Ask HN: How does one break into a new industry? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: How does one break into a new industry?

6 pointsNewUser763126 comments

Let's say someone has been involved in e.g. B2B software roles and projects for most of their professional life. But they have a strong interest in a seemingly unrelated fields - something hardware-related like robotics, automotive, manufacturing, etc.

How does one get involved in such an industry? This is the conundrum of one of my colleagues who is looking for an industry switch.

There don't seem to be relevant conferences or meetups in his area, and job applying is quite awkward. He'd be junior in a new industry and expected to take literally 1/3 the wage. Of course he does his fair share of self-study, but no formal schooling for any of these different fields.

I'm not sure what to recommend, what are some things would you do? Go back to school? Take a (much) lower paying job and go from senior to junior (or even intern)? Also, that option may not be feasible given existing financial obligations. One idea I had was maybe for him to try applying to work at startups, who might view one more "holistically" in terms of overall capabilities.

Whether they go back to school or not, they're likely going to have to accept a much lower salary. They're a senior in their field, but if that doesn't translate well to the new field they really are a junior again, and should expect to be compensated accordingly. It's a tough pill to swallow and something a lot of people in tech (especially B2B) have faced. You either have to come to grips with a lifestyle change or stay in the field and find fulfillment outside of work.

Fair enough, I think it's important people are realistic. Perhaps one could find an adjacent field that's heavily software related and try to sell their pivot that way. I believe he has Machine learning experience, which seems to relate to an increasing number of physical hardware fields these days.

Work on a tangentially related field until they get enough experience to be accepted in the new industry?

I worked in the furniture industry building software and we had a great interior designer who ended up working as a SME (business analyst) in our projects for 3 or 4 years.

I helped her prepare her resume and practice for interviews and she got a job as an actual BA making the salary of a mid level/senior BA and has been killing ever since.

Robotics sounds doable:

Software Engineer->Low level software engineer->Embedded swe->robotics (doing a mechanical eng diploma in the evenings)

Probably drop pay at each stage tho!

Get an entry level position in one of the companies in that industry, make friends in the company, show them your interest in the industry, earn their trust to put you on some project that gives you the experience in the industry.

Probably through the buddy network is your best bet.

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