Ask HN: What is the smartest career path to take?

Someone asked me what would I regret not doing at the end of my life. When ever that would be. As is common wisdom we regret what we do not do, not what we choose to do.

So I quite my job and road a bicycle up the east coast for 6 weeks. Followed a year later w NZ and Australia. Then the UK ....

Take concrete steps in a promising direction and judge the results along the way.

For example, if you want to pursue a higher-paying job:

* Do interviews at big tech companies. Talk to the people who work there and really learn what it’s like to work there.

* Visit cities like SF, NYC, and Seattle, meet local people, and see if you would love to move there.

Same goes for the other options. Spend some time working for free with someone who has a startup idea and see if you like it. And so on.

My personal anecdote: I’ve always tried to do interesting things with meaningful impact while staying away from dark pattern systems (ad tech, marketing tech, surveillance tech) as they are detrimental to society at large. This has led me to spend more time on safety critical systems. Also, I prefer to research algorithms, techniques and tools that other engineers can use to deliver products. I try to write code that other engineers will use.

My choices have led me to enjoy high autonomy at the price of salary, which is about adequate at best. That’s the price of the moral high ground.

It may be that what’s bothering you is the lack of impact. It seems that most of your research doesn’t lead to products, and the market share of the products also sounds fairly niche.

Perhaps doing the same role at a large corporation with a large client base will scratch the itch. Govt. is also another choice. Policy impact can be massive. Your research will be more focused on tech that actually has a chance of being useful to the business and some of the code you write will end up in a production system. Now, this will likely still make you less money, sometimes far less, than the folks in operations, basically those in the line of fire responsible for ensuring continuous operation. You could go work for them instead if money is more important.

That’s the fundamental tradeoff: autonomy or money. It’s entirely up to you to decide which is worth more to you.

I won’t jump into opening your own business because that requires a completely different skillset, and frankly it’s very difficult to succeed if you’re not inherently a people person. It would only really work if you have a unique skill catering to a dedicated, pre-made market. Every other type of business seems to require a lot of people-handling, and overall is the least autonomous of the three. The client is always your boss. Ergo if you have many clients, you have many bosses. Of course, giving people exactly what they want can make you a billionaire, so there’s that tradeoff again.

First thing to realize is that you are already very successful in monetary terms. You're in a top percentile of earnings and have options open to you many people would dream of. You've got lucky!

Once you have accepted that, you need to work out what is driving you on because it is likely ego rather interest or passion or desire. It's about how you can demonstrate you are a success to some figure you have chosen to arbitrate your success - be that friends/family/organisation/other.

The smart thing to do is what you want to do and is bringing you closer to fulfilling you current life goals - and these will change.

Luck can turn bad very quick and go well - one career move ended up increasing my income massively - but my latest one due to bad timing with covid has left me unemployed and looking for work!

B. Work at a FAANG. You'll get serious dollars. Use that to build long runway. Run company later or just FIRE yourself to peace.

Don't waste time on rinky dink stuff right now.