Startup founder and now a CEO (which feels like the strangest job in the world). When I was working as a software engineer, I felt like I had a lot of excess energy that I wanted to put towards something that was mine. I am drawn to responsibility, because responsibility means that I'm in a position to make decisions that impact many people. It's thrilling and I enjoy being in the service of other people. Anyways, it's really hard to not have responsibility when you really want it, so I realized I had to leave and start my own thing to really get that.
Ask HN: What made you choose your current career?
41–50 of 69 posts
Re: Ask HN: What made you choose your current career?
#42It was December, I was bored to death staring at my four screens and thinking the weather really sucks in Europe in winter, and some guy calls me out of the blue asking me if I want to move to the beach. I had a chat with a few colleagues, one of them told me he spent a year in Australia and loved every second of it; his wife refused to move from Europe as she liked to be close to her parents, so he was stuck in the…
Your writing has a wonderful tone. Do you have a blog?
Check the OP's past submissions. You are in for a treat!
Re: Ask HN: What made you choose your current career?
#43I started tinkering with computers at 10, became an IT tech. at 15..and eventually started programming at the same time. I got my first professional job at 17.
Now I own my own software company (been doing this for 5 years).
Re: Ask HN: What made you choose your current career?
#44Earlier quoted context omitted.
Your writing has a wonderful tone. Do you have a blog?
Check the OP's past submissions. You are in for a treat!
Thanks to you both... that means a lot!
Funny thing is I started a few blogs anonymously, and they never really took up, and I stopped all of them within weeks of starting. But I keep coming back here because, well, a man is weak, and those upvotes mean something, that somebody read it and enjoyed it.
Somehow that "pays" more than the dollars I could have gotten consulting for the same amount of time it took to write it...
Re: Ask HN: What made you choose your current career?
#45Career: Programming/Creating a startup.
I was an Arabic linguist at the NSA, and would input certain numbers I'd hear into a tool. Whenever I heard a specific one, I was supposed to add 9 to it and put that number into the tool. This drove me insane, because I kept asking why I had to add 9 myself, instead of the program just doing it (since I could describe the rule myself). I started putting in trouble tickets every few months, but they were all ignored. At one point, I just decided I was going to fix it myself, and approached the guy who made the tool and asked him for permission to modify the program to fix it. He handed me the O'Reilly Perl Cookbook, and said to go to town on it.
I ended up finding out in the code how to fix the problem within the first day, and started thinking about other ways I could improve the program to make our lives easier. I made all sorts of improvements, and my cubicle neighbors saw this and asked if there was any way I could make a tool for simplifying their manual process. I got to work on it, and quickly whipped out something that stored all of their entries for later review. The big problem at the time was that I didn't have any basic knowledge of CS -- I didn't even know what a database was, so I built a system of just storing all of the text in flatfiles and using Perl's Tie::File to turn the files into dynamic arrays.
I started making program after program, and what drew me to my career was walking by someone's computer and seeing the program I built on their desktops as they were working. Eventually, the entire division of 80-90 people were all using my programs for their day-to-day, and I had to quickly learn a lot of hard lessons about putting things into production.
So, in short, I think the big reason I chose my current career was that I always loved building things that people not only wanted to use, but thanked me for building them because of how much easier it made their lives. There is nothing more satisfying (to me) than building something useful and having people who use it think you're a modern day magician.
Re: Ask HN: What made you choose your current career?
#46Pragmatism. I tried twice to get an engineering degree (electronics and CS) but I am too lazy when it comes to studying boring stuff on a structured manner. On my third attempt (age 23) I decided to water-down my aspirations and simply get a BS with a CS and Math focus. I had been programming for fun since age 15 (an Atari 130xe with a Basic cartridge) so it was natural to do it for money. Naturally, like any real professional, I started learning everything that I know AFTER graduation, using my clients as ginea pigs. I never wanted a job per se so the degree was more of a social fulfillment rather than a pre-requisite to start a professional career. I turned down job offers and opened shop right after graduation. I am 40 now, busy and happy :)
Re: Ask HN: What made you choose your current career?
#47I'm a software engineer. At elementary school I discovered programming (a weird local 8bit computer) and spent several years after that being fascinated what can I do with computers, but it never occurred to me that programming can be a profession. Just like people play computer games a lot and never thing they can make money out of it. Until I was about 17-18yr old, I had no idea what I'll do for a living. Then I needed some stable income and it turned out that I can make pretty good money using something I already know.
Re: Ask HN: What made you choose your current career?
#48Programming was my second choice. I wanted to be a math professor. One day I'm sitting in the office of my favorite professor and we're talking about grad school and PhDs. I asked him if it was worth it. He told me that you don't do it because it's worth it, you do it because you love it. I knew this, and I loved math, so I nodded. Then he told me what my career could look like after I graduated. Part time, working a…
I went to grad school for a Math PhD for 3 years and then dropped out to switch to computer programmer. If I didn't go to grad school, I would have regretted it, but having done it, it seems like a waste of time now.
That was on reason I switched out. I would likely be a permanent adjunct or be grateful for whatever tenure-track job I could get at some low-ranking university in the middle of nowhere. And if you don't get a tenure-track job at one of the top research universities, your teaching load can be pretty high.
I still occasionally read about stuff that interests me. I'm thinking about making some Math-based HTML5/mobile games in my spare time.
My biggest regret right now is that I'm stuck in the PHP/LAMP webdev niche, and I'm having a hard time getting interviews for anything else. If demand for PHP dries up, I could wind up in a spot where my experience has no market value and my career may be over.
Re: Ask HN: What made you choose your current career?
#49I left school and studied to become a graphic designer. After I graduated, I couldn't find (or keep) work because I sucked at my profession.
This was around the time the Internet started to become affordable (and thus popular), so I decided to migrate my poor design skills and started to get into making web pages.
After a few years, I realised I sucked web design too, so focused on the coding part. After about 10 years of learning to code, I realise I suck at that too and speculate I'm mentally retarded or something.
So my career is: Not Sure.
Re: Ask HN: What made you choose your current career?
#50I've always kinda of been into computers and technology. My first encounter was in pre-school with an Apple II; it seemed to be my favorite thing in the school and I'd always watch the teachers when they plugged them in.
I played with a lego a lot and would take apart my RC-Toys to see how they work, and then put them back together. By the time I was 14 I started learning how to upgrade my computer and shortly after I build my first budget gaming PC. Around the same time as the gaming PC I got a chance to see inside the Microsoft compound in Redmond because my to-be step-father worked for Microsoft. I got to see a glimpse inside the NOC, I got to see a server room, and I was amazed that everyone had Nerf guns, the vending machines were free, and everyone made a lot of money. I knew what I wanted to do now: I wanted to be a game developer.
I started playing with linux, aspired to be a "hacker" in the FOX News sense when I was 16. Started learning more, and ended up with a hobby. My high-school years were very rough and my career aspirations went by the sideline for a number of years until I got away from that life.
Then at about the age of 20 I became a recluse, hikkikomori, and my best friends were talked to and found over Skype and various forums. I put my life into anything that involved technology and I gave myself a skillset. Once I got tired of being alone all the time I started putting out resumes to anyone that was hiring and I landed an interview with an animation studio. I excelled at the interview, got a job as a sysadmin, and the rest is history.
A promotion and a raise later I still feel like I've found my place. The job is a perfect fit for my skillset, cultural values, and the kind of people I work with. I think I've found where I belong.