Ask HN: If you were to switch career, what would you do?
If you were to quit your developer job today and move away from the tech world for a little while, what job would you do? Or what domain would interest you?
When you're good at sales + you're already a developer, you can build your own Saas and sell them (like most solo founders do, except excel them at selling it).
When you're good at sales + you work for someone else, you can still get rich fast by taking up a commission based job (most tech startups I know of these days, provide around 10%).
You should broader your point: percent based compensation can make you money fast. Far faster than trading your fixed hours for money at a capped rate.
Trading time for money is doing a thing that doesn't scale.
A good friend made enough money he was able to quit his job as an engineer to provide telecom consulting services directly to small healthcare providers in the North Carolina mountains. Started a small phone company, hired a sales guy, who closes the deal, my friend comes along and walks the company through integrating.
He describes it as a hybrid between being a reseller and a managed service provider, but 100% of their revenue is residuals from services his partner sells, and they both live pretty comfortably and happily.
Brokering typically has % based compensation.
These don't inherently involve any more 'sales' than selling yourself in an interview for any other kind of role. They can involve more sales if you need them to.
But I know deep inside that I can never be a salesperson. It's just not in me. The Dilbert gene.
I think it's true of a lot of developers, too.
A developer - needs to "sell" his solution to his teams/managers
A trainer needs to sell his trainings to get students to come visit.
A tech conference presenter needs to "sell" his ideas to the audience so they can "buy" it.
Actually, training and sales is an extremely good combination to have. Case in point: Most people on the internet get rich by teaching others to become rich rather than doing what they teach themselves :) Such as - eCommerce courses, become a consultant type courses, etc.
I do some of this on a small scale now but I run my own project based workshops or after school clubs in order to bypass the system.
Examples of clubs I have ran:
- Learn how to build an automatic solar powered plant watering system
- Learn how to build your own retro arcade system
- Learn how to build a battle bot and battle it against other classmates bots
- Learn how to program [name of game]. I focus on 1 game and try to cover most of the basics. After they get the core game programmed, they are able to customize it or program another game with the concepts they learned.
For most of these things kids utilize critical thinking, math, programming, electronics and engineering.
I know nothing else apart from fixing computers and I really suck at programming, therefore I'm doomed to switch career.
Plus, I'm old for technology.
My problem is I'm an introvert who gets easily exhausted, both physically and emotionally.
If I could only get hired as a hand crafted shoemaker https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Tbwiv1NHR4 or as a carpenter that works again the traditional way of hand crafting...
I want to stop dealing with technology; just use my computer when I feel the need to or so I can pay my bills; nothing else, nothing more.
For me the trick is to avoid pretending I'm an extrovert, which is something I feel a lot of fellow introverts are doing.
Put me in front of a whiteboard or on stage at a conference and I'm fine, but I still tend to hide out in dark corners at parties.
The point is that nobody ever "hired" her. Take shoe repair classes if you want, or find a shoemaker who will take you on as an apprentice, or just buy some old tools and watch a bunch of online videos. No matter what path you take to learn the basic skills, you'll never end up with a sole proprietorship like that by being hired.
If I still had to provide, then I’d be curious about plumbing - the sort of job that cannot be automated or offshored.
Each of them has their trade-offs though - building is super rewarding, but very hard on the body. Or becoming a sparky is probably more interesting, but lots of climbing round inside in small tight spaces running wires etc. and spiders. lots of spiders.
Plumbing.... also interesting, but you gotta be prepared to deal with other peoples shit.
Let me explain. I would live with just the bare necessities, see the world at my own pace, free of all obligations and demands, fix a bike here or there, help out people wherever I could.
That's obviously unrealistic in this rat race society and the times we live in, but perhaps that's part of the allure.
On a more grounded level, something in concert/stage production. I love live music shows, festivals and theater productions. It's not nearly as glamorous as most people think, but the stories you'll have are amazing and outrageous.
On a realistic level, I would stay within my current job profile (technical product owner or some such similar title), but switch to a company working in the area of improving the environment and lessening human impact.
This can be good and bad. If they don’t understand IT then they don’t value it, but if they get it then there are very interesting jobs to be done.
They are all going to need good control systems, machine learning for optimisation and much more. Just some ideas.
As a start, I’m turning to creative hobbies that let me use computers in a creative way:
My self christmas gift was a some gear to start shooting short films as a hobby that I will write, direct, photograph, and produce/compose the music. I think that's better than spending my free time coding and being burnt out.
I did switch careers this year, away from software development. I'm now working as a stagehand in the theatre.
(I'm still working on Strukt and a couple other projects in my spare time. Expect version 1.6.1 in couple days, probably.)
The money side of things doesn't look great, though.
I'd like to be able to tinker with farming machines. But I don't enjoy being around people who work in that field (unintentionnal pun).
I think I'd like to work in the woods or in environnental oriented NGO. I must find a way to concile both.
Downside is that if anything, there's even more travel than I have with my current job.
Another option I tend to look into from time to time is sourcing and inspecting classic cars and motorcycles for overseas (ie, non-US) buyers. That's something that I've done occasionally as well, but it's very cyclic work.
Every so often I debate going to law school part-time. But I feel a little trapped by my tech career and how much I’ve done and progressed so far.