Ask HN: Just left college, unsure of what to do | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Just left college, unsure of what to do

8 pointsrandomuser199810 comments

Hey I just finished up my comp sci degree, I got a job straight out of uni at a tech consultancy company (no more than 37 hours a week, free food, amazing pay, chill culture), but I was bored at that job, so bored that I quit after 3 months.

I started coding when I was 11-12, I really love coding, I've implemented some really complicated software in my spare time, 2d physics engine, regex engine in haskell, web server in C from scratch, freebsd kernel modules(yeah I am a giant nerd).

It seems like most of the dev jobs are really repetitive, boring CRUD work and honestly its a little depressing. I don't really want to do this kind of work for the rest of my life. It seems my comp sci degree was basically worthless, the work I did was just essentially gluing JS code and libraries together.

I am now doing a Masters specializing in distributed computing.

I am thinking about going into research after. I am also thinking about leaving comp sci as just a hobby and getting into mechatronics engineering or something like this. I am 21, I have plenty of time.

Any advice on how to avoid this CRUD work, which seems to be basically 99% of jobs on the market at the moment? Any advice on what I should do?

Thank you so much, I really do appreciate the time everyone takes to read this post and reply. :)

So...you want a fun exciting job that pays well and challenges you? Get in line. No one cares that you have a degree. It means nothing right now because you have NO EXPERIENCE (on paper). You have to go through the grind just like everyone else so that you can learn, build on it, increase in your position and area of expertise, and then down the line begin teaching someone who is then in the CRUD job you were once in.

Nothing will ever replace starting at the bottom and working your way up. This takes time, sweat, and sometimes tears. I started at 18 and am now 36.

I disagree. Having a portfolio and connections can land you a job in your field of interest right away. Source: personal experience, starting from a similar place as the OP.

My advice to the OP: you already have a good portfolio. Network with professors with whom you are on good terms, friends who have already entered the work force, public-ish open source figures in your areas of interest. Ask around if they have openings for even intern work (which does not imply CRUD!). Once employed, as your co-workers and managers recognize your talent you'll bubble your way up to a well-matched position, from which point "normal" career advice takes over.

As someone who has worked in the distributed/embedded space for a few years now, the biggest complaint I hear from management about hiring is that finding talent, even "green" talent, is hard. There's not enough interest in the space. Managers love recommendations, and someone like a university professor who has seen your work and interacted with you is perfectly positioned and glad to recommend someone promising to their industry friends.

Granted, location probably plays a big part in this. My experience is limited to the Boston area.

Side note, I've never seen frontend/CRUD → backend/embedded/distributed/what-have-you treated as a promotion path, not even across employers. The teams doing CRUD work for a product are usually organizationally or geographically separated, or even an entirely different company, from those doing the type of work you're interested in. Frontend/CRUD isn't "drudge work" to get to the position you really want, it's just a different job description entirely.

There are a lot of different jobs. Some of them are easier to get when you are starting. Some jobs take some background to get you in the door. But there are a vast number of companies and different jobs. Figure out what you are interested in, look at job boards and apply. The monthly hacker news job thread lets you look for jobs in certain locations, easily in the browser.

No I am more than happy to take a significant pay cut to do more challenging work.

Hello! Sometime back I was in similar position so i started working partime from home. I take the boring and high paying work which most other refuse to accept.

Meanwhile, I find validation and fullfilment through hobbies like metal fabrication/machining and creating electronics/mechanical projects. I've workshop full of tools like mills, lathe, laser/plasma cutter, 3d printers and several website where I use my tools to deliver the item designed by my customer their door - it's lot of fun!

Recently, so am I always looking for ways to expand my workshop and make money on side.

Lately I've been creating filament from waste plastic

https://medium.com/endless-filament/make-your-filament-at-ho...

Here's what research has to say about it: https://3dprintingindustry.com/news/greek-researchers-determ...

Often what you like doing doesn't pay well or isn't very dependable. So I suggest trying to convert your hobbies into side businesses and see if they can prove to be worthwhile while still taking partime jobs in the skill that pays well but you don't like.

My life experience has taught me that if you want a challenging and rewarding career in tech you have to make some tough choices:

* Sacrifice high pay for rewarding work. There are lots of places that offer tough challenges for developers interested in doing original work but they, counter intuitively, tend to pay less. Such places are academic research, government (military, alphabet soup), NGOs, charities and so forth. Cutting edge games can be challenging development work but that industry tends to pay less there are so many young people eager to make games.

* You could step away from the day to day technical work to focus on strategy and emerging technologies. In the corporate world these people are called principles or senior principles. Your job is to advise management and communicate strategy. This is harder than it sounds because you be spending a lot of time outside of work performing continuing education and aggressively learning new skills that may not materialize into anything useful.

* You could look for a job at an early stage startup. The work is likely also challenging and original but expect to sacrifice pay for a tiny slice of equity that may not pan out. This is still technical and higher paying but you will be building anything.

* If you really want a rewarding career get into public education as a technology teacher. Be prepared for real world challenges earning less than an entry level developer.

> Any advice on how to avoid this CRUD work, which seems to be basically 99% of jobs on the market at the moment?

This is largely why I maintain my part time military job. When the corporate world has ground my soul into ashes I can recharge for a year in a foreign nation with more interesting people.

I would think you would do well at small companies or startups. You have more freedom to design the system there. Many big companies have overbearing policies or "cookie cutter" template architectures you have to follow.

In a smaller company you can also have more of an impact on solving whatever the business problem is. Selecting a company with interesting business problems could be good for you too (maybe fintech).

I know I am fed up with the big company politics/policies and boring business problems. I can't quit since I have a family to support. So I guess another piece of advice is to stay single so you have more freedom and options to change and move.

Try to learn more about industries that sound interesting to you, and meet people from those industries to learn what they do. Speaking with lots of different people and learning about what they do will probably help you figure out what excites you. Totally agree that you shouldn't work at a job that seems depressing, and we don't live in an age where you need to "pay your dues" and "work your way up" as a smart, confident young person anymore--unless you want to. It's up to you to find the right opportunities to go after, though, and that requires a lot of scouting.

Some options:

- Join a company that does something that challenges you

- Join a company with technology that doesn't challenge you, and increase its value by solving harder, and more valuable, problems, than they're doing. You can't do that if you quit after 3 months.

- Create your own company and work on hard problems

- Go into academia and work on hard paper problems

Not all hard things are useful, important, or valuable, and I wish you to find a place that does all. There's a difference between science and engineering.

Take some time off to learn yourself and your privilege

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