Comment by adpoe | Hacker News Reader

Comment by adpoe | Hacker News Reader

You have a ton of time, don't worry.

I changed careers more than once between 20 and 30. To/from radically different fields.

Besides that, your skill-set as a programmer is _much_ more than your choice of language/web framework.

You have skills in:

- Building things

- Decomposing and solving abstract problems

- etc..

And don't let a perceived lack of math skills intimidate you. This stuff is learnable, with effort and time. ML is most-decidedly not magic. You can learn it, if you have an interest.[1]

That said, if programming is losing its luster, but you still enjoy software -- try product/project management. Good pay, and it's a very social job where your tech skills will be valued.

If you want something dramatically different -- the sky's the limit. At 20, you could switch to Business, Law, Medicine, Journalism, Banking, whatever. Biggest lesson I've learned: don't be afraid to try. Good luck!

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[1] (For context, I started studying math much later than you (~27), and have worked on ML in a research lab, since then. But when I was 20, I barely passed college algebra... Point is, you have time and can learn if you want.)

> That said, if programming is losing its luster, but you still enjoy software -- try product/project management. Good pay, and it's a very social job where your tech skills will be valued.

Do you have an opinion on how much of product management is politics and posturing, and how much is actually building good products? For example, one doesn't have to look very far to find substandard software and features on hundreds of highly trafficked sites or commercial products, yet I'm under the impression that getting a job where one would have the authority to fix these things would be next to impossible. (And yes, I absolutely understand that decisions are, or at least should be, first and foremost economic decisions, and subject to competing priorities. For example, just look at the positive cultural change Microsoft has undergone relatively recently, they are a good example of a company who has changed in respect to what I'm talking about.)

So, I worked as a PM for about 3.5 years, in total. That was in the past, and now I work as a developer (not a manager anymore).

My guess is that a lot of this depends on the organization, and product/projects.

But as an opinion...

The politics/posturing & social aspects of the job are integral to shipping products, making positive incremental changes, and "getting things done".

As a PM, I definitely was not the boss. (Even though the success of the project was ultimately my responsibility.)

This meant I had to lead, persuade, and _negotiate_ very effectively -- always arguing what's best for the product, or the end-user.

So I guess I'd say that these sorts of politics aren't separate from building a good product. They're sort of the process for getting things done.

But again, that's limited & personal experience. My companies were relatively small (20 - 50 people). In essence, I was figuring things out as I went along. (These were small businesses, and we all were.) Big organizations with lots of really established process may be different.

How did you end up working in an ML research lab? What's the story here? What's your background etc.

That's a very long story... But here's the essence.

I got a degree totally unrelated to CS. (Think "arts". Decent school. Top 50. But not prestigious.) Bounced around at not-great jobs for awhile, living in NYC and barely making ends meet.

Then I managed to get a job at an online media startup (essentially a management role), which was a very lucky break.

That got me into software, and I was able to use that experience to move into product/project management. I did that for a few years at some boutique companies, working crazy hours but learning a lot.

Then I decided to go back to school and study CS (starting at undergrad level again)... so I spent a few years re-learning everything from the ground up. That includes all the math, stats, etc... that you'd expect from a typical undergrad engineering program. It took awhile to finish, and was frustrating at times, but it was worth it.

Fast forward a few years... and now I work as software engineer. I focused on ML during my studies, and again (with lots of luck) managed to get a job at an R&D lab doing machine learning, during my final year in school.

I've since moved and now work at a company that does low-level OS-type work. (Which I actually enjoy more than ML.)

It's been a wild ride, but it's been fun.

Non-linear paths like this rarely get mentioned, but I met dozens of people with similar stories when I went back to school. It's hard, but can definitely be done.

inspiring story. thank you. i have a technical BA but have done similar hopping around new york etc. since then and have been self-teaching cs trying to figure out a path that will work for me. how did you jump into a management/product? did you read up on those skills or are you a good at selling yourself? how did you make the decision to go back to school? i'm most interested in how you were able to commit to giving up art.

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