Ask HN: Other careers for a hacker?

Sales and marketing. There is no rush like the rush of money, real, serious money.

Everyone you see programming is like a medieval craftsman, good at one thing and one thing only. As a salesman, you're the top dog, you have an eye for who is good and who is bad, you can choose whose products to sell, who to make rich, and who to work with. You're a phone wielding king-maker.

If you love thinking, that's all you will do. You will try to understand everyone's business, what they do, who they sell to, how much, how often, and under what restrictions. You take your work with you, to the pub, restaurant, street, gym and home. You will be taking notes when others are talking. You will go over your girlfriend's browser history to learn what she shops for. You will be opening your parent's credit card statements to see where the money goes. A day at the mall will be like heaven to you; you will get a rush from seeing people spend. Information will fucking nurture you.

You do that so often you can see trends before they hit the press :-)

Nothing like being able to give your friends and family business, real solid leads, and all others will have to contend for your attention and rolodex.

Sales makes bull-fighting look boring. It's as if the newspapers were published for your own amusement. Every little column brings in an idea, a lead, a name, an opportunity.

P.S. and on good days you will be too thrilled that you end up talking like this. Guess who closed today? ABC :-)

I have no idea what'll work for you.

For me, I started in I.T. at 16, did the corporate thing by 19, and at 24 became a climbing instructor.

It was great. The pay was crap, but I learned a lot about people and group management and all kinds of other things that I just don't think most hackers ever have to deal with. I mean, how often do you get to practice talking to a 6-year-old that's climbed to the top and refuses to let go?

After a few years in the outdoor industry I returned to computer systems, much more well-balanced I think.

I don't see much personal value in moving from programming to something tangential to program. Diametric opposition, now that's much more fun.

What do you do now? Do you work for yourself or someone else? What do you enjoy about it?

I'm currently 100% self-employed, working on two businesses: one in IT consulting for individuals and companies, and one in news aggregation and publishing (which has been suffering lately but is about to get a shot in the arm again).

First, the bad stuff that I don't like: I haven't had a real vacation in quite a while; any money that I make has to go back into the business, so I'm perpetually poor; I work long hours and most days of the week; I am on the front-lines, dealing with the frustrations that various technologies bring to the people trying to use them.

So it's not all roses, but I do still prefer it to a regular job. For one thing, if I make a stupid decision -- and I often do! -- I can clean it up. My businesses are limited only by what I'm willing to achieve. I have done some pretty good things for my clients, and that's rewarding by itself.

The one advice-y lesson I've learned so far: GET HELP. I was struggling with the consulting business, and then Leslie (my girlfriend) started helping out, and it's made a tremendous difference. Now my billing is mostly on time, there's someone that knows what my expenses and revenues look like, and she's running around behind me keeping my head screwed on straight. :-)

Additionally I've hired a tech (twice), and it's valuable getting someone else's point of view and experience involved, so long as you're willing to give them some pretty clear rules at the beginning and then get out of their way.

I know that this wasn't your question, but I was having this same problem for a while... My wrists and arms hurt like hell while I was at work, it was really awful.

I get made fun of for it now, but what I did was take two keyboards, and use one for each hand. Spreading my arms apart so that my wrists weren't cocked out really helped me...so much so that I've been able to go back to one keyboard (my trusty IBM model M). Think more about hugging your monitor than poking it in the stomach (if that makes any sense...I mean the orientation of your hands).

The other thing that I did was replace my regular mouse with a trackball. (A kensington expert mouse [http://blog.nongraphical.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/08/expe...).

I really enjoy coding...so it wasn't so much a "what else can I do" situation for me, it was a "how can I keep doing this".

> same problem for a while... My wrists and arms

Neck muscles, shoulder, upper back. The problem derives from starting in one direction and needing my arms to be braced enough to be quick to the keys. I've tried all sorts of different postures and what not, seen my chiropractor a few times, etc., but nothing helps the problem other than being away from the computer for a while.

Please don't take offense to this, but what kind of shape are you in? I found that losing some weight really helped my back problems.

I'm 5'11" and ~150lb and I get exercise regularly. I've tried all sorts of things to further strengthen my back and upper body over the past couple years (and to improve its flexibility), but judging by the enduring pain, fitness is not a factor here.

Bad luck, then :(.

Sorry to hear that... Are you in a position where money isn't playing a huge factor? Something that I have always had in the back of my head to do after I "retire" is to teach. Once you finish your degree (didn't see if you said post grad?) you'll be eligible to teach in some states (I know you can in IA if you have a Bachelor's in anything).

Define exercise regularly?

> Neck muscles, shoulder, upper back.

I have the same problem. My wrist/forearm problems are symptoms of a problem that starts up at the shoulder and back.

One thing that has helped me tremendously is a foam roller. I have one that allows me to lie on it with my spine parallel to the roller length. I use it in the morning before work and in the evening after work (for about 10 min.) and I find it really helps release built-up stress and fatigue in my back and shoulders.

http://www.healthyback.com/products/glidepoint/foam-rollers/...

The pair programming idea got me thinking - what about hiring someone for half days doing your typing for you? This seems economical, esp. in this economy. Maybe a local CS student who would see this as an internship, or at least know the syntax well enough to make your dictation efficient. Since you have your own business you'd just treat it as an expense.

I think the speech to text suggestion is also worth investigating.

Since you've tried a bunch of things, I assume you've read up on ergonomics. A previous employer forced me to take an ergonomics evaluation when I wanted a new chair. I thought it was going to be a waste, but it was really useful and helped me improve my home office setup as well.

I guess to approach this from another angle, I just had a chat with one of the senior tech leads at the corporation I work for (140k+ employees). He said that several of the developers he worked with moved on to do completely different things in the years following a project built about a decade ago.

One went on to be an instructor of some sort, another a farmer. My realtor worked in the same place I did writing HTML and Cobol before she got so burnt out she became a realtor. That was 8 years ago.

There's no limit to what you can do, both as a developer and outside the tech realm. Hackers are not just technical. Hacking can be anything you make it.

Good luck, and I hope you find your passion. :)

A cow-orker of mine (now at Google) moved to Dragon Naturally Speaking, and also became a product manager. He changed from writing code to writing specs and emails.

It seemed to work out, though he was a good writer of prose to begin with.

The syadmin stuff, the HTML, and the PHP/ColdFusion tend to be pretty hard on your hands. Lots of typing to not say very much. Maybe you'd like a concise language with a good IDE, like Common Lisp, instead?

I find that most annoyance while programming comes from things like switching from the editor to the terminal to the documentation and back to the editor. As I bring more and more functionality into Emacs, I find myself typing less and thinking more (and generally being less annoyed). I have never experienced pain while keyboarding, though, and I am flexible enough to elicit grimaces from people watching my normal movements. YMMV.

CL is concise? I hadn't heard it described that way. Now, I've certainly heard [Arc](http://www.arclanguage.org/) described as concise.

Maybe try it out and see for yourself. Arc is a domain-specific language for building Hacker News, not a general-purpose programming language.

Yes, I plan to (at some point), thanks, but it will probably take me a while until I get experienced enough at CL to be able to judge how concise it is.

I had severe finger pain two years ago and went to a chiropractor but none of that helped. I got a Kinesis keyboard and a good chair and the pain slowly subsided and is now gone. I find that the worst thing is the mouse, so I have a kensington trackball and switch hands. It really could be just a keyboard/mouse/posture thing.

Hmmm... no idea if this will work, but can you find a place that does pair programming? Maybe you could spend most of your time being the person not at the keyboard.

Have you tried reducing your hours? I find it difficult to concentrate after 7 hours. If you can reduce to 35 hours a week, you might notice drastic improvements.

Unfortunately this has nothing to do with the mind, I could easily hack for a day straight with some good coffee, barring the pain. You do bring up a good point however...I'd gladly work twenty hours if I could support myself on it, but in this industry I've never come across such a thing except for interns and such.

Now what I'd love to do is go live somewhere cheap overseas if I could get interesting work outsourced (esp. development of significant JS software), but that sounds like a pipe dream.

Teach english abroad, and do some freelance here and there for extra income

Everyone says this, how does one pursue it? I speak Spanish very well.

Taiwan has tealit.com. I'm sure most countries have something similar.

If you speak spanish very well, I would suggest Chile. Though not the cheapest place in S. America, cheaper than the U.S. and Europe, most of Asia, and rent could be ~$220-$300 month, you could live well with <$800 (single, no kids), $15/day food (eating out)

Its safe, more organized than most of the US cities ive been to, and it has a thriving and friendly tech community if you dont want to completely remove yourself from it.

If you seriously want to pursue this, let me know, I lived there for some time and have very good contacts w/ the startup/tech community and in education.

I suggest you read this article: http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/10/10/chile-wants-your-poor-y...

(I'm not Chilean, no agenda here)

Thanks, what would be a good way to reach you? I considered the contact form on your website, but I don't know if you'd receive that directly.

andres barreto + gmail + com @andresbarreto

Seconding the freelance half. I'm only 16, so my pay isn't there yet, but I get the idea that most professional consultants could pretty easily support a modest lifestyle working half-time.

I freelanced full-time for a year and it's a very difficult way to support oneself. For every hour you bill, unless you have a very good thing going, you'll also spend an hour following leads and an hour dealing with organizational crap. It's really the worst of both worlds and I'm trying to kill off the business that formed over that year as best I can, without pissing off existing clients.

To get enough jobs to support yourself, you end up undercharging. And the business can't scale because most people you'd consider subcontracting to either charge astronomical rates or are god-awful: There's a surprising dearth of people who know their stuff.

But if you do this overseas you can easily support yourself.

As for teaching English, the best thing is to just go to a country you are interested in and look for work once you are there. I taught English in China last year (along with doing freelance work) and this is how I did it.

You could find work before going but this is actually riskier. They will most likely lock you into a year-long contract and there is a lot of bad schools that recruit this way because the candidates do not know any better. It's much better to move to a place and spend a month looking. That way you can talk with other teachers, see how the school looks and make sure it is not in the middle of nowhere.

In many developing countries you can live well on $500 a month so freelancing is always an option for you again if teaching isn't for you.

Purely anecdotal, but I had fairly severe wrist Tendonitus on and off. I starting taking vitamin B-6 (and occasionally B-12), haven't had trouble since.

Nevermind. Not relevant. Thanks for the clarification.

I appreciate the thought regardless, I'm sure 95% of problems like these are wrist/hand-related.

FWIW: I did cure my dad's incapacitating back problems when I was 17 using six months of daily massage and some aggressive gymnastics-based stretching techniques to get his flexibility within normal range of motion in about 2 weeks. Just mentioning it in case it sparks a new thought for you. Otherwise, carry on and good luck in your job hunt.

Have you considered Dragon Naturally Speaking? Ask @benjyfeen about it, he works in SRE at Google. My understanding is his carpal tunnel got so bad that he had to stop typing 4 or 5 years ago, and went through some intensive training with Dragon Naturally Speaking. Now he's able to do all of his work without a keyboard.

there are some sites marketing paid video tutorials, maybe you could team up there?

do you have a list of those sites?

peepcode.com is one.

i really like their design and the content focus is niche, but a good one.

if by niche you mean general dev niche, then yes. They cover a wide range of topics, ranging from iPhone development to Productivity.

How about taking a break at work? Or four?

I do, and I do.