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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?

#71

Post by CryoLogic »

swedish_mafia wrote: post #4

I believe this is a time when a lot of software engineers are asking the hard questions about their careers. Here's why: The technologies have become simpler and the barriers to entry have become low. Once upon a time, if you knew the mainstream languages (C++ and Java) it meant you paid your dues learning the hard stuff. Today, with nodejs becoming mainstream, and the cloud at the backend, developers who come from a…

Yes, it is easier to build a TODO-list app today than ever before.

No it is not significantly easier to build a fully-fledged software business.

What is expected and required has also scaled up immensely. You can't just drop a Java SWING GUI on a simple tool and put it on a website with a PayPal link and wait for search to bring you business anymore.

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

#72

Post by MikeTheGreat »

swedish_mafia wrote: post #4

I believe this is a time when a lot of software engineers are asking the hard questions about their careers. Here's why: The technologies have become simpler and the barriers to entry have become low. Once upon a time, if you knew the mainstream languages (C++ and Java) it meant you paid your dues learning the hard stuff. Today, with nodejs becoming mainstream, and the cloud at the backend, developers who come from a…

As someone who teaches Intro level students it can actually be a bit more difficult to get started. Not always (there's stuff like LightBot, Scratch, and Alice), but it used to be that HTML + JavaScript was a pretty good way to start.

Nowadays, programming for the web can involve:

* HTML

* CSS

* JavaScript, client-side

* JS framework(s)

* server-side language (possibly JS / Node)

* SQL

What's really messed up is you can choose PHP for the server-side (say) and end up with a single file that contains _all_of_those_languages_.

(Yes, you don't need to use them all at once, but even if you do the classic HTML+JS w/ document.write()'s your students are going to push you for the cool stuff they actually see 'in the wild')

This is not to say that you can't get started (and there's a lot of material out there to help motivated people) but depending on where you start the stuff you need to learn can be surprisingly voluminous.

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

#73

Post by dsnuh »

PascLeRasc wrote: post #41

Does anyone have any stories of career do-overs that aren't just a renaming of "software engineer" on both sides?

Exactly. Most of these read as "I went into a different specialization of the same field".

Where is the engineer that just chucked it all and opened a donut shop? That's the level I want to know about. Most of these are just stories of people making lateral moves in the same industry.

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

#75

Post by ctdonath »

Did embedded software for a couple decades at numerous companies. Was good at it, but saw the path was going to slowly drift into the weeds (company was aspiring to build products competing with what competitors had discarded as obsolete). Noticed one of those rare ground-floor technology shift opportunities was occurring in the industry...

Told my students in my side/after-hours gig as professor "there's a rare ground-floor technology shift opportunity occurring in the industry, now's your chance..."

A friend was co-founder of a startup. One day, while in his home for unrelated reasons, he was on the phone with CIO lamenting their [then] inability to find iOS developers. He saw me, pointed, shouted "don't leave!", hung up, and asked if I wanted to do iOS development. "Yes!" I replied with enthusiasm. He then asked if I actually knew iOS development. "No! but I'd jump at the chance & reason to learn!" We arranged a 6-month trial period, I worked long hard nights learning & implementing iOS code, and within 3 months was hired as the 2nd employee.

A few years later, that business was sold, and moved on to doing apps for major corporations.

Upshot: technology & business path was stalling out, used an opportune connection to take a risk in jumping to the near-start of a new yet equivalent technology path. Was able to leverage deep "magic" skills (intuition, arcane knowledge, refined techniques) to "do-over" my career, starting with decades of experience into a realm just years old.

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

#76

Post by Liuser »

_diyu wrote: post #43
rb808 wrote: post #34

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…

I'm only 32 but that's kind of where I'm at right now too. Mastered Objective-C and Mac & iOS development 10 years ago, now it's all Swift and nobody's really hiring for iOS devs in my area (Chicago suburbs), and nobody's hiring for native Mac developers anywhere, period. And all the best practices in iOS have changed drastically since then, too, in terms of both coding and UX. Learned Ruby on Rails 8 years ago, but…

When you get into technology, you should go under the assumption that you will be a student for the rest of your life. Otherwise you will get left behind. My Dad is in tech (I followed his footsteps). For as long as I can remember growing up he always had a book with him in his free time. He started with punchcards.

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

#77

Post by bubbleRefuge »

brd wrote: post #10

It's all about latching on to domain expertise. Rarely is a developer a pure technologist, there is always some niche you've become involved in whether it be related to payments or UX or a subset of businesses functions. Assuming you have some meaningful knowledge of something non-technical, you can take that with you into a different area of software development. I've transitioned across various technical roles by u…

That's right. Its about domain and specialization. I'm 48 and have a really good remote gig b/c I've got about 10+ years in one specific enterprise software domain. Interviewing for mainstream technology generalist job is where you get hammered with the Google-style interviews.

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

#78

Post by crimsonalucard »

maxaf wrote: post #17
swedish_mafia wrote: post #4

I believe this is a time when a lot of software engineers are asking the hard questions about their careers. Here's why: The technologies have become simpler and the barriers to entry have become low. Once upon a time, if you knew the mainstream languages (C++ and Java) it meant you paid your dues learning the hard stuff. Today, with nodejs becoming mainstream, and the cloud at the backend, developers who come from a…

I disagree with some of your points. Firstly, being able to crank out simple web apps doesn't translate to building large systems that solve hard problems. There's a huge gulf there that can only be bridged by experience, and lots of it. Secondly, and this also speaks to experience, simply having worked in a "software developer"-style job for some number of years doesn't convey the experience needed to solve hard pro…

This isn't true at all. The state of the situation is tons of people are trying to switch over to web dev and given enough time and effort anyone can become competent at building large systems and solving hard problems. That huge gulf is huge but the gulf is shrinking at an incredible velocity.

The supply of human software developers is increasing at an incredible rate. You don't need a degree in software to do software. I would say roughly 40% of software devs now have an actual software engineering degree. Heck, I'm working with a guy who has a degree accounting and went to a freaking bootcamp for six months. He got lucky and was able to pass the hiring managers' little software puzzle (DFS problem) and he's now a full-time developer.

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

#79

Post by _diyu »

Liuser wrote: post #76
_diyu wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm only 32 but that's kind of where I'm at right now too. Mastered Objective-C and Mac & iOS development 10 years ago, now it's all Swift and nobody's really hiring for iOS devs in my area (Chicago suburbs), and nobody's hiring for native Mac developers anywhere, period. And all the best practices in iOS have changed drastically since then, too, in terms of both coding and UX. Learned Ruby on Rails 8 years ago, but…

When you get into technology, you should go under the assumption that you will be a student for the rest of your life. Otherwise you will get left behind. My Dad is in tech (I followed his footsteps). For as long as I can remember growing up he always had a book with him in his free time. He started with punchcards.

I don't mind learning, definitely. I got into this field because I'm passionate about software and I enjoy programming a lot. But while I have a full time job and a large-ish family to support, it's hard to fit "3 years of professional React.js experience" into my spare time to put on my resume, so that when nobody's hiring iOS developers anymore, I can still get a job. That's what I'm talking about. A lot of the skills are very transferrable, but I've already been turned down for a few jobs simply because I just don't have the in-production experience with the exact technology they're hiring for, even though I could pick it up pretty quickly.

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

#80

Post by atsaloli »

rb808 wrote: post #34

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…

What's DI?
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