
Ask HN: How many of you gave up working as a professional coder? - sillysaurus3
What do you do now, other than management?
======
cableshaft
I haven't left it yet, but I'm starting to plant the seeds now that I'm hoping
will eventually lead to full-time board game designer in 5-10 years. I've got
several prototypes, one being evaluated by a publisher currently, and I've
been going to conventions and networking with other people in the industry. If
one of my designs ends up being a hit, I should have enough money to make the
transition.

I still enjoy programming, but there's a lot of "Keeping up with the Tech
Jones's" with constant new flash in the pan API's or frameworks and not a ton
of just "get shit done", and BA's/managers with minimal technical experience
making decisions on what you have to do is the rule, not the exception, and it
seems a little pointless after awhile.

Like I could be replaced by someone else and the work would still get done, so
what value am I really adding to this? At least in video games I had creative
input on the look, feel, and design of the game. In corporate dev I've had
almost zero input, except sometimes in how the data is structured (which
doesn't excite me anywhere near as much).

~~~
bo_Olean
>> I've got several prototypes, one being evaluated by a publisher currently,
and I've been going to conventions and networking with other people in the
industry. If one of my designs ends up being a hit, I should have enough money
to make the transition.

Care to share more on this ? If I want to, where do I start making board game
prototypes ? An email would do good, I don't see your contact info on your
profile. All the best.

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siberianbear
I retired from my job managing a group of software engineers in Silicon Valley
a few years ago. I'd been quite frugal, mostly driving old beaters I bought
outright. I owned a condo outright. I ate the free and discounted food at
work. I was making $300K+ a year in base salary and equity compensation, and
my expenses were only about $20K a year. (My biggest bill was my monthly
homeowners’ association fee of about $400.) So, I was able to save a metric
ton of money and invested it all in the stock market.

As a child, I loved computers. I taught myself 6502 and x86 assembly
languages, as well as some other languages. When I got to the university and
actually understood how digital circuits worked, I was so fascinated. When I
finally landed in Silicon Valley, I felt like I was in a dream. I was good at
what I did and I met awesome people who were good at what they did. Actually,
the greatest pleasure was meeting and working with people who were much
smarter than I was.

Eventually, the thrill wore off. I’d seen so many bugs and new projects that
they started all feel the same, kind of like my personal version of the film
Goundhog Day. I didn’t love it anymore. And then later, I didn’t even like it
anymore.

At one point, I calculated my net worth at a few million dollars and realized
that I could just quit my job and live off the investment interest. So I just
did it. I’ve been retired for four years now.

I travel a lot, which was something I couldn’t do much when I had a job that
only gave me three weeks of vacation. I can also travel in a different way:
taking the time in a new place to see un-touristy things, meet locals and
study the language a bit. I read a lot of books, none of which are about
computers. I haven’t been back to the United States in over a year.

Thanks to my frugal habits and the runup in the stock market, my net worth is
higher. My “burn” rate is under 2%, which means that I can do this
indefinitely. I don’t miss Silicon Valley and will never live there again. In
fact, I probably won’t ever live in the United States again. And I don’t miss
my cubicle one bit.

What I did is unusual. But the thing I don’t understand is _why_ it is
unusual: most of the professionals I worked with could have made the same
choices and had the same result. I guess they found more enjoyment in the
cycle of work and consumption than I did. And like most people who lived in
the Valley, I knew and had friendships with people who were far richer than I
was: whose net worth was $10M or $30M or more, who could retire today and have
a very comfortable life anywhere in the world. But they continued to work. I
can only guess that they found more enjoyment in work than I did.

~~~
mailshanx
I would really, really _love_ to hear some details of how you ended up in the
very high paying jobs, and any advise you might have for how to manage one's
career to maximise earning potential, assuming one starts off with a quant /
ML / software eng background.

Also, if you have any observations or advise for developers who are NOT based
in the US, i'd love to hear that.

~~~
siberianbear
I went to a “second-tier” school in the University of California. Having
worked with engineers from better schools (e.g., Stanford), I would say I was
as talented on average as they were, but I had terrible study habits in high
school and so my grades weren’t that good. At the university I did a lot of
stuff that wasn’t required for my degree, like doing a senior design project
and leading the local chapter of IEEE. I hustled to get internships. I took an
internship doing IT support at a civil engineering firm my first year, but
later I got better internships at Apple and Intel. By the time I graduated, I
was a far stronger candidate than my peers at my school. I had six job offers
when I graduated. I job hopped a couple of times early in my career for better
positions, but I eventually ended up at a company I really liked and stayed
there for twelve years.

You don’t say much about your background or where you are, so it’s hard to
answer your question. I think there’s really two parts to your question: “1.
How do I become a great software engineer?” and “2. How do I emigrate to a
country with higher salaries for engineers?”

To me, these are pretty basic questions. To be a great software engineer,
teach yourself to solve difficult problems and then go do it. Always push the
limit of your ability. Learn multiple languages. If you’re a system software
person, go tinker with databases. If you’re a compiler guy, go tinker with
neural networks. If you’re a C programmer, go learn Scheme or Haskell. Read
books on lots of topics: microprocessor design, good software engineering
practices, design patterns, etc. In your job, be indispensable. Be the guy who
can solve any bug or solve any problem, even if it spans multiple areas of
knowledge. Be indispensable.

 _Don’t_ be the guy who holes himself up as a guru in a little obscure walled-
off technical area and hides his knowledge as a form of power or job security.
There is no job security. Even if you’re good, your company could go through a
rough spot and lay you off. The only job security is to be known in a network
of other people as a great engineer, and then if you don’t have work it’s no
problem to find another job.

If you go interviewing for any serious jobs, you’re going to get coding
questions. Whether they are a great way of assessing a candidate is a topic of
debate on HN, but that doesn’t matter. You’re going to get them. People have
put together anthologies of these questions: be sure you can solve them. If
you practice and are good at it, you will be able to solve similar problems
that you haven’t seen before.

If you’re in an “emerging economy” with low salaries for engineers, then
figure out how to get to a different country. The demand for software
engineers worldwide is huge right now, and so if you can figure out a way to
legally work in a richer country and you have any talent at all, you can find
a job. Visa programs put a high value on university degrees in technical
fields, so if you don’t have one it’s likely you’ll need to get one.

The United States has the best paying jobs for software engineers right now,
but it is very hard to emigrate to right now because the H1-B visa category is
oversubscribed. The best way to get in now is to go work for a big company
that has a presence in both the USA and abroad (like, say, Google) and then
after a year you can transfer to the USA on an L1 if your employer allows it.

I’m no expert on moving to Europe, but I know that various countries have
“blue card” programs for skilled technical people to move to Europe on.
Anecdotally, I believe the best-paying jobs are in northern Europe, especially
in Germany. But the pay will be less than in the USA. I transferred one
engineer from Silicon Valley to Germany (his request) and I had to give him a
25% salary cut and he got a lot less equity compensation going forward.

The good news is that there is a _huge_ demand for skilled programmers
everywhere. I’m so glad that my childhood passion was computers and not
medieval French poetry, in which case I’d be serving lattes at a coffee shop
and be living in fear that a robot is going to take my minimum-wage job.

~~~
lgieron
> Anecdotally, I believe the best-paying jobs are in northern Europe,
> especially in Germany

I think nothing in Europe beats London. Of course, the rents are insane, but
if you don't have a family and are willing to live in a shitty place (maybe
with flatmates) with a commute, it doesn't affect you as much.

~~~
gambiting
Nothing in London gets close to what people make in SF, and the rent is
equally insane. I know senior software engineers in London with 15-20 years
experience and they make ~100k pounds(~140k USD)/year,sometimes a bit more
sometimes a bit less, and equity is definitely not a given thing. Obviously
UK/US salaries are not directly comparable , but still, if you want to be
making >$300k/year, then you need to work in finance in London, not IT.

~~~
lgieron
I'm not sure how typical it is for a grunt level developer to be making >$300k
in SV. For that kind of money, you typically need to be a manager (team lead
at least). I think you can expect yearly earnings of around 150k pounds when
you're contracting in London as a (obviously top-notch) technical team lead,
which is about $220k. It's less than $300k, but contracting taxes in UK are
about 20%, compared to the 33+% figure siberianbear gave. Plus, you don't need
to wait years for the stocks to vest.

The biggest problem with that is that a lot of companies don't like to
contract out management, so you're options may be somewhat limited (and if you
choose full-time employment instead, you go straight into the maw of 40%
taxation).

~~~
d4rkph1b3r
>For that kind of money, you typically need to be a manager (team lead at
least).

False. You have to be very senior, but you do not need to 'typically' be a
manager. There was a spreadsheet a few months ago on HN showing that with
RSUs, most of the top tech companies pay above this for their higher level
(non manager) engineers.

>It's less than $300k, but contracting taxes in UK are about 20%

Wow, contracting taxes are _higher_ in the US, maybe it is a comparable if you
can make 150k+ doing consulting work in the UK!

~~~
lgieron
> Wow, contracting taxes are higher in the US

The justification in Europe is that governments want to encourage
entrepreneurship (and contracting counts as entrepreneurship), hence lower
taxes. I wonder what's the logic behind the US situation.

------
kd5bjo
Earlier this year, I left my job at Facebook to play tennis all the time. When
I'm not doing that, I'm either playing video games or pretending to make
furniture.

Only time will tell whether this is a sabbatical or a career change.

~~~
cylinder
What's your cash burn rate so far?

~~~
kd5bjo
It's pretty high at the moment, since I'm paying for a lot of 1:1 instruction
(7 hrs/wk split between tennis and fitness) and am still getting used to the
new area. If you take that out, I'm probably spending something like $20-40k
annually.

------
glenr
I did. Started in '99; started an agency in '04 where I was the lead coder
with 2 partners; by 2010 I was dabbling at best. Another six years on, I don't
code at all and do sales/management. I'm not sure I'd do it the same should I
have my time again, I miss it.

------
jonsterling
My last day is in just over two weeks! Starting my PhD in type theory at CMU.

------
King-Aaron
My current post may well be my last; I'm sick and tired of continuously
working for SME's with no direction, business plan or competent management. If
I lived somewhere that there was more opportunities I may feel differently.

~~~
dublinben
Have you considered moving? That seems to be the obvious solution.

~~~
King-Aaron
I have considered moving, however it means moving to literally the other side
of the country. While that's not strictly out of the options, I don't know if
the industry as a whole is what I'm sick of or not. Part of me wants to re-
tool in nursing, however at 30 that's starting to fall outside of the options
too, haha.

~~~
jrumbut
It's better to re-tool at 30 than 31, and better at 31 than 32, and better at
50 than never. A few years is nothing, maybe it's different where you are but
in the US it's very common to become a nurse as a second career in your 30s.

------
adamkchew
After getting the 6 figures programming job, I realized that I was already
decent so I quit and started a startup. Now I'm just reading books, riding
bikes, and networking.

~~~
ikeyany
How did you know where to go next? Neither 'leaving a six-figure job' nor
'starting a startup' are trivial moves to make.

------
id122015
The more I read the more I realise its not worth it to be employed as a
programmer. I havent even started employment. Sometimes I read that
programmers are not even allowed to do what they want, so I start to be
content that even though I do little Im free to do what I want.

------
SFJulie
Well, I can do bread that is edible, alcohol that make your drunk without
poisoning you music that people can sing repair bikes fairly well

But ... I get rejected for every job I ask : I don't have diplomas. The bread
I see on average are at best and as good as mine, my alcohol is cheaper than
market and tasting better, my reparations are clean... but I don't have
diplomas and the conforming education...

So I am looking back at coding, and I still hope I will find whatever is not a
modern job intoxicated with all the current hype in IT or financial or web
agency or startup spirit.

Wish me luck, it is tough but I am still going and as long as I can I will
try.

~~~
trumbitta2
You could move to Copenhagen (or one of these other 19 cities:
[http://www.wired.com/2015/06/copenhagenize-worlds-most-
bike-...](http://www.wired.com/2015/06/copenhagenize-worlds-most-bike-
friendly-cities/)) and open a bike repair shop where bikers can have a snack
and a drink, listening to good music, while you repair their bikes.

Just sayin'

------
lukeh
I did it, more or less. I had a software company, now I am a full time
musician.

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yolesaber
I worked for a long time as a coder, then team lead / principal engineer and
finally architect before reaching a point where I could exit. Now I synthesize
new psychedelic drugs and sell them to rich yuppies from NYC seeking mind
expansion.

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nickthemagicman
Good question. Im wondering this as well.

