
Ask HN: Nowhere to go from here? - old_young_guy
I&#x27;m feeling a bit discouraged and hopeless in regards to &quot;where to go&#x2F;what to do next&quot;.<p>I&#x27;m 23 with no degree, and I work in web development as a senior team lead for $130k&#x2F;yr salary in Utah (silicon slopes area).<p>I&#x27;ve been at this job for over a year and the &quot;hard&quot; programming problems feel already solved.  I spent the first little while creating a solid framework for creating new web solutions, and at this point, my job is starting to just feel like data entry. It&#x27;s a lot of &quot;make a page that does this&quot;, or &quot;create a system that allows us to do X&quot;, and I&#x27;m just filling in the pieces and naming the fields, etc.<p>There are interesting problems that I want to solve regarding AI, writing compilers, creating programming languages, etc, but it seems like no one wants to pay me to work on those problems.  I end up just spend most of my free time doing that and dreading returning to work.<p>I also feel like I can&#x27;t advance or change positions because according to everywhere that I interview, I&#x27;m already at a real high point in salary and I constantly get low balled for offers.<p>I just feel a bit stuck and would appreciate any advice.<p>Thanks
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AnimalMuppet
Don't sneeze at the $130K in Utah. This may be the best financial
circumstances you ever have in your life. Make the most of it. If you've got
debt, pay it off. Bank a bunch of it, as nostrademons said. If you feel like
it and they'll agree, take a sabbatical and do whatever you feel like (AI
research, travel, ski for the winter, whatever). It'll never be this easy
again.

(And yes, it seems to me that you are massively overpaid for the local market.
In fact, if you don't mind sharing, who's paying you that kind of money here?)

But you feel like you're dying inside, because the job is too easy. One way to
deal with that is to go to your boss and say "Have you got anything harder for
me to work on?" Or look around and see what else needs solved in software
where you are, and tackle it. (If you're getting your "real" \- official -
work done, you don't even need to ask for permission.)

Another approach would be to go part-time (if they'll let you) and go to
school. If they pro-rate the salary, you'll be fine for money. You don't
really need to go to school for the degree; what you need are people that you
can work on hard problems with.

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nostrademons
Save some money and then either strike out on your own or take a pay cut to
break into an area that you really want to work in. The whole point of being
overpaid is to have some money to buffer yourself against either unforeseen
bad luck or local maxima that you can't get out of without investing time &
money into.

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zamalek
I'm quite similar to you, problems are what motivate me and I also don't have
a degree.

First thing I would do in your position is to get a degree. In my case it's
for immigration. I just need that piece of paper so I'm looking at more
practical universities, not necessarily prestigious. I'm looking at WGU[1]
because they geared around professionals who might already know course
content. Regardless, put that $130k to good use.

What I do in my spare time is contribute to open source projects. If I can't
find one that piques my interest, I start one (and subsequently they get no
attention, but that's not the point). I work to get paid. Right now I'm lucky
enough to be working on some interesting graph theory problems, but it hasn't
always been that way and nor will it necessarily stay that way forever. If
programming is your hobby, maintain that hobby. Your employer has other things
to worry about.

 _> [2]: Even if your job was tasting pies, every now and then you'd taste a
bad one._

[1]: [http://www.wgu.edu/](http://www.wgu.edu/) [2]:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/Showerthoughts/comments/4toouj/some...](https://www.reddit.com/r/Showerthoughts/comments/4toouj/somewhere_in_the_world_there_is_somebody_with/d5j58rf)

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nibs
I am in a similar position (22 years old). I have been "coping" by working on
machine learning projects on the side in the area that I have determined gives
me a lot of meaning (teaching AIs to learn correlations between diet and
autoimmune diseases). I do this and trial it with my friends who have AI
issues, and work normally during the day putting all the discipline I can into
just focusing and doing good work for the 9-5 I am expected to. Hopefully,
eventually, I can spin off my work project and/or one of my side projects will
get traction. I should have enough capital to live off my investments/retire
and work on harder, more interesting/long term problems for the rest of my
life in about five years. Put in those terms, it is not as hard to keep
grinding.

