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Ask HN: What is the smartest career path to take?

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Re: Ask HN: What is the smartest career path to take?

#61

Post by cyberpunk »

kblev wrote: post #57
cyberpunk wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not the OP but if you're interested in my take -- I've been freelance ops/devops in/around europe for around 10 years; I would say it's not so feasable as a junior unless you really can hit the ground running which only comes with experience, at least in ops. Most clients expect me to be productive within about a week of landing if not less, otherwise they would have found a permie. They also expect senior freelance…

How much can you earn as senior devops freelancer in Europe? Have you considered relocating to the US? I'm a devops contractor in the UK and looking at options to maximize income.

Around 100euro/hour - depending on the city.

Nah, quality of life wouldn't be there for me, personally.

London is still probably highest rates for devops in the EU, Munich/Frankfurt/Amterdam/Paris aren't far behind but the work is more boring, Berlin rates are less but everything is quite cheap..

Re: Ask HN: What is the smartest career path to take?

#62

Post by idoby »

tw600040 wrote: post #38
idoby wrote: post #11

Higher paying jobs don't pay higher for no reason. One of those reasons could be that you have unique skills worth paying for. Another reason is as compensation for squeezing every last hour of work out of you. Not saying you can't get a higher paying job and be happy with your work-life balance, but buyer beware when it comes to this. You might actually be in a good place in this regard. If you start a business, you…

//Higher paying jobs don't pay higher for no reason Completely disagree. there are software developers working so much and making peanuts and there are developers that know how to BS and work may be 1/5th and make thrice or 4 times the pay. Completely disagree that higher paying jobs demand more.

True, but being able to BS is a great reason why people would pay you more.

Re: Ask HN: What is the smartest career path to take?

#63

Post by bradlys »

pmiller2 wrote: post #42
davedx wrote: post #13

> But I'm also cautiously thinking how your earning potential lowers as you age. It's not happened to me yet, my earning potential has only increased as I've gained more experience (41 now), especially since I went freelance. I would say in your 20's is a great time to take risks. Usually doing this will give you great experience you can then apply throughout your life, too. For example: - Work for a startup. Here yo…

I’d like to push back a bit on “work for a startup in your 20s.” Sure, if you want to work at a startup, I would say early career is the best time to do so. Best case scenario, you learn a lot, your company has a successful exit, and you make some decent cash. The other side of the coin is that for every well run startup where you can learn a lot, there are a bunch that are terrible, where you won’t learn as much, yo…

It's important to highlight the type of things you'll learn. I don't know if I ever became a better software engineer in a technical sense through working at startups that have any kind of struggle. Startups that are on a rocket ship might have time for building their employees or the money to hire employees who know how to write code well without supervision - but most don't.

The other aspect here is a lot of people have a different idea on what joining a startup is. I've heard of people saying, "Oh, I'm joining a startup!" And then it's Uber just before they IPO. Maybe technically Uber was a startup at that point but I've been at a seed stage company - they're not even remotely comparable experiences. I worry people who have only worked at startups with 10+ engineers, super engineering driven culture, and lots of funding are giving the advice of, "work for a startup! It's great!"

Most of the time - it isn't great. It's terrible and not being a founder is the #1 reason I never want to join a startup again. All the risk - none of the reward and none of the power. Fucking sucks.

Re: Ask HN: What is the smartest career path to take?

#64

Post by colinmhayes »

xenonite wrote: post #35

I found useful general career advice on https://80000hours.org which I can highly recommend to study.

Seconded 80000 hours. Great pragmatic advice, but it really is geared toward a certain mindset. Many developers are in the required headspace, but not all of them.

Re: Ask HN: What is the smartest career path to take?

#65

Post by joeldg »

Not a dumb question at all. I am 46 now and am a Senior SRE at at large company here in the valley and have been where you are, I went the startup route for a while but in the end this is a better fit for me.

There is an old saying that "someone who doesn't like to talk about their work, hates it." If your free time is not involved with what you do at work then you may be in the wrong profession or, you may have not had a chance to marry the two. Filmmaking and government are both GREAT areas for tech!

I used to live in LA and know a lot of people in the movie industry who work in computers there and make a very good living. It's not just VFX folks but also game companies and all the support that goes with media, from websites, pipelines and advertising. There is a ton of ways to be in tech/programming and work in film or game industries in LA or New York. Same goes for politics, except that is going to be more limited to Washington DC (which is surprisingly a great place to live). In DC and the surrounding areas like Maryland is where all your tech folks at a multitude of government contractors, lobbyists, data collection and campaigns (as well as security).

If it is just about money and if you want to stay a programmer in regular tech then my advice in answer to this is; challenging yourself is always the best/better option unless you are explicitly taking a break. If you want to advance in your career and not stagnate, if you want to not be bored then you need to challenge yourself at every step. If this is not possible in your job, find a new job. Finding a new job is easier than you might think, every company is hiring programmers, data science, large data, reliability people even in the middle of a pandemic. Most of those companies will move you to one of the hubs of tech. Get that book cracking the coding interview, do practice interviews online, read all the cheatsheets for interviews people have on github, contribute to opensource, write tutorials on Medium and Github pages and try to land a job in Silicon Valley, you will make money and live in a pretty place and if you are careful with money you can retire early. (all the FIRE kids are doing it)

Figured I would toss that out there.

Re: Ask HN: What is the smartest career path to take?

#66

Post by blaser-waffle »

> I wish someone would make a guide for young people titled, "how to succeed at your life."

There is no universal "win at life" thing. You've been fed a stream of broadly capitalist rhetoric that you need to earn more and consume more. They don't have any answers to "succeeding" or being happy -- they just want you to buy another luxury vehicle or a house you can't afford.

Don't get me wrong, nice things are nice -- nothin wrong with having a Lexus -- but you're the only one who gets to choose "how to succeed at life."

When you're 80 years old and you're explaining what you did during your life to your kids/friends/nursing home attendants what would you want to tell them?

Re: Ask HN: What is the smartest career path to take?

#67

Post by joeldg »

volume wrote: post #23

This is one of my favorite videos about choice. It’s a couple snippets of Alan Watts and audio from Mr. Nobody. All with nicely edited video clips from here and there. I think it related to nonduality. That all options are correct, when you think about it or frame it a certain way: https://youtu.be/aGpyjeq93K8

oh man.. this is my fav one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wU0PYcCsL6o

Re: Ask HN: What is the smartest career path to take?

#68

Post by julianeon »

tw600040 wrote: post #38
idoby wrote: post #11

Higher paying jobs don't pay higher for no reason. One of those reasons could be that you have unique skills worth paying for. Another reason is as compensation for squeezing every last hour of work out of you. Not saying you can't get a higher paying job and be happy with your work-life balance, but buyer beware when it comes to this. You might actually be in a good place in this regard. If you start a business, you…

//Higher paying jobs don't pay higher for no reason Completely disagree. there are software developers working so much and making peanuts and there are developers that know how to BS and work may be 1/5th and make thrice or 4 times the pay. Completely disagree that higher paying jobs demand more.

True, but for every 10 jobs paying 80k, in probably 8 of them you can keep it to 40 hours strictly, whereas for every 10 jobs paying 150k, it's the reverse: in 9 of them, you have to work more than 40 hours a week. (Maybe the 1 other guy has a Harvard CS degree and can immediately pull up his LinkedIn inbox if his manager implies a threat).

There may be extenuating circumstances if, say, you work remotely from Nowhere, Alaska, so they can pay you less, or you work in a college lab where programmers-in-training are plentiful. But generally, those forces are pushing to equalize, across programming positions all across the country.

I worked a lower paying job at one point, and the truth is, at lower salaries, "well this is what you're paying me for" was kind of implied. Or maybe it's more accurate to put it in reverse: if your employer jacks up the workload, then employees will think, why don't I just get a 120k job, since it'll be the same amount of work, now? So employers at lower salaries have a strong incentive to be chill, just as employees at that level can have a chill lifestyle, as that's something employers are happy to make happen for lower costs.

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