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Ask HN: Former devs who can't get a job, what did you end up doing for work?

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Re: Ask HN: Former devs who can't get a job, what did you end up doing for work?

#231

Post by srdesigner »

xyst wrote: post #224
mark_l_watson wrote: post #122

I am in my mid-70s now and for the first time in my life I can’t find part time work. I have had three really good leads in the last four or five months but in each case there was no job unless I accepted a full time position. Sadly at my age, I don’t have the energy for full time work, so it is what it is. My wife is happy I am not working, and she literally would not accept it if I tried a full time gig, even just…

> I am in my mid-70s now It says something about society that asks people to work well beyond their retirement age. I hope you are only looking because it gives you purpose rather than doing it because it’s necessary (ie, medical bills, rent). If it’s the latter, very dystopian and on par for this neoliberal economic hellhole we live in. Personally, if I get to that age. I am cashing in my chips. No way I am working…

I am 61 and still working at a tech startup. I love startups. I do not have to work any more (not wealthy due to an exit, but I have enough with normal savings and investments to stop now.) In my line of work (not an engineer, but engineer adjacent, lol) it is unusual for someone my age to be employed- it's a young person's game. But I am fortunate because I have attributes that many lack, including extreme tolerance for ambiguity (at work, not at life.)

I work because I like it. I like being around smart people doing smart things. But in a couple of years, I will stop working and just spend time lifting weights, practicing bjj and painting.

Re: Ask HN: Former devs who can't get a job, what did you end up doing for work?

#232

Post by tra3 »

xyst wrote: post #224
mark_l_watson wrote: post #122

I am in my mid-70s now and for the first time in my life I can’t find part time work. I have had three really good leads in the last four or five months but in each case there was no job unless I accepted a full time position. Sadly at my age, I don’t have the energy for full time work, so it is what it is. My wife is happy I am not working, and she literally would not accept it if I tried a full time gig, even just…

> I am in my mid-70s now It says something about society that asks people to work well beyond their retirement age. I hope you are only looking because it gives you purpose rather than doing it because it’s necessary (ie, medical bills, rent). If it’s the latter, very dystopian and on par for this neoliberal economic hellhole we live in. Personally, if I get to that age. I am cashing in my chips. No way I am working…

> It says something about society that asks people to work well beyond their retirement age.

I dont think that's what's going on here. If you click on OP's profile you'll see that he's written a bunch of books. He also mentions Common Lisp and Racket, not exactly go to languages for soul-less corporations. My take is he's doing it for the love of the craft.

I aspire to do this too when I'm at that age. I've been through a few career iterations with the only constant being is that I love to make things.

Re: Ask HN: Former devs who can't get a job, what did you end up doing for work?

#233

Post by nickd2001 »

In 2001 I arrived in Canada having quit my US tech job, during dot-bomb, just after 9-11 with everyone waiting to see what'd happen next. Not many IT jobs out there then. Never mind, plenty hospitality jobs in Whistler :) Did couple of seasons there. Felt sorry for stressed out IT guys that came to fix the hotel's systems ;) Min wage, but tips too, and free stuff people left in rooms. Endless supply of free tea which I'm partial to ;). Lived cheaply - sardines'n'pasta, omelettes (yeah eggs were cheap then) , porridge. Had savings from tech work which was a cushion, but didn't break into them massively. In the end, returned to UK , had to be a bit sensible, got back into tech as jobs started to appear again. Was great fun working on a ski resort, albeit a bit rootless / transient too, wouldn't wanna do it for ever. Now its "been there. done that", I wouldn't return. When you've worked in tech, getting a basic job to tide you over in a "normal place" can be tricky becaue people think you're over-qualified and won't stay. At a ski hill, there are like, former lawyers as lifties. No-one cares. They're just happy if you aren't a stoner ;) People don't think beyond one season. A few people though end up managing hotels and stuff then can hop to something else. So for some its actually a good career move. For others they kept the wolf from the door with free lift pass. I'd recommend this to anyone for a season or two, if they've not already done it :)

Re: Ask HN: Former devs who can't get a job, what did you end up doing for work?

#234

Post by datadrivenangel »

welshwelsh wrote: post #182
mywittyname wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a difference between reading the news at work or chatting about nothing with coworkers for a half-hour a day and working part-time while passing it off as full-time. There are plenty of developers who work 7+ hours a work day, plus a little more at nights or on weekends during crunch times. I'm one of these people and every place I've worked has had these people. It's not like all of our work requires intense…

The average office worker is productive for less than 3 hours per day https://www.vouchercloud.com/better-living/office-worker-pro... That's normal across all industries. If there are people who are actually productive for 7 hours per day, they are extreme outliers. I used to think that I worked 8-10 hours per day. That was until I measured my actual productivity. I worked as a translator once. When I timed myself, I…

Machines have a concept of duty cycle! Welding machines are rated to a maximum percentage of time that you can run them before they overheat and shut off. This is helpful for thinking about the importance of rest.

Re: Ask HN: Former devs who can't get a job, what did you end up doing for work?

#235

Post by gremlinsinc »

zvive2 wrote: post #160
secondcoming wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wouldn't it be cheaper in the long run to just buy a laptop?

the person you're replying to is absolutely unhinged, sadly

you sound like a person I used to date who my therapist says is definitely a clinical narcissist... love bombing, devaluation, isolating from family members, transactional and conditional, and discard.

edit: I ask because I used to have the domain zvive and use that username... so a little personal for the user to use zvive2.

Re: Ask HN: Former devs who can't get a job, what did you end up doing for work?

#236

Post by xyst »

_benj wrote: post #45

I’m usually hesitant to share but I’ve been doing commodities trading. There’s a humongous amount of BS out there about trading or day trading but the fact is that people do it and make it, and my best friend being a consistently profitable trader for the last 4 years didn’t help my skeptic case… At any rate, turns out that the challenge of trading is less of a technical or financial one. Sure, one needs to understan…

> doing commodities trading.

Game is rigged for big players. You are gambling.

> best friend being a consistently profitable trader for the last 4 years didn’t help my skeptic case…

Last 4 years have been a boon for day traders. Any idiot with a decent sized portfolio and appetite for risk can make a living. However you are literally staring at graphs all day. Not very fun or rewarding or contributing much to society tbh.

For every winner out there, there are always hundreds of losers. Something something, “survivorship bias”

> one needs to just see numbers, statistics and trust on one’s strategy.

In a vacuum, this makes sense. But the market can remain irrational much longer than you can remain solvent.

Good luck with grinding out there. The current POTUS is a massive grifter, and driven by pseudo scientific neoclassical economic theory. So your day trading days will likely be sustainable for the next 4 years.

Re: Ask HN: Former devs who can't get a job, what did you end up doing for work?

#238

Post by cutemonster »

popularrecluse wrote: post #50
beryilma wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but I started to realize that pushing 50 and being as cynical as I now am, I'm pretty much unemployable as an IC. Well that's me. My theory is that it is not age that makes one unemployable in the software industry, but the unwillingness to put up with shit cooked up by bunch of 25 year old CEOs, CTOs, and the like.

At my last gig someone that my team unanimously rejected as unqualified showed up one day the following year as our new technical lead and boss. It went about how you'd expect. Much later I told my skip boss about the kind of feeling of disregard that may have fostered as he pushed me for insights. And he remarked that it sounded like I had a chip on my shoulder. All I could come up with was 'guess I was born with it…

> Much later

I wonder if the new technical lead and boss still work there, at that much later time?

Re: Ask HN: Former devs who can't get a job, what did you end up doing for work?

#239

Post by xyst »

jmcgough wrote: post #171

Medicine. It's significantly harder than software engineering in terms of the lifestyle and demands on you, but I've never been happier or more fulfilled. A lot of the skills translate over, other than perhaps the actual coding.

Medicine is a nice pivot. I was in this exact opposite scenario in college though. In prep for my MCAT, I was an emergency medicine scribe. The experience there broke me and I truly realized how shitty medicine (at least in the US) really is.

Once you finish med school, complete all of the exams (STEP?), get a residency spot, and finally become an MD (or DO). The challenge doesn’t stop there.

Now you get to deal with a whole another beast: hospital and clinical based medicine in a neoclassical economic setting. Your patients don’t matter. Their outcomes (unless sued) don’t matter. What matters is pumping your billings at the end of the quarter, dealing with endless amounts of paperwork with private insurance.

Healthcare in the US is a mess and I am glad I switched early before getting myself into $250K+ or more worth of debt (med school is expensive af).

Re: Ask HN: Former devs who can't get a job, what did you end up doing for work?

#240

Post by gcheong »

mark_l_watson wrote: post #122

I am in my mid-70s now and for the first time in my life I can’t find part time work. I have had three really good leads in the last four or five months but in each case there was no job unless I accepted a full time position. Sadly at my age, I don’t have the energy for full time work, so it is what it is. My wife is happy I am not working, and she literally would not accept it if I tried a full time gig, even just…

Someone of your caliber could probably get some fractional job gigs, for example: http://fractionaljobs.io/
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