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Ask HN: How to reskill without losing income?

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Re: Ask HN: How to reskill without losing income?

#91

Post by wyclif »

I also went through this a few years ago. I was a land surveyor and although I loved the combination of technical, mathematical, and analytic skill with working in the great outdoors, the subprime mortgage crisis resulted in big commercial land development contracts drying up.

You have to be single-minded and goal-oriented. Another HN user above says to "pick a technology stack" and focus down on it. That's great advice. I already had some experience on the LAMP stack and I built up from there. Don't let yourself get distracted after you've decided the direction you see yourself moving in.

Work on side projects. Go to meetups. Find people you can collaborate with and work well with you. See if you can get some PT work that is being parceled out by companies because their own FT devs are too busy. If you're allowed to expose your code, build up your Github. Don't forget to visualise where you see yourself going, and don't be afraid to tell people where you're headed.

Also, make productivity apps work for you. Have a Dropbox file where you keep all your technical books, and have that file open all the time. Subscribe to Pinboard or some other bookmarking service to save technical blog posts and documentation you want to read. Use Trello to manage your projects. Etc. Good luck to you.

Re: Ask HN: How to reskill without losing income?

#92

Post by WorldWideWayne »

newton10471 wrote: post #86
WorldWideWayne wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And (this might be obvious), but read, read, read! That's what works for me at least. Articles, books, blogs, IRC, IRC chat logs, Github issues, etc. When I am learning something new I might spend a few days (or even weeks depending on the subject) reading around about it before I take that first step to build my side project.

Reading to learn is not borne out by research as a good way to build and retain skills, and can just as likely create illusions of competence http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect . Research shows it's far better to just start doing the activity. The reading should just be used to get you just to the point where you can start doing.

Understanding fundamentals before doing some activity is empirically more efficient though. Both thinking and doing are necessary for understanding the fundamentals of a given skill. Reading or communicating about things is a subset of thinking about them. It's all necessary at some point, whether you do it before, during or after your activity.

I read to understand fundamentals and to get useful information such as which libraries, techniques, etc are popular in the arena that I'm entering or things to avoid. Many, many times reading has saved me from entering a given arena because I was able to conclude that whatever new technology I was looking into wasn't really going to work the way that I wanted.

Re: Ask HN: How to reskill without losing income?

#93

Post by marktangotango »

darklajid wrote: post #52
GrinningFool wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't underestimate the value of the lessons you've learned in the bowels of that corporate product. Consider: 1) You have experience in a corporate environment. You know the kinds of things that terrify them, and you know the kind of experience they expect from the companies they interact with. This knowledge and perspective is incredibly valuable to any startup in the b2b space. 2) The problems you solved - while m…

Thanks for the words of encouragement. I'm not totally pessimistic, I was really referring to the knowledge that doesn't translate to a new job. After 10 years and working deeply with a lot of stuff I am among the 'Do you know..?' types for questions about the inner workings of the product. That is really just baggage. Processes, experiences probably can be reapplied elsewhere. But having read some C files from 1996…

>> But having read some C files from 1996 (I .. didn't work at that company at that time), reciting the product's API every evening after dinner and being intimately familiar with the current .Net code base is time invested in this job and this job only.

I disagree with this, you gain something working closely with a legacy code base. After you've done it once, it becomes easier when you have to it again, although if you do it more than a few times, it gets REALLY old. I distinguished myself at my last two jobs by jumping into and becoming proficient with the legacy code in short order.

Re: Ask HN: How to reskill without losing income?

#94

Post by Robert_Webonise »

If you're a senior level developer (ie: if you've been doing development more than 7+ years), then you're in luck. Companies usually recognize senior level developers can migrate to a related technology stack without too much of a loss, and the skills of being a senior developer are more soft-skills than particular technical areas. Recruiters generally won't know how to sell you in this regard, but with a bit of networking, you should be able to find you a bridge position into your new technology stack. You are going to be expected to hit the ground running, which will make the first few months of that job really exciting, but it should be entirely possible.

A good place to look is in consulting companies, like my own Webonise Lab. Consulting companies will often hire experienced people to become generalists with broad skill sets, and will often take a specialist and give them an opportunity to train up through the company's open source projects and the like.

Re: Ask HN: How to reskill without losing income?

#95

Post by tphyahoo »

BadassFractal wrote: post #83
mreiland wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I work for myself specifically to avoid people like you.

I work for myself specifically to be able to isolate the kind of developers that will make my organization successful. It's wonderful that we all have the opportunity to choose what kind of environment we want to work in.

Fortunately "side projects" are an easy requirement to game.

On a less snarky note, I think the objection is the power dynamic of employers essentially wanting employees to train off the job rather than subsidizing continuing education, but pretending that it's a utopian "we're all in this together" situation, but where equity is not usually shared.

Re: Ask HN: How to reskill without losing income?

#96

Post by pcsanwald »

brianfryer wrote: post #59
pcsanwald wrote: post #24

As someone who does a lot of hiring for a startup, I will say I'm agnostic with regards to languages and frameworks. We've hired folks with all sorts of disparate backgrounds including embedded C (we mostly use Java and JavaScript). I think you should sell yourself as an experienced technologist who's looking to learn. You should also demonstrate a willingness and ability to learn new things; maybe by making somethin…

This is an excellent point. We hired an engineer at the startup I work at who had a lot of Java experience but very little Ruby experience—our stack's primary language. He was a fast learner and had no issues getting up to speed in a reasonable amount of time.

that's been my experience, too; both for myself personally, as well as people I've hired.

Re: Ask HN: How to reskill without losing income?

#97

Post by vancouverwill »

pcsanwald wrote: post #24

As someone who does a lot of hiring for a startup, I will say I'm agnostic with regards to languages and frameworks. We've hired folks with all sorts of disparate backgrounds including embedded C (we mostly use Java and JavaScript). I think you should sell yourself as an experienced technologist who's looking to learn. You should also demonstrate a willingness and ability to learn new things; maybe by making somethin…

I wish more were as progressive as you, with different languages the syntax changes bit the patterns and computer science is exactly the same. A good programmer can adapt very quickly as even within a language ylthey have to adapt all the tome to new libraries and new problems.
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