Ask HN: What's that one thing you would do, if you got to rewind your career? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: What's that one thing you would do, if you got to rewind your career?

24 pointswanderer4219 comments

This is a great question. I spent the last ~10 years hopping around jobs, working at both FAANG and small startups, but I never stayed anywhere more than 1-2 years. I also moved around a lot. My biggest mistake was focusing too much on salary, job title, technologies and self-development, and not enough on forming deep relationships with others. That was true even in college where I got good grades, but I rarely went to lectures, study groups or parties.

Now I'm here with a relatively broad network but few deep connections. I don't have anyone I can ask for career advice, have beers with, chat with about work, or discuss for new opportunities. Looking at my resume you'd think I'm "successful" - but it's the opposite. It feels kind of lonely and at times I'm sad.

No matter what you do in life, in the end it's all about people. Don't waste your opportunities to get to know your fellow coworkers/classmates/bosses. Make some friends.

Also, don't burn your bridges. There were times in my career when I sacrificed relationships so that I could move on. For example, leaving a co-founder behind when I no longer believed in the company. Looking back, I was kind of an asshole and too immature to realize it. I wasn't capable to fully empathize with the people around me. I truly regret that now.

same here, I am half way through this and had made an attempt to fixit but.. probably its too late to fix

It’s never too late to fix.

I would be happy to connect and get to know you. Don't hesitate to reach out!

@gmail

If I could rewind my career I would do these things.

* Stay longer at my first company. It was an old school tech company most of the developers were 40+ years old. It had cubicles and outdated technologies. After 2 years, I grew bored and I left because I wanted to work with exciting tech,make more money, and work with younger people. Over the years, I realized it was the perfect company for my personality. Stable, low key, and quiet, they allowed people to grow into a real engineer. I took it for granted.

> they allowed people to grow into a real engineer

would you mind expanding on what you mean by this?

In my observation there's a difference between sales driven companies and engineering driven companies.

Some companies are sales driven they just want profit, and want to deliver the product as quickly as possible. They hire developers to work like assembly line workers. Come in, do the tasks you're assigned, work overtime and repeat the next day.

From the perspective of leadership, you're the helper. Feed the nerds snacks and caffeine, maybe have ping pong table, to look like you're fun. You have to be there are 9AM sharp. You have to be at your desk the whole time "working".

Signs: If you feel like you can't go for a walk without getting in trouble. During Stand-up meetings, if the conversation is more about deadlines then solving the problem.

Engineering driven companies are companies were the engineers have a lot of influence. While you're expected to provide business value, you're not at the mercy of product managers or product owners. you're encouraged to spend reasonable time building your skills.

Because building the product requires deep technical expertise, they can't just ship it without consulting the tech leaders, they can't impose deadlines and expect developers to deal with it, there's more conversation.

Signs: You are allowed to research, you're allowed to experiment, you're allowed to make mistakes.

Eat healthier. You might think this is unrelated, but as I have improved my health, my clarity and speed of thought has improved exponentially. Had I done this a couple decades sooner, I would have likely done even better in my career and had better interactions with others.

I agree with this, and would like to add lose weight sooner. How you look, like being fat, really affects how people view, and interact with you. It also affects how you interact with others, and your opinion of yourself.

Never work for other people. Never work a 9-5. I would have started selling my own things or working for myself before leaving my parents house.

At 32 and finally working for myself, I can’t believe I spent almost 10 years building someone else’s dream.

Can you share more info about your work now?

What would you like to know?

Since working for myself I've had a VC-backed startup to improve democracy, done consulting work, and right now I'm writing a book about personal finance (thehappymoneybook.com).

If I could go back in time to 10 years ago I would have continued to work on the online t-shirt brand I had started instead of abandoning it to get a "real job."

Deep down I think most people resent the employer/employee relationship. I think most people are creative and entrepreneurial. But we're told in school to be obedient instead of problem solvers. We're told that failure is to be avoided. We're told that being comfortable and bored is better than broke and happy. I think more people don't work for themselves because they're scared, because they're told not to, and because they've forgotten how.

Having lived in NYC for most of my life, and surrounded by friends in finance and finance tech, I thought working as a developer in one of the Wall Street firms (investment banks, hedge funds, etc.) was the pinnacle of a technology career. Man was I blind.

Needless to say, on the other side of the continent (and in NYC itself, to a lesser degree) was the Silicon Valley tech industry.

So while I pludged around doing LoB .NET, others were grinding leetcode to get into these tech companies that not only offered stupendously superior compensation but also work and lifestyle perks that put working as a technologist in finance to shame.

If I could rewind my career back ten years, I'd do everything I could to get my foot into the SV tech industry whether here in NY or moving to California. That said, I'm still trying.

I recall back in 2011 or 2012 a Google recruiter even reached out to me and I just ignored her thinking a job at an investment bank was far superior to a job at Google (whether or not I would have passed the Google interview is another story of course...). If I could travel back in time, I'd kick my earlier self in the mouth.

This is suprising. I'm at the start of a data/ML engineering career and working at hedge funds that use technological methods seem very appealing to me. They are known for topping FAANG compensation offers and the work seems innovative and interesting tech-wise.

I don't disagree with you. I know there are elite hedge funds, as well as certain niches in finance tech that pay extremely well. It sounds like you're there.

But I'm not in one of them, and neither are most SWEs in finance. We're justing doing line-of-business .NET or Java.

Thankfully I've managed to worm my way into a niche (JavaScript/React/Python) which, while not exactly super-lucrative in the finance world, is at least much more marketable to SV tech companies than doing C# and WPF.

I'd find a mentor. Heck, I didn't even know what that word was or how important it was until I was a good 10 years into my career.

Ask for more money/set salary expectations higher.

Yeah, I know what you're thinking. Sounds a bit like a cliched answer, right?

And yes, it does. But I'm the only person in my peer group who went in the tech industry, and I had absolutely no idea what the market rate was for software engineers or web developers in said industry. As a result, I ended up seriously underpaid overall, especially given I was the one who was asked what my salary expectations were.

Alteratively, I guess it'd be focusing more on networking and connecting with people. I never realised the importance of thing growing up, so I never ended up with a network at all, or anyone to rely on for anything.

Make time to speak more with my manager about the role I wanted that didn’t seem to be available, rather than accepting that role at a less stable company and then getting laid off from it due to cash flow problems a month after my former manager had hired someone else into the role I’d wanted.

On a similar note, take the old advice of finding a good boss instead of a good job. I've mostly had good bosses, but they always had at least 25+ people under them making it really hard to form a good relationship.

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