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Ask HN: Just moved to SF. How can I leverage my new location to skill up in dev?

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Re: Ask HN: Just moved to SF. How can I leverage my new location to skill up in dev?

#51

Post by redroyal »

neborath wrote: post #41
redroyal wrote: post #18

[flagged]

Yeah sure let's move to the South Bay and live in the 12th circle of Hell, a.k.a., the worst abomination of city planning known to North America. San Jose used to be a city on the upswing but after the riots and COVID it has the feeling of a shell of a city that is being kept alive by the nice infrastructure they built there a short while ago. Sunnyvale is peak suburbia -- endless tracts of suburban homes and strip m…

I think the South Bay is divine. Better weather, safe, quiet, smart people, amazing campus, great food, many whole foods and fantastic restaurants. Although it’s for the wealthy true story. But rent is very similar to SF and quality of life is very different. I’ve lived all over New York and Brooklyn, San Francisco unfortunately, Berkeley, Mountain View, Menlo Park and now Palo Alto. Mountain View and Palo Alto have a quality of life on par with uptown Manhattan.

Re: Ask HN: Just moved to SF. How can I leverage my new location to skill up in dev?

#52

Post by w10-1 »

Forget tools and experience.

Do all you can to get back into school. Unless you focus exclusively on making that happen, it won't.

The future in tech is for highly-educated specialists who can also generalize: PhD's in statistics et al. And the people that can help those people.

Re: Ask HN: Just moved to SF. How can I leverage my new location to skill up in dev?

#56

Post by culopatin »

cvccvroomvroom wrote: post #55

Unless you make $400k+, SF is the wrong place to be because you're likely living beyond sustainable means. Move to SJ or Newark, or somewhere cheaper like RTP Virginia.

I don’t think your math is right. I’m living well within means. I don’t have any debt either.

Re: Ask HN: Just moved to SF. How can I leverage my new location to skill up in dev?

#57

Post by culopatin »

jmspring wrote: post #36

I think another comment mentioning look into meetups is the most solid advice in this thread. To be honest, your post is a bit of a mess in both what you are doing (and have done) and what you are seeking. You clearly have some skills since you are getting paid to be remote and work on technical projects. I would consider taking a step back and figuring out a way to package that. Next, what sort of external engagemen…

Hey thanks a lot for your detailed reply. As I was writing my post more things I wanted to express kept coming out. My mind and interests are kind of a mess, I wish I had two realities in parallel so I could be a mech eng in one and a software eng in the other.

I’m actually in my early 30s, I followed an unconventional path with a country change in my early 20s thanks to motorsports and luck, but postponed school.

My goal is to be proud enough of my knowledge to call myself a developer, not much tbh. I think I don’t do that right now because I don’t know at what level other devs are in their day to day, and my only point of reference is HN where everyone seems to have a postdoc. I also think I’m too humble for this space and location. I went to a VC party last Friday and I noticed everyone seemed to be lying up in what they did, but once I peeled the outer layer, we were all trying to figure it out.

I do have a very stable job with great benefits (and pension!) so I’m not planning on leaving that right now, but I have free time I want to use wisely.

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