6 ms·

Ask HN: Career advice and what skills gave you the most leverage

56 points by keplerdos 3y ago

Hi all, new to posting but not to the forum. But, I’m struggling with my career, where to do next, and I’m throwing a line out for anyone that may have their own lessons learned to share. For context, I’m a project manager in the EV charging infrastructure space. Nothing to do with software, as I’m primarily involved with the physical installation. I’ve been a PM for the better part of a decade in different industries and find myself a bit stuck in the ‘crisis of meaning’ stage. I’m good at my job, but it’s not fulfilling and although I’m senior level I still haven’t broken through the $100k ceiling. Though, I do live in a medium cost of living area. So, what am I asking? Well, I want to shift over to a position that will allow higher earnings and decent personal growth. Maybe it’s a unicorn job to get money and fulfillment, but the search continues. Given the housing crisis and crazy prices, I just feel I need to do what I can to increase earnings. Like most people, I just want to comfortably afford a modest house. So, to all the high earners out there, do have any general advice? Any top of mind jobs I could chase, given my PM background? I realize how broad this post is, but I’m desperate for a thread to follow and an outside perspective. Thanks

binarymax 3y ago
I'll be brief and say the key to many successful careers has been to focus on data. Software, infrastructure, and everything digital is just scaffolding and piping to move and transform data in one way or another. So if you find some kind of data you enjoy working with or interpreting, then you can become an expert in that kind of data (the domain) and the problems and solutions that are related. Best of luck!
- bhu1st 3y ago
  Never thought that specific data is what defines a domain. Do you have other examples of this or a more elaborate form of explanation to this?
  - philomath_mn 3y ago
    I think they just mean the meaning of the data that comes through, which naturally consitutes the information important to that domain. I work in fintech, the data points of my domain are transactions, prices, properties of different instruments, etc. This data is moved + manipulated in different ways using different formats by different systems, but each day I accumulate useful context and expertise on the data of my domain.
not_your_vase 3y ago
Job hopping comes with significant salary raise, that's usually the point. If your hop doesn't come with 20%+ raise, you just hopped wrong. After 1.5-2 years repeat. It compounds. It's not really skill dependent. I mean of course you need some skill, but the point is that the raise comes for the skill you already have, why the employers are willing to shell out more.
- keplerdos 3y ago
  Very true. I job hopped a few years ago and came to a startup. I took a small pay cut, but it came with options and other perks. If the options hit, it’s still two to three years out. Tempted to purchase what I’ve vested and job hop again. Though I would eventually like to stay somewhere awhile and mentor. Thanks!
- xyzelement 3y ago
  This is a common but unfortunately very narrow perspective. Frequent lateral moves can inch you upwards but asymptotically to a limit. If project manager's in OP's area make $90K, no amount of job hopping is going to making him a $350K earner. Agree all else equal, better earn $95K than 90K but the better bet is to break out of that range. Just lateral moves won't get you there. You need a different strategy.
  - cableshaft 3y ago
    At least in my experience, you need the job hop to get the change shift of role, industry, or promotion as well. I would be doing my previous bosses' job and then some, and show it in review cycles, only to get the 'yeah you're right, just wait a bit longer, we'll figure it out' over and over again. Leaving for another company was the only way it happened.
old_sysadmin 3y ago
Disclaimer: Probably not highly compensated by hackernews standards (ie I'm still working), but I am well above the threshold you cite. Have been doing this since ~1993, and ... I wouldn't change anything. Had a few wins along the way You say you are a PM - have you done both greenfield (aka "primary software construction") and looking at how to deploy/tune a canned application (like Salesforce)? I think they are materially different skills. How deep are your personal tech skills? I tend to see the very best PM's become CEO's pretty rapidly, so that is one path. For me the most impact came from "rushing to the unglamourous stuff." Documentation, testing, build and deployment pipelines, security and compliance (which are not the same thing), and then building bridges to other functions, which helped me be the 'voice of the customer,' over and over again. As an IC, I've been a coder (initally perl, later c++, then python), network engineer (cisco bgp/load balancers - pre cloud era), data center manager, biz apps steward (jira, confluence, sfdc, hris), database admin. As a manager I've managed dev teams, SRE teams, data science teams, and product teams. Getting involved in sales engineering and direct customer support also helped a lot. They talk about "T" shaped people, but if you can have depth in multiple areas and have a framework for understanding black box (ie $largeVendor [ie Oracle] is used for $UnchangeableMissionCritical application - how are you going to work with it?) stuff, then you can level up from a "mere" PM to an "Agent of Organization Wide Change"
- keplerdos 3y ago
  [dead]
- Sohcahtoa82 3y ago
  > security and compliance (which are not the same thing) So much this. I'd hesitate to even call them adjacent. Compliance is nothing more than a set of checkboxes. It won't stop your developers from writing `sql.query("select * from users where username = '" + username + "'`.
Jemaclus 3y ago
Job hopping is the best way to improve wage growth, as others said. I will paraphrase something an old boss said to me, which is that the fact that you're asking about ways to improve puts you heads and shoulders above most people. There's tremendous value in focusing on growth -- personal and professional -- and spending a lot of time introspecting and thinking a lot about how to be a better person, a better team mate, a better leader. You'll get it wrong, you'll mess up, but the act of thinking about it is going to give you some advantages over most people you interact with. For me personally, I think one of the best skills you can develop is the ability to problem solve. I'm an engineer, so I think about problems through a certain lens, but for PMs, it's equally important. It's not just about how to arrive at a solution, but how to determine whether you're even looking at the right problem. It's something that I thought came naturally to me, but I spend a lot of time running scenarios in my head about how I might solve the real-world problems I see in front of me. For example, if a particular system is slow, I run through scenarios on how to speed it up or decouple certain features to enable concurrency. If customers are dropping off in a funnel, I brainstorm scenarios through which I can proactively alert us that something is going wrong, or perhaps how to add additional telemetry to give us more signal in the noise. One axiom out there is "bring solutions, not problems," and so constantly practicing the the problem solving is something that has served me very very well. My solutions aren't always the best, but the muscle memory is very ingrained and I can iterate very quickly with people about what possible solutions are, more so than many of my peers. In a similar vein of this, like, is the problem the right problem to solve? Just because something is a problem doesn't mean it's an _important_ problem. For example, my CEO is asking me to do something that will make us $100,000, and she says it's really important. But our company makes $400 million dollars a year in revenue. Is an additional 100K going to move the needle? Nope, not even a little bit. So is that the best use of our time? No. That doesn't mean we shouldn't build the feature, but it does mean that we are probably not solving the correct problem. By reframing "doing the thing" as "building a tool to automate the thing," then I can 10x, 25x, 50x the leverage the company has to do these 100K revenue tasks. I don't always win this argument, but it's a good exercise to go through at any rate. Anyway, that's some stream of consciousness stuff for you. Hope it helps. Best of luck!
- keplerdos 3y ago
instagib 3y ago
Try to find a place that actually teaches commission sales. As in once hired they send you out somewhere for two weeks or more of training. The skills they teach have been very helpful in getting better pay than co-workers and early promotions. You may have to apply the skills for a few weeks or months with actual customers. The deep end is car sales. 12hr days and the bottom sales person gets fired. Second option would be trying to find somewhere that will apply for you to get a security clearance. High job security and a good bonus pay on top versus without it.
- keplerdos 3y ago
  [dead]
picardo 3y ago
This is more of a meta skill, but "learning to learn" was a game changer for me. For a long time, I had approached learning in a set and done kind of way, i.e. I'd read and immerse myself on a new topic, declare I'd learned it and move on. But I realized that was not only wrong, but it was blinding me to my shortcomings. I took a few courses, and started testing myself regularly on new topics to overcome that blindspot. YMMV!
- keplerdos 3y ago
  [dead]
sokoloff 3y ago
I think that a combination or intersection of skills is often more valuable than a slightly deeper individual skill. I was a “pretty good” programmer (I’ll estimate as top 10%), but am also a fairly good writer (I’ll estimate top 20% there). That combination has been quite valuable to companies I’ve worked at and for my family. Find the intersection of valuable things where you excel or could excel.
- halkony 3y ago
  Wholeheartedly agree. One underlining here is it's easy to fake experience in an individual domain ("yeah, I know python. I read like 2 books.") but you can't fake experience in multiple, pointed domains ("yeah, I used python to manage a fleet of clown cars for the Hertz-Barnum merger").
ericmcer 3y ago
Uhh if you are a senior PM and you want to make >100k you should... apply to senior PM roles that pay >100k? There are a ton out there, just spoof up your resume and start applying. High level PMs at FAANG make at least 200k base + a ton more with equity. If the goal is to get more money, starting a whole new job path is a crazy choice, just find a senior PM role that pays more. If you hate PM that is a different discussion.
- 972811 3y ago
  OP is a project manager. This is different than a product manager (which I think you're referring to) or a program manager. I don't think there are many $100K+ jobs for general project managers. My actual advice would be to switch to one of those other roles
  - paulcole 3y ago
    > I don't think there are many $100K+ jobs for general project managers I hire project managers and I would say this is very location dependent and also very industry dependent. Find the right type of projects in the right industry and $100,000 should be very very achievable in a medium-cost-of-living city. It should be a no-brainer in NYC or SF. That said, again depending on industry and type of projects, there’s a lot of risk in switching jobs for 20% more salary. How long until those projects dry up and you’re first out the door?
paulcole 3y ago
> although I’m senior level This means way less than you think it does. If you’ve just been working at some company that hands out senior titles like candy, it’s not worth much. If you really are senior level you need a good story to show that to people you’re interviewing with.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
tcbawo 3y ago
* This might sound trite, but you will make the most money when your company has lots of money. If your company is struggling or its industry is going through a cyclical slowdown, you will typically make less than at a flush firm or in a booming industry, even if you are a top performer. Tactically switching industries midway through my career led me to significantly higher comp longer term (several multiples). * Become indispensable in the key areas that are most highly correlated with company success. I mean improving the company's bottom line, not working more hours than anyone else. Be focused and direct. These priorities are often broadcast by ownership/the executive team, but sometimes the message gets lost in translation by middle management. Do these things with visibility and measure the difference you've contributed. If your job isn't in the critical path or your job doesn't have enough transparency, move on. * If you don't have equity, it's not your company. Don't make the mistake of sacrificing your mental or physical health for your company's sake. It's never worth it. Having 'moral' equity instead of real equity is an awful feeling. Instead of holding out, moving on was always the right call for me.
- cableshaft 3y ago
  These are great pieces of advice, and something I wish I had followed earlier in life. I probably should be following one of them now even.
  - tcbawo 3y ago
    I had never considered sunk cost fallacy https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunk_cost https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunk_cost on the long term time horizon of my career. In multiple cases, I stayed on longer than I should have. Early in my career I suffered from short term thinking, rather than guiding my job in the direction I wanted. Will growth allow me to follow the career track of my manager or other senior IC? Do I even want that? Am I gaining valuable experience, or am I beginning to stagnate?
- robin-redbreast 3y ago
  Where is this from?
- 3y ago
mattbrewsbytes 3y ago
Your project management skills translate well across industries. If your desire is to get into software PM because there is more money there then start applying for those roles, expand your network to people that work at companies that have those roles and maybe take people out for coffee to see if/where you may have gaps to close before they would hire you. Another angle might be to look into software companies in the EV sector, ones that build apps based on the charging infrastructure. Pivoting into running projects for them would probably be the most straight forward path to doing PM work on software and not physical install of hardware.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
ezedv 3y ago
Considering your project management experience and the growing demand for EV charging infrastructure, you might explore roles in renewable energy project management or operations management. These fields align with your expertise and offer potential for both personal growth and higher earnings. Additionally, exploring professional development opportunities or certifications in relevant areas could enhance your skill set and open up new avenues.
warrenm 3y ago
The "most leverage" is networking with other people - on other teams, other companies, at differing career levels, and in various roles Since high school, I have had precisely one job where I did not know someone going in and/or who did not come to me: and that was cleaning cars at Hertz at the turn of the century Every single other position I have had came from: a referral, personal inquiry, or a recruiter finding me Maintain a good reputation, and get to know as many people as you can
nprateem 3y ago
Finding a high-paying job is like sitting an exam where you can already find the answers. Just go onto job websites, search for what their experience requirements are, then work on gaining that experience however you can. But you also mention wanting to find meaning. The two aren't necessarily related, so you need to decide what you actually want.
cm2012 3y ago
Connect your work to profit.
Matthew911 3y ago
[dead]
Matthew911 3y ago
[dead]

56 points by keplerdos 3y ago

binarymax 3y ago

I'll be brief and say the key to many successful careers has been to focus on data. Software, infrastructure, and everything digital is just scaffolding and piping to move and transform data in one way or another. So if you find some kind of data you enjoy working with or interpreting, then you can become an expert in that kind of data (the domain) and the problems and solutions that are related. Best of luck!

bhu1st 3y ago
Never thought that specific data is what defines a domain. Do you have other examples of this or a more elaborate form of explanation to this?
- philomath_mn 3y ago
  I think they just mean the meaning of the data that comes through, which naturally consitutes the information important to that domain. I work in fintech, the data points of my domain are transactions, prices, properties of different instruments, etc. This data is moved + manipulated in different ways using different formats by different systems, but each day I accumulate useful context and expertise on the data of my domain.

not_your_vase 3y ago

Job hopping comes with significant salary raise, that's usually the point. If your hop doesn't come with 20%+ raise, you just hopped wrong. After 1.5-2 years repeat. It compounds. It's not really skill dependent. I mean of course you need some skill, but the point is that the raise comes for the skill you already have, why the employers are willing to shell out more.

keplerdos 3y ago
Very true. I job hopped a few years ago and came to a startup. I took a small pay cut, but it came with options and other perks. If the options hit, it’s still two to three years out. Tempted to purchase what I’ve vested and job hop again. Though I would eventually like to stay somewhere awhile and mentor. Thanks!
xyzelement 3y ago
This is a common but unfortunately very narrow perspective. Frequent lateral moves can inch you upwards but asymptotically to a limit. If project manager's in OP's area make $90K, no amount of job hopping is going to making him a $350K earner. Agree all else equal, better earn $95K than 90K but the better bet is to break out of that range. Just lateral moves won't get you there. You need a different strategy.
- cableshaft 3y ago
  At least in my experience, you need the job hop to get the change shift of role, industry, or promotion as well. I would be doing my previous bosses' job and then some, and show it in review cycles, only to get the 'yeah you're right, just wait a bit longer, we'll figure it out' over and over again. Leaving for another company was the only way it happened.

old_sysadmin 3y ago

Disclaimer: Probably not highly compensated by hackernews standards (ie I'm still working), but I am well above the threshold you cite. Have been doing this since ~1993, and ... I wouldn't change anything. Had a few wins along the way You say you are a PM - have you done both greenfield (aka "primary software construction") and looking at how to deploy/tune a canned application (like Salesforce)? I think they are materially different skills. How deep are your personal tech skills? I tend to see the very best PM's become CEO's pretty rapidly, so that is one path. For me the most impact came from "rushing to the unglamourous stuff." Documentation, testing, build and deployment pipelines, security and compliance (which are not the same thing), and then building bridges to other functions, which helped me be the 'voice of the customer,' over and over again. As an IC, I've been a coder (initally perl, later c++, then python), network engineer (cisco bgp/load balancers - pre cloud era), data center manager, biz apps steward (jira, confluence, sfdc, hris), database admin. As a manager I've managed dev teams, SRE teams, data science teams, and product teams. Getting involved in sales engineering and direct customer support also helped a lot. They talk about "T" shaped people, but if you can have depth in multiple areas and have a framework for understanding black box (ie $largeVendor [ie Oracle] is used for $UnchangeableMissionCritical application - how are you going to work with it?) stuff, then you can level up from a "mere" PM to an "Agent of Organization Wide Change"

keplerdos 3y ago
[dead]
Sohcahtoa82 3y ago
> security and compliance (which are not the same thing) So much this. I'd hesitate to even call them adjacent. Compliance is nothing more than a set of checkboxes. It won't stop your developers from writing `sql.query("select * from users where username = '" + username + "'`.

Jemaclus 3y ago

Job hopping is the best way to improve wage growth, as others said. I will paraphrase something an old boss said to me, which is that the fact that you're asking about ways to improve puts you heads and shoulders above most people. There's tremendous value in focusing on growth -- personal and professional -- and spending a lot of time introspecting and thinking a lot about how to be a better person, a better team mate, a better leader. You'll get it wrong, you'll mess up, but the act of thinking about it is going to give you some advantages over most people you interact with. For me personally, I think one of the best skills you can develop is the ability to problem solve. I'm an engineer, so I think about problems through a certain lens, but for PMs, it's equally important. It's not just about how to arrive at a solution, but how to determine whether you're even looking at the right problem. It's something that I thought came naturally to me, but I spend a lot of time running scenarios in my head about how I might solve the real-world problems I see in front of me. For example, if a particular system is slow, I run through scenarios on how to speed it up or decouple certain features to enable concurrency. If customers are dropping off in a funnel, I brainstorm scenarios through which I can proactively alert us that something is going wrong, or perhaps how to add additional telemetry to give us more signal in the noise. One axiom out there is "bring solutions, not problems," and so constantly practicing the the problem solving is something that has served me very very well. My solutions aren't always the best, but the muscle memory is very ingrained and I can iterate very quickly with people about what possible solutions are, more so than many of my peers. In a similar vein of this, like, is the problem the right problem to solve? Just because something is a problem doesn't mean it's an _important_ problem. For example, my CEO is asking me to do something that will make us $100,000, and she says it's really important. But our company makes $400 million dollars a year in revenue. Is an additional 100K going to move the needle? Nope, not even a little bit. So is that the best use of our time? No. That doesn't mean we shouldn't build the feature, but it does mean that we are probably not solving the correct problem. By reframing "doing the thing" as "building a tool to automate the thing," then I can 10x, 25x, 50x the leverage the company has to do these 100K revenue tasks. I don't always win this argument, but it's a good exercise to go through at any rate. Anyway, that's some stream of consciousness stuff for you. Hope it helps. Best of luck!

keplerdos 3y ago

instagib 3y ago

Try to find a place that actually teaches commission sales. As in once hired they send you out somewhere for two weeks or more of training. The skills they teach have been very helpful in getting better pay than co-workers and early promotions. You may have to apply the skills for a few weeks or months with actual customers. The deep end is car sales. 12hr days and the bottom sales person gets fired. Second option would be trying to find somewhere that will apply for you to get a security clearance. High job security and a good bonus pay on top versus without it.

keplerdos 3y ago
[dead]

picardo 3y ago

This is more of a meta skill, but "learning to learn" was a game changer for me. For a long time, I had approached learning in a set and done kind of way, i.e. I'd read and immerse myself on a new topic, declare I'd learned it and move on. But I realized that was not only wrong, but it was blinding me to my shortcomings. I took a few courses, and started testing myself regularly on new topics to overcome that blindspot. YMMV!

keplerdos 3y ago
[dead]

sokoloff 3y ago

I think that a combination or intersection of skills is often more valuable than a slightly deeper individual skill. I was a “pretty good” programmer (I’ll estimate as top 10%), but am also a fairly good writer (I’ll estimate top 20% there). That combination has been quite valuable to companies I’ve worked at and for my family. Find the intersection of valuable things where you excel or could excel.

halkony 3y ago
Wholeheartedly agree. One underlining here is it's easy to fake experience in an individual domain ("yeah, I know python. I read like 2 books.") but you can't fake experience in multiple, pointed domains ("yeah, I used python to manage a fleet of clown cars for the Hertz-Barnum merger").

ericmcer 3y ago

Uhh if you are a senior PM and you want to make >100k you should... apply to senior PM roles that pay >100k? There are a ton out there, just spoof up your resume and start applying. High level PMs at FAANG make at least 200k base + a ton more with equity. If the goal is to get more money, starting a whole new job path is a crazy choice, just find a senior PM role that pays more. If you hate PM that is a different discussion.

972811 3y ago
OP is a project manager. This is different than a product manager (which I think you're referring to) or a program manager. I don't think there are many $100K+ jobs for general project managers. My actual advice would be to switch to one of those other roles
- paulcole 3y ago
  > I don't think there are many $100K+ jobs for general project managers I hire project managers and I would say this is very location dependent and also very industry dependent. Find the right type of projects in the right industry and $100,000 should be very very achievable in a medium-cost-of-living city. It should be a no-brainer in NYC or SF. That said, again depending on industry and type of projects, there’s a lot of risk in switching jobs for 20% more salary. How long until those projects dry up and you’re first out the door?

paulcole 3y ago

> although I’m senior level This means way less than you think it does. If you’ve just been working at some company that hands out senior titles like candy, it’s not worth much. If you really are senior level you need a good story to show that to people you’re interviewing with.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

tcbawo 3y ago

* This might sound trite, but you will make the most money when your company has lots of money. If your company is struggling or its industry is going through a cyclical slowdown, you will typically make less than at a flush firm or in a booming industry, even if you are a top performer. Tactically switching industries midway through my career led me to significantly higher comp longer term (several multiples). * Become indispensable in the key areas that are most highly correlated with company success. I mean improving the company's bottom line, not working more hours than anyone else. Be focused and direct. These priorities are often broadcast by ownership/the executive team, but sometimes the message gets lost in translation by middle management. Do these things with visibility and measure the difference you've contributed. If your job isn't in the critical path or your job doesn't have enough transparency, move on. * If you don't have equity, it's not your company. Don't make the mistake of sacrificing your mental or physical health for your company's sake. It's never worth it. Having 'moral' equity instead of real equity is an awful feeling. Instead of holding out, moving on was always the right call for me.

cableshaft 3y ago
These are great pieces of advice, and something I wish I had followed earlier in life. I probably should be following one of them now even.
- tcbawo 3y ago
  I had never considered sunk cost fallacy https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunk_cost https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunk_cost on the long term time horizon of my career. In multiple cases, I stayed on longer than I should have. Early in my career I suffered from short term thinking, rather than guiding my job in the direction I wanted. Will growth allow me to follow the career track of my manager or other senior IC? Do I even want that? Am I gaining valuable experience, or am I beginning to stagnate?
robin-redbreast 3y ago
Where is this from?
3y ago

mattbrewsbytes 3y ago

Your project management skills translate well across industries. If your desire is to get into software PM because there is more money there then start applying for those roles, expand your network to people that work at companies that have those roles and maybe take people out for coffee to see if/where you may have gaps to close before they would hire you. Another angle might be to look into software companies in the EV sector, ones that build apps based on the charging infrastructure. Pivoting into running projects for them would probably be the most straight forward path to doing PM work on software and not physical install of hardware.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

ezedv 3y ago

Considering your project management experience and the growing demand for EV charging infrastructure, you might explore roles in renewable energy project management or operations management. These fields align with your expertise and offer potential for both personal growth and higher earnings. Additionally, exploring professional development opportunities or certifications in relevant areas could enhance your skill set and open up new avenues.

warrenm 3y ago

The "most leverage" is networking with other people - on other teams, other companies, at differing career levels, and in various roles Since high school, I have had precisely one job where I did not know someone going in and/or who did not come to me: and that was cleaning cars at Hertz at the turn of the century Every single other position I have had came from: a referral, personal inquiry, or a recruiter finding me Maintain a good reputation, and get to know as many people as you can

nprateem 3y ago

Finding a high-paying job is like sitting an exam where you can already find the answers. Just go onto job websites, search for what their experience requirements are, then work on gaining that experience however you can. But you also mention wanting to find meaning. The two aren't necessarily related, so you need to decide what you actually want.

cm2012 3y ago

Connect your work to profit.

Matthew911 3y ago

[dead]

Matthew911 3y ago

[dead]