
Career options out of programming? - confusedgeek
Hoping the folks at HN can help me with my dilemma. I am in my late-twenties, female software engineer in the Bay Area, work for one of the &#x27;unicorn&#x27; companies. 
The problem? I got into Computer Science for not-so-noble reasons and am hating that choice now because I don&#x27;t like the field enough and can see it thwarting and affecting my career. I needed a fat salary when I was graduating (went to an Ivy League) and jobs for CS majors paid well. 
I am a techie at heart - I love math and science, and was a finalist for my country&#x27;s Math Olympiad making it through a very competitive process. I just find programming unnatural, though my skills and role are comparable to a Google senior software engineer. Apart from math and science, I have some background in economics and business and have turne out stints at consulting firms before. 
Do you have advice for someone in my place about changing careers, finding something that is less about programming, but highly technical?
======
eshvk
Have you thought about switching tracks within technology? Management is a
hard tough problem. Becoming a good manager with a technical background can
help you solve problems at a bigger scale without having to actually program
your way (alone) through the entire thing.

Alternatively, you could get back into school, get a PhD in something applied.
Say Machine Learning or Statistics. I would argue a lot of jobs in research
labs (Microsoft Research, Google etc) are less about writing a load of code
but about solving an interesting problem.

~~~
confusedgeek
To your first point (management) - could you tell me more about how or point
me to people who've made the transition themselves?

To your second point (research lab)- I began my career in research and have
worked at two world-class industry labs, including Microsoft Research. You are
right that these jobs are less about code - explains why I did well. :) After
five or ten years at those firms, you'd be surprised at how many people in
those places are truly satisfied with their jobs.

At my last job, an industry research lab that I quit to do product development
with my current valley company, I couldn't meet a single soul in a building of
a 1000 who seemed happy and excited enough to jump in the morning and get to
work. Microsoft Research was a different story - but every happy, thriving
individual I met there was in _love_ with their field. I was similar for a
couple of years, but couldn't sustain that. Wanting to be part of the
corporate rat race as someone else pointed out, may have been a factor.

------
karmajunkie
I tried to change careers once, going back to school to go into medicine. Took
a semester off to help a buddy with a software development project and make
some cash, and never went back. While that says more about me in general than
what you're talking about, for me it was a matter of finding problems I cared
more about (in my case I was writing public health software) and teams I
enjoyed working with. I'm certainly in no position to judge your skillset, but
say above that you feel comprable to a senior Google engineer (the relative
merit of that being a whole 'nother topic!) yet you mention in another thread
you have a sense of trepidation about reading code, working on only new
projects, and you rarely feel satisfied with your non-trivial code. To me this
suggests perhaps some room for growth as well. I had a great deal of the same
feelings about my own code (even to this day on occasion) but i've developed
much better elegance to my code as well as an ability to shrug the lack of
elegance off as a necessary evil sometimes.

I gave up on the medicine thing because as much as I love the field of biology
and human health, the lab experience wasn't so much better than coding that it
would have changed my life, nor the practice of medicine so financially
rewarding it would have compensated for opportunity cost as a reasonably well-
paid developer. I've found that my career's had up and down cycles but overall
I'm very fortunate to be in this line of work. You might as well, but I don't
think you're crazy to want to leave the field either.

Whatever you end up doing, best of luck to you in the endeavor!

~~~
confusedgeek
Thanks for your detailed response. 1\. I don’t ‘feel comparable to a Google
senior (L4/Level4, to use Google terminoloy) engineer’ - it is a fact that my
role at my company is equivalent to that. If anything, I feel an imposter,
having made it to my job with all the shortcomings discussed (Google L4
engineers can typically build software at scale easily, and definitely aren’t
as uncomfortable reading code as I am). It helps that I am in extremely niche
field, so cannot be directly compared with other canonical L4 types. 2\. Your
story of the shift from medicine to software and the thought-process is
useful. Not entirely easy for me to follow given my immigrant status. Any
minor job title/company changes trigger a new H1/greencard, somewhat
jeopardizing my chances of staying here longer term. I am not whining - just
making a note here, in case someone reading this has dealt with or seen
similar situations being handled before.

------
zer00eyz
Programing is un-natrual.

Lets assume you graduated at 22, and your 28 now... You have a total of 6
years of experience, and the reality is the first three of those were you
unlearning computer science and starting on the path of engineering...

The problem may be what your coding. If your interested in math and science
and business is the code your writing DOING those things? Programing is PART
of the job, figuring out what to code is the bigger part, and if that isn't
interesting then the coding is even MORE un-natrual. Does what your company
does excite you in any way, are there interesting parts of it for you to chase
after, and if there aren't can you name a company that does something that you
think is interesting?

The other question I have is are you in the US (an Ivy school) but not FROM
the US ("my country's...")? I ask because it may be compounding the issues
your having.

~~~
confusedgeek
That's correct. I am in the US but not from the US. Like I mentioned in my
response to karmajunkie's comment, that does make career changes slightly
tricky for me.

~~~
zer00eyz
I'll be frank, your foreign, in a foreign land, not only based on your
nationality but as a female in a male dominated world. This screams to me that
"I don't have mentors or close associates at work" the kinds of folks who are
going to be frank and honest with you, who are going to call you on your
mistakes, who are going to push you to get better.

The harder question for you is, are you having a moment of self doubt, or are
you really looking to get out? If I reflect back on my on career then at
points I think I have said everything you are saying... but I had folks around
me who listening and giving me answers to help me keep going.

After reading through the rest of your responses in this thread let me dish
out some advice

\-- We all have moments of self doubt, your aware your having one, so thats
huge

\-- Looking at your own code and seeing the flaws, thats normal. There are
actors who hate seeing themselves on film because they only see their
mistakes. If you aren't looking back, and you aren't seeing problems then your
either foolish or over worked.

\-- Small is easy, big is hard. This is true of all things in life, if your
making a holiday meal (large) its a whole hell of a lot different than making
your lunch.

\-- Honestly you need to read this:
[http://discovermagazine.com/2015/june/13-curiosity-we-
have-a...](http://discovermagazine.com/2015/june/13-curiosity-we-have-a-
problem) if your current work culture isn't like that, CHANGE JOBS NOW.
Everyone screws up, if you find it, and your willing to own it, they should
support you. I once lost several hundred thousand dollars with a bug, at the
end of the day my boss invited me to a meeting, I thought I was going to to
get fired and he could see it. His response was "you did the right thing, and
your never going to make that mistake again, your worth several hundred
thousand dollars as an engineer now so relax.

\-- Learning new languages sucks. Its hard and your going to be terrible for a
long time. Deal with it. There is a quote from a cartoon "sucking at something
is the first step to becoming sorta good at something"

\-- Your use of VIM/C and unwillingness to part with it seem to say that your
stuck in a rut. Vim is great don't get me wrong, and if your going to learn a
new language a bare bones editor forces you to read... but in the long run
your missing out on a world of tools that will make your job easier and
faster! Change is hard, your going to suck at using the tools but you will get
better with time

\-- Reading code is even more unnatural than writing it and I think I suck at
it. I have been told by several people that I have an amazing proficiency for
reading code, that no one they know is faster or better at it. You know what
though, I read a lot of code, a LOT of code, a good portion of my day is spent
looking at other peoples work... I read peoples checkins, I read bug reports
and fixes, I read things that interest me that aren't even remotely related to
what I'm doing at present.

\-- No one is perfect or even good at everything... so your code doesn't scale
out of the box, the person next to you who's does, have you ever read it? if
not go do it (read code) and figure out what THEY screwed up... keep reading
it till you understand it, till you find the mistakes...

~~~
confusedgeek
Thanks, your analysis is spot-on. I'll work on the 'to do' items you
suggested, particularly the last one.

------
ruraljuror
If you are interested in academics, you could go on the career path to being a
business school professor. I know some people in your shoes who have done
that.

But to be perfectly honest it seems like you are in the rat race. Check out
the book _Happier_.

------
ErikRogneby
Become a technical polymath. Consider branching out in to hardware? IoT,
etc...

Take away technology, what are you passionate about? If you founded a company,
it went big, you cashed out and started a foundation, who would your
foundation give money to?

Go do that.

------
bulte-rs
Consultancy... Go work for a big consultancy firm. Good pay, good guidance,
big clients and not too much programming.

~~~
confusedgeek
I had a McKinsey offer - rejected it to take up my first job which was in
technical research in California. Most consultants spend time building
powerpoint - some of them are exceptional and eventually do well - like the
ones who are now top-notch biz-dev folks at valley tech companies. But thats a
small fraction.

~~~
bulte-rs
Agreed... Your deliverables are "boring" (although not useless). Point being
that you're able to LEARN a shitload at these companies from various
perspectives.

(offt: I don't really have any connection with the SV since I'm not US based
and not working for a product company. So I have no clue about current state
of Bizdev/M&(t)A there... Care to elaborate?)

------
sjg007
What about programming do you find unnatural?

~~~
confusedgeek
Thats a good question - I can't really articulate it well, but here's an
attempt. (a) Design / Scaling: I guess I like solving small coding problems
that translate math or logic into code. It is building software at a non-
trivial scale that bothers me - anything that I've designed that was over 2000
lines was fugly code, and I can find numerous design flaws with the code I
write and all the alternatives to it. At the end of my work assignments I am
often dejected thinking - "I can't ever design something non-trivial cleanly."
(b) Not being as good with new frameworks/tools: I am a loyal C/vim/shell
person, no IDEs. I am very efficient at my shell+Vim development environment
(which was shoved into me in school when I didn't have a choice), but I shy
away from trying anything new because it feels unnatural or scary.

~~~
d4rkph1b3r
This may seem like a weird request, but let me know what you think about this
quora answer:

[http://www.quora.com/Reviews-of-Haskell-programming-
language](http://www.quora.com/Reviews-of-Haskell-programming-language)

~~~
confusedgeek0
Thanks. I am guilty of being intrigued by 'Learn you a Haskell for great good'
that a colleague kept as a prized possession on his desk and not following up
and learning it. I know what I am doing this weekend.

