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20 years ago I got my first job as a digital designer for a 5 person startup working out of a 300 sq feet office inside a GOYA bean warehouse in Secaucus NJ designing websites, digital business cards and intranet sites. #UX #Design #Digital
Not to mention, I had to travel over 2hrs to get to work each morning via walking, bus, train and more bus. Now kids got Uber and Zoom. Well -- at least we had foosball!
I worked on $11/hr and sometimes didn't even get paid when client invoices were late. We didn't have Door Dash, we ate at the taco truck that stopped in front of the GOYA warehouse. Popeyes whenever we felt rich (they didn't have the chicken sandwich).
The largest site we built was a competitor to http://Match.com funded by some dude who sold his Porsche to pay us. We actually went door-to-door to sell websites and I made Flash websites for underground hip-hop artists to pay for my young adult lifestyle.
I had to visit my clients in the projects of Queens and Brooklyn to get paid in rolls of cash from rappers. Other times, I didn't get paid, but just invited to album release parties to connect with more clients.
Back in the start up, our boss made us take turns cleaning the bathroom. Once, we "renovated" the office ourselves - ripping up the carpets and painting the walls by hand. @OZSTYLE and @lenino can attest to these details. It's been 20 years fellas since "ITMediaCorp"!
I remember my boss threw shit at me when I was 15 mins late after my 2 hour commute and made some of us pretend to be his secretary to make us look like a bigger company. But man was he hilarious. He was Michael Scott before Michael Scott!
We were building sites with #Dreamweaver #Flash #PHP and #JSP. We outsourced development work to Ukraine and India way before it became a thing. I designed on a Power Mac G4 Cube which was on Mac OS 9. #TheStruggleWasReal
One time I fell asleep on the NJ Transit bus and driver had to wake me up. I was lost in the middle of warehouse city. I had to borrow a phone from a nearby office to call my coworker friends to pick me up.
