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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?

#361

Post by WhompingWindows »

andrea_sdl wrote: post #351

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…

"The benefits are well beyond the change"...unless you lose your benefits for not working full time.

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

#362

Post by NickM »

tvanantwerp wrote: post #335
m_fayer wrote: post #289

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.

I work at a nonprofit (thankfully not for peanuts), and I know that many of them take advantage of this. They use the "passion" of the employees as an excuse to pay way less than market rates, even if they've actually got the money. One friend of mine is a developer at a nonprofit, and I know he's earning in the 25th percentile for his skills and experience in this region. I am certain his passion for the cause helpe…

I mostly agree with you, but I wouldn't entirely blame nonprofits. There's a lot of public pressure on nonprofits to reduce costs as much as possible because everyone is obsessed with "overhead". This TED talk explains the problems with this situation really well:

https://www.ted.com/talks/dan_pallotta_the_way_we_think_abou...

Choice quote: "so in the for-profit sector, the more value you produce the more money you can make, but we don't like non-profits to use money to incentive people to produce more in social service. We have a visceral reaction to the idea that anyone would make much money helping other people; interesting that we don't have a visceral reaction to the notion that people would make a lot of money not helping other people."

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

#363

Post by pragone »

Dowwie wrote: post #260
pragone wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely! I found that I was spending an inordinate amount of time in front of a computer and not interacting with anyone. I also was extremely disappointed with a general lack of self-improvement; I think part of that was that I just graduated, where I was used to everyone constantly studying and working to improve themselves. These experiences may have also been in the minority in the industry, but they were my e…

Don't discount your expertise! I met a doctor who programs and that lead him to becoming the resident health informatics guru on staff. We met at a local Meetup for a programming language.

for sure! I hope to be able to incorporate my previous life into my future career. My real dream is to build an EMR designed for patient care, but is also able to do billing (all EMRs were designed and built for billing specifications, and is one of the reasons they all suck to use as clinicians). But I don't have the time or energy to pursue the enterprise sales apparently necessary for the field.

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

#364

Post by pragone »

profalseidol wrote: post #324
pragone wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That's a good way of putting it!

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

#365

Post by sreyaNotfilc »

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…

That hits close to home for me recently. I was very attached to the company I work for that I sacrificed myself for it. I've, in a way, lost who I am as a person, and became more-or-less a tool that produces code. Not a human at all.

About a month ago, I put in leave for the first time in 4 years. I rarely take the day off, so this was a big deal. And, I felt kinda guilty doing it. Even though the rest of the team took their time off, I felt I had to be the responsible one.

Well, the week before the leave was to occur, we had an "important demo" to get ready for. This demo was something out of the blue, but I was asked to still work during my leave. I said "OK" an was really pissed.

That night I couldn't sleep. I felt that I put in all my quality work, why can I not take my proper leave like everyone else? The next day, I put my leave back in and took a nice restful week off last week!

The world didn't end. I'm still employed, and the demo (the all important demo) was canceled because other devs haven't even finished their work.

It felt good to be detached emotionally. Never again will I sacrifice my personal time again at work. Its not worth it to yourself, and also to the company.

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

#366

Post by hanley »

andrea_sdl wrote: post #351

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…

How do they handle company benefits like 401k, health care, etc when you reduce your hours down from "full-time"?

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

#367

Post by VLM »

sanbor wrote: post #291
yutyut wrote: post #134

I was a mid-level developer at a large software company making a very competitive salary and quit to join the U.S. Marine Corps and train to become a Naval Aviator. I'm now a 'mid-level' AH-1Z pilot. I work longer hours and have generally a lower quality of life but there's something to be said for the immensely unique things I've gotten to do and how profoundly well-rounded the entire experience has made me. I will…

With respect I'd like to ask if you don't have ethical issues. The military forces of USA has been doing pretty bad stuff in the last 50 years, so I have the feeling that you're not saving lifes but rather ruining them. War became such a common thing and nonsense in the US that at this point thatnpeople is not sure if they're at war or not.

Its hard to analyze which way the balance tips if on one side of the balance his job is fulfilling, while on the other side of the balance sophistry gets upvotes. They're almost orthogonal issues.

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

#368

Post by billsmithaustin »

Quitting my job at an enterprise software company. I worked for a series of companies that wrote software that they didn't actually use (or at least their operations didn't depend on using it). Not eating their own dog food meant they could get away with selling software that didn't work very well. It was demoralizing to be told we had to prioritize making new things over fixing what we had.

Now I only work for companies that use their software to provide a service. There is more of an incentive for the software to actually work.

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

#369

Post by __exit__ »

aavotins wrote: post #174

Long story short - I was brave and stood up for myself, demanding the righteous thing. I was 15 years old back then. I had just learned how to code and my hunger for programming was insatiable. I didn't think much, browsed through relevant classifieds and sent out a couple of honest e-mails stating that I really want to have a job, but I have no real life experience. A company replied within a few days and they were…

Glad it worked out in the end for you!

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

#370

Post by mattdmrs »

phakding wrote: post #25

There is no loyalty in business. Keep your loyalty for your family and may be friends, not for the company you work for. The company will never be loyal back. Have an opportunity to make more or work more interesting? Grab it with both hands. If you are 99.99% of the workforce, you are not indispensable no matter how much you think you are.

Disclaimer: I have a company and I've started a few in the past.

My take is that the loyalty a company has towards a given employee cannot be the same, simply because it lacks the emotional basis that usually makes that loyalty as strong and/or as irrational. It's completely a matter of company culture which, in most cases, isn't very empathic to employees.

I don't think lack of loyalty is a rule though. I think that if the company culture is set up properly, it can totally have some form of valuable, albeit different, loyalty towards its employees.

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