Ask HN: What made you choose your current career? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: What made you choose your current career?

#21

Post by nickbauman » Sat, Apr 25, 2015, 4:19 PM UTC

I grew up in a software company. Mom worked for a German company that designed embedded software used in automating sea ports and satellite tracking / telemetry. Mission critical kind of stuff. The company would hire developers from all over the world and they would come to Germany and often live with us for a couple of weeks before finding their own place. So many of the engineers became "big brother" kind of friends to me. One of them gave me my first computer. A Sinclair Spectrum 48k. I started using unix (running on a VAX) at work playing with their kit, too.

Mind you I didn't want to become a computer programmer at all. I would come home from school and stop in at my mom's work and all these engineers would be sleeping under their desks because a port worker had been killed when a container ship struck a pier or a satellite entered low-earth orbit and flamed out costing $100 million or something. I associated programming with tragedy and high stakes.

So I went to art school. My senior year I was spending more time in the computer lab than anywhere else. We had a lab populated with Silicon Graphics workstations and I'd written scripts to render my animation across all the machines so I could get a result in minutes instead of hours. Then the web became deregulated.

Lately I found my way into working on rail automation software that had safety critical requirements. Which is exactly what I never wanted to do and so I quit after 3 years.

I'm still in the industry and haven't figured out what I want to be when I grow up.

Re: Ask HN: What made you choose your current career?

#22

Post by stinos » Sat, Apr 25, 2015, 4:21 PM UTC

Conincidence mostly. I didn't actively search for what I'm doing now (10% hardware 90% software from very lowlevel microcontrollers/fpga to highlevel business apps). Or maybe is was just destined to be: I wouldn't really want to be doing something else (well, except for quitting jobs all together and go live far away and be self-sufficient, but that's something with a long learning curve).

Wanted to go for biology first but hearing what it would take to really get into cutting edge research I changed my mind and went for what seemed, given my hobbies and complete lack of interest for other non-tech fields,the most logical: electronics engineering. Thesis project was picked truly by coincidence (basically the last one left because we were late, lol) but the company offered me a job because I fit in pretty well. Still working there now parttime (did work in different departments as well in the meantime, now I'm back where it started) and parttime for a startup but the job is similar.

Re: Ask HN: What made you choose your current career?

#23

Post by eliben » Sat, Apr 25, 2015, 4:21 PM UTC

lotharbot wrote: post #12

I'm a stay-at-home dad. I fell in love with my son. He drove my wife crazy. She'd rather be coding.

This is pretty cool! How old is your son now? Do you intend to remain stay-at-home forever, or until your kid(s) reach a certain age?

Re: Ask HN: What made you choose your current career?

#24

Post by tjconnelly » Sat, Apr 25, 2015, 4:22 PM UTC

"I must create a system, or be enslaved by another man's; I will not reason and compare: my business is to create." -- William Blake

Re: Ask HN: What made you choose your current career?

#25

Post by jonsen » Sat, Apr 25, 2015, 4:23 PM UTC

tekacs wrote: post #7

I started using computers at age ~2, programming at ~7 and learning CS theory at ~10. One guess what my occupation is. :P

Retiree?

Re: Ask HN: What made you choose your current career?

#26

Post by drglitch » Sat, Apr 25, 2015, 4:24 PM UTC

Career: Finance/Trading Platforms Developer (by accident). I wanted to be a doctor. And I hate math.

When I was 7, me and two of my friends signed up for a local free summer course for computer skills and typing for Pioneers (this was in Kiev, Ukraine, in mid-90s).

Learning MS-DOS was pretty cool and different. It was also great fun to make infinite-loop batch files that printed out some vulgarities on screen when the instructor wasnt looking. One day, when walking into a class, an older (maybe 15?) guy in corner of the room (who turned out to be a sys-admin) drew my attention: he had a bunch of weird text on screen in some program I've never seen before (all i knew was "copy con mytext.txt"). Then, at a press of a button, his computer lit up and started drawing colorful circles and making noises.

I've just experienced QBasic (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QBasic).

I was fascinated by what I saw and, with encouragement of the the sysadmin visited couple of sessions of an "advanced programming" class. Although I didn't understand much, I was hooked. With great support from my parents - who - and i'm still not sure how - found the means to get me a PC at home (those cost many months of salary at the time) - i started tinkering with graphics, windows, and random computer stuff. Then a "Delphi for Dummies" found it's way to my hands somehow.

The rest of it all, leading up to today, is history as they say. For me however, it's a series of completely random, lucky, events that gave me the initial interest and subsequently permitted me to pursue an absolutely fascinating career.

Today, i am actively dedicating time to get young engineers interested in technology and show them what amazing possibilities it brings.

Maybe one day i'll even write a blog about it :)

Re: Ask HN: What made you choose your current career?

#27

Post by humility » Sat, Apr 25, 2015, 4:25 PM UTC

Loved computers since childhood, hence I'm a programmer!

Re: Ask HN: What made you choose your current career?

#28

Post by toyg » Sat, Apr 25, 2015, 4:28 PM UTC

Pure luck.

After a few crazy moves and dropping out of 3 different universities, I was down to washing dishes at some crap restaurant and underpaid tech support. After 18 months of that, I told myself I deserved better and just quit. A week later I got called for an interview at some financial-software company I'd never heard of, they were desperate for an Italian-speaking geek. 11 years later, I'm a well-paid consultant in an expensive niche.

I'm not an ambitious guy, I've always just wanted a nice house, not having to worry too much about money, and time to geek around. If I could do it all again, maybe I'd study harder, maybe I'd emigrate sooner, I don't know.

Re: Ask HN: What made you choose your current career?

#29

Post by nickbauman » Sat, Apr 25, 2015, 4:28 PM UTC

crdb wrote: post #11

It was December, I was bored to death staring at my four screens and thinking the weather really sucks in Europe in winter, and some guy calls me out of the blue asking me if I want to move to the beach. I had a chat with a few colleagues, one of them told me he spent a year in Australia and loved every second of it; his wife refused to move from Europe as she liked to be close to her parents, so he was stuck in the…

Your writing has a wonderful tone. Do you have a blog?

Re: Ask HN: What made you choose your current career?

#30

Post by giaour » Sat, Apr 25, 2015, 4:28 PM UTC

Becoming a programmer was a mercenary decision for me.

I dropped out of an Ivy League PhD program part way into my dissertation because I was pretty sure that finishing my doctorate in comparative literature and continuing down that career path would mean getting on food stamps.

Being a doctor or lawyer would have meant going to even more school, but it only took a couple months of reading to learn enough C# and JavaScript to get a job as a junior developer.