Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ask HN: Any successful transitions from a tech/IT career to working in the arts?

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 83 posts

Re: Ask HN: Any successful transitions from a tech/IT career to working in the arts?

#21

Post by SMAAART »

TL;DR: do it! But do it strategically.

The good news is that you're young at merely 27.

More good news: you have a someone financing you, your current job.

Think about being an Artist as being an entrepreneur running your own startup, the beauty here is that you control every single aspect:

- you control the product: you can change it and tweak it at any time. Discontinue a product line, or take it back

- you control the pricing: free or $1,000,000, BOGO; it doesn't matter, you control it as you see fit

- you control the branding: NFT or mass production, the choice is yours, and you can always change your mind

- you control the positioning: for the elites or for the masses? Mass e-commerce distribution or atelier-style single sales?

Just like a start-up you will need:

- some type of business plan, where you address all the choices outlined above; a timeline, a capital budget, and timeline of activities

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimum_viable_product

Continue to work full time as you start moonlighting at your new venture. With time you'll increase the moonlighting and possibly decrease the dayjob. At some point there will be an inflection point where you jump ship and pursue the new venture full time and either drop the dayjob or scale it down to part-time / free lance.

Resources:

* Jerry Saltz book: How to be an Artist

* Follow jerry on IG/Twitter

* Paul Graham book: Hackers and Painters

Re: Ask HN: Any successful transitions from a tech/IT career to working in the arts?

#22

Post by wintermutestwin »

>I'm wondering if I should decide on taking the plunge, or at least plan for it... since I do feel the friction in transitioning getting a bit higher as I spend more time in this field.

I spent 25 years in tech before transitioning into non-profit work. The friction/inertia was a bell curve for me and was primarily driven teo things:

Money: For the first 15 years or so, the money/benefits were the archetypal golden handcuffs. At first, the more I made, the more financial responsibilities I took on. But I didn't keep upgrading my lifestyle past a certain point and I kept increasing my savings rate. At the end of my time in tech, my savings allowed me to choose my career without consideration of the money.

Skills: I realized I wanted to do something else and so I shifted my career away from narrow specialization in hands on tech to more strategic roles (product and people management). This gave me a wealth of skills that were more easily translatable to roles outside of tech.

Note that I am not specifically advocating for the path I took, but just giving my perspective on how it worked out for me.

Re: Ask HN: Any successful transitions from a tech/IT career to working in the arts?

#23

Post by jeffwass »

I did a PhD in physics, then transitioned to a career as a quant in finance, and lately I’ve gotten involved in the arts with some side projects (music, writing). I’ve written the draft of a kids sci-fi novel and have a few other stories in the works, nothing published yet.

First, I would suggest finding out what you want to do. You mention journalism and literature, which are quite different. Which one more appeals to you?

As you may have seen, many techies here have GitHub side projects. So I’d recommend starting off by continuing with your tech day job and treating your writing as a kind of side project.

If journalism is your calling, maybe you can start by writing a few free ‘articles’ on a blogging platform.

If you want to do literature, then start by writing something. If you have a story in mind, get started on it. Maybe it’s a short story, maybe it’s a novel.

But whatever it is : Start Today! Write just a single paragraph, even if it’s pure shit. And frankly the first paragraph of a first draft is likely to be shit so just let it be shit, it can be heavily edited or cut later. But you’ve written something, you’ve gotten started, and have planted a seed from which to build on!

Also, Twitter has a brilliant supportive writers community. There are all kinds of things like hashtag games where you write a snippet based on the “word of the day”, each day there are dozens of different hashtags. See #vss365 as one of the most popular ones.

Most authors I’ve seen and follow on Twitter have day jobs. Some have only quit their job after publishing a few successful novels.

But the key is to write something and get something down and make progress on it. Start as a side project and see where it goes.

And get yourself writing that first paragraph today!!!

Re: Ask HN: Any successful transitions from a tech/IT career to working in the arts?

#24

Post by fennecfoxen »

baron_harkonnen wrote: post #11

There reason you don't hear about these transitions too often is because it's virtually impossible to have a "career" solely in the arts. I've had many friends over the years who where all variety of artists/creatives working in the arts including performing art, visual arts, writing, musicians etc. Skills range all over the board from talented amateurs to highly trained/skilled professionals. Nearly all of them, eve…

> There reason you don't hear about these transitions too often is because it's virtually impossible to have a "career" solely in the arts.

My little sister has a fine arts degree and has worked as an artist. She's had lots of write-ups in local and regional papers, and has sold at least one piece for about $10,000.

She describes being an artist like this: "No one wants to pay you for your work."

Re: Ask HN: Any successful transitions from a tech/IT career to working in the arts?

#26

Post by TigeriusKirk »

The people saying to keep your day job and work at a creative field on the side are probably right. As long as that day job is a low-stress 40 hours a week. Working at a high stress high overtime job will make creative work on the side impossible.

I spent the better part of a decade trying to make it as a screenwriter. During that time I worked what was basically part time dev work. Finding those situations was a little tricky, but the income was comfortable and the time demands low.

Despite having scripts that got me meetings with nearly everyone I wanted, nothing ever moved forward and eventually I moved on. I know I sacrificed some income over that time period, but I'm glad I got to play the game for a while.

Now I'm still working part time, fully remote, but self-publishing novels that sell a few copies. That satisfies my creative needs if not my ego needs.

If you want to write, start now. There's no point in waiting. But it'll be easier on you if you keep a decent income while doing it.

Re: Ask HN: Any successful transitions from a tech/IT career to working in the arts?

#27

Post by jonahbenton »

Your experience about the availability of paying work in tech may mislead you about the availability of paying work in the arts, of which, relatively speaking, there is very (very!) little.

That said, there are many ways a tech background is useful in the arts, and some of the most interesting work I have done in tech has been with arts-oriented organizations. Of course quite a number of arts folk subsidize their passion through day jobs in tech.

I would recommend viewing it not as a transition, per se, but an adding on. Good luck.

Re: Ask HN: Any successful transitions from a tech/IT career to working in the arts?

#28

Post by issa »

I went from a career as a full-time musician to a tech worker. When I say "career", I mean that I literally got by with the minimum of everything. It was fine in my 20s, but quickly became unsustainable in my 30s. This is why so many comments in this thread are focused on money. The typical path for artists is to start young and broke, or young with wealthy parents. Then it just becomes a story of financial attrition. A few people become financially successful and continue as musicians, but most eventually find a "real" job as they get older.

This is the depressing truth: as you get older you want and need more financial stability. So if you do want to make the switch, you should do it now. Be willing to be broke for the next 5-10 years as you chase your dream, then, worst case scenario, switch back to tech.

Re: Ask HN: Any successful transitions from a tech/IT career to working in the arts?

#29

Post by vxNsr »

You need to understand that success in the arts looks very different from success in STEM. In our field success is all about how much money you can make, there is a side focus on also feeling fulfilled, but rarely do you hear people talk about how fulfilling their work as a function of itself.

In the arts on the other hand success is defined by how happy you are with the work you’ve accomplished regardless of a dollar value attached to it by others. All the successful artists/creatives I know aren’t making STEM salaries but are happy with the work they’re doing and thus feel successful.

Re: Ask HN: Any successful transitions from a tech/IT career to working in the arts?

#30

Post by fnord77 »

I know of a guy who was a programmer at a bank I think in the 90s who became a noted fashion photographer.

many successful artists either live in abject poverty or get support from rich benefactors. Even Vincent Van Gogh got support from a rich brother.

Post reply on HN