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

Ask HN: How did you move from IT/software to something unrelated?

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 185 posts

Re: Ask HN: How did you move from IT/software to something unrelated?

#41

Post by wrigby »

wapz wrote: post #36
wrigby wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're being polite by not linking, and I appreciate that. However, it's truly good and I think other people will want to give it a watch. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G31_dEOvYuY

How did you get the youtube video from his profile? I looked through and couldn't find a way to correlate the two as we don't know what year he won.

I just assumed it was this year, and then I noticed he linked to (presumably) his SoundCloud account in another HN comment[1], which I used as (good enough) confirmation that I had found the right video.

1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12422365

Re: Ask HN: How did you move from IT/software to something unrelated?

#42

Post by colechristensen »

sidlls wrote: post #34

When my family moved to the Bay Area we owned a home. Rather than sell, we engaged a property manager to rent it out. We had a few years of excellent income from that which essentially paid the PITI (principal, interest, taxes, and insurance) on our FHA-financed home (including holding a "reserve" for repairs, vacancy, etc.) plus a (very small) profit. It definitely lit a fire in my belly to switch out. I find softwa…

Personally, I find going into real estate borderline immoral. Competing with people who want to own homes raises prices and makes people spend less on more interesting and intrinsically valuable pieces of the economy. There is some place for it, but right now there is far far too much money and too many people vying to get maximum profit out of a basic human need.

Re: Ask HN: How did you move from IT/software to something unrelated?

#43

Post by rezendi »

It's pretty non-traditional, but: in my spare time, evenings and weekends, I wrote a couple of bad novels. This took a long time. Then I took time off between contract jobs to write a good novel. Then I sold the novel, and got a couple of subsequent book deals, enough to spend six years as a full-time novelist, which was pretty great. Then I parlayed that into magazine journalism.

I eventually went back into software -- writing is not great for one's bank balance unless you hit it extremely big; my gross income is now more than triple what it was during those years as a full-time writer -- but I'm still an occasional journalist and even more occasional author, and those were an excellent six years.

I think the tl;dr is to try to turn what you enjoy doing in your spare time into your secondary profession.

Re: Ask HN: How did you move from IT/software to something unrelated?

#44

Post by learc83 »

BigJono wrote: post #22
learc83 wrote: post #13

You can do front end developer contract gigs on one of the freelancer sites. You won't make a ton but you can make 2 or 3 times minimum wage (based on Vancouver minimum wage) without trying very hard. You can make a good bit more than that if you get good at contracting. Plus contracting lets you build skills you won't get working as an employee. Work 4 months out of the year full time, or 10-15 hours a week year rou…

What kind of places do you look to find this kind of stuff? I'm based in Melbourne, so I'm not sure how different it is, but last time I looked into it the work on offer seemed overwhelmingly based around inexperienced devs working on shoddy PHP/Wordpress sites for far below minimum wage.

Upwork and various sites like it have plenty of people making way above minimum wage. You have to spend some time sorting through the nonsense, but it's there.

If you're in North America, speak fluent English, and you can actually program, steady jobs in the $20-$30 an hour range are easy to find. (note that if you're a decent developer living in North America, I wouldn't advise working for those rates unless you have a specific reason to, e.g., you want easy jobs that are easy to find or you really need money now.

Living in Melbourne it might be a bit harder because of the time zone difference you lose a bit of the advantage North American developers have over eastern Europe, India, and other low cost of living countries.

I still think it's probably doable.

There are jobs on those sites paying decent developer wages as well, but those are harder to come by. I did a bit of work on Upwork and other sites before I started finding work through the Hacker News find a freelancer and upped my rates to $100 an hour.

Re: Ask HN: How did you move from IT/software to something unrelated?

#45

Post by lowglow »

rezendi wrote: post #43

It's pretty non-traditional, but: in my spare time, evenings and weekends, I wrote a couple of bad novels. This took a long time. Then I took time off between contract jobs to write a good novel. Then I sold the novel, and got a couple of subsequent book deals, enough to spend six years as a full-time novelist, which was pretty great. Then I parlayed that into magazine journalism. I eventually went back into software…

Loved this response. I love the non-trad roles evolved from engineering.

Re: Ask HN: How did you move from IT/software to something unrelated?

#46

Post by wapz »

ssijak wrote: post #39
wapz wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How did you get the youtube video from his profile? I looked through and couldn't find a way to correlate the two as we don't know what year he won.

..."Music Video of the Year" at the Oxford International Film Festival...

So the oxford international film festival has only had one music video of the year ever? As I said we don't know what year he won.

Re: Ask HN: How did you move from IT/software to something unrelated?

#47

Post by JoshMnem »

There is a great job that you might be interested in that would be easy to obtain as well as provide opportunities for travel, free accommodation, and give you free time to work on programming, read, or whatever you want. You could stay in BC or move anywhere in the world -- get a job at a hostel.

You don't need any special skills to get a job at a hostel. I think that it would be much more beneficial for personal development than serving coffee or flipping burgers. It's very good for interpersonal and intercultural communication skills. Depending on which shift you work, you could still get in a full day of coding on side projects on some days.

I worked in that industry and was even able to get a European work visa based on it (along with the technical skills). Send me a message if the idea interests you. (@joshhostels on Twitter)

Re: Ask HN: How did you move from IT/software to something unrelated?

#49

Post by PritiKumr »

wrigby wrote: post #41
wapz wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How did you get the youtube video from his profile? I looked through and couldn't find a way to correlate the two as we don't know what year he won.

I just assumed it was this year, and then I noticed he linked to (presumably) his SoundCloud account in another HN comment[1], which I used as (good enough) confirmation that I had found the right video. 1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12422365

Good amount of research there. :D
Post reply on HN