
Switching Jobs - algui91
https://flowingdata.com/2017/11/16/switching-jobs/
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nautilus12
The top jobs that computer programmers switched to are all other computer
related jobs, some nearly identical depending on how you treat the term
programmer, vs developer.

Kind of depressing that once you become a computer programmer, you can't
really escape computer work. Id like to hear more about people that go on to
do something totally different successfully, like baking. Maybe its too
uncommon. Also interesting, the top non computer jobs are lawyers and judges,
and then accountants.

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smallnamespace
> Kind of depressing that once you become a computer programmer, you can't
> really escape computer work

Can't, or not rational to?

The monetary returns to being a dev vs. other lines of work are high and have
been growing for the last 2 decades.

One can do much worse than golden handcuffs.

~~~
xapata
> I see young men, my townsmen, whose misfortune it is to have inherited
> farms, houses, barns, cattle, and farming tools; for these are more easily
> acquired than got rid of. Better if they had been born in the open pasture
> and suckled by a wolf, that they might have seen with clearer eyes what
> field they were called to labor in. Who made them serfs of the soil? Why
> should they eat their sixty acres, when man is condemned to eat only his
> peck of dirt? Why should they begin digging their graves as soon as they are
> born?

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gervase
Is there any way to view the inverse, "Which professions were most likely to
switch to X?" I'd be interested to see where most developers are coming _from_
, instead of where they're switching _to_. I couldn't figure out how to see
that information from the page.

~~~
claudiulodro
As one data point, I was a furniture upholsterer before I switched to
development.

~~~
pkaye
How did you make the switch? Did you have practical experience beforehand? Or
did you take courses?

~~~
claudiulodro
I spent some time messing around with QBasic and Microsoft FrontPage when I
was a kid, but that was about the extent of it. I was able to get a grant from
the government (thanks Obama!) for college and got a CS degree at the local
state university.

Overall, I'd say it was an excellent investment on the government's part. They
spent a few thousand on grant money and will be getting hundreds of thousands
of dollars in tax revenue over my lifetime from increased earnings.

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kiteracer
There are some interesting quirks in the data if you click through the 'see a
random occupation' button enough times. I wonder if they're artifacts of the
sample size, or of the way certain professions are classified. Of people in
the following professions who left their jobs -

Power plant operators, distributors, and dispatchers:

* 33% became Food batchmakers

* 11% became Bakers

Veterinarians:

* 46% became Actuaries

* 36% became Software developers, applications and systems software

Fish and game wardens:

* 87% became Detectives and criminal investigators

Psychologists:

* 25% became Urban and regional planners

~~~
smelendez
With the game wardens, I wonder if it's common to transition into the state or
county police

~~~
stevenwoo
Not sure about game wardens, but all state and county park rangers in
California where I am at are also law enforcement officers so I assume that
makes it a relatively easy transition.

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carbocation
It seems ... unlikely that physicians switch to become pharmacists,
optometrists, or physicians assistants.

[https://imgur.com/a/AKEus](https://imgur.com/a/AKEus)

~~~
rattray
Interesting. I wonder if that's a data cleanliness issue?

eg; one year a Dentist says they're a Physician (maybe they didn't see the
"Dentist" category) and the next year they say they're a Dentist.

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dopamean
I don't have a ton to say about the content of the article other than a super
boring, "that was interesting." One thing that was cool is the chart labeled
"Switching Rate for Different Jobs." I've never seen that style of chart
before and found it really effective for sharing the data. Does anyone know
what that is called?

~~~
showerst
It's a clustered bubble chart that's been ordered. Clever.

~~~
pcl
It also doesn't render in desktop Safari.

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askafriend
There was nothing truly surprising about the findings themselves but I will
say that they were presented very well and intuitively. That was the real
value in this article and something other similar articles can learn from.

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couchand
This is such a rich dataset and I'm sure there are some very interesting
insights. But I was very disappointed with most of the data visualization; the
primary question of the article is addressed in a set of bar charts for a
single occupation. There's no way at all to gain any complex understanding of
the systems at play here with such a keyhole view of the world.

I'd like to see the career switching dataset in different forms to see what
insights we could derive: network diagrams, heatmaps, and so forth --
visualizations that show the complex interconnectedness of this rich data.

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DeBraid
Masterful data visualization. Simple and informative. Thank you!

