Long term: Don't become a peasant, live life on your own terms.
https://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2012/01/13/the-shockingly-si...
If you like hacking, you can arrange your life to do that.
Ask HN: Career and life advice for a 30yo
151–160 of 171 posts
Re: Ask HN: Career and life advice for a 30yo
#152"go back to academia" doesn't mean you have to go back there and collect certificates, take classes and pass exams. Find a prof working on something interesting to you and offer to help. Better still submit a patch to whatever source code they have put out in the public domain. Its a great way to get your leg in the door. Lots of the labs in the country have techies on staff. It leaves the subject matter experts free…
Academia can be more political and exploitative than the private sector. It is a bad choice for people "following their passion"
Re: Ask HN: Career and life advice for a 30yo
#153There are a lot of good thoughts here, especially those about focusing on companies with technology risk. It seems like you would enjoy working on something like that.
What I would like to contribute to the conversation is this: life is long and you will benefit to think of it as an arc.
First, think about your career in ~7 year chapters. Congratulations, you just finished the first chapter! If you're 30, that means you probably have 4-6 more working chapters, then some retirement chapters thereafter. It seems like you found out some things you didn't like in that first chapter, and you want the next chapter to be different.
Second, spend some time to think about your life in reverse. What do you want your live to be like when you're 75 years old, and then work it backwards from there. If each chapter is a building block, then what do you need to accomplish in the next 7 years to move you toward what you want in the future. This is an exercise worth doing annually.
Or, maybe you only want to have one more working chapter and then you want to retire. So, you'd make a whole bunch of different choices if that were the case.
In any case, the point is that you're frustrated in the moment, but the moment is just a point on the arc of a long life. Use what you learned in the first chapter to move along the arc in a direction that you prefer.
Re: Ask HN: Career and life advice for a 30yo
#154You're working at the wrong place.
I've worked at startups that had more of the culture you desire, as well as places that have the culture you're current describing.
During the interview process you need to ask the right set of questions to help you understand the culture of the company & that it's a fit for you.
I found this out the hard way, but each job I learned a bit about what I didn't like & added to my questions to understand the next gig better. Over time I learned what I actually wanted & sought that out.
Re: Ask HN: Career and life advice for a 30yo
#155> what do you think? I think you're not actually here to get advice, but to lament the state of things. You need to grow up. You have no respect for these people outside your profession, whose work you do not understand. You're blaming the environment for your personal unhappiness. Nobody is forcing you to stay in your lane. There's an endless amount of things you could do, you just don't want to take the risk, other…
damn you're one angry dude
Re: Ask HN: Career and life advice for a 30yo
#156Here’s some advice from a hacker-turned-MBA: find your passion outside of work. Tech is great money. You can live a very comfortable life by putting in your 40 hours a week at a good company. There is absolutely nothing wrong with this; and treating it as a clock-in/clock-out type of job will keep you from burning out. Use that comfort to explore your true passion. A lot of times this isn’t remotely related to tech —…
Sadly, you've been defeated.
Re: Ask HN: Career and life advice for a 30yo
#157There are still FLOSS projects that still have that hacker culture you mention. You can still build things and feel good, though you probably won't get paid. Check their mailing lists, Github issues, IRC chats, Slack or whatever channel these projects use for communication, there are big discussions in what technical decisions to take. These projects always need help and also have different problems to be solved. It…
But what about a source of income? I want to contribute to open source, but after all we live in a capitalist society and people have to get a "real job" (read: writing spyware for microsoft) in order to buy food and shelter and to live, instead of writing code for free.
Re: Ask HN: Career and life advice for a 30yo
#158> what do you think? I think you're not actually here to get advice, but to lament the state of things. You need to grow up. You have no respect for these people outside your profession, whose work you do not understand. You're blaming the environment for your personal unhappiness. Nobody is forcing you to stay in your lane. There's an endless amount of things you could do, you just don't want to take the risk, other…
damn you're one angry dude
I'm not angry at all. I'm just showing you the lack of respect that you have for others. You've earned it.
Your way of looking at the world is useless. How can you have any self-respect, working for all these "conmen"? How can you cope with not getting credit for being the great engineer you think you are? You can't. You're miserable.
Just change the way you think, or change your life situation, either approach will bring results.
Re: Ask HN: Career and life advice for a 30yo
#159Earlier quoted context omitted.
damn you're one angry dude
I'm not angry at all. I'm just showing you the lack of respect that you have for others. You've earned it. Your way of looking at the world is useless. How can you have any self-respect, working for all these "conmen"? How can you cope with not getting credit for being the great engineer you think you are? You can't. You're miserable. Just change the way you think, or change your life situation, either approach will…
You’re seething, keep going.
Re: Ask HN: Career and life advice for a 30yo
#160I would say, first of all, if you're in The Valley you should leave. All of the cultural issues you describe are much worse there than other places. I haven't really encountered them at all personally.
And then second, I would say lower your expectations for your career/work in terms of being meaningful. Look at your job for what it is: an exchange of time for money. If you want, go the "FIRE" route and do intense saving for a few years and then retire early and pursue something else. Either way, I've found that it's liberating to separate my sense of purpose and happiness from what I do at my job. It's just really hard to find something that makes the world better and also pays the bills. Your happiness and purpose can still come from engineering, though I would recommend adding more to the mix than just that alone, but the key is separating them from your source of money.