Ask HN: Web developer and looking for a career change, what are my options?

I view software as means to an end, and that end is solving a real concrete physical problem in the real world.

It's hard to look at a specific vertical / domain and try to guess what kind of app you can build for them that would make an impact, as an outsider looking in.

So, become an insider by getting a job and doing real hands-on work in an area outside of programming. For me, since I figured I got the "hacker" part down, I wanted to get the "hustler" part down, and I joined a very early stage startup and did all things customer-acquisition, in charge of the singular goal of bringing in money. A hardware company at that.

Then, military has always fascinated me, so I sought to get an insider's perspective.

Now I've got additional perspectives that has been constructive in helping me understand where else and how else software might be able to make an impact, which is helpful when you're looking for opportunities to ... make something people want.

Do you have any advice on how to find these meetups? Is meetup.com good enough or is there a better resource such as something at city hall?

I got a degree totally unrelated to CS. (Think "arts". Decent school. Top 50. But not prestigious.) Bounced around at not-great jobs for awhile, living in NYC and barely making ends meet.

Then I managed to get a job at an online media startup (essentially a management role), which was a very lucky break.

That got me into software, and I was able to use that experience to move into product/project management. I did that for a few years at some boutique companies, working crazy hours but learning a lot.

Then I decided to go back to school and study CS (starting at undergrad level again)... so I spent a few years re-learning everything from the ground up. That includes all the math, stats, etc... that you'd expect from a typical undergrad engineering program. It took awhile to finish, and was frustrating at times, but it was worth it.

Fast forward a few years... and now I work as software engineer. I focused on ML during my studies, and again (with lots of luck) managed to get a job at an R&D lab doing machine learning, during my final year in school.

I've since moved and now work at a company that does low-level OS-type work. (Which I actually enjoy more than ML.)

It's been a wild ride, but it's been fun.

Non-linear paths like this rarely get mentioned, but I met dozens of people with similar stories when I went back to school. It's hard, but can definitely be done.

My guess is that a lot of this depends on the organization, and product/projects.

But as an opinion...

The politics/posturing & social aspects of the job are integral to shipping products, making positive incremental changes, and "getting things done".

As a PM, I definitely was not the boss. (Even though the success of the project was ultimately my responsibility.)

This meant I had to lead, persuade, and _negotiate_ very effectively -- always arguing what's best for the product, or the end-user.

So I guess I'd say that these sorts of politics aren't separate from building a good product. They're sort of the process for getting things done.

But again, that's limited & personal experience. My companies were relatively small (20 - 50 people). In essence, I was figuring things out as I went along. (These were small businesses, and we all were.) Big organizations with lots of really established process may be different.