Switching Jobs | Hacker News Reader

Switching Jobs

flowingdata.com

169 pointsalgui9138 comments

The top jobs that computer programmers switched to are all other computer related jobs, some nearly identical depending on how you treat the term programmer, vs developer.

Kind of depressing that once you become a computer programmer, you can't really escape computer work. Id like to hear more about people that go on to do something totally different successfully, like baking. Maybe its too uncommon. Also interesting, the top non computer jobs are lawyers and judges, and then accountants.

I worked with a guy who left to take over the family farm.

> Kind of depressing that once you become a computer programmer, you can't really escape computer work

Can't, or not rational to?

The monetary returns to being a dev vs. other lines of work are high and have been growing for the last 2 decades.

One can do much worse than golden handcuffs.

> I see young men, my townsmen, whose misfortune it is to have inherited farms, houses, barns, cattle, and farming tools; for these are more easily acquired than got rid of. Better if they had been born in the open pasture and suckled by a wolf, that they might have seen with clearer eyes what field they were called to labor in. Who made them serfs of the soil? Why should they eat their sixty acres, when man is condemned to eat only his peck of dirt? Why should they begin digging their graves as soon as they are born?

> Kind of depressing that once you become a computer programmer, you can't really escape computer work.

Not necessarily, I like programming. I have spent to Working as a medicinal chemist, and in sales and in marketing, but am back programming which I really enjoy.

It isn't easy but it's possible to change routes. I did software for 6 years, then quit. In the last 2 years I've worked as a farm engineer, a cook, done tree work, and carpentry to pay the bills. It's not something I would recommend to everyone. Part-time side work in something your interested in might be a good way to test the water.

I know a few people who left careers as software engineers to go to grad school in a different field, some to a humanities field.

It's easier to escape computer work than most fields -- computer workers tend to have relatively high salaries and ought to be able to survive the transition period if they saved enough money.

This. A dream of mine is to study developmental economics, go back to my birth country and join an NGO.

But how.

Step 1 is usually, reduce your expenses. When people say they can’t do something like that, it’s usually an economic decision. But, plenty of people live on the lesser salary. We all get used to the higher salary and rachet up spending accordingly. Otherwise, living paycheck to paycheck would only happen for a narrow slice of the country.

I’m not a minimalist, but it seems to me that the solution for many problems starts with “spend less”. We just don’t want to hear it. I know I don’t.

Read about Stoicism. There's a quote - which is apt considering it's nearly Christmas - about what to give someone as a gift. I can't recall it exactly but goes along the lines of, "Don't add to a person's possessions, but rather free them of their desires."

The money working for NGOs isn’t as good in most situations. But there is a lot of opportunity to be entrepreneurial in this context. Software will eat the world in these countries too. One starting point that may be interesting is: https://vc4a.com

Read about the two routes.

http://www.paulgraham.com/love.html

I know one who left to become a chocolatier.

Programmer here, currently in my first year of a Psychology degree. Just started but time is on my side.

With any luck I'll keep doing development part-time until I graduate. Much better than most student jobs for sure :)

I wouldn't say that escaping from tech is really difficult or uncommon - it's more realistic to say that tech has a relatively good balance of money earned for the time spent working. A lot of other fields have the same or a lot more work for less pay, in addition to externalities (e.g. workplace injuries for jobs with a physical labour component).

Personally, I started in tech (infosec), and I currently own a food truck.

hows that working out? ive heard it can really pay off. is it worth it not working crazy tech hours?

Is there any way to view the inverse, "Which professions were most likely to switch to X?" I'd be interested to see where most developers are coming from, instead of where they're switching to. I couldn't figure out how to see that information from the page.

As one data point, I was a furniture upholsterer before I switched to development.

How did you make the switch? Did you have practical experience beforehand? Or did you take courses?

I spent some time messing around with QBasic and Microsoft FrontPage when I was a kid, but that was about the extent of it. I was able to get a grant from the government (thanks Obama!) for college and got a CS degree at the local state university.

Overall, I'd say it was an excellent investment on the government's part. They spent a few thousand on grant money and will be getting hundreds of thousands of dollars in tax revenue over my lifetime from increased earnings.

I'd be interested in that too. I switched to development from carpentry. I'd like to know where to go when I get burned out on development. I'm not really interested in the standard management or project management routes.

There are some interesting quirks in the data if you click through the 'see a random occupation' button enough times. I wonder if they're artifacts of the sample size, or of the way certain professions are classified. Of people in the following professions who left their jobs -

Power plant operators, distributors, and dispatchers:

* 33% became Food batchmakers

* 11% became Bakers

Veterinarians:

* 46% became Actuaries

* 36% became Software developers, applications and systems software

Fish and game wardens:

* 87% became Detectives and criminal investigators

Psychologists:

* 25% became Urban and regional planners

With the game wardens, I wonder if it's common to transition into the state or county police

Not sure about game wardens, but all state and county park rangers in California where I am at are also law enforcement officers so I assume that makes it a relatively easy transition.

I was curious about the Veterinarians and their dominant switch to Actuaries. From what I understand, both of these are "licensed" trades (at least in the US). Can someone please explain the logic behind this.

https://www.evernote.com/l/ASl5vTakJT1BrqerojTCghdg-NYssxXOo...

It seems ... unlikely that physicians switch to become pharmacists, optometrists, or physicians assistants.

https://imgur.com/a/AKEus

Interesting. I wonder if that's a data cleanliness issue?

eg; one year a Dentist says they're a Physician (maybe they didn't see the "Dentist" category) and the next year they say they're a Dentist.

I don't have a ton to say about the content of the article other than a super boring, "that was interesting." One thing that was cool is the chart labeled "Switching Rate for Different Jobs." I've never seen that style of chart before and found it really effective for sharing the data. Does anyone know what that is called?

It's a clustered bubble chart that's been ordered. Clever.

Thanks!

It also doesn't render in desktop Safari.

It's a bubble chart I think you can make with D3.js, (mentioned at the bottom, follow the link), something similar was used but sideways for a chart of rapers by their average number of words used per song a few years ago. (Just google rap vocabulary, you'll probably find it), it's a very cool interactive chart type.

"rapers"

Gotta watch that spelling. You don't want to accuse innocent musicians of something :)

“R. Kelley’s”?

"Beeswarm chart" is the search term that will get you more examples.

Another great example http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2013/05/25/sunday-review/...

There was nothing truly surprising about the findings themselves but I will say that they were presented very well and intuitively. That was the real value in this article and something other similar articles can learn from.

This is such a rich dataset and I'm sure there are some very interesting insights. But I was very disappointed with most of the data visualization; the primary question of the article is addressed in a set of bar charts for a single occupation. There's no way at all to gain any complex understanding of the systems at play here with such a keyhole view of the world.

I'd like to see the career switching dataset in different forms to see what insights we could derive: network diagrams, heatmaps, and so forth -- visualizations that show the complex interconnectedness of this rich data.

Masterful data visualization. Simple and informative. Thank you!

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