Earlier quoted context omitted.
Thanks!
I'm in a very similar position right now, could I ask you a couple of questions over DM / email?
[deleted]
Ask HN: What was the best decision you made in your career?
461–470 of 491 posts
Re: Ask HN: What was the best decision you made in your career?
#462Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you have the experience there are plenty of project management contract roles.
Contract PM roles tend to be axe-men -- you're there to kick people and crack whips because you're not part of the org and don't have to worry about future interactions or consequences. Also makes it easy to shoehorn in new ideas and break out of groupthink, which is necessary for big orgs, IMO. Plus you're gone when the project or milestone is completed, instead of having to worry about finding another role or layin…
I've been doing it for 10 years now, and that hasn't really been my experience. Sometimes you might have to push, but you should be doing that as a permanent PM anyway.
You can sometimes have to leave when the project is completed, but more often than not they have a new project kicking off.
Re: Ask HN: What was the best decision you made in your career?
#463Earlier quoted context omitted.
Define "medium-sized". Sydney has over 5m people in it and covers approximately 4750 sq mi. So maybe half the population of the LA metro area in about the same size?
> 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…
Exactly, the structure and subdivision of local government is quite different. The ‘City of Sydney’ has only about 200,000 people in it [1] despite the population in the entire metropolitan areas being similar to that of Seattle’s.
Re: Ask HN: What was the best decision you made in your career?
#464Emotionally 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…
Made this mistake too. When I started back in paid employment I set myself ground rules of working when I am work, no email/messaging outside of work, arrive on time, leave on time, no overtime paid or unpaid, not thinking about work when I am not there, no socialising with colleagues and keep personal chit-chat to a minimum.
I found that this made me a better employee - focused on completing work quickly during the working day.
Easier to set these ground rules when you start with a company, also easier to set when you are 40 than 20.
Re: Ask HN: What was the best decision you made in your career?
#465Earlier 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…
Wow, I lived in Japan for five years and have known many people on the JET program and never knew this. Thanks for posting. Would be interested in those documentaries if you remember them.
Re: Ask HN: What was the best decision you made in your career?
#466Moving from permanent to contractor. I made the jump 5 years ago and have worked for a number of companies since, on 6-12 month contracts. The money has jumped each time, such that I’m on what I consider to be silly money now for the job I do — Ireland, not US. The work is always interesting for at least 6 months and I learn a ton of new stuff with every contract, much of which I use when building my own products (Do…
I'm also based in Ireland, would you mind giving a range for what you consider 'silly' money? My impression is that Contracting works well at lower salaries but once you move into the higher tax bracket (40%) then the the disadvantages of contracting start to outweigh the benefits as most of the additional income is eaten up by tax.
Re: Ask HN: What was the best decision you made in your career?
#467Earlier quoted context omitted.
IME another benefit of this is you can attract a more reasonable class of people at work. When you can be manipulated by guilt and "the VP wants this tomorrow, it's high visibility", the most manipulative people in your org are going to latch onto you and praise you. If you are emotionally detached from this type of behavior, other people who are emotionally detached will be more willing to associate with you because…
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…
Four years without leave sounds really overboard. In Europe the law mandates every worker to have a one-month leave each year. Not granting the leave is illegal by the employer. Just keep in mind that in a capitalist society the work is never your everything as an employee. You're exploited one way or another and should detach yourself from the company in some way. There might be different circumstances where the employees' interests align better with the employers', but in general this fact always holds.
Re: Ask HN: What was the best decision you made in your career?
#468Moving from permanent to contractor. I made the jump 5 years ago and have worked for a number of companies since, on 6-12 month contracts. The money has jumped each time, such that I’m on what I consider to be silly money now for the job I do — Ireland, not US. The work is always interesting for at least 6 months and I learn a ton of new stuff with every contract, much of which I use when building my own products (Do…
Hi there. Any obvious and non obvious suggestions as to how should one switch from permanent to contractor?
Re: Ask HN: What was the best decision you made in your career?
#469Staying in development. I figured out early on that I had no interest in management, and that served me well during the 2000 bubble burst and 2008 crisis. What was harder to learn was that I had no interest in the Software Architect role. I thought it was something I was "supposed" to move up into, but as I talked to my managers about it over a period of a couple of years I realized it was a lot of meetings and drawi…
I'm 41 yo and feeling like I'm at a bit of a crossroad. I feel that I will be miserable as a manager, and will always want the introverted work of development. How has it worked out for you? Any tips?
I was able to retire at 55 last year, so it worked out. The last few years were spent at big companies so there was zero pressure to move into management, there were plenty of people that wanted to do that so they had their fill. I think there was some expectation to move into a Tech Lead type role but if you do some of the Tech Lead tasks unofficially (code practices, mentoring) you should do fine.
At 41 think of it this way. You're older and if you're laid off, would you rather be a middle manager looking for a job or a developer that's kept up your skills?
Re: Ask HN: What was the best decision you made in your career?
#470Earlier quoted context omitted.
Conversely, I took the opposite leap from a relatively successful corporate career to startup. I’ve learned a huge amount and appreciated the opportunities and flexibility I have. I think experiences in both worlds are valuable and wouldn’t trade either experience for anything else.
I'd love to read a write-up on the trade offs between the two in 2018's context.
Some quick notes...
Corporate Benefits:
- While a lot of folks look at bureaucracy as a huge drawback, in retrospect, I learned a lot about how to influence people and trying to see all sides of an argument.
- In some cases, it can be freeing to work for a big corporate environment if you manage to find yourself on a team with a green field project. It's got a lot of benefits that startups have with little to no risk of failure.
- Structure can be good for some folks, especially early in your career if you haven't got the slightest clue what you're interested in doing long term. I view it sort of like bootcamp for the military - you get a routine, you learn to function as a group, without the stress of needing to survive.
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Corporate Drawbacks:
- Bureaucracy - it can be utterly draining. Some fights feel like such a slog for minute improvements.
- It's easy to get lost in the mix - bosses can change frequently if an organization is unhealthy, team members bail, and product groups fall apart. The healthiest corporate groups can be incredibly freeing to work in and the worst corporate groups can really burn out your creativity because it turns into monotony.
- Golden handcuffs - I walked away from a big chunk of money when I went to startup land. It wasn't easy but ultimately it was the right choice.
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Startup Benefits:
- More work than you have people to do it. There's always something to do, you never end up with busy work, and you're almost always learning something you didn't know the day before about the business or your technology.
- Smaller groups that feel more like family and less like work. I get to work with my friends, people that I'd hang out with outside of work. That can be a double edged sword, but for me I enjoy it.
- Closer connection to the customer. At a big corporate job, you're so far removed from your customers as an engineer that it can be very isolating. For startups, you often interact with a customer if something's broken or a customer wants a new feature. I enjoy that a lot.
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Startup Drawbacks:
- More work than you have people to do it. If you don't set good boundaries and have a good culture of identifying the most important thing to be done, everything can feel like a "tyranny" of the urgent.
- Pay is lower, especially at earlier stages. I'm not terribly obsessed with money. I like to have money to travel and enough to get a few things I want but expensive cars or collecting guitars isn't my jam.
- Unpredictability - Business needs change quickly as you fight for deals, you experiment or cut features to try and drive costs down. It can feel like you built something and then aggressively cut it prematurely.
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These are just my notes on it - and really it's stream of consciousness. I'm sure if I sat down to write a real blog post, it'd probably be a little better reasoned.