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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?

#251

Post by TheArcane »

FahadUddin92 wrote: post #129

I did following things that helped me grow, 1. My engineering ended in 2013. I was shit broke. I started doing online courses in 2016. Till now I have done 51 online courses in different things and just a month ago I got moved into a DevOps role (from a WordPress developer role). $0 invested in it. 2. The other best thing is growing my LinkedIn network. I grew my network from 200 people to to 15000 people (most of wh…

> 15000 people

I can't imagine the low SNR because of that enabling you to derive any use from it.

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

#252

Post by FahadUddin92 »

minhazm423 wrote: post #135
FahadUddin92 wrote: post #129

I did following things that helped me grow, 1. My engineering ended in 2013. I was shit broke. I started doing online courses in 2016. Till now I have done 51 online courses in different things and just a month ago I got moved into a DevOps role (from a WordPress developer role). $0 invested in it. 2. The other best thing is growing my LinkedIn network. I grew my network from 200 people to to 15000 people (most of wh…

I have a ton of questions for you but I'll boil it down to several for now: 1) Which courses would you recommend? Which had the greatest impact? How would you do things differently? Would you forego engineering entirely? 2) Suppose one doesnt have friends from school or work, how does one build a linkedin following? What did you write about? How did you promote your articles? 3. Again, favorite books? Most impactful?…

For the 4th thing. I got replies because I asked very relevant and to the point questions. If its very specific and they can really help, they respond.

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

#253

Post by DIVx0 »

badtuple wrote: post #121
DIVx0 wrote: post #38

Taking a chance and joining a very large corporation. Previously I was all about startups or small companies and was very much against the mega-corp environment. Over several months a colleague "recruited" me to join their team and I don't regret it. I've been able to climb pretty high within this corp and it has been a wild ride. Never in a million years would I have thought I'd have any sort of influence over techn…

Did you feel like you had agency when you first started? I'm talking to a Global 500 for a senior engineering role and I'm super torn. The role seems cool, but I like my agency and have alot of it currently. It's a hard thing to risk giving up.

I had similar concerns before I joined up. I didn’t want to get swallowed up in some massive project or shuffled around in reorganization after reorganization.

The guy who was recruiting me made all the assurances that would not happen. I respected this guy, it’s the only reason why I even entertained being “recruited” for this role. Even with that though his word was not good enough.

What put me over the edge was meeting with his boss and then his bosses boss. I got the impression that these people had great skills in running an organization. They both were ex engineers who made the leap to senior management prior to joint the mega Corp (VP and Exec VP). I felt like I could trust them to a degree. It has proven out for me.

So, I suggest trying to get information to gauge how much you can “trust” your senior leadership beyond whomever will be your supervisor since those are the people who will really have the most control over your agency and future at that company.

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

#254

Post by bshimmin »

BerislavLopac wrote: post #237
bshimmin wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I spent about three years contracting, and the way I started was to ask the company I was a permanent employee at (who routinely hired contractors) if they would like to hire me as a contractor instead of as a perm. They said "OK" and so I quit as a perm and restarted as a contractor (I actually also managed to negotiate a four day week and one of the four days at home, back when remote working was much less of a thi…

Where are you located? I'm quite interested in transitioning to a consultancy, but I've always had trouble doing selling. Any hints you could share?

Hey, feel free to drop me an email to have a chat - there's an address in the web page linked from my profile.

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

#255

Post by RealityVoid »

TheArcane wrote: post #247
DerekQ wrote: post #203

Moving from permanent to contractor. I made the jump 5 years ago and have worked for a number of companies since, on 6-12 month contracts. The money has jumped each time, such that I’m on what I consider to be silly money now for the job I do — Ireland, not US. The work is always interesting for at least 6 months and I learn a ton of new stuff with every contract, much of which I use when building my own products (Do…

I work with mobile robotics and machine learning. I wonder if it's too niche for it to enable me to comfortably start contracting instead of jumping from one permanent role to another.

Mobile robotics sounds so cool. But looking around it seems most jobs are concentrated in a couple of locations and the rest of the world seems to be a desert. Just curious where are you located and how is the mobile robotics scene over there?

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

#256

Post by bvelica »

The best decision I ever made was when I bought my first computer and when I started working in an internet cafe here in Romania (so I can learn what a computer is and how it works).

I was 19-20 years old, without a home of my own (sleeping on 2 chairs side by side for many years in a single room with my grandparents), working in a fast food and with almost no education (just high school night classes done - I was working since I was 17.).

I've started learning on my own (every day I read), learned Linux and at 36 I am an accomplished man. Ambition, self education, learning and reading got me where I am now... and maybe a bit of luck.

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

#258

Post by hikarudo »

Founding a startup. Two years before that I had very low self-esteem, due to having dropped out of a PhD program and coming back to my country, basically giving up the life I had built abroad over a few years. It took me one year to go back to being a functional person, and after one more year working at a company I felt confident and wholesome again.

Then I quit that company and co-founded a startup, to which I dedicated myself 100%. In 6 months we had a functional product. In retrospect, that might easily have gone south, but I had the good luck of choosing to build a product that obviously had a market, and the extremely good fortune of having great partners.

I never would have thought that one day I would achieve such professional and financial success.

I am an introvert and have difficulty making and maintaining contacts. Yet all of this was possible because of people I knew. On the other hand, it was my history of dedication, passion for engineering, and 'tackling difficult engineering problems' that led to people having a high respect for me and my abilities.

Introverts, consider that possibility that people respect and like you more than you think.

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

#259

Post by Dowwie »

eragone wrote: post #39

Changing careers. Left software to become a doctor. I'll graduate in 7 months.

If you eventually find yourself in a residency matching program, don't let a horrible human being acting as a chief of staff deter you from your hard earned accomplishment. These chief of staffs think that they are doing good by abusing residents, perpetuating abuse that they may have received long ago. You may be able to avoid this by not selecting any top ranked healthcare programs.

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

#260

Post by Dowwie »

pragone wrote: post #54
lintroller wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since this is mostly a place where those in the software industry spend time, your story is generally going to veer off the path most people here took in their career. Can I ask for more detail about why it was that software was not the proper path for you?

Absolutely! I found that I was spending an inordinate amount of time in front of a computer and not interacting with anyone. I also was extremely disappointed with a general lack of self-improvement; I think part of that was that I just graduated, where I was used to everyone constantly studying and working to improve themselves. These experiences may have also been in the minority in the industry, but they were my e…

Don't discount your expertise! I met a doctor who programs and that lead him to becoming the resident health informatics guru on staff. We met at a local Meetup for a programming language.
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