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Ask HN: Have you ever thought of leaving programming for something else?

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Re: Ask HN: Have you ever thought of leaving programming for something else?

#141

Post by saneshark »

CyberFonic wrote: post #48
jxm262 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can I ask how you got started in the field? I actually began my career in Accounting (my undergrad is in it), and still find the world of finance pretty interesting. Somewhere along the line I ended up in Engineering and have been a Software Dev ever since. But I do still think about getting into trading at some point, but not sure how to transition.

How does an accountant end up in "engineering" without going back to Uni and doing an engineering degree?

Malcolm Gladwell's much contested principle that 10,000 hours of deliberate practice can make anyone world-class in a field, aside.

Software engineering is incredibly high in demand, there are countless free resources and courses available online, and there are a lot of people out there with the capacity to teach themselves. Software engineering is probably the single most enabling thing one could teach themselves in today's world.

There are people who learned how to code, tossed an app in the App Store and made millions. Or someone who started a wordpress blog, dabbled in some customization and discovered a passion for writing code that they never knew existed. It's like teaching yourself how to read, it enables you to learn and understand more.

It's probably one of the few professions where Malcolm Gladwell's contentious principle holds true. Do it religiously for 5-6 years and absorb everything you learn like a sponge, and you are probably more of an expert in your field than someone graduating from a University because you're on the cutting edge whereas they're just figuring out where they fit into the picture.

Re: Ask HN: Have you ever thought of leaving programming for something else?

#142

Post by nostrademons »

JDiculous wrote: post #109
sean_patel wrote: post #83

Programming is a creative art, and when I say that to my non-programmer friends, they laugh it off, but if you think about it, it is true. Just like artists, the programmers, coders, developers all design and create new things that didn't exist before, and no 2 programs or applications or completely functioning code will be identical for anything other than a fizzbuzz type test. So it is natural for the creatives to…

Programming involves very little creativity compared to actual art, so to call it a "creative art" is a gross exaggeration. A programmer is given a very specific set of tasks (eg. send data from A to B, fix bug, implement X), and his problems are mostly technical. This doesn't even compare to the creativity involved in a real artistic endeavor like designing your own videogame, writing your own screenplay, or composi…

Perhaps I've just been lucky with jobs, but my daily work hasn't been "send data from A to B, fix bug" since my first job before college (except for ramp-up time when I was just starting at Google, and even then my manager was like "Do you really want to just be fixing unit tests?". It was "Give quants a development environment where they can quickly write algorithms that will run on our parallel-processing cluster", "Visualize violations of Reg NMS for the SEC", "Let teenagers build their own casual games through a WYSIWYG interface and share them with their friends", "Redesign the Google Search Results Page", "Figure out who wrote what on the Internet", "Make webapps perform as well as native ones", and "Fix unemployment" (along with some newer startup ideas I'm not ready to talk about yet). There's been plenty of creativity in all of them - sometimes too much, since with creativity comes risk and the possibility that it won't actually work as well as it did in your mind.

Re: Ask HN: Have you ever thought of leaving programming for something else?

#143

Post by gandolfinmyhead »

Sadly yes. It's been very frustrating at times. I thought of becoming an environment artist for videogames instead.

Though OP hasn't asked for the following here goes, I feel the IT field has a lot of people wanting to change career paths, more than any other field because of the following:

1. Programming is an art, if not done right and assuming the product is in continuous development, will come back to bite you in the rectum like there's no tomorrow.

2. 99 percent of the industry is about shoving products out without any care for proper architecture or refactoring of any sort. Result -> feature addition/ bug fix times grow exponentially with time.

3. The IT field has no concept of overtime pay

4. 1 + 2 + 3 => loads of burnt out devs :-> people wanting to switch jobs regardless of how high paying programming can be

Re: Ask HN: Have you ever thought of leaving programming for something else?

#144

Post by spraak »

david927 wrote: post #114

I currently work in a good environment where I'm appreciated and paid well. Not many people in the world can say that, so I have a lot to be thankful for. Programming has done good by me. But I don't love it. Alan Kay is right, it's like building "an Egyptian pyramid with millions of bricks piled on top of each other, with no structural integrity, but just done by brute force and thousands of slaves". There's no eleg…

I'd say that's job specific. My engineering role feels very artful, elegant, full of vision. And bruh, the whole "slaves built the pyramids" thing is a myth. Easily Google-able.

Re: Ask HN: Have you ever thought of leaving programming for something else?

#145

Post by saneshark »

JDiculous wrote: post #133
saneshark wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting. I actually had the opposite experience. I majored in Economics and worked in commercial banking for a number of years, then moved to Chicago and took a job at a proprietary trading firm, mostly trading Grain contracts intra-exchange. It was incredibly fun, extremely lucrative, but also pretty stressful. That being said, it was great trading from 9:30 am to 1:15 PM, then calling it a day, heading to a bal…

Are you still contracting or working full-time? I work full-time right now, but my dream is to have total geographic flexibility like you.

I work full-time for adhocteam.us, a government contractor. I'm active on vets.gov and we're hiring. Tag me on something you're proud of on Github and I'll take a peak, I'm saneshark on there too.

Re: Ask HN: Have you ever thought of leaving programming for something else?

#146

Post by cyberferret »

david927 wrote: post #114

I currently work in a good environment where I'm appreciated and paid well. Not many people in the world can say that, so I have a lot to be thankful for. Programming has done good by me. But I don't love it. Alan Kay is right, it's like building "an Egyptian pyramid with millions of bricks piled on top of each other, with no structural integrity, but just done by brute force and thousands of slaves". There's no eleg…

> It's an Asperger profession; smart but artless.

Sorry, but I would have to disagree with you on this. I've been programming now for over 35 years, and really cannot see myself doing anything else. I find I can channel my creativity into programming in many ways, and writing a good piece of code gives me the same satisfaction as writing or recording apiece of music. Yes, I am a musician too, and while they are very different, I see a lot of similarities between them too.

ANY job can become a task of 'piling bricks via brute force and slavery' at some point in time. Every good friend who has had a seemingly dream job has broken down and despaired at some of the drudgery involved over a beer.

One of them does, in fact, write plays that do very well in the UK theatre scene and he also writes TV shows that do well locally - but he often speaks of the interminable problems dealing with promoters, agents, crew and transport.

Another good friend tours the world as a physio with an international cricket team. First class flights and hotels everywhere, rubbing shoulders with celebrities. Many of us (thought we) would kill for such an opportunity, but he says he is tired of living out of a suitcase and having to check the local papers under the door every morning to remember which city he is in.

It is all a matter of perspective.

Re: Ask HN: Have you ever thought of leaving programming for something else?

#147

Post by jdkanani »

cygned wrote: post #140

Call me crazy but I have always had this exit plan. If my business completely fails, I'd give away my stuff and live in buddhist temples, would visit Tibet, travel around and spend my days meditating and helping people. Sounds like an insane idea, but as a Buddhist that would be a fulfilled life for me.

Count me in! Have an exact exit plan.

Re: Ask HN: Have you ever thought of leaving programming for something else?

#148

Post by mpfundstein »

iends wrote: post #42
mataug wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Leaving a high paying job isn't very hard if you don't have many commitments. I left a decent paying job to attend grad school and so far its been rewarding.

Sure, but I have a graduate CS degree, a wife, and a kid on the way :)

Me too. My kid is now 2 1/2. I'll stick to work until April. Then I'll quit and do something else. I also want to get more involved into business, so I'll enter business school. Saved me a good amount of money! One thing that is important to me is that we have quite low costs of living. And I mean really low costs. No expensive car to maintain, no fancy hobbies. So this works... Don't know about your situation though but I learned that you can cut back tremendously if you must.

Re: Ask HN: Have you ever thought of leaving programming for something else?

#149

Post by mpfundstein »

brighteyes wrote: post #7

If I could make a good living off my music, I'd seriously consider it. But that's unlikely.

what did you try to make it happen? No offense, but I know a lot of talented musicians that don't bring it to anything because they only 'business'-like thing they do is to upload their stuff on youtube/soundcloud....
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