Just a bit of fun really, but it may be interesting to see how people started out in their careers and where it took them. Maybe it will be inspiring to anyone looking to get started in their career.

For me, I don't count my first real job as this, but as a teenager I did a holiday job for a software company that my dad worked for which was creating installation media - this involved copying files to a 3.5 inch floppy using DOS and sticking a printed label on - exciting stuff!

My first "proper" job was then 1998/1999 working as a software engineer for a large company who wanting loads of Y2K "fixes" putting into their 100s of internal apps. This really was an interesting job as they had so many applications in so many languages - I learned C++, Quick Basic, Visual Basic, some IBM mainframe stuff and our development PCs ran dual-boot Windows NT and OS/2 Warp...

After doing that job for a year, I then decided to go to university, although it was a tough decision as the job was good, the benefits were good, but I didn't want to lock myself down so young...

What I have done since university (which is quite some time) is a whole other story (or post... or two)!

My first “IT” job was as a keypunch operator in an IBM PCAM shop.
Did that for one year then went back to school...didn’t get back into IT for several years.

Edit: That 1st job was in 1966 (!)

I got into Linux because someone told me I could self-host my website on it, and I did, for five years. So in that way, I guess you could say I was my own hosting provider.

Never had an IT job, but I did, as a sideline at my job as trainer, run a PCBoard BBS on OS/2 Warp for my department, which had offices across the country; it was used mainly for transmitting documents, but I also set it up with FidoNet. Making that work was a lot of fun.

When that job disappeared (my entire unit in Delaware was dissolved), I got a job as an the one-man training department for an outfit that manufactured card access software and hardware. They sold through authorized dealers, and I trained the dealer reps in setting up the hardware and configuring the software; I also occasionally trained end users in configuration and usage, if the were willing to pay the freight.

The software was for Win95 and, later, WinNT. That's where I learned to use a multimeter and wire networks.

1987. Having completed the intense CCP course at DePaul, i landed my first job at a union (UFCW) benefits office, as one half of a two-programmer team. We were to develop a system to download data from the IBM 4281 mainframe, convert to a Btrieve database on a Compaq portable PC, and write programs in Realia Cobol on the portable for in-house auditors to take to the field. The union office never got around to hiring the PC programmer, so i took over the whole project. On the strength of this experience, later was hired by a downtown Chicago software firm as part of a three-man team building and advancing a vertical market 4GL software package, still for the MS-DOS platform, and still using Realia Cobol. I also was the firm's Assembly guy. In 1994 started my own one-horse shareware and consulting business having added C programming. Quit the whole thing in 1997, only a decade of professional IT work.

Didn't do anythng IT until 2005 when i finally got on the internet, returning to retired / amateur status in learning html, javascript, php, css, etc.

My first job was as a programmer for Dutch defense, on a PDP-11 (later multiple), mostly in assembler with some Fortran. During my stay there (which was from 1980 to 1987) I also added Pascal to my official languages (first under CP/M).
We did a lot of what I now would call script-writing too, to facilitate day-to-day production for the operators.

never had one.

but i keep up the (rather simplistic) website of my current employer - replaced the "1999" design with a sort of php "framework" with sidebar menus etc.
that's a few extra credits coming in every month for something i just learned myself by using linux & trolling various forums... and it's almost no work at all

I was an information scientist, not an information technologist. I worked in scientific libraries abstracting and indexing articles and carrying out searches. Of course the searches involved computerised databases but the internals of those were all Greek to us. But during the 90's, computers gradually moved out of the computer unit and into labs and offices, and the BRE Library acquired its own minicomputer (a Prime first and later a VAX). I became the go-to person for interfacing with it. I learned to program: Basic first, then Fortran and then Pascal. I didn't pick up C until I started messing with Linux after retirement.

While a student I got a part-time job as a lab technician in the EE department. I remember a full professor bringing in a dead power supply who said he had spent an hour trying to figure out what was wrong with it. I replaced the fuse, tested it, and took it back to him 10 minutes later.

I started out as a hardware service technician servicing online banking hardware. This started in 1970, and after seven years I moved on to hardware education. That lasted until I retired ( early ) in 2003. As a trainer, I learned a lot, mostly hardware support, mainly in networking.

I spent a year after retiring full time working at a small training centre teaching unemployed youth how to fix PC's. I did that until government funding ended. That was the end of my IT career. One thing I'm still enjoying from that experience was my introduction to linux. I had lots of experience as an end user with windows and OS/2. Fully retired, I have had a lot of time to learn a lot of things linux. Now if I just figure out how to get the wife to give up on Win 7...

Great responses so far - thank you all for responding!

I haven't had an IT job but I am currently looking for one. Seems like with the lack of certification and experience they are hard to come by.

our crazy, overspecialised world in a nutshell.

(i bet the professor had similar stories about the likes of you)

whenever somebody says they work with computers, i say: "OK. but what?"

I went to a vocational school and trained using MSDOS and other PC software, Windows hadn't taken hold at the time but was starting to get more popular. In 1990 my first IT job was at a large local bank as a computer operator running IBM Mainframe systems!

Long ago in the 70's - before M$oft, before Linux ... OS/VS1 sysprog.
ddg that ...

Software developer in the military. Wrote code using visual foxpro 3 and 5.