Looking for career advice | Hacker News Reader

Looking for career advice

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Hello HN, I am looking for some advice from you developers out there. I have been a hobbyist coder for about 10 years, and love it. Mostly I have written small stuff to solve a problem that I found challenging, or read about.

About 10 years ago, I was in school as a CS major and during the summer I somehow got side tracked into the film industry, and have been doing it ever since. I really hate it, and have been telling myself that I need to find something that I love doing. This isn't something that I've just come to relise, but have been thinking about for 2 years now.

So trying to keep this short, I am a 34y living in Los Angeles with about 1 year of CS schooling behind me. I have about 2-3 years of savings to live comfortably and am thinking about pursuing a career in development. I would like to think I have an intermediate understanding of C/C++ and PHP, and am working on Python.

Would anyone give me some advice on what the next step is? Do I go back to school and finish my degree, look for a junior dev position? I don't want to leave my current job with out some sort of plan and I figure here is the best place for advice.

Sorry for the long post, but thanks for reading! Any help is appreciated.

p.s - I really don't like HTML/CSS and reading some of the posts about interviews and the white board scare the out of me. I'm not good interviewing and would probably fail miserably even though I could solve most of the problems.

If you have 2-3 years of savings and are not risk adverse, I would find an issue, either in your current industry or out of it and develop a product for it. With that kind of runway you can develop several product therefore greatly increasing your chances of successes. I don't know what the demands are in your industry but development is not all glamorous, HN paints a rosy picture but that is because it is a certain segment of the industry. Just taking a job in the industry could place you in a job that is every bit as bad as your current one. There is a lot of ignorance of what developers do and a lot of that ignorance is willful. It can be a trial to put up with it at times. It is the reason you see a lot of freelancers on HN trying to make the transition to a product based company. If I had 2-3 years I personally would develop a product. There are plenty of good ideas floating around, pick one you like and start building it.

As for the whiteboard don't worry about them, I lock up on them too. There are good companies out there that know they filter out good candidates, so a lot of people are starting to look at what you have built, not biased trick questions on a while board. If you come across one, politely decline noting that it will not accurately reflect your capabilities and let them know if it is a necessity then they can conclude the interview and that you will not take offense. Interviews are a two way street, I get an uneasy feeling from organizations that rely on the whiteboard and feel that they build one dimensional development teams, as such I try to avoid them, and generally try to bring the interview to a close as quick as possible when I see that they rely on them.

I do not think college will help you. Put the effort into teaching yourself C/C++, PHP, and Python. You can get the books you would have to read while in school anyway.

Then, build a resume of products you have developed. If you have been able to make some cool ones on the side, go with those. If you have an idea for a bigger one, but do not have the time, then maybe live off those 2-3 years of savings for half a year and work on the project full-time. You will learn a ton working on the project, you might make a viable business, and you will add to your resume for getting a job.

Best of luck

I feel for you. Let's say that I am on the same boat right now and on the same stage of life. I am also looking for answers on the same question.

That said, I cannot give a good advice per se. But let me say this. Keep at it. Get involved with the developer community.

In fact, there is the SoCal Code Camp on January 28-29, 2012 at Cal State Fullerton. Check it out http://www.socalcodecamp.com/ . I will be there.

I'm interested in going to this - perhaps even giving a presentation. The website said it will be updated shortly. Do you have any information for this event?

Info is on the site: http://www.socalcodecamp.com/sessions.aspx

Thanks for the replies. I have thought a lot about spending some time trying to develop something for the industry. It is really surprising how bad some of the software is in film, it would be great to make something that is useful instead of everyone having to put up with the crap that is out there.

MarlonPro - I will be attending the code camp, thanks for that

Make sure to sign up for the FREE Geek Dinner after event's first day. You have to register on the event front desk early on Saturday. I guess there's only 100 tickets available for the Geek Dinner.

"It is really surprising how bad some of the software is in film"

I'd be interested in reading more about that if you want to go into more detail.

If you have the savings to live comfortably I would suggest you avoid a job. In almost all cases the ratio of awesome learning to repitition and compromise is tiny and it sounds like you want to learn how to do this profession well.

So some of the best practitioners do this for free - in open source development. Find a couple of established projects (mYbe in a domain you understand like film blender3d comes to mind) and join in. Progress from just compiling and testing the code others write to fixing one or two bugs (the time you are ready to contribute a bug fix is the time you look at a bug and say I know where that is failing)

from there most non-poinsonous projects will take you on -find a mentor in the project- does not have to be very formal - do things their way, their setup their indentation style, until you know why you will do it differently.

On the side set up and administer a real live service that has real live people using it. Could be a start up. Could be a saas for a local charity. The main thing is to get a feel for the problems of running a live service.

Do this for 6 months - year. Also exercise and eat well, you may as well. Check back here every few months and after six months, go look for jobs. You will be amazed how much less daunting that whiteboard.

Free advice - worth every Penny

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