This is something I’ve been thinking about, but nothing speaks to me enough to jump ship. Anything I think of also means taking a huge pay cut, so it seems to make sense to stay on the current track until the wheels fall off to maximize my savings to soften the transition. It’s also possible that I may never need to switch careers before retirement, so it could be a moot point.
Ask HN: What (other) jobs do you think of doing?
11–20 of 23 posts
Re: Ask HN: What (other) jobs do you think of doing?
#12I do my own mechanic work, but I have old trucks. I would never sign up to work on modern vehicles and the entitled customers trying to get one over on you.
I drove a route (not delivery) many years ago and I liked that. I tend to like jobs where you start with a pile of work, and finish with none left, rather than perpetually working towards something that's never done, like maybe a software project.
Re: Ask HN: What (other) jobs do you think of doing?
#13There are industries that one can switch to. Tourism, agriculture, healthcare are things where people will use the robots rather than be used by them.
Jobs that control the money flow will probably be able to make a cut for themselves, finance.
Re: Ask HN: What (other) jobs do you think of doing?
#141. Saunameister in public saunas. AI won’t be replacing that any time soon
2. Stay-at-home dad
3. Personal trainer for elderly ladies
Now I’m building software
Re: Ask HN: What (other) jobs do you think of doing?
#15In my 25+ years programming, I don't yet think I've met a programmer who hasn't dreamed of "just being a lawnmower" (or some equally equiv, "mundane" job). Just the idea of ending the day having accomplished something and being able to 100% switch off work and just relax. The same is probably true of other professions like lawyers and doctors. AI is definitely going to change things. It already has, but I don't think…
I was a part time fitness instructor from 1999-2012 and was a (very bad) real estate investor from 2002-2008. I wouldn’t say fitness instructor is just for the young, my wife is now 50 and she has been teaching for 5 years. But it’s definitely not something you can do full time, the money isn’t there and trying to do it too much and is a wear and tear on your body. Even owning your studio isn’t that great as far as income.
But now at 51 and I have been working remotely between three companies since 2020, there is nothing I would rather do than wake up, wash up, and walk to my office in the other bedroom.
We have also done the digital nomad thing for a year and this year we will be away from home for a total of 3-4 months. There is nothing else that I would rather be doing.
Re: Ask HN: What (other) jobs do you think of doing?
#16I am sick of tech, been doing it my whole life. built a company and now I just want to put my hands in the dirt or on a tool.
Re: Ask HN: What (other) jobs do you think of doing?
#17Re: Ask HN: What (other) jobs do you think of doing?
#18AI interaction is fundamentally unsatisfying. (I have a theory as to why; see below.) An AI can get you results, maybe even the results you wanted, but it can't give you a genuine smile. Even when we're surrounded by things that get us results, we still want the smile. So if you're doing something where you interact with people face to face, at least some of the time, that's a decent place.
In my large town/small city, there's an ice cream shop that closes between Thanksgiving and roughly March 1st. I would love to own a business that people cared as much about as they care about that place opening for the year.
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Why is interacting with an AI unsatisfying? I wonder if it doesn't come down to information theory. AI output has too little information in it.
You compute the information in a text by going symbol by symbol. Normally "symbol" means one character or byte. But you could do it by going word by word (or word part by word part) instead. Here you can see the problem: an AI gives you whatever word is the most probable next word, given the context. That's lower information than human output, which would give a wider variety of next words, and therefore a higher (Shannon) information content.
Yes, you can change that by increasing the temperature of the AI. Can you do that enough to give human-equivalent information content without destroying the coherence of the output? (Merely high Shannon information isn't the only goal. The insane may have high information in their output, but they are incoherent enough that it doesn't matter.)
Re: Ask HN: What (other) jobs do you think of doing?
#19Re: Ask HN: What (other) jobs do you think of doing?
#20Also, they’re more resistant to AI/automation. Like many, I’m not sure if I’ll want to stick around and manage a bunch of AI agents, that’s not really what interests me in the software world.