Picked up too many boring jobs with messy legacy codebases as opposed to prioritizing building and specializing. Went into industries that ended up being on their way down and didn't take care of their engineers and switched to tech late.
Ask HN: What huge mistake did you make early in your career?
401–410 of 505 posts
Re: Ask HN: What huge mistake did you make early in your career?
#402Earlier quoted context omitted.
Hardware Security?
I currently work in hardware security, but my job at the NSA was mundane and barely involved anything secret.
Any good books that you would recommend on "Hardware Security"? I understand it is a broad field but would like to start somewhere.
Re: Ask HN: What huge mistake did you make early in your career?
#403In a test project for new location services inside a mobile network, I was provisioning 1000 employees with new sim cards, and inevitably a few got mixed up. One of those was someone's secretary who ended up having a phone number of someone with high security clearance who deals with national security type stuff.
Re: Ask HN: What huge mistake did you make early in your career?
#404My biggest mistake, that I made again and again, was not leaving a job when it was time. I thought I had something to prove, but there was never any point to it. You don't owe anything to an employer. You can't prove anything to an employer. They have absolutely no loyalty to you, and care less than nothing about what is right or wrong, wise or foolish. So: If you ever think things might not turn out as well as you h…
I agree, but just a note: it doesn't do your career any good to hop a lot. I won't hire someone that looks flaky. If you find yourself at a bad job, sure, move on. But work on sussing out the good from the bad so you don't put yourself in a bad situation repeatedly.
I’m sorry but I very much disagree. Each hop netted me much better work-life balance and much higher pay, and actually broadened my horizons and whag I bring to the table because I have experienced a wide array of corporate cultures and team styles.
What DOESN’T do wonders for your career is thinking/hoping/praying that sticking it out at a subpar company year after year will magically bring you those same benefits, if it’s not already happening and you’ve already asked politely for it to be resolved.
Re: Ask HN: What huge mistake did you make early in your career?
#405Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've refused to hire people who job-hopped every year or two. With a record like that, there's zero reason to expect they're going to stick around. Why invest in bringing them up to speed if they're just going to leave?
Because maybe they’re just looking for the right environment, and maybe you’re it. Hiring is like dating, after all. This reads instead like an egregious case of the fundamental attribution error, and one that’d I’d view as quite the blunder by my management team, since the real consequence is limiting our access to the talent pool. Even aside from the FAE, this kind of attitude also systematically reinforces structu…
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Re: Ask HN: What huge mistake did you make early in your career?
#406Joining a big company and not leaving on time.
I spent 15 years there but the last 3-5 were looking for something else.
Finally I just quitted.
Re: Ask HN: What huge mistake did you make early in your career?
#407I went into programming PLCs for industrial applications.
Totally stagnant, backwards industry, were the platform suppliers basically make a living, handing in advances from 20 years ago to the industries suppliers in the walled garden.
Its stressful, every machine developed is a unicum, software reuse is widely not used and often not possible, due to the "lowest common denominator" setting up what can work for a team.
All good programmers leave the field as fast as they can. The others, who cant and are worth the salt, are in eternal fear of the A-day or G-day. The day one of the large valley software companies turns around and says "boo".
They could easily replace the whole infrastructure of used software for all machines involved and install a steam like software market place for industrial controller components. No more "laptop-guy" sitting next to the machine for half a year and "thats normal".
The only thing keeping this industry "alive" is the phobia of the great ones from anything "physical".
I tried to leave, but this job is like a taint on your resume. People will not touch you with a stick, cause normal software companies have usually made bad experiences with the "programmers" leaving industrial automation. There are actually companies who try to lock there programmers in, by teaching them a "unique" bad software development style. I had people explaining git to me as a hot, new thing in 2018, at a company were we suggested it 8 years earlier. Yes, that resistant to change.
In every company you come, you are viewed as a sort of union-busting freak of nature, because that is the only way one could be that "good" at making software. Obviously i must be possible to memorize a million globals, instead of packing them into objects and systematically develop my stuff.
And you have that moment over and over again.
In dubio pro rubicon.
Re: Ask HN: What huge mistake did you make early in your career?
#408Thought that I could replace lower-than-average communication skills with higher-than-average technical skills. The story goes that software engineering is about knowing how to design a system a build it. The truth is: you also have to know how to _sell_ your design, how to document your decisions, how to push forward with your agenda. You won't go anywhere without a team that values you. This means that interpersona…
Similarly, I've tried to power through issues and leverage my ability to focus and grind through hard problems rather than communicate the problems and my situation. Sometimes it impressed people that I 'got things done', but that isn't as great of a gain as the inverse is damaging. People could become frustrated about delays if I didn't manage to power through it in time, or they'd be confused and/or concerned that…
I think a lot of reluctance to communicate problems is due to a lack of trust. If you are building an environment where management supports staff and mentors them, I believe it creates a culture where staff are also more likely to do the same with each other.
In my experience this type of culture is quite rare, and I think it's great that you are encouraging this in your own organization.
Re: Ask HN: What huge mistake did you make early in your career?
#409Perhaps it's not a huge mistake, but I definitely did not think through the pros and cons of getting a PhD. There have certainly been some benefits (e.g. being able to move from my home country to one I prefer), but the amount of forgone earnings and time working on problems all by myself (where I don't get the advantage of mentorship so much; profs really have checked out on coding since before y2k in the most part)…
I think you can also partially think of it as a gamble (similar to doing a startup).
For example, I did a machine learning related PhD that propelled me into my dream job, earning about 3x more than I would have otherwise.
My motivation wasn't money though, and that's probably the mindset you need, but it's not guaranteed to be a bad outcome financially :-)
Re: Ask HN: What huge mistake did you make early in your career?
#410I should have stayed in the Bay Area and followed up on WhatsApp and Instagram.