
Ask HN: What made you choose your current career? - theBeaver
Please state your career
======
crdb
It was December, I was bored to death staring at my four screens and thinking
the weather really sucks in Europe in winter, and some guy calls me out of the
blue asking me if I want to move to the beach. I had a chat with a few
colleagues, one of them told me he spent a year in Australia and loved every
second of it; his wife refused to move from Europe as she liked to be close to
her parents, so he was stuck in the miserable weather and resigned to his
fate.

I took the Skype interview at 6am in the dark of my flat, wearing my suit for
work, and he made sure to tell me about how he had just gone surfing that
morning. I had to do three trades from the train platform due to the delay and
a time change in South Africa we forgot about.

My boss was busy making a lot of money on a volatile morning and took a couple
hours to process my verbal resignation, at which point he jumped ("you WHAT?")
and told me to go see HR. They trusted me, and were relatively busy, so they
let me stay til the next day.

We had a chat in a conference room where he told me that his biggest regret
was how his career kind of "just happened", with positions of ever increasing
money and responsibility keeping him in the game until he was life-locked
(kids, house, cars, skills, network...). He encouraged me to go seek
adventure, he had wished to go to Asia at "my age" but never got round to it.

Sydney was even more awesome than I imagined. The rest kind of followed
naturally; that and I never managed to get back in, so had to keep going,
self-teach, moved companies, etc.

But it all comes down to a cold, miserable day in Geneva and an executive
trawling LinkedIn for suitable hires for his team downunder. I sometimes
wonder whether I'd have eventually quit to do my own thing, or whether I'd be,
like some of my friends from university, debating whether to go for the DBS or
the F-type this season.

~~~
nickbauman
Your writing has a wonderful tone. Do you have a blog?

~~~
crossroads091
Check the OP's past submissions. You are in for a treat!

~~~
crdb
Thanks to you both... that means a lot!

Funny thing is I started a few blogs anonymously, and they never really took
up, and I stopped all of them within weeks of starting. But I keep coming back
here because, well, a man is weak, and those upvotes mean something, that
somebody read it and enjoyed it.

Somehow that "pays" more than the dollars I could have gotten consulting for
the same amount of time it took to write it...

~~~
M8
Are you a developer or a trader? What do you think about desk development
positions?

~~~
crdb
Neither - my co-founder and I consult over the whole data chain from tracking
to recommendation engines and automation, and I write around 10% of the code,
usually SQL and scripting; this finances our startup R&D better than taking
funding in Singapore, which is only generous towards Singaporeans.

I think finance is a broad industry with a wide mix of experiences and
competence and it entirely depends on which firm you are working for. I'd work
in any position for someone like Jim Simons, Paul Singer or Seth Klarman, I'd
probably try fairly hard (and tried fairly hard back then) to get in somewhere
like Glencore, places like IMC or Tibra sound quite fun, but I'd hesitate to
take up any kind of job at some of the smaller banks, startup funds or other
dubious entities. Even some of the non-bulge bracket but global banks are
seriously bureaucratic and technologically still in the 1980s (without the
culture of proper engineering allegedly more common back then). Then there's
the special cases: at Standard Chartered, you get to work with people like
@donsbot which is fantastic for your technical development independently of
whether you enjoy the industry or the company.

The money is good, but not that good. By specializing in something there is a
lot of demand for outside of finance (say, "big, proper" dev ops) you can pull
a lot more money than by being an average quant or the "guy who makes the
tools for the traders", even if the best quants will pull large amounts of
money. We interviewed dev ops people making north of USD 300k a year for
managing less than 100 servers.

Lastly, a lot of business people in finance look down on IT; they see it as a
commoditized industry with less intelligent people than those brilliant people
who have "survived" markets and bring in revenue (one might make the same
argument about them - the most often said thing on a trading floor is "would
he make the same money without the bank's name on his business card" and
"personality" and free lunches was never a factor in choosing the bank I'd
trade with). If you can forgive them for that, wear your suit, swallow your
pride and do what you're told, you can make an easy living in those places.

------
rickhanlonii
Programming was my second choice.

I wanted to be a math professor. One day I'm sitting in the office of my
favorite professor and we're talking about grad school and PhDs. I asked him
if it was worth it. He told me that you don't do it because it's worth it, you
do it because you love it. I knew this, and I loved math, so I nodded.

Then he told me what my career could look like after I graduated. Part time,
working at 2-3 universities, where teaching math was more of a hobby than a
job. I decided that for me, no matter how much I loved math, it wasn't worth
it.

Fortunately, I'm pretty good with computers and programming comes naturally
given my math background. I'm really satisfied with where I am now, but math
is the one that got away.

~~~
fsk
I went to grad school for a Math PhD for 3 years and then dropped out to
switch to computer programmer. If I didn't go to grad school, I would have
regretted it, but having done it, it seems like a waste of time now.

That was on reason I switched out. I would likely be a permanent adjunct or be
grateful for whatever tenure-track job I could get at some low-ranking
university in the middle of nowhere. And if you don't get a tenure-track job
at one of the top research universities, your teaching load can be pretty
high.

I still occasionally read about stuff that interests me. I'm thinking about
making some Math-based HTML5/mobile games in my spare time.

My biggest regret right now is that I'm stuck in the PHP/LAMP webdev niche,
and I'm having a hard time getting interviews for anything else. If demand for
PHP dries up, I could wind up in a spot where my experience has no market
value and my career may be over.

~~~
jtfairbank
If you're in the bay area, we're hiring. ReSchedule Med is an automated staff
scheduling solution for healthcare orgs. The scheduling part is pretty intense
math wise, but we're early so we really need someone who can help with a bit
of everything.

And good devs can learn another language no problem, so the PHP niche isn't a
concern.

[https://reschedulemed.com](https://reschedulemed.com)

My email is in my profile.

~~~
fsk
I live in NYC.

A couple months, I applied to all NYC HN ads, including the ones that said
"You don't need experience in our tech stack." I got zero onsite interviews. I
know that I know my stuff very well.

~~~
jtfairbank
I can't comment on the other YC companies, b/c I don't know what they are
looking for or how their process works.

If you're willing to relocate shoot me an email.

~~~
fsk
Unfortunately, relocating is not an option for me right now.

------
jeena
I was a heating engeneer and liked it but during the winter it was so freaking
cold, I couldn't feel my feet. That's when I decided I needed a job which can
be done in an office where it is warm during the winter.

I went back to school, made a website with Frontpage for my first band (when I
was 22 or something), that got me interested in computers. I self learned
webstuff, later landed a job in web but decided to study computer science at a
university to trully understand what I was doing. Now I am a Linux programmer
in the car industry.

So basically I got cold feet.

------
drglitch
Career: Finance/Trading Platforms Developer (by accident). I wanted to be a
doctor. And I hate math.

When I was 7, me and two of my friends signed up for a local free summer
course for computer skills and typing for Pioneers (this was in Kiev, Ukraine,
in mid-90s).

Learning MS-DOS was pretty cool and different. It was also great fun to make
infinite-loop batch files that printed out some vulgarities on screen when the
instructor wasnt looking. One day, when walking into a class, an older (maybe
15?) guy in corner of the room (who turned out to be a sys-admin) drew my
attention: he had a bunch of weird text on screen in some program I've never
seen before (all i knew was "copy con mytext.txt"). Then, at a press of a
button, his computer lit up and started drawing colorful circles and making
noises.

I've just experienced QBasic
([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QBasic](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QBasic)).

I was fascinated by what I saw and, with encouragement of the the sysadmin
visited couple of sessions of an "advanced programming" class. Although I
didn't understand much, I was hooked. With great support from my parents - who
- and i'm still not sure how - found the means to get me a PC at home (those
cost many months of salary at the time) - i started tinkering with graphics,
windows, and random computer stuff. Then a "Delphi for Dummies" found it's way
to my hands somehow.

The rest of it all, leading up to today, is history as they say. For me
however, it's a series of completely random, lucky, events that gave me the
initial interest and subsequently permitted me to pursue an absolutely
fascinating career.

Today, i am actively dedicating time to get young engineers interested in
technology and show them what amazing possibilities it brings.

Maybe one day i'll even write a blog about it :)

------
lotharbot
I'm a stay-at-home dad.

I fell in love with my son. He drove my wife crazy. She'd rather be coding.

~~~
eliben
This is pretty cool! How old is your son now? Do you intend to remain stay-at-
home forever, or until your kid(s) reach a certain age?

~~~
lotharbot
My son is 5 now. We intend to have more.

I'll probably stay at home forever. Taking care of the house and kids is one
way I can show love to my wife. Though we might go into a semi-retired "make
video games" mode in a few years (my wife tells me I'm a top-notch tester, and
I have pretty good game design sense.)

~~~
eliben
Hope the next question is not too snoopy - I'm just curious, so feel free to
ignore me. Taking care of a 5 year old sounds like far from a full-time job to
me (presumably he's in K / pre-K). I have two kids myself (4.5 and 1 y.o) so I
have a bit of perspective. What do you do with all the free time?

~~~
lotharbot
I bought my parents' old house and spent 2 and a half years cleaning and
fixing and renovating. We have a young family living with us, and I spend some
time mentoring them and helping with their small child. I handle all the
cooking, groceries, yardwork, etc.

I also run a competitive gaming site (with my wife and another friend):
[http://descentchampions.org/](http://descentchampions.org/)

------
Killswitch
I had goals and dreams of becoming a professional chef. Even applied for Le
Cordon Bleu my senior year in high school.

In the meantime I was tinkering with building websites and learning HTML and
that. I built a few sites and one day a friend who taught me told me to put
some playboy style pics on my site and it'll attract people to come. Being 16
I was down for looking at hot girls. So I did. Then later he told me to sign
up for these "webmaster programs" and put links on my site and I can make
money. So I did.

Long story short, Paris Hilton did what she does best and lets a sex tape of
herself leak and I got ranked in the top 5 sites when people started hammering
Google searching for it and I was doing about $5-10k/week in revenue off that
video. I decided after 10 years of running porn sites I'd bunker down and
really learn to program, and now I'm a software engineer.

So you can say Paris Hilton is the reason I do what I do.

~~~
GuiA
Do you still cook?

~~~
Killswitch
For myself yes. And while I was building sites I was a cook at various
restaurants for 6 years.

------
pocketstar
Current job - spacecraft thermal engineer, currently taking a 3 month
vacation.

It started when I first played halo CE. I decided I want to make massive space
stations like halo and I realized that in the next 20-30 years that will
hopefully be possible. Until then I am trying to gather all the tools and
knowledge I need to lead the next chapter in space exploration and
colonization.

------
jonkelly
No one chooses insurance, it chooses them. Joined a management consulting firm
out of school, got assigned to a bunch of insurance cases. Escaped to Oracle.
1998, got a call from a friend of a friend: I hear you know a lot about
insurance...I just got a million dollars to start an online version of
GEICO...are you in? 17 years later, my career is insurance.

------
tjconnelly
"I must create a system, or be enslaved by another man's; I will not reason
and compare: my business is to create." \-- William Blake

------
nickbauman
I grew up in a software company. Mom worked for a German company that designed
embedded software used in automating sea ports and satellite tracking /
telemetry. Mission critical kind of stuff. The company would hire developers
from all over the world and they would come to Germany and often live with us
for a couple of weeks before finding their own place. So many of the engineers
became "big brother" kind of friends to me. One of them gave me my first
computer. A Sinclair Spectrum 48k. I started using unix (running on a VAX) at
work playing with their kit, too.

Mind you I didn't want to become a computer programmer at all. I would come
home from school and stop in at my mom's work and all these engineers would be
sleeping under their desks because a port worker had been killed when a
container ship struck a pier or a satellite entered low-earth orbit and flamed
out costing $100 million or something. I associated programming with tragedy
and high stakes.

So I went to art school. My senior year I was spending more time in the
computer lab than anywhere else. We had a lab populated with Silicon Graphics
workstations and I'd written scripts to render my animation across all the
machines so I could get a result in minutes instead of hours. Then the web
became deregulated.

Lately I found my way into working on rail automation software that had safety
critical requirements. Which is exactly what I never wanted to do and so I
quit after 3 years.

I'm still in the industry and haven't figured out what I want to be when I
grow up.

------
vonmoltke
Currently a software engineer working in NLP and machine learning, with a bit
of demo-quality front-end design recently. I started out as an electrical
engineer, though.

When I was doing my undergrad, I didn't really like programming. I took many
of the core CS classes, though, because I really wanted to do embedded
development. I just wanted my degree to be electrical instead of computer
engineering because I felt an EE was going to have an easier time getting a
job in the rapidly imploding dot-com bubble. Plus, I actually liked the
physical aspects better; one of my two backup plans was to become an
electrician.

When I got into a real job, though, I discovered real-world programming was
more interesting than what I was forced to do in class. Additionally, I got
introduced to the world of FPGA and CPLD programming. While my first position
was hardware production support, I pushed to move towards signal processing.
After 3.5 years I managed to switch programs.

Unfortunately, the program I switched to turned out to be a black hole. It was
a DOD program that required special clearances to work on. I found out much
too late that this effectively made me a prisoner of the program because
getting people cleared was so difficult and expensive. Furthermore, I could
say so little about what I was doing that I could hardly get interviews, let
alone sound competent in the few I did get.

I took my current job out of desperation. I had been searching for over two
years and basically took the first offer I was able to get, which was a small
local company. It was a domain I had never worked in (NLP) in a language I had
never worked in (Java). It has worked out pretty well, though I can't get as
interested in NLP as I was in signal processing. Unfortunately, I think I am
trapped again as I get recruitment pings about once every two weeks from my
new world but can't get the time of day from companies in the old one I left
reluctantly.

------
yesimahuman
Startup founder and now a CEO (which feels like the strangest job in the
world). When I was working as a software engineer, I felt like I had a lot of
excess energy that I wanted to put towards something that was mine. I am drawn
to responsibility, because responsibility means that I'm in a position to make
decisions that impact many people. It's thrilling and I enjoy being in the
service of other people. Anyways, it's really hard to not have responsibility
when you really want it, so I realized I had to leave and start my own thing
to really get that.

------
Sukotto
Technological generalist: programmer, project manager, product developer,
database guy, etc.

Why am I in tech? Partly due to participating in the Duke of Edinburgh's Award
program and partly because I just took whatever was interesting at university
until I was forced to pick a major... when I tallied up my course credits, the
shortest path to a useful degree was "computer science" so I did that.

Why does my career look like the plot to "Memento"? Because each time I
reached a point where my work was no longer that interesting, I looked around
and started doing something else.

So I went from front-line cast member at Disney World[1], to a university
grad, to Java dev for a small dev shop, to Perl/CGI and Javascript at a tech
mega-corp, to acquire/process/present data on a trading floor, to semi-
retirement, to Japan, to a web-dev shop, to an ecommerce mega-corp. At the
moment I don't do any development but that will likely change soon as I miss
it.

I feel I've been really lucky. I could easy have (and almost did) crashed and
burned but somehow it has worked out so far.

The trick is to look at every opportunity and ask yourself "if I turn this
down and never get another chance, will I look back and wish I had done it?".
If so, think hard about what really matters to you and do whatever will
maximize that.

[1] I took a year off university to go work at Disney on a cultural exchange
program. It was an awesome experience, I met my future wife (who was on a
similar program) and gained extremely valuable customer-relationship
experience.

------
kaolinite
It was the logical choice, really. I'd been programming since a young age, it
was logical that I'd become a programmer.

I often wonder if there's a job out there that I might enjoy as much or even
be better at. Only other profession I might be interested in is watchmaking
(sounds crazy but there's actually a huge demand for watchmakers), but the
cost of tuition and the risk I might not be good at it means I'll probably
never give it a shot.

------
skrebbel
Freedom.

The reason I founded a startup is the same reason Jack Sparrow is a pirate.
The freedom to choose what to do and how. And when.

For example, right now I'm in the middle of a 3 week paternity leave because
of my second son's arrival. Here at HN there's this vibe that if you run a
startup, you're not supposed to sleep or take vacation. But really, why be
your own boss if you don't use the freedom that comes with the package?

------
NovaS1X
I've always kinda of been into computers and technology. My first encounter
was in pre-school with an Apple II; it seemed to be my favorite thing in the
school and I'd always watch the teachers when they plugged them in.

I played with a lego a lot and would take apart my RC-Toys to see how they
work, and then put them back together. By the time I was 14 I started learning
how to upgrade my computer and shortly after I build my first budget gaming
PC. Around the same time as the gaming PC I got a chance to see inside the
Microsoft compound in Redmond because my to-be step-father worked for
Microsoft. I got to see a glimpse inside the NOC, I got to see a server room,
and I was amazed that everyone had Nerf guns, the vending machines were free,
and everyone made a lot of money. I knew what I wanted to do now: I wanted to
be a game developer.

I started playing with linux, aspired to be a "hacker" in the FOX News sense
when I was 16. Started learning more, and ended up with a hobby. My high-
school years were very rough and my career aspirations went by the sideline
for a number of years until I got away from that life.

Then at about the age of 20 I became a recluse, hikkikomori, and my best
friends were talked to and found over Skype and various forums. I put my life
into anything that involved technology and I gave myself a skillset. Once I
got tired of being alone all the time I started putting out resumes to anyone
that was hiring and I landed an interview with an animation studio. I excelled
at the interview, got a job as a sysadmin, and the rest is history.

A promotion and a raise later I still feel like I've found my place. The job
is a perfect fit for my skillset, cultural values, and the kind of people I
work with. I think I've found where I belong.

------
stinos
Conincidence mostly. I didn't actively search for what I'm doing now (10%
hardware 90% software from very lowlevel microcontrollers/fpga to highlevel
business apps). Or maybe is was just destined to be: I wouldn't really want to
be doing something else (well, except for quitting jobs all together and go
live far away and be self-sufficient, but that's something with a long
learning curve).

Wanted to go for biology first but hearing what it would take to really get
into cutting edge research I changed my mind and went for what seemed, given
my hobbies and complete lack of interest for other non-tech fields,the most
logical: electronics engineering. Thesis project was picked truly by
coincidence (basically the last one left because we were late, lol) but the
company offered me a job because I fit in pretty well. Still working there now
parttime (did work in different departments as well in the meantime, now I'm
back where it started) and parttime for a startup but the job is similar.

------
walljm
I'm a software developer.

I hated being bored and I didn't like working hard. ;) When I was a teenager I
asked myself what kind of activities I enjoyed doing for long periods of time
that made decent money and working with a computer was one of those, so I
pursued a CIS degree.

But I'll be honest. I hated my job for a long time. My original two reasons
are awful reasons to pursue any line of work. I eventually became disenchanted
and started making serious plans to switch to photography full time because I
loved photography, which had started as a hobby and was growing into much
more.

But two things happened which changed how I looked at my job. One was I got
over a lot of the initial learning curve and switched companies and found a
work environment I liked considerably more. The other was due to my interests
in art, which unlocked my desire to _understand things_ which was eventually
fed by software development.

I love my job now (weird how that worked out).

Anyway... thats me. :)

------
k__
First I played video-games all the day. Then I had to fix/upgrade my own PC
because I couldn't afford to pay anyone to do it. This got me deeper OS and
networking knowledge than the normal user. From building and repairing PCs and
building networks for friends came editing configuration files and later
writing scripts, first to get things running on my bad machines and then to
cheat in games or automating some IRC stuff. Which led to becoming a
programmer.

The only thing I knew after school was how to do stuff with computers and
playing games, so I did a degree in computer science and worked as a
developer.

I didn't really choose to be a developer, I just did it most of my adult and
adolescent life and some time people asked if I could code for them and they
paid me.

Sadly this led to boring jobs, since I never really searched for anything, I
just did what people asked me to do.

------
bikamonki
Pragmatism. I tried twice to get an engineering degree (electronics and CS)
but I am too lazy when it comes to studying boring stuff on a _structured_
manner. On my third attempt (age 23) I decided to water-down my aspirations
and simply get a BS with a CS and Math focus. I had been programming for fun
since age 15 (an Atari 130xe with a Basic cartridge) so it was natural to do
it for money. Naturally, like any _real_ professional, I started learning
everything that I know AFTER graduation, using my clients as ginea pigs. I
never wanted a job per se so the degree was more of a social fulfillment
rather than a pre-requisite to start a professional career. I turned down job
offers and opened shop right after graduation. I am 40 now, busy and happy :)

------
bazillion
Career: Programming/Creating a startup.

I was an Arabic linguist at the NSA, and would input certain numbers I'd hear
into a tool. Whenever I heard a specific one, I was supposed to add 9 to it
and put that number into the tool. This drove me insane, because I kept asking
why I had to add 9 myself, instead of the program just doing it (since I could
describe the rule myself). I started putting in trouble tickets every few
months, but they were all ignored. At one point, I just decided I was going to
fix it myself, and approached the guy who made the tool and asked him for
permission to modify the program to fix it. He handed me the O'Reilly Perl
Cookbook, and said to go to town on it.

I ended up finding out in the code how to fix the problem within the first
day, and started thinking about other ways I could improve the program to make
our lives easier. I made all sorts of improvements, and my cubicle neighbors
saw this and asked if there was any way I could make a tool for simplifying
their manual process. I got to work on it, and quickly whipped out something
that stored all of their entries for later review. The big problem at the time
was that I didn't have any basic knowledge of CS -- I didn't even know what a
database was, so I built a system of just storing all of the text in flatfiles
and using Perl's Tie::File to turn the files into dynamic arrays.

I started making program after program, and what drew me to my career was
walking by someone's computer and seeing the program _I_ built on their
desktops as they were working. Eventually, the entire division of 80-90 people
were all using my programs for their day-to-day, and I had to quickly learn a
lot of hard lessons about putting things into production.

So, in short, I think the big reason I chose my current career was that I
always loved building things that people not only wanted to use, but thanked
me for building them because of how much easier it made their lives. There is
nothing more satisfying (to me) than building something useful and having
people who use it think you're a modern day magician.

------
WesternStar
Got a degree in Physics when I was doing grad trips but had a conversation in
the basement of a STEM dept in the northeast where I discovered that for
people of my race they would have exactly one grad student and they would
graduate them with a masters 7 years later(One of the kids from my school went
and he has two masters they were ranked #1 at the time and I believe still
are). At that point I decided grad school was too much of a risk. I worked in
phones for 3 years, mostly technical support and I loved it it was easy for
me. So I went back and did a degree in Computer Engineering which I loved and
presented some really fun challenges and now I'm looking for something with
smarter coworkers than my current government affiliated work.

------
toyg
Pure luck.

After a few crazy moves and dropping out of 3 different universities, I was
down to washing dishes at some crap restaurant and underpaid tech support.
After 18 months of that, I told myself I deserved better and just quit. A week
later I got called for an interview at some financial-software company I'd
never heard of, they were desperate for an Italian-speaking geek. 11 years
later, I'm a well-paid consultant in an expensive niche.

I'm not an ambitious guy, I've always just wanted a nice house, not having to
worry too much about money, and time to geek around. If I could do it all
again, maybe I'd study harder, maybe I'd emigrate sooner, I don't know.

------
sososoko
26yrs old, Academia (Info Sec), I was in the final year of my BTech Computer
Science, i got a scholarship from my Undergrad(UG) university to do my
final(4th) year in South Korea as part of an Academic Exchange. The catch was
that when i returned upon completion of the exchange i was to work as a TA at
my UG university. when i returned i worked there for a year and was sent to do
a Master's(Info Sec& CyberForensics) abroad, the catch was that again i had to
return and work as Faculty(lecturer) at my UG university. So my career path
has been chosen for me in a way.

i would prefer to get into private industry when my contract finishes.

------
ble
A desire to work at an intersection of programming, physics, and statistics.

------
zaphar
Software Engineer

When I was 10 years old I was going to be a biologist. When I was 12 years old
I was going to be a microbiologist. When I was 15 years old I was going to be
a Virus Hunter for the CDC.

Then I went to college and got a glimpse of what that career choice would
actually look like as opposed to what I had imagined it would look like. I
decided I didn't want that after all.

Programming had just always been a hobby. At some point though I started
making money doing it and realized that I could be happy doing this for the
rest of my life. The rest as they say is history.

------
lukaslalinsky
I'm a software engineer. At elementary school I discovered programming (a
weird local 8bit computer) and spent several years after that being fascinated
what can I do with computers, but it never occurred to me that programming can
be a profession. Just like people play computer games a lot and never thing
they can make money out of it. Until I was about 17-18yr old, I had no idea
what I'll do for a living. Then I needed some stable income and it turned out
that I can make pretty good money using something I already know.

------
leesalminen
I'd always known 2 things: I loved small businesses and I was really good with
computers.

So, I started a software company that helps small businesses.

At one point in time though I thought I was going to be a chef. Ha.

------
leke
I left school and studied to become a graphic designer. After I graduated, I
couldn't find (or keep) work because I sucked at my profession.

This was around the time the Internet started to become affordable (and thus
popular), so I decided to migrate my poor design skills and started to get
into making web pages.

After a few years, I realised I sucked web design too, so focused on the
coding part. After about 10 years of learning to code, I realise I suck at
that too and speculate I'm mentally retarded or something.

So my career is: Not Sure.

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ggambetta
I started trying to make games when I was 5 or 6 on a ZX Spectrum. In
retrospect, I never _chose_ to become a software engineer... it was just the
obvious thing to do. Interestingly, at that age I was also starting to write
short stories. I didn't explore that path professionally, but I've taken
writing seriously as a hobby a couple of years ago. I've written a novel and
three screenplays so far.

In summary, I'm doing what I was already doing when I was 6. Not sure what to
make of that.

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nextw33k
I'm a Software Developer.

When I was younger my family owned a local computer company supporting a range
of customer sizes. At the time I recall saying to my Dad that I wasn't sure if
I should be a programmer or an IT technician. He bluntly said, be a programmer
there is no money in IT support.

That was late 80s, whilst at the time there was money in IT support, over the
long term he was right.

I think doing what your family does helps, because you have people around you
that know and can support you.

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maguirre
Career: Electrical Engineer/Embedded software development

My father. We grew up extremely poor in the midst of a civil war and he made
extra income by fixing TVs and other electronics. I remember watching him
measure voltages with his "old school" analog multimeter and watching the glow
of the vacuum tubes and that heat and smell that emanated from those TVs.
Watching him work with electronics sparked my interest from a very early age
and led me to my career path

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humility
Loved computers since childhood, hence I'm a programmer!

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giaour
Becoming a programmer was a mercenary decision for me.

I dropped out of an Ivy League PhD program part way into my dissertation
because I was pretty sure that finishing my doctorate in comparative
literature and continuing down that career path would mean getting on food
stamps.

Being a doctor or lawyer would have meant going to even more school, but it
only took a couple months of reading to learn enough C# and JavaScript to get
a job as a junior developer.

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ComNik
Software Engineer / Wantrepreneur.

Playing games, wondering how a game gets on the CD. Even though I loved it, a
few years in game programming seemed like it was not "useful" enough.
Transitioned to general software-, especially web-development. Started
studying CS when the time came.

It's been almost 9 years since the first line of code and for now it seems
like this will be the thing I do for some time.

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jyothepro
When I wanted to goto college I wanted to become a pilot but I did not get an
admit letter in most of the colleges but some demanded admission fee (which we
could not afford).

My dad suggested I do computer science as the next option. Maybe I would not
have liked being a pilot as a job but fir sure loving my programming life.

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BjoernKW
Entrepreneur in the software business.

I've been interested in computers and software from when I was 8 or so. I've
to thank my father who introduced me to computers when he let me use his C64
(for gaming at first but I quickly turned to writing Basic programs as well).

I became an entrepreneur because of freedom and flexibility.

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karmakaze
Got an Atari 400, yeah the one with membrane keyboard, loved that thing.
Asteroids + Basic cartridge, no storage. It was great for teaching me to let
go of code after building a vision. Hobby naturally turned into an easy career
path.

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88e282102ae2e5b
Career: computational biologist

I was an English teacher, but I found myself thinking about death and the
future daily. I went back to school for biology and learned how to program and
an opportunity to study aging just fell into my lap.

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ddoolin
I was offered an internship/mentorship by a family friend to do web
development since he knew I was already fairly well-versed in computers &
higher-level programming concepts. The rest is history.

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dethstar
My cousin studied the same and I'd see him making software (cheats) for this
game some members of my family played (me included) and wanted to do the same.

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rongenre
Software Engineer since the early 90's, programming since the early 80's.
Because I'm not smart enough to be a mathematician.

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spacemanmatt
Not very good at anything but programming. That changed after a while, but
sure described the start of my career and hs/college years.

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philangist
The movie hackers. I'm a software developer :)

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tekacs
I started using computers at age ~2, programming at ~7 and learning CS theory
at ~10. One guess what my occupation is. :P

~~~
jonsen
Retiree?

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gmarcus
Tech Entrepreneur (currently running an iOS/Android dev shop)

In 1981 when I was 12, my folks took me to my cousin Herb's house. He just
bought a brand new BMW and took me for a drive. Coming from a middle income
family, I never had been in a car like this. The handling on the road, the
bucket seats, the dashboard were all amazing to me.

I asked cousin Herb, "What do you do to have a car like this?". Herb said "I'm
a systems analyst". "What's that?" I asked. He replied "I work with
computers".

Click...computers = BMW.

Next Monday, I stormed into my 7th grade math class and said "I want to learn
about computers". Got started on TRS-80 and the rest is history.

I remember how amazed I was to press an "a" on a keyboard, and an "a" showed
up on the screen. I wanted to know how that happened...and once I started
coding, I realized that I could be in control of what happened. I went from an
end-user to a maker and loved it. The possibilities were limitless.

Greed may have started me on my career path, but it turns out that computers
and me were a match made in heaven. I loved the pace of innovation, and I was
doing stuff of my own creation that amazed people. It felt good to be a geek.

Finally got my BMW while the VP Engineering at a SF startup in 2009, but that
small accomplishment pales in comparison to the lifetime of creating and
exploring that I have had....and still enjoy.

On a side note: I feel so fortunate that I found my career at the age of 12
(though I didn't know it at the time). That drive gave me a focus that helped
shape many decisions that people struggle with. Summer jobs, hobbies, college
major, first job, where to live. They all fell in place easily for me cause I
knew what I wanted in life.

\- TRS-80 in 7th grade JHS

\- Winning JHS science fair with my personality prediction algorithm

\- Atari Computer camp when I was 13

\- Reading Byte magazine like it was Shakespeare

\- Changing my home address so I would be zoned for my local HS a year earlier
(they had actual programming classes)

\- Placing out of BASIC, and going directly to PASCAL in 9th grade.

\- AP Computers in 10th grade (and tutoring the 12th graders)

\- Working summer jobs as data entry and tech support through HS

\- Winning an award for my HS in a regional programming competition

\- Summer Advanced Sciences and Technology program. Got to work on medical
imaging software for a research hospital at 15.

\- Convinced my HS principal to let me co-teach a course in Applied computers
(DBase, Lotus 123, Wordstar) cause they no longer had any classes for me to
take.

\- Went to Stony Brook University (inexpensive, and great CS dept) and able to
declare a double major in Computer Science and Applied Math

\- Started the Stony Brook Computer Science Society and was president for the
next 4 years

\- Used my financial aide work/study grant to get a university job at the
Micro-Computer Demonstration Lab selling Apple/IBM/Xerox computers to faculty,
students and staff. $3.15 an hour.

\- 2 years later, the guy that ran the lab retired and IBM offered me a part-
time job to run the lab. Same job, but now making $10.50 an hour.

\- Represented Stony Brook in regional collegiate programming competitions

\- Got a research job at IBM TJ Watson Research my Junior summer. Met a
brilliant researcher who was moving to the private sector to do a startup in
NY. Gave me a job offer that would be waiting for me when I graduated in a
year.

\- 1991: Moved to NYC to work at the startup (Ovid Technologies) where we
built Medline using OOP.

\- Rode the OOP wave through 3 more jobs, and promotions from Developer -> Sr.
Developer -> Project Leader -> Director at various startups in NY.

\- 1996: Joined a NYC startup (InterWorld) where we built app servers for our
e-commerce products.

\- Rode the "internet" wave through 2 more jobs, and promotions from Director
-> CTO -> VP Product

\- 1998: Joined an SF startup (Topica) as CTO to build a free email groups
product. Got a BMW.

\- 2001: .bomb and moved back to NYC, doing tech consulting for a few years on
scalable server infrastructure

\- 2003: Joined a CT startup (Netkey) where we built systems management
software for Retail. Moved to Boston to build up a dev team. Got acquired by
NCR.

\- 2008: Moved to Brazil to be with my partner. Thought I would pickup another
CTO type job at a startup, but I was too ahead of the curve. Played a lot of
Xbox trying to figure out what I was going to do with my life.

\- 2009: Out of boredom, started to play with the iOS SDK. Last time I wrote
code was in 1996, 13 year gap.

\- 2010: Published my first app. Thought I was going to be rich...instead
learned that it was tough to make money publishing apps. Just then, a friend
said he needed an app for his startup in NY. I banged it out for him and
realized I could make a living doing consulting as an app developer.

\- 2010: Started my own company, Cliq Consulting. So far: 17 clients, 35 apps,
89 million installs.

\- Currently riding the app wave...and having lots of fun doing it.

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paulhauggis
I started tinkering with computers at 10, became an IT tech. at 15..and
eventually started programming at the same time. I got my first professional
job at 17.

Now I own my own software company (been doing this for 5 years).

