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Ask HN: What was the best decision you made in your career?

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Re: Ask HN: What was the best decision you made in your career?

#221

Post by gravelc »

Doing a bioinformatics Masters degree. Had 15 years molecular biology wet lab experience and was getting very bored with the repetitiveness of it. Did the degree, learnt to code. Now earn more money, much safer in a highly competitive job market, and most importantly really enjoy what I'm doing.

Without taking the time to do the degree, none of it would have happened. Had 2 kids whilst working and studying - come to think of it, a supportive wife was by far the best decision career wise.

Re: Ask HN: What was the best decision you made in your career?

#222

Post by djuralfc »

FahadUddin92 wrote: post #220
djuralfc wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are some of the business related books you found interesting?

Business Adventures, Crossing The Chasm, Hard Things About Hard Things, Only The Paranoid Survives are great books.

Thanks.

Re: Ask HN: What was the best decision you made in your career?

#224

Post by shRaj9fEc8Vith »

tudorconstantin wrote: post #137
shRaj9fEc8Vith wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it's so sad that from where i live (SEA), 3 times average gdp per capita is no where enough for retirement. insurance and healthcare system is a joke. so whenever you got health issue, be prepare to spend butt-load of money. i have no idea how gdp per capita is so low yet people have so much of money (unreported income, corruption probably) I make about 25 times the national gdp per capita yet i'm just above average…

I had 3 times the average national net salary, not GDP, which I guess should be even more. But that income wouldn't have allowed me to retire either. It would allow us (me, my wife and a child) to live a comfortable life though. As a back of the envelope calculation, if you can live with 30% from the income, one should be able to retire in about 7 years.

ah i see.

Re: Ask HN: What was the best decision you made in your career?

#225

Post by undershirt »

mikekchar wrote: post #90
pandapower2 wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

interesting that you did the JET program at 39. I figured it was all 22 year olds. Out of curiosity, were you a single person? Wondering if they accommodate adults with a spouse and one or more children.

I was single, but the programme does accommodate families. I've even met more than one single parent on the programme (and universally it seemed to be a wonderful experience for the child, which surprised me greatly). The spouse even gets a working visa (or did 10 years ago when I was on the programme). It's a great job. I haven't looked at the situation recently, but there used to be an age limit of 40. I applied wh…

fascinating, thank you sharing that!

Re: Ask HN: What was the best decision you made in your career?

#226

Post by shanghaiaway »

programmarchy wrote: post #52
reedx8 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why didn't programming for embedded systems work for you?

My two cents, having done some of both... Embedded systems don't really scale the same way backend systems do. In embedded, you write the firmware, and it gets loaded into thousands or millions of devices. There may be a few updates, but firmware kind of gets frozen in time. With backend, you write code that can be used to expand a business. You're adding features to grow marketshare or scaling up to meet user demand…

More likely, the market for embedded is in China and not the west, so there is little demand for these skills.

Re: Ask HN: What was the best decision you made in your career?

#228

Post by BerislavLopac »

DerekQ wrote: post #203

Moving from permanent to contractor. I made the jump 5 years ago and have worked for a number of companies since, on 6-12 month contracts. The money has jumped each time, such that I’m on what I consider to be silly money now for the job I do — Ireland, not US. The work is always interesting for at least 6 months and I learn a ton of new stuff with every contract, much of which I use when building my own products (Do…

I've been contracting for two years now, and I agree with the majority of what you said. (UK here)

However, I've recently started considering returning to permanent, primarily for one reason. At the age of 50, half of which has been in a software development career, I find being a code-monkey -- even a senior one -- quite unsatisfying. I would like to return to leadership roles I had while I was permanent, but they are nearly impossible to find as contracts.

Re: Ask HN: What was the best decision you made in your career?

#229

Post by tasuki »

ur-whale wrote: post #194
shRaj9fEc8Vith wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it's so sad that from where i live (SEA), 3 times average gdp per capita is no where enough for retirement. insurance and healthcare system is a joke. so whenever you got health issue, be prepare to spend butt-load of money. i have no idea how gdp per capita is so low yet people have so much of money (unreported income, corruption probably) I make about 25 times the national gdp per capita yet i'm just above average…

>it's so sad that from where i live (SEA), Well then. Move to Romania. Problem solved.

Moving from EU to SEA is easy. Moving from SEA to EU is significantly more difficult.

I'm privileged to be a EU citizen, but not everyone is. Also see: https://www.passportindex.org/byRank.php

Re: Ask HN: What was the best decision you made in your career?

#230

Post by wingerlang »

jmpman wrote: post #200

Read “Who moved my cheese?”, and promptly quit IBM. It was obvious they considered engineering a cost center and were determined to offshore as much head count as possible. I moved to another company where engineering was valued as the driver of innovation and the core competitive differentiator. It was like night and day.

I just read it. Very interesting I must say!
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