Starting over when you think it’s too late | Hacker News Reader

Starting over when you think it’s too late

theatlantic.com

117 pointspseudolus31 comments

I am not sure I want to start over in that I want to change profession. I love coding - have done so for nearly thirty years now and cannot see myself stopping even in retirement (I do see software as a form of literacy) but would I like to work in different domains - yes. Write code for non-profits ? yes. In different parts of the world with different people? yes

That kind of start over I do want. The give it all up and become a landscape gardner ? Not really, because although I would enjoy it, I know in six months I would be trying to use code to solve landscape gardening problems :-)

For me, I'd love to have the freedom to work on what I find technologically challenging or important. It's been a few years since I really felt invigorated by my work. My pay is "good", but my work is boring/complicated/messy/uninspiring (typical "keep the lights on" work). Some days, I feel like I jumped back ten years in my career. I've tried to drive inspiration and challenge within my work, but it's often met with silence from my team — I feel alone and unsupported, yet my team would wholeheartedly claim otherwise.

Check out software research engineer positions at the national labs, universities, or UARCs. Pay isn't FAANG tier, but it's usually comfortable and you get to constantly work on new tech

A lot of those presumably require doctorates however.

Not for the software work. In fact, some will give you time to pursue graduate degrees

Maybe landscape gardening needs software solutions, who knows. Optimization of irrigation, planting, taking soil readings, understanding the binary language of moisture vaporators...

Combine your love of coding with landscaping. That's what I'm doing with food now. Twenty years in tech, now I'm doing food and drink marketing - with tech.

There are also a number of companies doing things like computer vision to optimize crops, robotics for automating vertical farming, etc.

Iron Ox comes to mind: https://ironox.com/

Also https://farming-revolution.com/en/

Bob Ross of code? Iñigo Quilez videos.

I built a garden reticulation system using a Raspberry Pi Zero W, a relay board and 12v solenoid valves bought off eBay, and integrated it with HomeKit for automation. Compared with what’s on the market, it’s easier to use and cheaper.

I know that’s not what you mean but maybe a hobby like mine would help?

If you are serious about writing code for non-profits, you might be interested in places like Zuri Group (https://zurigroup.com/) or BrightVine (https://www.brightvinesolutions.com/). I am in that space as an independent consultant, and it can be really rewarding.

There are options for switching to the public or non-profit sectors if that's what you are after. In the US Code for America has since 2011 run yearlong partnerships with cities (mostly) to tackle entrenched problems with tech-industry style innovation and processes. Many other national programs have also been launched around the world under similarly named "Code for X" names.

In the US there are also many avenues for contributing at the state or federal levels such as 18f, US Digital Service, Defense Digital Service, and so on. The UK has the Government Digital Service,

If none of those seem right to you, perhaps a stint in academia would appeal more? The demand for research software engineers is skyrocketing, even though the pay being offered is not. Anyone with experience willing to tolerate a pay cut ought not to have much of a problem finding a position (and field) that suits them.

The article talks mostly about being self employed.

I made a career transition. The hardest thing for me has been the constant comparisons my brain does. Some examples below, it’s exhausting. The best advice I have is to prepare for it, and know what will work for you. For me, it’s been reminding myself of why I made the shift, and to focus on my growth path…have I continued to learn and grow, at the pace that’s right for me?

Person 1 just got the promo I’m working toward…and they’re x years younger than me.

My mgr is 3 levels above me, but only x years older.

My friends stuck with one path and are further ahead / making more money

Etc

Yeah, I worry about this a lot, honestly. Perhaps it's my biggest mental block for taking the plunge and changing careers into software.

I'm a senior engineer, but doing something very niche that is only software-adjacent. There's definitely a very real feeling of being trapped. If I transition, it seems I would almost necessarily take a pay cut, even though I might enjoy the new work more.

Possibly it would work out better financially in the long run, but it's very hard to get over that initial financial activation energy.

The only saving grace is that software salaries are so ludicrous that if I do transition, the cut to joining at a junior level would probably not be too bad for me. I can only imagine what it's like for folks going the other direction.

My friend tried to get me to mine Bitcoin. I was worried my gpu would die, so I didn’t. He’s a multi millionaire now.

The key to happiness is to not compare yourself to others. Everyone has their own path.

Easier said than done, but it’s a habit that you can consciously work on. Eventually it becomes automatic.

Further, there were other "BTC millionaire" offramps not limited to Mt. Gox or the landfill HDD guy.

I like "The only person you should compare yourself is the person you were, yesterday."

I've had four careers. Three of them were tech/tech-adjacent but while there was sort of a natural path through them, they were all pretty different from each other. (Product manager/industry analyst/outbound marketing for lack of a better term.)

If you're tired of what you're doing, there are often adjacent jobs that are a change of scenery but still take advantage of many of the existing skills and industry knowledge you've built up.

I did a career change after age 40. I was a network engineer (i am generalizing a bit).

I did a boot camp, learned to code, very happy with my career now.

I find that most people aren’t willing to do what needs to be done to get what they want… and they often overestimate what it takes / the impact of failure.

If you have a family, house, etc. it can make you more risk-averse if you don't have a substantial amount of savings.

That said, if you are smart and motivated, re-skilling for an in-demand high-paying field is pretty low risk. It's the people who try to jump into something in a very competitive field, like owning a restaurant, with no prior experience, that can end up worse off.

No doubt on the responsibilities. They are real and there’s a lot of pressure for stability from them.

I had all those things.

For me it was sleep, family responsibility, camp / coding, family responsibility , coding late at night, sleep…. and repeat.

If you are super smart, well-connected, and ambitious like the lawyer mentioned in the article, then transitioning to a related high-verbal skill, like writing, should not be too hard. If you are in 'sales' , then it will probably be harder.

>transitioning to a related high-verbal skill, like writing, should not be too hard

Except that writing, as anything more than a hobby business (unless it supports some other activity), is a real crapshoot. The person in the article wrote a bestseller--which does seem to be fairly well known--and that's really hard and hardly something you can just plan to do unless you're already a name for some reason. And it's reasonable to wonder if, even given a best-seller, they're making as much as they did as a lawyer.

None of this isn't to say it wasn't the right move for her. But it was almost certainly a net negative expected value move for just about anyone even if a few win the lottery.

I have a hard time taking advice from someone who starts with such a broken premise: She's looking for something external like her job to make herself happy before she'll invest deeply in it... rather than realizing it's the other way around. Investing greatly and making progress on something, combined with gratitude will make us happy.

Some from column A, some from column B. If you are miserable in a bad situation, you can't just conjure up happiness. Sometimes external things might be the problem, or the solution.

Viktor Frankl begs to differ, but perhaps he's just an outlier

Would love to but feels recklessly risky from a financial trajectory point of view.

Doing pretty well on a finance path and there is no guarantees I’d land anywhere near on a tech route in terms of pay even if tech nominally pays well. Especially with no tech cv and no tech formal education.

What about when other people think it's too late?

That's something entirely different to overcome.

So hard to leave tech when you make like 150-200k for doing a few code change support etc.

Imagine taking career advice from 20-something insulated out-of-touch Atlantic staff writers and interns.

"Please don't pick the most provocative thing in an article or post to complain about in the thread. Find something interesting to respond to instead."

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

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