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Ask HN: Career change at 22

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61–66 of 66 posts

Re: Ask HN: Career change at 22

#61
There's "coding" which is usually used to imply creating business applications. This you say is blue collar. I wouldn't know because that's not a world I have much experience with. But the world needs good "coders". And good blue collar workers.

Many of the problems you discuss are common to much of human experience. Every generation laments lack of virtue in the young, though most of those doing the lamenting are usually considerably older than you. You say you are 22. Here's a thought: has it occurred to you that to people more experienced than you, you are the "young, inexperienced" kind of person you're lamenting? Maybe you're a genius and wise beyond your years (but I do not think this is the case, as Bahamut said...this is a good growth opportunity for you) but you still have much to learn, and you always will for the rest of your life. So stay humble.

As an aside, there is a whole world of programming involving the need to understand mathematics, physics, and engineering at deep levels. If you're looking for a deeper intellectual challenge, look for areas where computer programs must interface or simulate complex systems of systems. You may find ways to scratch your need for maturity and rigor by programming, say, a model of a real hardware component of an aircraft.

Re: Ask HN: Career change at 22

#62
Make the change. I'm a career programmer and am happy with it. I had a friend who quit in his mid-20s to go to med school, that was a smart decision for him.

If you don't love what you're doing, change now. You have plenty of time at 22.

Re: Ask HN: Career change at 22

#63

I'm a little over decade older than you but I've been around this business a long time. Web development has always had young, inexperienced people going into the business. Things have always been changing really little care for methodology. Things are getting better, not worse. The amount of elitism this post drips with is semi-infuriating. I come from nothing. A poor kid with a good brain who was lucky enough to sch…

Take some solace in the fact that if he doesn’t grow up a bit, he’s only going to hurt himself. The blue collar folks of the world will just grab a beer and talk about what an asshole he is, and he’ll never realize the opportunities he’s missed or the friends he could have had.

Re: Ask HN: Career change at 22

#64
post #63

I'm a little over decade older than you but I've been around this business a long time. Web development has always had young, inexperienced people going into the business. Things have always been changing really little care for methodology. Things are getting better, not worse. The amount of elitism this post drips with is semi-infuriating. I come from nothing. A poor kid with a good brain who was lucky enough to sch…

Take some solace in the fact that if he doesn’t grow up a bit, he’s only going to hurt himself. The blue collar folks of the world will just grab a beer and talk about what an asshole he is, and he’ll never realize the opportunities he’s missed or the friends he could have had.

Regretfully, I've interviewed with a lot of young folks with attitudes similar to this. It's bad for the industry.

Re: Ask HN: Career change at 22

#65
post #30

I agree with your description of web development work, I would personally find it very difficult to do that professionally because of the lack of rigor and blasé attitude to software quality. However, web development is not the only way you can make money by programming computers. I encourage you to look into either scientific programming or embedded software development. Your peers would be much more competent in th…

It’s true that slapping together a WordPress site doesn’t require much rigor, but that’s not what all web development is like. Building a site that can handle tens of millions of requests per day takes a lot of very rigorous work. Writing highly concurrent web services also requires a methodical mind.

Web development describes many different kinds of work. The work doesn’t get easier just because the end result is exposed via an HTTP endpoint.

Re: Ask HN: Career change at 22

#66
post #47
post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a current CS student who's had a couple of backend internships and am interested in doing stuff with scientific computing in the future (likely wanting to go into grad school for this). In general, where can I find resources about the kinds of career starting points I can get into as someone with this kind of interest? It seems like the most popular kind of job with a bit more theoretical rigour than web dev is b…

Here's a list of broad fields within scientific computing that you can dig into: * Numerical simulation: writing code to solve physical models (fluid dynamics, material stress, etc), optimizing them for a given goal * High-performance computing: running those simulations or other compute-intensive task in a supercomputer (aka a bunch of computers networked together), using APIs like OpenMP * Machine learning: trainin…

Thanks so much! This cleared up a lot of things for me.
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