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Comment by bearjaws | Hacker News Reader

This is really the best career advice.

I was fortunately able to leave a terrible job 2 years ago and immediately had contract work, now I run my own business and get constant referrals from my network. I make more than ever, have incredible work-life balance, and for the most part love what I do.

If you don't have a network, the moment you quit/lose a job you are dead to the world. Even now I have people approaching me for FTE roles, I haven't even worked with them for 2 years. Am I some god tier programmer? Not really, but I have a good track record and people always want to go to someone they already trusted.

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It's not advice really. If it were advice, it would be something you could do.

Building a network is something anyone can do. Join meetups. Find local user groups. Find online groups and get active in them. Give talks. Write and publish your thoughts locally and/or online. Talk with people. Ask (good) questions. Let people get to know you and the way you think. Many more ways exist than just these.

Connecting with other professionals in various ways is all there is to building a network and anyone can do it. They just have to do it.

This. I'm still benefiting from being in a BSD users group that I went to between 2000-2008 because it was filled with passionate/talented tech people, most of whom have gone onto other things. Find places to get into discussions and show your opinions and have discussions. If you are in a group where your mind is never changed, then find something else.

Ok, now that's advice.

You definitely can.

I always built my network mostly at local meetups and online communities.

It helps if, like in my case, are into functional programming, as people into that niche prefer working with other functional programmers.

> If you don't have a network, the moment you quit/lose a job you are dead to the world.

As someone without a network and left their FAANG-adjacent (or whatever the current acronym is) job in 2022, this is mostly true.

Amazon still hits up my inbox every month or so, though.

Yeah if you're not a social butterfly in the modern world you're just effed. Or about as good as dead, unless you happen to be extremely lucky.

In academic / white collar work for sure. But if you're something like a skilled craftsman whose services are in demand, you can probably do fine with less social networking.

Carpenters, electricians, and plumbers will be able to name their price in the Los Angeles area for the next few years.

Maybe. All of them have cycles of good and bad times. I've known many Electricians and Carpenters who have been laid off for years at a time before things come back.

What sort of business are you running now, if you don't mind elaborating?

I have two, one is a dev shop for LMS software, mainly working in custom AI solutions now.

The other is a consultancy where I help resolve tech debt and put out fires at SMB's, which I get most of my work from referrals.

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