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Ask HN: Pivot from SWE to What?

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Re: Ask HN: Pivot from SWE to What?

#21

Post by tayo42 »

coip wrote: post #19
torben-friis wrote: post #3

I see a bit of mixed signal from your post: you like recreational programming, but you hate leetcoding (which are close to puzzles). You mention that the non-technical part of the job (product thinking?) doesn't seem interesting, but you consider content creation which is very much people-facing. What is it that you like? Not a specific job or task, I mean what is it that you like doing? Solving problems for people,…

Are lc problems puzzles? Could see p.e. being close to that but lc has always felt so much more grindy and less creative. Merry christmas

Leet code feels like doing crosswords. There's a right answer to it, it's like a puzzle. If completing is a grind that's more of a mindset thing and how your approaching it.

Re: Ask HN: Pivot from SWE to What?

#23

Post by Magmalgebra »

> I hate leetcode and that keeps me away from most of the job opportunities

Odds are that until you can get past this mindset, you will hit a similar wall in every career, it will just be less obvious to you that you're hitting it.

Success at most careers means a lot of tedious grinding out basic skills. If you're lucky you like the grinding, but that's rare.

And here's the important part - getting better at this stuff makes the job more fun, humans really like the feeling of mastery. My first 4 years in SWE were miserable because I had no CS background. But I ground really hard on textbooks and leetcode, every minute of which was uncomfortable, and now my career is awesome!

Maybe SWE isn't for you, but whatever you do, commit to the work.

Re: Ask HN: Pivot from SWE to What?

#24

Post by sokoloff »

dfhewit wrote: post #16
torben-friis wrote: post #3

I see a bit of mixed signal from your post: you like recreational programming, but you hate leetcoding (which are close to puzzles). You mention that the non-technical part of the job (product thinking?) doesn't seem interesting, but you consider content creation which is very much people-facing. What is it that you like? Not a specific job or task, I mean what is it that you like doing? Solving problems for people,…

I think it’s clear: they just want a creative job. I get this as I’m the same way. I grew up writing whatever code I wanted, so it seemed like a great match. A few years into my career, I realized I had become just a cog in the wheel and that I’d always just be a cog. For me, as interesting as my career is, it saddens me that there are so many artist-SWEs like me, because the golden handcuffs can kill your dreams.

> it saddens me that there are so many artist-SWEs like me, because the golden handcuffs can kill your dreams.

Sometimes dreams are just fantasies.

I love programming (and other puzzle-solving). I’d love it slightly more if I could just do it in whatever field or direction stuck my fancy, but I’ve made peace with the idea that we get paid that golden handcuff compensation in exchange for someone else choosing the puzzles we work on to be ones valuable and relevant to them.

Re: Ask HN: Pivot from SWE to What?

#25

Post by coip »

tayo42 wrote: post #21
coip wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are lc problems puzzles? Could see p.e. being close to that but lc has always felt so much more grindy and less creative. Merry christmas

Leet code feels like doing crosswords. There's a right answer to it, it's like a puzzle. If completing is a grind that's more of a mindset thing and how your approaching it.

It is a mindset thing insofar as my opinion is that there are more interesting things to practice with, sure. Grindy endeavors aren’t bad, just grindy. Given how much of the practical application side of that practice is handled by libs/pkgs @ runtime for a lot of product dev I’ve been involved with, it can seem a bit much. It isn’t so black and white of course, but this is just an off the cuff musing. I miss whiteboarding sessions, and I feel like the lc grind does a disservice to both sides of the hiring table in a lot of cases. Sure, “what’s a better alternative at scale” comes to mind, but I’ll digress lol

Re: Ask HN: Pivot from SWE to What?

#26

Post by rcbdev »

lonesword wrote: post #9
rcbdev wrote: post #5

Why don't you either just say the country you're from or don't say it at all? Making the reader have to look up which country is the most populous on earth seems like the worst possible way of conveying that you are Indian.

I agree with you, somewhat. But now you have taken the trouble to complain that you had to look up “most populous country on earth” and yet contributed nothing to the discussion.

In fact, I have probably saved some readers the trouble of also opening a new tab and looking for this added context, by providing it directly within this thread.

Re: Ask HN: Pivot from SWE to What?

#27

Post by pfannkuchen »

Magmalgebra wrote: post #23

> I hate leetcode and that keeps me away from most of the job opportunities Odds are that until you can get past this mindset, you will hit a similar wall in every career, it will just be less obvious to you that you're hitting it. Success at most careers means a lot of tedious grinding out basic skills. If you're lucky you like the grinding, but that's rare. And here's the important part - getting better at this stu…

Maybe I’m not good at the basics, but as an ostensibly quite successful engineer, I have rarely had to do “the basics” at work, and I don’t see how leetcoding would improve my actual performance.

Leetcoding is basically testing how well you can cobble together solutions out of a decently large bag of tools. You run into other tools you have to cobble together as part of actual work, but you never have to memorize those particular tools.

So leetcoding becomes memorizing an arbitrary feeling set of tools that you never actually have to use in practice just in order to prove that you can cobble together solutions on the fly using the tools.

Certain personality types bristle at being told to memorize a large set of things for no practical reason. It feels subservient to do so.

Now if what you are really saying is that forcing yourself to feel subservient is required in a lot of careers in order to succeed, then yes totally :)

Re: Ask HN: Pivot from SWE to What?

#28

Post by barrenko »

8n4vidtmkvmk wrote: post #14
smackeyacky wrote: post #4

If the job application requires leetcode, just do it. The worst thing that could happen is you learn something. I’ve been in the industry since the 1980s. I don’t see AI as any kind of threat. We expected a lot of the waves of technology would reduce the need for programmers but I now view it like Jevon’s paradox: AI will expand IT uses not reduce the number of programmers. My colleagues all lived through various par…

+1 suck it up and do the leetcode. I kept failing until i studied. Never had to do it again at the job.

Hate it myself but +1 if you want to stay in the industry and you don't have other another manner of making yourself indispensible.

If you understand leetcode related stuff then you are sort of more useful than an AI, if not, well then...

Re: Ask HN: Pivot from SWE to What?

#29

Post by vladsanchez »

Become a Tradesman (Carpenter, Electrician, Mechanic, Welder, Plumber, Cleaner, etd) or a tradesman agency! They've become highly paid and most agencies are ripe for acquisition.

But since if you're so lazy/undisciplined to disregard skilling up (Leetcode, Coursera, Udemy, Pluralsight, etc) then I think your race to become one won't be any easier and I can't recommend anything else.

Good luck!

Re: Ask HN: Pivot from SWE to What?

#30

Post by solarengineer »

Assume that your cash runs out. What will you then do?

Until you rebuild your cash base and have some cash flow, please hit the pause button on seeking your calling. One's calling can change over the years, and multiple times at that. Those who have found their calling are able to continue in it because they also make money to sustain living in a self-supported society (there are no benevolent sponsors like Kings and rich donors anymore who would support artists for the remainder of their lives)

Even with AI coming in, there is a lot of need for those who can make maintainable systems and systems that do not lose data. How good are you with your basics? Solving the SICP can help you pick up new programming languages. Solving the leetcode and clearing system design interviews can help you land a paying job. Being AI-savvy can help you get jobs at places that have budgets for AI tools (and therefore also have budgets for other things like salaries).

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