Ask HN: If you were a coder who successfully changed careers, what do you do now?

I wrote code for 13 years before changing. These days I earn income trading futures on treasury bonds, albeit, with a heavy reliance on programming. After being put in touch with some experienced people, I turned their "systems" into automated algorithms. The rest, as they say, is history.

Credential wise, the only addition has been a Series 3 commodity broker license. I'm not a broker, but I'm required to hold the license to operate the algorithms using other people's capital.

You have to know what you love about coding - Why do you do it? Ex: for exposure (your work gets seen), for competing with yourself, for recognition by peers (open source maybe), for most money for your family, etc. I got burned out coding on stuff that I found less meaningful and transitioned to the product side where my coding skills gave me a very unfair advantage against competition and peers alike (I could build what just became possible by reading APIS). I found myself wanting to code for fun and after 2 years went to get an MBA at a top school while coding my first startup at the same time. My brain loved learning all the intricacies of Finance, VC, Patent Law, and anything else that can help or hurt entrepreneurs, while my hands were hammering on product. Now I code almost full-time on my startup. I code in a language I didn't know a year ago (Go) and the speed of it gives me so much joy to work on it, compared to others - it makes coding fun. Find out your Whys, and you may realize that coding is not sitting for 3 decades, but power to bring to life previously impossible things (or just things other's didn't think of) that can improve the lives of people anywhere on the planet.

Respectfully there are two separate things here:

1. The notion that 'coding' is exactly what you're doing now.

I think that doing actual development varies far more widely between roles, company sizes and verticals than in other careers.

As an example: in my programming career I've done everything from work with Navy SEALS (handheld athletic training software) to attend rock festivals (making sure scheduling software stays up and working) to some AR.

I have a friend that makes robotic control software for nuclear plants and flies around the world collecting stories of people who have seriously messed things up. Another friend works at a big bank as one of a floor full of people doing something insanely boring with credit cards. They both seem happy. They both are developers. Their lives could not be more different.

Coding doesn't have to mean 40hrs a week in a windowless office and all of those roles varied between 20% to 60% coding (at a rough estimate) and if you've only ever worked in a large company it's crazy how different building even building your own apps/services can even be.

2. Switching careers.

I've always really liked Scott Adams career advice to try and be the top 25% of two different subject areas:

http://dilbertblog.typepad.com/the_dilbert_blog/2007/07/care...

Being a developer is a great '1st skill' because it mixes so well with nearly everything else in today's society. So, I'd say don't abandon it (or your knowledge) but try to pair it with something you find more interesting.

I have been thinking about going that route as well. How and when did you know it was the right choice for you?

The biggest "aha" moment for me was realizing that everyone out there busting their asses and burning out to "increase shareholder value" were making me rich.