Ask HN: What’s Next?

[swansonator]

Appreciate any feedback from fellow HN folks.

Have been a web developer/engineer for 10-15 years now. Have a great stable job, but not 100% loving the work.

Recently switched jobs and increased my pay over 100%, but it’s really not about the money. While it’s amazing that companies are paying this, not sure if this ticket type of work is for me. I would say I’m loyal and prefer working on one solid goal for a company. The current company I work with has me split on a few projects and the context switching is very difficult. I’d ultimately like to move to DevOps, and there seems to be a path towards that, but not anytime soon. Am I impatient?

I’ve also been considering completely moving away from tech. I love tech and building things, but the longer I work in development and engineering, the harder it is to keep focus and justify the time vs the compensation for all the time in front of a screen.

[ss108]

> I’ve also been considering completely moving away from tech. I love tech and building things, but the longer I work in development and engineering, the harder it is to keep focus and justify the time vs the compensation for all the time in front of a screen.

What else do you think you'd do?

I moved from dev to law. I had less experience than you. I am trying to jump back into tech ASAP.

I can explain more about my thought process and stuff if you'd like.

[spuz]

I'd love to know more about your thoughts on moving from tech to law and back again? What was your motivation?

[taxcoder]

I second the request to hear more.

[tomcam]

I would love a blog post about your journey

[runjake]

Thirded. Would be highly interested.

[euroderf]

I moved from software dev to technical writing. It uses a different part of your brain, and yet a technical background can be an advantage in TC - not all tech writers have a tech background!

[p0d]

My life has been tech and making things (outdoors) as a hobby for quite a few years. Working on physical projects has been an antidote to sitting on my rear all week.

[vp8989]

Wouldn't a DevOps role have more context switching?

[dimitar]

I currently have to juggle Build & Release Pipelines, Infrastructure as Code, monitoring tools, Building images, Configuration management, some DB admin. The context switching is almost a defining feature of modern DevOPS/Operations/SysAdmin/Infrastructure Engineer jobs, unless you are working in a pretty big company that allows you to specialise.

On the other hand if you get a job dealing with only build pipelines or only Kubernetes maintenance it will get boring in a while. Best is to rotate between projects, and have different team members build expertise on some area.

[yuppie_scum]

Yes, at best in DevOps you might get to work a project for a day or two before being yanked in a completely different direction.

[ingvul]

DevOps usually need to be on-call (paid) rotations. That sucks.

[nine_zeros]

Join a startup with a bit more chaos and lesser management heavy processes, ticket tracking, spreadsheet, charts and management speak garbage.

[jasfi]

Consider starting your own business. I'm aiming to help people like yourself startup: https://cxo.industries

[kleer001]

do something real with your hands, something heavy and hot and dangerous and dirty

get away from computers

[baremetal]

after 15 years of sitting in front of a computer, im so glad to be working outside. and owning my own business.

[kleer001]

I'm a good 24 years into my career and I don't see myself taking my own advice, yet. Soon though, soon.