Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

481–490 of 491 posts

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

#481

Post by momozaur »

tudorconstantin wrote: post #137
shRaj9fEc8Vith wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it's so sad that from where i live (SEA), 3 times average gdp per capita is no where enough for retirement. insurance and healthcare system is a joke. so whenever you got health issue, be prepare to spend butt-load of money. i have no idea how gdp per capita is so low yet people have so much of money (unreported income, corruption probably) I make about 25 times the national gdp per capita yet i'm just above average…

I had 3 times the average national net salary, not GDP, which I guess should be even more. But that income wouldn't have allowed me to retire either. It would allow us (me, my wife and a child) to live a comfortable life though. As a back of the envelope calculation, if you can live with 30% from the income, one should be able to retire in about 7 years.

What is the formula to compute the 30%, how did you compute it? After you retired, how much (%) of your salary will you be able to spend monthly?

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

#483

Post by gabaryza »

I too went the workaholic route. My departure came when I saw that the utter faith I had in a project was not at all shared by the Project's management. That feet of clay moment allowed me to gain emotional distance and maturity. Thereafter I was able to become what one of my later employees described as "the adult in the room". However, it would not have happened had I not had my technical heart broken.

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

#484

Post by NickM »

taphangum wrote: post #475
NickM wrote: post #362

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

"Interesting that we don't have a visceral reaction to the notion that people would make a lot of money not helping other people." If for-profits didn't help people, they literally would not exist.

I think you're misinterpreting what he's saying (which might be my fault for expecting the quote to make sense outside the context of the talk). The quote is referring to the fact that we frown on people making money from running charitable organizations that help people, but making money from running a for-profit business that helps nobody is considered fine and admirable.

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

#485

Post by dave333 »

A) Migrating UK->USA and ending up learning C/Unix at Bell labs. Still here and still use these tools 38 years later.

B) Moving to silicon valley, mostly due to the climate, but also because my house often made more than I did, and there are just so many opportunities.

C) Joining a startup - learned to be agile - didn't get rich but at least got to roll the dice.

D) Becoming a contractor - can get foot in the door more easily after the dot com bust.

E) Becoming full time again at large company. Nominal paycut but with all benefits and bonuses and stock actually earn 30% more plus more job security at the tail end of my career.

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

#486

Post by nik1aa5 »

tudorconstantin wrote: post #321
the_new_guy_29 wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Im also interested in this

I found it on jobs.perl.org. I already had about 5 years of Perl programming experience. And I offered to work on US timezone, which I think also helped.

Cool to see that there are people hired because of Perl! These days you only here about these new, fancy and very hip programming languages that you must learn...

All the best on your job!

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

#487

Post by kleer001 »

abledon wrote: post #301
kleer001 wrote: post #22

Quitting my job at a family-like studio and going freelance. I regret the loss of comfort, familiarity, and semi-security, but my pocket book doesn't, the pay increase was gigantic. AND I've gotten to see the world, lived in 7 different time zones.

What tech stack?

Houdini. I'm a visual effects artist.

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

#488

Post by FahadUddin92 »

minhazm423 wrote: post #474
FahadUddin92 wrote: post #424

Earlier quoted context omitted.

'The Startup of You' by Reid Hoffman is another great book.

Thanks for getting back to me! Would you be able to link me to the exact courses? Or, the authors at least? Were you trained in engineering, or self taught? Where do you go to for your marketing knowledge? favorite sites, blogs, books, thought leaders? How do you combine marketing with your other skills? Any other advice for a person aspiring to be in your position?

1. You could Google the authors/books/courses. 2. I did a CS degree but I worked almost full time as a freelancer learning technology while I was at University (this helped me pay my University fee and also make extra money for everything I wanted to try like different ventures). 3. For marketing. The basic ideas came from doing my own ventures. When you really need to get the word out, you start using social media, link building, backlinking, SEO, SEM, Ads etc. There are really good Udemy courses for that (try the ones that are free). I read the book called 'Traction' for exploring marketing channels. Its great. Most of the other things come from daily feed coming from different sources. I like gary vaynerchuk's stuff on it these days. 4. I combined marketing by giving business ideas and opportunities for expansion to each employer I worked for. Things like sharing links to good content, doing analysis of competitors and helping young marketing guys (in startups). 5. Read a lot. Don't try to be someone else. Adopt the things you like in someone and keep moving!

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

#489

Post by hikarudo »

ILikeConemowk wrote: post #446
hikarudo wrote: post #258

Founding a startup. Two years before that I had very low self-esteem, due to having dropped out of a PhD program and coming back to my country, basically giving up the life I had built abroad over a few years. It took me one year to go back to being a functional person, and after one more year working at a company I felt confident and wholesome again. Then I quit that company and co-founded a startup, to which I dedi…

What does your start-up do?

Sorry for the late reply. Computer vision.
Post reply on HN