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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?

#111

Post by itomato »

After so many years of growth and development in any industry, you have to change and shift to stay relevant.

A big part of being relevant is being interested. If you aren't relevant or interested, you aren't of any value in that particular niche of that particular industry.

What I chose to do when faced with this was to move into an adjacent field where my skills were applicable and relevant to the new and interesting challenge.

When the situation arose yet again, I took the knowledge gained by having applied my skills in new ways to focus on applying them in a constant state of change to help others in different niches.

It's all one big spiral staircase of shark's teeth, where there is no shortage of change, growth or people willing to take your place.

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

#112

Post by ccdev »

nathanaldensr wrote: post #54

I'm dealing with this right now. I have a ton of experience--since I was a young teenager, in fact--of being a software developer, mostly in positions of technical leadership. Most of my resume consists of architect jobs. And yet, to pay the bills, explore a new area of the country, and expand on complimentary skills, I took a job as a senior DevOps engineer contractor at Idaho National Laboratory. Since my contract…

To be honest, I would rather take more algorithm-focused interview tests than be filtered through the HR perception that I don't qualify for Programming Language Y because I only have experience with Similar Language X. At least most of the companies that do algorithm-based tests are more agnostic about the languages you have used in the past.

Pair it up with the fact that I never look for jobs until I am let go from a job, and I have a double whammy for "hard sell". Something I didn't know that is a bad idea to do until much later in my career. But hey, it's not like we all know about all the things you should and should not do about careers. I just assumed that the only drawback of not having a job is that you have no income stream coming in.

I am able to get through interview rounds with Amazon, and also have gotten the attention of a few interesting companies from my Github projects. But somehow I do not get a good perception with local companies on my resume. Others have helped me out on fixing my resume and they've told me, it's too aimless. It does not have a clear sense of growth and direction, so I am trying out a new resume hoping that my job-searching experience will improve.

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

#113

Post by ordinaryperson »

ccdev wrote: post #97

Thanks for the replies, everyone. Keep them coming! I didn't expect this topic to get this popular. The reason I asked this question is that I am facing a career slump as a software engineer, and finding out that the software industry is brutal if you don't know how to carve a path for your own career. And when I mean career slump, I really mean it. I'm living with my mom at age 35 which is quite the opposite of what…

What do you WANT to do (besides make money)?

Generally speaking there are 3 broad career paths for developers these days:

1. Senior developer/team lead

2. Management

3. Startup founder / worker

==========

Senior dev:

==========

PROS: Actually get to build stuff all day. Fun to program the latest and greatest. Be respected as an expert by your peers. Less meeting and paperwork hassle than other roles.

CONS: Can be sat on by middle management. Often don't get to drive product or strategic decisions. Low salary ceiling. Frustrating to be forced to do things you think are bad ideas.

==========

Management

==========

PROS: Get to make decisions (well, more than people beneath you, anyway). Potential path to the 1%. No more keeping up with the ratrace of programming platforms and languages. Can have a positive impact on the lives of your reports.

CONS: No satisfaction of hands-on product building, just lots of sitting in meetings, sending e-mails and crafting PowerPoints. Sometimes mentally exhausting to babysit your reports. Lots of Game of Thrones-style politics.

==========

Startup founder / worker

==========

PROS: Fun (well, more than corporate jobs). Be your own boss / have more independence. Work on interesting problems. Potential path to fame and fortune.

CONS: 90% likely to fail and put you in debt or company go out of business. Potentially limitless time commitment. Doesn't feel life-fulfilling to work on a company dedicated to disseminating cat gifs (or whatever the startup does).

==========

Ask yourself which of these 3 paths appeal to you the most, then write out a list of what you need to do to get there, potentially.

If you're living with Mom at age 35 however it sounds like you need to move to a big city like San Francisco or New York where they pay developers a lot more, but I don't know what your situation is.

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

#114

Post by blitz_skull »

_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…

Is there a private message feature here? I may have an opportunity you'd be interested in.

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

#115

Post by tw1010 »

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…

> Once you're laid off or fired once its really hard to be the super confident hacker you were at 25.

This is the point of all those self-help books about grit and things like that. Their point isn't really to accelerate your progress when you're feeling good and confident. Their purpose is to help you regain the confidence once you lose it, to make you robust to setbacks.

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

#116

Post by matte_black »

crimsonalucard wrote: post #65
matte_black wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was in your position, been working with iOS since the beginning until I decided to just get the fuck out of iOS and start doing some useful things. Went all in with building single page applications in JavaScript and Node, front end, back end, and database administration, and haven’t looked back. Fuck iOS now, native mobile development benefited from a craze where everyone thought mobile apps were the new web apps,…

Node and javascript? Those technologies change and move faster than anything else in the industry. What you're doing now will likely be obsolete within a couple years.

So what? You’re not never going to find one thing to learn for all time. Things change. The point is to get started and then follow the industry.

Who cares if what I do today is obsolete in a few years, by then I’ll be doing something different.

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

#117

Post by Havoc »

GreeniFi wrote: post #102

I was a bored private equity lawyer, working like a ninja, ashamed by my firm’s clients. I did a one year Masters in Environmental Economics, did some really interesting work and then joined someone else’s start-up and ran a few side projects. That gave me the experience and confidence to really go out on my own. To anyone else about to pivot their life I would say: 1. A British one year masters (not an MBA) is a gre…

I'm curious about the questionable PE clients if you don't mind elaborating a little bit. I'm in the PE space myself and haven't seen anything particularly shady? Obviously you can't go into details, but perhaps you can add a bit more colour to the comment?

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

#118

Post by crimsonalucard »

matte_black wrote: post #116
crimsonalucard wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Node and javascript? Those technologies change and move faster than anything else in the industry. What you're doing now will likely be obsolete within a couple years.

So what? You’re not never going to find one thing to learn for all time. Things change. The point is to get started and then follow the industry. Who cares if what I do today is obsolete in a few years, by then I’ll be doing something different.

Don't learn the language. Learn the fundamentals. The fundamentals remain constant.

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

#119

Post by ErikAugust »

jaredhansen wrote: post #9
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…

>developers who come from an "html programming" background can now build scalable and enterprise grade applications without breaking a sweat. This is a popular misconception but inaccurate nonetheless. It may appear that way at first glance, but there is still more to building "scalable and enterprise grade" stuff than just cobbling together a bunch of off the shelf components.

It's possible - but not without breaking a sweat. Coming from "HTML programming" you are looking at many years of experience and learning to get to that level despite how good tooling has become.

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

#120

Post by ccdev »

ordinaryperson wrote: post #113
ccdev wrote: post #97

Thanks for the replies, everyone. Keep them coming! I didn't expect this topic to get this popular. The reason I asked this question is that I am facing a career slump as a software engineer, and finding out that the software industry is brutal if you don't know how to carve a path for your own career. And when I mean career slump, I really mean it. I'm living with my mom at age 35 which is quite the opposite of what…

What do you WANT to do (besides make money)? Generally speaking there are 3 broad career paths for developers these days: 1. Senior developer/team lead 2. Management 3. Startup founder / worker ========== Senior dev: ========== PROS: Actually get to build stuff all day. Fun to program the latest and greatest. Be respected as an expert by your peers. Less meeting and paperwork hassle than other roles. CONS: Can be sat…

I'm definitely choosing path 1, which is to become a senior dev. I prefer technical-focused jobs. Learn from mentor programmers, get into teams and learn formal development practices, and then help out programmers less experienced than myself. I've never held a senior title, never led a group, nor even been involved with the process of hiring other programmers.

I currently live in Chicago which is pretty good for COL/salary ratio, for the average programmer. Caveat: I am not average. I consistently get offers from very low paying jobs- as in "$25/hr on a contract" low. This comes from the tendency to being let go from jobs without having another one lined up, so I never could afford to wait much longer for a better offer to use as leverage. Also, I don't qualify for unemployment insurance.

That has put me in the bottom 15-20% of local jobs by total compensation. If I were to restart as a junior programmer at one of the better companies, I'd actually be getting paid somewhat more than at my last job (and with insurance benefits for once).

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