Live data from Hacker News

Ask HN: Developers who switched careers, what are you doing now?

news.ycombinator.com

151–160 of 344 posts

Re: Ask HN: Developers who switched careers, what are you doing now?

#151
I started my career with 5 years in IT/devops. During that time, a few friends and I started a retail hobby game store (Magic the Gathering, board games, etc). Did that for 18 years. During that time, we wrote code and used technology to give us a competitive edge. Closed the store during Covid. Now I'm applying to developer jobs.

We were quite successful but the retail was wearing on me. Specifically retail employees are a challenging bunch to manage because retail margins are so low. I developed a saying: "You can either find someone good at customer service or someone knowledgeable. Anyone who's good at both can find a job paying a lot more." The best employees we had always left for a career in a field outside of retail.

My manager was a great guy. He's very personable, remembers everyone's name, very caring, and knows the products inside and out. He does lack a few management skills but I think he's probably near the top in the industry. He's studying to become a social worker.

During the time we had the store, we did a software startup and had a couple of engineers. I was far happier doing that work and working with that team.

When Covid hit and everything shutdown, I was delivering product to customers and thinking to myself over and over again "I would rather be writing code." So we decided to close. It was really sad to close the store after 18 years. However, my wife told me a few months later that I looked far happier than I had been for years. Now I'm really excited to be getting back into the tech industry.

Re: Ask HN: Developers who switched careers, what are you doing now?

#153
About five years into my career, I pivoted into a consulting position at a tech company. Still was coding often but the role was more about instructing and tutoring customers on best practices, methodologies, and newer tech like containers. Did that for a few years. Then a few months ago I realized that, while I enjoy coding, I was more passionate about the human interaction and teaching. Now soon I'll be starting a sales engineer role selling, and teaching, a cool product and making more money than I would have as a developer.

Re: Ask HN: Developers who switched careers, what are you doing now?

#154
post #6

Switched to remodeling houses and landscaping. I switched because this is better. Healthier. Saner. Happier. More in line with my long-term goals and general growth.

I'm afraid this sector is soon going to be saturated.

That's what people have been saying about software engineering for 20+ years. More substantively, I wouldn't count on the sector getting saturated. The US has under-built new homes for a decade, and available housing stock is extremely low. A lot of the money that would have gone to buying a new home is flowing into renovations.

Re: Ask HN: Developers who switched careers, what are you doing now?

#155
post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That would help with climate change, but the biggest part is reducing our consumption in all senses. For example, my electricity bill is 10€/month, I have no fridge, use no heating, no hot water, so I'd totally be able to live with just a small solar panel, as I almost never use a device that requires a high power (I eat mostly raw fruits/vegs, more rarely eggs, fish or rice)

That sounds horrible haha, each to their own. I used to live like that when I had no money, maybe I’m a bit biased I think I’ll wait till corporates are mandated to reduce waste at scale before I go that far. Ever seen how much waste a single Dominos store makes per day? Can’t recycle greased cardboard

Same here as a student, but I kept that lifestyle since then because I like that simplicity, the amount of money I earn doesn't change anything to that

Re: Ask HN: Developers who switched careers, what are you doing now?

#156
post #60

Product Management. I hate it, but I was too stupid to get into FAANG as an SDE and my personality type better matches the role. I love coding and have done it my whole life and for 10 years professionally but at the highest level I’m simply not as smart as other people

Au contraire. “faang” ( with the exception of the “n” ) engineers aren’t on average smarter than gen pop devs. They are simply willing to grind leetcode and put up with a lot more behavioral stressors ( large companies are incredibly difficult to prove impact and all the low hanging fruit is done, so the fights are more bitter because the stakes are lower )

You're being downvoted but your point about FAANG engineers not being "special" resonates to a degree with me. I think every team need engineers, that are learning, to do the drudgery — even (especially?) FAANG companies. (I did mostly that in my own career.)

To be sure, FAANG companies have their luminaries that are some of the brightest people I have ever known. Among engineering they are recognized as the really smart ones — the ones you go to when a bug is kicking your ass (for example — or when you need to re-architect the entire graphics pipeline of your product in order to stream 60 FPS 1080K video).

But they are not representative of the rank and file at big companies.

Re: Ask HN: Developers who switched careers, what are you doing now?

#157
Moved from development to quant trading. Still involves writing code but that's not the focus, and the code is for yourself, not somebody else. Much more satisfying having such a direct feedback loop between your code/research and its impact on the markets in production. Also feels more intellectually stimulating in that many of the problems you solve don't have an existing solution (or at least not one in the public domain). And very satisfying if you're a competitive person, because your every success is in a sense the failure of somebody in another trading firm.

Re: Ask HN: Developers who switched careers, what are you doing now?

#158

I'm not sure if you're looking for stories of moving away from tech, software, or just development, but I did the latter. I started as a web developer, but I realized that my favorite part of the job wasn't building new pages/apps but helping my colleagues when they ran into roadblocks. I got a reputation as a problem-solver and people would come to me with their thorniest bugs or browser compatibility issues and I l…

can you explain that role sound interesting ?

It's been a bit different in each of the companies I've had it, but fundamentally it's about using product expertise, general tech skills, and problem-solving to help the people who are using the product. Sometimes there are planned/scheduled/proactive projects, but the primary responsibility is responding to and helping with whatever issues customers are running into. This means the job can be unpredictable, because on any given day you don't know what's going to come up, but I like that - it keeps things new and interesting.

Support requests come in through whatever channels the team uses (every team I've been on has used email, some have also used Slack/phone/videoconference/etc.) and include things like bug reports, questions about best practices or how to do something with the product, and sometimes feature requests. As a support engineer, I take ownership of the support requests and do whatever is appropriate to drive them toward successful resolutions for the customer.

Because software products can change quickly, this often involves learning new features or systems. I often get support requests about tools or workflows I've never seen before (or that have changed significantly since the last time I looked at them) and have to quickly get up to speed on them. I learn best when it's in service of a goal, so this works well for me - I'm trying to help the customer accomplish their own goal and that motivates me to dig in and learn.

If it's a bug, I also investigate and try to reproduce the reported behavior. Sometimes the issue isn't what it appeared and the problem was that our documentation or UX was unclear, in which case I clarify things to the customer and file a ticket to fix the docs/UX. (Or just fix it myself - the amount of direct work I've been able to do in the docs/product has varied between companies, based largely on their size.) Sometimes it is a bug, in which case I'll try to come up with some alternate way for the customer to do what they are trying to do and then also file a ticket to get the bug fixed (with clear repro steps and getting as close to the root cause as I can, depending on how familiar I am with that part of the code base).

I also try to be proactive and serve as a customer champion - in most companies I've seen, product support has the broadest view of what issues are coming up for customers, and that can be valuable signal for the product team on how to prevent issues before they happen.

That's it in a nutshell. :) Always learning and applying expertise to help people succeed. I think it's a great fit for people who don't need to be in the spotlight but like knowing they've helped individuals and who work well in a rapidly-changing environment. (I think it might actually be kind of a dream role for technical people who have ADHD.)

Re: Ask HN: Developers who switched careers, what are you doing now?

#159
I went to law school and am currently a biglaw first-year. Trying to switch back to dev though (see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29690759)

Basic reasons for switch: 1) self-taught dev, so felt like I was always playing from behind; 2) wanted to pursue interests I had before going into tech; 3) felt like I wasn't productive in college, and thus wanted to have an intellectual experience.

I didn't think at all during law school that I would go back to being a dev (exiting to in-house counsel role in tech was always a possibility). However, working full-time in law has made it clear this is a huge misfit for me culturally, and also the work of being a lawyer mostly involves a bunch of low-skilled bullshit. I thought that I was leaving a more superficial industry to go into something with more intellectual depth and thoughtfulness, but it turned out to be the opposite.

Happy to elaborate if anyone wants; previous times I have mentioned this on HN, people really wanted to know more, but I was unable to answer them in time, unfortunately.

Re: Ask HN: Developers who switched careers, what are you doing now?

#160
Late career switch to fine leather bookbinding. Love it. I’ve always been interested in crafts, and they offer an immediacy and a tangibility that’s lacking in technology, especially in the cloud. Also, it’s a community that thinks in terms of decades or centuries instead of weeks or months, which is refreshing after riding the JavaScript rollercoaster for the last few years.

I’m currently apprenticing with a master binder who’s nearby.

Post reply on HN