Ask HN: How do I move up my career/life?

[anonymous567]

My background:

I'm a 25 year old Indian software developer working in India.

As for my education, I actually studied in the United States for my MS in Computer Science (from a large public university; not ivy league), and is one of the rare Indian students who actually returned to India immediately after I got my degree. I cannot pinpoint exactly why I returned; it was a combination of me being an introvert + I really felt like I didn't belong there. (Don't get me wrong here — all Americans (and non Americans, for that matter) I met in USA were wonderful nice kind people; it's just, I didn't belong there).

After returning back to India, I got a software engineering job which I would've gotten anyway even if I never went to America (I try not to think too much about this).

I have 2.5 years of work experience, and at work I do Laravel for the most part, with occasional Python and Go. If I may say so myself, I'm an expert in Laravel, great with python, and just a beginner in Go. I'm constantly learning and improving myself.

I work on a specific product (that our company sells to many other companies; basically what I'm saying is, this product is not something a specific client asked us to build — it is a web application we built and sell and make money from), ie., I'm NOT a consultant programmer or anything like that.

I've become good enough at my current job that it's no longer stressful.

I'm making decent money (decent enough for a single guy living in a tier-2 city in India), and I don't have much expenses. No loans or mortgages or crap like that.

My problem is that I don't know where to go to from here. Like, I'm in a good, comfortable place. I want to get to a better, even more comfortable place, and I don't know what to do.

I've considered applying to other jobs, but the work environment in most other places around here is hectic and is not worth with going to. And most other jobs here are those consultancy/outsourcing type jobs which I'm not keen on doing. Also, I doubt if any of those would be intellectually stimulating.

I tried my luck applying to FAANG companies, and well, I didn't get them. Unlike previous years, this year I didn't even get a callback after I applied (I used to get to the interview stages). Maybe they decided I might never improve lmao.

Perhaps I should move abroad? But where to? Going to USA is out of the question with the H1B lottery and associated crapshoot that I don't want to subject myself to. Plus, that's a country I choose to return from.

Or perhaps I should try to get away from my web developer job and get into something else?

Let's see. Consider machine learning. I'm good at math, yet I had an extremely difficult time in my artificial intelligence class; therefore I might end up being bad at ML, but who knows. Although there's plenty of ML jobs here, it's difficult to get those jobs if you're not already in ML. Hard to get my foot in the door.

I have more interest in type systems and programming language theory and things like that. While I'm not an expert, I know little of Haskell and Racket, and I think I'd enjoy doing more of those in a professional capacity. But then again, the job market for those kinds of things is next to nil here. A career at Jane Street interests me more than a career at Google, but I don't think I'm great enough for them to move me to one of their offices abroad (they don't have offices in India).

Should I learn ML/Data Science and get into that? Should I move abroad? Should I do anything else?

So, I'm asking for general career and life advise here. I don't have any active pressing problems, but my life is just meh. Borderline depressing.

Thanks for reading thus far, and sorry if I wasted your time.

[SwSwinger]

I was 27, living in the Southern USA with a MS from a State University, feeling very similar to you. I decided to push through my comfortable malaise and got offers at early Amazon AWS & Facebook back in 2009. It changed my life trajectory completely. I worked a little bit harder but got exponentially better payoff and interesting problems. Recommendations:

1. Getting into a more prestigious company is likely your next step. You only need to stay there 2-4 years but, since colleges are more corrupt, it's really the modern grad degree that proves your worth. FAANG or a reputable startup is your best option (LinkedIn Top 50 or Breakout List). The crazy hours you hear about are more self-imposed than you think, not mandatory.

2. If FAANG isn't calling you back, this means that you likely weren't even close on the interviews (Medium to Strong - No Hire). The interview algorithms are a heavily game-ified system and these companies expect you to study and game them so hard that answering the questions are second nature. I used to resent this, then I realized that it's actually a really good way to filter a large group of people with less class bias. If anyone can pass but they have to create their own 2-4 month gradual study plan to ace it, who is competent enough to pull that off? Often, in a larger org, you are encouraged to ignore your instincts and game-ify on arbitrary metrics to achieve larger-multistage company goals anyways. Adjusting my mindset this way helped me get the fortitude I needed to be better here.

3. Coding Competitions are another good way to get noticed by companies. The existing algo interviews started as NP-complete puzzles and Coding competitions and many people came to Facebook from that route (https://github.com/robertdimarco/puzzles/tree/master/faceboo...). Kaggle is the new equivalent for ML. It's a great time to get into ML via a non-traditional route and will likely turn into the existing algo interview frustration as it matures.

[anonymous567]

Thank you for your advise. I value it highly.

Me not being an American and not being physically present in the USA complicates things.

My understanding is that, because the US visa situation is the way it is (due to historical reasons), unless I'm an extraordinary candidate (I'm not) I'm not going to get a callback from any of their US offices. So these days I don't even bother applying to their US offices.

Anyway, as long as it's FAANG, it doesn't matter too much to me where it's located at.

Some of those FAANG and similar companies have offices in India, but AFAIK their focus in India isn't as much on engineering as compared to their US offices (I could be wrong here). And besides, it's pretty hard to get into their Indian offices anyway.

The few callbacks and interviews that I did get from FAANG and similar companies were actually from their UK/European offices (and I messed them up).

Still, I'm not going to give up yet and would keep trying.

[908B64B197]

Visa-Wise, it may be easier for you to transfer from the Indian office to the US office.

[FreezingKeeper]

There’s a lot of self-deprication in your post. “Sorry if I wasted your time” and “Maybe they decided I might never improve”.

You are worthy and this random internet stranger cares. Imagine for a moment you have the opportunity to ask anyone you imagine to be on HN what they could give you. What would you ask for?

[bmc7505]

  I have more interest in type systems and programming language theory and things like that.

I was in your shoes a few years ago. Have you thought about grad school? If you don't mind the cold, you should consider applying to somewhere in Canada. There are a number of labs here working at the intersection of PL and ML. Feel free to reach out if you have any questions about the process: [e-mail]

Good luck!

[anonymous567]

Well, I already happen to have an MS from a US university. So, the next logical step would be a PhD.

And PhD is a whole another beast. It's a commitment that I'll have to think hard and carefully about.

I've considered the idea of doing PhD in Canada before, at the University of Toronto, or the University of Waterloo; not for PLT, but for networks which I was into back in the day. I'm not into networks as much anymore.

Is McGill University known for PLT? The other university I've considered is TU-Delft in the Netherlands, which does some things in the field of PLT.

However, it's been over 3 years since I graduated, and I'm not sure if I'd get glowing letters of recommendation from my prior schools at this point. To top it off, my master's degree focus was on OS, networks, and cybersecurity (the "systems" stuff). So, I'm definitely not going to get anybody to praise my abilities in PLT.

(And I love cold!!)

[908B64B197]

> Well, I already happen to have an MS from a US university.

Was it a "terminal MS" or a research MS? Both send very different signals[0]. What was your undergrad like?

> Is McGill University known for PLT?

Never heard of it. They don't seem to be very active in computer science. Waterloo, from my understanding, is a giant undergrad school. Grad students are outnumbered 6x by undergrads (that's a red flag). Only Lab I keep hearing about is the MILA [1]

[0] https://blog.alinelerner.com/how-different-is-a-b-s-in-compu...

[1] https://mila.quebec/en/

[seahawks78]

Don't do a PhD in either US/Canada unless you were in top 1% of the class and practically slept through all advanced Math courses (e.g. Convex Optimization, Linear Programming, Karush-Kuhn-Tucker etc.) and still ended up with an A. Asking someone to do a PhD just because they are bored/not challenged enough in their work is an incredibly bad piece of advice!!! Stay away! Academia in US/Canada is mostly a lost cause today (apart from a few bright spots which are doing cutting edge AI/ML/DL or Nano Tech research). Academia in US/Canada is as much corrupt today as Catholic Church was in the middle ages!

[bmc7505]

I disagree, but I admit that I may be biased. I know plenty of folks whose grades were not perfect, but were determined and had a clear idea of what they wanted to study. However there is some degree of bureaucracy involved, so you must be persistent.

[ducktective]

What about PhD in Europe in engineering?

[bmc7505]

I see. The Ph.D. route is not an easy one, and you should think carefully whether it is what you really want. However I would not assume that less-than-perfect grades are an insurmountable barrier. More importantly, you must be persistent and resourceful.

Between McGill and UdeM, there are probably a half-dozen professors working on systems, formal reasoning, and type theory in Montreal. There are others at UofT, Waterloo and UBC. If your interests align maybe reach out to see if they are taking new students?

If you are still interested in machine learning, you might also consider applying to Mila/IQIA in parallel:

https://mila.quebec/en/cours/supervision/

Anyhow, good luck with your next steps -- I hope you'll find what you're looking for.

[sleekstrike]

Here are a bunch of options you can explore:

- You are young and skilled, apply for a Canadian PR under express entry and move to Canada. Better work/life balance, better pay and better opportunities.

- Keep learning new stuff everyday. If you stop learning in the technology space you become obsolete pretty quickly.

- Work in the blockchain space and by extension in open source software. You are good at Go, contribute to Go Ethereum Client.

[anonymous567]

I got a question about Canadian PR.

Do I need to have a Canadian job offer before I apply for PR?

Assuming that I don't have a job offer, and I end up getting a PR anyway, then do I just fly to Canada and hunt for jobs there? It scares me to just go to a country without a job offer in hand.

From what I understand, getting a PR becomes easier if I already have a job offer. And conversely, getting a job offer is easier if I'm a permanent resident. It's like a chicken and egg problem :)

Also, my mindset has been that, if I'm taking the trouble to move to a different country for a job, that job better be an excellent job. But I also understand that I can get into a less excellent job in the beginning, and then look for other awesome jobs.

(Also, I'm not implying that there's anything "less" about a less exciting job; all I meant is that I don't have to move to Canada (or anywhere else) if I'm just going to end up being a Laravel developer, which I currently am).

Lots of uncertainties.

Also, if one is toying with the idea of moving countries, what are some other places a person in my shoes should consider moving to?

[nothrowaways]

If you didn't like USA Canada wouldn't be different.

[jpmoral]

Why not?

[prazacker]

Based on what I have read both on the post and replies in the comments looks like you want (— having more net worth).

You need to first find some purpose or things that make you happy in general. Is it money/coding/learning/building something new?

If its money, you need to keep moving to newer jobs after every few years(2-3 experience) that pay higher. The market right now favors good developers and scaling money via offers is the best. New environment, people and work can be refreshing.

Save -> Invest and let it compound over long time to increase your net worth.

If its coding/learning - you can try joining a mid level company that's around 20 - 100 people where you would have freedom to pick and work on new things - keep learning/moving across teams.

If you job doesn't allow consulting - building something new on the side on your own should work out, try and find an interesting side project you can build or contribute to open source projects, join the community - many active channels on discord.

If you have any other questions, post on the thread - i will try my best to help you out.

I have been coding since the past ~12 years and kept myself busy in learning new technologies. Been building new products using latest technologies every few months, this kept me excited. I hated corporate jobs as they cap the learning and had to deal with incompetent/bad managers.

[giantg2]

Nothing wrong with moving back to an area that you like. There are areas of the US that I wouldn't want to live in, even if it means making more money (like Silicon Valley or NYC).

I would say just enjoy the less stressful job. It's probably a good idea to learn newer technologies or have a hobby-level side project just in case you have to look for a new job. I became an expert in a system and got to that liw-stress zone, only to have my job outsourced. It's good to have other skills.

It seems many people believe a career is necessary and that a career means constantly moving up. It's possible that a step in your career might take years longer than someone else, or it might take a less traditional route.

I've come to the realization that I have a job, not a career. I'm a midlevel developer with "a lot of potential", but that will never translate to a promotion or real raise. I've become jaded by all the false promises and lack of progression, and that will create a viscous cycle. So for me, it's best to just see it as a job so I don't fall as deeply into that cycle as I would if viewing it as a career.

[ahmaman]

Too many options to choose from can be paralyzing.

Here are somethings that I found helpful.

------------------

Improve one aspect of life at the time. It becomes overwhelming in life if there are too many moving parts.

Asking "right now, what is more important to me?"

Moving abroad? Changing fields and follow what interests you? Starting a relationship?

When I am not sure what I want, I try to pick a plan that gives me the highest amount of flexibility and randomness.

- Pick a big city and be active.

- Become financially independent to increase the flexibility in my life.

Often asking what I am struggling with right now and focusing on fixing an immediate pain is helpful.

If you decide to move abroad, it is easier if you have a useful skill. Right now web development is in demand. Moving should be easier.

Choose the destination depending on what you want from moving abroad. Want learn new perspectives? try a different culture. Want to build a new home? Try different places where you feel like home. For context I immigrated to Finland 8 years ago and now living there permanently.

When it comes to career, by far the most useful thing I found was to choose what interests me. Figure out a way to make a living combining 2-3 unrelated things that interest you.

[AbbeFaria]

Or perhaps I should try to get away from my web developer job and get into something else?

You already know what to do here.

I just quit my job at MSFT sometime back, worked straight outta college for four years (in the MS-IDC office). I quit to actually pursue Research in "systems". As for you not getting a callback, add the right keywords/buzzwords in your resume and most importantly LC (considering where you are in your career LC is more than enough). Thats all there is to it. You have a Masters degree from US and you seem like a curious person, I have seen people with far less get into a FAANG job (in India at-least).

FAANG job would definitely be a step up in all aspects money, career etc, for a couple of years at-least. But I get a sense maybe you will grow out of it too (just like I did).

Good luck with whatever you do.

[anonymous567]

Pardon my ignorance, but what's an LC? Leetcode?

[AbbeFaria]

Yes, LC is Leetcode. Its gotten to a point where that is pretty much all you need to get a FAANG job, nothing more complicated than that.

[pjbeam]

yes, Leetcode

[cubano]

You probably need to get into management if your desire is to make more money and stay in IT...

Also, I always had a strong passion for music, so I started a band as a "side-project" and it added a huge amount of fun to my life...plus it allowed me to meet interesting non-tech people and really put in perspective the "work" side of my life comparted to the "living" side.

It sounds like you need more "living" and less "work"...of course, music probably isn't your thing but anything that really interests you outside of IT could be considered as a way to get out of the rut you find yourself in.

[asimjalis]

A lot of the suggestions are incremental changes. Maybe that is the reason they are not satisfying. Could you think big? What is an impossible dream that you have that you have ruled out because rationally it appears unachievable? Could the malaise be caused by this conflict between what your heart wants and what your mind thinks is possible?

[Galactasm]

I'm 26 years old, living in US so I don't know if I have the best experience as we're probably in similar boats career wise. I don't know if I have the best advice to give but maybe you can find some wisdom in some of my experiences.

I was really frustrated earlier this year, left my job, got a new one that I was really excited about. It's a remote software job in game dev. It's a good job and I'm excited, but what I realized is that it wasn't some magical bullet for all my frustrations. Life is complex and I think I'm starting to realize that it can't all be boiled down into one thing. I'm not just interested in doing one thing. I want to work on cool things, I want to become really good at my job and pick up skills and experience, I want to get married, I want to waste time playing games and doing other experiences I enjoy, I want to pick up random skills that won't really benefit me in any meaningful way but I would enjoy having. And the list goes on. I don't think I can distill what I want or who I am into one thing or one goal. That said I'm very aspirational, just like a lot of engineers/geeks/nerds. I think a common path for many engineers in life is to try and reach some technical peak. There's the idea that if I could just get good enough, if I could be really competent at my job or some skill then I would derive satisfaction from it. I think I would if I reached that peak. But I think reaching that peak would be a bit like this new job I got; it wouldn't be the answer for everything. That doesn't mean I'm not going to go for that peak, I am, it's just I no longer have the illusion that it will profoundly change who I am. So I think I maybe see some parallels with what you want. You're looking to get into FAANG, ML, or even looking into moving to a different city/country. I don't think any of these things are going to profoundly change who you are or how you feel. I'm not saying don't do them, pursuing those things could be some of the greatest things you do in your life.

Again not to try and be annoyingly profound, but try to find out who you are instead of defining yourself through your aspirations. Little things can end up having a large effect on you as well, not just huge life changing decisions, which I'm guessing you're hoping will get you out of this malaise. I don't think working at facebook or moving to London, will change your mindset. They might faciliate that change, but the change ultimately will be internal to you.

[aristofun]

some concrete steps I learned from personal experience:

1. Switch away from php to something modern, more universal, more looking into the future and more relevant for big tech these days ASAP.

I mean find better job on go, js, python, kotlin or whatever biggest companies use for new products these days — right away.

Some company or startup that is building complex product, rather than just reselling engineers’ work hours to customers with lookalike projects.

And continue to build your unique carrier capital on that.

2. Get prepared to motivate and push yourself to grow.

3. Find best place in your area or (if you decide you don’t really belong in your country either) find opportunities to move to Europe or Canada. There’re plenty of them currently.

4. Build some plan with end goal that you feel you really like.

And just f*ng execute.

Plan (and your feelings about it) may and will change dramatically along the way, it’s okay.

The only critical part is keep moving.

If this doesn’t help - find a therapist that will help you fix your mental barriers.

Good luck.

[f0e4c2f7]

One of the hardest parts of applying to FAANG or any job is how draining it is to go through the trouble of applying and then not even getting a response. I've been there, it feels bad every time.

I've been involved in hiring at most companies I've worked at and I can assure that hiring is a complete disaster everywhere. In fact, you mentioned that you were introverted but if you volunteered to help out with interviewing at your current company you might find it to be an eye opening experience.

It does tend to be better at faang companies, but not that much better. Still lots of ego and superstition.

One option to consider would be to just keep applying to either faang companies or companies with generally higher prestige that might lead to faang companies.

You can also look into doing contract work for them which tends to be an easier onramp to working there full time (but still quite hard).

You can also take this time to poke around at what you find interesting. This will likely also help your career a lot in various ways.

I've been in your situation a lot of times in my career "well this is boring. Now what?" I don't want to say this is advice exactly because you never know where it goes - but for me I've always looked around to see what seems most interesting and worked on that. Mostly because I'm a very lazy person and if I'm not deeply in love with my work it feels like pulling teeth.

Selfishly I'd love to have you back in the US! We need all the developers of your caliber we can get. But I totally understand not wanting to mess with visas. I have some friends who are on H1-B's. I would go crazy with all the nonsense they have to do. I had no idea how long it took before talking with them about it.

One last thought, ycombinator has been doing a push towards becoming international lately. You could take some time to think of something the world needs and you could plausibly build with great effort and then apply to YC with just the idea. Perhaps something that could only be built with a deep knowledge of Laravel.

Getting into YC is a longshot but you may find the questions in the application and sketching out your startup idea illuminating in it's own way. You can also apply again with more than just an idea next time if you don't get in. Or seek other funding (though that road is probably more difficult in India than in the US. Who knows though, there must be parts of India with a startup scene.)

Good luck friend!

[DrNuke]

You proved you are smart enough and socially able to live a fulfilling life already, so well done and congrats (it is much bumpier for many of your peers). It seems you need to know better your inner voice now (who you really are and what you do want from life), instead of using external metrics such as a degree or a job to define you. Again, smart enough to acknowledge and undergo this process before leaving your comfort zone. The easiest path away to meet new opportunities may be some intellectual nudge, such as coding competitions in the field/language you like the most? Take care and good luck.

[netvarun]

>> I know little of Haskell and Racket, and I think I'd enjoy doing more of those in a professional capacity. But then again, the job market for those kinds of things is next to nil here. A career at Jane Street interests me more than a career at Google, but I don't think I'm great enough for them to move me to one of their offices abroad (they don't have offices in India).

Just wanted to comment on this - Hasura is one of those rare venture funded startups whose stack is in Haskell and iirc they hire a lot of Haskell devs in Bangalore, India

[CMCDragonkai]

My company has some Haskell related work regarding programming language development for cloud infrastructure. We hire remotely. Contact me via my profile, and send me your resume.

[bitxbitxbitcoin]

If becoming more comfortable aka having more net worth is your goal: freelance in your spare time from India while exploring your move abroad/switch jobs options.

[anonymous567]

Freelancing is something that I've thought about.

My current job unfortunately doesn't allow me to freelance. It's explicitly mentioned in the terms.

However, you kind of explicitly mentioned what I've been trying to get at — having more net worth.

[mongol]

You only mention growing into new technical fields. But you can grow in other ways. Such as, becoming freelancer, or developing a side project.

[AmpsterMan]

My company is U.S. based, but has operations in Hyderabad. Here are openings https://www.vertafore.com/about/join-our-team

[throwaway3812]

I had Vertafore on my radar a while ago but the Glassdoor reviews scared me away, how has your experience with them been?

[AmpsterMan]

I am U.S. based, so experience might be different for India teams. I find they are an insurance services company first, and a software company second. They are very product focused and so the engineering and quality departments suffer. I think the CEO is pretty good, and the company has been recently acquired by a larger company that is more engineering focused than the previous one, so I think there is a brighter future, though I don't think the DNA of the company is going to change overnight.

One thing to keep in mind: The India teams are not supposed to be "second class citizens". The company is trying to complement already existing teams with support from overseas, so there may be growth in that vein. Vertafore pays slightly lower in the State of Colorado than do other companies, but it's still within reasonable.

Overall I'd say it's a middle of the road services-turned-software company that is still experiencing growing pains. It has good, established products with income flows so its stable.

Full Disclosure there is a referral bonus for both parties if a referred person gets hired. If interested, you can PM me your contact details and I can refer you.

[asimjalis]

> I really felt like I didn't belong there (in the US).

Reminds me of a joke by standup comedian Vishnu Vaka, delivered in Indian accent: “As you can probably tell from my accent I am from . . . New Jersey.”

[abc_lisper]

A little bit of reading and broadening your horizons is what you should do IMO. Because it doesn't seem like you know what you want, and neither do the people suggesting you what to do. Find things that draw you in, generally like having a significant other or a love, or a passion.

It is a truly difficult process. No wonder people end up in the wrong jobs, have regrets etc. In any case, strengthen your position financially, as there will always be a need for it, even if you don't need it now.

There are truly 1 or 2 things most people will be successful at. It is worth trying to figure out what those are, for being successful in the wrong thing is not worth it.

[kleer001]

Take on more responsibility, it's the guaranteed way up the ladder in any context.

[sergiotapia]

>I've become good enough at my current job that it's no longer stressful.

This sentence stood out to me. If you're comfortable you're not growing. Punch above your weight-class and get hungry! Light that fire within yourself!

[rufus_foreman]

I want you to hit me as hard as you can.

[softveda]

Also ask in r/developersindia

[nothrowaways]

> I got a software engineering job which I would've gotten anyway even if I never went to America

+

[eternalban]

Get married.

[noud]

Then get children.

Life is more important than career.

[uxcolumbo]

Before getting kids - might want to analyse what impact the climate crisis will have on your future kids.

[ricardobayes]

this is a suboptimal strategy though as only inconsiderate people would reproduce.

[tmn]

That's a huge fallacy by simplification. It's just as accurate to say only the brave will reproduce (also not entirely true).

[randomopining]

Why just married -> kids? Why not use 27 until like 35 to go out and see the world, accomplish stuff, meet people and women.