Ask HN: How to get out of Tech and still make a decent living? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: How to get out of Tech and still make a decent living?

#41

Post by rbosinger » Sun, Aug 14, 2016, 7:21 AM UTC

louprado wrote: post #29

Coincidentally 15 years ago a fellow engineer told me his plan was to keep the same job as long as possible, get to the point where it isn't demanding intellectually, clock in the minimum hours, and then find fulfillment through family, friends, and hobbies. He has built 3 homes in his spare time, is a millionaire, and has an amazing family. It took me 15 years to realize he was right. I now work 4 hours a day as a .…

I once rubbed a friend the wrong way when he said "maybe I'll just get out of tech, take a few years of courses and become an electrician or something like that. Make 100k and be happy with that... leave the computer behind."

My response was: "Fine plan but don't think you'll just go make 100k after a couple years of trade school and not have any stresses!"

A few people showed me I was wrong about that but we were also living in Alberta while oil was still strong. Had my friend taken this path he likely wouldn't have made 100k for long if at all (until he had much more experience).

Anyway, point being, it's hard to go make decent money even though we all meet people who seem to do so with what seems like little effort. Lots of folks say they make good money but their interpretation of "good money" might be much different than the yours.

Re: Ask HN: How to get out of Tech and still make a decent living?

#42

Post by mikecsh » Sun, Aug 14, 2016, 7:22 AM UTC

willium wrote: post #31

jballanc wrote: post #12

I knew a woman once who went to law school, but burned out on the law before she passed the bar...so she went to medical school, but burned out on that before she completed her residency. What she eventually realized, though, is that there are very few people who have actually made it through both law school and medical school, so she set up a career for herself matching doctors with lawyers who needed medical expert…

Fascinating. I've been interesting in going towards law school, but am not sure I'd actually like to practice law at the end. This uncertainty plus the cost of attending, has been discouraging. I wonder how she was able to go through both since each comes with a steep cost Law School: $34,300 (avg per year) * 4 = $137,200 Medical School: $32,889 (avg per year) * 4 = $131,556 137,200 + 131,556 = $268,756 One would nee…

Depends where she was studying as well. I'm in the UK and my elec engineering masters was £4k. They've since hiked the fees for higher education and my medical degree is ~£36k. Still, that's 9 years of education for 1 years of dev salary, plus I work for a startup whilst studying. It's definitely doable!

Re: Ask HN: How to get out of Tech and still make a decent living?

#43

Post by menssen » Sun, Aug 14, 2016, 7:23 AM UTC

bjelkeman-again wrote: post #32

jballanc wrote: post #12

I knew a woman once who went to law school, but burned out on the law before she passed the bar...so she went to medical school, but burned out on that before she completed her residency. What she eventually realized, though, is that there are very few people who have actually made it through both law school and medical school, so she set up a career for herself matching doctors with lawyers who needed medical expert…

This is more or less what happened to me. I had worked in the sofware industry for 15 years, when I decided to get out. Not a developer, but a trajectory of pre-sales support/training, systems analyst, project manager, consultant, and doing a few startups that made me enough money to live, but nothing spectacular. I took my hobby, sustainable large scale horticulture and tried to switch by starting with a degree in e…

Out of curiosity, your later-in-life college experience: what kind of school was it at? (Meaning: large state university, liberal arts college, Yale, for-profit, etc.) As a college dropout who was a terrible student, I've been wanting to go back more and more as time passes.

Re: Ask HN: How to get out of Tech and still make a decent living?

#44

Post by weinzierl » Sun, Aug 14, 2016, 7:26 AM UTC

beagle3 wrote: post #39

willium wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fascinating. I've been interesting in going towards law school, but am not sure I'd actually like to practice law at the end. This uncertainty plus the cost of attending, has been discouraging. I wonder how she was able to go through both since each comes with a steep cost Law School: $34,300 (avg per year) * 4 = $137,200 Medical School: $32,889 (avg per year) * 4 = $131,556 137,200 + 131,556 = $268,756 One would nee…

Especially if you are not going to practice at the end, consider going abroad to study (might be possible even with family, definitely possible without). The costs in western europe are about 15%-20%. The costs in eastern europe are half that, and in some places in Asia it is cheaper still. If you want to practice in the US, you will have to take some local-law courses (law) and pass the bar/board exams - but it will…

Good advice for probably every field except law. Law is so different in most European countries that it won't be of much use in the US. Also a lot in civil law hinges on subtleties in the respective language.

Re: Ask HN: How to get out of Tech and still make a decent living?

#45

Post by summarite » Sun, Aug 14, 2016, 7:27 AM UTC

The one lesson you should probably take from the comments here is that your should take a look at what you enjoy and how you might be able to make a living off it. If your main condition is a big salary and life in a big city, well the consultant world awaits, but it's also not as easy as many here make it sound.

Else, just be honest and see what you really like. A friend of a friend lives somewhere on the African coast and deals in shells. Locals sell them to him, he sells them on to traders abroad. He surely doesn't make 100k, but the change of location and lifestyle also means he doesn't need to.

So: think out of the box. Just make it a new life.

Re: Ask HN: How to get out of Tech and still make a decent living?

#46

Post by rbosinger » Sun, Aug 14, 2016, 7:28 AM UTC

One thing to note: when talking to people in-real-life about what they do for a living and how much they earn take everything with a grain of salt. I've had beers with guys that said "dude.. I'm making sick money doing X" only to find out later that "sick money" was $18/hour (in Canada). I've also had similar conversations with other people and found out they meant 300k a year.

Re: Ask HN: How to get out of Tech and still make a decent living?

#47

Post by kkarakk » Sun, Aug 14, 2016, 7:31 AM UTC

beagle3 wrote: post #37

I hear you, and hope you can find something that works for you. A cousin of mine, an aeronautic engineer, went on to become a patent agent (editor/writer/evaluator) at a big patent firm. He needed to do some legal training, but it was less than a year -- not a full law degree. He couldn't be happier - he is paid to read and be up-to-date on a lot of interesting stuff, has conversations with interesting people all day…

Being comfortable is an issue regardless of career. A self-satisfied sales guy who doesn't know the latest buzzwords and customer expectations is as useless as an IT guy who doesn't know the latest buzzwords and optimizations. Really interesting thought though, experienced coders should be tested about the cutting edge instead of what is familiar

Re: Ask HN: How to get out of Tech and still make a decent living?

#48

Post by menssen » Sun, Aug 14, 2016, 7:35 AM UTC

beagle3 wrote: post #37

I hear you, and hope you can find something that works for you. A cousin of mine, an aeronautic engineer, went on to become a patent agent (editor/writer/evaluator) at a big patent firm. He needed to do some legal training, but it was less than a year -- not a full law degree. He couldn't be happier - he is paid to read and be up-to-date on a lot of interesting stuff, has conversations with interesting people all day…

There are two sides to this. That story from a few months back about the guy who wrote homebrew getting denied a job at Google because he flubbed some particular algorithm on a whiteboard is pretty messed up. On the other hand, I agree with you that experience tends not to be a particularly accurate predictor of actual skill, and that white board algorithm implementations are at worst a good faith effort to solve the problem of interviewing for competence.

Re: Ask HN: How to get out of Tech and still make a decent living?

#49

Post by gaius » Sun, Aug 14, 2016, 7:36 AM UTC

kevindeasis wrote: post #38

I can't believe no one has mentioned opening up a retail, foodchain (not a restaurant), coffeeshop or franchising. If you open one of these in a good location you can make really really good coin. It's crazy how much money coffee shops in my campus makes. There are more than 20 coffee shops in a 1km radius and they are all making insane profits for a medium size campus.

How much of that is paid in rent tho'? Classic landlord tactic, get a business in, if it's a success capture all of its profit, if it goes bust get another one.

As with all things, if it was easy everyone would be doing it...

Re: Ask HN: How to get out of Tech and still make a decent living?

#50

Post by sp527 » Sun, Aug 14, 2016, 7:38 AM UTC

isuckatcoding wrote: post #21

I am a very young developer (about a year and half out of college) so this might be a naïve thought. Isn't 15 years quite a long tenure for software development? I thought after 5-10 years you move into product/project management or something higher. I mean I realize everyone is different but still. Being the inexperienced programmer I am right now I imagine myself happily coding until I am 50 (lol ask me in 15 years…

I have about 3 years of industry experience, but it's been enough to teach me one very valuable lesson: don't transition entirely out of software engineering until you have some reasonable assurance of personal/financial security.

I once transitioned into a more client-oriented role for a brief time and was almost immediately scrambling to claw my way back out for a handful of reasons: (1) the value I was creating became nebulous and hard to define compared to before, (2) I lost the insane value-creation lever that software engineering enables, and (3) things became considerably less deterministic in general.

You really don't need to look any further than the various high-profile executive flameouts of seemingly intelligent people with strong engineering track records (e.g. Marissa Mayer) to understand the problem. You could even be a great manager/salesperson/product designer and still fail because so much is out of your control. I saw this play out repeatedly amongst the various managers and executives at my previous company.

So if you're going to take the risk of escalating beyond the role of an individual contributor, make sure you have a parachute.