Hacker News Reader

Oddly, I felt like I had much more free time after college. When work ended at 5pm, I suddenly had this huge 7 hour window of time where I had no homework to work on, no projects etc... I started reading for fun, working out, doing side projects, and I still had time!

I felt the same, until I started seeing my job as not "Do what my boss tells me to" but as "Contribute something awesome to the world." That job is never done - there's always some other project you could be working on, some way you can make your product better, someone else you can help out.

On the plus side, it's a lot more fulfilling than feeling like you put in 8 hours for a boss so you can have 7 hours to yourself. It's like the distinction between work and play melts away and it's all play.

I'm in the same boat here. I worked for a Fortune 500 corporation for the first 3.5 years after college, and for the most part I was just putting in my 8 hours. I enjoy software development, but the atmosphere and mentality at this business didn't encourage you to go the extra mile. If you said, "Man, I love this company," people would give you strange looks, probably suspecting you of being a suck-up. There was a lot of "us-vs-them" mentality with regards to the regular employees and managers. On top of all that, the systems and teams were so huge that you could only get so far ahead with your work before you had to stop and wait for the "marathon, not a sprint" types to catch up. All in all, it was discouraging, and it started to kill my passion for developing great software.

Earlier this summer, I quit that corporate job and joined a 10-person tech start-up with highly-motivated, smart, and optimistic employees. Everyone believes in the business's potential, and we all strive to make our work better and better. There are no set hours (whatever is most efficient for your lifestyle), and vacation is unlimited. Combined with a small, motivated workforce, these policies result in an environment where developers no longer feel like children doing chores but trusted professionals who can handle their own responsibilities and work/life balance.

All that to say: Life after college can vary greatly depending on how you make your career choice. You can take the corporate job if you like, but I love working for a smaller business with flexible policies and motivated co-workers working hard to change the future.

> [...] and vacation is unlimited.

I think there's a case to be made for mandatory vacation. Just make people take off at least two weeks every year.

In the financial sector, there are regulations requiring a minimum consecutive absence.

> It is the FDIC's goal that all banks have a vacation policy which provides that active officers and employees be absent from their duties for an uninterrupted period of not less than two consecutive weeks. http://www.fdic.gov/news/news/financial/1995/fil9552.html

I think as a general rule, I do agree with this. When you don't have mandatory vacation, you start asking yourself the question, "Should I really time off work?" Motivated, hard-working people have a hard time saying "yes" to that question. So far, we've all taken time off for vacation this past summer, and we're getting a couple weeks for Christmas, but I can see how such a system could have negative impacts.

That's good to hear.

I agree with this big time. Not that I didn't have hobbies, interests, desire to contribute to the world from the beginning. But after a while for me it shifted from "I have all this time and I would like to have productive hobbies where I make things and contribute to the world," to "oh my god I really have to WORK if those hobbies are ever going to turn into anything worthwhile and oh look I'm taking on more responsibility at work and now there are so many more days when I come home tired..." Life changes really quickly.

This resonates loudly with me-- I'm almost 35 and have been out of the university 5 years now.

On one hand, my wife paid her way though school and had a very similar experience of working FT (or several part-time) jobs).

It's only been since she graduated several years ago that (as a violin teacher) she's been able to schedule time into her life for things like vacations and the like.

On the other hand, I spent 10 years in the university, switching from CS to philosophy, getting an MA in English, and leaving a PhD in Literature after a couple of chapters in my dissertation. In that process there is a tremendous pressure to be constantly working on your project, and I simply don't have that now that I have been doing freelance web development.

Much as with my wife, the certainty of being able to find however much work I need has really allowed me to throttle back on feeling guilty when I'm not pushing forward on some project or other (or, perhaps, just allowed me to feel less guilt on pushing forward on non-remunerative projects like becoming a better musician or learning a new programming technique/technology without a direct short-term payoff).

If I could add anything to the OP, it'd be this: taking a full time job that doesn't mark seasons or develop you into some new person isn't inevitable. IMO, your plan to seize new found free time is much more profitable than giving into the flow of "Wednesday just being Wednesday".

It may take more than a day for all to be revealed.

I sure hope so! I didn't mean to imply that I have it all figured out. But I have to wonder how much a post-college transition article applies to me when written from the perspective of a "traditional" college student. Or at least the type who was a student and only a student when in college since a lot of the transition difficulties are centered around having to work every day and so on.

Its true that post college will be different for different people. Life is different, but this last statement "My post-graduation plans? Seize all that extra free time! Start working out more. Go to that weekly Reddit poker night. Go to more concerts. Go to programmer meetups." is a restatement of the article author's point.

The author makes the first derivative version of that point, which is that one needs to actively live your life, but the expression is the same, deliberately go into life and make your way. Or more practically pick a direction and move out.

If you get through college, and many people do, and you still have no idea what you want to do, you are at a relative disadvantage with respect to your peers who are charging off into their destinies.

College makes sense as a program to get a degree, but that really only makes sense in the larger context of "with that degree I can then move on to this next thing and that gets me closer to ..." If you don't pick a direction and go there you will find 10, 20 or even 30 years go by and suddenly you start seeing that you are going to be dead eventually and wondering what it was you have done with your time.

If I may suggest one addition to your list of things to do with your newfound free time: travel! It can be really difficult to go on any real adventures while you're in school, especially when you're holding a job on top of that. Now that you're out and still young, go explore!