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Ask HN: What was the best decision you made in your career?

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101–110 of 491 posts

Re: Ask HN: What was the best decision you made in your career?

#101
Career wise: Investing in myself. After many years of complaining about companies that wouldn't send me on training I paid for it myself, studied myself and left those companies for better jobs with more interesting people on higher salaries.

Personally: Taking time out of the office for my family and myself. I'm happier and healthier.

Re: Ask HN: What was the best decision you made in your career?

#102

By far, applying to work remote for a US based company 3 years ago. I am living in Romania. I still work for them. Theoretically I should be able to retire in about 5-10 years, in my mid 40s, depending on how frugal I am with my expenses. This wouldn't have been possible working for a local software company, even though I was paid about 3 times the average national income.

it's so sad that from where i live (SEA), 3 times average gdp per capita is no where enough for retirement.

insurance and healthcare system is a joke. so whenever you got health issue, be prepare to spend butt-load of money.

i have no idea how gdp per capita is so low yet people have so much of money (unreported income, corruption probably)

I make about 25 times the national gdp per capita yet i'm just above average in my country.

Re: Ask HN: What was the best decision you made in your career?

#103
post #99

There is no loyalty in business. Keep your loyalty for your family and may be friends, not for the company you work for. The company will never be loyal back. Have an opportunity to make more or work more interesting? Grab it with both hands. If you are 99.99% of the workforce, you are not indispensable no matter how much you think you are.

So true! When you experience sudden group layoffs you realize rescuing the balance sheet matters far more than retaining good talent. I once had a boss tell me “Working here should be your career. Don’t treat this place like just another notch on your resume.” Sorry boss, but it might be just a footnote on my resume. I’m only staying here as long as the work and the pay is satisfactory otherwise I’m already interview…

In my second job, the company was not doing well financially. They stopped 401k match, reduce salary by 5% across the board etc. I still stayed because I liked the work and the people. Then they started laying off people who were with the company for 25+ years. One of them was my good friend. An asian guy who worked day and night and treated his work like his baby. He had two kids in medical school and a house with mortgage. He also was the only bread winner in family. I could see the pain and anxiety in his eyes. He had to sell everything and move back with his family to be with his brother and extended family.

That was it for me. I found a much better paying job within two weeks and never looked back.

The next company I worked for laid people off on schedule even though they were growing like crazy. In my four years there they went from 2b to 6b, but laid off many employees every year or so.

Re: Ask HN: What was the best decision you made in your career?

#105
I could have gone the IT route, being a Windows NT sysadmin and making twice the amount I could have made as a programmer. I stuck with programming because I enjoyed it more, and I felt I wouldn't have to keep taking certifications, etc, like MCSE. 25+ years later and I'm still programming and I still love it, except I'm making about 10x in total comp vs what I was making.

Re: Ask HN: What was the best decision you made in your career?

#107
post #38

Taking a chance and joining a very large corporation. Previously I was all about startups or small companies and was very much against the mega-corp environment. Over several months a colleague "recruited" me to join their team and I don't regret it. I've been able to climb pretty high within this corp and it has been a wild ride. Never in a million years would I have thought I'd have any sort of influence over techn…

Conversely, I took the opposite leap from a relatively successful corporate career to startup.

I’ve learned a huge amount and appreciated the opportunities and flexibility I have.

I think experiences in both worlds are valuable and wouldn’t trade either experience for anything else.

Re: Ask HN: What was the best decision you made in your career?

#109

Had a quarter-life crisis, so decided to quit my job after working 5 years as a software engineer and get a masters degree in a foreign country in 2010. Had to choose a specialization, and chose AI/ML only because I liked reading sci-fi. Graduated in 2012 and was suddenly and accidentally in a great position to ride the AI and data science wave taking over the industry.

Would you recommend getting an MSCS for getting into AI?

Re: Ask HN: What was the best decision you made in your career?

#110
Circa-2000 I was in my final year of university and working as a Windows service desk monkey in the SysAdmin team of a Sydney-based company that developed a platform for hosting (legitimate, regulated) gambling websites.

Sun Microsystems happened to be across the road from us. My mind was blown the first time I saw the value of the invoices for servers and Solaris licenses that we bought both for ourselves and on behalf of our customers. That's where a lot of those dotcom-era "investment" dollars ended up - at Sun.

One day we needed a router + firewall for some internal service. One of the Unix sysadmins in the team grabbed a spare i386 desktop PC, stuck a 2nd NIC in it, installed Slackware Linux and configured ipchains. Job done: no budget, no managerial approval, no licenses, nothing. I couldn't believe it.

I asked him about Linux and after learning more came to the conclusion that it could basically do most things that Solaris could do but was 1) free and 2) ran on cheap, commodity hardware.

That was the writing on the wall for me. I taught myself Linux and pretty soon had my first bona-fide Linux Sysadmin job. Linux went on to become the OS that runs the world and I've never struggled to find relatively interesting, well-paid work since then.

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