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Ask HN: What was the best decision you made in your career?

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Re: Ask HN: What was the best decision you made in your career?

#141

Post by minkzilla »

yutyut wrote: post #134

I was a mid-level developer at a large software company making a very competitive salary and quit to join the U.S. Marine Corps and train to become a Naval Aviator. I'm now a 'mid-level' AH-1Z pilot. I work longer hours and have generally a lower quality of life but there's something to be said for the immensely unique things I've gotten to do and how profoundly well-rounded the entire experience has made me. I will…

Thanks for this response. I'm going to graduate college soon and I've been thinking of trying to join cal fire. I know I want to be in tech, but I don't know if I am ready for it yet. I think I need something more exciting/meaningful while I am still young.

Re: Ask HN: What was the best decision you made in your career?

#142

Post by yakshaving_jgt »

Transformative moments in my career:

- Learning Vim and working from the terminal

- Going through the book 'Seven Languages in Seven Weeks'

- Learning typed Functional Programming

I think the above three things are solid, foundational skills — proficiency with power tools, learning to learn, and learning to think about problems differently.

Another transformative moment in my career was when I learned that many things popular and shiny today are just bad implementations of things we've had for 40 years. Specifically I realised this after learning GruntJS, and then Make.

Re: Ask HN: What was the best decision you made in your career?

#143

Post by hef19898 »

busterarm wrote: post #111
phakding wrote: post #25

There is no loyalty in business. Keep your loyalty for your family and may be friends, not for the company you work for. The company will never be loyal back. Have an opportunity to make more or work more interesting? Grab it with both hands. If you are 99.99% of the workforce, you are not indispensable no matter how much you think you are.

And I'll fly the opposing flag here. Loyalty to people is everything in business. Got a good working relationship with people? Stick to them like glue. Make your moves as a unit. Having a team of people consistently work well together is lightning in a bottle. I've built relationships with people just by doing right by them in tough situations that have lasted decades and paid fantastic dividends.

Both is true in my opinion. Strange thing I witnessed, loyalty between corporations matter (e.g. suppliers and customers) and loyalty between people matters (just pick wisely, not everybody is worth it). Loyalty between corporations and people doesn't exist and is usually a one way street.

Re: Ask HN: What was the best decision you made in your career?

#144

Post by sidcool »

sdenton4 wrote: post #98
sidcool wrote: post #87

Is a Master's degree worth it in Computer science? I am very interested in operaing systems and distributed computing.

Grad school is a great thing to do if it suits you. If structuring your own time leads to side projects and deep diving in a technical area, then you've probably got the right drive and self determinism to do decently in grad school. Just avoid dreaming too much about tenure track jobs and you'll have a great time. (Well, so long as the program doesn't suck. Do your research...)

Thanks, that helps.

Re: Ask HN: What was the best decision you made in your career?

#146

Post by debt »

yutyut wrote: post #134

I was a mid-level developer at a large software company making a very competitive salary and quit to join the U.S. Marine Corps and train to become a Naval Aviator. I'm now a 'mid-level' AH-1Z pilot. I work longer hours and have generally a lower quality of life but there's something to be said for the immensely unique things I've gotten to do and how profoundly well-rounded the entire experience has made me. I will…

Don’t mean to sound like a dick but in an effort to keep the record straight: sounds like you fucked up.

The military is the least meritocratic and most bureaucratic shitstorm in existence currently.

Flying planes is great if you’re able to only ever want to do that until dead.

Re: Ask HN: What was the best decision you made in your career?

#147

Post by nik1aa5 »

tudorconstantin wrote: post #89

By far, applying to work remote for a US based company 3 years ago. I am living in Romania. I still work for them. Theoretically I should be able to retire in about 5-10 years, in my mid 40s, depending on how frugal I am with my expenses. This wouldn't have been possible working for a local software company, even though I was paid about 3 times the average national income.

How did you find the vacancy? Isn't there some dedicated website for Europeans who want to work for an US company remotely?

Re: Ask HN: What was the best decision you made in your career?

#148

Post by jedberg »

Leaving my cushy public company job for a startup.

And then four years later leaving the startup for a job at a public company.

In fact, my entire career has been startup/corp/startup/corp/startup. So far all the money has been made from the corp jobs, but the big learning spikes came from the startups. So that pattern has served me well.

Re: Ask HN: What was the best decision you made in your career?

#149

Post by stephenr »

Taking a 'risk'.

I was working in an infra/support role at a state government run education institute, and following a reasonably interesting (compared to most of the work) project I started looking for work I would enjoy more (than the regular stuff) elsewhere.

I got a call from an interstate contracting agency (and I still don't know how this part happened) about a job I couldn't do (flash dev) and didn't apply for. I explained that I hadn't applied and wasn't interested but then they mentioned they were also looking to fill a federal government contract for a front-end developer. I had been applying for web jobs (despite having zero commercial experience in it, it'd been what I originally intended to do when I started studying years earlier) so I said I was interested, and within 10 days (I think? It was a while ago) I had confirmation I'd won the contract, over someone with 10 years experience.

I've long since moved back towards ops/infra (albeit in a web focus - load balancers and DB clusters rather than desktop management policies and file/print servers) and dev-tooling type stuff, but that first big step - away from family, and a reasonably safe government job, to a fixed-term contract definitely played a big part in getting me where I am now.

Re: Ask HN: What was the best decision you made in your career?

#150

Post by todd3834 »

debt wrote: post #146
yutyut wrote: post #134

I was a mid-level developer at a large software company making a very competitive salary and quit to join the U.S. Marine Corps and train to become a Naval Aviator. I'm now a 'mid-level' AH-1Z pilot. I work longer hours and have generally a lower quality of life but there's something to be said for the immensely unique things I've gotten to do and how profoundly well-rounded the entire experience has made me. I will…

Don’t mean to sound like a dick but in an effort to keep the record straight: sounds like you fucked up. The military is the least meritocratic and most bureaucratic shitstorm in existence currently. Flying planes is great if you’re able to only ever want to do that until dead.

What do you mean to sound like? A cool guy who just drops truth bombs? The guy did what he wanted to and he is happy he did it. Sounds like he won to me. Love what you do and you never work a day in your life right?
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