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Ask HN: What's that one thing you would do, if you got to rewind your career?

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Re: Ask HN: What's that one thing you would do, if you got to rewind your career?

#11

Post by toomuchtodo »

neophyt3 wrote: post #8
gas9S9zw3P9c wrote: post #6

This is a great question. I spent the last ~10 years hopping around jobs, working at both FAANG and small startups, but I never stayed anywhere more than 1-2 years. I also moved around a lot. My biggest mistake was focusing too much on salary, job title, technologies and self-development, and not enough on forming deep relationships with others. That was true even in college where I got good grades, but I rarely went…

same here, I am half way through this and had made an attempt to fixit but.. probably its too late to fix

It’s never too late to fix.

Re: Ask HN: What's that one thing you would do, if you got to rewind your career?

#12

Post by alexmingoia »

Never work for other people. Never work a 9-5. I would have started selling my own things or working for myself before leaving my parents house.

At 32 and finally working for myself, I can’t believe I spent almost 10 years building someone else’s dream.

Re: Ask HN: What's that one thing you would do, if you got to rewind your career?

#13

Post by nforest »

decafninja wrote: post #10

Having lived in NYC for most of my life, and surrounded by friends in finance and finance tech, I thought working as a developer in one of the Wall Street firms (investment banks, hedge funds, etc.) was the pinnacle of a technology career. Man was I blind. Needless to say, on the other side of the continent (and in NYC itself, to a lesser degree) was the Silicon Valley tech industry. So while I pludged around doing L…

This is suprising. I'm at the start of a data/ML engineering career and working at hedge funds that use technological methods seem very appealing to me. They are known for topping FAANG compensation offers and the work seems innovative and interesting tech-wise.

Re: Ask HN: What's that one thing you would do, if you got to rewind your career?

#14

Post by http-teapot »

alexmingoia wrote: post #12

Never work for other people. Never work a 9-5. I would have started selling my own things or working for myself before leaving my parents house. At 32 and finally working for myself, I can’t believe I spent almost 10 years building someone else’s dream.

Can you share more info about your work now?

Re: Ask HN: What's that one thing you would do, if you got to rewind your career?

#15

Post by brtkdotse »

gshdg wrote: post #2

Make time to speak more with my manager about the role I wanted that didn’t seem to be available, rather than accepting that role at a less stable company and then getting laid off from it due to cash flow problems a month after my former manager had hired someone else into the role I’d wanted.

On a similar note, take the old advice of finding a good boss instead of a good job. I've mostly had good bosses, but they always had at least 25+ people under them making it really hard to form a good relationship.

Re: Ask HN: What's that one thing you would do, if you got to rewind your career?

#16

Post by decafninja »

nforest wrote: post #13
decafninja wrote: post #10

Having lived in NYC for most of my life, and surrounded by friends in finance and finance tech, I thought working as a developer in one of the Wall Street firms (investment banks, hedge funds, etc.) was the pinnacle of a technology career. Man was I blind. Needless to say, on the other side of the continent (and in NYC itself, to a lesser degree) was the Silicon Valley tech industry. So while I pludged around doing L…

This is suprising. I'm at the start of a data/ML engineering career and working at hedge funds that use technological methods seem very appealing to me. They are known for topping FAANG compensation offers and the work seems innovative and interesting tech-wise.

I don't disagree with you. I know there are elite hedge funds, as well as certain niches in finance tech that pay extremely well. It sounds like you're there.

But I'm not in one of them, and neither are most SWEs in finance. We're justing doing line-of-business .NET or Java.

Thankfully I've managed to worm my way into a niche (JavaScript/React/Python) which, while not exactly super-lucrative in the finance world, is at least much more marketable to SV tech companies than doing C# and WPF.

Re: Ask HN: What's that one thing you would do, if you got to rewind your career?

#17

Post by dmarlow »

gas9S9zw3P9c wrote: post #6

This is a great question. I spent the last ~10 years hopping around jobs, working at both FAANG and small startups, but I never stayed anywhere more than 1-2 years. I also moved around a lot. My biggest mistake was focusing too much on salary, job title, technologies and self-development, and not enough on forming deep relationships with others. That was true even in college where I got good grades, but I rarely went…

I would be happy to connect and get to know you. Don't hesitate to reach out!

@gmail

Re: Ask HN: What's that one thing you would do, if you got to rewind your career?

#19

Post by CM30 »

Ask for more money/set salary expectations higher.

Yeah, I know what you're thinking. Sounds a bit like a cliched answer, right?

And yes, it does. But I'm the only person in my peer group who went in the tech industry, and I had absolutely no idea what the market rate was for software engineers or web developers in said industry. As a result, I ended up seriously underpaid overall, especially given I was the one who was asked what my salary expectations were.

Alteratively, I guess it'd be focusing more on networking and connecting with people. I never realised the importance of thing growing up, so I never ended up with a network at all, or anyone to rely on for anything.

Re: Ask HN: What's that one thing you would do, if you got to rewind your career?

#20

Post by alexmingoia »

http-teapot wrote: post #14
alexmingoia wrote: post #12

Never work for other people. Never work a 9-5. I would have started selling my own things or working for myself before leaving my parents house. At 32 and finally working for myself, I can’t believe I spent almost 10 years building someone else’s dream.

Can you share more info about your work now?

What would you like to know?

Since working for myself I've had a VC-backed startup to improve democracy, done consulting work, and right now I'm writing a book about personal finance (thehappymoneybook.com).

If I could go back in time to 10 years ago I would have continued to work on the online t-shirt brand I had started instead of abandoning it to get a "real job."

Deep down I think most people resent the employer/employee relationship. I think most people are creative and entrepreneurial. But we're told in school to be obedient instead of problem solvers. We're told that failure is to be avoided. We're told that being comfortable and bored is better than broke and happy. I think more people don't work for themselves because they're scared, because they're told not to, and because they've forgotten how.

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