
Ask HN: Have you successfully done a career do-over, and how did you do it? - ccdev
I&#x27;m not talking about switching professions at some point in your life. More specifically, doing your career over again in the same profession, in order to redeem your past failing career.<p>Either you got &quot;too comfy&quot; in your job, didn&#x27;t learn much, then found a very tough time being a good fit for other jobs. Or you simply have stopped being a good hire for other reasons. What did you do to redeem yourself in the eyes of your respective industry?
======
rb808
I suspect its not as easy as many people make out.

I was a great C++/OO dev for 10 years before I got bored, starting doing
management, business focussed roles and more high level devops style work.
After 10 years of that I wanted to move back into pure coding. With great
experience should be easy right? Wrong.

I got a mid-level java/python dev job and it was difficult, I was out of touch
and everything was different or new. Languages, styles, CI/CD, DI, git,
containers, unit testing its a huge amount to learn. After a year I got laid
off because I was getting paid like a senior but not keeping up with the
grads.

A few years later I'm productive and useful in this new world but I dont
really like it. I'm enjoying Scala and functional programming but with so many
libraries and tools I feel like everything is so difficult and complicated. It
takes a lot of study effort to keep up. Also I'm never sure if its because the
applications I work on are badly designed, or I just dont really understand
modern design. I have a business specialty which keeps me employable but I
miss the old days when things were simpler.

Being "old" at 40+ really isn't so easy - I'm not sure you can ever redeem
yourself in the eyes of the industry. Best you can hope for is get a non-tech
domain specialty and find a big stable company that values experience and try
to keep working on interesting projects. Once you're laid off or fired once
its really hard to be the super confident hacker you were at 25.

EDIT - thinking about if you want advice. Get a business specialty or
technical niche. Dont get too lazy, if you aren't learning on the job for a
few years in a row, change the tech in the project or leave. It should be easy
to keep employed but you have to keep working at it. Best career money-wise is
to move to management, but its difficult to move back. Dont take the high
paying job on a dead end project without a plan to get out.

~~~
_diyu
I'm only 32 but that's kind of where I'm at right now too.

Mastered Objective-C and Mac & iOS development 10 years ago, now it's all
Swift and nobody's really hiring for iOS devs in my area (Chicago suburbs),
and nobody's hiring for native Mac developers anywhere, period. And all the
best practices in iOS have changed drastically since then, too, in terms of
both coding and UX.

Learned Ruby on Rails 8 years ago, but it changed so fast that most of what I
knew about it has become irrelevant, and I never was very good at Rails in the
first place.

All the best practices I've learned in HTML/CSS/JS/jQuery/Less/Sass are
becoming outdated pretty quickly.

Spent 5 years mastering Clojure but it's obviously very niche and I don't have
any experience with big data or anything else Clojure is usually used for,
only traditional web apps.

It feels like there's no way to keep up with the industry while staying
relevant and employable.

~~~
Liuser
When you get into technology, you should go under the assumption that you will
be a student for the rest of your life. Otherwise you will get left behind. My
Dad is in tech (I followed his footsteps). For as long as I can remember
growing up he always had a book with him in his free time. He started with
punchcards.

~~~
_diyu
I don't mind learning, definitely. I got into this field because I'm
passionate about software and I enjoy programming a lot. But while I have a
full time job and a large-ish family to support, it's hard to fit "3 years of
professional React.js experience" into my spare time to put on my resume, so
that when nobody's hiring iOS developers anymore, I can still get a job.
That's what I'm talking about. A lot of the skills are very transferrable, but
I've already been turned down for a few jobs simply because I just don't have
the in-production experience with the exact technology they're hiring for,
even though I could pick it up pretty quickly.

~~~
6a68
Want to get some production experience with react? Tons of webdev projects are
using it at Mozilla. Come on over and find yourself a good first bug :-)

~~~
hodl
"But while I have a full time job and a large-ish family to support, it's hard
to fit "3 years of professional React.js experience" into my spare time ..."

I'm sure your got the bugs, but the gp ain't got the time

------
ElectronicE
I got a super comfortable job for the past 15years as a work from home C++
server programmer. It has allowed me to be around and watch my kid grow rather
than be away 8-6PM and just come home to dinner and put them to bed.

It was very good pay at the beginning but it hasn't keep up and now it's not
that good (to bad either).

A few years ago I started playing with electronics (Arduinos, Raspberry PIs
and stuff like that). After a while I started looking and picked up a few easy
jobs related to that in Upwork as a way to do something different as doing the
same thing for 15years can take it's toll.

Shortly after I was picking more and more advanced jobs. I picked a few big
clients and moved them off Upwork. I'm now doing advanced embedded system
programming and electronic design as a side gig on weekends and afternoons and
making more money than my main programming job (which I can't seem to be able
to leave).

And that's the story of how I found an alternative to my comfortable job. If I
ever leave it I will never go to an office again, I will just expand my
embedded freelancing.

~~~
geoffmac
' and now it's not that good (to bad either)'

looks like a few other skills have depreciated too

~~~
wil421
Criticizing the parent for grammar and even not using capitalization or
punctuation. You aren’t even following the norms for quoting on HN.

------
ccdev
Thanks for the replies, everyone. Keep them coming! I didn't expect this topic
to get this popular.

The reason I asked this question is that I am facing a career slump as a
software engineer, and finding out that the software industry is brutal if you
don't know how to carve a path for your own career.

And when I mean career slump, I really mean it. I'm living with my mom at age
35 which is quite the opposite of what someone expects of a software engineer
at this age. Most people I know are buying/have bought houses and starting
families. And I'm not at a point of self-sustainability yet. I can barely keep
up with the insurance payments of my own car, and just keep the vision of
having my own place to live in (once more, as I lived alone before things got
tough) close to my mind. No longer be dependent of my family, get some
privacy, some autonomy and instead of living every day switching between
errand boy and going to a coffee shop for the free internet, to apply to jobs,
or simply taking a break from my parents.

So that's pretty much me right now. I have 10 professional years of a "whole
lot of nothing", no big signs of progression, maturity, or taking on more
responsibilities. I didn't major in Computer Science, but I still expected my
first programming job to be like, getting a mentor, working alongside a group
of (in-house!) programmers, being able to ask them many questions and learn
all about formal development practices.

Well, I got none of that in the places that I worked at. So seeing your
stories gives me a good idea and hope that I can just move on from the past
and have better companies approach me with hope and optimism, like I'm a bona-
fide junior eager to learn.

~~~
ordinaryperson
What do you WANT to do (besides make money)?

Generally speaking there are 3 broad career paths for developers these days:

1\. Senior developer/team lead

2\. Management

3\. Startup founder / worker

==========

Senior dev:

==========

PROS: Actually get to build stuff all day. Fun to program the latest and
greatest. Be respected as an expert by your peers. Less meeting and paperwork
hassle than other roles.

CONS: Can be sat on by middle management. Often don't get to drive product or
strategic decisions. Low salary ceiling. Frustrating to be forced to do things
you think are bad ideas.

==========

Management

==========

PROS: Get to make decisions (well, more than people beneath you, anyway).
Potential path to the 1%. No more keeping up with the ratrace of programming
platforms and languages. Can have a positive impact on the lives of your
reports.

CONS: No satisfaction of hands-on product building, just lots of sitting in
meetings, sending e-mails and crafting PowerPoints. Sometimes mentally
exhausting to babysit your reports. Lots of Game of Thrones-style politics.

==========

Startup founder / worker

==========

PROS: Fun (well, more than corporate jobs). Be your own boss / have more
independence. Work on interesting problems. Potential path to fame and
fortune.

CONS: 90% likely to fail and put you in debt or company go out of business.
Potentially limitless time commitment. Doesn't feel life-fulfilling to work on
a company dedicated to disseminating cat gifs (or whatever the startup does).

==========

Ask yourself which of these 3 paths appeal to you the most, then write out a
list of what you need to do to get there, potentially.

If you're living with Mom at age 35 however it sounds like you need to move to
a big city like San Francisco or New York where they pay developers a lot
more, but I don't know what your situation is.

~~~
ccdev
I'm definitely choosing path 1, which is to become a senior dev. I prefer
technical-focused jobs. Learn from mentor programmers, get into teams and
learn formal development practices, and then help out programmers less
experienced than myself. I've never held a senior title, never led a group,
nor even been involved with the process of hiring other programmers.

I currently live in Chicago which is pretty good for COL/salary ratio, for the
average programmer. Caveat: I am not average. I consistently get offers from
very low paying jobs- as in "$25/hr on a contract" low. This comes from the
tendency to being let go from jobs without having another one lined up, so I
never could afford to wait much longer for a better offer to use as leverage.
Also, I don't qualify for unemployment insurance.

That has put me in the bottom 15-20% of local jobs by total compensation. If I
were to restart as a junior programmer at one of the better companies, I'd
actually be getting paid somewhat more than at my last job (and with insurance
benefits for once).

~~~
ordinaryperson
In that case, I'd recommend specializing in one particular
language/framework/domain.

Whether it's NodeJS, Python, C#, Swift -- pick one and run with it. "General
programmer" is fine for management but not great for senior developer.

It seems little odd that at 35 you're still in the $25/hr range. Either you
got a late start or maybe there's some soft skills you need to improve
(running a meaningful meeting, developing a strong rapport with business
partners and management, etc).

Good luck.

~~~
ccdev
>It seems little odd that at 35 you're still in the $25/hr range.

Don't underestimate the negative effects of having no job lined up when you're
let go from your current one. You can't realistically negotiate for an ideal
salary when you're currently making zero. Taking a less-than-optimal job offer
is still better than being homeless, though.

For reference, my first web development job paid $12/hr (part-time) in 2007,
in the Chicago area. I found this job by cold-emailing job listings on
Craigslist.

------
southphillyman
Can't speak on it personally but about 3-4 years ago during my last job search
I searched a few "Getting a dev job after 30" type queries. I was around that
age and concerned about all the ageism claims. Apparently there are forums
full of former developers either out of the industry or struggling to remain
in it. There was a lot of talk about depression and guys being suicidal
because they couldn't keep up with the industry, etc. Really eye opening to me
at the time as the industry seemed strong as ever, even for outdated stacks.

If you're not getting any offers that's one thing I guess, but imposter
syndrome is real in the industry. We all worry about being up to some rockstar
level and all the grueling interview processes out there. Then we brush up for
a couple of weeks, hit the market, and field multiple offers again.

~~~
khazhou
I find the notion of age discrimination at 30+ to be simply ludicrous. I’ve
been at multiple top tech companies, and the very common age ranges were
mid-20s to (estimated) late-40s.

~~~
southphillyman
Older devs exist but they tend to be very senior with a lot of responsibility
in my experience. Where does that leave the competent but non architect level
dev who doesn't want to be responsible for that level of pressure? Maybe a 40
yr old wants to just take a mid level CRUD job for the purposes of keeping up
with his mortgage and has no other ambitions beyond that? It seems like being
"just a guy" is looked down upon the older you get which is not fair when
there are plenty of those types of roles out there (mostly given to younger
people)

~~~
sshumaker
Is the 40 year old comfortable taking the same salary as an early/mid career
dev? Therein lies the rub.

~~~
indemnity
Yep, that’s it entirely. In your 20s it’s super easy to take a lot of risks,
what do you have to lose?

When I was 20 I decided over coffee to move to the other side of the world.
Had some savings, not a lot but just did it.

Now, at 37, there’s a mortgage to pay and a family to support.

I don’t have the runway to do two or three years of low pay again to switch to
another field.

I am aggressive paying that down though, so that I have this option in my 40s.

------
hemling
47 here. I drove my career into a dead-end.

Always been a generalist. Tried many times to do startups and saas products.
It never got me anywhere. Between my projects, I worked as a freelancer, while
living in many different countries. I took anything I could get. Earned enough
money, then tried again. I have broad work experience, but nothing deep.
Started a family late in life (with 44). Now I feel my career is a dead-end.
Plus I seem to have lost my ability to put up with all that technological mess
and the ever-new-shiny-thing.

I'm in a real slump. It's been a long time that I slept well.

Last year I created an online course. It's self-hosted and on Udemy. Compared
to the time I have invested it generates peanuts, but I enjoyed the process of
teaching.

So this is my plan out of the slump: teaching and corporate training. I figure
that once I have created sufficient products, I may be able to make a living.
And I'm trying to get my foot into corporate training. Though I'm an
introvert, I do enjoy a lot helping others to learn and acquire skills.

I'm working on my public speaking abilities as well. Last year I gave a talk
at a conference. I was nervous as hell, but at least some seem to have enjoyed
my talk.

It's a long hard way, but I feel it's the only viable for me.

btw - if anyone here wants to chat, get in touch, email in profile.

~~~
thisiswilson
I'm only 30, but I feel the same way. I've just never been interested in
keeping up with the latest tech, I just like to get things done with the tools
that work. PHP, JQuery and WordPress still work. I'm a generalist as well and
have held positions or have done a fair amount of work in most areas of
marketing in my 9 years in the industry.

I think your idea of teaching and doing corporate training is the right
direction. You could then take your lectures and record those and build
courses on those. That's how you create that content-momentum and spend less
time building, thereby improving your ROI.

Good luck!

------
szermer
I started out doing telephone technical support 20+ years ago.

After the bubble in 2000 I moved back to NYC to work with my dad as a Private
Investigator. I did that for 8 years until I realized I was too young for that
life.

I applied to only one grad program (RISD) because their ID program sounded
interesting and I wanted to get into the design world. Focusing on only one
school made it a challenge and allowed me to fine tune everything. Like a
cosmic coin flip.

After finishing up the program in 2010 (I specifically wanted a 2 year program
because of the double hit of negative income and cost) my wife and I moved out
to the Bay Area. I went from taking an internship at a design firm ($15/ hr as
a 36yo is humbling) to my current role of building out a UX design team of 20
designers in Providence, RI.

In the 7 years of working in the Bay Area I burned through 8 jobs. Some were
wonderful stepping stones, some were side tracks, a few were painful
situations of treading water with waves constantly going over my head — but
all were learning experiences that made my skillset hard to beat in the
marketplace.

My current role is funding my family (oh yeah, had 2 kids in that 7 year
span…. Don’t drink the water in Rockridge unless you want kids) to relocate
back to Providence, RI. It feels nice to come full circle back to the place
that gave me a chance to experiment and reinvent myself.

My advice… life is about collecting experiences. Don’t let any single
experience define you. Be proud of your accomplishments, learn from your
failures, and be nice to everyone you work with. My network has helped me out
countless times.

Everyone roots for the underdog.

~~~
josephgrossberg
As someone who just found himself 41 and jobless, I found this a great
perspective on things. TY for sharing, especially that advice paragraph!

------
brd
It's all about latching on to domain expertise. Rarely is a developer a pure
technologist, there is always some niche you've become involved in whether it
be related to payments or UX or a subset of businesses functions. Assuming you
have some meaningful knowledge of something non-technical, you can take that
with you into a different area of software development.

I've transitioned across various technical roles by understanding software
architecture, business process mapping, master data management, manufacturing,
and a slew of other relatively niche areas of domain expertise. I don't think
my work was anything unique, I was just aware of the niche components of the
projects I worked on and did a good job marketing that knowledge.

~~~
ccdev
I am trying to specialize more in graphics, though I still have to figure out
how large is my skills gap between "doing solo graphics projects" and "full-
time graphics programmer", especially in math. After getting advice on my
resume on how to hide the slow career growth, I've been told to spin it to
show I am interested in this niche and show direction towards that.

If you had been able to read my un-revised resume, it would probably read like
a story that feels the same in the beginning as it is in the end, with no
clear conclusion. So I am working on a new version with a different spin.

~~~
fizx
It's probably better to specialize in business verticals than tech choices,
and better to choose something that doesn't have so many kids learning it to
build games. YMMV

------
larrik
I fell into an obscure technology stack out of college (AS/400...in 2005). It
was comfortable, but technologically unsatisfying and completely useless for
my resume. I kept my skills sharp after hours, and then took a pay cut to jump
ship to a "proper" programming job, which lead me to a _great_ high paying
remote gig after a scant 18 months there. It was for a lot of reasons, and it
was scary (had my first kid shortly before the jump), but it was completely
worth it and not _that_ hard. Just, be good at it.

------
partisan
I was working as a .NET Developer (still do), but around 2010, I was neck deep
in a codebase that was passing around DataSets, stuck in VB.NET, no real
leveraging of code. I interviewed for Amazon and tanked miserably, which was a
wake up call for me as I wasn't aware how much I had let my skills slip.

I knew I had hit something of a low point so I started learning on my own
again outside of work. I picked up several non-MS languages and technologies
which helped me to understand better how I should be using the MS stack. I
eventually found DDD, CQRS, distributed computing, and other concepts that
colored my design perspective. I petitioned for, and through threat of
leaving, got the department permission to use C# and I started to refactor
code when I touched it.

It was a tough road. I sometimes didn't have patience with myself, but I
started counting the little victories and kept going from there.

I am currently learning front-end frameworks, ES6, and Typescript. Nobody
asked me to. I just know I will learn something in the process that I can
apply in the future even if I never get a job related to this tech.

------
ChuckMcM
I'm not sure what this means: _What did you do to redeem yourself in the eyes
of your respective industry?_

Are you talking about someone who screwed up enough times that the mean free
distance to a negative referral is essentially 1.0 ? I don't see industries as
having 'eyes' but I have known industries that are relatively small
communities.

I have known, and hired, a number of people who have 'redone' their career
when the thing they started with didn't pan out, a chemist into a QA person, a
semiconductor process engineer into a UNIX developer, a mom into a product
manager. That sort of 'do over'.

And I've met folks who 'grew up' in a company doing one thing for 15 to 20
years and then failed to find an opportunity to continue doing that thing.
Only to switch into a different career all together. Most commonly that is,
"Hey you weren't you 20 years at BigCorp? What are you doing these days,
'mostly consulting'" sorts of conversations.

~~~
ccdev
I'm mostly talking about people that, for one reason or another, appear to
wander around with no clear career progression or direction, so it looks like
they are "junior" in experience despite being "senior" in total years worked.

And I think that re-doing careers by switching professions (as you say,
chemist -> QA) is different than re-doing career in the same profession.
Something like the former is different because it's easier for companies to
treat you as a clean slate if you switch to something that has little overlap
with your former profession. But I want that clean slate treatement just re-
attempting my profession.

For instance, maybe I want to re-do my entry level years because I never got
into Computer Science, and would like to get an internship at a leading tech
company, because that is a better start than my reality, which was just
graduate with no internships, no support group of professionals, nor
recommendations for good companies. It was just me going solo and blindly
applying to local jobs at Craiglist for low-budget clients.

So yeah, I'm not talking about career switching into another profession, but
more like hitting the reset button on one, to do it better the second time
around.

~~~
ChuckMcM
Okay that is helpful. In my experience, this situation -> _people that, for
one reason or another, appear to wander around with no clear career
progression or direction, so it looks like they are "junior" in experience
despite being "senior" in total years worked._ has always been that the person
wandering didn't know what they wanted, and if it had been years, didn't have
tools to figure out what they wanted.

I am reasonably certain there are other explanations/causes but the three
cases I can recall easily were all that the person got into a career in
computer programming because someone one _else_ told them they should. And
they stayed employed but they didn't have any idea about what they wanted to
do so they changed jobs for all sorts of reasons, a girlfriend, a pay raise, a
manager that kept bugging them at the old job. All of the change reasons were
external to their career path.

One really wanted to be a musician. They could talk on and on about different
styles and influences. They lit up and were on fire. One was lost, they had
always had their life planned out for them by others and they followed that
plan until it ran out (just after graduate college and get a job). And they
never previously had been required to create their own plan. I didn't get to
talk with the third person I can remember because they moved on to a new
position before I had that chance.

If that resonates with you then my advice is to work on figuring out what you
really care about. And I recognize that isn't an easy task, it was simple for
me I was fascinated by computers and the systems you could build with them, so
much so I build stuff just for fun. But a good way to search for the things
that you care about are to explore different things (very hard to do as a
single breadwinner in a family). As I told my musician friend, even if you're
not an artist with a signed label contract, you have a understanding of what
they are going through and you can write code. Can you find ways to help other
musicians that way? Or music lovers? Or screenwriters trying to match music to
scenes? or hospitality businesses wanting to influence the mood with music?
You can get quite meta and still exploit the experience you've developed in an
area you care about.

Without an amnesia treatment there is only so much you can reset :-) Mostly
folks learn basics about work (its not always fun, how you work can be as
important as what you get done, your boss may be an idiot but it doesn't
change the fact that they are your boss, etc). So instead of 'resetting' it's
more like vectoring. Now that you've been in the career for a while, if you
know what you'd like to be then imagine you have reached that point and and
then try to imagine plausible steps that you would have had to take to get
there.

------
haskellandchill
I have done a career do-over. I took a lower paying position that involved
pair programming. It was like developer rehab after the startup grind left me
wondering if I could even contribute as a programmer anymore. The firm had a
good reputation and recruiters were all over me, which was good. Then I took a
much higher paying enterprise type job where it doesn't matter how I code and
there is no point in doing anything better. Not sure what my next move will
be, might get knighted as a data scientist soon, who knows. Good luck!

------
swedish_mafia
I believe this is a time when a lot of software engineers are asking the hard
questions about their careers.

Here's why: The technologies have become simpler and the barriers to entry
have become low. Once upon a time, if you knew the mainstream languages (C++
and Java) it meant you paid your dues learning the hard stuff. Today, with
nodejs becoming mainstream, and the cloud at the backend, developers who come
from an "html programming" background can now build scalable and enterprise
grade applications without breaking a sweat.

That leaves the "hard core" dev in a little bit of a fix. "Where do I go from
here?" The front end is where the complexity is today. Its hard to compete in
the AI and machine learning roles when there are phds doing this for ten years
who are on the same table. Devops is also simple enough for someone with 3
years of experience of be on top of the game.

Now add to that the fact that the number of devs with 8 years of experience
(what I consider the senior dev) grows bigger and bigger each year..

The next slow down I believe will be brutal to our industry.

~~~
jaredhansen
>developers who come from an "html programming" background can now build
scalable and enterprise grade applications without breaking a sweat.

This is a popular misconception but inaccurate nonetheless. It may appear that
way at first glance, but there is still more to building "scalable and
enterprise grade" stuff than just cobbling together a bunch of off the shelf
components.

~~~
ErikAugust
It's possible - but not without breaking a sweat. Coming from "HTML
programming" you are looking at many years of experience and learning to get
to that level despite how good tooling has become.

------
unit91
I was a Fortran developer for a few years in the Aerospace business. After a
while, I got sick of 1977 and just wanted to be a "regular" full stack guy.

At the time Rails 2.X was current and Clojure was pretty new. Both looked
pretty neat. I learned Rails and Clojure on my free time, went through Michael
Hartl's Twitter knockoff to learn, and applied for jobs.

Nobody really loved how little I knew about modern web dev, but several told
me they could see I was bright-ish and sufficiently motivated that they'd take
the chance. It was hard and stressful at first, because I didn't know
_anything_ (JavaScript, jQuery, what's a "callback" function?, etc.) but I
picked it up fairly quickly.

Made $80K my first year (pretty good junior dev salary in Texas) and it's been
better every year since.

------
rm_-rf_slash
Not sure how applicable this is, but I’ve gone back to school to get an M.Eng
now that I know I don’t want to do (or only have the skills for) applications
development forever. The focus is ML/AI but I’ve found a surprising amount of
enjoyment out of working with hardware in the rapid prototyping class I’m
currently taking. In retrospect, sticking with just one domain was probably
why I got bored in the first place.

I haven’t necessarily switched careers, but it’s still not easy. If I could go
back and give myself one piece of advice, it would be to knuckle down and
learn differential equations and linear algebra. That’s the difference between
understanding how machine learning works and tinkering around with TensorFlow.

~~~
volkk
just started taking an online intro course to deep learning. really hoping
that i'm not simply wasting my time and that if i actually want to one day
pursue it, that i won't need to have a PHD in this field

------
GreeniFi
I was a bored private equity lawyer, working like a ninja, ashamed by my
firm’s clients. I did a one year Masters in Environmental Economics, did some
really interesting work and then joined someone else’s start-up and ran a few
side projects. That gave me the experience and confidence to really go out on
my own. To anyone else about to pivot their life I would say: 1\. A British
one year masters (not an MBA) is a great way to build a network and learn
enough skills to make a fist of your next step, learningon the job. 2\. Don’t
do an MBA. Ever. 3\. Learn start-up skills on someone else’s start-up before
blowing your own cash on your own dumb-ass mistakes. 4\. Read Hacker News
everyday!

~~~
Havoc
I'm curious about the questionable PE clients if you don't mind elaborating a
little bit. I'm in the PE space myself and haven't seen anything particularly
shady? Obviously you can't go into details, but perhaps you can add a bit more
colour to the comment?

~~~
GreeniFi
I should probably point out that I only joined all the dots on the gangster
bits many years after I left. At the time I only saw legal but morally dubious
deals. Basically - if your business generates substantial negative
externalities, you're in a very morally grey area.

------
didip
Aren't most software engineers already doing this?

Initially I was SDET, doing a bunch of boring JUnit work.

Then I wanted to get into video game industry while I was still young. Learned
Microsoft Visual C++ along the way.

Then I got sick of the video game industry, the internet industry looks pretty
cool, so I switched to it. Picked up PHP, Python, and Ruby all together at the
same time.

Then I got sick of SysAdmin telling me what to do, so I learned a bunch of
Linux skills and config management to become DevOps.

And I am kind of there now. I always fantasize of working on native mobile
app, maybe one day I will make a switch again.

------
EnderMB
Mine is a similar story to others, although I can't really say if it's a
success or not.

For the past eight years I've been a C# developer, working my way up from mid-
level to senior developer across a number of companies. I've built dozens of
websites, contributed to open-source projects, and have given talks at local
user groups.

The problem with being a single-stack person, especially in the .NET world, is
that you look on at your peers on the Linux stack and wonder if you're missing
out, so I left a cushy job as a senior developer at a large agency to be a
standard developer at a software firm, one that focuses on everything but
.NET.

I'm a month in, and it's been hard going from being the guy that knows things
to the guy that struggles. Getting to grips with Linux and the terminal was
surprisingly easy (probably because I was an avid Powershell user on Windows),
but I've struggled to learn languages and frameworks quick enough. I have
enough of a grasp of Python and Ruby to be able to look at code and know
what's going on, but I'm still miles behind others, and it feels like a gap
that won't be easily/quickly solved, regardless of the time I put into
learning/doing. Despite the logic being almost exactly the same, it's crazy
how one can go from making stupid mistakes in a PHP script to fixing a long-
standing bug in an ASP.NET MVC site in the space of a minute.

------
gxs
I think what this thread is highlighting more than anything is the importance
of building real, meaningful relationships as you progress through your
career.

As you progress, make a name for yourself as someone that delivers and build
relationships with people. It's amazing how willing people are down the line
to bring them on to their team/company in different roles if they already know
you to be good and enjoyable to work with.

I'm already 33, and this is something I haven't been the best at, so
definitely a wake up call for me.

------
ctdonath
Did embedded software for a couple decades at numerous companies. Was good at
it, but saw the path was going to slowly drift into the weeds (company was
aspiring to build products competing with what competitors had discarded as
obsolete). Noticed one of those rare ground-floor technology shift
opportunities was occurring in the industry...

Told my students in my side/after-hours gig as professor "there's a rare
ground-floor technology shift opportunity occurring in the industry, now's
your chance..."

A friend was co-founder of a startup. One day, while in his home for unrelated
reasons, he was on the phone with CIO lamenting their [then] inability to find
iOS developers. He saw me, pointed, shouted "don't leave!", hung up, and asked
if I wanted to do iOS development. "Yes!" I replied with enthusiasm. He then
asked if I actually _knew_ iOS development. "No! but I'd jump at the chance &
reason to learn!" We arranged a 6-month trial period, I worked long hard
nights learning & implementing iOS code, and within 3 months was hired as the
2nd employee.

A few years later, that business was sold, and moved on to doing apps for
major corporations.

Upshot: technology & business path was stalling out, used an opportune
connection to take a risk in jumping to the near-start of a new yet equivalent
technology path. Was able to leverage deep "magic" skills (intuition, arcane
knowledge, refined techniques) to "do-over" my career, starting with decades
of experience into a realm just years old.

------
nathanaldensr
I'm dealing with this right now. I have a ton of experience--since I was a
young teenager, in fact--of being a software developer, mostly in positions of
technical leadership. Most of my resume consists of architect jobs. And yet,
to pay the bills, explore a new area of the country, and expand on
complimentary skills, I took a job as a senior DevOps engineer contractor at
Idaho National Laboratory. Since my contract ended and I've started applying
for jobs again, it feels like I'm being treated as damaged goods. I can't tell
whether it's the fact I live in the Idaho Falls area or whether it's the
Senior DevOps Engineer title. I get the standard "We've decided to pursue
other candidates" non-reason. I have no data on which to base tactical changes
to my approach. My applications are just falling into a black hole.

I know I am a very qualified candidate for any of these positions, _and_ I
have lots of GitHub contributions where people can actually see my work. That
doesn't seem to be enough, however. Can't I just talk to a _real_ person? My
communication skills are excellent, and whenever I _have_ gotten in front of
the hiring manager, it nearly always leads to an offer. Am I the victim of
algorithm-driven hiring?

To plug myself a bit: If anyone is looking for an experienced .NET architect
who's done a bit of everything (including my own startup), drop me a line. I
favor working remotely but I'll relocate to a desirable area for the right
position. [nathan] at aldenfamily |dot| net.

Oh, and OP, you didn't mention if your question applies to you, but if it
does, hang in there. We don't have much control over the ridiculous state of
hiring in IT, so there's not much we can do except plug along.

~~~
komali2
When you ask them why they turned you down, what do they say? Have you tried
asking for resume feedback?

~~~
nathanaldensr
Most of the job ads (Dice, Indeed, etc.) obfuscate the actual company behind a
recruiter and no-reply email addresses. I would love to reply and ask, but in
99% of cases the reply email is noreply@somerecruitmentfirm.com.

I have talked to a couple of real people, one over the phone and one over
email. In both cases I feel like I had a good rapport built. The first guy
turned me down because his company only had the budget for a junior
programmer. The second guy hasn't yet responded to my reply to him, but I'm
hopeful.

Overall, I've probably applied to 100 different places (mostly remote jobs)
and haven't even received rejections--let alone a reply--from the vast
majority.

It pains me to no end that I am seemingly not allowed to simply talk to a real
person. I understand why; I'm not naive. It still sucks.

~~~
p-funk
Since you mentioned Indeed, I thought I'd mention I had a similar sort of
"resume black hole" experience. For a long time, I wasn't really thinking and
just applied through those job board sites, directly from the posting. Later,
I started using those sites just to research companies, and then go to the
company site and apply there, and all of sudden I get five responses in a
week. If there's no company listed, a lot of times you can google portions of
the job description and it leads to a real company. My resume formatting would
often be messed up by the job board sites, so it probably went straight to the
garbage. There's really no reason to go through a recruiter if you can avoid
it.

~~~
nathanaldensr
I've been doing that whenever possible. I even have my wife helping! It does
work for some of the posts where the _actual employer 's name_ is listed, but
for recruiter-obfuscated posts, it's much more difficult. Sometimes we are
able to reverse-engineer the original company using location and other
information, though. It's still a draining experience.

------
wffurr
My first programming job out of school was on really obsolete tech: IBM
Unibasic aka Pick Basic in an ERP system. It's a career trap on par with
taking a COBOL programming job right out of university:
[https://medium.com/@csixty4/pick-was-post-relational-
before-...](https://medium.com/@csixty4/pick-was-post-relational-before-it-
was-cool-ed610c9d0f14)

I broke out and rebooted my career by quitting and going to grad school full
time and getting a Master's degree in CS from a fancier university in a tech
hub city. My phone blew up with recruiters when I graduated and posted my
resume online.

~~~
su30mki117
Any tips that you can give to someone who is about to finish his Master's when
it comes to looking for jobs?

~~~
wffurr
Brush up on your algorithms and whiteboard coding. Tech interviewing is a
skill that you can practice and master.

Cracking the Coding Interview, Topcoder, Euler Project, etc. are good places
to do this.

------
PascLeRasc
Does anyone have any stories of career do-overs that aren't just a renaming of
"software engineer" on both sides?

~~~
dsnuh
Exactly. Most of these read as "I went into a different specialization of the
same field".

Where is the engineer that just chucked it all and opened a donut shop? That's
the level I want to know about. Most of these are just stories of people
making lateral moves in the same industry.

~~~
Tenobrus
That's explicitly what this question is about though, the OP specifically says
they want to know about lateral moves in the same industry.

------
WaylonKenning
I reached the end of my career progression in IT Architecture. Started as a
Solutions Architect, then reached Enterprise Architect. And there's no where
to go after that.

So I took the leap and tried something different - became a Product Architect
focusing on a specific technology. Now I'm a Mobile Product Manager, something
that pays (probably) less than an Enterprise Architect, but tests out new
skills like investment proposals.

My ultimate end goal is CTO. I think having an end goal in mind helps me focus
on what do I need to do in this job or the next that gets me closer to that
goal.

------
throwaway_234
I got too comfortable and thought I dont need to be harassed or witness others
being harassed. I'm leaving this craphole and I'll be able to get another job
when Im ready to go back to work. That was June of last year and I was ready
to get back to work in September. Yet all those recruiters knocking on my door
and landing me 30 phone & in person interviews never prompted an offer. Though
six long months later and as of two weeks ago I started a new gig.

Im not sure why it took so long as it never did before, but it's either there
is more supply then before for UI/UX Designer & Developers roles, I'm getting
old(42), I do both design & development which the UX side ppl say Im not
experienced in the study testing where this button should go(let's talk about
that for hours) to developers saying I dont know React. Also, I thought ppl in
my field might have been talking about how I just up and left my last job
without mentioning the harassment(after Me Too movement started to roll i
reached out to the heads of this big company reminding them that I reported a
female colleague's harassment was ignored then harassed myself .. im a dude).

Overall I am glad that's behind me/working now and it just took time and
potentially making ppl shut up about me when they dont know the whole story.

------
JeremyNT
I'm not sure whether this qualifies exactly, but when I first got into tech I
thought ops was what I wanted to do. I always dabbled in programming (I did
learn rails when it first came out) and followed generally the state of web
development, but my skills simply never developed in that direction. I was
boxed in by my job, and I learned nothing new there. I ultimately decided
there was no path forward - so I went backwards.

I switched from a senior Linux admin to a junior rails development job a bit
over one year ago now.

It's humbling to start over at my age. The degree to which one can specialize
in IT is striking, and the amount of knowledge you learn and internalize is
vast. I learn something new nearly every day now, and little (though some) of
my prior skillset directly translates.

I'm very glad I took this step, but it's not been easy. I think a lot of
humility is required, especially for somebody who is comfy and well
established in their current position. But I'm lucky enough to work somewhere
with patient and helpful colleagues, who do not view my age and lack of direct
experience as a detriment.

One benefit of starting over when you're older: this time around, I fully
realize how much I don't know, and I'm never afraid to ask stupid questions.
The same was certainly not true of 24 year old me.

------
hcnews
I was at one of the FANG companies for 6+ years, joined right after
graduation. However, I couldn't get senior due to me being naive (I have no
ego, hence wasn't able to collaborate effectively with teammates, pissed a few
off a few times), positioning of the product (none of my team members got
promoted to senior while I was in that team). Last year I opted to change my
jobs when my promo was denied again. I had hard time finding other teams to
switch to (because of mentions of pissing off people) and also was completely
bored of my existing team. FWIW, my technical work was never in question, just
that no one supported me at promo times etc.

I am now in another good software company (similar to FANG, probably a level
lower in terms of core compsci ability). The big change I have done is to
accept that not everyone is learning all the time and not to try to do the
same (its software engineering not research). I learnt this throughout the
interview process by talking to lot of good college friends (who also work in
tech in Bay Area) and acquaintainces recommended by friends.

My change isn't complete yet, hoping that this change will lead to better
collaboration with team members and work output. Job title might improve too
at some point in the future, though I am not too worried about it.

~~~
ahussain
> The big change I have done is to accept that not everyone is learning all
> the time and not to try to do the same (its software engineering not
> research)

What do you mean by this?

~~~
hcnews
Basically solve a small problem at a time (however uninteresting it is; a lot
of things are uninteresting to me), never try to put the whole world in my
head or continually come up with ground breaking stuff. I also realized that
most other people are doing the same and this helped me align better with
them.

------
nightsd01
In university, I was studying biology. In my free time however, one day I had
the strange desire to build a simple app that would simulate the solar system.

After spending months learning how to build software, I realized just how
deeply satisfying software development was to me. So I started doing small,
low paid freelance work building apps to build up a portfolio. Every time a
project ended, I’d move on to bigger projects with higher pay. I’ve never
looked back. I dropped out of school and my passion & skill have grown ever
since. Eventually I had a good resume and the recruiters came to me.

Now I am working at an amazing company in the Bay Area. I love it. It’s a job
where I actually look forward to going to work every day, which is fortunate
and lucky.

Given that the software world is always changing, I am always learning
something new. Lately I’ve been learning React-Native.

------
mod
I owned a brick & mortar business and decided I couldn't keep doing it. The
particular type of business has a late-night lifestyle attached to it, and a
crowd that I felt was "bringing me down."

I left the business (I'm still a silent partner) and took a web development
job. I had been building my own websites & things for about a decade by then,
but had no professional experience.

I'm 5 or 6 years in now and getting bored with it. The bulk of the learning is
over.

My life has been a series of big changes and disparate job-types, and it feels
like another one is on the horizon. I sometimes lament not being the best-in-
class in almost any discipline, but I find that I'm adequate or above-average
in a great many things and there's maybe some comfort to be had in that.

------
itomato
After so many years of growth and development in any industry, you have to
change and shift to stay relevant.

A big part of being relevant is being interested. If you aren't relevant or
interested, you aren't of any value in that particular niche of that
particular industry.

What I chose to do when faced with this was to move into an adjacent field
where my skills were applicable and relevant to the new and interesting
challenge.

When the situation arose yet again, I took the knowledge gained by having
applied my skills in new ways to focus on applying them in a constant state of
change to help others in different niches.

It's all one big spiral staircase of shark's teeth, where there is no shortage
of change, growth or people willing to take your place.

------
nurettin
Early 2000s, I was a full time procrastinator, college introvert, MTG/DND geek
and homework/thesis freelancer. German government increased fees to a point
which I could no more afford it, so I dropped out and found a real job.

~~~
w0de0
If you will forgive me indulging in stereotyping: this is a very German
response. Two sentences, brutally honest about the self, logically complete,
and subtly amusing.

------
badkangaroo
Started off as a concept artist for a few years, then started doing particle
effects, moved into 3d environment modeling for a few years, and did a few
characters, then moved into character modeling for a few years, then
animation, then character rigging, then rigging automation through mel script
for a few years. then worked as a technical artist for several years, then
learned more programming stuff, then wrote a bunch of unreal script for a few
projects for a few more years, then learned C# for unity and now i've been
writing C# for VR apps for a while...

------
Dowwie
Often, it's the situation that architects your decisions. If you can delay
debts and dependencies, you can afford to do more. Live within your means.
Downsize your needs. Practice frugality.

------
NumberCruncher
Everyone should read

[https://www.kalzumeus.com/2011/10/28/dont-call-yourself-a-
pr...](https://www.kalzumeus.com/2011/10/28/dont-call-yourself-a-programmer/)

Tl,dr: do not be the guy who writes code in x language for y bucks / hour and
applies to vacancies online. Be the guy who generates business value and talks
to people in the industry. Start doing it today!

------
wuliwong
I got my Ph.D. in physics in 2010, worked for about 1 year in research then
took a year to try and build my own startup while collecting unemployment. I
didn't successfully get a startup going but I learned enough web development
during that time that I have been doing it professionally ever since.

~~~
turc1656
How were you able to collect unemployment if you decided to leave to try to
get a business started?

~~~
wuliwong
I got laid off and then made that decision. And I basically just started
building websites that I thought would be cool. Trying to "get a startup
going" might be giving myself too much credit.

~~~
turc1656
Ah, that make sense. Incorrect assumption on my part that you decided to
leave.

~~~
wuliwong
I wanted to try something completely on my own and I had done a lot of
programming in my physics career so I thought that building a website would
make sense. I SEVERELY underestimated the complexity of web development
though. :) But I'm glad I did or I probably wouldn't have even tried it.

------
ojbyrne
Get another job. “Stopped being a good hire for other reasons” makes it sounds
like you’re experiencing a lot of rejection. Finding a new job is a numbers
game, but also the more you search, the better you get at interviewing. Don’t
give up, treat your job search like a full time job, be diligent.

------
danschumann
I don't think it's a good idea for people like me..

I'd rather try to figure out a way to make my career (my skills) fun again.
And find a way to get curious.

Or, to expand slightly past my skillset ( like management ), and learn that
skillset, but as a superset of my existing skills.

------
keyle
This industry is the very definition of career do-over. Every 5 years or so we
change our activities. No one writes code or design like 20 years ago. With a
career of 50 years, we are all doomed to have to change.

Adapt over time. Don't just jump. Take on new responsibilities. You will find
experience crosses many fields. It's a lot about domain knowledge (e.g.
financial industry) and we carry a lot of stuff over with us. Never undersell
yourself, experience is king. Always be keen on learning, asking questions to
younger self. Cross pollinate, experiment and be curious. Too many old devs
just corner themselves. They shouldn't, they have a gezillion experiences and
it always comes down to a race condition ;)

~~~
movedx
Well said.

Stay flexible and keep learning. I like the 4% rule: keep increasing the
difficulty of a daily challenge by 4%, i.e. keep pushing your self to reach
higher and higher.

------
xstartup
I was a Symbian S40 app developer, after that Symbian C++ S60, developing J2ME
applets. Left the job, launched my own app. Made first million doing that!
Then I recreated the same app for Blackberry then finally Android, made tons
of money doing this. Then it got soo crowded, clones kept coming and I lost my
competitive edge. Then I launched a web app in a niche and built SaaS
business. At this point - I had all money I ever wanted but I lost motivation,
I started getting back to my roots. Hacking on projects, building expertise
across dozens of different technologies. It was as if I am trying to justify
what I've earned. Naive me! But then I realized that tho I am among the people
who claim technology as their passion but this is not what attracted me to
this field. What attracted me was a solving problem which many had in common.
So, I left hacking and started building small products again. Launching 4-5
more products, all successful - I never failed at anything. But still,
sometimes I feel that I just keep getting lucky. This thing still haunts me
till date. I am not able to relax or take a day off either. Life has become
hell lately, I feel I've to fight to survive. The world just doesn't make any
sense to me!

~~~
cryodesign
So you seem really successful and financially sorted, but yet 'life has become
hell' and you feel you have to fight to survive? Do you mean financially?

------
ebbv
Yep I was a programmer at a university until 2002 when I had driven my own
career into the ditch along with my personal life. I had to start over from a
lower position after gathering my wits about me, and work my way back up.

The hardest part was getting that second chance, if you had a more senior job
and you're applying for a lower one it's obvious to people there's something
going on there. Your best bet is going to be honesty, and convey very clearly
you've learned from your mistakes and that you want to improve, your open to
feedback, etc.

Good luck.

------
swyx
i am somewhat bemused that this got 38 upvotes in 16 minutes. i have no idea
how hacker news' new page works.

~~~
akulbe
It means there's lots of eyes on the article and the folks agree. No surprise
there.

~~~
aaronchall
The 72 votes in 38 minutes as of now means that the few who upvoted it from
the /new page are being validated by the general community after it got on the
front page.

