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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?

#431

Post by andrewbinstock »

phakding wrote: post #408
mattdmrs wrote: post #370

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Thing is though from the other side even if you have good intentions, you still have more then one people to think about. So your loyalties are split. For an employee, it's only one entity to be loyal to.

Most employees have split loyalties as well: Family members, personal projects, etc., which to varying degrees affect their loyalty to the company. It's how it should be. Neither side is free from conflicting loyalties. Nonetheless even within those constraints, both side can show loyalty if they treat each other with consideration and respect.

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

#432

Post by mixmastamyk »

benmanns wrote: post #63
scottfits wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

no, don't learn ruby on rails today. Companies still use it but I highly recommend using Django or Flask and Python as an alternative if you're starting from the ground up

Why?

Believe they'd say that popularity of the language is on the upswing rather than down. In a world where JS, Python, and Perl already exist, is there still room for Ruby? (Mention Perl because I believe it might fill some Ruby use-cases, and is generally already installed on Unix.)

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

#433

Post by rakoo »

rsrx wrote: post #314
rakoo wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honest question: what makes you want to come back? Why not settle there for the long-term?

Honest answer is that I don't know exactly why. I am really torn about this right now. After 5 years of moving around all the places look more or less the same and I am getting pretty lonely/anxious/depressed due to lack of stability/constant friendships and relationships. So I have to make a homebase to fix this. But the problem is that I feel like I would be making a mistake whichever place I choose. At one side I…

Sounds like you've made your decision already but you just want to be sure it's the good one, which unfortunately no one can tell you. I feel what you're saying, I've been to Asia (especially SEA) every year for holidays, and I love the atmosphere and the "easiness" feeling; however I do like the stability and the reliability of things here in Europe. Tough decision. Good luck to you!

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

#434

Post by imhoguy »

Tehchops wrote: post #391
the_new_guy_29 wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Im also interested in this

Our company is currently hiring an SRE in EMEA. US(Seattle) based. Full remote.

Please send me some details, timezone, spec. My email in the profile, thx.

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

#435

Post by loco5niner »

krageon wrote: post #350
anonu wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US Military is a huge employer and there are a variety of jobs and roles in the organization. Your comment is like telling employees of a company they should feel ashamed because management cooked the books.

They might be a huge employer but they also murder people. Even if you work in a role that supports murder and doesn't actually do it directly, I'd say that the ethical side is a concern. Certainly not something to be dismissed out of hand, even if you make the decision that you are ok with it. I am of the opinion that a "well it's far removed from me even though that is what the organisation's main goal is" stance i…

> but they also murder people

Not murder. Unfortunately, people are killed in war. Not the same thing.

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

#436

Post by rsrx »

rakoo wrote: post #433
rsrx wrote: post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honest answer is that I don't know exactly why. I am really torn about this right now. After 5 years of moving around all the places look more or less the same and I am getting pretty lonely/anxious/depressed due to lack of stability/constant friendships and relationships. So I have to make a homebase to fix this. But the problem is that I feel like I would be making a mistake whichever place I choose. At one side I…

Sounds like you've made your decision already but you just want to be sure it's the good one, which unfortunately no one can tell you. I feel what you're saying, I've been to Asia (especially SEA) every year for holidays, and I love the atmosphere and the "easiness" feeling; however I do like the stability and the reliability of things here in Europe. Tough decision. Good luck to you!

Thanks!

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

#437

Post by otakucode »

Does an accident count? The large contract I'd worked on for years got won by a new company. I had a job offer from Subcontractor Company A that I wanted to work for. But I wanted just a little bit more money. Like, literally 5k more so I wasn't taking their initial offer would have been great. So, I sent my resume to the Prime Contractor asking for an irrational amount of money. Figured they'd counter with "lol no, but how about X?" and I could use that to get a small bump at least from the Subcontractor. Then the word came out. The Subcontractor would get no slots on the new contract. Either the Prime picked me up or I'd be out of a job. Eep. I found out later the Prime wanted to drop me like a hot potato, but the customer went to bat for me, so I got an offer late in the evening after spending the day hearing about all my coworkers getting offers. It wasn't quite for the irrational amount I'd asked for, but I jumped at the chance to sign the offer. It still ended up being, by far, the biggest increase in my salary of my career.

The real best decision, though, was leaving my job. I had been talking to people for years about the future of work being online and freelance and such. So, I decided to just quit my job and see what happened. Turned out to probably be the best thing I could have ever done. My income dropped a lot, sure, but I learned probably 10x as much in 2 years as I had in the previous 15 years combined. The anxiety of being entirely freelance and chasing money wasn't really my cup of tea, but it certainly put me in a much better position when approaching employers with that experience at my back. Not to mention the psychological confidence knowing that no matter what happens, I won't starve.

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

#438

Post by Viliam1234 »

nojvek wrote: post #374
VLM wrote: post #367

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

All in all, if you’re working for US military you cannot make a claim “I save lives and do good ladila”, indirectly you may be ruining many many lives. I don’t think the US has a good reputation as peace makers, albeit the opposite.

> I don’t think the US has a good reputation as peace makers, albeit the opposite.

Depends on which part of the world are you asking.

I live in Eastern Europe. US military (and NATO, but I am just repeating myself) is currently the only reason why Russian armies are not marching through our streets. Western Europe alone would gladly sacrifice us at any moment.

I understand that if you asked e.g. someone from South America, you could get a dramatically different answer. But I am speaking for myself right now.

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

#439

Post by [deleted] »

bungie4 wrote: post #303
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…

Yup. Hard lesson. The contract between employer and employee is a simple one. You trade skill and time for money [Period].

[deleted]

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

#440

Post by magnusdeus123 »

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…

This isn't the first time I've seen your comments and thought to myself: "This guy sounds like an awesome dude."

Great write up, once again. Cheers.

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