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Ask HN: I achieved my dream of being a self-taught dev. I hate it. Now what?

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Re: Ask HN: I achieved my dream of being a self-taught dev. I hate it. Now what?

#31
Solutions engineer Sales Engineer Support engineer Technical account manager Consultant Etc

Things that are not 'just dev'.

Entrepreneurship is difficult but doable esp if you have the right personality type.

Ultimately you will have to figure out something you can do and either like doing or can tolerate doing.

I never have, usually get bored, etc.

Re: Ask HN: I achieved my dream of being a self-taught dev. I hate it. Now what?

#32
post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Toxic. Rethink this. I had this mentality and it hindered me significantly. Now I listen too the worst idea and I've grown personally and professionally more than ever.

> Toxic. Rethink this. This is the second time someone disagrees with your view, provides a well written response, and you respond back with a personal attack. I can try to steel man the other side of the argument, even though I disagree with it. nothing in your comment is a coherent, reasonable response to the op. I’m not a gate keeper of this community but please share nuanced ideas to defend your view point. For t…

[flagged]

Re: Ask HN: I achieved my dream of being a self-taught dev. I hate it. Now what?

#33
post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Toxic. Rethink this. This is the second time someone disagrees with your view, provides a well written response, and you respond back with a personal attack. I can try to steel man the other side of the argument, even though I disagree with it. nothing in your comment is a coherent, reasonable response to the op. I’m not a gate keeper of this community but please share nuanced ideas to defend your view point. For t…

[flagged]

> You need help dude.

> you agree with it and are triggered

> maybe you are part of that group and require introspective.

More personal attacks.

Here’s some advice for your personal benefit:

You can disagree with people and that’s fine. but share your ideas and respond to individual points you disagree with. avoid emotionally charged angry responses. you will only upset your self and drain mental energy thinking everyone else is out to get you. it’s unnecessary and unproductive

Re: Ask HN: I achieved my dream of being a self-taught dev. I hate it. Now what?

#34
post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

> You need help dude. > you agree with it and are triggered > maybe you are part of that group and require introspective. More personal attacks. Here’s some advice for your personal benefit: You can disagree with people and that’s fine. but share your ideas and respond to individual points you disagree with. avoid emotionally charged angry responses. you will only upset your self and drain mental energy thinking ever…

[flagged]

Re: Ask HN: I achieved my dream of being a self-taught dev. I hate it. Now what?

#35
post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You don't need to know X to be able to lead X I think the point is that you do. > I'd sit on calls where nobody could figure it out. A business manager articulats the problem and it's solved in an hour You'd have to define "thinking outside the box" - if you are suggesting that most programmers aren't creative I'd say you have no clue about most programmers. If its a call about a technical problem - no chance. But…

Toxic. Rethink this. I had this mentality and it hindered me significantly. Now I listen too the worst idea and I've grown personally and professionally more than ever.

> I've grown personally and professionally more than ever

according to who? yourself?

Maybe you haven't grown, maybe your self assessment skill is just poor?

Re: Ask HN: I achieved my dream of being a self-taught dev. I hate it. Now what?

#36

> But sitting down, alone, in front of a computer screen all day every day is slowly driving me mad. Without changing the industry completely, I know of two ways to make the experience more social: - work from a coworking space (a smaller one where you actually get to know people and hang out) (edit, i assumed working from home, but that's probably not the case) - Try sales engineer (or similar) positions - you still…

> - work from a coworking space (a smaller one where you actually get to know people and hang out) (edit, i assumed working from home, but that's probably not the case)

Serious question/devil's advocate here: if a corporation/company/business/startup/whatever is paying you for 8 hours of work a day (8am -> 5pm with a 1 hour lunch in between), when are you supposed to talk to people in a co-working space?

Are you saying like, in between meetings, and when you aren't "heads down" tracking down bugs/looking at logs/writing documentation/writing code/writing tests, you just... shoot the shit throughout the day vocally across from one desk to another? Walk to a watercooler and hope somebody else is also randomly hanging out there throughout the day? How many times can you do that a day? Multiple 15 minute watercooler breaks a day? Go to a group lunch?

I feel like that would hurt the average person's productivity. Sounds like a lot of distractions.

Obviously humans aren't binary objects that are just "work non stop" or not with no feelings.

I just feel like you'd be replacing "I hate coding/being alone/no social aspect" with "I'm socialized but now I'm behind on my work/distracted/can't get any peace"

Re: Ask HN: I achieved my dream of being a self-taught dev. I hate it. Now what?

#37
I never wanted a desk job, but health and economics said otherwise. I did ease into it over several years and have gotten more used to it. It took a few years to get used to less "people time". Going from working on two to five man crews to sitting in an office by myself did weird (and not good weird) things to my head. It didn't help that I tried sales for the first year or so and that was emphatically not a good fit. That's a long ramble, just saying I've been there. Since you have the GI bill it might be worth trying something else. Or perhaps you are like me and want something else once you master the challenge in front of you.

Check out land surveying. Haven't done it but it looks interesting from the outside, good mix of inside research and outside work.

Another reply mentioned engineering. I met a man who had been a site engineer, responsible to make sure construction projects were accomplished according to plan.

When you find the answer we'd love to hear.

Re: Ask HN: I achieved my dream of being a self-taught dev. I hate it. Now what?

#38
post #11

What do you like about coding? Building the whole project or the key parts? You can move towards management if you get the big picture and only code things you like. One of my managers in the past would attend meetings all day and strategize. If he found a project he liked, he'd delegate someone to attend his meetings. He figured out a way to keep himself sane.

> You can move towards management if you get the big picture and only code things you like. This is terrible advice. you hate X but somehow you can be successful in leading, motivating, mentoring, and developing people who do X all day. This is the cancer that infected big tech. A class of professional managers who provide little to no value but don’t want to leave because the grift is so easy.

In my career, the big cancer has been decent engineers thinking they're good managers and end up making everyone up and down the chain miserable because all they know is a command-and-control style managing, or passive-aggressive style managing where the reports don't necessarily know they're being left on the line to dry.

It has been super rare for me to see managers who are just filling a position and grifting. Perhaps the only time was at a large defense contractor where I interned in college.

Re: Ask HN: I achieved my dream of being a self-taught dev. I hate it. Now what?

#39

> But sitting down, alone, in front of a computer screen all day every day is slowly driving me mad. Without changing the industry completely, I know of two ways to make the experience more social: - work from a coworking space (a smaller one where you actually get to know people and hang out) (edit, i assumed working from home, but that's probably not the case) - Try sales engineer (or similar) positions - you still…

> - work from a coworking space (a smaller one where you actually get to know people and hang out) (edit, i assumed working from home, but that's probably not the case) Serious question/devil's advocate here: if a corporation/company/business/startup/whatever is paying you for 8 hours of work a day (8am -> 5pm with a 1 hour lunch in between), when are you supposed to talk to people in a co-working space? Are you sayi…

Average person paid to work 8 hours probably spends half of that time on browsing internet, so there's little loss.

Re: Ask HN: I achieved my dream of being a self-taught dev. I hate it. Now what?

#40

I never wanted a desk job, but health and economics said otherwise. I did ease into it over several years and have gotten more used to it. It took a few years to get used to less "people time". Going from working on two to five man crews to sitting in an office by myself did weird (and not good weird) things to my head. It didn't help that I tried sales for the first year or so and that was emphatically not a good fi…

Surveying has become increasingly computerized, so your software experience could be very useful. You would need to take a university course to become a registered surveyor. The earnings are good as well.
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