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My father has held a number of jobs through his life, but he has a knack for sales. My mother moved to the US when she was 19 years old, after saving an amount of money that I have yet to be able to save myself (at 25).
Inspired by blog posts from Jason Shen and Rick Webb, I decided to list the paid jobs I remember having to date.
At 25 years old, I count 35.
including internships.
- busboy at a Cazadero music camp (first 40 hour a week job at 14)
- house painter
- roof and gutter cleaner
- retail associate / cashier at Michaels Arts and Crafts
- retail associate / cashier at Target
- film producer at Santa Rosa high school (won first monetary prize for creative work)
- bank teller at a Exchange Bank (private Sonoma county chain)
- sales representative for Cutco knife distributor (first cold call sales job)
- ebay seller (through buying broken xboxs to repair and resell)
- it staff at Soka University of America IT department (first official tech job)
- printed clothing producer with LKBG (my first invoicing company-produced all the printed clothing gear for clubs and residential services at college. established ein number to get wholesale prices and found cheapest printers)
- respite care worker for the Institute for Applied Behavior Analysis (home care service for families with autistic children)
- office intern at medical service NGO (this is where I learned how much I hate busy work)
- graveyard shift retail associate / cashier at CVS pharmacy (this job sucked)
- street canvaser for Green Peace (first job in L.A., walking up to people in the street and convincing them to give you money)
- telefundraiser for Obama campaign
- retail associate / cashier at college bookstore
- waiter at sushi bar (first job where my tips were more than my wage)
- marketing intern for Laguna Canyon Foundation (produced films to be used for PSA’s on public cable TV)
- graphic designer for college bookstore products (first time I saw something my design produced in bulk)
- construction work for a summer, remodeling a professor’s home
- attorney general in university student government (not paid – learned to navigate bureaucracy)
- web developer for freelance clients (got paid to learn how to code)
- concert hall staff (first employee for newly opened Performing Arts Center)
- outsourced web developer over oDesk (made 20$ an hour from Americans, while living and traveling in China)
- art gallery intern at stage候台BACK (first and last art gallery related job)
- bartender at Franck Shanghai (first bar-tending job)
- startup event organizer with Techyizu (not paid – hosted and fund-raised for lean startup machine, hackathon, and barcamp events)
- web developer for italki (first startup job – in Shanghai.)
- digital marketer for Kenas Home
- ux developer for converse asia pacific(first corporate job)
- recruiter technology trainer at Vitamin T (taught 60 recruiters the basics of web development)
- front-end web development temp worker at Acquinity Interactive (first job in New York and later found they were shutdown by FCC)
- consultant with A Triangle inc, my first registered corporation (first major contracts with universities (Columbia Medical School, New York University, and Pace University) and media publications (Bullett Magazine, CableVision) – fulfilled contracts traveling to Europe and Latin America)
- senior software engineer at Conde Nast (longest job to date – started as lead developer of [W Magazine (90k MAU)](http://wmagazine.com, followed by lead develop at Bon Appetit (5m MAU), and currently on the New Yorker (12m MAU))