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Twitter’s best answers to the question ‘What were your first 7 jobs?’

Careers can surprise you.

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Jay Hathaway

Internet Culture

Posted on Aug 8, 2016   Updated on May 26, 2021, 7:35 am CDT

What were your first seven jobs? A simple question, but it dominated Twitter over the weekend. Turns out people love talking about themselves, cracking jokes, and discussing the current state of labor under capitalism. Who knew?

The #First7Jobs meme started with this earnest tweet from singer Marian Call:

And quickly picked up enough momentum to turn into a full-fledged hashtag game. As you might expect, jokers had a field day with it:

https://twitter.com/Christian_Zamo/status/762112239507767296

https://twitter.com/don_macdonald/status/762090916836364288

https://twitter.com/SeanMcElwee/status/762136711560302593

https://twitter.com/bubblyphil/status/761876895013015552

https://twitter.com/Ben_O_723/status/762125906597076992

https://twitter.com/ftrain/status/762244722039611392

https://twitter.com/bafeldman/status/762449105440215042

https://twitter.com/jimray/status/762362044423114752

Most people answered seriously, though, and the results were revealing on a couple of levels.

Successful people’s answers reminded us that every once in a while, someone goes from washing dishes to being an astronaut. Or that a kid running a slushee machine can one day be Lin-Manuel Miranda. 

But that’s a rare career trajectory, especially for younger people. 

The other revealing thing about #First7Jobs is that very few people—even those relatively new to the workforce—reported having fewer than seven. Getting and keeping a job for life, then collecting a pension and retiring, is a thing of the past. If young people want pay increases, they have to change jobs.

So #First7Jobs turned out to be more than just another chain-letter survey —the kind that used to get passed around LiveJournal, but now get passed around Facebook. It’s simultaneously a reminder that success is still (kind of) possible (in rare cases), a commentary on the economic struggle most people are going through, and a new joke format to play with. 

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*First Published: Aug 8, 2016, 2:20 pm CDT

Jay Hathaway

Jay Hathaway is a former senior writer who specialized in internet memes and weird online culture. He previously served as the Daily Dot’s news editor, was a staff writer at Gawker, and edited the classic websites Urlesque and Download Squad. His work has also appeared on nymag.com, suicidegirls.com, and the Morning News.

Jay Hathaway