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Ask HN: Has anyone started over outside of tech?

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Re: Ask HN: Has anyone started over outside of tech?

#431

Post by michepriest »

I’ve had 7 careers (art teacher, financial advisor, owned an insurance brokerage, marketing director, intrapreneur, product manager, and a venture lead/interim CEO at an AI venture studio).

After my last job I wanted to quit tech. I spent 18 months trying a bunch of different things (no-code, podcasting, illustrating, creating info products and courses, E-commerce, and micro-coaching). I now do a variety of things including co-founder for hire where I not only advise but roll up my sleeves to get first customers and put together a data backed go-to-market strategy. The beauty of the co-founder for hire gig is it’s 10 hours a week. I get to focus on the things in tech that I love without the mad hours, politics, and stress.

The thing is, you can always go back to tech. Taking a mid-career gap year/sabbatical is an amazing experience. You’re sure to learn a lot about yourself. Tech isn’t going anywhere.

Re: Ask HN: Has anyone started over outside of tech?

#432

Post by ornornor »

seanw444 wrote: post #308
ineedasername wrote: post #168

Very early in my career, I briefly took a non tech job to get out of one I hated. I say briefly because I quickly found myself in a job that surrounded by 100 problems easily solvable with simple tech solutions, and started to do them- either because it saved me time or it was painful to watch other people do something painful slow when simple tools would do it— things like stitching together data files (basically a…

Working software in a place that isn't mainly software is actually really great. I write the internal systems and occasionally work on the customer-facing websites and applications at a small local manufacturing company. Definitely better than my first job in RPA where I was constantly on a call with an uptight customer that gave vague descriptions of what they wanted, that then got upset when they had to call us 4 m…

> I write the internal systems and occasionally work on the customer-facing websites and applications at a small local manufacturing company.

How did you find this gig? I think I’d enjoy working in this way with complete control over the dev process while making a very tangible difference in reducing employee toil. Just don’t know how to find that. And also how’s money?

Re: Ask HN: Has anyone started over outside of tech?

#433

Post by ornornor »

cryptica wrote: post #182

I've been passionate about coding since I was 14; I self-taught myself to code on school library computers during my lunch break, went to uni, was involved in some startups. I still enjoy coding (I'm 32 now) but I hate coding as a day job because I'm forced to do everything in ridiculously inefficient ways. I often think to myself; surely, if they force me to use these insanely wasteful, over-engineered tools, they s…

Sympathies from one apple picker to another. This sucks.

Re: Ask HN: Has anyone started over outside of tech?

#434

Post by ornornor »

Eumenes wrote: post #218
0xDEF wrote: post #37

You can learn programming and get a lucrative career without a CS degree. Are there other fields where that is possible?

Sales (can easily pull 200k OTE with 3-5 years of exp), tech recruiting (easily make 150k with ~ 5 years of experience if you focus on SWE/tech), design (companies are dying for product designers right now)

How do you get started in sales? This is something I’ve been curious about but I’m not super extroverted so I don’t even know if it’d work. And also, zero experience.

Re: Ask HN: Has anyone started over outside of tech?

#435

Post by Eumenes »

ornornor wrote: post #434
Eumenes wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sales (can easily pull 200k OTE with 3-5 years of exp), tech recruiting (easily make 150k with ~ 5 years of experience if you focus on SWE/tech), design (companies are dying for product designers right now)

How do you get started in sales? This is something I’ve been curious about but I’m not super extroverted so I don’t even know if it’d work. And also, zero experience.

I'd say you gotta start somewhere like customer support/service, become an expert on the products you support, build relationships internally. Know the competition very well. You can't walk off the street and start selling SaaS to SMD or Enterprise. Alot of sales people come from adjacent roles.

Re: Ask HN: Has anyone started over outside of tech?

#436

Post by obiefernandez »

edu wrote: post #363
obiefernandez wrote: post #26

Other than some long-term entanglements I’ve basically retired from tech and started over as a music producer/touring DJ. Living the dream, but definitely feels like starting again from the bottom https://soundcloud.com/obie

Oh! That sounds awesome, my dream. Did you had much music teaching as a kid? How was your path?

Just a little bit of piano. First turntables at 14. Bedroom producing since 2001

Re: Ask HN: Has anyone started over outside of tech?

#437

Post by thfuran »

SamWhited wrote: post #391
shaman1 wrote: post #386

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you considered cashing out? Meaning selling the house so you get you equity back. Maybe you can use that to move somewhere more affordable and start over.

I've thought about it, but I don't think that's actually an option. Renting is just going back to throwing money into some asshole landlord making profit off of other people not wanting to be houseless, and everywhere else where I'd have any possible desire to live is getting more and more expensive too, so even though I'm lucky in that my house has gone up a lot it doesn't actually do me any good if I want to buy ag…

>even though I'm lucky in that my house has gone up a lot it doesn't actually do me any good if I want to buy again

That's only true if you want to buy again somewhere with similarly priced real estate rather than somewhere with cheaper real estate.

Re: Ask HN: Has anyone started over outside of tech?

#438

Post by Xeoncross »

cachecrab wrote: post #336
Xeoncross wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would say it's not so expensive as it more deprives you from the time you would otherwise spend climbing the corporate ladder, networking, and starting a company/side project. Kids aren't the huge bill that people seem to think they are unless the parents have a spending problem or don't really want to raise the kids and lease out the education, child care, and transportation duties to other people/organizations. T…

Childcare is a pretty large expense. Whether you have two working parents and use daycare, or one stay at home parent (single income instead of double), there's a significant cost associated with each. The average amount spent on a child per year is 17k [1]. It may not be that much if you're making $200k+/yr, but on the median household income of $71k/yr [2], it's a pretty significant chunk — about ~24% of your incom…

Yes, that was the point I made. Either opportunity costs or it costs for if both parents work full time.

I do think that families that figure out how to at least have one parent home for the kids seem to have better relationships with them. I like the idea of families that can swap each parent having a year or something with the kids, the issue is that most careers don't support that model. You can't have multiple year gaps in your resume nor do both spouses often make the same income.

Re: Ask HN: Has anyone started over outside of tech?

#439

Post by benhurmarcel »

fsloth wrote: post #174
elteto wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why are you talking about college? Having kids in general is very, very expensive. More so if you want to provide them with opportunities and activities as they grow up.

Having kids is not terribly expensive everywhere. Not all need to have super expensive hobbies either. I guess there is a huge regional difference - starting from cost daycare.

Having kids isn't that cheap even outside the US.

I estimate I spend about €1000 more per month for having one baby. It's pretty significant in a country where the average employee earns €2000/month after tax (and a senior engineer is at €3500/month roughly).

Re: Ask HN: Has anyone started over outside of tech?

#440

Post by iagooar »

farleykr wrote: post #28
iagooar wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cooking has these qualities, too.

Absolutely. Or baking. I learned how to make sourdough last year and am now at the point where I make all the bread our family needs. Sourdough is especially deep because the steps are so simple on paper yet so full of nuance to explore. Easy to learn hard to master sort of situation.

Agree. Pizza baking is kind of the same, it is impressive how deep down the rabbit hole you can go with it.
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