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

Ask HN: If you were to switch career, what would you do?

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

321–330 of 881 posts

Re: Ask HN: If you were to switch career, what would you do?

#321

Post by chiph »

Recreational vehicle repair. Sales are way up since the industry almost died after 2007/2008, and the manufacturers are producing crap quality in order to satisfy sales demand. It's not uncommon for someone to spend $400k on a new RV and have to take their new purchase back for a months worth of rework -- only to find out there's no service openings for 5 months.

What's stopping me is the up-front capital requirements to lease a building, hire technicians, and buy the tools & equipment needed (you can't just use an ordinary car lift on a 50,000 pound bus).

Re: Ask HN: If you were to switch career, what would you do?

#322

Post by conorcleary »

anabisengrin wrote: post #115

When I leave my current job I'm going to apply for an adult course on wood working. I love to build things, and wood is the most available and easy to work with material (compared to plastic, rock or metal). And seriously, I bought a saw, a hammer, a screwdriver last year, it got me crazy. Same as having a unix terminal and an Internet connexion.

Look into producing beehive equipment; even if you're not a beekeeper, there is a constant and large demand for high quality, low price woodenware. Fairly easy to set up jigs and it is easy to find blueprints. By the end you'll be a beekeeper anyway ;)

Re: Ask HN: If you were to switch career, what would you do?

#325

Post by lightedman »

I do exactly that as a break from my other businesses of lighting and network installation. Mining is awesome stuff. You get outdoors, you see awesome views, you can go it solo or with friends, and if you use your brain a little bit, you can make some serious cash in a short period of time. There are tons of BLM lands with abandoned claims just waiting for someone to re-register the claim and open it back up, or lands adjacent to that claim which were never touched and possibly have tons of material the other claim couldn't get to/missed during survey.

And then you get to start your own D&D-style real-life dragon hoard and put it on display. Very few people are unimpressed by nature's splendors.

Re: Ask HN: If you were to switch career, what would you do?

#326

Post by treehau5 »

I would love to be a performing artist. I can play various instruments, and am recently really loving playing Piano. Would love it if solo pianists could practice to virtuoso level and make a decent living, but sadly, they cannot. Unless you have the magical combination of proper connections, prestigious music school credentials, timing, and luck, you cannot hope to make the kind of salary I am making programming. My sister, a Soprano who went to NYU taught me this early on.

Funny story, her school call her a couple weeks back and I happened to be in the room with her, and you could tell it was some undergraduate performing some capstone research project, and he asked her "If you could tell students now one thing, what would you tell them?" to which she cynically replied, "Don't waste your time if you hope to make a living." and "Only .05% of you will go on to have successful music careers." Brutal.

Re: Ask HN: If you were to switch career, what would you do?

#327

Post by conorcleary »

khedoros1 wrote: post #5

I imagine that I could be happy building wood furniture. Or maybe becoming a car mechanic. I think that I'd still like to either make or repair something, if I wasn't going to be a software developer.

Look into producing beehive equipment; even if you're not a beekeeper, there is a constant and large demand for high quality, low price woodenware. Fairly easy to set up jigs and it is easy to find blueprints. By the end you'll be a beekeeper anyway ;)

Re: Ask HN: If you were to switch career, what would you do?

#329

Post by personlurking »

misiti3780 wrote: post #137

I would be a modern day philosopher/thinker (like Taleb, Dawkins, Harris). I would start with the classics and read everything, learn ancient Greek, Aramaic, as well as Italian, French and German (maybe Russian also, who knows) I would study the first proof in mathematics all the way up through modern probability theory. I would throw away my cell phone and do all of this work from a nice modern loft in the Trastever…

Take out the math part and make it outer Trastevere (far from the tourists) and you just stole my answer.

Re: Ask HN: If you were to switch career, what would you do?

#330

Post by lloyd-christmas »

bungie4 wrote: post #277
tjic wrote: post #207

Woodworker. From running two small ecommerce companies I think I've learned enough about MVP, shipping, inventory management, etc. From 25 years as a software engineer I've learned about building tools to automate steps. I'd pick some "hard to find / expensive niche (e.g. Greene and Greene, Art Nouveau, etc.), but offer repeatable designs, not do custom work. That would allow for lots of jigs, fixtures, using cheap m…

This is funny, I came into programming from being a high end cabinet maker. I had to give it up because I'm allergic to the components that make up the 'smell' of red oak. Which we worked with a lot. Theirs a real satisfaction in looking at a your work at the end of the day and being able to SEE it.

I've always whittled as a fun side hobby. My desire to do anything bigger is limited by a fear of the table saw. As a lefty, nothing in the shop plays nice with me. I'm too worried about losing a finger which would impact my income stream as well as my other hobby, piano. But, I still spend more time looking at joinery than I do on HN.
Post reply on HN