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I did: http://www.publicstatic.net/2009/01/sure-change-jobs/ The biggest adjustment for me was money. I'd gotten so used to buying whatever I wanted (not large things) that I had some money trouble early on. But I'm back to programming now. I love it.
It's a great story, inspiring even, why don't you do an HN post ?
I should probably clean it up, too. Some of the formatting got butchered in a server move.
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a bit of everything
:\ really no focus? even something general like, "web development" (as opposed to "game development", "financial software"). i'm curious because i wonder what fields it's easy to find work in again after a year off.
Go back and do a PhD? +'s - When you finish, you should be pretty marketable Pick up a whole new set of research skills Support group shouldn't be a problem in a university environment Potential for coding if you want to. Someone with industry experience will tend to have a good idea of what will work in reality -'s You will take a hit money wise until you qualify You could perhaps look at doing a masters as an inter…
PhD is a long and uncertain education path... that leads to an even longer and more uncertain career path.
Oh, and you will be 5+ years older that everybody else.
“Oh, you hate your job? Why didn't you say so? There's a support group for that. It's called EVERYBODY, and they meet at the bar.”" -George Carlin
This is just a joke, I wouldn't take it seriously. Do you really think Carlin hated his job?
Worked on Wall Street for almost 20 years. Did everything from quant finance to selling bonds to managing technology project. Left in 2004 (yes, deferred comp was left on the table), moved to Australia to study machine learning and collected a doctorate. Started a biofuel company (long story).
Now, six years later, I'm founding a quant marketing startup. Net result: less salary, more upside, more psychic benefits. Make sure your spouse is up for it and they are willing to grow. If so, you'll be closer otherwise the inevitable stresses may take their toll. Mine ended up getting an MFA and a new career of her own.
Turns out my neighbor in Australia was a senior product developer at Microsoft before he decided to move to an atoll in the Pacific and then get a biology degree. He used to jokingly accuse me of copying him. (Typical Microsoftie.)
I think the bottom line is that mastery is not enough for some people. The 21st century midlife crisis cannot be cured with a new Porsche. You need another mountain to climb.
Go back and do a PhD? +'s - When you finish, you should be pretty marketable Pick up a whole new set of research skills Support group shouldn't be a problem in a university environment Potential for coding if you want to. Someone with industry experience will tend to have a good idea of what will work in reality -'s You will take a hit money wise until you qualify You could perhaps look at doing a masters as an inter…
Are there attractive, single members of the opposite sex involved with this? If so, just let me know which colleges I should apply to.
Biology probably has the best balance between "attractive" and "sane" you're going to find.
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Funny, but not as funny as if it were true. PP is when you're competent and get promoted to something you suck at; Peter's suggestion is the other way around. Sorry to nitpick.
But isn't it true? If someone is succeeding as a programmer, that says nothing about how they'll do as a manager. Therefore pushing for that promotion is a good way to wind up getting promoted to something you such at. Which is the Peter Principle at work.
I'm going to make an analogy to love. In the beginning, you're attracted to someone mostly because of looks. Then you get to know all the good things (s)he has shared with you. Eventually, the passion flame wanes and you're now able to see her/his ticks and vices. The flaws. Getting into software development is similar. At first you get excited by your first "hello world", then you find all sorts of cool things that…
I had originally gotten in programming, as you said because of the excitement of hacking, "hello world"; it was an intrinsic joy that I had that I derived although extrinsic rewards (striking it rich) was in the back of my head. But it wasn't the extrinsic demands that was driving me day-to-day, otherwise I would have gone into accounting instead of programming.
But it was all of these extrinsic demands that pushed me to climb the corporate ladder, deal with maintenance & management etc. In so doing, I was telling myself that I had to plough through these minutiae to get to my big external validation of climbing the ladder, becoming rich, etc - when in fact, it was my intrinsic motivation that got me to where I was from the get-go. And if getting to the and staying at the top means sacrificing the internal joy for external validations, then it's not worth it.
I used to think that dropping your obligations to the ladder is counterproductive to your career. But not anymore when I spend more rationalizing and calming myself down from all of the angst of writing TPS reports and posturing/covering my ass during meetings. I don't even have anymore energy/time to actually write code. And that's pretty damn counter-productive.
I always have taken a broad definition of hacking and I see this pattern everywhere. You could see playing guitar as having fun creating music & expressing yourself, or memorizing sets & rehearse & network to get your band signed to a huge label. You could see making friends and picking up women as having fun meeting people & expressing yourself, or memorizing sets & rehearse & network to up your social worth, etc.
I'm really just a mediocre programmer with really good domain knowledge Your problem is that you have no problem. Let me explain... I believe that the "quality" of a programmer is not how much you know, but what you can do with it. So it you have "really good domain knowledge", then you probably aren't a mediocre programmer at all, you're probably a good programmer or even better. Like many other hn'ers, I love to co…
great advice (as usual), edw519 ... have you thought about starting a blog with an FAQ mined from your responses from "Ask HN" questions? an easy hack that someone else could even do would be to troll through "Ask HN" threads, extract the ones where your answer was highest-ranked, and slap them together on a webpage somewhere. then that could be manually filtered and curated. i think that this would be a helpful page…
Yes I have thought about starting a blog for some time, but I was always afraid it would take time away from my programming.
Oh, what the heck...
I have updated my hn profile.
Now I have a weekend project.
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This is just a joke, I wouldn't take it seriously. Do you really think Carlin hated his job?
Yes, I bet there were times that he did. Especially before he was "George Carlin, world famous comedian" and was just some guy trying to land enough gigs to feed himself.