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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?

#31

Post by acconrad »

hkarthik wrote: post #13

I did this back in 2009. Here's how to do it. Pick a technology stack that you want to get a job in and build a side project in your spare time. Attend meetups with experts in your local community and learn how to make it awesome. Build relationships with them along the way. Use those relationships to get some part-time contract work in said technology stack with someone local. Document this experience and build up a…

I can attest to this method being completely effective, but I think you can skip the contract work, and it might get in the way.

At least in my experience as a contractor, people are looking for contractors because they have lots of experience in this technology but don't have the resources or time to devote to their project full-time. So if you have little experience in a tech stack, you may have a hard time finding this kind of work.

I simply built a side project (I did this with Rails) and then got hired full-time at a startup to do Rails work. As with everything, YMMV.

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

#32

Post by mooreds »

druml wrote: post #3
a3voices wrote: post #2

You could do work at night on side projects to learn new skills.

Better if you could do it together with others. Join a study group of the tech you want to learn or even try going to relevant hackathons.

> a study group of the tech you want to learn

Aka an open source project that is written in the stack you want to learn.

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

#33

Post by vkjv »

I'm curious about something similar, but perhaps more drastic. I went to college for EE, but after graduating got a job in software. I enjoy computer engineering much more than software, but at this point I'm 5 years into my career and I don't see a way that I could ever switch paths without taking a critical hit in income.

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

#34

Post by millzlane »

nasalgoat wrote: post #17

When I interview people, I am less interested in their specific experience than I am in their ability to think and troubleshoot problems. Google solves the knowledge problem but doesn't solve the problem of intelligently using that info. I imagine other employers are similar, and given the high demand for tech workers, you might be surprised at the reactions.

I would enjoy working with people who think this way. I interviewed at Cisco last week and got hung up on a couple of technical questions about the mount command in Linux. Long story short it seemed like the interviewer wanted me to know every option or switch for the commands he asked about.

I would have just looked in man pages for the switch that I required or the usage. For commands I would hardly ever use even on a production system. He told me my Linux skills were weak ha. It may be true, but at least I could find the answer without google. The hosting company I interviewed at told me to feel free to Google it, "I'm good I just need man pages."

It's like knowing how to spell. Just because you don't know how to spell a word doesn't mean you don't know how it's used in a sentence. If you know how to locate the word in a dictionary you have the right answer.

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

#35

Post by GrinningFool »

darklajid wrote: post #9

Thanks a lot for asking this - I'm in a similar boat¹ and will follow this thread with interest. Good luck from another 30-something. ① For me 'niche tech' is one thing, and 'investing a lot of time in the bowels of the corporate product over 10 years' the other one - the latter just WILL go away if I switch and is absolutely not useful elsewhere

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 maybe specific to the corporate product - generalize well. There's a better-than-even chance you had to deal with managing data from multiple inputs, scaling and performance, build management, testing issues (even if experience in pain of not having it), product delivery, and/or user experience. These things are not as different as you might expect.

Reference: I spent many years working for a Large Bank developing in-house software before transitioning into the startup world. THe biggest problem I had faced was my complacency - somewhere along the way I gave up on pushing to do things better, and it took me a while to get that back. In that way I was fortunate that I came to work for a company that gave me the time I needed to do that.

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

#36

Post by GrinningFool »

darklajid wrote: post #9

Thanks a lot for asking this - I'm in a similar boat¹ and will follow this thread with interest. Good luck from another 30-something. ① For me 'niche tech' is one thing, and 'investing a lot of time in the bowels of the corporate product over 10 years' the other one - the latter just WILL go away if I switch and is absolutely not useful elsewhere

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 maybe specific to the corporate product - generalize well. There's a better-than-even chance you had to deal with managing data from multiple inputs, scaling and performance, build management, testing issues (even if experience in pain of not having it), product delivery, and/or user experience. These things are not as different as you might expect.

Reference: I spent many years working for a Large Bank developing in-house software before transitioning into the startup world. THe biggest problem I had faced was my complacency - somewhere along the way I gave up on pushing to do things better, and it took me a while to get that back. In that way I was fortunate that I came to work for a company that gave me the time I needed to do that.

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

#37

Post by vkjv »

> Are there any companies that would be willing to hire a grumpy 30-something and recognise his/her experience as something reusable?

Yes. I work for a large company that does recognize this and does not hire for specific stack experience. We have a hard enough time finding enough good people, regardless of specific experience, to use that as a critical factor.

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

#38

Post by personlurking »

My issue is similar, though not so tech-related. I do VA work for some startups but would like to get into a growing interest of mine (journalism), though my time is limited. I have experience as a writer, but not a background in journalism. I could make the complete jump to being a journo and self-publish, shop stories and find my way, but that'd mean giving up what pays the bills (pay & responsibilities of which are currently on the rise). Doing what I want to do means way more work and, very likely, less pay.

Does anyone else here juggle two different jobs? Is there a secret to doing so?

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

#39

Post by barrkel »

nilkn wrote: post #21

Do companies really try to pigeonhole developers into "tech stacks" so much that you'll be forced to revert to junior status to change? Unless we're talking about COBOL -> Haskell here, I think any decent company would be wary of overvaluing skills with a particular language or framework and undervaluing fundamentals.

It depends. It's more about developers pigeonholing themselves. Some CVs come along and are e.g. all Java, EJB, Spring, Hibernate etc. - they present themselves as completely unidimensional and more or less rule themselves out of something broader.

There are different things you learn when you've coded in a mix of C/C++, Java/C#, Ruby/Python, and perhaps something functional. But having all your experience in one of these buckets is more a sign of a junior developer, or the old "one year's experience ten times".

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

#40

Post by fecak »

sjcrank wrote: post #25

I have found it is much easier to switch to a new stack within your existing employer than it is to get hired for a stack for which you have no professional experience. Here are the steps: a. find employment at a company that requires your niche skillset but also has projects in your desired tech stack (hopefully this is your current employer) b. learn enough of the desired tech stack on your own to be a useful contr…

This is advice that many seem to overlook. Leverage the current skills to get exposure to the ones that you want. It is not always easy to find companies that both use your dated skill and the skill you want. Devs at those companies probably aren't that interested in using the old technologies, so you should be welcomed for your willingness to do the job they don't want to do in exchange for learning something new.
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