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Ask HN: What huge mistake did you make early in your career?

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Re: Ask HN: What huge mistake did you make early in your career?

#461

Post by zamadatix »

philprx wrote: post #341
zamadatix wrote: post #144

I created a 2x10 gigabit loop directly to the data center core of a regional health system on the consolidated virtualization rack that held ~80% of the applications back in 2012. It also took out the PBX. Thankfully it only took me just about 5 minutes to realize what I had done and run from the office area to the data center (in the same building thankfully) to set it back. I thought for sure at minimum I was at le…

ahaha, good one! NB: Hard to call the service desk to complain... when there's no PBX to route the call ;-) just joking, yes it was restored :-)

Even worse - internal PBX down means all of the calls for that hosted service desk line would have been redirected to their on-call cell numbers instead of forwarded to the internal desk phones!

Upside - company paid for their phones and service. Downside - their phone fell apart ringing in such scenarios (well, except at 4:25 PM apparently lol).

Re: Ask HN: What huge mistake did you make early in your career?

#462

Post by topkai22 »

EFruit wrote: post #282

Frankly, the biggest mistake of my career thus far has been starting it. I didn't get in to a university, so I bumbled around for 6 years at a community college. In the middle of it, I managed to get a 6-month stint at a help desk (which I needlessly proud of, and then promptly fired from). Went back to the community college, burned out on trying to get an associates and transfer, and tried changing course to getting…

First off, it sucks to feel trapped and anxious. I’m sorry.

Your story sounds somewhat common on HN- lack of formal education credential, degree of isolation socially, and emotional/mental health problems.

Do you have a mentor/coach type figure you can talk to? Someone that you aren’t trying to get a job from, but who can talk to about the non-tech parts of working?

What are you doing in your non-working hours? You said you are down to one friend. I suspect that being more social would help your mental state and work on those important social skills. In my 20s I met friends though social sports leagues (bocce ball, dodgeball, etc…), and in my 30s through service organizations/volunteering. These are nice frameworks for meeting people because they give you a shared sense of identity and commonality out of the box. Remember to be generous in how you interact with people, smile and laugh a lot, and that they are probably awkwardly seeking friends too.

Apologies if you hear this all the time. If interested, I’d like to hear your story and maybe do some mentoring. I’m (my hn username) at outlook.com

Re: Ask HN: What huge mistake did you make early in your career?

#463

Post by znpy »

yjftsjthsd-h wrote: post #206
ramesh31 wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We all hate it, but it pays the bills. It's ultimately better to be in this position as a thoughtful person aware of the consequences of your work, since they would just replace you with someone less conscionable otherwise.

> It's ultimately better to be in this position as a thoughtful person aware of the consequences of your work, since they would just replace you with someone less conscionable otherwise. If you do the same work, what does it matter?

No it doesn't matter, but hypocrites will keep on saying this along with other lies to avoid facing the reality, that is that they are complicit in doing whatever they don't regard as ethical or whatever.

I haven't seen many people just plain say it: "the company I work for does harm but I don't care because I get a fat paycheck every month".

Re: Ask HN: What huge mistake did you make early in your career?

#465

Post by znpy »

LinuxBender wrote: post #82

Not putting the hostname or something distinct in my shell prompt, at least on my machine. sync && reboot Connection closed by remote host. Mild panic sets in... Oh, lets up-arrow and see what customer server I just rebooted. Reboot on Solaris did not do a graceful shutdown of anything, it just sig-kills everything. Veritas clustering in it's early years did not like this one bit.

I have fond memory of Veritas cluster manager, if that's what you're talking about.

Re: Ask HN: What huge mistake did you make early in your career?

#466

Post by gofreddygo »

ncmncm wrote: post #116

My 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've adapted my mindset to think of my job/role as a car lease . Expires in 3 years.

I don't get too comfortable, not too attached, tend to live in the moment, enjoy the good parts, ignore the bad ones, think of the next person in my role, stay on the lookout for my next job/role, but not overdo it.

I've been able to stick to this, but haven't come up with a ways to enforce it.

Re: Ask HN: What huge mistake did you make early in your career?

#467

Post by smithsonian112 »

threetwoone wrote: post #409
_huayra_ wrote: post #347

Perhaps 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 :-)

I am also getting a PhD related to Machine Learning. Can I ask what your dream job turned out to be?

Re: Ask HN: What huge mistake did you make early in your career?

#468

Post by smithsonian112 »

_huayra_ wrote: post #453
dr_dshiv wrote: post #349

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree with your conclusion but think your advice is good to consider. A PhD lets you be an expert in whatever you want for the rest of your life, if you want. Do it for selfish, ego-satisfying reasons (e.g., loving science, wanting to become a real expert in an area) not for the academic career path. Have fun with it, but don't drop out. Get the damn degree. Get it and get on with your life.

> e.g., loving science, wanting to become a real expert in an area This is good advice, and sort of what I meant as a test to see if you want to do a PhD. Sadly, a lot of grad students did not use the time effectively and ended up anxiously trying to appease their advisor as somehow a proxy for getting accolades from their parents. Although I didn't know it, I, too, fell into this camp to a moderate degree. In other…

I can totally relate to the piece about it being a kick in the ass to pull myself together. I also got into the PhD partially to prove that I am smart enough. I think I needed to play that pattern out one way or another, it was something that would have come out in other ways in a different situation. But I did learn something about myself by confronting this issue so directly in the PhD, even though it’s difficult to articulate what exactly I got out of it.

Actually I came around to the point of view that most people get into the PhD for “the wrong reasons”, but that the process of being confronted with those wrong reasons helps you grow. Similar to “nobody is ready for marriage, marriage makes you ready for marriage.”

Re: Ask HN: What huge mistake did you make early in your career?

#469

Post by smitty1e »

alchemism wrote: post #421
smitty1e wrote: post #385

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Plenty of career people at this consultancy. Also transplants. I just passed 5 years.

Does your employer offer its people the 10-20% annual salary increase so they do not have to look elsewhere for what the market is willing to provide? I ask this seriously.

No, that sounds a bit excessive.

If you're growing the business at a healthy clip, maybe those sorts of raises are sustainable.

Re: Ask HN: What huge mistake did you make early in your career?

#470

Post by b3morales »

archiepeach wrote: post #367
pedrosorio wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> “You’re going to give me a year and then be gone. Why should I hire you?”. Never had a good answer when I was in my 30s. Now that I’m in my 40s, I have a pretty good one. What's the answer?

You can also mention how companies encourage disloyalty by paying new starters significantly more than existing employees. I’ve seen great people working hard towards a promotion, putting in the hours, playing everything right - only to be passed over for a promotion due to management politics and a boss that was looking out more for herself than her team. Meanwhile, another employee simply just left and walked into…

Yup, this. We took temporary pay cuts last year, which was more or less understandable, business was down. But I did a couple of interview rounds and got offers that were 15-20% above my pre-cut salary. And people were shocked that I was leaving.
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