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tangential questions: why did you pause your career? Did you regret pausing it? were you easily able to get back in?

• venning 11y ago
  > why did you pause your career? Like a lot of programmers, I was bad at dealing with people, both personally and professionally, and knew I needed a way to address that. While a year of going up to complete strangers in an already tense environment and being rejected by 97% of them (an average rate) helped me greatly, it's taken quite a few more years to get better "at" people. > Did you regret pausing it? I did not and do not. > were you easily able to get back in? Hmm. I've discovered over time that I am particularly good at weighing what is worth learning and what is worth ignoring. (I base that on revisiting my old assertions of what technologies and trends will matter in the future.) In that way, any loss of time to periodic pauses to my career (there has been more than one) have been outweighed by my ability to renew it quickly. I wouldn't consider myself a "10x coder" but I'm decent and I reason well about complexity, which helps. Whatever your status in your field, I highly recommend exploring other adventures in life for two reasons. First, seeing life without your career helps reduce its importance in your life, providing perspective on what can otherwise seem like an inviolable part of your identity. Second, if and when you return to your career, if it is something that you like, you will find yourself valuing it more. I started out not really sure I wanted to be in this whole software thing. Now, I love it and love being good at it. For that, I am thankful.
  • it_learnses 11y ago
    thanks :)