Walked away from 20 years of software development last year. I've been day and swing trading stocks for last 2 years. I'm now trading full time and doing great. I don't miss the daily stand-ups, scrum meetings, planning meetings, "quick chats", one-on-ones with management, weekly department meetings, monthly company meetings, and late night critical support calls one bit!
Ask HN: Developers who switched careers, what are you doing now?
71–80 of 344 posts
Re: Ask HN: Developers who switched careers, what are you doing now?
#72Mid-career I went back to school for a PhD in Computer Science, and now I definitely think of myself as a CS researcher rather than an engineer. I still write code occasionally, but it’s no longer a daily activity. I switched because I wanted to better understand the why’s of what I was doing as an engineer (applied ML by the time I got out if the game). I like it a lot! Grad school salary was a rough come down after…
what is your area of research now and are you also teaching or in industry?
Re: Ask HN: Developers who switched careers, what are you doing now?
#73Not reading Hacked News… that’s what they’re doing now.
Not feeling obliged to read HN is an actual life goal of mine.
Re: Ask HN: Developers who switched careers, what are you doing now?
#74Moved to renewables. Wanted to try and help with climate change and needed new challenges. Solar is a fantastic industry. Lots of room for improvement feels like internet did in thr mid 90s. Just a ton of enthusiasm and a sense you're part of something big and important.
do you think NEM 3.0 is coming and will it kill the residential solar industry?
Re: Ask HN: Developers who switched careers, what are you doing now?
#75I'm not sure if you're looking for stories of moving away from tech, software, or just development, but I did the latter. I started as a web developer, but I realized that my favorite part of the job wasn't building new pages/apps but helping my colleagues when they ran into roadblocks. I got a reputation as a problem-solver and people would come to me with their thorniest bugs or browser compatibility issues and I l…
can you explain that role sound interesting ?
Re: Ask HN: Developers who switched careers, what are you doing now?
#76Moved to renewables. Wanted to try and help with climate change and needed new challenges. Solar is a fantastic industry. Lots of room for improvement feels like internet did in thr mid 90s. Just a ton of enthusiasm and a sense you're part of something big and important.
That would help with climate change, but the biggest part is reducing our consumption in all senses. For example, my electricity bill is 10€/month, I have no fridge, use no heating, no hot water, so I'd totally be able to live with just a small solar panel, as I almost never use a device that requires a high power (I eat mostly raw fruits/vegs, more rarely eggs, fish or rice)
Re: Ask HN: Developers who switched careers, what are you doing now?
#77Product Management. I hate it, but I was too stupid to get into FAANG as an SDE and my personality type better matches the role. I love coding and have done it my whole life and for 10 years professionally but at the highest level I’m simply not as smart as other people
Au contraire. “faang” ( with the exception of the “n” ) engineers aren’t on average smarter than gen pop devs. They are simply willing to grind leetcode and put up with a lot more behavioral stressors ( large companies are incredibly difficult to prove impact and all the low hanging fruit is done, so the fights are more bitter because the stakes are lower )
Being willing to do the interview process is part of it, yes, but this idea that they’re all just average is completely wrong.
Highly paid big company engineers are some of the most talented developers out there. The companies invest great resources into making it that way.
The idea that they’re all just average devs who did LeetCode for a month and now they’re paid twice as much is a comforting fiction for non-FAANG engineers, but it’s not true.
If it was true, we’d be seeing scores of average developers taking a month to do LeetCode and then get huge pay increases. Who wouldn’t invest a month of work on a free website if the payoff was millions of dollars over the next decade?
Re: Ask HN: Developers who switched careers, what are you doing now?
#78Not a switch per se, because I still work on IT related stuff, but I started a bakery and a retail store (two separate businesses). I hired a chef and a manager to do the work professionally, and I pay for wages, rent, material, etc. But I get to learn the immense efforts it takes for a brownie to be on a table, for a cake to bring a smile to face, and a cheesecake to melt in the mouth. It was a fresh experience, and…
Any insight on initial investment required and ROI? Is this actually passive or you still have to do a lot of back-office work?
Re: Ask HN: Developers who switched careers, what are you doing now?
#79Was in tech for 15 years, I was feeling burned out and started a beverage company out of my kitchen. It really took off and now its my full time gig. I have a small staff and work 3-4 days a week. Work-life balance is way better, however I'm missing the challenges and smart individuals that come with working on tech products.
Re: Ask HN: Developers who switched careers, what are you doing now?
#80Walked away from 20 years of software development last year. I've been day and swing trading stocks for last 2 years. I'm now trading full time and doing great. I don't miss the daily stand-ups, scrum meetings, planning meetings, "quick chats", one-on-ones with management, weekly department meetings, monthly company meetings, and late night critical support calls one bit!
Sorry for the blunt question, but how does it feel to go from something where you make something valuable to ...that?
(At least I feel what I do give me meaning)