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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?

#411

Post by pragone »

Dowwie wrote: post #259
eragone wrote: post #39

Changing careers. Left software to become a doctor. I'll graduate in 7 months.

If you eventually find yourself in a residency matching program, don't let a horrible human being acting as a chief of staff deter you from your hard earned accomplishment. These chief of staffs think that they are doing good by abusing residents, perpetuating abuse that they may have received long ago. You may be able to avoid this by not selecting any top ranked healthcare programs.

Yeah unfortunately that's an attitude that still exists in some places. Fortunately I'm going into a specialty (EM) that has much less of that, and my first priority is to find a group of people I like and that I want to go to work with every day.

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

#413

Post by mailshanx »

mikekchar wrote: post #90
pandapower2 wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

interesting that you did the JET program at 39. I figured it was all 22 year olds. Out of curiosity, were you a single person? Wondering if they accommodate adults with a spouse and one or more children.

I was single, but the programme does accommodate families. I've even met more than one single parent on the programme (and universally it seemed to be a wonderful experience for the child, which surprised me greatly). The spouse even gets a working visa (or did 10 years ago when I was on the programme). It's a great job. I haven't looked at the situation recently, but there used to be an age limit of 40. I applied wh…

Thanks for taking the time to write it down - very fascinating indeed!

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

#414

Post by bsvalley »

I quit for a year after a burnout working at a faang. This was the 1st time in my career where I had absolutely no plan after leaving my employer. I usually switched jobs in the past for a better job. This time I had no plan but to just chill.

What happened? I was out of the rat race and I took time to look around me. I could feel the rush of people going to work on the morning and coming back on the evening, while I was simply on my way to starbucks or to the nearest gym. It is scary. You understand how a 9-5 job turns you into a madman. People looked so angry, depressed, like robots. You endup doing things during the day when everyone is in jail working. You have to try it yourself to realize how life sucks if you follow the rat race. The only way to get out is to break the rope. My goal in life is to never go back to this dark place.

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

#415

Post by richpimp »

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…

The crazy part about overworking in the software development industry is that, at least from where I am (TN, US), job opportunities are abundant. I could maybe slightly understand working the crazy hours if ours was an industry where jobs were scarce or competition was cutthroat, but I've never had issues getting work. Yeah, maybe I won't be working on the sexiest thing, or making as much as I'd like, but I'm going to land on my feet pretty well.

My little bit of advice: save enough money for your emergency fund. I recommend at least six months worth of expenses. Not just for your primary bills, either, add up how much you actually spend in a month on everything and save 6 times that. That way, if you end up in a shitty situation, you can walk away and not have to worry about money, and you don't have to start eating ramen noodles everyday. I feel like money (or the lack thereof) is usually the reason why people put with so much crap. You don't need FU money, just enough to give you a comfortable runway to getting a new job. If you're even a halfway decent developer and you're in a decent market, six months should be plenty of time to get a new job.

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

#416

Post by clintcparker »

Not going into management too early. The opportunity was presented to me on more than one occasion, but I felt I wasn't where I needed to be technically yet. Waiting was worth it, because when I finally made the switch, I was already an influencer and well respected technically. I'm able to call BS when necessary, and actually provide valuable feedback and review to all of my team. I think I would always feel unqualified to lead technical people otherwise.

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

#417

Post by latchkey »

mylons wrote: post #384
latchkey wrote: post #315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I concur. Consulting works for some people. Myself included. Two years ago, I went one step further and moved from SF Bay area to Saigon, Vietnam. I've had a variety of tech jobs while here, but I am currently consulting for two primarily US based companies. My expenses are almost nil (compared with before) and I live a very minimal lifestyle (own and purchase very little). I plan on going nomadic in the next couple…

what were the first few concrete steps you took to make this happen? did you just start cold emailing?

Short version of the story...

I started a business in SF that brought me to Saigon, Hanoi and Da Nang (3 separate trips). I fell in love with the country and told everyone I'd move there someday. A year later, I quit. Immediately started searching for jobs in Saigon online and through contacts. Found a company through some mutual friends who hired me to come over and teach them about agile (I'm an ex-pivot). Got rid of everything I owned... Moved... haven't looked back.

Prior to my current consulting work, I randomly met a guy in a coffeshop in my apartment building who had a bitcoin book. I'm into crypto. Started talking, got invited to help install some litecoin asic machines for a new operation they were running just outside of Saigon. Became cto. Grew that to 1500 machines in two data centers (~5MW of power), ran that for 8 months until they pulled everything out of Vietnam (longer story).

It has been a very interesting couple of years.

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

#418

Post by richpimp »

Different perspective here than most. I worked in the retail grind for a decade before getting into software development. The best decision I ever made was going back to school and getting into this industry. For those who've done this for their whole careers, know that you've got it pretty well made relative to most other people. If you think office politics is bad in software dev, I remember people cannibalizing each other over a 25 cent raise. In any service industry, you really are just a cog in the wheel. It makes me appreciate what I do now so much more, and I always try to remind myself of that if I ever find myself down or upset about something work-related.

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

#419

Post by dandare »

Art9681 wrote: post #403
sanbor wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You're either very young or naïve or both. Almost everything we do in this world has good/evil direct/indirect consequences. For example, should I blame you for polluting the planet because you are using an electronic device to post naïve comments on the internet that likely gets its energy by producing some sort of pollution? What about the vehicle you drive? What about the slaughters that take place because of your…

OPs question was relevant and respectful, your answer is not. Good and evil may be a spectrum/scale rather than discrete categories, but they are not a myth.

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

#420

Post by tvanantwerp »

NickM wrote: post #362
tvanantwerp wrote: post #335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 c…

Strongly agree. The external pressure from well-meaning but uninformed donors to "cut costs" isn't helping the situation.
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