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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?

#351

Post by andrea_sdl »

Working part time. Inspired by a comment here in HN I decided 3 years ago to take the leap and moving from 5 days/week to 3.5day/week to spend more time with my family.

My paycheck is less but I get to enjoy life a lot more and I have more time to replenish my energies. I remember that before this I always felt out of breath at work. Too much high paced, too little time. After this change I got more efficient (and I was efficient before) and that feeling of time missing to do things has gone away.

For anyone reading: if you have a decent pay and have been employed in the company for some time, consider this option. Chances are they'll agree to moving onto part-time with no trouble and the benefits are well beyond the change in the money you earn.

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

#352

Post by dolessdrugs »

JustSomeNobody wrote: post #338
sanbor wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, and the US military played a central role developing internet. But as a pilot you might be order to drop some bombs.

So, you don't think the US should have a military at all? How does that work in the real world?

Where are you getting that?

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

#353

Post by DIVx0 »

apohn wrote: post #327
DIVx0 wrote: 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.

Its a mega corp in terms that it is comprised of several large enterprises. If the "arm" I worked in was spun off as its own corporation it would be Fortune 30 by revenue. Worldwide I think we have about 40k of the 270+k total employees in the corp group. The group as a whole is in the Fortune 10 and serves the health care industry.

My part of the corp is all software. Product development both "commercial enterprise" grade to individual consumer facing. This involves plain old software development, data science, infrastructure as well as R&D (some basic, mostly emerging tech)

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

#355

Post by harel »

jlengrand wrote: post #345
harel wrote: post #312

I can't pinpoint a single one, but a few in a sequence: 1. Before I built my reputation and experience, I said Yes to a lot of things. Not all of them I could do, but once I said yes and jumped in the deep end, I found out I can do them and do them very well. Necessity was a big driver. 2. Life style trumps "exit". I worked with various start ups for 20 years. I founded and co founded 4 of them. At some point I decid…

Learning to say no is definitely high on my list. Only when saying no do you start getting valued by others. Taking job interviews not as events where I had to prove myself for a chance to get validated, but rather as a discussion between two parties to see if what they have to offer to each other matches is another that comes to mind. I can really see a before and after break in my career.

Yeah, decision 1 to say Yes was only applicable until I felt confident enough to say No. Perhaps I should have added 1.1: Unlearn decision 1, and say No when you don't want to do something.

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

#356

Post by sakopov »

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 was a contractor for 4 years before going back to perm mainly because of health insurance costs (I'm in the US). One of the troubles I had switching back to perm is that my future employer looked at my resume and saw me as a "hopper" since most of my contacts were 6 months to a year long. Luckily I had a friend already working at the company that put in a good word for me. But this experience made me think twice about doing contracting again. This is really the only negative thing about contacting I've encountered. It's a great way to be introduced to a variety of different environments and get a large bump in pay.

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

#357

Post by rshurts »

goatherders wrote: post #310

I started waking up early (5am) to start work. I typically am done with the important stuff by 11am which frees the rest of the day for things like "not working at all" "learning something" "experimenting with something". This also means that on the once or twice monthly occasion that I have too much to do, I still get it done by 5 or 6pm at worst instead of working into the late-night hours like I used to. I agree w…

What time do you go to bed and how much sleep do you need each night?

I've been trying to get up earlier, but evenings/nights are still prime time for family, spouse, and "me time." So, starting work at 5am seems out of reach.

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

#358

Post by rc_mob »

apohn wrote: post #339
expathacker wrote: post #235

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…

IME another benefit of this is you can attract a more reasonable class of people at work. When you can be manipulated by guilt and "the VP wants this tomorrow, it's high visibility", the most manipulative people in your org are going to latch onto you and praise you. If you are emotionally detached from this type of behavior, other people who are emotionally detached will be more willing to associate with you because…

Yeah, I'm not afraid to put in long hours here and there. But I refuse to make a habbit of it, and have clear lines in the sand of how much extra time I'll put it.

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

#359

Post by harel »

harel wrote: post #312

I can't pinpoint a single one, but a few in a sequence: 1. Before I built my reputation and experience, I said Yes to a lot of things. Not all of them I could do, but once I said yes and jumped in the deep end, I found out I can do them and do them very well. Necessity was a big driver. 2. Life style trumps "exit". I worked with various start ups for 20 years. I founded and co founded 4 of them. At some point I decid…

I have a 4th one, also quite important to me: 4. I decided that a rule that cannot be broken when pragmatism requires, is not worth having. Common sense must prevail, always.

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

#360

Post by ralphc »

Staying in development. I figured out early on that I had no interest in management, and that served me well during the 2000 bubble burst and 2008 crisis. What was harder to learn was that I had no interest in the Software Architect role. I thought it was something I was "supposed" to move up into, but as I talked to my managers about it over a period of a couple of years I realized it was a lot of meetings and drawing diagrams, and I was better, and happier, actually writing code.
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