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Ask HN: Developers who switched careers, what are you doing now?
There is no back story here, but just curious of you who actually started off as an engineer and decided to switch early, mid or late career. What are you up to now? Why did you switch? How are you liking it?
- datalopers 5y agoI switched mid-career to being a full-time parent. The pay sucks but the benefits are amazing.
- feistypharit 5y agoWoohoo! Me too! Now the kids are 8 and 10 and I’m looking to get back into the workforce. It’s amazing how few people respect the work involved being a full time parent.
- jwitchel 5y agoMoved 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.
- achenet 5y agocould you please describe how you did the switch?
- jwitchel 5y agoI 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?"
- emteycz 5y agoWhat is your typical day? Did you need any certifications etc?
- MattGaiser 5y agoWhat is it you do in the industry?
- agumonkey 5y agoOne of the few interviews I accepted was for a renewable management company. It does change the motivation a bit.
- pogopaule 5y agoDid the same but as a dev. Created this list for my fellow devs who want to do the same https://github.com/pogopaule/awesome-sustainability-jobs https://github.com/pogopaule/awesome-sustainability-jobs
- marssaxman 5y agoThanks!
- erikpl 5y agoThank you so much for this!
- pogopaule 5y agoYou are very welcome
- PyWoody 5y agoThis is exactly what I've been looking to find. Thank you for putting it together. You should make a standalone post of it.
- pogopaule 5y agook, will do
- hwers 5y agoCould 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.
- jwitchel 5y agoEnergy 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.
- tinodb 5y agoCan only speak for ourselves, but at Solar Monkey we make software for solar panel installers and consumers. We have plenty of fun challenges! Like figuring out how to make it easy for sales people to design (electrically) valid solar panel set ups, as well as determining whether systems perform well for consumers based on yield data (with both analytical and ML models).
- sabujp 5y agodo you think NEM 3.0 is coming and will it kill the residential solar industry?
- 11235813213455 5y agoThat would help with climate change, but the biggest part is reducing our consumption in all senses. For example, my electricity bill is 10€/month, I have no fridge, use no heating, no hot water, so I'd totally be able to live with just a small solar panel, as I almost never use a device that requires a high power (I eat mostly raw fruits/vegs, more rarely eggs, fish or rice)
- hn_throwaway_99 5y agoI mean, kudos to you, but the vast, vast majority of people (myself included) are not willing to give up refrigerators, or heat, or hot water, so your approach really isn't relevant give the scale needed to solve the problem.
- seba_dos1 5y agoI haven't done so myself either, but as the time passes I increasingly become convinced that the only available options for vast majority of population will be to do it now on your own terms or be forced to do it with everyone else later.
- vinyl7 5y agoI like how as a people, we exploded with technology and capabilities, and now supposedly need to return to living like a cave man. I just hope that people who decide to live that way can cope with the fact that all the rich people and politicians will still live in affluence no matter what
- 11235813213455 5y ago"like a cave man" → I advocate for cherry-picking what's really useful in our modern societies: internet, a laptop, runnable water, electricity, and saving energy and resources for all the rest because we're reaching our limits on this planet. But that's hard to pass this message without making people feel "guilty" (which again is not my point at all)
- omginternets 5y agoAre 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?
- jwitchel 5y agoI 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.
- mariusseufzer 5y agoI could imagine woodworking in the future!
- joek1301 5y agoOne more down the dev-to-woodworking pipeline [1]. [1]: https://github.com/docker/cli/issues/267#issuecomment-695149477 https://github.com/docker/cli/issues/267#issuecomment-695149...
- mauvehaus 5y agoOh hey that's me! I blew my 15 minutes of internet fame on a throwaway comment on a github issue :-)
- hotpotamus 5y agoI'm thinking of making custom Kentucky Long Rifles personally. Tons of handcrafting - really woodworking since most makers use manufactured barrels and/or lockwork, and I believe there's a market for them. From a US Federal perspective, they're not even legally firearms so I don't think you'd have to worry much about red tape.
- rpmisms 5y agoIf you do, add me to the waitlist. I love classic firearms.
- askonomm 5y agoOne of my "retirement" daydreams is to have a garage where I'd spend my days doing woodwork. There's something about building things with your bare hands that is very appealing to me.
- eropple 5y agoI’m 34 and I am nowhere near retirement and I do this now. It's easier to get started when you're young and have the physical stamina and strength to spend a Saturday in the shop. I'm going to go spend my day down there today, as it happens, while the dog supervises!
- craftit 5y agoI am wondering if after changing career, would they still read this site, or is it part of what they wanted to get away from?
- varrock 5y agoWhen I first stumbled on a senior engineer browsing HN at my very first internship, I assumed it was a hut for developers. However, the more I've browsed this place over the years, the more I realize the community is much, much larger than that. There are some very insightful people from many industries contributing to this site.
- fmvab 5y agoAs someone who’s changed careers, I value HN for the wide variety of intellectual topics and often insightful commentary. I think in recent years it’s actually moved further away from the ‘$N raised by $X from $Y to build A for B’ headlines that I used to hate. It still takes some digging to find stuff I like, but not long. The classic web1 design helps. Every community on the internet has its problems. Every community has its own circlejerk customs. And n-gate.com is all that needs to be said about HN’s problems (hope he comes back). I’d be curious to hear from people here about other communities or news aggregators of the same quality or better
- swayvil 5y agoSwitched to remodeling houses and landscaping. I switched because this is better. Healthier. Saner. Happier. More in line with my long-term goals and general growth.
- rzzzt 5y agoRemodeling doesn't sound like a healthy activity.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- eropple 5y agoIt can be. It's physically taxing work but that's not a bad thing. Living where you're remodeling at the same time is stressful.
- rzzzt 5y agoI have no doubt that it is very fulfilling, but was thinking more of the dust, solvents, VOC, ie. the tiny things that are out to make you sick.
- eropple 5y agoAll those absolutely exist and you absolutely have to pay attention to them. And that is why your good friend Keen makes comfy ceramic-toed boots and your other good friend, the Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing Company, makes respirators with high-flow P100 filters and WorkTunes Bluetooth headphones/ear protection. I'm thankfully mostly done my last (for a while) remodel, but I spend a bunch of time in my wood shop, and I'm always struck by how much longer I can do stuff when I'm even just wearing an RZ mask even when I have the dust extraction on and the overhead filters going. Dead trees just make a lot of crap, let alone gypsum boards and the like.
- _3u10 5y agoStress and sitting at a desk all day kill just as effectively as gypsum dust. However it’s a lot easier for a remodeler to put on a P100 mask.
- pul 5y agoNot 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 more 'free', but instead I now feel self-imposed pressure to make this one shot count. I know my runway is limited, so every day that didn't tangibly contribute to bottom-line growth feels wasted. I can rationalize it by reminding myself that I can always get a job and try again later, and that I should be spending most of my time on mid to long-term goals that have delayed effects. But that hardly changes how I _feel_. All in all, I'm really glad I made the jump, and I'm still super excited about what I do now. [1] https://www.nslookup.io/ https://www.nslookup.io/ [2] https://www.whoismyisp.org/ https://www.whoismyisp.org/
- jasfi 5y agoI did something similar. Building is the easy part. Getting meaningful traction is difficult. My own projects: https://cxo.industries https://cxo.industries https://tradecast.one https://tradecast.one
- hwers 5y agoI like the "Copy successful traders if you don't know technical analysis." feature. I've always wanted that as an option for stuff like this.
- jasfi 5y agoGlad you like it! It came about because the feedback I got was that not everyone knows or is good at technical analysis, or even wants to learn it.
- jasfi 5y agoI should mention I'm going to Open Source a lot of the dev tools I built, including a back-end SDK + Flutter renderer to make life easier building mostly CRUD apps in Flutter. I'm using Nim on the back-end, but a Python SDK is going to be added soon after the initial release. https://nexusdev.tools/ https://nexusdev.tools/
- _eht 5y agoFollowed Bill Gates' footsteps and bought a section of farmland. I grew up in FFA, and knew I wanted to raise beeves, etc since I was young. After a divorce, I pulled the trigger. Software funded beeves.
- Icathian 5y agoI wasn't sure so I googled it. You are talking about some kind of cattle ranching? https://www.collinsdictionary.com/us/dictionary/english/beeves https://www.collinsdictionary.com/us/dictionary/english/beev... Regardless, congratulations on taking the plunge! I hope it goes well for you!
- _eht 5y agoYou got it-- running a fold of Scottish Highland beasts. Thank you!
- Accujack 5y agoMy first guess would have been beaver farming.
- alexk307 5y agoI thought it was beehives
- ProllyInfamous 5y agoThat's a different insanity — "BEEKS" we call ourselves =P
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- kQq9oHeAz6wLLS 5y agoJust don't follow entirely in Bill's footsteps. If someone offers you a ride on their private jet to meet some women...say no.
- babagabooj 5y agoNot reading Hacked News… that’s what they’re doing now.
- _eht 5y agoPatently false
- travisgriggs 5y agoI know that’s not true. I live in a remotish town of ~50,000. With ag and retirement as the primary backbone. A couple months ago, someone on HN’er responded to one of my comments, and we’ve hung out a few times. I actually came here to see if he’s posted since he pivoted to real estate. I’m still in tech.
- marban 5y agoNot feeling obliged to read HN is an actual life goal of mine.
- marssaxman 5y agoWhy do you feel obliged to read this site?
- 5arias 5y agoWent from opera singer to developer to most recently CTO Solutions Architecture which is more change management and BD strategy than anything else. Enjoying it so far and it’s definitely blowing away my idea of a comfort zone. 37 now, will probably look to do another industry change again around 45-50. I could probably go into performing arts technology or something like woodworking or auto mechanic would be a lot of fun.
- kirso 5y agoLove this! 34 now, I started as a renewable energy analyst, moved into tech sales, then product and currently just hacking for fun but not looking into transitioning into a full-time SE. I truly believe we will have more than one career throughout our lifetime due to information availability and accelerated learning. Also for those of us who are privileged and have the time and opportunity, I believe when we achieve the basis mastery of the field, most of us just want to learn something new and do not want to go into PhD level depth. My next forte is probably design!
- Ayesh 5y agoNot a switch per se, because I still work on IT related stuff, but I started a bakery and a retail store (two separate businesses). I hired a chef and a manager to do the work professionally, and I pay for wages, rent, material, etc. But I get to learn the immense efforts it takes for a brownie to be on a table, for a cake to bring a smile to face, and a cheesecake to melt in the mouth. It was a fresh experience, and I really like the change of pace it brought. We have been experimenting with waffles, brownie flavors, cheese cakes, etc. It feels like buying a new domain every day!
- v-yadli 5y ago> It feels like buying a new domain every day! ... and gain new domain knowledge every day (sorry :D How about version-controlled ingredients, chief-as-a-service CI pipelines, taste issues tracker, things like that?
- moneywoes 5y agoHow is the cashflow?
- pearjuice 5y agoAny insight on initial investment required and ROI? Is this actually passive or you still have to do a lot of back-office work?
- hieu229 5y agoTry banana bread too!
- gmays 5y agoInteresting, 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 -- I manage the business's finances and bought the commercial building they operate out of (and rent it to their business at a loss), so I've been learning a lot. For context, the business has grown ~30% YoY the last few years. But to continue growth I think we'll need to expand business online (90%+ of sales are in person). "Sell online" seems harder and harder these days due to the competition--building to thrive in brick and mortar is different than online. During COVID they started weekly Facebook live shows which do well, but the audience is mostly local. Since it is a brick and mortar businesses they already have processes for inventory, etc. in place with thousands of SKU's and are next door to the local post office, so I think there are some opportunities to leverage that into unique business opportunities. For example, they are a gift shop and specialize in helping people find gifts. 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? If I ever take a few months off I'd probably spend time thinking about how to leverage the unique advantages of old-school brick and mortar businesses like this.
- mauvehaus 5y agoI build furniture now[0], but I occasionally hack up code for myself[1]. [0] https://longwalkwoodworking.com https://longwalkwoodworking.com [1] https://github.com/longwalkwoodworking https://github.com/longwalkwoodworking
- eropple 5y agoI like your work. Thanks for sharing.
- mauvehaus 5y agoThanks!
- 2bitlobster 5y agoWow for the chandelier
- mauvehaus 5y agoThank you!
- JKCalhoun 5y agoVery cool. I assume you are able to make a living selling your pieces? They seem pricey to me but then again you're not in the business to outsell IKEA. Is shipping a problem or do your customers generally arrange to pick up the pieces themselves?
- mauvehaus 5y agoThanks! Let's say I'm (actually, not Silicon Valley) profitable, growing, and making a meaningful contribution to our household income. Not quite "making a living" on my own, but I feel good about this year and going forward. I'm definitely targeting people in the post-IKEA parts of their lives, but sometimes the value prop is as simple as "you can't get a decent book shelf for a kid's room". I built some for a customer whose daughter destroyed a set of cheap ones. That's a very different bookshelf than if a lawyer wants a set for their office, obviously, but not everything I do is high-end either. Shipping is interesting. After a bad experience with a carrier whose trucks are a familiar sight in the US, I no longer ship anything I can't box the hell out of via non-specialist carrier. Some stuff I deliver, some stuff goes by carriers that specialize in art-type stuff. LTL would likely be an option for some stuff as well. Pickup is an option as well, of course.
- danurman 5y agoI'm not sure if you're looking for stories of moving away from tech, software, or just development, but I did the latter. I started as a web developer, but I realized that my favorite part of the job wasn't building new pages/apps but helping my colleagues when they ran into roadblocks. I got a reputation as a problem-solver and people would come to me with their thorniest bugs or browser compatibility issues and I loved it - the detective work of investigating and diagnosing the issues, the creative solutions to work around browser limitations, and the satisfaction of helping people achieve their goals. Then I met a product support engineer at my friend's startup and heard about that role, and realized it was an entire job made of what I loved most about my previous jobs. I joined the team and was on it for years, and have been working in technical support for software products ever since (about twelve years now). I still build websites as a hobby, but I wouldn't want to do it for a job anymore. I'm very happy in product support.
- imachine1980_ 5y agocan you explain that role sound interesting ?
- danurman 5y agoIt's been a bit different in each of the companies I've had it, but fundamentally it's about using product expertise, general tech skills, and problem-solving to help the people who are using the product. Sometimes there are planned/scheduled/proactive projects, but the primary responsibility is responding to and helping with whatever issues customers are running into. This means the job can be unpredictable, because on any given day you don't know what's going to come up, but I like that - it keeps things new and interesting. Support requests come in through whatever channels the team uses (every team I've been on has used email, some have also used Slack/phone/videoconference/etc.) and include things like bug reports, questions about best practices or how to do something with the product, and sometimes feature requests. As a support engineer, I take ownership of the support requests and do whatever is appropriate to drive them toward successful resolutions for the customer. Because software products can change quickly, this often involves learning new features or systems. I often get support requests about tools or workflows I've never seen before (or that have changed significantly since the last time I looked at them) and have to quickly get up to speed on them. I learn best when it's in service of a goal, so this works well for me - I'm trying to help the customer accomplish their own goal and that motivates me to dig in and learn. If it's a bug, I also investigate and try to reproduce the reported behavior. Sometimes the issue isn't what it appeared and the problem was that our documentation or UX was unclear, in which case I clarify things to the customer and file a ticket to fix the docs/UX. (Or just fix it myself - the amount of direct work I've been able to do in the docs/product has varied between companies, based largely on their size.) Sometimes it is a bug, in which case I'll try to come up with some alternate way for the customer to do what they are trying to do and then also file a ticket to get the bug fixed (with clear repro steps and getting as close to the root cause as I can, depending on how familiar I am with that part of the code base). I also try to be proactive and serve as a customer champion - in most companies I've seen, product support has the broadest view of what issues are coming up for customers, and that can be valuable signal for the product team on how to prevent issues before they happen. That's it in a nutshell. :) Always learning and applying expertise to help people succeed. I think it's a great fit for people who don't need to be in the spotlight but like knowing they've helped individuals and who work well in a rapidly-changing environment. (I think it might actually be kind of a dream role for technical people who have ADHD.)
- formercoder 5y agoI went and worked on Wall Street. Good experience and the work could be interesting but honestly got to the point where I wasn’t willing to sacrifice my life to the extent necessary to stick it out. Heading back to tech in a more business oriented role that I think will be better for me, and money is the exact same for now. It won’t ramp up as fast but I do think the lifetime upside is similar in compensation and immeasurably better in health and happiness.
- b20000 5y agohow did you make the move? without prior track record in trading or finance?
- formercoder 5y agoMBA
- b20000 5y agonever thought that would be enough. what did you exactly do day to day in your wall street job?
- formercoder 5y agoI was on the private side doing m&a, debt and equity advisory. MBA is a common path into the role.
- b20000 5y agook, i thought you went into trading… like being a quant or trader.
- throwawayHN378 5y agoProduct Management. I hate it, but I was too stupid to get into FAANG as an SDE and my personality type better matches the role. I love coding and have done it my whole life and for 10 years professionally but at the highest level I’m simply not as smart as other people
- forum_ghost 5y agowhy do you hate it? (ur personality matches dev better than pm? not sure how to read your comment)
- mathieubordere 5y agoYou don't have to LOVE your job/profession per se, but hating is certainly not healthy for you, it sounds to me you at least have the choice to pursue a different career.
- cellis 5y agoAu contraire. “faang” ( with the exception of the “n” ) engineers aren’t on average smarter than gen pop devs. They are simply willing to grind leetcode and put up with a lot more behavioral stressors ( large companies are incredibly difficult to prove impact and all the low hanging fruit is done, so the fights are more bitter because the stakes are lower )
- PragmaticPulp 5y agoBeing willing to do the interview process is part of it, yes, but this idea that they’re all just average is completely wrong. Highly paid big company engineers are some of the most talented developers out there. The companies invest great resources into making it that way. The idea that they’re all just average devs who did LeetCode for a month and now they’re paid twice as much is a comforting fiction for non-FAANG engineers, but it’s not true. If it was true, we’d be seeing scores of average developers taking a month to do LeetCode and then get huge pay increases. Who wouldn’t invest a month of work on a free website if the payoff was millions of dollars over the next decade?
- stevenminhhh 5y agoI just moved from a full-stack engineer position to AI researcher of an R&D lab in a software company. Honestly, not much of a career change, but given the new position, I can be much more exposed to new technologies, get to try out new things, like IoT and Blockchain as well. Hopefully with the new knowledge I acquired, I can start my own business someday. Mostly since somewhere along the road of coding 8-to-5 as a developer, I want to create something for myself instead of building other's dream.
- bunje 5y agoI did software engineering for 3 years after graduation. Now I teach mathematics in a high school since '20. Software engineering was very stressful for me and I also wanted to sync holidays with my kids. Parents seem to value my background. Pay is low but I have a reasonable amount of extra time to tinker.
- kQq9oHeAz6wLLS 5y agoNever undervalue work-life balance. Good move on your part, I'd say
- k8sToGo 5y agoI also think teaching is thousand times more rewarding and motivating than the 500th CRUD app.
- smugma 5y agoI was a SWE at a FANG. Left to get an MBA, then went back to FANG to do other things. Finance, Operations, Product. My role now still has me involved in solving problems, and I will still review technical architecture (eg why are you proposing a GraphDB for this highly structured data, how are you going to address the fact that Cassandra is eventually consistent, etc.), but it’s a lot more people and solutions driven. A lot of email, Excel, and Zoom. Very little writing scripts and running queries, which I do once a quarter or so.
- djstein 5y agoSounds like what I want to do. Do you believe this transition was worth it? Did you see a pay increase or cut? What do you see in the career trajectory?
- ryandrake 5y agoI did this. SWE before, got MBA, came back to tech and eventually settled on project management. Pros: - You get a bigger picture of the business and product. As a SWE you generally work on a tiny morsel of a huge product. Product managers and project managers often get to work across the broad product (or even a portfolio of projects if you're overworked), interact with leadership more, if your lucky, even have a voice in the direction the project/product is going. - Greatly helped me work on that "social skills" muscle. I have to actually talk to people--people who are not also introverted nerds like me! - Work life balance can be better than SWE but find the right company. I currently stop work at 5:30 and it's great. Cons: - Your work output is generally slide decks and spreadsheets. Yuck. I miss my work output being the actual software that users use. - The pay is much worse than as a SWE. You're not going to be seeing these $500K total compensation packages that every SWE that posts on HN apparently gets. - The cost of the MBA can set your net worth back quite a bit, and given the above pay disparity, it's not worth it financially. You can also be a project manager or product manager without paying $X00,000 for an MBA. I'd be closer to retirement now if I just remained a SWE. - Career growth: Meh. About the same. At most places you're either junior or senior and that's it. Just like software engineering. If your goal is to be VP or This or Director of That, I don't think changing careers to "a different type of individual contributor" is going to help.
- rubyfan 5y agoI switched from development at startups to a solution architecture role at a Fortune 500 and then eventually to a business executive role at the same Fortune 500. Hated working in big company IT and the business role gave me a significantly larger role in decisions and influence. Compensation wasn’t really effected one way or another since trajectory has been steady upward. I think that slows down nowish since I didn’t come up in the traditional business and many more senior roles are filled by traditional executives. Like many people right now I’m evaluating options for better work-life balance and really actually miss learning new domains. The downside of looking at other options is the role is so unique I don’t fit exactly into most roles at other companies. So it’s been hard to get a foot in the door with other companies outside the industry I’m in.
- ChrisMarshallNY 5y agoI was a manager, for many years. I ran a development shop, but did not write paid code. I was good at it, but hated it. I wanted to code all the time. During that time, I wrote open-source stuff, on the side (unpaid). Since leaving that job, I am now writing code, more than ever, and still not getting paid. Not what you're looking for, I know, but that's my story, and I'm sticking to it.
- lifeplusplus 5y agoI'm from NYC mind if I connect
- ChrisMarshallNY 5y agoSure. I’m on Long Island. My HN profile has ways to get to me.
- kirso 5y agoHave you considered getting sponsors on Patreon or Github?
- ChrisMarshallNY 5y agoNot really. I have a very specific demographic that I Serve. It would not be considered "proper" to solicit money from them. Most others would not find my software useful. I actually don't mind that my stuff isn't that popular. The more folks that use it, the less freedom that I have to modify it. I'm my own best customer. I write the software that I need, and consume it. Publishing it forces me to cross my t's, and dot my i's. It seems that high-Quality software isn't a "thing," these days, so I guess my stuff isn't something people want.
- tyronehed 5y agoI was a journalist, and a foreign correspondent. Software engineering was the second career, not the first.
- whiskeyocelot 5y agoMid-career I went back to school for a PhD in Computer Science, and now I definitely think of myself as a CS researcher rather than an engineer. I still write code occasionally, but it’s no longer a daily activity. I switched because I wanted to better understand the why’s of what I was doing as an engineer (applied ML by the time I got out if the game). I like it a lot! Grad school salary was a rough come down after engineer money, but I was a saver, and I saw it as an investment in my happiness and future career. And I really love what I do now and feel like I have real impact on the world, so it was very much worth it!
- sabujp 5y agowhat is your area of research now and are you also teaching or in industry?
- robodale 5y agoWalked away from 20 years of software development last year. I've been day and swing trading stocks for last 2 years. I'm now trading full time and doing great. I don't miss the daily stand-ups, scrum meetings, planning meetings, "quick chats", one-on-ones with management, weekly department meetings, monthly company meetings, and late night critical support calls one bit!
- matsemann 5y agoSorry for the blunt question, but how does it feel to go from something where you make something valuable to ...that? (At least I feel what I do give me meaning)
- emteycz 5y agoProviding liquidity to the market is valuable too, as well as rapid reallocation of capital where it's needed. Not to say there aren't differences, of course. But I feel like your comparison is condescending. These people do valuable work too.
- kirbmart 5y agoWas in tech for 15 years, I was feeling burned out and started a beverage company out of my kitchen. It really took off and now its my full time gig. I have a small staff and work 3-4 days a week. Work-life balance is way better, however I'm missing the challenges and smart individuals that come with working on tech products.
- snyena 5y agoCould you tell me a bit more about your beverage company?
- sprocket 5y agoI worked full time as a software dev from about 1999 until 2010. It was never really all that fulfilling for me, although I was pretty good at what I did. I was laid off in 2010, and spent the rest of the year milking goats and sheep, and making cheese in France and the UK. When I returned home in late 2010, my wife and I moved to a more rural location, bought a small herd of goats, and started building a cheese plant. We've been making cheese going on 8 years now, and have expanded into sheep and cow's milk production, in addition to our goat's milk varieties. Unlike most of the cheese producers around us, we focus on raw milk cheeses with natural rinds. Many of our varieties are inspired by cheese I encountered while working in Europe. Here's a small gallery of some of our cheeses: https://imgur.com/a/zg0eaTz We're just emerging from our kidding season and heading into lambing. It's the most challenging period of the year, as we'll have 150+ kids and lambs arrive over a couple of weeks. https://imgur.com/a/USmPghf The shift has been fulfilling overall, and I still do work on some tech related projects which has been great. I have to some degree begrudgingly watched my peers' income shoot up dramatically over the last 12 years, while I have to work twice as hard to bring home the same amount. Overall though, it's been net positive for my family, and while I've tried to quit farming at least half a dozen times, I was never able to bring myself to make the break.
- nouveaux 5y ago"as we'll have 150+ kids and lambs arrive over a couple of weeks." Holy cow can you give more specs on your farm?
- sprocket 5y agoIn the grand scale of things, we're pretty small. We milk just under 100 dairy goats, and have about 150 goats total on the farm (the other goats being a couple of breeding bucks, and some kids of various ages that will be milked in future years.) I'm somewhat smaller than I was two years ago - we scaled back a bit in 2020, as the pandemic seriously killed cash flow for a couple months. We produce our own sheeps milk too, but on a much smaller scale. We also pick up cows milk from a neighbouring farm. I'm expecting this year to process around 100,000 liters of milk, producing around 10-12 tons of cheese.
- mikesabbagh 5y agoDid not switch jobs, but got a huge land (with my amazing IT income) that used to be a quarry. The plan is to pump Carbon in the depleted soil to help climate change and build a fruit forest to share with local community (not doing it for profit). Too early for success story
- nouveaux 5y ago"The plan is to pump Carbon in the depleted soil" This sounds awesome. Can you elaborate? What does this look like and what are the costs involved?
- PragmaticPulp 5y agoI’ve taken a meandering path in developer-adjacent roles: Engineering management, then product management (entirely different type of management), then adviser/consultant roles, and even years as a stay at home dad with some stints as an IC developer mixed in. When I talk to developers, a lot of them expect me to gush about how much better things are once you’re away from the code. The truth is that I frequently regretted not sticking with a basic software developer trajectory from the start. Management of any type is far more difficult than it appears from the outside. A huge part of my management jobs has been handling and hiding all of the problems that come up so that the team doesn’t have to deal with them. The better I’ve done my job, the easier it looks from the outside. My teams should never have to know about the difficult battles I’ve dealt with, down to some of the most bizarre and even scary personnel problems I’ve had to handle. Software development felt like the most difficult and least-appreciated job at the company when I was young, but after a tour of management positions I miss the days of being able to sit down with a team and solve hard problems in the code.
- angrygoat 5y agoI've been a full time dev since 2000 – 22 years. Right now I'm in training for ordained ministry in a Christian denomination. I came back into regular church worship a few years ago, and then started studying theology through my diocese and found I loved it. Now I'm close to completing a Masters of Divinity at university, and I'm in my third year of training at theological college. Software skills have been much more useful to all of this than you might think. In the church the idea of 'calling' has a particular prominence; sort of doing those things that you find rewarding, that you have the skills and aptitude for, and that also help others – God is seen to be in all of that, too. It took a while but at a certain point I just realised that while I'm really good at software, it's not the other two things for me. It's a funny thing to let it go, slowly, and if I am ordained I think it'll be my equivalent of playing with train sets in the garage. I guess what I'd take from all of this is that even in a secular sense, we're always learning about ourselves, and it's never too late to be brave and explore something new.
- omginternets 5y agoThis is both cool and unusual! I have a question: did you ever get a feeling of what I can only describe as "numinous vertigo" when thinking about software systems? I sometimes get the sense that I'm peering into some basic universal structure, especially if the work has strong ties to theoretical CS or mathematics. It's as if I'm looking at something so fundamental and so meaningful that it ends being an emotional experience. At times, it's even been somewhat overpowering; it reminds me of Stendhal Syndrome in its quality [0]. Most people think it quite strange to have this kind of reaction to software, but computer science isn't really about computers in exactly the same way that geometry isn't about measuring the earth. In both cases, it feels like there's a divine essence. At any rate, I'm curious if your sense of calling in any way resembles this, or if this feeling is familiar to you. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stendhal_syndrome https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stendhal_syndrome
- angrygoat 5y agoAwesome question. I don't have a hugely strong mathematical background (second year university in some areas, like calculus, some stats, linear algebra, but a long time ago), but I think I know what you're getting at. My answer is yes – I had a particular experience on a silent retreat which I think falls into this category. There's a 15th century text by Nicholas of Cusa that I think you might enjoy and which I think speaks to what you've raised. It's a fairly hard slog, especially if you haven't read anything similar – but I hadn't when I first read it, and I made it through. The title is De Visione Dei[0]. Cusa starts out with an Icon (a sacred image) which is omnivoyant: like the Mona Lisa, it gives the impression that it looks at each observer. Cusa builds a fairly complex mathematical argument, building on the observations of monks who process around the icon, reporting to each other their observations. From this Cusa builds a descriptive idea of the divine; but as the argument progresses, this breaks down. This, however, is not a failure – Cusa has rather wonderfully brought the scholastic, reasoned, philosophical approach into dialogue with the apophatic, negative, approach. I won't spoil the ending for you. Cusa's drawing on theology from the Western and Eastern traditions of Christianity, and also on theology from Islam. These big existential questions that fascinate me. To get a bit Kierkegaard, I think he's right in that it's what's real, it's what ought to ultimately draw our attention. One interesting thing studying theology/philosophy/... is that my working set of metaphors has somewhat switched. I used to think about everything in terms of software, and sometimes startle people; now I often think about things in terms of texts like Cusa; which also startles people :-) [0] https://jasper-hopkins.info/dialecticalmysticism.pdf https://jasper-hopkins.info/dialecticalmysticism.pdf (a reputable, scholarly translation)
- genezeta 5y agoI just left, after some decades, not switched to anything else. Friend of mine though, he became a postman, about ten years ago. He was never quite happy being a software engineer. I see him occasionally and he's always happy with a job where he gets to work by walking around in the open most of the day.
- JKCalhoun 5y agoThat's awesome. Funny how, as you get older, you might be bolting across "campus" to catch a meeting in another building, laptop under your arm, cutting across "the quad" to save time. For a second you catch a glimpse of the gardener outdoors in the sun, weeding around the perimeter of the quad and the thought suddenly occurs to you that he may well be enjoying life more than you. To be sure, the pay is great, but as you get on in years it becomes easier to consider if you might already have "made enough".
- ToddWBurgess 5y agoI was a software developer during the dot-Com days. Lost everything when my company folded. Transitioned to being a licensed funeral director. Some of my funeral director highlights include working for the Office of the Chief Coroner, supporting the Canadian military during Afghanistan operations as a civilian funeral director and ending up in Haiti after the earthquake in 2010 to do recovery efforts for the Canadian government. Got injured on the job and ended up on long term disability. Transitioned back to be a developer because I used the downtime to learn to code again. Let's just say the last 20 years of my life have been an adventure. Life is good.
- billsmithwicks 5y agoThat's some adventure! How did you manage to get injured on the job? And what was it like learning to code with the latest frameworks?
- eric4smith 5y agoNot a full switch. But I started a cleaning company. I build custom software to help run the business because I could not find anything to fit my needs. My skills also came in handy to build the website to make it exactly for our needs. And things like building a chatbot to help bring on new cleaners is what we are starting to build right now. I still code, but not so much these days. Mostly manage and architect. But occasionally I get my hands dirty to deal with things I want quickly and efficiently.
- lifeplusplus 5y agoAre you looking for a cofounder
- eric4smith 5y agoNot for the cleaning company.
- onlyrealcuzzo 5y agoI'm in the process of transitioning out of a FAANG SWE position to be full time in property development. There's not enough houses for people to live in. Most people hate you for "driving up prices" and "gentrifying neighborhoods" - but it leaves me much more satisfied than engineering. After paying ~40% tax for a decade and paying ~3x what the Fed and State spend per Capita over a lifetime - it's nice to see my working hours reduced dramatically and my true tax rate drop down to ~12%. You don't need to make $1M per year, when you don't have to give $400k to the tax man.
- soared 5y agoAlways feels weird when someone in the top 1% of earners, making over $500k/yr, complains about taxes.
- marcrosoft 5y agoWhy? They are the ones that end up paying the most.
- micromacrofoot 5y agobecause regardless of paying most taxes, they’re still making most money
- 55555 5y agoHe’s saying his tax rate is dropping to 12%. So at his level it is possibly easier to make more money by switching to a job/business with a lower tax rate, even if income is somewhat lower. (I’m not sure how he’s getting 12%… LTCG with deductions?)
- onlyrealcuzzo 5y agoIn real estate your cash flow can be much higher than your taxable income due to depreciation. Since it's unearned income, you don't have to pay payroll taxes. And you can also avoid paying capital gains tax on the first $250k in capital gains on a property (after 1 year). There are a lot of people in speculative markets that pay close to 0 tax in real estate.
- cyphax 5y agoI'd been programming for about 20 years, but it wasn't fun anymore, and it had become a drag that I wanted to get away from. I recently (end of last year) applied to (and got hired at) a teaching position at the school I got my own degree from (they're programming and related courses, so it's relevant to my experience). This is something I had promised myself a good decade ago and I finally made good on it. I used to hate leaving the house to sit in an office, and wanted to work from home. Now it's a classroom, and I love being there and having this role. It's everything I hoped it would be, I honestly couldn't be happier.
- nouveaux 5y agoI started my career with 5 years in IT/devops. During that time, a few friends and I started a retail hobby game store (Magic the Gathering, board games, etc). Did that for 18 years. During that time, we wrote code and used technology to give us a competitive edge. Closed the store during Covid. Now I'm applying to developer jobs. We were quite successful but the retail was wearing on me. Specifically retail employees are a challenging bunch to manage because retail margins are so low. I developed a saying: "You can either find someone good at customer service or someone knowledgeable. Anyone who's good at both can find a job paying a lot more." The best employees we had always left for a career in a field outside of retail. My manager was a great guy. He's very personable, remembers everyone's name, very caring, and knows the products inside and out. He does lack a few management skills but I think he's probably near the top in the industry. He's studying to become a social worker. During the time we had the store, we did a software startup and had a couple of engineers. I was far happier doing that work and working with that team. When Covid hit and everything shutdown, I was delivering product to customers and thinking to myself over and over again "I would rather be writing code." So we decided to close. It was really sad to close the store after 18 years. However, my wife told me a few months later that I looked far happier than I had been for years. Now I'm really excited to be getting back into the tech industry.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- LavaStain 5y agoAbout five years into my career, I pivoted into a consulting position at a tech company. Still was coding often but the role was more about instructing and tutoring customers on best practices, methodologies, and newer tech like containers. Did that for a few years. Then a few months ago I realized that, while I enjoy coding, I was more passionate about the human interaction and teaching. Now soon I'll be starting a sales engineer role selling, and teaching, a cool product and making more money than I would have as a developer.
- logicchains 5y agoMoved from development to quant trading. Still involves writing code but that's not the focus, and the code is for yourself, not somebody else. Much more satisfying having such a direct feedback loop between your code/research and its impact on the markets in production. Also feels more intellectually stimulating in that many of the problems you solve don't have an existing solution (or at least not one in the public domain). And very satisfying if you're a competitive person, because your every success is in a sense the failure of somebody in another trading firm.
- nouveaux 5y agoOne of the concerns about trading that I always have is being able to compete with the big traders. What are your trading speeds like? How long have you been doing this?
- logicchains 5y agoYou don't have to do it all yourself; there are quite a few companies that will offer you trading capital and access to their infra in exchange for a 50%+ share of your profit. I myself am on a team at a smaller firm with a high degree of independence, around five years of experience in the industry. The infra (including FPGA/ASIC execution platform, microwave network etc.) is the big expense for latency. On the software side it's often easier for a single experienced C or C++ dev to write trading software with a hot loop of 2-3 micros than it is for a large team anyway, because it's harder to ensure memory allocation and layout coordination/discipline with multiple devs. The ideal however isn't to compete for those ultra low latency opportunities, it's to find a trade that nobody faster than you is doing. E.g. it's too capacity constrained or cumbersome for the large firms, or in a less developed market that they aren't yet in (e.g. somewhere like Nigeria or Indonesia, or some random blockchain), or it's so creative that nobody else has thought of it.
- _benj 5y agoI’ve been considering quant for a while too. What you mention about latency sounds like HFT, market making strategies? Instead of that I’ve been looking into momentum and mean reverting stuff, and my best friend being a profitable trader gives me the confidence (hopefully not misplaced) that we can automate him away and scale the strategy that he has already developed, or at the very least setup a system that receives weekly input and can operate by itself with low maintenance requirements. I’m curious what was your journey into quant from software development… did you studied statistics and data analysis? Saved to have a ton of capital before starting? Open a quantconnect account and profit? :) Thanks and congrats!
- ss108 5y agoI went to law school and am currently a biglaw first-year. Trying to switch back to dev though (see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29690759 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29690759) Basic reasons for switch: 1) self-taught dev, so felt like I was always playing from behind; 2) wanted to pursue interests I had before going into tech; 3) felt like I wasn't productive in college, and thus wanted to have an intellectual experience. I didn't think at all during law school that I would go back to being a dev (exiting to in-house counsel role in tech was always a possibility). However, working full-time in law has made it clear this is a huge misfit for me culturally, and also the work of being a lawyer mostly involves a bunch of low-skilled bullshit. I thought that I was leaving a more superficial industry to go into something with more intellectual depth and thoughtfulness, but it turned out to be the opposite. Happy to elaborate if anyone wants; previous times I have mentioned this on HN, people really wanted to know more, but I was unable to answer them in time, unfortunately.
- gedy 5y agoYou may want to consider joining or starting company that works on trying to simplify or automate the low skill bs you mention
- ss108 5y agoOn it ;D
- georgeburdell 5y agoDid you study from scratch to get into law school or did you already have a pre-law background? I am thinking (daydreaming, really) about becoming a non-profit type lawyer as my next profession because I am interested in some social causes that have fallen out of favor and don’t have much activism anymore. Going to law school seemed to me a good option for understanding how to effect change through the legal system.
- ss108 5y agoOne doesn't need any specific background to go to law school in the US. People go with STEM backgrounds all the time. I would say to strongly consider going if these social causes are sufficiently specific (sounds like they are) AND if you really care about them enough to be able to put up with any BS in the actual act of lawyering to pursue such litigation. If you're in tech, I can say with like 80-90% confidence that the actual experience of working in the law is going to feel like bullshit. But, if lawyering is a means to an end for you, then I think it can be worth it. > Going to law school seemed to me a good option for understanding how to effect change through the legal system. Do you know anyone working at a policy-focused legal non-profit? Paradigmatic example would be the ACLU, immigration-focused non-profits, or environmental orgs. I would ask them for a better take on whether effecting such change is even possible. If you're willing to share what your particular social causes are, I can perhaps give better advice, but ultimately the kinds of changes you want to see are probably better pursued through lobbying and other such advocacy as opposed to actually lawyering. FWIW, during law school, I interned at the ACLU and one of the bigger environmental orgs (and also at the Manhattan DA's office and for a state appellate judge in CA, but those aren't really applicable here).
- fatbird 5y agoLate career switch to fine leather bookbinding. Love it. I’ve always been interested in crafts, and they offer an immediacy and a tangibility that’s lacking in technology, especially in the cloud. Also, it’s a community that thinks in terms of decades or centuries instead of weeks or months, which is refreshing after riding the JavaScript rollercoaster for the last few years. I’m currently apprenticing with a master binder who’s nearby.
- thisarticle 5y agoSerious question, what’s the TAM on that? Like how many books are we talking a year?
- fatbird 5y agoAt one end, there's making one-offs or small editions that sell for thousands of dollars each (or hundreds each for larger handmade editions). In terms of physical production, a binder could make hundreds from scratch every year; in practice, I believe the market for a binder's artistic works is smaller than that, and everyone I've met supplements that with teaching, grant money, restoration, or ancillary work (such as clamshell boxes or custom rebinding). The person with whom I'm apprenticing makes a good living at it, but he concentrates mainly on restoration and ancillary products, and has a strong side business selling rare books (partly because he can buy old but poor quality books, restore them, and sell them for much more). It's a business very dependent upon networking within a collector community, and I have no idea how large it is, but it's definitely there and has deep pockets. One student I took a class with made a decent living making clamshell boxes for collectibles, and one collector brought her an original script from Star Wars, signed by the cast, including all the verification paperwork, and one of the prop light sabres. I don't need to make a living at it, so I'm lucky. But it's definitely an area of the arts with arts level compensation, which is to say... not great.
- janwillemb 5y agoI 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 instead of helping out.
- nautilius 5y agoI’d say the theme is “midlife crisis”.
- throwaway984393 5y agoIt's the opposite of a crisis though. It's midlife career rebirth.
- yoyohello13 5y agoIt’s a crisis that leads to positive change.
- nautilius 5y agoCrisis in its origin just means 'decisive point'.
- janwillemb 5y agoI 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.
- nautilius 5y agoOh, I mean it completely literal and in its original sense as a 'decisive moment', but you are of course right that it's diluted in everyday use.
- atduskgreg 5y agoI switched from software development consulting to being a game designer at a large studio. I still use my programming skills part of the time to prototype and build content but there’s a lot more variety day-to-day especially as I’ve gotten to be more senior: writing design documents, working with producers on the game’s business strategy, working with artists and ux designers, managing and mentoring, etc. The biggest difference is that I care about what we’re making in itself. Trying to make a game fun for people is a much more rewarding creative challenge than “get people to click on ads” or “make the website scale”. When I was a software consultant I thought I could find motivation in the pure craft of code. But as soon as I got into games I realized that can’t hold a candle to making a product where you feel creatively invested in the end result.
- b20000 5y agoaren’t major game companies the most stressfull place to work far beyond other companies?
- atduskgreg 5y agoGame companies that do “boxed product” releases (eg. giant games that come out on a date announced up to years in advanced that make their money from up front purchases) certainly can be. My company makes Games as a Service games which makes things much less stressful. We ship the game every two weeks so if a feature isn’t ready it just ships two weeks later. The result can be (with the right team culture a much healthier working environment. I’ve had better work-life balance and more time to allocate to skills growth (both my own and to support that of my reports) here than I ever did in traditional tech.
- thenerdhead 5y agoDid engineering for 8 years, product for last 6. Finding my passion for writing over the last couple years and actually selling books every other day. I want to become a full time writer, part time programmer/indie hacker. Life is much more than a big tech salary you can’t leave. You can bet your bippy that I’m going to work hard enough to be able to leave that behind in the next few years or retire early on reduced income to pursue it for awhile.
- c0nfused 5y agoI spent my 20s doing programming started off doing web dev and support and ended up doing the consulting thing. Got involved in a few games and start ups along the way. Made some money, have a bunch of opinions about how not to do things, met interesting people,and generally thought I was in for the duration. I had kids, and my spouse flat out makes more money than me for fewer hours and better benefits. So, I am now the full time parent. We decided that having one of us stay home would be the best for the kids. So far it seems to make a difference. It has really great parts and hard bits too. Basically, after a decade of short deadlines and long hours it's hard to adjust to the final product being your kids be good people by 2035. You get to rediscover the joy of playing at the playground, pet neighborhood dogs, and visit libraries and museums. On the other hand,I think that in the first year of COVID my number of adults interacted with per week approached 1. I admit that I keep my foot in the door at one of my previous employers where I do someplace between zero and 5 hours a week of work on some legacy systems I helped build and have now been left to grow unchecked for 10 years. Overall, I think that from a pure lifestyle perspective I don't think I can go back to 50+ hour weeks.
- kirso 5y agoWould you go back to web dev though? Say if money was no issue at all would you continue being full-time parent?
- simonbarker87 5y agoI’ve been coding for 15 years, got my first professional dev role in 2019 after shutting down the manufacturing company i’d founded in 2011. I’ve had three dev jobs since then and have learned that while I love coding I can’t be a professional dev for the rest of my life. Nothing wrong with it, I just need more variety. So I founded https://careerswitchtocoding.com https://careerswitchtocoding.com to help new devs and career switchers land their first dev job. I’ve also grown a dev focussed Instagram account to 56K followers along the same lines https://instagram.com/allthecode https://instagram.com/allthecode I’m now full time on this and working out how to build a proper sustainable business model around it. I love coding and developers and so I want to help new developers have awesome careers.
- c0nrad 5y agoGoing back to school for Physics (age 30). It'd be cool to understand why the universe exists before I die.
- burntoutfire 5y ago> It'd be cool to understand why the universe exists before I die. I'm affraid physicsts aren't interested in this question (as it can't be answered by science).
- jimmygrapes 5y agoMight be able to get enough understanding as to "what we have" (if not "why we have it") to be content for a human lifetime, though.
- amerkhalid 5y agoNot me but my friend quit his job to design jewelry based on ancient artifacts[1]. He sometimes work with some museums to get artifacts 3d scanned/photographed. Seems very Indiana Jones to me. [1]: https://bonene.com/ https://bonene.com/
- 55555 5y agoI’ve been getting into jewelry lately and WOW! This is so cool. Thanks for sharing.
- Auracle 5y agoWhen 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 week. I did some part time web dev for local companies and hated it. I then shifted to being a photographer, with the idea that the seasonality of the work would let me work on my own projects in the winter. That kind of worked out, but it turns out that the photography takes up a lot more of my time than I thought. I released an app for the Wii U/3DS that did decently well. I made some extensions for Photoshop that absolutely flopped, though I did get a job offer due to it that I had to turn down due to timing. At some point during all that I/my doctors figured out what was wrong with me - somewhat, at least. Treating my terribly low testosterone helped significantly and I take stimulants to make up the rest. Now I’m settled with my wife and baby where we grew up, which is rural. I’ve been thinking about quitting the photography to go back in to development but I’m 33 with basically no relevant work experience. Quite frankly, I don’t know how good I’d be at the job either. I have no basis for comparison for my programming skills and I haven’t exactly kept up. I’m guessing I could get a local job but I don’t know if the pay would be better than what I make now. Theoretically with a few years under my belt I could maybe get a remote position that I’d possibly enjoy and would pay better. I feel stuck. I love doing (high school) senior photography, so I’d hate to give that up. It’s also just a small portion of my business and I’ve had a hard time expanding it even though my work is definitely the best in the area. Don’t discount how nice actually using your brain during your job is. Retouching/editing is largely brainless once you’re at my level and the only thing that keeps me sane are podcasts/audiobooks.
- lifeplusplus 5y agoI always hear wedding photography pays the most
- Auracle 5y agoI 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.
- RubberMullet 5y agoQuit my job as the CTO at a small Bay Area startup. One too many failed startups had taken their toll, I felt like a boxer that had lost his chin. Thought about culinary school and becoming a chef but after reading Kitchen Confidential, I changed my mind. Decided on welding/fabrication and ended up working on a ranch that had a metal fabrication shop. I enrolled in some classes at the local CC so I could improve my skills and ending up getting an AA in welding and a few classes short of one in machining. Got a part time job teaching metal trades at the local CC which led to becoming a certified welding inspector through AWS, no the other AWS. I accepted a tenure track offer but switched to management after a few years. I became the director of CTE department that oversaw the creation of a mechatronics and cybersecurity degree program as well as opening up a makerspace. I loved it because it really allowed me to leverage my eclectic skill set. However, due to a staffing shortage I ended having to train, not teach as I wasn't faculty anymore, incumbent workers as part of a industry partnership. So now I was working two jobs, one blue collar and one white collar. This led to working 12+ hour days and coming in on weekends so I could catch up. In a nutshell, my objections to the situation fell on deaf ears so I quit out of frustration. After a short break I went back to university to finish my bachelor's degree with the tentative idea of pursuing a job in edtech. Right after I graduated lockdowns started so I took the time to explore some other avenues while I looked for a job. Today, I'm solo dev working on my first indie game funded by selling some Bitcoins I had been sitting on for over a decade. With the current geopolitical situation aside, I couldn't be happier.
- hesdeadjim 5y agoNow that’s a cool journey. I made the switch to gamedev a decade ago after more traditional startups. If you’d like to chat about the industry I’d be happy to. I helped build a larger studio, then went indie with some moderate success, now I’m doing the build a studio thing again because I am an insane person.
- lifeplusplus 5y agoI think last part is the important part of this post... Selling decade old bitcoins
- danthewireman 5y agoI did web development and graphic design for a couple decades, and wrote a few technology books (one of them was on DHTML, so this was a while ago). I'm now writing fiction, mostly fantasy. The $$ isn't quite where I'd like it to be, but it's getting better, and I'm 100x happier. My brain works with stories much more easily than it does with programming, in a much more satisfying way, and it took a long time to learn this. It's crazy to make this switch in my 50s, but it'd be crazier not to.
- greenie_beans 5y agoThis sounds kinda like me except i’m you when i’m 30, coding full-time and writing fiction on the side because it doesn’t pay. I’m hoping to turn writing fiction and non-fiction into a part-time job eventually, and maybe write some technical books along the way. Before working as a dev, i worked for a media company writing a bunch of shit and i hated it/felt like high school writing assignments with no autonomy, so i decided to protect that passion and turn my coding hobby into a full-time job. My goal is to have the freedom one day to write what i want and make some money doing. It makes sense to me to get good at writing and coding, and combine those things eventually. Just gotta be careful not to spend too much time coding.
- bradly 5y agoI left tech in July and I'm building furniture and woodworking now. I had been doing Rails since 2007, ending my career with a great 4.5 year stretch at Apple and was ready for a break. Two to four weeks off a year just isn't enough for me and my family and simply getting paid 10-20% more wasn't going to change our life. I'm loving it. I don't sit or stand in place for eight hours a day. I'm learning a ton. I'm engaging with both local builders and master craftspeople. I get to share my work with family, friends, and neighbors. There's a lot of volunteer opportunities that don't require anything but showing up and willingness to help. If anyone is interested in leaving tech for woodworking, feel free to reach out. My contact info is in my profile.
- micromacrofoot 5y agoHow did you start and how long did it take to start making a sustainable income? I would prefer to switch to something that puts me on my feet but I can’t imagine how I could make it work financially. TBH at this point in my career I think I’d rather just deliver mail even if it paid 75% of my current salary (unfortunately it’s more like 33%).
- 55555 5y agoYou want to be an MTA?
- bradly 5y ago> sustainable income TBD :) I've been doing more learning than earnings, but we did plan for this. We paid off our mortgage, got solar, drew down six months of expenses into cash, and bought $5,000 2011 Leaf this year. Worst case scenario is I get another job in tech and I'm right back were I started from, so we saw it as little downside.
- micromacrofoot 5y agoah thanks for this, something worth thinking about
- snowman-yelling 5y ago
- bjelkeman-again 5y agoNow me, and part of my former team, are building and operating circular food production systems. I got fed up with building data systems to just make more money. I needed to work on something that made a positive impact in the world. The previous change also moved in that direction, but it was still in software, but then we started a foundation and built data systems that supports countries that receive development aid, and those organisations that supported them. The work is super rewarding. But more work than either of the previous half a dozen startups.
- p10jkle 5y agoI 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!
- redisman 5y agoWhat kind of a timeframe are you expecting to make any money back?
- thegypsyking 5y agoHow did you make the change? I’m an ml engineer at a faang company that would love to do something similar
- kirso 5y agoThats great, in fact I think devtools are probably one of the best areas of focus - so much to improve DX/UX wise!
- dbjacobs 5y agoHad a 20 year career in artificial intelligence and security, then in 2003 started my own financial planning business working from home. While I continue my tech habit as a hobby, the greater home involvement and greater connection to people has never had me second guessing the change.
- sean_the_geek 5y agoI was a software developer for 12 years then switched to finance. I trade fixed income now! I hate it sometimes and miss the good-ol software development.
- spenczar5 5y agoI was a software engineer for about 10 years. Now I’m a furniture maker and occasional finish carpenter. Worked at Twitch as an early-ish employee, we got acquired by Amazon. Made it to Principal Engineer and just got tired of the sorts of problems that are hardest in software at scale: project management, building consensus, migrating systems. Also got really tired of the wastefulness of software: so much software gets thrown out in under 5 years. Stuff that lasts 10 years is considered extraordinary, and 20 years is almost unheard of. I don’t like knowing how ephemeral all the effort is. Maybe one day we will know how to make good software but we dont today. So I want to make “permanent” stuff. Nothing meets that bar but furniture and carpentry can at least manage a few hundred years. I totally love it and don’t miss my old career at all. The pay is way worse but I saw this coming and saved well while I was paid the insane software salaries that are common today. I am on my feet, more fulfilled, and find the mental effort is actually much higher - the problem solving is more interesting to me. Mostly though I am just much more proud of what I make and do.
- livinglist 5y ago> Also got really tired of the wastefulness of software: so much software gets thrown out in under 5 years. Stuff that lasts 10 years is considered extraordinary, and 20 years is almost unheard of. Whenever I think of this while working on my personal open source projects, I become a little bit unmotivated, cuz in the end it will be rendered useless, so why the heck should I spend my time on something that’s not gonna last long….
- turtleyacht 5y agoYou'll have projects to update, refine, and maybe even rewrite, on your own time and your own circumstances. At least better than lacking projects and only thinking of starting them :) As well, a maintainer may come along and preserve it.
- drdunce 5y agoSpent many years in software engineer in London - web dev; ecommerce; mobile dev etc. Picked up a bunch of industry certifications along the way, happy customers, completed projects, but didn't ever manage to get more than average salary. Moved to academia, got a PhD in machine learning, got a bunch of publications in high ranking outlets, and managed to land an entry level assistant position - but now I'm stuck in the same position, just in academia. My work/life balance is probably a bit better. Still love computer science and will probably keep on, but it's a cruel mistress!
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- FarmPal 5y agoI’ll share my story here of multiple switches. I switched to tech in my early career, worked 5 years or so, and am switching to Registered Massage Therapy as I apply to med school. I’ve also always had long term plans to become a Christian pastor. I’m switching because first of all, I have the financial luxury of doing so. Secondly, because, as another person said, I feel like it’s my calling. My meaning and purpose in life that was missing from a tech job that I actually really loved, but wasn’t spiritually fulfilling. Life is short, and money is only one part of the equation, so we’ll see how it goes from here. =)
- lazyeye 5y agoA show I've been watching consistently (about 5 seasons) is Port Protection. It's all about the day to day existence of people living a subsistence lifestyle in the town of Port Protection, Prince of Wales Island, Alaska. I often wonder what it would be like to live that life without the money pressure they have. Where you're not trapping beaver to pay for bullets, so you can hunt deer to have enough food for the winter etc. There are lots of other shows like this ("The Last Alaskans", "Life Below Zero", "Yukon Men" etc). https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4838586/ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4838586/
- kcartlidge 5y agoStarted as an engineer back in the days of Vax and MSDOS (1980s). Worked through the start of Windows and the internet, then decided to switch. I went through chicken farming, loading trucks at a builder's merchant, handling directory enquiries phone calls, fork lift driving, designing kitchens, fruit picking, managing vehicle fleets, and more. Eventually concluded dev work is what I love and returned to it about 5 years later.
- geoffkendall 5y agoI quit software development in 2009 to switch into consulting with businesses on sustainability, once I found out how bad things were with respect to climate change, biodiversity loss, etc. After 4 years of consulting I realised I was never going to change the world working only with large companies one by one that could afford high daily rates, so I set up FutureFitBusiness.org - a non-profit dedicated to translating systems science into practical guidance for companies and investors to understand what ‘true’ sustainability means (i.e. reaching a range of science-based thresholds, and not just being slightly less bad than peers) and gives them the means to steer and assess progress toward it. I went back to my software roots in terms of our model: everything we publish is under a Creative Commons license, free for anyone to use, plus we have a partner program for advisors who want to be officially recognised as knowing how to help companies get the best out of our methodology. So we’re open sourcing sustainability!