Ask HN: Tired of working for startups, what are my options without a CS degree? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Tired of working for startups, what are my options without a CS degree?

4 pointsdojineb4 comments

I'm in my thirties, been a developer for 5 years and didn't study computer science. I know JS pretty well, Ruby, Docker, some sysadmin, Ansible, did some backend (preferred) and some frontend (meh)... I'm an ok developer, I write tests and publish everything I do on the side on GitHub.

I have only ever worked at startups. I usually stay 6-9 months: that's how long it takes for the company to change too much or for me to lose interest. At that point, I negotiate to be laid off and the company is happy to oblige since they can hire 1.5 junior devs instead. I'm not a "team player": I don't drink the kool-aid, don't do overtime, and I think that 2-3 weeks PTO a year is way too low to be healthy.

My colleagues seem happy to give up their lives to look good to their manager and be eligible for promotion, it makes me look bad in comparison. I take pride in my craft and in my code, I just think it's not an emergency unless people are dying, and people are never dying when there is a business emergency.

However, I'm tired of this cycle of 6-9 months on and 3-4 months off to recover. It's not worth my sanity and it's not worth the startups' time (I assume.)

I'm not into starting my own thing: I don't have the drive to put in the hours. I'm not interested in management, I'm happy as an individual contributor and don't want the politics or the headaches. FAANG are no go: I wouldn't pass those 6-8 hours whiteboard interviews.

I can work in Canada and Europe, I don't mind moving or working remotely.

What are my options at that point? A large corporation where it's duller but the pace saner? Startups again? Should I get hired as a contractor instead of an employee with a better hourly since I only stay 6-9 months anyway? How can I still be of value to employers while sticking to 30-40 hours a week and not drinking the kool-aid? How do I reach my savings goals while delivering value without becoming a yes-man or burning out regularly?

Really sounds like you'd be happiest at a large, well established corporation.

I've been in the startup world as well, really didn't like all the things you listed that are so prevalent in 'start up culture'.

I've been working as a senior engineer at a large financial institution for about a year. Programmers are not seen as these people who are expected to work insane hours under tremendous pressure. But they are seen as very valuable staff: our company recently decided they were a software company first, and a financial company second.

While the problems we're solving might not be as sexy as the Hot-New-Thing (we've yet to do anything with machine learning), they're very challenging and incredibly important -- not only to the company's bottom line but also to the millions of customers using our applications.

Sure, there's years of technical debt not everyone is a talented, brilliant programmer. But we do some amazing work and the many decades of experience the organisation has in HR makes for a very enjoyable, engaging and challenging workplace.

I don't have any great advice except that those 6-9 months stints are toxic to many employers, I write that as someone who averaged 7 months across multiple startups before writing them off entirely. Pretty much every potential employer I've talked to could care less what the reasons were for leaving each startup.

Suggest finding a way into an established company with sane employment policies, possibly as a contractor first.

> that's how long it takes for the company to change too much or for me to lose interest

What's the thing that keeps your interest? What's the change that makes you uninterested?

If you don't want any crunch, seeking out a clock-puncher position at a big corp that does some software development might be a good idea... but that will be MORE boring.

Or... start your own thing that is aligned with your interests?

> What's the thing that keeps your interest? What's the change that makes you uninterested?

I think it's the routine of it all. Yet another CRUD app, yet another meaningless "emergency", yet another client/stakeholder tantrum, yet another power play in which I'm a pawn. It's interesting in the first 3-4 months because everything is new (company, software, people) but then it fades away.

> Or... start your own thing that is aligned with your interests?

I've thought about this many times, but I don't think I have what it takes.

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