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Ask HN: Developers who switched careers, what are you doing now?

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Re: Ask HN: Developers who switched careers, what are you doing now?

#181

I worked full time as a software dev from about 1999 until 2010. It was never really all that fulfilling for me, although I was pretty good at what I did. I was laid off in 2010, and spent the rest of the year milking goats and sheep, and making cheese in France and the UK. When I returned home in late 2010, my wife and I moved to a more rural location, bought a small herd of goats, and started building a cheese plan…

"as we'll have 150+ kids and lambs arrive over a couple of weeks."

Holy cow can you give more specs on your farm?

Re: Ask HN: Developers who switched careers, what are you doing now?

#182
post #91
post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stress and sitting at a desk all day kill just as effectively as gypsum dust. However it’s a lot easier for a remodeler to put on a P100 mask.

The greatest danger is prolonged intellectual concentration. It will drive you stark raving bonkers and that's no lie. And it's so slow and gentle that you'll never know it. And when everybody around you suffers from the same derangement, it's considered perfectly normal

It can be physical too. Pretty sure my GI issues were caused from the stress of shipping software.

Re: Ask HN: Developers who switched careers, what are you doing now?

#183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good luck to you! I remember back in the late 90's / early 2000's when The Stock Market Only Goes Up, and 1/4 of my software peers quit to "become day traders." Well when the bear market inevitably came, I started seeing them back in scrum meetings... Do your due diligence and and preserve your capital :)

I remember. So easy to day trade when everything was going up, ha ha.

I remember this too. I decided I'd only try it with $1K. Soon, I'd tripled my money (despite trading fees), decided that I'd proven I could do it, and then put it all for long-term into a company I liked and believed in (Red Hat).

Later, I learned that winning being easy was the nature of the market at the time, rather than it being a personal achievement worth proving.

I also was lucky that I didn't discover a compulsive/addictive weakness for the activity, which could've turned a $1K experiment into personal ruin.

Re: Ask HN: Developers who switched careers, what are you doing now?

#184
post #166
post #159

I went to law school and am currently a biglaw first-year. Trying to switch back to dev though (see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29690759 ) Basic reasons for switch: 1) self-taught dev, so felt like I was always playing from behind; 2) wanted to pursue interests I had before going into tech; 3) felt like I wasn't productive in college, and thus wanted to have an intellectual experience. I didn't think at all…

You may want to consider joining or starting company that works on trying to simplify or automate the low skill bs you mention

On it ;D

Re: Ask HN: Developers who switched careers, what are you doing now?

#185
post #2

Moved 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)

I feel like I know you :)

Re: Ask HN: Developers who switched careers, what are you doing now?

#186
I’ve been coding for 15 years, got my first professional dev role in 2019 after shutting down the manufacturing company i’d founded in 2011.

I’ve had three dev jobs since then and have learned that while I love coding I can’t be a professional dev for the rest of my life. Nothing wrong with it, I just need more variety.

So I founded https://careerswitchtocoding.com to help new devs and career switchers land their first dev job.

I’ve also grown a dev focussed Instagram account to 56K followers along the same lines https://instagram.com/allthecode

I’m now full time on this and working out how to build a proper sustainable business model around it.

I love coding and developers and so I want to help new developers have awesome careers.

Re: Ask HN: Developers who switched careers, what are you doing now?

#187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most developers work on meaningless, "make the rich richer", products anyways

But you can find something meaningful (very easy), or start your own business (easiest moment in history to rise 1million), or teach in a bootcamp... There are 100 options. Wasting a wonderfull mind just because... sad

Sadly, there not many options if you want comfortable life and do good at the same time.

My fiends and I really wanted to do good when starting our careers and looked at many non-profits, all of them pay sub-market rates. And then we learned secondhand that most of these non-profits were run by narcissists leaders with worse office politics than regular offices.

We got jobs in regular companies building some of most critical infrastructure of the internet. We felt like we were contributing to advancement of humanity and freedom. But after 10 years, we realized we just made rich kids richer, divided humanity like never before, destroyed privacy, and made sure everyone is addicted to their screens.

I mostly helped in the building of the cloud, and I know what business most of our clients are in. Very few are doing something that is not harmful.

Teach in bootcamp? So that these rich-kids will have more workers?

Start your own business? Consulting? Helping other companies do evil? Another app to get hooked on? Restaurants? There is already obesity epidemic? Build new homes or rehab? I can respect that but it is capital intensive.

Anyways, I see whenever trading is mentioned people call it a useless activity while most of us are engaged in actual harmful activities.

Re: Ask HN: Developers who switched careers, what are you doing now?

#188

I've been a full time dev since 2000 – 22 years. Right now I'm in training for ordained ministry in a Christian denomination. I came back into regular church worship a few years ago, and then started studying theology through my diocese and found I loved it. Now I'm close to completing a Masters of Divinity at university, and I'm in my third year of training at theological college. Software skills have been much more…

This is both cool and unusual! I have a question: did you ever get a feeling of what I can only describe as "numinous vertigo" when thinking about software systems? I sometimes get the sense that I'm peering into some basic universal structure, especially if the work has strong ties to theoretical CS or mathematics. It's as if I'm looking at something so fundamental and so meaningful that it ends being an emotional e…

Awesome question.

I don't have a hugely strong mathematical background (second year university in some areas, like calculus, some stats, linear algebra, but a long time ago), but I think I know what you're getting at. My answer is yes – I had a particular experience on a silent retreat which I think falls into this category.

There's a 15th century text by Nicholas of Cusa that I think you might enjoy and which I think speaks to what you've raised. It's a fairly hard slog, especially if you haven't read anything similar – but I hadn't when I first read it, and I made it through. The title is De Visione Dei[0].

Cusa starts out with an Icon (a sacred image) which is omnivoyant: like the Mona Lisa, it gives the impression that it looks at each observer. Cusa builds a fairly complex mathematical argument, building on the observations of monks who process around the icon, reporting to each other their observations.

From this Cusa builds a descriptive idea of the divine; but as the argument progresses, this breaks down. This, however, is not a failure – Cusa has rather wonderfully brought the scholastic, reasoned, philosophical approach into dialogue with the apophatic, negative, approach. I won't spoil the ending for you. Cusa's drawing on theology from the Western and Eastern traditions of Christianity, and also on theology from Islam.

These big existential questions that fascinate me. To get a bit Kierkegaard, I think he's right in that it's what's real, it's what ought to ultimately draw our attention.

One interesting thing studying theology/philosophy/... is that my working set of metaphors has somewhat switched. I used to think about everything in terms of software, and sometimes startle people; now I often think about things in terms of texts like Cusa; which also startles people :-)

[0] https://jasper-hopkins.info/dialecticalmysticism.pdf (a reputable, scholarly translation)

Re: Ask HN: Developers who switched careers, what are you doing now?

#189
post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But you can find something meaningful (very easy), or start your own business (easiest moment in history to rise 1million), or teach in a bootcamp... There are 100 options. Wasting a wonderfull mind just because... sad

What a load of shit. This is the same mindset folks who pop up to yell at some Google engineers have. Why are you using your skills to collect data for adtech! You could be helping bring clean drinking water to the world! People value what they value, and should be able to work in fields that bring them happiness and don’t break the law without your judgement. Who are you to tell anyone what’s meaningful?

It's unfortunate that adtech enjoys less popularity than bringing clean drinking water to the world. That's really a tragedy and the main thing wrong with the world.

I wish I could do wildly unpopular things without people criticizing me.

Who the hell is everyone else, to dare judge me?

I am above judgement.

Re: Ask HN: Developers who switched careers, what are you doing now?

#190
post #112
post #25

Not 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…

Interesting, have you leveraged your tech background to help the business? I'm in a similar spot--my wife bought a retail business (gift shop + dress boutique) with her sister around 2018. My tech background made some things easier, like modernizing how they operate (bluetooth scanners, iPads, inventory management vs. the old clunky stuff that was in place). Retail is a hard way to make a dollar, but very interesting…

My wife is doing the online business for her mother’s brick and mortar business. Unfortunately having the brick and mortar store doesn’t help all that much for the inventory situation. That’s because you can sell 1000 different SKUs with only 1 of each in inventory in a brick and mortar store. But online you better have only 1 SKU and 1000 of that in the inventory. It takes effort to put a SKU online as you need a description, picture etc. for each.

You might want to keep that in mind when looking at helping your wife & sister to bring their business online. For example by having a reduced availability or offering a live video call service walking around the store and let customers choose that way.

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