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Ask HN: What's the most rewarding investment you've made in your career?

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Re: Ask HN: What's the most rewarding investment you've made in your career?

#31

Post by nonplus »

daok wrote: post #11
nonplus wrote: post #4

Moving to contracting/b2b had a much larger effect on my quality of life than I anticipated. I don't lose sleep over the insurance or investment options my employer provides. Flexible hours with most contracts. I feel more in control of my life.

Don't you have to pay a hefty price for private insurance? Dont you have the stress to find contracts all the time?

All of that is true. I have preexisting conditions; relying on my employer for insurance was a bit of a mess. Some jobs would have insurance that the best plan would cost maybe 8k more out of pocket in a year (compared to the previous employer). Maybe the FSA was really bad/they would not reimburse things they should/force you to appeal 3 times for every transaction (Imagine spending 5 hours a month fighting with the FSA program about giving you your own money).

Getting a contract is stressful, but I've found job security is basically non existent anyway, so if I couldn't find b2b work I could always take traditional w2 or 1099 work.

When I switched I was expecting more stress, and less stability. A few years in though, I feel better than I did in fte roles. It might not be for everyone, but it's worked for me so far.

Re: Ask HN: What's the most rewarding investment you've made in your career?

#32

Post by claudiulodro »

Learning a trade:

- I have a solid career/business-opportunity to fall back on when I get tired of the tech industry. Many trades have been around for hundreds of years and can't really be outsourced.

- I can use all common power and hand tools and do my own home projects.

- I've saved thousands of dollars on quality (non-particleboard) furniture over the years by restoring thrift store or sidewalk finds.

- By far the most important part though is learning the value of craftsmanship, and the process of starting as a beginner and gaining competence via prolonged effort.

Re: Ask HN: What's the most rewarding investment you've made in your career?

#33

Post by mooreds »

reidjs wrote: post #8
mooreds wrote: post #3

Blog. It serves as a historical record, proof of work, and forced me to investigate technologies. On top of all of that, it helped me learn to write prose, which is such an important skill for a dev.

I don't blog, but writing in general has helped me immensely. A lot of people think writing is grammar and spelling. Try writing to evoke a reaction from other people, e.g., strangers, loved ones, friends. For example, try to write something that will make a stranger laugh. I think you will find that is substantially harder than explaining how a compiler works. Writing effectively is communicating effectively. And as…

> And as time goes on it seems more and more things are being written rather than spoken.

Agreed! Writing scales (write one, can be read by many dispersed in place and time), it is searchable (far more easily than audio), there's no accent barrier, has a high knowledge per byte ratio.

Love the description of 'evoking a reaction'.

Re: Ask HN: What's the most rewarding investment you've made in your career?

#34

Post by mrjivraj »

Some of these have been pretty good: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1tBrZEMFK9XNWxiqOxE8o...

A couple of years ago, I started this spreadsheet to share my investments with close friends and family.

One unexpected benefit has been that i have gotten my sister interested in investing. Since investing is a big passion of mine, it has been personally very rewarding to be able to discuss investing topics with her.

Re: Ask HN: What's the most rewarding investment you've made in your career?

#37

Post by wheelinsupial »

behan wrote: post #18
massung wrote: post #2

Easy answer: the extra time spent every day helping my daughter with her homework. This has paid off enormously. Not because she's a grade-A student (far from it; she has a lot of difficulty). But because I've been able to consistently, calmly teach her the following skills that I'm now starting to see her pick up: 1. Everything looks difficult the first time. The hardest step is always the first one. Take a deep bre…

It's interesting you say that, I actually recently wrote a blog post title "Don't help your kids with their homework" https://www.chrisbehan.ca/posts/dont-help-your-kids-with-the... although for very different reason than you have highlighted here. Thanks for sharing your perspective (:

"an essential ingredient of learning is feedback, often received in the form of grades"

"Recommend resources for learning"

The best thing someone can do to help another learner is to teach them how to evaluate their own work. If there is an answer key to the book, that's great. If there isn't, then they should learn how to use the worked examples to evaluate their learning.

Feedback is important as you say, but having a long time delay between completing something and the evaluation through a grade isn't helpful. It can be demotivating, lead to reinforcing or practicing bad habits, or not making the connection between seeing continuous improvement.

Re: Ask HN: What's the most rewarding investment you've made in your career?

#39

Post by 2OEH8eoCRo0 »

massung wrote: post #2

Easy answer: the extra time spent every day helping my daughter with her homework. This has paid off enormously. Not because she's a grade-A student (far from it; she has a lot of difficulty). But because I've been able to consistently, calmly teach her the following skills that I'm now starting to see her pick up: 1. Everything looks difficult the first time. The hardest step is always the first one. Take a deep bre…

I wish everyone had this mindset. There was a thread the other day about mandatory highschool classes but these simple life lessons are priceless.
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