[nso]

I was a regular dev that got promoted to a position that made me consider getting out of the business for good. I was running on fumes, and fantasized about getting a job as a cashier somewhere.

Quit my job, sold my place and my stuff, bought a one-way ticket to Mexico as the first leg of a one year trip around the world. Been here for 4 years now. Got married, got a bunch of dogs, a kid, a really cool job, and regained my love for coding and life.

Edit: Since this got upvoted a bit I will add some back story.

I was well aware that I was experiencing burn out, and I tried the regular things. I changed my unhealthy eating habbits, I started working out and got the muscle tone up and fat down, I took extended vacations to exotic places -- and while it all did work to stave it off, it was not enough. I returned from a 1 month trek in South America, and when I sat down at my desk at work I knew I was done. I had gained the confidence and perspective I needed to rip the band-aid off.

So while my story above seem drastic, there was a build-up period before I made the big change.

[toomuchtodo]

Congrats on finding happiness!

[nso]

It hides in the funniest of places =) Thanks

[isalmon]

It would be awesome to read the details about your journey. Do you have a blog and if not - are you going to write about it at some point?

[nso]

I doubt it. I'm ironically busier than ever before, and also don't think I have that much interesting to say. I might start some kind of tech blog for our company once we grow a bit, tho.

[bob_theslob646]

Sounds like a nice excuse. You are telling me you do not have an hour a week or an hour once a month to reflect on your life?

I am not saying you have to make your story public by blogging, but you already have some interest from others on the site who may have experienced or are experiencing similar things that you went through.

Sounds like you are rather humble which is fine, but do not think what you have to say is not interesting if random strangers on the internet are asking you about your story.

If that does not trigger alarm bells of you being actually interesting/ having interesting things to say than I do not know what would.

[nso]

I'm not one for publically sharing my personal life in greater detail than above, so my reflections will remain internal =)

[dajohnson89]

just curious, what job did you get in mexico? When I visited, i fell in love, but sadly I assumed that it's impossible to get a job i'd like there, which paid anything at all.

edit: fell in love with the place, not a person ;-)

[nso]

I used to work as a full stack dev for a web hosting / data center company in Norway.

What my current position is called I have yet to figure out, but I am designing and developing a control system for growing shrimp for a startup here in Mexico. It sounds super boring, but it's actually pretty cool stuff.

We've got a really cutting edge method of growing shrimp with the help of biofloc. My system started out as a way of monitoring and altering the health of this very fragile eco system of microbes, algae and such, but has since pivoted to a beast of a system which best can be described as shrimp as a service :p You come to us with a bunch of money and we will give you the way to grow shrimp more efficiently and eco-friendly than anyone else can claim to do today -- all without you needing any prior knowledge about the field, and most of the decisions are either digitized or outsourced on the fly. The system can also be used to grow shrimp with traditional methods more efficiently.

Big data is also a keyword, where we will constantly learn from participating farms how we can improve the process, detect known and unknown diseases, etc. We'd also like to get in on the distribution side of things once we have lots of farms under our umbrella, and with the ability to look at data and see where we can improve profitability for our customers we have a big advantage.

It's a lot of work, but it's tons of fun and I'm learning lots about a field I never in my wildest dreams would guess I would work in. And there there is something satisfying with digitizing a very analog field. Soon we will start hires to build my team, and our biggest investment round yet -- which will start a fun new phase for the company. We're looking for american investor money, so please let me know if you have an in ;)

I got the job by sheer coincidence. I was at some house party and met a guy who turned out to be a entrepeneur in desperate need of with the ability to make his idea into a product. I wasn't looking for a job, and he was pestering and begging me for months before I relented and promised to build him a prototype.

It doesn't pay a lot by american standards, but the buck lasts longer here so I'm doing pretty ok.

[TomMarius]

That sounds super cool, do you have a website?

[nso]

You can read about the biofloc tech from our lab farm (where we develop and improve the process) here: http://www.aguablancaseafood.com/about#/biofloc/

The control tech is not mentioned, and it does not have a website. The «official» reveal will be in the beginning of 2018.

[hrithikguy]

Congratulations!

[easymode]

kudos!