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Ask HN: Have you successfully done a career do-over, and how did you do it?

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Re: Ask HN: Have you successfully done a career do-over, and how did you do it?

#161

Post by su30mki117 »

wffurr wrote: post #160

My first programming job out of school was on really obsolete tech: IBM Unibasic aka Pick Basic in an ERP system. It's a career trap on par with taking a COBOL programming job right out of university: https://medium.com/@csixty4/pick-was-post-relational-before-... I broke out and rebooted my career by quitting and going to grad school full time and getting a Master's degree in CS from a fancier university in a tech h…

Any tips that you can give to someone who is about to finish his Master's when it comes to looking for jobs?

Re: Ask HN: Have you successfully done a career do-over, and how did you do it?

#162

Post by cryodesign »

xstartup wrote: post #155

I was a Symbian S40 app developer, after that Symbian C++ S60, developing J2ME applets. Left the job, launched my own app. Made first million doing that! Then I recreated the same app for Blackberry then finally Android, made tons of money doing this. Then it got soo crowded, clones kept coming and I lost my competitive edge. Then I launched a web app in a niche and built SaaS business. At this point - I had all mone…

So you seem really successful and financially sorted, but yet 'life has become hell' and you feel you have to fight to survive? Do you mean financially?

Re: Ask HN: Have you successfully done a career do-over, and how did you do it?

#163

Post by matte_black »

crimsonalucard wrote: post #159
matte_black wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In most jobs you will not get a foot in the door if all you claim to know is fundamentals. If you do not know the languages or frameworks they work in the interview is over as they are not going to spend the time training you. They want you to get in and be effective as soon as possible, not pay for your on the job training.

Personally I have found that this is relevant only for front end work. For the backend you just need rudimentary knowledge of a framework/language to get your foot in the door, then the actual testing is language agnostic.

Makes sense. Us front end guys are fairly expendable.

Re: Ask HN: Have you successfully done a career do-over, and how did you do it?

#164

Post by crimsonalucard »

matte_black wrote: post #163
crimsonalucard wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personally I have found that this is relevant only for front end work. For the backend you just need rudimentary knowledge of a framework/language to get your foot in the door, then the actual testing is language agnostic.

Makes sense. Us front end guys are fairly expendable.

Don't pigeonhole yourself into the frontend. Be language agnostic. Mastering the fundamentals allows you to transition across the stack.

Re: Ask HN: Have you successfully done a career do-over, and how did you do it?

#165

Post by GreeniFi »

Havoc wrote: post #117
GreeniFi wrote: post #102

I was a bored private equity lawyer, working like a ninja, ashamed by my firm’s clients. I did a one year Masters in Environmental Economics, did some really interesting work and then joined someone else’s start-up and ran a few side projects. That gave me the experience and confidence to really go out on my own. To anyone else about to pivot their life I would say: 1. A British one year masters (not an MBA) is a gre…

I'm curious about the questionable PE clients if you don't mind elaborating a little bit. I'm in the PE space myself and haven't seen anything particularly shady? Obviously you can't go into details, but perhaps you can add a bit more colour to the comment?

PE firms buying businesses off gangsters before selling them on fat margin to more established investors. However it was the straight up corporate clients at the firm who were always on Human Rights Watch lists that depressed me most.

Re: Ask HN: Have you successfully done a career do-over, and how did you do it?

#166

Post by GreeniFi »

Havoc wrote: post #117
GreeniFi wrote: post #102

I was a bored private equity lawyer, working like a ninja, ashamed by my firm’s clients. I did a one year Masters in Environmental Economics, did some really interesting work and then joined someone else’s start-up and ran a few side projects. That gave me the experience and confidence to really go out on my own. To anyone else about to pivot their life I would say: 1. A British one year masters (not an MBA) is a gre…

I'm curious about the questionable PE clients if you don't mind elaborating a little bit. I'm in the PE space myself and haven't seen anything particularly shady? Obviously you can't go into details, but perhaps you can add a bit more colour to the comment?

I should probably point out that I only joined all the dots on the gangster bits many years after I left. At the time I only saw legal but morally dubious deals. Basically - if your business generates substantial negative externalities, you're in a very morally grey area.

Re: Ask HN: Have you successfully done a career do-over, and how did you do it?

#167

Post by Sohcahtoa82 »

atsaloli wrote: post #80
rb808 wrote: post #34

I suspect its not as easy as many people make out. I was a great C++/OO dev for 10 years before I got bored, starting doing management, business focussed roles and more high level devops style work. After 10 years of that I wanted to move back into pure coding. With great experience should be easy right? Wrong. I got a mid-level java/python dev job and it was difficult, I was out of touch and everything was different…

What's DI?

DI is Dependency Injection, which is a $1,000 term for a $5 concept.

A Python class without DI:

    class SomeClass(object):
        def __init__(self):
            self.someDependency = GetDependency()
A Python class WITH DI:

    class SomeClass(object):
        def __init__(self, dependency):
            self.someDependency = dependency
...

That's it. DI is just explicitly passing ("injecting") a dependent object into an object, rather than requiring the object to call a function to get a reference/pointer to the dependency or make one.

Re: Ask HN: Have you successfully done a career do-over, and how did you do it?

#168

Post by Sohcahtoa82 »

crimsonalucard wrote: post #137
fizx wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's an over complicated term for a really trivial pattern in development. Yes, but... The objective of most business-oriented programs is to create the One True Function(tm), usually known to developers as a the "application." For everyone's sanity, this should be composed of smaller functions, which are sometimes called "objects." An object is just a function that was created using a specific creation template, u…

Objects and functions are different. An object retains state, a function should be stateless. Objects cannot be evaluated and do not have return values.

> Objects cannot be evaluated and do not have return values.

Python would disagree.

Re: Ask HN: Have you successfully done a career do-over, and how did you do it?

#169

Post by crimsonalucard »

Sohcahtoa82 wrote: post #168
crimsonalucard wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Objects and functions are different. An object retains state, a function should be stateless. Objects cannot be evaluated and do not have return values.

> Objects cannot be evaluated and do not have return values. Python would disagree.

Python disagrees with you. Given a python script with a single class. If you instantiate an object and try to "call" or "evaluate" it:

    class A(object):
         def __init__(self):
             pass

    x = A()
    x()
you get this output to stderr:

  Traceback (most recent call last):
    File "python_temp.py", line 6, in 
      x()
  TypeError: 'A' object is not callable
Of course you can mess with the callable magic method, but that's more of a trick then a standard. You may be referring to how functions in python are implemented as callable objects rather than primitives. This is an implementation detail that is language specific, similar to how in javascript, functions are also classes.

In standard programming vernacular and practice, objects and functions are two different primitives. They are not the same thing. An object is a noun, a function is a verb, and just like their english grammar counter parts functions and objects are primitives because a Noun is not really a special kind of verb nor is a verb a special case of a noun.

Edit: added more detail, grammar editing.

Re: Ask HN: Have you successfully done a career do-over, and how did you do it?

#170

Post by hodl »

6a68 wrote: post #107
_diyu wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't mind learning, definitely. I got into this field because I'm passionate about software and I enjoy programming a lot. But while I have a full time job and a large-ish family to support, it's hard to fit "3 years of professional React.js experience" into my spare time to put on my resume, so that when nobody's hiring iOS developers anymore, I can still get a job. That's what I'm talking about. A lot of the ski…

Want to get some production experience with react? Tons of webdev projects are using it at Mozilla. Come on over and find yourself a good first bug :-)

"But while I have a full time job and a large-ish family to support, it's hard to fit "3 years of professional React.js experience" into my spare time ..."

I'm sure your got the bugs, but the gp ain't got the time

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