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Ask HN: Feelings of regret over career path?

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Re: Ask HN: Feelings of regret over career path?

#21
post #4

I think its natural for an intellectually curious person to feel doubts about whatever they choose. Personally -- I studied Econ as an undergrad, worked at 2 startups for 2 years, then nonprofits for the next 3, and then law school and a big firm job. When I was sitting in that law firm office, I hated my life relative to both the non-profit world and the startup world. Of the 3, the startup world allowed me to live…

I went a somewhat similar path. I studied Computer Science in undergrad and wasn't sure if that was the route I wanted to take, so I went to law school (three more years of college also sounded fun). I enjoyed my time at law school, especially its relation to philosophy and quasi rule-based systems, inter alia (oh yeah, you pick up some Latin in law school).

However, after a few years out practicing patent law, I miss the hacking, startup, engineering, etc. and related cultures. I obviously took a somewhat circuitous route, but now realize how much more one can do in life hacking things.

Even in patent law, which is highly related to technology and, accordingly, startups, you are just another cog in the creation system, not yourself creating. I find software much more liberating philosophically and mentally. However, practicing patent law does have many positive attributes, e.g., staying abreast of technology is part of your job duties.

I am now heading back, both mentally and hopefully soon career wise, to everything hacking and startup related. My time spent away obviously helped my skill-set in other areas, but, hacking is something too hard to stay away from full-time. Good luck on your journey. I do not think you will regret any path you take.

Re: Ask HN: Feelings of regret over career path?

#22
post #6

It is the nature of the hacker to question everything, even his inherent hackiness. You're perfectly normal. Now relax and go build something.

I agree. And, the quest for knowledge makes the study of Philosophy look appealing. It appears to be a mysterious field where all truth resides.

Take it from me, it isn't. I got a degree in philosophy. It isn't all bad. It will teach you to read fast, write well, and think logically. It is basically the study of logic and how it relates to language.

If it makes the OP feel better, I went Philosophy, Law, and now all I want to do is hack. The grass is always greener.

Now, we should both just make something.

Re: Ask HN: Feelings of regret over career path?

#23
I am interested in philosophy, and this is the _reason_ I chose computer engineering. You now have the tools to find the answers to your philosophical questions, in a way that has never before been practical - you can study the nature of the mind by developing models in computational neuroscience; you have enough background in mathematics and logic to study Godel, Turing, Russell, and the meaning of knowledge and truth; you can shed light on the existence free will by developing FMRI analysis tools. Maybe you can look at your ECE degree as the first part of your education.

Re: Ask HN: Feelings of regret over career path?

#24
post #11
post #2

I dont know about the others but I do feel just like you. I had also posted something like this here http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=824178 . And about philosophy I think every true hacker is a philosopher in its true sense. Hacking is in my opinion a type of philosophy of living. Philosophy can be summed up to being investigation of questions and also analysis of the answers. And every hacker does just that. And…

philosophy = physics without the math Do the world a favor and stick with hacking: build something.

I disagree. I'm more inclined to say:

philosophy = science - assumptions

Also, mathematics came from philosophy... So did Science, actually.

Re: Ask HN: Feelings of regret over career path?

#25
I got two engineering degrees (ME and EE), and you know what I learned? I learned that engineering is an amazing field and a boring career (for me anyway)!

So, I started doing something else. I now own two companies and in the 6 months since quitting my engineering job, I've doubled my income. No regrets, just decisions and action.

I wouldn't be here had I not went to school and gotten my degrees. Sure, I could probably be somewhere else equally exciting, but this is what I've done, and I enjoyed all of it greatly. When I realized I wasn't enjoying my path at any point, I figured out why and turned.

My one piece of advice is this: don't turn until you've figured out exactly why you're not happy.

Re: Ask HN: Feelings of regret over career path?

#26

I had this same feeling when I finished my junior year as an Electrical Engineering major. The truth is, I chose that major when I was barely 17 years old, and it was accidental. I chose my major from a drop-down list on a web application. I was going to choose Computer Science, but then I saw "Computer Engineering" and thought it sounded more impressive, so I chose that one. Little did I know how different the cours…

I had a somewhat similar experience. I'm pretty much freaked out my junior year, and almost dropped everything to get a music degree. But I stuck it out, got my CS degree, and landed a good job before graduating. After 1.5 years, I quit. I craved that exploration phase which I never felt I got in school. I spent a year setting up a music studio and teaching guitar lessons out of my apartment. I loved it. But I found my self truly missing hacking on things, and when I got back to it, I realized how much I had missed it. I don't regret my decisions at all. Don't worry so much about what you should do; just do SOMETHING. Good luck!

Re: Ask HN: Feelings of regret over career path?

#27

I had this same feeling when I finished my junior year as an Electrical Engineering major. The truth is, I chose that major when I was barely 17 years old, and it was accidental. I chose my major from a drop-down list on a web application. I was going to choose Computer Science, but then I saw "Computer Engineering" and thought it sounded more impressive, so I chose that one. Little did I know how different the cours…

This is exactly what I want to do! just take a time out to try the things I'm interested to try. I have emailed my advisor to see if something like this is possible.

If you can find part-time employment on campus, you can work for a year and sit in on classes too. That way you can explore without the expense of making it official (most profs are cool with this).

As long as you trust yourself not to slack off during that year.

Re: Ask HN: Feelings of regret over career path?

#28
I struggled with what to do when I was in college, and ended up with a philosophy bachelor's and CS masters. I've been working as a software engineer since then.

One of the hard parts for me, both in school and later, was that I never really fit in with the CS crowd, since I wasn't nearly geeky enough (I didn't grow up with computers, I learned to program starting sophomore year of college, etc.), and my philosophical leanings lead me to see the world in shades of gray whereas, no offense to anyone here, engineers tend to see the world in more black and white terms than humanities majors. In engineering, there are right answers (does it work? is it faster?). In philosophy or history, there aren't. So that conflict always lead me to feel like maybe I was going the wrong direction, since I just didn't really fit in with the real hard-core hacker types. Was I going to enjoy it? Was I going to be able to keep up? It's often hard to tell just how good you can be or how much you'll enjoy something professionally until you give it a chance.

What eventually tipped me was that I burned out on philosophy; I enjoyed the study of it, I enjoyed the process of it, but at the end of the day no one ever has an answer. Any crazy position on any subject you can think of has someone with tenure that made their reputation by staking out that crazy position, and fundamentally there just aren't hard truths that you can easily cling to to dislodge them. So after my undergrad was done, I was pretty done with it: I'd learned a huge amount, become a better writer and clearer thinker, and learned better how to be objective and how to accept being wrong (and to not care about being right, but rather about getting to the right answer), but my desire for answers and progress wasn't going to be met by further pursuing philosophy, and it was time for me to go out and do something. Philosophy might have answers for you, on a personal level (it did for me), but you're not going to be able to convince other people of those answers no matter how good you are, unless you're one of the 3 best philosophers in any given generation. If just the process alone is enough for you to be fulfilled, more power to you, but for me it wasn't.

I do still wish I could do philosophy, and I miss the absorption in reading philosophy as well as the writing and thinking it entails. I could do more of that on my own time, but I have a hard time splitting my attention like that; both software and philosophy require a lot of mental energy and certain type of lose-your-self absorption in the problems at hand. But I've also found outlets for those impulses: I think a lot about how to make things better in our code base, or how to structure programs, or about language design, or about our development process. When I get the urge to write, I blog about software development and engineering. Software is such an involved, flexible field that you can exercise a lot of different skills and scratch a lot of different itches even within the field. So I don't regret my career choice at all; you can only choose one path in life, so there are always things you'll wish you could have done, and the best you can do is find a path where you're happy and enjoy life.

Perhaps most important to me is that the act of creating something new is, I think, a very special sort of act, and getting paid to do it, to create something new that wasn't there before, is something not a lot of people get to experience. The joy of that alone, I think, is really what drives a lot of software developers, and if you have that deep-seated urge to build things and take joy in creating something new, you'll probably be happy as a professional developer provided you find the right sort of environment.

And on a related note: honestly, no one enjoys their job 100% of the time. Maybe 0.1% of the population actually does, and the rest of us just lie about it in interviews with magazines or TV shows ("I love my job, I get to . . ." and "I have the best job in the world . . .") thus distorting everyone else's perception of normalcy, but regardless of what you do you'll have days where you come home and say, "I just want to go read books all day" or "I just want to go work on a farm" or "I just want to do anything but go to work tomorrow and deal with all this stuff again." It happens to everyone no matter what they're doing or how passionate they are about it.

Re: Ask HN: Feelings of regret over career path?

#29

I had this same feeling when I finished my junior year as an Electrical Engineering major. The truth is, I chose that major when I was barely 17 years old, and it was accidental. I chose my major from a drop-down list on a web application. I was going to choose Computer Science, but then I saw "Computer Engineering" and thought it sounded more impressive, so I chose that one. Little did I know how different the cours…

Sounds like what I'm doing! Basically, taking more technically-inclined contracts as a web developer, even though I prefer the thinking and managing part of web development just so that I can pursue learning and enjoying life at my leisure.

Re: Ask HN: Feelings of regret over career path?

#30
post #11
post #2

I dont know about the others but I do feel just like you. I had also posted something like this here http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=824178 . And about philosophy I think every true hacker is a philosopher in its true sense. Hacking is in my opinion a type of philosophy of living. Philosophy can be summed up to being investigation of questions and also analysis of the answers. And every hacker does just that. And…

philosophy = physics without the math Do the world a favor and stick with hacking: build something.

I'm not sure I follow you there. Quite a few philosophers are mathematicians-- René Descartes, Bertrand Russel, and Kurt Gödel are a few famous examples. It's also not at all clear the world would have been better off if they'd chosen to be engineers instead.
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