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Ask HN: Developers who switched careers, what are you doing now?

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Re: Ask HN: Developers who switched careers, what are you doing now?

#321

Post by kirso »

janwillemb wrote: post #180

I switched to teaching after 20 years (sidenote: I'm not the only one mentioning "20 years". Is there a common thread?) I've been doing it for one and a half year now, so maybe it's a bit too early to draw conclusions, but I really like it and gave me new energy. In software dev I began to feel like the Ecclesiasticus: "everything that looks new, has been done before". I also felt like IT is often making things worse…

Funny I would assume it would be around a decade before people switch but 20 years seems to be the trend indeed :)

Re: Ask HN: Developers who switched careers, what are you doing now?

#322

Post by jwitchel »

hwers wrote: post #43
jwitchel wrote: post #2

Moved to renewables. Wanted to try and help with climate change and needed new challenges. Solar is a fantastic industry. Lots of room for improvement feels like internet did in thr mid 90s. Just a ton of enthusiasm and a sense you're part of something big and important.

Could you give a sense about what the interesting problems there are? I get the sense (knowing nothing) that it's maybe similar to ML in the sense that only a few top research labs does all the fun stuff. The internet in the 90s had tons of low hanging fruit just about anyone could pluck.

Energy is fundamentally an economic problem so you're looking for places that reduce the incremental cost to deliver a kWh of renewable energy consistently over a long period of time. There is a shocking amount of soft costs (lawyers, permitting, financing, insurance, monitoring, sales, etc.) in renewables. Software can help with a lot of that. Fintech too.

The scale of our global energy infrastructure is incredible so small gains can have outsized impacts. I encourage you to just dig in.

Re: Ask HN: Developers who switched careers, what are you doing now?

#323

Post by jareklupinski »

jrumbut wrote: post #219
gmays wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting, have you leveraged your tech background to help the business? I'm in a similar spot--my wife bought a retail business (gift shop + dress boutique) with her sister around 2018. My tech background made some things easier, like modernizing how they operate (bluetooth scanners, iPads, inventory management vs. the old clunky stuff that was in place). Retail is a hard way to make a dollar, but very interesting…

> What if they turned that into a service where people submit who they need a gift for + their budget and the store sends a gift to the person? I've built sonething like this ~3 times as a consultant and I've never seen it get meaningful usage. Somehow it still sounds like a genius idea. Maybe if they have a following that is personally loyal to them it will work well? I hate to be discouraging but I might see if the…

I just watched a video about a Japanese website where you can put in an item you received as a gift, and it recommends items that are 30-50% of the gift's value that would make for an appropriate okaeshi or "return gift"

https://tinytotintokyo.com/gift-giving-in-japan-uchiiwai-%E5...

Re: Ask HN: Developers who switched careers, what are you doing now?

#324

Post by jwitchel »

achenet wrote: post #4
jwitchel wrote: post #2

Moved to renewables. Wanted to try and help with climate change and needed new challenges. Solar is a fantastic industry. Lots of room for improvement feels like internet did in thr mid 90s. Just a ton of enthusiasm and a sense you're part of something big and important.

could you please describe how you did the switch?

I came to terms with the belief that it was important for me to try and help with what I viewed as the critical problem of our time.

I just couldn't sit on the sidelines any more.

After that leap it was simply aligning my personal skills with various opportunities until I found a good fit. I looked broadly for a while: reforestation, fintech, residential installations, real estate, utility scale, training, open source, enterprise software, venture, etc. And I'm fundamentally an entrepreneur and a capitalist so I looked for problems through that lens.

But for me that process began with the same basic question every engineer has almost every day: "What is the problem, and what can I do to help fix it?"

Re: Ask HN: Developers who switched careers, what are you doing now?

#325

Post by jwitchel »

omginternets wrote: post #172
jwitchel wrote: post #2

Moved to renewables. Wanted to try and help with climate change and needed new challenges. Solar is a fantastic industry. Lots of room for improvement feels like internet did in thr mid 90s. Just a ton of enthusiasm and a sense you're part of something big and important.

Are you doing software in that field, or are you an entirely different sort of engineer now? If so, did you have to obtain some kind of certification? Can you tell us about how that works?

I stayed in software and specifically fintech software where I spent most of my career.

There are aspects of renewables that require certification or licenses depending on your country (electrical work for example). But most of the work does not.

Re: Ask HN: Developers who switched careers, what are you doing now?

#326

Post by kirso »

Auracle wrote: post #208

When I was 12 I suffered a brain injury that causes me to be tired all of time, along with some hormonal shifts. I didn’t realize it for a long time as it happened in the height of puberty. When I was 17 I started going to doctors to figure out the fatigue without much luck (“well, the sleep study came back fine so it must just be depression!”). I went to college for CS, but I knew I couldn’t manage a 40+ hour work w…

Think you can always hack on the side, see if you enjoy that and try to transform it to a full-time again.

There are soooo many more options in terms of learning materials these days that it was before!

Re: Ask HN: Developers who switched careers, what are you doing now?

#327

Post by Auracle »

lifeplusplus wrote: post #306
Auracle wrote: post #208

When I was 12 I suffered a brain injury that causes me to be tired all of time, along with some hormonal shifts. I didn’t realize it for a long time as it happened in the height of puberty. When I was 17 I started going to doctors to figure out the fatigue without much luck (“well, the sleep study came back fine so it must just be depression!”). I went to college for CS, but I knew I couldn’t manage a 40+ hour work w…

I always hear wedding photography pays the most

I do everything other than newborns, and yes - weddings are the majority of my income. They're also a ton of work and stress, and eat up my weekends - which is a lot more important to me now that I have a daughter.

Re: Ask HN: Developers who switched careers, what are you doing now?

#328

Post by kirso »

p10jkle wrote: post #232

I left SRE four months ago to become a VC investing in developer tools. I wanted to see if I can contribute to tech in other ways than writing code/getting paged. Liking it so far!

Thats great, in fact I think devtools are probably one of the best areas of focus - so much to improve DX/UX wise!

Re: Ask HN: Developers who switched careers, what are you doing now?

#329

Post by janwillemb »

nautilius wrote: post #201
janwillemb wrote: post #180

I switched to teaching after 20 years (sidenote: I'm not the only one mentioning "20 years". Is there a common thread?) I've been doing it for one and a half year now, so maybe it's a bit too early to draw conclusions, but I really like it and gave me new energy. In software dev I began to feel like the Ecclesiasticus: "everything that looks new, has been done before". I also felt like IT is often making things worse…

I’d say the theme is “midlife crisis”.

I did label it as such, although I didn't feel it helped to use the label. Because it's so often used jokingly, it feels like an underrating of what you're going through. You may come out of the period as a totally different person, a change process which you'd better take seriously.

Re: Ask HN: Developers who switched careers, what are you doing now?

#330

Post by pul »

kirso wrote: post #312
pul wrote: post #7

Not sure if this is what you mean, but I 'switched' from an ML consultancy to entrepreneurship. I now build and market my own projects ([1], [2]) and try to gain enough ad revenue to replace my former salary. Started 1.5 months ago, and enjoying every minute of it! No longer occupying my mind with corporate power dynamics saves a lot of cognitive bandwidth, but to my surprise it has been replaced. I thought I'd feel…

Hey Ruurtjan! Funny just replied to you on Twitter yesterday :) I think any switch actually counts irregardless. I feel you on the uncertainty thing. Quite honestly don't think you ever can escape this feeling. What helps is sort of going backwards from your imagined lifestyle that you want to live and how much you need. Generally there is always a conflict of how much $ can I earn on the job and maximise my retireme…

> Think the best we can do is just try to accept that feeling and do the best to achieve the financial needs necessary to keep going.

I think so too. Thanks :)

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