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Ask HN: Have you successfully done a career do-over, and how did you do it?

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Re: Ask HN: Have you successfully done a career do-over, and how did you do it?

#31

Post by movedx »

keyle wrote: post #8

This industry is the very definition of career do-over. Every 5 years or so we change our activities. No one writes code or design like 20 years ago. With a career of 50 years, we are all doomed to have to change. Adapt over time. Don't just jump. Take on new responsibilities. You will find experience crosses many fields. It's a lot about domain knowledge (e.g. financial industry) and we carry a lot of stuff over wit…

Well said.

Stay flexible and keep learning. I like the 4% rule: keep increasing the difficulty of a daily challenge by 4%, i.e. keep pushing your self to reach higher and higher.

Re: Ask HN: Have you successfully done a career do-over, and how did you do it?

#32

Post by ahussain »

hcnews wrote: post #30

I was at one of the FANG companies for 6+ years, joined right after graduation. However, I couldn't get senior due to me being naive (I have no ego, hence wasn't able to collaborate effectively with teammates, pissed a few off a few times), positioning of the product (none of my team members got promoted to senior while I was in that team). Last year I opted to change my jobs when my promo was denied again. I had har…

> The big change I have done is to accept that not everyone is learning all the time and not to try to do the same (its software engineering not research)

What do you mean by this?

Re: Ask HN: Have you successfully done a career do-over, and how did you do it?

#33

Post by wuliwong »

I got my Ph.D. in physics in 2010, worked for about 1 year in research then took a year to try and build my own startup while collecting unemployment. I didn't successfully get a startup going but I learned enough web development during that time that I have been doing it professionally ever since.

Re: Ask HN: Have you successfully done a career do-over, and how did you do it?

#34

Post by rb808 »

I suspect its not as easy as many people make out.

I was a great C++/OO dev for 10 years before I got bored, starting doing management, business focussed roles and more high level devops style work. After 10 years of that I wanted to move back into pure coding. With great experience should be easy right? Wrong.

I got a mid-level java/python dev job and it was difficult, I was out of touch and everything was different or new. Languages, styles, CI/CD, DI, git, containers, unit testing its a huge amount to learn. After a year I got laid off because I was getting paid like a senior but not keeping up with the grads.

A few years later I'm productive and useful in this new world but I dont really like it. I'm enjoying Scala and functional programming but with so many libraries and tools I feel like everything is so difficult and complicated. It takes a lot of study effort to keep up. Also I'm never sure if its because the applications I work on are badly designed, or I just dont really understand modern design. I have a business specialty which keeps me employable but I miss the old days when things were simpler.

Being "old" at 40+ really isn't so easy - I'm not sure you can ever redeem yourself in the eyes of the industry. Best you can hope for is get a non-tech domain specialty and find a big stable company that values experience and try to keep working on interesting projects. Once you're laid off or fired once its really hard to be the super confident hacker you were at 25.

EDIT - thinking about if you want advice. Get a business specialty or technical niche. Dont get too lazy, if you aren't learning on the job for a few years in a row, change the tech in the project or leave. It should be easy to keep employed but you have to keep working at it. Best career money-wise is to move to management, but its difficult to move back. Dont take the high paying job on a dead end project without a plan to get out.

Re: Ask HN: Have you successfully done a career do-over, and how did you do it?

#35

Post by volkk »

rm_-rf_slash wrote: post #25

Not sure how applicable this is, but I’ve gone back to school to get an M.Eng now that I know I don’t want to do (or only have the skills for) applications development forever. The focus is ML/AI but I’ve found a surprising amount of enjoyment out of working with hardware in the rapid prototyping class I’m currently taking. In retrospect, sticking with just one domain was probably why I got bored in the first place.…

just started taking an online intro course to deep learning. really hoping that i'm not simply wasting my time and that if i actually want to one day pursue it, that i won't need to have a PHD in this field

Re: Ask HN: Have you successfully done a career do-over, and how did you do it?

#36

Post by ebbv »

Yep I was a programmer at a university until 2002 when I had driven my own career into the ditch along with my personal life. I had to start over from a lower position after gathering my wits about me, and work my way back up.

The hardest part was getting that second chance, if you had a more senior job and you're applying for a lower one it's obvious to people there's something going on there. Your best bet is going to be honesty, and convey very clearly you've learned from your mistakes and that you want to improve, your open to feedback, etc.

Good luck.

Re: Ask HN: Have you successfully done a career do-over, and how did you do it?

#37

Post by turc1656 »

wuliwong wrote: post #33

I got my Ph.D. in physics in 2010, worked for about 1 year in research then took a year to try and build my own startup while collecting unemployment. I didn't successfully get a startup going but I learned enough web development during that time that I have been doing it professionally ever since.

How were you able to collect unemployment if you decided to leave to try to get a business started?

Re: Ask HN: Have you successfully done a career do-over, and how did you do it?

#38

Post by khazhou »

southphillyman wrote: post #18

Can't speak on it personally but about 3-4 years ago during my last job search I searched a few "Getting a dev job after 30" type queries. I was around that age and concerned about all the ageism claims. Apparently there are forums full of former developers either out of the industry or struggling to remain in it. There was a lot of talk about depression and guys being suicidal because they couldn't keep up with the…

I find the notion of age discrimination at 30+ to be simply ludicrous. I’ve been at multiple top tech companies, and the very common age ranges were mid-20s to (estimated) late-40s.

Re: Ask HN: Have you successfully done a career do-over, and how did you do it?

#39

Post by debt »

ElectronicE wrote: post #28

I got a super comfortable job for the past 15years as a work from home C++ server programmer. It has allowed me to be around and watch my kid grow rather than be away 8-6PM and just come home to dinner and put them to bed. It was very good pay at the beginning but it hasn't keep up and now it's not that good (to bad either). A few years ago I started playing with electronics (Arduinos, Raspberry PIs and stuff like th…

It's cool that you used Upwork as a way to change careers. Very intriguing use of that platform.

Re: Ask HN: Have you successfully done a career do-over, and how did you do it?

#40

Post by wuliwong »

turc1656 wrote: post #37
wuliwong wrote: post #33

I got my Ph.D. in physics in 2010, worked for about 1 year in research then took a year to try and build my own startup while collecting unemployment. I didn't successfully get a startup going but I learned enough web development during that time that I have been doing it professionally ever since.

How were you able to collect unemployment if you decided to leave to try to get a business started?

I got laid off and then made that decision. And I basically just started building websites that I thought would be cool. Trying to "get a startup going" might be giving myself too much credit.
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