[rdouble]

Work anywhere you can until you can save up about $5000. Then go to Australia on the working holiday visa. You can make $16/hr picking tomatoes or as a barista or $25 an hour shuffling stuff around at a building site. Save $20K while enjoying life, then move to California and do a 2 year degree at a community college for $36 per credit. Get good grades then transfer to a UC to complete a bachelor's at in state tuition costs.

[turing]

I second the idea of going to Australia. I have a friend who did so and managed to make $20/hour as a barista. Granted it won't be easy, but it will give you the chance to get out of Yakima. I've spent time there and I understand your desire to get out. From the sounds of it I think the change in scenery alone could do you some good. I wish you all the best, and I admire your strength.

[fletchowns]

Saving up $5000 is simply not feasible for a lot of people.

[bdcravens]

For some, yes. A single mom with 3 mouths to feed perhaps. A kid with no real responsibilities? As I see it, he (presuming here, I know) has as much as 100 hours of free time per week. As much as he dislikes home, if you're living there rent free (which is a luxury if you're over 18, IMO) then work is pure gravy. You're not entitled to free time to entertain yourself. If you want it, freaking work for it. Or spend your time whining on HN and Reddit about how you have no time.

I'm a developer today, and do ok by industry standards (not great, just okay, for now). However, I grew up in a less than trailer trash home, my dad was a janitor, my mom was nuts (I used to watch her talk to invisible people in a roach infested kitchen), my siblings were sucked into the poverty mindset. I was born with a serious medical condition. I've had some other crap go down that I'll barely tell my close friends, let alone an Internet of strangers, but trust me when I said I've had to rebuild areas of my life more than once. So what. I won't tell I have it all figured out, but I will tell you I will not be defeated. And I have little sympathy for those who tell me the horrible hand they've been dealt.

I realize that we live in a world where only the kids of the rich get to succeed, and the only way to start up your own business is to join an incubator. If you believe that, then you will be taken advantage of. Either push to be successful, or be the kind of person that the successful use to get there. They're more than happy to take your money and your spirit.

[shadowrunner]

Thanks for sharing your story. I have massive respect for people like you. Keep going brother.

[rdouble]

He's going to have to save up about that much to move pretty much anywhere that has better jobs, though.

[fletchowns]

So now you understand his mindset of feeling like he is trapped in the town he currently lives in.

[rdouble]

Yes, but one can save up $5000 in a summer working full time in food service. I did it as a prep cook when I was 19.

[scarmig]

$5000 in three months working in food service?

Doing that in a year or even six months is plausible, depending on how lucky his circumstances are, but three months strikes me as a bit of a stretch. At $10/hr * 40 hr/week * 12 week = $4800, ignoring rent, food, incidentals, and taxes.

[rdouble]

I worked 10am to midnight 6 days a week.

[ryanSrich]

No you can't. 40 * 8/hour = 320 @ 4 weeks (3) = $3,840.

How in the world could anyone save $5,000 in a summer when they're not even pulling in that amount?

EDIT: Even working 80 per week only brings in $7,680. Factor in bills and you're still not hitting 5k, guy.

[rdouble]

Hacker News definitely attracts geniuses these days. You have to work more than 40 hours a week.

Edit: What bills does he have? Food is free, because you work in food service. Rent in a place like Yakima is < $400/m. Summer starts in May. Also, after 40 hours a week you get overtime.

[kd0amg]

Assuming, of course, that you can actually get 40 hours...

[fnbr]

What would you have him do then?

[jurassic]

Another idea once you've saved up a couple grand is to outsource yourself while you continue learning and improving as a developer. Move somewhere with rock-bottom cost of living (southeast Asia? Boliva? ...you get the idea) while you do freelance coding online and build up a portfolio. Earn in dollars, live on pesos.

By moving to a lower cost area than Australia you still get a little of the "awesome, I'm traveling!" thing with low enough costs that you can try to do work that is relevant to your ultimate goal of getting a career in technology.

[GFischer]

NO. Don't move to Bolivia, Perú or some of those other countries (don't get me wrong, people there are great, I've had a great time, etc), but if you think Yakima is a tech hell, you won't believe how bad Bolivia is - I've worked for them. And you'll feel even MORE alone and depressed, you won't know how things work, you'll lack a lot of safety nets you don't even think about in the U.S., etc. I can't speak for Southeast Asia.

Stay in the U.S. and try to keep in touch with the comunity.

[hoju]

the point of relocating to a cheaper country isn't to earn a local wage

[GFischer]

Of course not, the point I'm trying to make is that most people are severly underestimating the culture shock.

Also, if he finds Yakima "hell", being very close to tech centers, how can you expect him to adjust to somewhere that's REALLY in the middle of nowhere in tech terms - and, while you might think it's easy not to get sucked into local wages, he's unable to make US wages living in the US. In my country, a US McDonalds wage (8 dollars an hour) is much higher than most midlevel manager positions, and higher than standard developer wages.

[galvanist]

I second that plan. Or instead of farming in Australia do something else that is outside your comfort zone. Do some WWOOFing, crew a vessel at sea as a janitor or cook, get a job in McMurdo for a few seasons, do something from cooljobs.com, look for low-level embassy jobs, teach English to students abroad, apply to the peace corps. And frankly, many giant evil multinational corporations have some of low-level international jobs, sell-out for a little while. ;)

[gcheong]

I used to work in the canneries in Alaska during the summers off from college. They pay you minimum wage but the long hours means most of your work is at the OT rate. It's crap work, will put some stress on your body but clearing 10k for a couple months work was not impossible and you get to meet a lot of interesting characters. This was 20 years ago though - not sure what things are like now.

[sethrin]

You can always get a job working in an Alaskan cannery. Most coastal towns will have one. It is not crap work -- it's fish guts work. They will probably pay minimum wage, which is $7.25 an hour at the moment, but generally you can work as much OT as you like. Many canneries will pay your way from Seattle, and give you room and board as well -- for certain values of "room" and "board".

If you're lucky and social, you can find your way onto a fishing boat; deckhands will usually get a percentage of the catch ($$$), and the work is easier.

I've been through Yakima a time or two before. A gritty wind blew continually -- it seemed like the kind of place where not even the dust wanted to settle. My sympathies to the poster.

[johncarpinelli]

I like the Australia idea, but I'd save up $10k before departing. Relocating to another country is expensive.

I suggest to find some freelance programming jobs online. He could make some money writing articles about the stock market for SeekingAlpha.com.

In terms of education, I think he should do some courses with Coursera or one of the other free online institutions.

[jasonm23]

Make that $20k the cost of living in Australia (especially the Sydney or Melbourne areas) is very high at the moment. $2.5kAUD/month is average for a single bed apartment.

Also getting a rental unit without previous references from Australian landlords/agents is particularly difficult.

Be prepared to spend out a lot of $$$ getting set up.

[jaylynch]

Just in case the OP reads this and is interested, this exaggerates somewhat for Melbourne. Particularly if you're a kid coming over on a working holiday, which actually sounded like a really good suggestion for the situation.

Yes you'd be looking to pay that for a nice, new or renovated single bed apartment in the middle of the city or an expensive area. As hinted at though, as someone with $5-10k in the bank coming here to be a barista there's no way you'd be able to get a lease for one of them anyway.

Head even a 20 minute tram ride out from the city, however, and suddenly you can pay AU$1,400/mth for a 1 or 2 bedroom place in an older building. (Though you may struggle to get a lease anyway...)

If you were on a working holiday you would likely be better off finding a shared place with some like-minded souls, and end up somewhere around $1,000 for rent + all your bills and such to live somewhere pretty nice.

[hoju]

yep, this matches my experience in Melbourne

[elithrar]

> You can make $16/hr picking tomatoes or as a barista or $25 an hour shuffling stuff around at a building site.

These figures sound good compared to US min. wages, but given the (substantially) increased cost of living I'm not sure this is good advice.

[RandallBrown]

I think it is good advice. The guy is in a rut. Going to Australia will do two things. One, open his eyes to a new part of the world. It's something not many people do and it will be fascinating and exciting. The second thing it will do is get him a high paying job that requires no skill. I think the idea is to try and live on an American cost of living, but in Australia. I don't know if that's possible, but I'd bet it's possible.

[rdouble]

It's expensive but it's workable, and you can still save money. The minimum wage is federal, so you get paid the same as a barista in Sydney as you do in regional Australia. Also, I suggested it because the working holiday visa is available. I'm not sure if there any other countries which even offer such an option to Americans.

[edsrzf]

New Zealand offers a similar Visa, but you'll be better off in Australia if you want to make money.

[bwb]

Agreed, I'm in AU now with my brother and he makes $20 an hour working retail at a bookstore. Housing and the rest is expensive though, so count on finding a shared house and a commute. And living cheaply while you save + work on your coding abilities.

[prawn]

Go anywhere else. Hike somewhere. Getting out of the rut and mindset is one step of many.

I do second the concern that Australia is expensive though. But there's no language barrier, work around and lots to see.

[Kluny]

Where do you get these tomato picking jobs? Seriously, though. I'm moving to Oz in three months and I've been craigslisting and gumtree'ing like crazy, but I have not had any replies. Can you give me the name of some farms to call about harvesting jobs?

[filopodium]

The first thing with these kind of fruit picking jobs is they are pretty seasonal and differ quite a bit from state to state.

I spent 9 months in OZ, most of the time in northern Queensland working at a lime/lychee farm and some time at a banana farm. Since you are not in OZ yet, I doubt you will have any luck with gumtree/craigslist. Even if you are there it's pretty hard to get the job that way - the farmers really like to make sure you WANT to work and can physically do the work (at least I didn't manage to find work via gumtree).

The thing you have to do is go to the farms directly and talk to the owners/recruiters face-to-face. We bought a cheap 2500$ car between 3 people from Sydney and started driving north along the coast. There's quite a bit of work in the tropical areas during the summer months - bananas, mangoes, limes, lychees, avocados in late summer etc.

So my advice would be - get a cheap car, travel and work at the same time! (some farms hire only for the harvest period which for some produce isn't very long!)

Hope this helps a bit

[jacalata]

Go to a hostel in Bundaberg, look at the wall. Or call a hostel in Bundaberg and ask them now. I don't think anyone offering fruit picking jobs cares about 'a guy who's going to move to australia in three months' enough to ever reply to an email though. The only people who would reply to that are the ones who will charge you money for it, there are too many kids wandering in each day looking for work on the spot to talk to someone on the other side of the world who probably is just daydreaming and won't ever turn up anyway.

[rdouble]

If you are in the Melbourne/Geelong area try Bellarine Hydroponics.