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Ask HN: If you were to switch career, what would you do?
31–40 of 881 posts
Re: Ask HN: If you were to switch career, what would you do?
#32I'd still want to create. Maybe something with my hands. Being a luthier or cordwainer sounds attractive. Assuming money were no issue, perhaps a musician.
Re: Ask HN: If you were to switch career, what would you do?
#33I want to become a toy maker.
Re: Ask HN: If you were to switch career, what would you do?
#34- Pilot
- Fiction Author
- Location Hunter for Cinematographers (basically get paid to travel to wonderful scenic places)
- Landscape Photographer (very hard to get paid for this I guess)
Re: Ask HN: If you were to switch career, what would you do?
#35- Film director or screenwriter
- Electronic musician (Just hardware, no software involved)
- Cartoonist / Illustrator
I lack the skills for all of them but at least I'm allowed to fantasise :)
I don't regret being a programmer though, computers are probably my favourite thing.
Re: Ask HN: If you were to switch career, what would you do?
#36I wonder if asking such question (and inspecting answers given) is not enough to refute the idea behind basic income - that it allows people to retrain into their desired profession, thus making the society more productive. Seeing that most people desire only a relatively small subset of careers (and almost no one want to be for example a dentist, an accountant, not to mention telemarketer or toilet cleaner), I don't think it's going to work.
Re: Ask HN: If you were to switch career, what would you do?
#37I'm actually thinking of switching into video editing career slowly, just as a backup for my current programming profession. The reason is I'm not sure whether I can survive as a competitive programmer in my late 30s and also I think I kind of like editing.
You make it sound like programming is some sort of competitive sport where you can't reasonably compete anymore when you're past your prime.
There's clearly no obvious reason why someone in his 40s shouldn't be able to develop software just as well as someone in his 30s. Apart from a more or less healthy lifestyle, staying competitive in this line of work is more about mindset than about age. You stay young by exposing yourself to new ideas and challenges. I've met 30 year olds who act twice their age because they've settled into a cosy big corporate job that doesn't require anything but will get them safely to retirement. I've also met 50 year olds who're still avidly learning new stuff and who've managed to remain quite competitive in the software consulting business.
Another thing to keep in mind is: Level up. When athletes in competitive disciplines can't keep up anymore they often become trainers and mentors. For various reasons this makes sense in software development, too. Coaching / mentoring / teaching is a rare skill, as is competent management.
Then there's always the opportunity to create your own software product (I know, easier said than done but much more doable still than in many other disciplines) and sell value instead of your time.
Re: Ask HN: If you were to switch career, what would you do?
#38When the tech world moved away from me (doing mainly embedded C for the last thirty years might not have been the best idea for my career), I became an aged carer for my disabled mum. I learned a lot about cleaning, gardening and adding subtitles to films as she is going deaf. I also learned a lot about editing spoken word audio files for pacing, volume and noise reduction as she wrote a memoir then recorded an audio version.
In the future, I could be an aged carer as I really like looking after people, although it doesn't pay well and there can be a lot of poo to deal with. On the other hand, one of my former managers has been working at Google for about ten years and is quite enthusiastic about my working with him there. Unfortunately, they are in California and I am in Melbourne so I'd have to move.
Re: Ask HN: If you were to switch career, what would you do?
#39I'd love to work in an underground hard rock mine. Being under the surface has always fascinated me. One of my favorite hobbies is caving. I live in Denver, so the Henderson mine isn't too far away...
Re: Ask HN: If you were to switch career, what would you do?
#40I already did after 25 years in development. I'm tempted to do a side-project or startup now after a few years away. If I was to return to tech I'd be very focused on creating real benefit and progress (think perhaps environmental, climate change, medical or learning etc), rather than a shiner bauble or "disrupting" something that really shouldn't be (internet connected kettles? Making everything a consumer replaceab…
> restoration
What type of restoration? Cars? Houses? Pinball machines?
> The surprise was, even after 3 years, discovering there's still more satisfaction in physical tiredness and manual activity at the end of the day than just mental.
My motorcycle broke down in Silicon Valley once. The guy I called to come pick it up had a normal ford truck. The bed was outfitted with a dual motorcycle winch. I got to talking to him on the way back to SF. He used to be in IT. Specifically, he used to manage and maintain one of Amazon's data warehouses in Seattle.
I asked him if he missed IT and he told me pretty much what you just said: the physical tiredness at the end of the day is more satisfying than just the mental exhaustion. He also got to make his own hours and he made more money towing motorcycles.