451–460 of 491 posts
To willingly decide to leave, halfway through my professional life, a career in which I had become one of very few world-class experts to pick up something entirely different and that I knew close to nothing about. It was scary, humbling, deeply rejuvenating and ultimately immensely beneficial, both from a personal growth and from a financial standpoint.
Circa-2000 I was in my final year of university and working as a Windows service desk monkey in the SysAdmin team of a Sydney-based company that developed a platform for hosting (legitimate, regulated) gambling websites. Sun Microsystems happened to be across the road from us. My mind was blown the first time I saw the value of the invoices for servers and Solaris licenses that we bought both for ourselves and on beh…
Does anyone have advice for starting on a path towards sysadmin work? Ive used linux for years, I develop on a chromebook running an all cli ubuntu chroot and have loved working this way for the past two years. Im very interested in devops (Im a fullstack JS freelancer) and enjoy working with servers and the cloud a lot. But Ive never considered myself “learn-ed” in the ways of linux. I have the time to devote to lin…
https://www.reddit.com/r/ITCareerQuestions/
https://www.reddit.com/r/linuxadmin/
https://www.reddit.com/r/devops/
https://www.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/
Would also recommend looking at A Cloud Guru for certification course learning:
I started waking up early (5am) to start work. I typically am done with the important stuff by 11am which frees the rest of the day for things like "not working at all" "learning something" "experimenting with something". This also means that on the once or twice monthly occasion that I have too much to do, I still get it done by 5 or 6pm at worst instead of working into the late-night hours like I used to. I agree w…
I struggle to wake up early in the winter months in particular. My body resists being up before the sun. Do you have this problem? If so, do you just will yourself through it or is there a better solution?
Also, Dan Pink has a new book out about timing with some discussion of the 'stages' of our day. Some people have naturally different stages.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qR-NqSpS_cE
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/timing-is-everyth...
--
I'll also second the OP as I'm not what I consider a morning person (when unemployed, more 10a-2a for natural rhythm) but my current job has me getting up around 5:30a. I might be a convert though because, as they said, getting a lot done early is pretty amazing. I like being home by 4 and having a large block of time to do spend however I want. And it translates to weekends too where I find myself up in the world early. I live in LA though so our daylight shifts aren't as drastic in winter as other places.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Define "medium-sized". Sydney has over 5m people in it and covers approximately 4750 sq mi This reveals something many readers might not have noticed. It's a quirk of politics and history that "Sydney" is defined to include the entire urban agglomeration that surrounds its city core (all 4750 sq miles of it), but this isn't the case in most U.S. cities. For an apples-to-apples comparison, you should be looking at U…
As per your footnote, LA reminded most of Australian sprawl in how it’s all spread out. Brisbane, where I live, sounds big, but the actual city is rather small — and way less dense than central LA!
https://www.theguardian.com/cities/gallery/2018/apr/10/sydne...
Quite surprising how closely it resembles some of the US, especially Southern California, in the sprawl, car culture, and surburbia. Then again, I hear Melbourne and Brisbane are quite livable with better public transit options.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Since this is mostly a place where those in the software industry spend time, your story is generally going to veer off the path most people here took in their career. Can I ask for more detail about why it was that software was not the proper path for you?
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…
The top comment on this recent HN is from an orthopedic surgery resident who also has a side business so seems there's plenty of ways to continue to integrate both in your life:
To leave the academic track and start working full time on a mobile app at the end of my Masters. Nearly everything notable that's come my way career-wise stemmed from people noticing that little app that I spent less than 6 months working on.
Mind sharing what app that was or what it was about?
Fortunately, there was a product out there, the Muse EEG headband, with a lot of users and a decent mobile SDK. The company gave us some free headbands to work with, some experience software developers told us what tech to use, and a few months later we released EEG 101: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.eeg_projec...)
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…
I've taken the attitude that I should be as dispassionate as possible to the work I do. Which doesn't mean don't care about the work I do, but there's a point where I become a perfectionist over the projects I truly care about. It was actually one of my managers who told me to get some perspective about it, it was very hard for me to realize that my work ultimately doesn't define me.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 to…
>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. If you happen to fall into emotional attachment and feeling guilty again, don't beat yourself up for feeling those things. There's a big gap between not taking time off in 4 years/feeling guilt and being able to emotionally detach. Sometimes it takes years to re…
I'm actually planning on leaving this place soon. I've been with the same group of people for a while and it seems nothing is going to change.
I'm planning on letting the new place, wherever it is, know from the start about my desires for getting work done as well as R&R.
...or just start a business of my own. We'll see.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
More details?
I started a doctoral program at the University of Maryland in aerospace engineering, instead of going to work with a bachelor’s in CS. Had I started a programming job, my net worth would almost certainly have an additional zero behind it. But: A PhD gives you intellectual freedom you don’t get any other way. I’m the PI for a space robotics program. And in grad school I made friends I’ll have for life. I got to do a V…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Contracting in Ireland and in the UK is an easy transition as most contracts are run through agencies, so you don’t have to network or go looking for clients like you might have to do in the US. A simple start point was to approach agencies who had active contract roles in the same way you would for permanent roles. Starting a new contract is just like starting a new permanent job — hand in your one month’s notice an…
Could you maybe name such an agency or at least what they are called?
Hays is a huge one and I've done one contract through them which went very well. They seem to be well organized, know when I'm becoming available and more or less what kind of work I'm looking for.
Computer Futures on the other hand spam me with tons of irrelevant stuff. That is partially my fault however, since a long time ago I submitted a CV to them with lots of keywords that I don't care about any more. Having said that, I recently got an interview through them and the client wanted to hire me. Ultimately it didn't work out, but I don't think they are to blame for that. I certainly did not put them on the blacklist. :)
Some of the other ones are smaller agencies from the UK and Ireland, where I am regularly in touch with one or more of their recruiters. You can probably find all of them on LinkedIn. The good recruiters often post new contract opportunities including rates (a nice habit in the UK, still uncommon in Germany).
They all love phone calls, which is a bit annoying, but not the end of the world, IMHO.