Comment by xtracto | Hacker News Reader

Comment by xtracto | Hacker News Reader

I strongly relate with this article. Being also in my 40s (but married with no kids) I am at a point in life where I am almost financially independent. I've got a bunch of equity from good startups (which will likely exit in the next year or two at about $500m to $1B mark, giving me a bit of cash) in my pocket and a job that gives me huge freedoms doing fun stuff (first time I do Machine Learning, Graph databases and neural networks for a straightforward application that is making people happy!).

But... I want to build my own startup. I don't really care about being solo, and actually I subscribe to Jack Ma's [1] ages' principles: I want to empower young people with my skills. So I joined a pair of young(er) guys building a startup, asked for some equity and cash comp, and next January will start building it. What I really wanted to do is get into Health Tech, but I've got a "curse" of having a strong background in FinTech. Although it pays very good, I am in a privileged position of not needing the money, and I'm in this age where "making a positive impact in the world" has way more weight (granted, I have this luxury given my current financial status). It also helps that I live in a cheap country with acceptable socialized health, so I don't have to worry about that (too much).

No point in my rambling sorry, I guess I just wanted to put it out there.

[1] https://www.knowol.com/knowledge/jack-mas-success-advice-all...

Another idea you may find interesting: InfoSec. Some of my friends who were looking beyond engineering said "Your Machine Learning is boring. But InfoSec is a very diverse landscape, hard to get bored".

I did InfoSec after my post-exit sabbatical and I found it too lonely. I was good at it (hobbyist decompiler my whole life), but the loneliness was a killer and I'm looking for team dynamics as my #1 factor for the next thing I do.

What kind of InfoSec role were you doing? I sometimes find team dynamics too draining :)

Vuln research - source and binary. Team meetings once a week and... nothing else.

I agree with your friends: machine learning is boring. At the ground level it is basically fancy ETL. I think it would be a gross mistake for schools to encourage undergrads to make a career out of ML (masters and PhD level stuff is hopefully better). InfoSec on the other hand is dynamic, even in the trenches, and is something that should continue to be in high demand for the coming decades.

Is it a good time to get into it now though? I would've thought InfoSec roles are first on the chopping block when budgets get squeezed in a tech downturn.

Maybe you're right, I'm not sure.

Healthcare money seems to be mostly around billing. Ways to increase billing mostly.

I’ve found that you need to get as much done as possible early on. Once you get to certain point HIPPA will drive all business decisions. Mostly by making people terrified of making changes and causing a violation.

Source. Been in industry off and on.

Would love to find a way to help regular people diagnosis problems better. If you go into any chronic illness forum. You see tons of people asking questions on symptoms, test results, doctors etc.

I constantly see people that have textbook perfect cases of some condition. But doctors routinely dismiss it. Or won’t order tests or ignore tests or don’t use correct tests.

> I’ve found that you need to get as much done as possible early on. Once you get to certain point HIPPA will drive all business decisions. Mostly by making people terrified of making changes and causing a violation.

Sounds pretty similar to my FinTech experience: PCI, SOC2 and ISO27001 or ISO37001 will drive companies into inaction.

Oh crud. Soc2 is horrific. All fun stops when company starts the process.

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