Ask HN: What made you choose your current career? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: What made you choose your current career?

#61

Post by sososoko » Sun, Apr 26, 2015, 7:48 AM UTC

26yrs old, Academia (Info Sec), I was in the final year of my BTech Computer Science, i got a scholarship from my Undergrad(UG) university to do my final(4th) year in South Korea as part of an Academic Exchange. The catch was that when i returned upon completion of the exchange i was to work as a TA at my UG university. when i returned i worked there for a year and was sent to do a Master's(Info Sec& CyberForensics) abroad, the catch was that again i had to return and work as Faculty(lecturer) at my UG university. So my career path has been chosen for me in a way.

i would prefer to get into private industry when my contract finishes.

Re: Ask HN: What made you choose your current career?

#62

Post by jtfairbank » Sun, Apr 26, 2015, 2:07 PM UTC

fsk wrote: post #60

jtfairbank wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're in the bay area, we're hiring. ReSchedule Med is an automated staff scheduling solution for healthcare orgs. The scheduling part is pretty intense math wise, but we're early so we really need someone who can help with a bit of everything. And good devs can learn another language no problem, so the PHP niche isn't a concern. https://reschedulemed.com My email is in my profile.

I live in NYC. A couple months, I applied to all NYC HN ads, including the ones that said "You don't need experience in our tech stack." I got zero onsite interviews. I know that I know my stuff very well.

I can't comment on the other YC companies, b/c I don't know what they are looking for or how their process works.

If you're willing to relocate shoot me an email.

Re: Ask HN: What made you choose your current career?

#63

Post by fsk » Sun, Apr 26, 2015, 4:32 PM UTC

jtfairbank wrote: post #62

fsk wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I live in NYC. A couple months, I applied to all NYC HN ads, including the ones that said "You don't need experience in our tech stack." I got zero onsite interviews. I know that I know my stuff very well.

I can't comment on the other YC companies, b/c I don't know what they are looking for or how their process works. If you're willing to relocate shoot me an email.

Unfortunately, relocating is not an option for me right now.

Re: Ask HN: What made you choose your current career?

#64

Post by spacemanmatt » Sun, Apr 26, 2015, 5:40 PM UTC

Not very good at anything but programming. That changed after a while, but sure described the start of my career and hs/college years.

Re: Ask HN: What made you choose your current career?

#65

Post by gmarcus » Sun, Apr 26, 2015, 7:07 PM UTC

Tech Entrepreneur (currently running an iOS/Android dev shop)

In 1981 when I was 12, my folks took me to my cousin Herb's house. He just bought a brand new BMW and took me for a drive. Coming from a middle income family, I never had been in a car like this. The handling on the road, the bucket seats, the dashboard were all amazing to me.

I asked cousin Herb, "What do you do to have a car like this?". Herb said "I'm a systems analyst". "What's that?" I asked. He replied "I work with computers".

Click...computers = BMW.

Next Monday, I stormed into my 7th grade math class and said "I want to learn about computers". Got started on TRS-80 and the rest is history.

I remember how amazed I was to press an "a" on a keyboard, and an "a" showed up on the screen. I wanted to know how that happened...and once I started coding, I realized that I could be in control of what happened. I went from an end-user to a maker and loved it. The possibilities were limitless.

Greed may have started me on my career path, but it turns out that computers and me were a match made in heaven. I loved the pace of innovation, and I was doing stuff of my own creation that amazed people. It felt good to be a geek.

Finally got my BMW while the VP Engineering at a SF startup in 2009, but that small accomplishment pales in comparison to the lifetime of creating and exploring that I have had....and still enjoy.

On a side note: I feel so fortunate that I found my career at the age of 12 (though I didn't know it at the time). That drive gave me a focus that helped shape many decisions that people struggle with. Summer jobs, hobbies, college major, first job, where to live. They all fell in place easily for me cause I knew what I wanted in life.

- TRS-80 in 7th grade JHS

- Winning JHS science fair with my personality prediction algorithm

- Atari Computer camp when I was 13

- Reading Byte magazine like it was Shakespeare

- Changing my home address so I would be zoned for my local HS a year earlier (they had actual programming classes)

- Placing out of BASIC, and going directly to PASCAL in 9th grade.

- AP Computers in 10th grade (and tutoring the 12th graders)

- Working summer jobs as data entry and tech support through HS

- Winning an award for my HS in a regional programming competition

- Summer Advanced Sciences and Technology program. Got to work on medical imaging software for a research hospital at 15.

- Convinced my HS principal to let me co-teach a course in Applied computers (DBase, Lotus 123, Wordstar) cause they no longer had any classes for me to take.

- Went to Stony Brook University (inexpensive, and great CS dept) and able to declare a double major in Computer Science and Applied Math

- Started the Stony Brook Computer Science Society and was president for the next 4 years

- Used my financial aide work/study grant to get a university job at the Micro-Computer Demonstration Lab selling Apple/IBM/Xerox computers to faculty, students and staff. $3.15 an hour.

- 2 years later, the guy that ran the lab retired and IBM offered me a part-time job to run the lab. Same job, but now making $10.50 an hour.

- Represented Stony Brook in regional collegiate programming competitions

- Got a research job at IBM TJ Watson Research my Junior summer. Met a brilliant researcher who was moving to the private sector to do a startup in NY. Gave me a job offer that would be waiting for me when I graduated in a year.

- 1991: Moved to NYC to work at the startup (Ovid Technologies) where we built Medline using OOP.

- Rode the OOP wave through 3 more jobs, and promotions from Developer -> Sr. Developer -> Project Leader -> Director at various startups in NY.

- 1996: Joined a NYC startup (InterWorld) where we built app servers for our e-commerce products.

- Rode the "internet" wave through 2 more jobs, and promotions from Director -> CTO -> VP Product

- 1998: Joined an SF startup (Topica) as CTO to build a free email groups product. Got a BMW.

- 2001: .bomb and moved back to NYC, doing tech consulting for a few years on scalable server infrastructure

- 2003: Joined a CT startup (Netkey) where we built systems management software for Retail. Moved to Boston to build up a dev team. Got acquired by NCR.

- 2008: Moved to Brazil to be with my partner. Thought I would pickup another CTO type job at a startup, but I was too ahead of the curve. Played a lot of Xbox trying to figure out what I was going to do with my life.

- 2009: Out of boredom, started to play with the iOS SDK. Last time I wrote code was in 1996, 13 year gap.

- 2010: Published my first app. Thought I was going to be rich...instead learned that it was tough to make money publishing apps. Just then, a friend said he needed an app for his startup in NY. I banged it out for him and realized I could make a living doing consulting as an app developer.

- 2010: Started my own company, Cliq Consulting. So far: 17 clients, 35 apps, 89 million installs.

- Currently riding the app wave...and having lots of fun doing it.

Re: Ask HN: What made you choose your current career?

#66

Post by nextw33k » Mon, Apr 27, 2015, 2:57 PM UTC

I'm a Software Developer.

When I was younger my family owned a local computer company supporting a range of customer sizes. At the time I recall saying to my Dad that I wasn't sure if I should be a programmer or an IT technician. He bluntly said, be a programmer there is no money in IT support.

That was late 80s, whilst at the time there was money in IT support, over the long term he was right.

I think doing what your family does helps, because you have people around you that know and can support you.

Re: Ask HN: What made you choose your current career?

#67

Post by Killswitch » Mon, Apr 27, 2015, 8:39 PM UTC

GuiA wrote: post #19

Killswitch wrote: post #15

I had goals and dreams of becoming a professional chef. Even applied for Le Cordon Bleu my senior year in high school. In the meantime I was tinkering with building websites and learning HTML and that. I built a few sites and one day a friend who taught me told me to put some playboy style pics on my site and it'll attract people to come. Being 16 I was down for looking at hot girls. So I did. Then later he told me t…

Do you still cook?

For myself yes. And while I was building sites I was a cook at various restaurants for 6 years.

Re: Ask HN: What made you choose your current career?

#68

Post by crdb » Tue, Apr 28, 2015, 7:10 AM UTC

M8 wrote: post #53

crdb wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks to you both... that means a lot! Funny thing is I started a few blogs anonymously, and they never really took up, and I stopped all of them within weeks of starting. But I keep coming back here because, well, a man is weak, and those upvotes mean something, that somebody read it and enjoyed it. Somehow that "pays" more than the dollars I could have gotten consulting for the same amount of time it took to write…

Are you a developer or a trader? What do you think about desk development positions?

Neither - my co-founder and I consult over the whole data chain from tracking to recommendation engines and automation, and I write around 10% of the code, usually SQL and scripting; this finances our startup R&D better than taking funding in Singapore, which is only generous towards Singaporeans.

I think finance is a broad industry with a wide mix of experiences and competence and it entirely depends on which firm you are working for. I'd work in any position for someone like Jim Simons, Paul Singer or Seth Klarman, I'd probably try fairly hard (and tried fairly hard back then) to get in somewhere like Glencore, places like IMC or Tibra sound quite fun, but I'd hesitate to take up any kind of job at some of the smaller banks, startup funds or other dubious entities. Even some of the non-bulge bracket but global banks are seriously bureaucratic and technologically still in the 1980s (without the culture of proper engineering allegedly more common back then). Then there's the special cases: at Standard Chartered, you get to work with people like @donsbot which is fantastic for your technical development independently of whether you enjoy the industry or the company.

The money is good, but not that good. By specializing in something there is a lot of demand for outside of finance (say, "big, proper" dev ops) you can pull a lot more money than by being an average quant or the "guy who makes the tools for the traders", even if the best quants will pull large amounts of money. We interviewed dev ops people making north of USD 300k a year for managing less than 100 servers.

Lastly, a lot of business people in finance look down on IT; they see it as a commoditized industry with less intelligent people than those brilliant people who have "survived" markets and bring in revenue (one might make the same argument about them - the most often said thing on a trading floor is "would he make the same money without the bank's name on his business card" and "personality" and free lunches was never a factor in choosing the bank I'd trade with). If you can forgive them for that, wear your suit, swallow your pride and do what you're told, you can make an easy living in those places.

Re: Ask HN: What made you choose your current career?

#69

Post by walljm » Tue, Apr 28, 2015, 1:20 PM UTC

I'm a software developer.

I hated being bored and I didn't like working hard. ;) When I was a teenager I asked myself what kind of activities I enjoyed doing for long periods of time that made decent money and working with a computer was one of those, so I pursued a CIS degree.

But I'll be honest. I hated my job for a long time. My original two reasons are awful reasons to pursue any line of work. I eventually became disenchanted and started making serious plans to switch to photography full time because I loved photography, which had started as a hobby and was growing into much more.

But two things happened which changed how I looked at my job. One was I got over a lot of the initial learning curve and switched companies and found a work environment I liked considerably more. The other was due to my interests in art, which unlocked my desire to understand things which was eventually fed by software development.

I love my job now (weird how that worked out).

Anyway... thats me. :)