Ask HN: What is your ideal career? - ne01
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thecupisblue
I believe it's VC or being a CEO that is a part-time mentor. As much as I love
software development, I also love marketing, design, business and networking.
I spend a lot of my time connecting people in my local community, connecting
companies I think are cool with possible customers and hires, mentoring
juniors (both devs, PM's and more) and helping a few pre-launch startups focus
their vision. Some of them have told me that I've taught them more than their
college professors and incubators, which I find inspiring to keep on moving.

But at the end of the day, I just love impacting the world and providing
people a chance at doing the same.

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jamesmp98
I'd really like to start a software consulting business providing enterprise
modernization and application security vulnerability analysis to corporations.
Basically going in telling people where the security holes are and what needs
to be modernized and help them choose / create solutions.

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Kevin_S
I have a long term vision of which I am carrying out the necessary first steps
now.

I want to create an organization that is essentially a 6 week retreat for
students before they begin college. Selecting the best applicants possible,
they will go through rigorous training to become their most successful selves,
covering Academics, Social life, Health, and Lifestyle topics. Elements of
secrecy will help it's applicant pool, I was heavily inspired by the Bohemian
Club.

Long term, the alumni network itself will more than make up for the cost, in
turn making the applicant pool stronger and stronger.

It's an aggressive plan, and requires years of building up from the ground.
But it's my dream to make it happen.

And if it doesn't work, I'll fall back on becoming an accounting professor.
Pretty similar jobs anyhow.

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thecupisblue
Love it! Is there a way one could track how this is going?

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Kevin_S
Hmm, I haven't built the site yet (not my expertise so somewhat putting it
off) and am working on a base set of posts that cover each small topic. After
that I'll throw together a site on wordpress and get them all posted.

Send me an email (in my profile) and I'll send you an update when I finish the
posts (few weeks). I'd love to have someone to bounce ideas off of - and
judging by your profile and comments you may be able to offer good feedback!

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pasbesoin
1) Helping people. Doing interesting and creative things.

2) Not actually, nor having to perpetually severely worry about, being screwed
over with respect to basic quality of life. Access to reasonable and effective
health care. A decent place to live (for me, that means mostly quiet and
hopefully with a decent portion of friendly neighbors). Knowing that when I
can no longer work, I won't end up in a hell hole.

Sounds pretty modest, doesn't it?

Yet today, in the U.S., it's becoming increasingly illusive and uncertain.

A major downside of categorizing into "winners" and "losers" and focusing on
some dystopian fervor for a modern-day "manifest destiny."

In my case, some crap health care (despite my relatively affluent
circumstances) set the stage early for additional struggle. Things just kept
spiraling down, and the advice I received only reinforced this.

Now -- too late -- I believe you can't have these things, unless you make your
primary job learning how to and practicing sticking up for yourself.

I think a lot of my generation got quite fucked over by unrealistic
instruction such as "the bully is only hurting himself", "collaboration
[undifferentiated, un-qualified] is the future", "things will turn out all
right in the end", "you're so [smart|pretty|special]", etc.

So now, my ideal career would be teaching all this by example.

Whatever you do, teach by example.

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tombert
It'll never happen (due to a lack of any formal on-paper education), but my
ideal career would be me researching new things that are interesting to me in
regards to math and programming. I'd love to research news things in the Join
and Pi process calculi (and other interesting things with distributed
computing) and write papers in LaTeX and whatnot; honestly, the more
theoretical, the better.

Sadly, I think those jobs are mostly reserved for people who went through
academic programs and have a bunch of letters after their name, so I stick
around in the land of pragmatism.

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peteypao
Why don't you get those letters?

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tombert
I'm not sure I have the mental tenacity to stick with a degree program for 8
years. Knowing how I am, I would probably do well enough in the actual courses
directly related to the major, but become disinterested and do poorly in
everything else.

I am not saying that people are wrong for requiring these credentials, I'm
just saying that that's what precludes me from a research job.

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aaronmiler
My ideal career is actually a split one.

I'm working on turning my garage into a fully licensed winery so I can start
producing hard cider commercially.

So in a perfect world, my time would be split 70/30 where 70% of my is spent
making/distributing/marketing hard cider. Then 30% of my time is spent on
lifestyle software businesses/applications

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Abdur91
my ideal career would be to have a position probably related to tech where my
work is to have a direct impact on people's life.By meaning tech i would love
to have a job i which i am facing new challenges every day and solving
them.Also my job should give me time to meet best minds around the world :)

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UK-AL
Running a small software business (5 - 10 people) in some niche area.

