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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?

#321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How did you find the vacancy? Isn't there some dedicated website for Europeans who want to work for an US company remotely?

Im also interested in this

I found it on jobs.perl.org. I already had about 5 years of Perl programming experience. And I offered to work on US timezone, which I think also helped.

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

#323

Emotionally detaching. I was a workaholic from age 16 until 33 and this was my primary identity. I used to always be proud of the work I did, no matter how lame the company or how many times I was screwed over. Then one day my father died, and I was fired from a company who I truly believed in and for whom I had sacrificed. This sounds cynical, but it's really peaceful. With the emotional energy and sheer time saved…

> I frequently espouse the virtues of a "Fuck you, pay me" work attitude...

One can enjoy the company they work for, but at the end of the day, they're not family and the loyalty only goes one way. Employment is a business contract and business is about making money. A company is going to try and wring everything they can out of you, so you should absolutely do the same.

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

#324
post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most doctors I've talked to, my Pulmonologist, and doctors that do the checkup during company required medical checkups talked like robots. Saying the same sentences every patient every day gets old fast. I remember one doctor playing his gameboy while waiting for the next patient in his very small examination room. That looked to me very uninteresting. What do you think? Edit: My Dad however long ago, a GP, had his…

Very interesting observation! I would say that that is definitely a stereotype - accurate, but not as common as you might think. For me, the real difference is every patient's response - some (many?) doctors treat the job as a job. For me, this is a calling. I'm there to help every individual (in my case, in the emergency department). So every interaction is unique because every patient is unique. I go through roughl…

Another analogy would be is working with different client. Every client has their own domain and can be very interesting. You'd however might need to quit and change jobs if currently in a company focused on one product/client/domain.

One of my previous companies was about writing automated betting software for Horse Racing. Interesting.

And for sure there are lots more domain.

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

#325
Got into consulting by chance and it just seems like a natural fit for me. Taking that leap out of strictly heads down coding and more into a "tell me what you're trying to accomplish and I'll help you get there" role has tripled my pay and is much more fulfilling.

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

#326
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 a…

Hi, for someone who is interested in starting contracting in UK, what should one know about taxes? Did you have to create a limited company? Could you please advise Thank you.

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

#327
post #38

Taking a chance and joining a very large corporation. Previously I was all about startups or small companies and was very much against the mega-corp environment. Over several months a colleague "recruited" me to join their team and I don't regret it. I've been able to climb pretty high within this corp and it has been a wild ride. Never in a million years would I have thought I'd have any sort of influence over techn…

>Taking a chance and joining a very large corporation.

I have two questions if you don't mind answering.

How large is the company you are referring to? 10K people? 100K, 250K, 500K?

What type of company is it? A company that builds and sells mostly software, or a company that uses software to sell something else (e.g. automobiles?). Amazon+AWS is a an example that is a hybrid of both.

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

#328

Tactically: public speaking. Strategically: forget about titles and career path and comp and just figure out how to provide value to the people around you. The other stuff takes care of itself.

I like how succinctly you've put it. I may add that as long as you are creating value or reducing the amount of collective headaches for the people around you, they'll keep you around.

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

#329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems intuitive to me that the thing you pour your intellect, attention, and care into for 7-9 hours a day 5 days a week should be meaningful and fulfilling. On the other hand, hanging meaning and mission over one's head seems like a great way to manipulate and underpay them, and being susceptible to this seems like a great way to become a useful idiot. Squaring these two views is something I struggle with.

Not everybody can have a job doing something they find meaningful and fulfilling, best not to delude yourself into thinking yours is if it isn't.

The counter to this is one can find meaning and fulfillment in any task, by doing it well and to the best of ones ability.

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

#330

I did following things that helped me grow, 1. My engineering ended in 2013. I was shit broke. I started doing online courses in 2016. Till now I have done 51 online courses in different things and just a month ago I got moved into a DevOps role (from a WordPress developer role). $0 invested in it. 2. The other best thing is growing my LinkedIn network. I grew my network from 200 people to to 15000 people (most of wh…

> 15000 people I can't imagine the low SNR because of that enabling you to derive any use from it.

Sounds like one of the random LinkedIn requests I get on a pretty much daily basis that I just hit the "Ignore" button on. I guess there are people who accept them. Furthermore, if I do get a random LinkedIn connect request that's immediately followed by someone trying to sell me on something, that's a recipe for reporting spam.
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