I build furniture now[0], but I occasionally hack up code for myself[1]. [0] https://longwalkwoodworking.com [1] https://github.com/longwalkwoodworking
Wow for the chandelier
Thank you!
Ask HN: Developers who switched careers, what are you doing now?
261–270 of 344 posts
Re: Ask HN: Developers who switched careers, what are you doing now?
#262I went and worked on Wall Street. Good experience and the work could be interesting but honestly got to the point where I wasn’t willing to sacrifice my life to the extent necessary to stick it out. Heading back to tech in a more business oriented role that I think will be better for me, and money is the exact same for now. It won’t ramp up as fast but I do think the lifetime upside is similar in compensation and imm…
how did you make the move? without prior track record in trading or finance?
MBA
Re: Ask HN: Developers who switched careers, what are you doing now?
#263Earlier quoted context omitted.
Always feels weird when someone in the top 1% of earners, making over $500k/yr, complains about taxes.
Why? They are the ones that end up paying the most.
Probably because 1) it’s not a surprise. You knew how much the tax would be when you accepted the position and 2) your net take-home is still higher than most.
Also note that the nice round figures OP provides are slightly over the top. In 2021, someone earning $1M would pay an effective 33% tax rate, or about $334K. That’s $66K below their stated $400K.
The poverty line for a family of 4 is just over $20K. So their rounding error is nearly 3 times the poverty line for a couple with two kids. Their net take home every year is an absolutely staggering and life changing amount of money for anyone who hasn’t spent years climbing the sociopathic career ladder at a tier 1 tech outfit.
Re: Ask HN: Developers who switched careers, what are you doing now?
#264Earlier quoted context omitted.
How did you start and how long did it take to start making a sustainable income? I would prefer to switch to something that puts me on my feet but I can’t imagine how I could make it work financially. TBH at this point in my career I think I’d rather just deliver mail even if it paid 75% of my current salary (unfortunately it’s more like 33%).
> sustainable income TBD :) I've been doing more learning than earnings, but we did plan for this. We paid off our mortgage, got solar, drew down six months of expenses into cash, and bought $5,000 2011 Leaf this year. Worst case scenario is I get another job in tech and I'm right back were I started from, so we saw it as little downside.
ah thanks for this, something worth thinking about
Re: Ask HN: Developers who switched careers, what are you doing now?
#265I was a software developer for 12 years then switched to finance. I trade fixed income now! I hate it sometimes and miss the good-ol software development.
Re: Ask HN: Developers who switched careers, what are you doing now?
#266Moved from development to quant trading. Still involves writing code but that's not the focus, and the code is for yourself, not somebody else. Much more satisfying having such a direct feedback loop between your code/research and its impact on the markets in production. Also feels more intellectually stimulating in that many of the problems you solve don't have an existing solution (or at least not one in the public…
One of the concerns about trading that I always have is being able to compete with the big traders. What are your trading speeds like? How long have you been doing this?
You don't have to do it all yourself; there are quite a few companies that will offer you trading capital and access to their infra in exchange for a 50%+ share of your profit. I myself am on a team at a smaller firm with a high degree of independence, around five years of experience in the industry. The infra (including FPGA/ASIC execution platform, microwave network etc.) is the big expense for latency. On the software side it's often easier for a single experienced C or C++ dev to write trading software with a hot loop of 2-3 micros than it is for a large team anyway, because it's harder to ensure memory allocation and layout coordination/discipline with multiple devs.
The ideal however isn't to compete for those ultra low latency opportunities, it's to find a trade that nobody faster than you is doing. E.g. it's too capacity constrained or cumbersome for the large firms, or in a less developed market that they aren't yet in (e.g. somewhere like Nigeria or Indonesia, or some random blockchain), or it's so creative that nobody else has thought of it.
Re: Ask HN: Developers who switched careers, what are you doing now?
#267I 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…
I haven’t left the industry but do live rurally and have considered getting some sheep for personal cheesemaking. Do you also shear them on any regular interval? Is that even necessary for any reason? If you do, do you sell the wool? I’ve seen it going in farmers markets for quite high prices, although I’m not familiar with the processing requirements.
I usually shear just before lambing, which is right now for us. Whether or not you need to shear will depend on the breed of sheep - some can lose their coats on their own, some will not.
For us it's necessary as our sheep get a 2"+ thick coat, which during our summers (last summer we hit 42C/108F, normally we peak at around 35C/95F), and having a thick coat can be deadly.
I put the fleece in the burn pile. I don't have the time nor inclination to clean and card the wool to prep it for sale. I imagine some people would take it to do it themselves, but at this point, I need one less thing to do, not one more. :)
Re: Ask HN: Developers who switched careers, what are you doing now?
#268I was a software engineer for about 10 years. Now I’m a furniture maker and occasional finish carpenter.
Worked at Twitch as an early-ish employee, we got acquired by Amazon. Made it to Principal Engineer and just got tired of the sorts of problems that are hardest in software at scale: project management, building consensus, migrating systems.
Also got really tired of the wastefulness of software: so much software gets thrown out in under 5 years. Stuff that lasts 10 years is considered extraordinary, and 20 years is almost unheard of. I don’t like knowing how ephemeral all the effort is. Maybe one day we will know how to make good software but we dont today.
So I want to make “permanent” stuff. Nothing meets that bar but furniture and carpentry can at least manage a few hundred years.
I totally love it and don’t miss my old career at all. The pay is way worse but I saw this coming and saved well while I was paid the insane software salaries that are common today. I am on my feet, more fulfilled, and find the mental effort is actually much higher - the problem solving is more interesting to me. Mostly though I am just much more proud of what I make and do.
Re: Ask HN: Developers who switched careers, what are you doing now?
#269Walked 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!
Day trading doesn’t work. What is your secret ? You can make millions selling your book.
Well, that's the catch.
Those who actually consistently make money daytrading (averaged out over a long enough time period) don't have a need to write those books (and potentially put themselves at a disadvantage by doing so) to make money.
While those who write "daytrading secrets" books typically make heavy majority of their money from those books, because they cannot make money from actual daytrading.
Re: Ask HN: Developers who switched careers, what are you doing now?
#270Walked 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!
Sounds lika fun way to earn a living.
Just dont be this guy
https://www.reddit.com/r/fatFIRE/comments/ti1jg8/i_owe_nearl...