventeen, employed, and happy to be Growing Up Silicon Valley.