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Ask HN: What did you do after quitting the IT industry and how have things been?

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Re: Ask HN: What did you do after quitting the IT industry and how have things been?

#111

Post by wocg »

silencio wrote: post #23

Bought a restaurant with family in hopes of staving off then-impending tech burnout - nothing fancy, so it's been a fun and mildly profitable side project. Was just about to hop on the med school path but I got pregnant at the worst time. Thinking I'll take a year to parent and maybe do some contracting while thinking about what to do for the future. Tech definitely pays well but I lost much of my interest in the pas…

How do you run a restaurant as a side project? I'd heard that this business requires a huge amount of time.

Re: Ask HN: What did you do after quitting the IT industry and how have things been?

#112

Post by eddiecalzone »

thinnerlizzy wrote: post #110

I don't know yet, but after leaving my last job about 4 months ago, I'm thinking about getting out. My last job was great fun, but led me straight to Nowheresville, as the skills I was using are not in great demand. ~2 years of doing that and my other tech skills are basically obsolete. Nobody is even looking for Angular anymore, and the jobs I see that use a LAMP stack look terribly boring to me. I'm going to take a…

Eh? I've had 3 Angular contracts in a row, the most recent started a couple months ago. Indeed shows over 500 openings in Chicago. I get the burnout, though. JS frameworks are just exhausting. I've been browsing Rust docs for the past hour, wondering if a side project would make the burnout better or worse.

Re: Ask HN: What did you do after quitting the IT industry and how have things been?

#113

Post by xrd »

iamdave wrote: post #104

I quit and will be starting my first of a two year pre-law program in two weeks. I'm quitting for a reason I haven't seen represented in the thread: "It's not even what I wanted to do as a career when I finished college" I only ended up in IT when my first job at a law firm as a file clerk nearly ended due to workforce reductions at a mid-sized law firm-an attorney I had helped in a big way solve a rather mundane wor…

I'm disappointed you are leaving tech. I wish there were more opportunities in tech that fulfilled your desire to fight for better laws and access to public resources. I suppose I'm happy you aren't leaving because of discrimination (making the assumption your social group represents your heritage...)

Re: Ask HN: What did you do after quitting the IT industry and how have things been?

#114

Post by pragone »

DoodleBuggy wrote: post #88
eragone wrote: post #14

Went to medical school. It's about as much fun as going to medical school can be, but I'm much happier than I was in software (I think?).

Good for you, medicine is a noble pursuit. Are you going to specialize?

Yes, hopefully into emergency medicine, but I start rotations this summer so we'll see where my passions truly lie.

Re: Ask HN: What did you do after quitting the IT industry and how have things been?

#115

Post by nitrogen »

beachstartup wrote: post #98
wil421 wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you make the transition? I can turn on the charm and getting tired of corporate IT. I know a couple people who've done it but they always knew a former co worker who got them jobs. I was thinking sales or sales engineer.

interview for open positions. ask your friends if their companies are hiring. be honest, tell them you want to transition. but ... i mean, if you can't sell yourself into a job, you're not going to be doing much sales.

As someone with basically zero talent for salesmanship, from my outside perspective I'd describe the sales process (and thus the process of getting a sales job) as anticipating, identifying, or manufacturing a need in someone, and positioning yourself to fill that need. So I imagine the parent commenter could use that to decide if/how to transition to sales.

Re: Ask HN: What did you do after quitting the IT industry and how have things been?

#116

Post by yahyaheee »

thinnerlizzy wrote: post #110

I don't know yet, but after leaving my last job about 4 months ago, I'm thinking about getting out. My last job was great fun, but led me straight to Nowheresville, as the skills I was using are not in great demand. ~2 years of doing that and my other tech skills are basically obsolete. Nobody is even looking for Angular anymore, and the jobs I see that use a LAMP stack look terribly boring to me. I'm going to take a…

This is why I think the best play is to work about 6 month contracts, take a month off to decompress, take another month learn a new hot technology, then jump back in

Re: Ask HN: What did you do after quitting the IT industry and how have things been?

#117

Post by bfrog »

HFTGuru wrote: post #65
voidz wrote: post #16

I became a full time father and results have been stellar. My boy is now one year old and turns out to be very clever... And very strong. He could crawl at seven months and started to learn how to walk at 11 months. His first word was 'hunger' (in Dutch, it sounds virtually the same) at two months, maybe it was imaginative but he was happy to eat after we we heard him say it, haha. Now he can also say 'mama' and 'pap…

I've been developing in C, in the finance industry as a high frequency trader as well as being a father. My son is home schooled and is typing elementary level sentences at 3 years old, he can also strum the guitar playing notes C D E F G A B on request. The down side is I work 10-12 hour days, but I get a performance bonus between 400k and 800k every year. I'm hoping I can retire in my late 30's, but I do miss out o…

How have you not retired yet with a 400-800K bonus is the better question?

Re: Ask HN: What did you do after quitting the IT industry and how have things been?

#118

Post by beachstartup »

nitrogen wrote: post #115
beachstartup wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

interview for open positions. ask your friends if their companies are hiring. be honest, tell them you want to transition. but ... i mean, if you can't sell yourself into a job, you're not going to be doing much sales.

As someone with basically zero talent for salesmanship, from my outside perspective I'd describe the sales process (and thus the process of getting a sales job) as anticipating, identifying, or manufacturing a need in someone, and positioning yourself to fill that need. So I imagine the parent commenter could use that to decide if/how to transition to sales.

that's marketing + sales but yeah, a small organization 'sales person', or an above-median good one that works in a large organization will have to understand (or even do) both.

Re: Ask HN: What did you do after quitting the IT industry and how have things been?

#119

Post by analog31 »

I'm not sure if this counts, because I quit before my career started. I learned programming in high school, ca. 1981, and I had a summer internship at a large data processing shop with an IBM 370 and several timesharing minicomputers. Also, my older brother was in the programming business, and I was able to look ahead to the typical CompSci coursework at the colleges in my area.

I loved programming, but it seemed like both the coursework and what programmers actually did for a living was pretty dull. Of course I wasn't exposed to the full range of possibilities, and it was just before the computer industry exploded, which nobody in my circle (parents, advisors etc.) predicted.

I went to college and majored in math. It seemed like the things that attracted me to programming were going on in the math and physics departments, so I was happy, and ended up with a physics degree. Today, I use programming as a problem solving tool, but have never held an actual IT job.

Re: Ask HN: What did you do after quitting the IT industry and how have things been?

#120

Post by nugget »

eragone wrote: post #14

Went to medical school. It's about as much fun as going to medical school can be, but I'm much happier than I was in software (I think?).

How would you compare the two fields? What do you look forward to in medicine?
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