Ask HN: What is the smartest career path to take? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: What is the smartest career path to take?

94 pointsbigJavaLava98 comments

I'm mid-twenties working as a Software Engineer. I'm still working at my first job out of college and making just about $80k. Not FAANG salary but supports my cost of living as of right now.

Currently, my job is very easy (mostly spikes and research) and extremely flexible. We basically spend time just researching the latest hypes in the tech industry and seeing if the company can offer products in the space.

As I said, it's easy, but also pointless and kinda boring at times. But I deal with it, nonetheless.

My question is what would the smart thing for me to do next? I'm still in the stage in life where I'm searching for "happiness and fulfillment" and want to try new things but I am also afraid of making dumb career decisions. Just for context, outside of work I mainly focus on my other interests (politics and government, filmmaking and socializing).

Should I:

1. Try to find a higher paying job? Bite the bullet and challenge myself to get a $100k salary job? I guess that if I'm going to be bored at work, I might as well be bored but making more. But I also know this will probably mean I will have to put in more work than I'm accosumted to. Also, I have a great work life balance that I would hate to lose. (I'm stricly 40 hours). But I'm also cautiously thinking how your earning potential lowers as you age.

2. Stay where I'm at and spend that extra time developing in the non-career areas I care about. I.E, getting more involved in my government and filmmaking stuff.

3. Start a business? Something I've spent the last two years researching and wanting to do, but I just don't have any ideas/problems to solve.

4. Something else?

Sorry if this is a dumb question. I wish someone would make a guide for young people titled, "how to suceed at your life."

View on HN

> But I'm also cautiously thinking how your earning potential lowers as you age.

It's not happened to me yet, my earning potential has only increased as I've gained more experience (41 now), especially since I went freelance.

I would say in your 20's is a great time to take risks. Usually doing this will give you great experience you can then apply throughout your life, too. For example:

- Work for a startup. Here you are on Hacker News! The pay won't be as good as a bigger company and equity probably won't ever pay out anything much, but you will learn a LOT if you choose to work for a half decent startup.

- Go freelance. This is how I've learned the majority of the technologies I've worked with. For the first 15 years of my career I mostly stuck to what I knew, after going freelance my skillset grew significantly due to working with various different clients with different requirements. Note that if you go freelance it will be hard to go back to working in permanent positions. The freedom and money is really nice.

Starting a business - (Assuming you mean "build a product") - I personally wouldn't recommend this unless you have a good idea; early paying customers; the ability to commit to it and execute continuously. It's the most difficult career path to take. IMHO it's worth waiting and gaining experience and seeing what else is out there first before diving in. It takes serious drive, tons of effort and some luck to be successful. I've released a few of my own products and nothing has been successful - becoming a successful freelancer was MUCH easier.

Take risks, meet people, learn plenty of new things. If you can combine your interests with your career it can be great but be careful you don't end up burning out on something you privately enjoy because of combining it with work.

Good luck!

I've been curious about the freelance route, but unsure what this really looks like in practice or if it's even possible for me to get into it.

1) How did you get started? Is it feasible for more junior engineers to get into it or not so much?

2) How do you find work consistently enough to make a living? What does the work often look like?

Not the OP but if you're interested in my take -- I've been freelance ops/devops in/around europe for around 10 years;

I would say it's not so feasable as a junior unless you really can hit the ground running which only comes with experience, at least in ops. Most clients expect me to be productive within about a week of landing if not less, otherwise they would have found a permie. They also expect senior freelance people in such a space to be making or helping to make a lot of decisions for them, which is hard to do until you've made enough mistakes to learn what not to do, instead of just knowing the latest doo-daa or other.

Finding work isn't hard, you register with a few agencies (e.g hays, linuxrecruit, etc etc and then they farm your CV out to their clients, and then you interview and start working.. I've never spent more than a week looking for a new contract)

As for the amount of work -- endless, at least in devops...

Currently I am working as a senior devops/sre for a startup, k8s, cloudy stuff, big springboot stack (50 or so services across 10 instances, etc) -- I do the same work as the full time staff, mgt treats me as slightly more senior/more votes than those because I am really, but you have to walk a bit of a political line sometimes.

Any questions feel free :}

How much can you earn as senior devops freelancer in Europe?

Have you considered relocating to the US?

I'm a devops contractor in the UK and looking at options to maximize income.

Around 100euro/hour - depending on the city.

Nah, quality of life wouldn't be there for me, personally.

London is still probably highest rates for devops in the EU, Munich/Frankfurt/Amterdam/Paris aren't far behind but the work is more boring, Berlin rates are less but everything is quite cheap..

I have a few questions. Are you a digital nomad? If you do tend to move around often, how does income tax affect you? How do you manage the stress or anxiety (if any) of perhaps you could say instability of your role not being permanent? What ways do you manage the client to step back a bit if they ask you to put in more hours than you’d like?

More of a contractor, I tend to have full time (8-10 hours/day) work with usually 6month+ duration.

I'm not a digital nomad, have a house and a child :}

No anxiety really, just keep some money set aside and after some years you sort of know if you'll be able to easily find a job or not.

In the absolute worst case, if I couldn't get another contract, I could always go perm, but I've not had to make such a decision yet.

Are you a freelancer or a contractor? I.e. are your engagements on the order of weeks or months/years?

> 1) How did you get started? Is it feasible for more junior engineers to get into it or not so much?

I got started with a combination of crappy freelance websites (I found some small assignments on elance etc), reddit/r/freelance, and had some small jobs for friends and previous employees. After that I found a great gig on Hacker News's "Seeking Freelancer" forum. Then I moved into longer term onsite contracts, hourly rates are a bit less flexible but you have more security and a more stable turnover.

2) How do you find work consistently enough to make a living? What does the work often look like?

As I said -- longer term contracts give you stability here. Other freelancers go for more lucrative short-term projects. There's lots of combinations. My first project was like 3 weeks, and I've been at my current assignment for almost 3 years now.

> my earning potential has only increased as I've gained more experience

I think the OP is referring to the sum earning potential across remaining years. At a certain point job retraining isnt worth it because the low number of remaining years results in a negative EROI vs maintaining the course.

I’d like to push back a bit on “work for a startup in your 20s.”

Sure, if you want to work at a startup, I would say early career is the best time to do so. Best case scenario, you learn a lot, your company has a successful exit, and you make some decent cash.

The other side of the coin is that for every well run startup where you can learn a lot, there are a bunch that are terrible, where you won’t learn as much, your stock options won’t ever be worth anything, you’ll be overworked, and you’ll overall end up behind where you would have been starting at a more established company.

My experience has been mostly the latter, so I’m a little biased here, but it seems like the default HN bias leans the other way, so I’m trying to counterbalance that. Yes, I did learn from my couple of startup tours, but I’m not sure if I became a better engineer as a result of working at those places. IMO, my time at larger, public companies has been more valuable to me in career terms.

100% Agree. My first startup job, I learned a ton but the second one was pointless. Target strartups with superstars - those who have a track record of winning. It makes a difference.

It's important to highlight the type of things you'll learn. I don't know if I ever became a better software engineer in a technical sense through working at startups that have any kind of struggle. Startups that are on a rocket ship might have time for building their employees or the money to hire employees who know how to write code well without supervision - but most don't.

The other aspect here is a lot of people have a different idea on what joining a startup is. I've heard of people saying, "Oh, I'm joining a startup!" And then it's Uber just before they IPO. Maybe technically Uber was a startup at that point but I've been at a seed stage company - they're not even remotely comparable experiences. I worry people who have only worked at startups with 10+ engineers, super engineering driven culture, and lots of funding are giving the advice of, "work for a startup! It's great!"

Most of the time - it isn't great. It's terrible and not being a founder is the #1 reason I never want to join a startup again. All the risk - none of the reward and none of the power. Fucking sucks.

Totally agreed. I've been at 3 startups. One was a 12 year old "startup" that was just a privately held business with big dreams and no follow through. The second was a later stage (series C or D, I believe) company where I did learn some things, but, not enough to make up for the below market comp and worthless options. The third was a series B startup that was much the same.

For an employee, whether they're looking to learn or earn, I think "go work at a startup" as a blanket piece of advice is a bad idea, unless they know how to spot the red flags a bad startup throws up. The earlier stage the company is, the more potential it has for both learning and earning. But, earlier stage bad companies haven't been weeded out as thoroughly as later stage companies. This is just survivorship bias, although, in this case, it works for you rather than against you.

You can always quit. I’ve spent time at startups and some have quite good, one fantastic.

The benefit is that in a small startup you get so much more exposure and are not siloed away.

That’s easy to say when you’re a bit established and sitting on some savings. It’s not so easy for someone starting out from college, or someone who, for whatever reason, doesn’t have the savings to do so.

Counterpoint to “more exposure and not siloed away”: this can easily lead to overwork, either self or externally imposed.

I think your 20s are actually a bad time to join a startup. Every dollar you earn in your 20s is worth more than a dollar you earn later in your life, because of compound interest. Financially, you're nearly guaranteed to make more money at a FAANMG, and you don't have to play the lottery or (generally) work crazy hours.

You might learn a lot by jumping into a startup, but your chances of failing are probably higher than if you start one 20 years into your career. The average age of successful startup founders is not in the 20s.

Amazon will make you work ridiculous hours.

This is a good other way to go, I've met 2 people who played the game this way. They became engineers at huge, kinda pointless, companies (Alcatell-Lucent) and achieved a decent but not spectacular position. Something akin to tech-lead. Leading a decent team, but not as a people manager.

Then they joined a not-gonna-happen startup (to do with optical fibers) as a CEO, investing something like $50k of their own money to get the position, later increasing their stake to $150k. If the startup is about to die this is not very hard. They had a plan to turn things around and in at least one case (out of 4-5 tries) it worked. This guy was then forced out of the CEO job, but he was certainly very well compensated for his efforts (triple digit millions).

Of course he did try that 5 times, and lost everything 4 times out of 5. Including years of work. It's not for the faint of heart.

The other one made out well as well on one of his past efforts that was taken over by a competitor for a very nice price, after which he left. He's now working on a company that I'm not really holding out much hope for.

> huge, kinda pointless, companies (Alcatell-Lucent)

Why is Alcatell-Lucent kinda pointless?

It's an ancient, huge, French-Swiss company. You can start working there, you can end your career there and nothing much will happen between the two. You'll never matter, you'll work on problems but nothing that makes a difference, you'll never be credited with anything, you'll never earn any real amount of money, and whether the page numbers in your design doc are correctly formatted will have double the career impact that the design itself has ... The only thing that matters to anyone at the company is how many years you've worked there or if you've invested large amounts of money in the company.

If you want your entire career to be exactly like, let's say, the first year of your master study at university, with exactly defined problems to be solved, then get a thank you, maybe a nice compliment if you've done exceptionally well, then to see your solution disappear and never even be used anywhere (and certainly not voluntarily by a customer) or if your family has enough money to build a house out of 100 dollar bill bricks, it's the perfect place. A place where people use extreme social pressure, even crimes, to get the slightest of advances within the company, because there is no future there. I would make damn sure all my interests lie outside of work though, even in that case.

You seem to be conflating joining a startup with founding a startup. I mean join one as an employee.

I also don't think you should try and exclusively maximize your dollar earnings in your 20's, personally. But it's just an opinion.

Some advice from my experiences.

First thing to realize is that you are already very successful in monetary terms. You're in a top percentile of earnings and have options open to you many people would dream of. You've got lucky!

Once you have accepted that, you need to work out what is driving you on because it is likely ego rather interest or passion or desire. It's about how you can demonstrate you are a success to some figure you have chosen to arbitrate your success - be that friends/family/organisation/other.

The smart thing to do is what you want to do and is bringing you closer to fulfilling you current life goals - and these will change.

Luck can turn bad very quick and go well - one career move ended up increasing my income massively - but my latest one due to bad timing with covid has left me unemployed and looking for work!

> Once you have accepted that, you need to work out what is driving you on because it is likely ego rather interest or passion or desire.

Well phrased. I agree 100%. I've spend considerable time in the past trying to get into FAANG companies before realizing I was chasing status and money more than I was chasing something I actually wanted to do.

A mental "metaphor" I use to avoid falling into that trap again is thinking about how most people don't really want to be rock stars. They just want to be famous and rich. Most people would hate practicing instruments for hours a day, touring in a bus all summer performing shows every night, dealing with record labels, etc.

Congratulations! You've got the fundamental building block of what I call "The Dev Lifestyle".

You can work PILLARS, CONTRACTS, and SIDE HUSTLES - mix and match to suit you.

Your PILLAR job is the one that provides a modest salary and very valuable benefits. It must not require many meetings and you need to be able to keep it with as little effort as possible, otherwise the rest of The Lifestyle becomes impossible. Don't take a management job there (more meetings). Keep it as long as you can.

Next, you'll want to start moonlighting as a consultant. This is your CONTRACT GIG. This will often pay MORE than your PILLAR pays you. Use contract gigs to develop a huge network of people over time who will hire you for yet more contract gigs. With the right accountant at your side, your overall tax rate for contracts (in the USA) will be ridiculously low, so you end up with even more in your bank account.

Along the way, you will get ideas for products or services. These are your SIDE HUSTLES. Develop and market them yourself. Push yourself to use new and interesting technologies in these endeavors. Eventually you might hit the jackpot and have a business that pays you enough to quit all other work.

Good luck!

Re tax rate, how does that work? What are you writing off to get a ridiculously low tax rate?

I was under the impression that overall tax is usually ~10% higher for contractors in the US.

Higher paying jobs don't pay higher for no reason. One of those reasons could be that you have unique skills worth paying for. Another reason is as compensation for squeezing every last hour of work out of you. Not saying you can't get a higher paying job and be happy with your work-life balance, but buyer beware when it comes to this. You might actually be in a good place in this regard.

If you start a business, you might get the opportunity to learn a bunch of things you never would have in a corporate environment, and if the business succeeds, you might have the time and money to do the other things on your list. If it doesn't succeed, you'll certainly have the time when you decide to shut it down.

Another option is to start a side business while working for your current employer, if your contract and legal environment will allow it.

Your mid-twenties are a great time to figure out what you want to be by the end of your thirties.

//Higher paying jobs don't pay higher for no reason

Completely disagree. there are software developers working so much and making peanuts and there are developers that know how to BS and work may be 1/5th and make thrice or 4 times the pay.

Completely disagree that higher paying jobs demand more.

True, but being able to BS is a great reason why people would pay you more.

True, but for every 10 jobs paying 80k, in probably 8 of them you can keep it to 40 hours strictly, whereas for every 10 jobs paying 150k, it's the reverse: in 9 of them, you have to work more than 40 hours a week. (Maybe the 1 other guy has a Harvard CS degree and can immediately pull up his LinkedIn inbox if his manager implies a threat).

There may be extenuating circumstances if, say, you work remotely from Nowhere, Alaska, so they can pay you less, or you work in a college lab where programmers-in-training are plentiful. But generally, those forces are pushing to equalize, across programming positions all across the country.

I worked a lower paying job at one point, and the truth is, at lower salaries, "well this is what you're paying me for" was kind of implied. Or maybe it's more accurate to put it in reverse: if your employer jacks up the workload, then employees will think, why don't I just get a 120k job, since it'll be the same amount of work, now? So employers at lower salaries have a strong incentive to be chill, just as employees at that level can have a chill lifestyle, as that's something employers are happy to make happen for lower costs.

I've worked $150k/year jobs, the expectations of work pace/output are implied, but completely there.

They'll pay lip service to mental health and work-life balance, but you'll see the real incentives in who gets bonuses/promotions and who gets "managed out".

Try to have a minor mental health episode in a tech company. Just try. Then tell me how long the line is at the unemployment office.

> Higher paying jobs don't pay higher for no reason. One of those reasons could be that you have unique skills worth paying for.

In tech, often the high pay comes from knowing the latest hottest tech. My devops friend is making 2x the usual devops pay only because he's competent around a combination of latest cloud and big data technologies.

People want different things. Worse, people want different things at different times. That makes it very hard to write "how to succeed at your life".

You're bored. I think that means that you're ready for a job that demands more of you than the one you're in. (Plus, that usually means more money.) Looking for a job with more responsibility might be your first move. (That doesn't mean that you necessarily have to switch companies. You can just ask your boss for more or harder work.)

But as you move to harder work, one of the problems is maintaining balance. You want work that demands more of you - but not so much that work becomes your life. That way lies burnout and depression, which are not what you're looking for.

> You want work that demands more of you - but not so much that work becomes your life. That way lies burnout and depression, which are not what you're looking for.

Yes, balance is key. I guess you can't have the best of both worlds?

You can't have all of both worlds. You can find a somewhat-close-to-optimal-for-you balance. It won't be everything you want, but it hopefully will be good enough.

You can definitely have the best of both worlds. People will tell you (or me here) that it's rare, etc, and maybe it is, but all you need is one. Keeping balance is not something you do once and then you are done, it is similar to, you are not a recovered alcoholic, you are a recovering alcoholic, because any day you can fall back. You don't have to say, I can either have a happy personal life or make money, you can do both.

I'm in my late 20s, and went through something similar when I left my first job a few years ago. I'm sure that has both positive and negative implications for my advice!

The book "So Good They Can't Ignore You" by Cal Newport was really beneficial for me to build a mental model about career growth.

In short, "career growth" is basically _building an asset_ and then _bartering that asset_ for things you want. So in your case, it's really important to understand two things:

1. What assets (career capital) do you have? e.g. Authority borne of experience, a history of demonstrating excellence (or at least good-enoughness), a good network/references, etc.

2. What do you want to barter those assets for? What kind of job do you want to have, ideally?

As an example, in my case, I felt my "capital" was fairly low -- I was still a junior developer. But, I really wanted to work remotely, and work-life balance is very important to me. So, I willingly accepted a pay cut to work from home. Then by building more capital over time, I've been able to raise my salary back to the original level, and above.

In your case, perhaps you should evaluate whether you have accumulated enough "capital" to "fund" a significant spike in salary, or not. (Chances are, if you've been working at a place for years, you have also made some demonstrable growth. If not, you might want to think about how to grow your responsibility at your current gig.)

I'm an example of your #2. I have a pretty easy and cushy 40-hour software development job, in a fairly quiet company and industry. I could be making more or doing splashier work at a FAANG, but I'm happy to compartmentalize software into that box, and spend the rest of my time on non-technical hobbies and interests.

Not everyone has to be a world-smashing rock star startup. Hacker News certainly has an exposure bias towards that, but there's absolutely nothing wrong with doing a mundane software job to easily pay the bills, while channeling your passionate focus elsewhere.

It's perfectly fine to have a wall between work and other interests. I rarely get interested in software for its own sake outside of getting paid for it (maybe a small personal project once every couple years), and conversely my other interests need to stay passions rather than trying to be leveraged into monetizing.

> I could be making more or doing splashier work at a FAANG, but I'm happy to compartmentalize software into that box, and spend the rest of my time on non-technical hobbies and interests.

Do you think FAANG people have no hobbies?

They are just like you and me.

Here are a few good starting points:

- https://pmarchive.com/guide_to_career_planning_part0.html

- https://blog.samaltman.com/how-to-be-successful

- http://www.paulgraham.com/hs.html

- https://twitter.com/naval/status/1002103360646823936

- https://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2012/12/18/your-money-or-you...

- What should I do with my life? Po Bronson [Book]

I recently re-read this article by Julia Evans: https://jvns.ca/blog/2018/09/30/some-possible-career-goals/

You might want to read it for inspiration.

> I'm also cautiously thinking how your earning potential lowers as you age.

Be wary of that thinking -- It is not your earning potential that wanes, but your chance of a huge startup exit. And aging doesn't mean you cannot try for those opportunities, it means older people have also seen that a good salary, with good savings, and decades of compound interest will still make you a multi-millionaire. But the thought of 20, 30, 40 years of watching interest slowly grow sounds horrible in your twenties. Yet once you've lived 20-30 of those years, it sounds like common sense. Many of us older folk choose to "only" be wealthy, not stinkin' rich, because we feel it is a better life than giving up your twenties chasing unicorns.

> how to suceed at your life.

Find something to do for work that pays decently and doesn't give you mental health problems. Do it well. Do it 40ish hours a week. And then put it away and go live "your life". Make friends/family. Enjoy hobbies. Go enjoy this world, and whatever interests you have in it. Nobody sits on their deathbed wishing they had worked more.

How do you define success for you life? Put differently, what do you define as The Good Life?

You have to define that metric for yourself. Nobody else can do that for you. That said, I can offer a personal illustration.

I was in an art-oriented career previously. I defined The Good Life back then as achieving prestige in my field of art. Several years in, I came to realize that, for myself, my definition of The Good Life had changed. It now included time to spend hanging out with and helping friends; getting to know my nieces and nephews; having time to pursue art that's meaningful to me without attaching my paycheck to it.

I've been able to make progress towards my personal definition of The Good Life by changing careers into tech where job security is more guaranteed than in the freelance art world, and where the jobs are interesting enough and pretty cushy. That's given me the financial freedom to have that balance in my life with time for friends, family, religious life, art, my spouse, and other things.

What is success to you?

That is a really good question. Honestly, I never really thought about it. Nothing outside of get a degree, get an apartment, and get a job.

I'll give a bit of a different perspective since I've never worked as a professional developer, unlike the majority of the folks here.

Don't be afraid to reinvent yourself in a completely different industry. I've changed careers three times. I worked as an engineer, then in energy finance, and now as a diplomat. In some cases, it meant a move up, sideways, or even a drastic pay cut and starting over at the bottom.

You'd be surprised how many industries just want people who are fast learners and are willing to put in the work to ramp up quickly.

Pick an industry you think makes a difference. I made my last career move at 37 with a hefty pay cut, and now I'm a lot happier.

In the end, you're not competing with anyone but yourself. You might as well pick something now that you think will meet your long-term goals. And if it doesn't work out like you thought, it's never too late to reinvent yourself.

As others have said here the answer is “it depends”. There is no best career path for the most part. There are certainly ways you can make more money and have greater job security. Most of the time job security and salary are at odds with each other.

Next you need to decide what you want out of life. Do you LOVE development and building software? Or is it something that you do because it pays pretty well? Do you want to travel and see the world? Do you want to work only enough to do the things you love? Do you want to build a company? Do you like managing people? Do you want to still be a developer in 20-30 years?

I don’t think this is a dumb question and I actually think that it’s smart to ask these kinds of questions. Unfortunately I can’t tell you what is best for you with out know more about you. (Even then I can just give advice based on my life experience which may or may not help you) I suggest finding a trusted senior person at your company and see if they will mentor you. If may help to see aspects of the business not related to development as well.

If you want to use salary-as-a-metric-of-success, your location is going to help put your situation in context. FWIW I've had super well paying jobs that had awesome work-life balance, and very bad paying jobs that had awful work-life balance. I think it's a false dichotomy, you can have both good pay and good life balance.

With that out of the way, "How" to achieve "more" depends a lot on your interests and life goals.

edit: I see that 7 and 10 months ago, you basically posted the same "Ask HN". I think you should change job, there's no reason to keep a job that bores you to death. There's no point in trying to learn to love your job, if you don't enjoy it, you don't enjoy it. Luckily as a software engineer, you're not stuck in there.

Now your problem seems to be that you don't know what to do with your life, and you feel that somehow you need to accept the routine of daily life to find happiness. You mentioned wishing you could be satisfied with the routine like others are. There's no point trying to fit someone else's enjoyment of life, you're not the same person. It's not true that this is the only way to enjoy life.

Again, I don't know your situation/location, so it's hard to put your situation into perspective. I'd just say, on the "how to live a happy life" side of things, that you need to figure out first why you're alive, what makes you wake up in the morning and decide that your life worthy of living. Somehow, by continuing to breathe everyday, you're making the active decision of being alive. Figure out what motivates this decision, and then optimize for it.

Personally, I've always thought that life is pointless, has no intrinsic meaning. It's like a video game, you can play it or not, and it won't change anything whether you do or not. However, there's reasons we play video games: they're enjoyable, something in them makes us feel satisfaction. In my personal life, I enjoy the idea of exploring and furthering humanity in the technological space, and that motivates how I govern my life, or at least which goals I pick for myself. It made me pick hobbies, such as sailing and fabrication/manufacturing, that help me live my goals. I've oriented my career choices in a similar manner too: in particular only working for remote companies. I've not always been happy, in the moment, with the job I was making, but it was usually the right tradeoff overall toward my longer term goals.

from what it sounds like, you have done 3-5 years at your current place (which is your first job out of college). Reading your post, it sounds like your job hasn't really given you a whole lot of proper software development experience (build out proper software systems, productionalize your product/solution and then do support once it goes live, etc.).

Frankly speaking, granted I don't know the exact nature of your work - but it seems like your years of experience won't really reflect quality of work expected from an engineer similar to your work experience (number of years).

It happens - I have been in similar situation at the start of my career (doing part-time MSc that took few years to complete).

My advice to you - since you haven't mentioned programming / personal dev. projects as your hobbies...likely this isn't a hobby/habit you will pick up soon so unless you are naturally gifted, I wouldn't bank on you landing a FAANG position (or a similarly high paying Dev job). Therefore, if I were you, if you have substantial savings built, pay off your debts (if you have any) and after that, either invest in real-estate (buy and then rent property) otherwise get training for some trades career where you can eventually have a shot at running your own company when you hit 40s (HVAC, plumbing, trucking, garage door installation, etc.).

Why do I say this? 10-15 more years down the road, your lifestyle and the mind-and-body would have changed. What is the guarantee you will still enjoy sticking around in IT given you already feel bored? Better build out something for yourself that is non IT related.

I would have advice you for something that involves government / filmmaking but those are activities that IMHO involves a ton of good luck for you to make anything significant from it.

I had a similar dilemma when I was your age. Mine was burn out / bored driven.

Someone asked me what would I regret not doing at the end of my life. When ever that would be. As is common wisdom we regret what we do not do, not what we choose to do.

So I quite my job and road a bicycle up the east coast for 6 weeks. Followed a year later w NZ and Australia. Then the UK ....

I look back and my traveling days and I think I'd be better off doing something else during that period.

It seems like traveling and adventuring has been glamorized by the media and people around me a bit much and I caught the bug.

Looking back, I would have preferred to spend more time at local gardens, participated more in neighborhood events, helped out local community more and got to know my neighbors better. These activities to build a deeper emotional connection with people around me would have helped my mental health tremendously back then.

I'm not saying I regret traveling, I'm saying that the main reason why I took time to explore the world primarily because of the glamor of it and me trying to chase the next crazy adventure, all the while contributing to global warming in my wake. Traveling is not for everyone and I hope fewer people give out a blanket `travel the world` prescription and more people are willing to admit that maybe traveling didn't do shit for their growth.

Don't you think that if you'd have done all those things instead you'd probably be saying now that you'd wish you'd gone travelling? ;)

Do both!

I know that's how the saying goes, but I don't think I would be saying now that I'd wish I had gone traveling if I had not done it. I'm pretty such I would not be wishing for traveling if I'm at the same state of happiness as I am now, and I could have reached the same level of happiness in life if I did not travel (possibly even earlier).

Traveling objectively made me worse off than if I had not done it.

i want to counter all the sensible people offering you to save money and such while you're young. let's say you want to spend a decade building your reputation, expertise, and saving money. and lets say you have to compromise in order to do this, meaning you'll be working at ok places but you won't care deeply for the work you're doing.

after about 4 years of that 10 year long stretch you're going to lose motivation/track of the grand plan and wonder what the hell you are doing with your life. if you ever get out of that depression you'll regret every moment you wasted on a plan that amounts to serving a decade of your best years in prison, so that you can come out the other end having forgotten what you were going to do, or if you do remember having lost all the enthusiasm and will to do it. not to mention you're likely to go through significant life events like meeting your significant other, breakdowns, etc.

humans are not timeless fixtures of character and personality. this fact is exacerbated by the accelerated rate of change in the world. you're not who you were last year, and 5 years from now the difference a year makes is only going to only grow larger.

do what you really want to do. do it now. do not ever compromise.

The career path that enables you to have the most fulfilling life.

You only get one life - if you're not spending it doing what you enjoy or are passionate about, you're wasting it. Decide what you want to do or accomplish with your limited time in this mortal coil, and then make a plan which allows you to meet those goals.

This decision is personal and exists entirely outside of the economy and your role in it. Your career only comes into play when you need to make money to meet your goals, then you have to figure out the balance between working and living and make sure that the work supports the living. The perfect career is one which directly supports your life goals by virtue of being paid to get the most out of life, by making a career out of something you're passionate about. Don't fall for the propeganda that would have you be satisfied with a corporate wage slave life simply because it "feels right". Become a corporate wage slave because it enables you to meet your goals, not because it is a goal in and of itself - but if you can manage it, try to skip or minimize the wage slave step and accomplish your goals directly.

In short, think about your life before you think about your career, and use your conclusions to frame your thinking around your career.

To put it bluntly:

How can research be easy? If it is easy, aim higher.

If you want to start a business but you haven't had an idea in 2 years even though you are paid for having ideas, that's a problem.

Being a business insider is the best place to come up with ideas. Maybe you can ask for a temporary transfer out of your research position onto the production line or into sales? Experience the problems. Then the ideas come by themselves.

Bring one idea to market and you have the reputation to be a freelancer or a founder.

I too am mid-twenties and software engineer. I've actually been thinking about much of the same thing.

Personally, I'm currently focused on developing my self-awareness by attending therapy, journaling on childhood issues and current emotional reactions, and meditating. I found even as an "adult" in a "real job" I have trouble asking for help, writing clear documentation, feeling confident to take on larger roles and digging into self-awareness has helped that a lot. See @healthygamer_gg on twitch if you're interested.

While doing all this, I realized what lead me to software was being good at the math and science in school, and this is a well payable stable job. Growing up somewhat poor, this seemed great and I loved the praise of doing good job and getting rewarded with bonuses/promotions. I began to see I depended on these to feel good but as I realize this, I want to get more out of life. And so, I find myself in a similar position to you, not really knowing what to do.

So, I suggest this: reflect on what you value, try to create and put something out there (maybe make a 5 min film on a recent local policy and how it affects your local community), develop skills and have fun, ask yourself who are and and why are you this way; who do you want to be? HBR's "Working Identity" posits that you can't know only by introspection, you have to also just try things out.

I'll finish off with this: "Know thyself" -Seneca. Perhaps there's no manual because the act of looking is the task required. That said, I find philosophy and psychology to be the closest proxy :P

A. Go work at a growth stage startup, i.e. Series A or close to it. You can commit really hard to work here. Double down whenever you can. Parlay that into bigger roles later. Crucially, aim to grow continuously here, you're trading off cash for growth so you have to get the growth.

B. Work at a FAANG. You'll get serious dollars. Use that to build long runway. Run company later or just FIRE yourself to peace.

Don't waste time on rinky dink stuff right now.

I don't think its possible to write a guide on how to succeed at life as peoples definitions of success change throughout their life! Some pointers for you based on what you have said:

1. Its nice to be financially well off & saving puts you in a better position. So regardless of whether your on $80k or $100k get saving.

2. Your in the bracket of people who likely wont have an issue earning, congratulations. People in this bracket will rarely if ever look back on a period in life and say "I wish I worked more", esp if you follow 1. So if you have any constructive hobbies outside of work then give them your all. If you have anything you want to try, eg going pro with the photography (never works but fun trying) or politiking (works but you'll end up a politician) nows the time! Dont just smoke weed and play games though.

3. I would recommend against starting a startup unless you really really like building stuff, dont mind crappy jobs and comfortable with a lot of sacrifice. Im a founder and happy, but its most definitely not for everyone.

4. If your looking for v. large salaries down the line optimise wholly for experience in your 20s. It's only when you get into the executive bracket that salaries go completely crazy, they are measured for all technical roles and demand/supply changes. Im not versed on the tech-speciality route, but I do remember high-paying specialities from telco in the 90s all but disappeared now (though a lot of people retired young from them)

Anecdotal, but I spent my 20s not working very hard. Didn't focus on career at all, however was very focussed on "learning". Ended up starting late and overtaking most peers, I think my diverse experience helped with perspective. Made me less institutionalised. Ive seen a few people with similar routes (20s travelling, yachting, building etc etc).

Having gone through my twenties and seen many bright cs grads fail at starting a business, I think the best option is to find a role where upward movement is attainable every couple of years and attrition is relatively low. I cannot tell you how envious I am of people who did worse than me in college but are DevOps managers or app sec managers.

There is no one set formula. Everyone here can only share what’s worked or not worked for them, and that may or may not work for you.

My personal anecdote: I’ve always tried to do interesting things with meaningful impact while staying away from dark pattern systems (ad tech, marketing tech, surveillance tech) as they are detrimental to society at large. This has led me to spend more time on safety critical systems. Also, I prefer to research algorithms, techniques and tools that other engineers can use to deliver products. I try to write code that other engineers will use.

My choices have led me to enjoy high autonomy at the price of salary, which is about adequate at best. That’s the price of the moral high ground.

It may be that what’s bothering you is the lack of impact. It seems that most of your research doesn’t lead to products, and the market share of the products also sounds fairly niche.

Perhaps doing the same role at a large corporation with a large client base will scratch the itch. Govt. is also another choice. Policy impact can be massive. Your research will be more focused on tech that actually has a chance of being useful to the business and some of the code you write will end up in a production system. Now, this will likely still make you less money, sometimes far less, than the folks in operations, basically those in the line of fire responsible for ensuring continuous operation. You could go work for them instead if money is more important.

That’s the fundamental tradeoff: autonomy or money. It’s entirely up to you to decide which is worth more to you.

I won’t jump into opening your own business because that requires a completely different skillset, and frankly it’s very difficult to succeed if you’re not inherently a people person. It would only really work if you have a unique skill catering to a dedicated, pre-made market. Every other type of business seems to require a lot of people-handling, and overall is the least autonomous of the three. The client is always your boss. Ergo if you have many clients, you have many bosses. Of course, giving people exactly what they want can make you a billionaire, so there’s that tradeoff again.

1. Work for a FAANG for 15-20 years.

2. Manage your personal finance wisely.

3. Don't get a divorce.

4. Retire.

On startup - are you married or have other obligations. It doesn’t get simpler to try the more complicated your life is (unless the partner is all-in supporting you for a few years)

On ideas - have you seen a product space that looks promising but your employer does not have solutions or has passed on it?

Quality of Life and Startup Life are not likely to coexist in real space. It’s jumping into a pit without a parachute. There may clouds or rocks on the way down.

If you want to make more and cruise, consider older/stable tech where the workforce is aging out but new tech applies (Kubernetes exists on mainframes, but those people are 60).

All of your options are very good ones, so you likely won’t be able to come to a decision by simply thinking about it and getting advice.

Take concrete steps in a promising direction and judge the results along the way.

For example, if you want to pursue a higher-paying job:

* Do interviews at big tech companies. Talk to the people who work there and really learn what it’s like to work there.

* Visit cities like SF, NYC, and Seattle, meet local people, and see if you would love to move there.

Same goes for the other options. Spend some time working for free with someone who has a startup idea and see if you like it. And so on.

My best suggestion is to develop another skill that could be distantly related to the skill you already have. In my case, before I retired I was good, not great at circuit design and was good, not great at developing firmware in C. With those two skills, I did not go unemployed. As far as boredom goes, most professions/vocations have long periods of boredom. I once asked a helicopter pilot if he ever got bored. His reply was that flying helicopters entailed long hours of complete boredom interspersed with moments of shear terror.

OK, you've got 'personal" happiness, and found it lacking, perhaps you need to expand your goals... Have you considered public service? Forgo the work you enjoy and the money you can make and go into politics, see if you can do something to make your town a better place. It need not become a career but you might well be able to do some good in a few years, and you'd certainly learn new things even in a few months.

People are happiest when their needs are met, where they can self-actualize, help and work with others. There are a lot of options these days as virtually ever industry needs software.

With respect to starting a business, it sounds like you have a role where you analyze the latest tech trends and to see if your company can use them. That skill is valuable and you could do that work as a consultant for other companies etc... That is one startup path. As you gain experience and clients, some product opportunities may arise. But it might be boring though if you find your current job boring. I can tell you though that the big consultancies charge big bucks for whitepapers and research into the current market leaders etc...

If you want to continue with a software career in politics and film making, then I would advise you to work in those areas to find the market you could develop software for. Is that something you want to do? What do you find interesting about those fields? In film making there are a lot of custom software pipelines for rendering etc... For politics, I don't know. I imagine there is some push for data driven politics but is that viable.. no idea? Maybe going back to school to study public policy or politics is a way to go. Maybe join a political campaign. There seems to be a lot of activity around FB ads and data analysis etc... So some of the tools you research now could be useful in political campaigns. Keep in mind that political campaigns have limited lifespans so you might want to combine that work with consulting work.

Also, it's your network that is going to get you your next opportunity. You get a network by working with other people. What field do you want that in? This is one reason why people dislike working from home because these opportunities become more limited.

This is one of my favorite videos about choice. It’s a couple snippets of Alan Watts and audio from Mr. Nobody. All with nicely edited video clips from here and there. I think it related to nonduality. That all options are correct, when you think about it or frame it a certain way: https://youtu.be/aGpyjeq93K8

I don't think anyone can define what it means to "succeed at your life" other than you.

Is more money important to you? It's OK if it is. From your #1, it doesn't seem like it is that important.

Everyone has a different meaning for success and everyone has a different path to it. What makes you happy? What do you wake up excited to do?

IMO the smartest thing you can do early in your career is get enough exposure to figure out what you're really good at. In my case, working for a startup for a few years exposed me to all parts of the business, from configuring modbus connections to making product decisions and managing a team. Some of these things sounded interesting until I was working on them every day; others seemed boring until I really dug in. In any case, I came out of it with a clear understanding of which career path I wanted to pursue, without all of the what-ifs that come with a lack of exposure.

If you find your niche, the money will come. If you find your niche, the fulfillment will come. I wouldn't recommend chasing either until you have a sense of what kind of work makes you feel competent and accomplished at the end of the day.

It's not true that you have to loose work life balance at the higher paying companies.

Speaking as someone who's worked at both Microsoft, Google, and Stripe your work life balance is completely up to you (Amazon is an outlier)

The average engineer at all those places has a decent work life balance, and in fact from what I saw working longer hours did NOT correlate strongly with improved career outcomes.

The only exception to this is that some of the better managers I saw tended to spend more hours working. But I think that came more from their ambition than an innate requirement of their positions: They wanted to keep going up the ladder so they kept trying to take on more and more responsibilities. Other managers I had who weren't as ambitious kept a good work/life balance and were still happy. Again, it's up to you.

If I were in my mid-20s and not married, here's what I'd do:

- Work like crazy to get a job at one of the big-bucks mills

- Live in a bare-bones apartment, sharing rent with others

- Rack up a big pile of cash, invest it in Boglehead fashion

- Work like that for 10 years, then go do whatever you really want to do

If you don't somehow die early, it should have paid off.

Good luck to you.

Few random thoughts:

1. Most people’s answers to questions like this tend towards “Here’s what I did, you should do it, too”

2. If you want to have a family in your 30s, you might feel a strong pull to optimize for money then. So optimize for learning and fun and risk in your 20s.

3. Working at (effective) larger organizations is nice training of best practices, process, communication, and professionalism

4. Working at a larger organization yields a big network that you can pull on for the rest of your career for interesting opportunities

5. Working at small startups is nice training for hustling, getting stuff done, and learning a lot by dint of doing a lot

6. Doing your own startup is #4, only moreso.

7. The best financial return is generally a pre-IPO that looks very likely to go public or reach liquidity soon. They tend to pay closer to market salaries and hand out equity relatively generously (ymmv)

This is all solid advice, I would probably add though that in your 20s you might want to set a time limit of a year and half to any one job, as soon as things get comfortable you should be looking for something new.

I had a lot of different jobs in my 20s and they all helped me become a better engineer, if I had stayed at one of the first ones (which was probably the most fun I had at work) then I wouldn't be where I am now..

Alt; land a gig at a consultancy or something doing some presales engineering stuff, you'll do an insane amount of weird things there for lots of different clients but have the security of a longer term position I guess.

Curious about your experiences as an early developer myself, any way to contact you?

Not really, I like to keep my HN account sep from reality. Happy to reply on here though :)

No problem.

What different roles did you do? I'm a software engineer (new grad), and have been thinking of switching roles to learn more, i.e sales engineering. How did you make the transition?

I started out as a C dev, then moved to ops, then consulting (infra, etc -- pre cloud), then devops style work (embedded with dev, cloud ops, automation etc), spent a while doing presales for a consultancy setting up CI/CD stuff POCs..

I have a lot of friends that I grew up are perfectly fine with just working--took a similar-sounding job to you out of college, bought a house, had kids, and really enjoy it.

Personally, I get bored easily. I took a similar job to you out of college but used all my spare time to start building my startup. As soon as I had a thumbs up from an investor, I quit my job--in retrospect, very prematurely--and went all in. It turned out to be a good overall career move as I found out what I liked and didn't like by doing literally everything in my startup--sales, software, hardware, you name it.

Youth is an advantage, as you have no responsibilities, and can do whatever you want, so take some risks if you want to. The last thing I wanted to do is wake up when I'm 60 and wish I had done X, Y or Z.

As someone who is older, and spent much of their 20s working on their career, I regret that I hadn't spent more time on my personal interests when I was young. If I had it all to do over again, I would spend less of those years trying to climb the ladder as a Software Engineer and more of my time writing and performing music.

I'm certain I'd still be working in tech today, some 30 years on, but I bet it would have been a lot more fun to have been in a band and had a serious musical hobby when I was in my 20s, rather than in my late 40s.

I found useful general career advice on https://80000hours.org which I can highly recommend to study.

Seconded 80000 hours. Great pragmatic advice, but it really is geared toward a certain mindset. Many developers are in the required headspace, but not all of them.

Listen to Naval Ravikant. He has a great Joe Rogan interview or you can listen to his podcast. Each podcast episode are short 1-3 minute bits of wisdom. Naval talks at a high level on how to achieve the trifecta of what most people want: health, wealth, and happiness/peace. These are the three things we need in the modern age to be free.

Does your family have a lot of money?

Yes: Do risky things that offer a high reward.

No: Do stable thing that offer good constant pay with sensible career path.

Don't do something until you are burnt out.

Do something that helps people in a way where you can receive their gratitude.

Time to go for FAANG and 4X that TC

I’m curious about earning potential lowering as you age. When does that kick in? I’m almost 50 and just got a 15% raise to about 150k. Plus I get a 3% cost of living increase every year. From what I can see my salary is just going up.

Have an exit strategy. You'll get to a certain age where you're too expensive and the level of experience can be bought cheaper and younger. My real advice is to be debt free by 40.

Your job sounds interesting, would you be interested in chatting about it?

my 2 cents: do this: "spend that extra time developing in the non-career areas I care about. I.E, getting more involved in my government and filmmaking stuff."

Your life will be judged by what you have done for others.

> I wish someone would make a guide for young people titled, "how to succeed at your life."

There is no universal "win at life" thing. You've been fed a stream of broadly capitalist rhetoric that you need to earn more and consume more. They don't have any answers to "succeeding" or being happy -- they just want you to buy another luxury vehicle or a house you can't afford.

Don't get me wrong, nice things are nice -- nothin wrong with having a Lexus -- but you're the only one who gets to choose "how to succeed at life."

When you're 80 years old and you're explaining what you did during your life to your kids/friends/nursing home attendants what would you want to tell them?

It is not a dumb question, it is a question everyone in their 20's should be thinking about. Not surprisingly though, it doesn't have a "right" answer as there are different answers for different people.

In my personal experience being 'bored' is a huge red flag for me. When I'm bored I don't do my best work, and I don't engage strongly with the team. Thus someone managing me would get the impression that I'm not very capable.

So instead of an answer I'd suggest an algorithm to use to guide you in your career choices. It goes something like this:

Ask yourself, what parts of this job give me satisfaction?

There are different ways to measure that, perhaps the easiest is to look at the past few projects you have worked on and write down what was your favorite and least favorite part of that project.

Understand that "writing software" is a skill or a trade that you apply to different problems. A woodworker that applies their skill to building houses might see themselves as a home builder, or one who applies their skills to making kitchen cabinets as cabinet maker.

Some people find pleasure in the finding of algorithms and efficiency, some like to dive into how software is created (tools), and still others enjoy specific domains such as databases, or accounting, or operating systems.

So step 1 of the algorithm is to find the parts of your job that bring you joy. It will also help you find the things you dislike the most about writing software.

Step 2 then is to invest time in mitigating the things you don't like about writing software and to start focusing on companies or roles that are more focused on the things you love about writing software.

When I joined Intel out of college I had a co-worker who had started the same time I did who was a software engineer. They found they really liked writing accounting software (they wrote their own money manager for CP/M) they left Intel and went to work for a company called PeachTree that did accounting software and loved it. Another co-worker at Sun who started out writing software but found they really enjoyed the planning and project management aspects rather than the coding aspects, so they went into project management instead. Both examples of people examining what they liked about their job or skill and then investing in doing more of that.

To your point 1) ... you mention the 'strictly 40 hours', and that is possible in any job, you just have to stick to it. Others may chide you for it, or be jealous, but it's a life choice that you get to make. Managers who don't respect it are not worth working for.

And "earning potential lowers as you age" this is only true if you don't grow your skillset with age. You can also find yourself in a unique skillset that grows in value with age. So basically it isn't a given. That said, its always a smart move to live well within your means and bank the excess for later.

> Step 2 then is to invest time in mitigating the things you don't like about writing software and to start focusing on companies or roles that are more focused on the things you love about writing software.

Unfortunately, in my case, those roles are reserved for people much smarter and credentialed than myself.

Obviously I don't know anything about your specific situation so humor me if I'm being dense okay?

How exactly are the roles "reserved" ? Do you live somewhere that has more of a patronage mode of filling roles or one where it's more merit based?

For example, one of the engineers I knew at NetApp came to work in the US from Mumbai because they could not advance as a software engineer without a degree from one of the "ITS" schools (they went to a second tier school). In the US that wasn't a problem, in India it was. Their solution was to change countries (as hard as that is).

If that is not the case, are you constrained in some way from upgrading your credentials to the ones you need?

I have also observed that smaller companies are more focused on who can do the job rather than their credentials. Sometimes moving to a company that needs your skills more than they care to look good on paper might be worth looking into.

Eh, part of it is just that "the things I love about writing software" just aren't very important or in demand in a business setting. There certainly are positions I think I would enjoy, but they are fewer in number most of the positions prefer people with graduate degrees (I know not to put too much trust in job listings, but some domains do tend to be more strict on that sort of requirements, whether it be a culture thing or otherwise) and I never went to school at all.

> If that is not the case, are you constrained in some way from upgrading your credentials to the ones you need?

Money, and to a lesser extent time. I can't be considered a resident of the state I reside in "for tuition purposes" at least for a couple years, so there's no in-state tuition for me. On top of that I make enough money not to qualify for any aid, but not enough to fork out nearly six figures in a reasonable time. I could maybe pull out private loans, but for just an undergrad degree, it honestly doesn't feel worth it.

> I have also observed that smaller companies are more focused on who can do the job rather than their credentials. Sometimes moving to a company that needs your skills more than they care to look good on paper might be worth looking into.

Yeah, I'm not fully given up quite yet, hell several years back, I didn't think I would ever get a software development positions period, but I managed to get in.

Study ayurveda, meditation, yoga and body building etc.

Then help and teach others.

what do you want to do?

Not a dumb question at all. I am 46 now and am a Senior SRE at at large company here in the valley and have been where you are, I went the startup route for a while but in the end this is a better fit for me.

There is an old saying that "someone who doesn't like to talk about their work, hates it." If your free time is not involved with what you do at work then you may be in the wrong profession or, you may have not had a chance to marry the two. Filmmaking and government are both GREAT areas for tech!

I used to live in LA and know a lot of people in the movie industry who work in computers there and make a very good living. It's not just VFX folks but also game companies and all the support that goes with media, from websites, pipelines and advertising. There is a ton of ways to be in tech/programming and work in film or game industries in LA or New York. Same goes for politics, except that is going to be more limited to Washington DC (which is surprisingly a great place to live). In DC and the surrounding areas like Maryland is where all your tech folks at a multitude of government contractors, lobbyists, data collection and campaigns (as well as security).

If it is just about money and if you want to stay a programmer in regular tech then my advice in answer to this is; challenging yourself is always the best/better option unless you are explicitly taking a break. If you want to advance in your career and not stagnate, if you want to not be bored then you need to challenge yourself at every step. If this is not possible in your job, find a new job. Finding a new job is easier than you might think, every company is hiring programmers, data science, large data, reliability people even in the middle of a pandemic. Most of those companies will move you to one of the hubs of tech. Get that book cracking the coding interview, do practice interviews online, read all the cheatsheets for interviews people have on github, contribute to opensource, write tutorials on Medium and Github pages and try to land a job in Silicon Valley, you will make money and live in a pretty place and if you are careful with money you can retire early. (all the FIRE kids are doing it)

Figured I would toss that out there.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com