[syspec]

Completely agree.

> He began working at McDonald's, earning $4.15 an hour working nearly 40 hours a week, mostly on the weekends. He was quickly promoted to shift manager at the age of 16,

> He enrolled in certification classes sponsored by CompTIA to get his A+ certification, which led to a job as a DSL installation technician for Bell South at the age of 19.

So he worked at McDonalds for 3 years in high school, what does that have to do with anything.

[kelseyhightower]

McDonald's was my starting point. It's where I developed much of my work ethic and my first taste of leadership in a professional setting. I was a shift manager for most of that time and remember learning about the restaurant business, food cost, working with customers, and managing people.

A lot of stuff did not make the article but who I am today was greatly influenced by that job. I chipped in on the bills, bought my own school clothes, and my first car (1987 Jeep Cherokee), thanks to that job, so for me it was very foundational.

[dangerboysteve]

If you have time to lean you have time to clean!

[Danieru]

Oh wow that saying brings back memories. All this time I thought my store manager had invented it.

McDonalds for me was pretty fun. At the time I could well see how the ease of promotion trapped some people. If you had any motivation at all you'd soon find yourself running a night shift.

Even now, a decade later, I get nightmeres where I'm back working there. Nothing feels longer than an 8 hour shift at McDonalds.

[breakfastduck]

Because it shows all those teenagers who are working at McDonalds in high school who feel hopeless that they can go so much further.

What's wrong with a bit of inspiration / hope?

I'm (possibly wrongly) assuming you've never had to work through that shit.

[moltar]

Exactly.

I know so many successful peers, including myself, who have worked at fast food and other menial jobs, during late teen years. If anything, this is actually a positive signal that someone cares about their future and is willing to put in the work.

[giantDinosaur]

Alternatively it highly depresses you and you drop out never to re-enter the job market, or to enter very late only once it becomes a necessity for survival.

[Hasu]

> So he worked at McDonalds for 3 years in high school, what does that have to do with anything.

I'm confused, you started by agreeing that highlighting the McDonald's experience is a good thing, then asked 'what does that have to do with anything'. I don't know what position you hold, here.

As for me, I never worked at McDonald's or any other fast food, but I did spend some time working at a local pizza joint, where I started as a busboy, and eventually assumed cook and delivery driver duties. I'd already taken programming classes and knew Java and Python, but had never considered software as a professional option. My time in the service industry was still super valuable to me as a software professional - I learned about time management, prioritization (working as a busboy and dishwasher who also makes some minor food items is an implementation of a priority queue where the priority values can change very quickly), and how to identify repeatable business processes. These are all highly valuable skills for someone who writes code, and pretty much any service industry job, taken seriously, requires understanding them. They apply equally in SaaS.

So my answer to your (possibly rhetorical?) question is: working at McDonald's for 3 years in high school has quite a lot to do with the rest of the career, as valuable fundamental business skills are there to be learned even in the lowest wage jobs.

[artursapek]

It gets the clicks.

[sltEvas]

It's the "American Dream". They need to reiterate again and again how every dishwasher can become something if they just work hard enough lol. It's these things that make me pity Americans, but other stuff offsets it as well, so there we go.

Almost anyone who wasn't born into money did some menial task around high school or college. I worked at UPS as package sorter, now I earn 40 times as much at FAANG.

But that had nothing to do with me working at UPS. I worked there because I liked the extra money on top of what my parents gave me and to me it was like getting paid for gym :D.

[Hasu]

> But that had nothing to do with me working at UPS. I worked there because I liked the extra money on top of what my parents gave me and to me it was like getting paid for gym :D.

I'm happy you ended up with a great job that pays well. Congrats to you!

But I think you underrate what and how much you may have or could have learned from working at UPS. UPS is a fantastic logistics operation, and while being a package sorter is obviously not the same as being a VP, the job still exposes you to a system that's highly optimized for profiting from being good at logistics, and that reaches every job in the system. Maybe you didn't learn anything at the job, but that doesn't mean there was nothing there to learn for someone observing and trying to learn.