Practical answer: military officer stuff
Ideal answer: go back to school and become a horticulture scientist
Ask HN: What would you do if you didn't work in tech?
131–140 of 141 posts
Re: Ask HN: What would you do if you didn't work in tech?
#132I don't really know what I would do. I'll probably find some other jobs that I don't need to talk to other people very often, but there are not many of these. I don't care too much about salary because I can always scale back to backbone lifestyle.
Maybe a janitor/security job or a bus driver job suits me well. Neither requires a huge amount of training, and neither requires a lot of brain activity so I can preserve my brain cells for hobby programming. Both have a non-trivial number of job openings too, especially for janitors/securities.
Re: Ask HN: What would you do if you didn't work in tech?
#133The pool of tech jobs in my area was sparse, but the local employers were fully on board with the big-city "use them for a while and toss them out" system. So when times were good in IT, I bought a machine shop, and in between times of lucrative IT employment, I did short-run metalworking and engine rebuilding.
Re: Ask HN: What would you do if you didn't work in tech?
#134All the jobs I rather be doing are antiquated. Furniture maker but it’s not a viable job anymore either. A machinist, tool-die maker. Or mechanic maybe. I have always thought that mechanics are just debugging a very specific architecture. None of these make money though.
A friend of mine is getting ready to retire after 30-odd years in IT. He has already tooled up and trained for his retirement profession: farrier; the guy who makes and installs horse shoes. It's more profitable than it used to be since few people do it any more, and farriers typically work on their own schedule.
Re: Ask HN: What would you do if you didn't work in tech?
#135If I had money, I'd start to set up free after-school tutoring/play areas. I'd love to open a new business of a dog park that sells coffee in the morning, and beer in the afternoon/evening. A small amount of nice workstations for people to get some work/studying done. If I never got into tech- well I was going to be a Materials Engineer, but if I were a tradesman I'd probably be an electrician because of my superiori…
I really like your ideas and send you support energy if you ever want to pursue these. I also have ideas for creating such spaces and just the other day I fantasized about a building I saw rent. Fwiw, if you earn USD, the "developing world" also needs these spaces and it's significantly cheaper to try and take a chance at some of these spaces.
True, I think these things are hard because they don't scale easy. You really need some passionate "boots on the ground" for it to work, you can't just send money over and have it work out most of the time. Finding the people who could run it well, and convincing them to do it is the hard part. These types of people are usually also not the best when "bad" people come around to bend the purpose to their desires.
It is my dream to do some of it in the developing world too, if I were to visit someplace often to help out more. A church I used to attend was big on surfing and would take trips to a small town in Mexico. They build an orphanage, some living spaces for single mothers, drastically improved some schools amongst other things and I think that was an awesome way to do charity. There were a couple run-ins with smalltime cartel-ish activity (as they saw it as a power grab) but because everything was from church to church, most donations came in the form of infrastructure and supplies (no money to take), and the pastor was a bit crazy (he visits prisons often and can deal with the thug mindset) they allowed it continue.
Re: Ask HN: What would you do if you didn't work in tech?
#136Realistically, probably nothing great.
I enjoyed programming and computers as a hobby in high school, but had eventually decided it was not something I’d like to do as a career.
But my initial plans after high school fell through and I found myself needing to make a living. Naturally I reached for a software career, but I do hate it as much as I expected.
I didn’t really have anything else going for me skill wise. The idea of spending four more years in school didn’t appeal to me as a teenager (though I regret this greatly). I didn’t attend a community college for a few months, but dropped out as it felt like a waste of time and money.
So realistically, I’d probably have been stuck working unskilled near-minimum wage jobs I had been working before I started my career. Prior to that, I had a fascination with biology that competed with computer briefly. “Bioinformatics” was a word that came up often in career ideas while I was in high school, but that was such a small niche, I really had no concept at all as to what that career path would have looked like.
Nowadays, there’s many more things I’m interested in, but they’re all inaccessible as careers at this point.
Over the years, I’ve been inspired by things like RF engineering, physics, PLC programming, and even various natural sciences, but lacked the education/intelligence/cash to go back to school. Certainly for as long as I’d have to for those careers. AI will likely reduce the number of people needed in the sort of fields anyway.
Re: Ask HN: What would you do if you didn't work in tech?
#137Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Myself, I have a good brain for engineering but have a marked lack of common sense. I mean this sincerely, this is a geniuinely impressive level of self-awareness. If everybody was better at recognizing things like this, I think the world would be a much better place. Cheers
I'm 50 so I have enough experience to have overcome any resistance to the idea that I am mostly a dumbass. The majority of my larger life decisions have turned out poorly. Fortunately the ones that worked out paid off well enough to make up for the ones that didn't.
Have you considered outsourcing these decisions to a part or full-time executive assistant?
Re: Ask HN: What would you do if you didn't work in tech?
#138I personally believe that life is better if you do what you are naturally good at versus something you're interested in. I was lucky that I am both good at and interested in tech. The LSAT doesn't feel too difficult, especially the sections based around logical reasoning. So if I went back in time and tech somehow wasn't an option, law is probably where I'd be
If you are naturally good at something that capitalism doesn't reward, I'm afraid the prospect of life being better is not going to work that well
Re: Ask HN: What would you do if you didn't work in tech?
#139I'd become a neurosurgeon, always wanted to be since childhood for some reason. Maybe I drew inspiration from youtube watching those tumor removal videos.
My Mum just had a giant pituitary tumor removed by a neurosurgeon and I have to say, the things they can achieve and they obstacles they can overcome to perform surgery boggle my mind. In this case, the whole 9 hour surgery was done with a optic nerve dangling in front of the operating area, as tumor was directly below it. The surgeon didn’t nick it.
Re: Ask HN: What would you do if you didn't work in tech?
#140I spent 5 years making gears, mostly bevel gears. If you see a Marvel 18" bandsaw made between 2015 and 2020, I probably cut the teeth on the band wheel and its pinion that drives it.
Some of the gears I helped make will still be in use in a century. I find great comfort in that for some reason. The job was rewarding, and interesting, but the pay and commute really sucked.
As for helping others, there were a handful of us in the job shop before it was bought by a bigger machine shop. It's a fairly solitary job.