osteopathic medicine, high problem solving to meeting ratio - must like people, financially a lifetime wash due to cost of education
Ask HN: What did you do after quitting the IT industry and how have things been?
201–210 of 221 posts
Re: Ask HN: What did you do after quitting the IT industry and how have things been?
#202Earlier quoted context omitted.
I retired in my early 40s. It was surprisingly boring.
I'm not on the same wavelength as retired people who complain about boredom. If I retired today, I literally have a >5000-line list of ideas, topics and activities I want to pursue, most of them inexpensive or even free to pursue financially for developers, but time-consuming. You could develop software to largely automate the municipal bureaucracy of a village in your nation. It takes a surprising amount of paperwor…
I find you very fascinating. Is there some way I can contact you?
Re: Ask HN: What did you do after quitting the IT industry and how have things been?
#203Went 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 long were you working for before you decided to go back to medical school? I'm thinking about it, but the long schooling time is putting me off.
Re: Ask HN: What did you do after quitting the IT industry and how have things been?
#204Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
Not this again. Someone will always make a post about earning a ridiculous salary that will ruin my entire week. I just don't believe people can add 800k of value to an organisation.
When I find myself thinking along similar lines, I go back and read a quote from The Conquest of Happiness[0]. Perhaps it may resonate with you.
"The habit of thinking in terms of comparisons is a fatal one. When anything pleasant occurs it should be enjoyed to the fun, without stopping to think that it is not so pleasant as something else that may possibly be happening to someone else.
With the wise man, what he has does not cease to be enjoyable because someone else has something else. Envy, in fact, is one form of a vice, partly moral, partly intellectual, which consists in seeing things never in themselves, but only in their relations. I am earning, let us say, a salary sufficient for my needs. I should be content, but I hear that someone else whom I believe to be in no way my superior is earning a salary twice as great as mine. Instantly, if I am of an envious disposition, the satisfactions to be derived from what I have grows dim, and I begin to be eaten up with a sense of injustice.
For all this the proper cure is mental discipline, the habit of not thinking profitless thoughts. After all, what is more enviable than happiness? And if I can cure myself of envy I can acquire happiness and become enviable. The man who has double my salary is doubtless tortured by the thought that someone else in turn has twice as much as he has, and so it goes on. If you desire glory, you may envy Napoleon. But Napoleon envied Caesar, Caesar envied Alexander, and Alexander, I daresay, envied Hercules, who never existed. You cannot, therefore, get away from envy by means of success alone, for there will always be in history or legend some person even more successful than you are. You can get away from envy by enjoying the pleasures that come your way, by doing the work that you have to do, and by avoiding comparisons with those whom you imagine, perhaps quite falsely, to be more fortunate than yourself."
[0] http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/51783.The_Conquest_of_Hap...
Re: Ask HN: What did you do after quitting the IT industry and how have things been?
#205Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not this again. Someone will always make a post about earning a ridiculous salary that will ruin my entire week. I just don't believe people can add 800k of value to an organisation.
When I find myself thinking along similar lines, I go back and read a quote from The Conquest of Happiness [0]. Perhaps it may resonate with you. "The habit of thinking in terms of comparisons is a fatal one. When anything pleasant occurs it should be enjoyed to the fun, without stopping to think that it is not so pleasant as something else that may possibly be happening to someone else. With the wise man, what he ha…
Thats all well and good, but I hate to earn peanuts. I doubt someone has 10x better skill than me, so why do they earn 10x as much?
Re: Ask HN: What did you do after quitting the IT industry and how have things been?
#206Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not this again. Someone will always make a post about earning a ridiculous salary that will ruin my entire week. I just don't believe people can add 800k of value to an organisation.
When I find myself thinking along similar lines, I go back and read a quote from The Conquest of Happiness [0]. Perhaps it may resonate with you. "The habit of thinking in terms of comparisons is a fatal one. When anything pleasant occurs it should be enjoyed to the fun, without stopping to think that it is not so pleasant as something else that may possibly be happening to someone else. With the wise man, what he ha…
"Comparison is the thief of joy" - Theodore Roosevelt.
Re: Ask HN: What did you do after quitting the IT industry and how have things been?
#207Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not this again. Someone will always make a post about earning a ridiculous salary that will ruin my entire week. I just don't believe people can add 800k of value to an organisation.
When I find myself thinking along similar lines, I go back and read a quote from The Conquest of Happiness [0]. Perhaps it may resonate with you. "The habit of thinking in terms of comparisons is a fatal one. When anything pleasant occurs it should be enjoyed to the fun, without stopping to think that it is not so pleasant as something else that may possibly be happening to someone else. With the wise man, what he ha…
I agree with most of that, however...
My aim is not to work for someone else, so I can decide to spend my limited time doing what makes me happy. When I'm getting paid peanuts there is no prospect of being able to have that choice.
I find it very difficult to just try to be happy with whatever "the man" has decided he wants me to do today.
Re: Ask HN: What did you do after quitting the IT industry and how have things been?
#208Earlier quoted context omitted.
Did you get appropriately reimbursed?
The quick answer is no. The funnier answer is we received an award for this particular piece of software (which is still in use and sold for phenomenal profits to this day). We were invited to go to an HP board meeting and receive the award directly from Meg. Unfortunately our entire office was shut down and we were all laid off before the reward date so that our division could save on overhead. Our division manager…
If there's any better example of why the business world sucks than this story, I'm yet to hear it.
I hope you found something else to do that you enjoy/get paid appropriately for.
Re: Ask HN: What did you do after quitting the IT industry and how have things been?
#209Earlier quoted context omitted.
The quick answer is no. The funnier answer is we received an award for this particular piece of software (which is still in use and sold for phenomenal profits to this day). We were invited to go to an HP board meeting and receive the award directly from Meg. Unfortunately our entire office was shut down and we were all laid off before the reward date so that our division could save on overhead. Our division manager…
Funny, perhaps HFT is an industry you should consider if you wish to be generously rewarded.
I bet if they were paying $800k they were making at least $8M.
Re: Ask HN: What did you do after quitting the IT industry and how have things been?
#210Earlier quoted context omitted.
When I find myself thinking along similar lines, I go back and read a quote from The Conquest of Happiness [0]. Perhaps it may resonate with you. "The habit of thinking in terms of comparisons is a fatal one. When anything pleasant occurs it should be enjoyed to the fun, without stopping to think that it is not so pleasant as something else that may possibly be happening to someone else. With the wise man, what he ha…
I agree with most of that, however... My aim is not to work for someone else, so I can decide to spend my limited time doing what makes me happy. When I'm getting paid peanuts there is no prospect of being able to have that choice. I find it very difficult to just try to be happy with whatever "the man" has decided he wants me to do today.
In my experience it's a bit of a catch-22. I find by working for people I respect, I learn more about how I can get to the point of having the freedom to do whatever I want. But until that day comes, I have to keep my head up and my attitude positive. If I don't, I find I learn less and I become less productive, and thus less valuable to "the man", thereby pushing my goals further away.
But you're absolutely right; it's not enough to "just try to be happy." I may be reading too far between the lines - apologies if I am, but it could be that you need to start looking for new opportunities. That said, even if you are mostly happy where you are, the best way to get a substantial raise is to have another job offer in-hand. It's the clearest signal there is to your employer what the job market thinks your value is (as opposed to what you think it is). This is where networking comes in.
Ultimately, it comes down to the question, "What can you control?" You can control how much value you provide (how hard you work, what you work on, how much initiative you take, ...). You can control your living expenses (cheaper rent, home cooking, no partying, no tv/video games, ...). You can control how you spend your free time / what you learn about in your free time (How much do you know about investing? Tax law? Corporate/economic/governmental trends?) Anything you can't control, is not worth fretting over.
At the end of the day, beating the system is hard fucking work. Sometimes it seems like the universe conspires against you, and others, if you have the mental clarity to see it, it hands you golden opportunities. I'm not "there" yet, but in my experience, confidence and positivity are the first steps. (I quote "there" because as Emerson and others have said, "Life is a journey, not a destination." And that applies equally to happiness.)
Anyways, hopefully there's something in there that's helpful :)