Ask HN: What did you do in your first year after school? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: What did you do in your first year after school?

15 pointsmarclave15 comments

A year has passed since I finished my engineering undergrad, and am curious what the people of HN did in their first year after school?

Was it a transitional period of reflection, did you travel, jump straight into a degree or work?

View on HN

I had a kid when I was 15. Getting to work post undergrad degree was imperative. Heck, working _during_ my degree was an absolute requirement. But work post-degree meant I could earn more. I minored in CS, my major was business. In my first year post undergrad, I went to work immediately selling and servicing insurance. Sometime after, I then moved onto financial services, then to construction as I got my teaching credential, then teaching, and, finally, after all that, eventually found my way to a 2yo start up doing software development (toss in a couple more kids along the way). It took me about 7 years to find software, and now I've been doing that ever since. It was the first time we had some wiggle room in our finances. We got our first real travel-somewhere-vacation last year. Never had a real vacation before software (even as a teacher). The first several years as a developer, time off meant repair projects around the house.

Long story to say that it's ok to not get directly into your career if you can manage it, but realize that the cost is potentially a year longer/delay on your financial goals, whether that be your ability to raise a family, buy a car, purchase a house, or until retirement. Also, once you have responsibilities, you won't likely be able to get back off that treadmill.

I went straight to work. I took about 6 months and many interviews to find a job, so I did some labouring work while looking for a coding position. Travelling around the world seemed too scary / not me.

In retrospect I wished I had given a PhD a go. Even if I dropped out I'd just get a job, and the stipend was generous enough for a single person to live.

I encourage people to consider travelling even if they thing it's not for them. It doesn't have to be like everyone else does it. I'd go back and travel to meet other like minded tech people, go to tech conferences, and get some nature walks in amazing places. It would be light on the partying and well trodden backpacker routes, using non-plane transport as much as possible. It also could be 2 weeks initially with an option to go home or carry on.

Appreciate your retrospection and thoughts.

Do you have an idea on what area you would do your PhD in?

Do you think that if someone is apprehensive about travelling for awhile after grad, that you would recommend a transitional period to explore ideas and not jump into any commitments? Which kind of feels as though it is an implicit side effect of going travelling for awhile.

PhD would be computer science related. Maybe related to compilers or programming languages.

I think what I'm saying is a 2-4 week holiday is a good way to test if you like travelling, and what sort of travelling you like. If you don't like travelling as in constantly moving, maybe a holiday in once place for a while might give you the cultural experience without all the hassles. Depends on what you like. I've met people doing back to back organised tours for months, not sure how they do that without going mad!

Those are both pretty neat fields.

Ahh I see, yeah makes sense and can vary between people for sure :)

Been 3 months since I graduated, I have been working.

Corporate life is much more lame than I anticipated it'd be.

What do you find to be particularly lame? On the flip side do you find yourself having more routine free time so that you can do more activities?

Haha I completely agree. The big five or six are really good at selling the "change the world and have fun" aspect, when in reality it's just sitting at a desk for 8 hours a day looking at jira tickets or whatever. Not that there isn't value in that sort of work but some perspective helps

After I graduated with a computer science degree, I spent a year playing competitive chess. I had already dedicated a lot of my free time in the last two years of my degree to chess and I couldn't wait to be done with school so that I could go all-in on chess.

I learned a lot of valuable life lessons during that year and I am glad I took that time before diving right into my career in tech. At the time, I was nervous that I was ruining my life by not getting started right away at a "real job", but things turned out completely fine -- in fact, I think my manager at my first big tech job was more intrigued by my chess skills than my coding skills :)

Cool :) What was competitive chess like? Also what was training like for chess, was it speed training alongside putting yourself in specific scenarios to get out of?

Any fav chess players?

I took a temporary job that was not in my field (software development), stayed there for a few months then joined a product life-cycle management startup as a web developer for half a year. That didn't work out, so I quit, then went back to that temporary job.

I'll be taking the GRE in September and am applying for graduate programs in my area.

Straight into work, as school was rounding off I sent of applications to various companies and NGO's over the world. The responses were interesting enough not to need an OE or something. Just go work where you will want to travel.

Not exactly the kind of school you’re implying, but I’ve spent the past year after my high school graduation working. I’m currently a software engineer at an asset management firm and will start university simultaneously soon :)

Cool :)

What are you going to be studying at Uni?

Good ol' computer science

Reply on news.ycombinator.com