[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

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.

[Willfire19]

Hey I'm just an undergraduate student right now, but if you're worried about job prospects, you should study Computer Graphics and Computer Vision. I find those fields to be way more math intensive than web programming, so it may be more up your ally. Plus, there's plenty of demand for positions in those fields.

[fsk]

You're an undergraduate now, so I'll give a lesson in how the actual job market works.

You get a job using languages/tools X, Y, and Z. When you apply for a new job, they'll screen your resume based on what languages and tools you used in the past, and use that as the basis for deciding whether to interview you or not. If the job ad asks for W, Y, and Z, that's close enough to X, Y, and Z, so you might get an interview. If the job ad asks for W, V, and U, no interview for you.

That is completely the wrong way to hire people, but almost everyone does this.

When you're a recent grad, people will hire you even without a perfect experience match, especially if you graduated from a highly ranked school.

Once you get a couple of jobs with X, Y, and Z, you'll probably keep taking jobs that use X, Y, and Z, because those will tend to make you the best offers. What happens when demand for X, Y, and Z dries up due to changing technology fads?

I'm at the point where I have a lot of experience in languages that are no longer used or are no longer trendy. That isn't seen as an asset, it's seen as a negative. People say "Why should I hire you FSK, when I could hire a recent college grad?" So my experience has no market value. Plus, age discrimination is a factor. (After you've been around the block a few times, you're less of a pushover, which is seen as a bad thing.)

That's why programmer is a bad career choice. Your experience loses its market value very quickly. You will do very well initially, but then you hit a wall and it's over. You have to move to management, start your own business, or always be chasing the latest tech fads. If you want to pad your resume with a new tech/language, do a project in it, even if it isn't the right choice for your employer's needs and you'll mess it up because you haven't used it before.

Computer vision may be "hot" now, but that's no guarantee of any demand 5-10 years from now. "Data Scientist" is also a hot item right now, is closer to my actual background (lots of database and data warehouse work, and lots of financial statistics and analysis), and I still can't get any interviews for "Data Scientist" jobs.