Ask HN: How did you move from IT/software to something unrelated? - <AUTHOR> I'm a frontend developer in the greater Vancouver, BC area. After becoming burnt out at my last position over a year ago, I've had no success in finding further work and don't have all that much motivation to continue the endless cycle of humouring recruiters and sending resumes out. Not because I don't like software development, more so because of the cost of continued attempts and lack of potentially inspiring outcomes (technical, very time intensive interviews with very few compelling companies worth the effort) that I am qualified for.
Anyhow, I'd like to apply at companies that, for lack of a better description, essentially pay minimum wage and require building basic skill that I may not have developed in software. Like Starbucks, McDonalds, retail. However, computers and software are pretty much all I know and all I have on my resume. I'm reasonably outgoing, well spoken, and have some confidence that I can work with others, but making the backwards transition from my career to a more basic jobby job (no intention of being derogatory here) is surprisingly unclear.
Edit: Part of the intention as well, is to build versatile skills that might allow more job flexibility in the future. For example if I were to travel and work without requiring a skilled worker visa. <comment><USER6> SALES. What fascinates me about sales is the ability to bring immediate value to a company. True value. If you walk in the door and bring in a new sale order for $100k: the company just made money. It may sound impossible todo. But it isn't. EG. Selling a twilio account to uber isn't like landing a mars rover. It is totally possible. Uber needs to send text messages and there are only a handful of players in that space. If that was your account your cut could be in the 7figures. You are now the shit.

My friend at Flurry selling mobile ads (in 2012) made over a million in one year flat. During that year - selling mobile ads was like selling drugs behind a school. If Flurry pulls in 30million from your accounts, 1million is just a write off. When I lived in a nicer area of PacHeights in SF, my neighbors with houses were in SALES: oracle, real estate, franchises , on and on. Javascript progammers? No.

Applying a new cool bootstrap theme to a website or making that node.js app is cool, but the value it adds? You are too far down the value stick. One of my sales friends told me a horrifying statement: "Once we finish signing the paperwork, everyone else is worthless." It is true. They can get new programmers, new teams, new infrastructure, new products, hell, money buys anything.

You can do what this guy does. You probably will need a suite and a smile. But I think he makes more than everyone on this thread combined. ALSO. If you passed his desk around 2pm on friday? It would be empty.

[https://www.linkedin.com/in/jason- eubanks-a775ba/](https://www.linkedin.com/in/jason-eubanks-a775ba/)

<comment><USER7> > "Once we finish signing the paperwork, everyone else is worthless." It is > true.

I think that's a fairly myopic, though unsurprising, point of view from the sales perspective. There's tons of work that goes into making a viable product that gets the paperwork to be signed. Programmers, teams, etc. are just as (ir)replaceable as sales staff; when you have the right combination, everything works well. Handshakes and signatures are the final step of making a deal, not the defining ones. From a bare financial point of view, once the paper's signed, you can change your company all you want, but unless the product/service continues to be well-made and add value to the customer, the money's not going to keep flowing. Engineering talent is not exactly fungible.

<comment><USER8> I'm in the IT services biz and while sales is a huge part of the process, they're selling our ability and our reputation which is based on our track record for quality execution. We don't sel them on "we're good at JavaScript" but we do sell on "we can design and develop high-quality technology products".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I stated my career early - while I was still in high school. I went from bagging groceries and doing checkouts at a grocery store to programming for a local company my senior year of high school. I continued doing this for my first couple years of college.

But then dot-bomb happened and it looked like the party was over. I looked down at the job opportunities after graduation. I didn't really want to spend the rest of my life wearing a tie, writing bank software and sitting in a cubicle every day, so I decided to try something different.

I became a seasonal park ranger. And it was _awesome._

Like most jobs, I got it through knowing someone. My grandparents had volunteered for the NPS and were able to connect me with the right people. I became a seasonal park ranger at Yellowstone.

It's not for everyone. The pay is not great, but you do get lots of good benefits because it's a government job. And you're often living in remote areas (the nearest grocery store was an hour and a half drive from where I was stationed). It's also not conducive to family life if that's your thing (again, the closest school was 1.5 hours away and everyone around me was my coworkers). And the days are long, helping tourists, checking permits, etc. Permanent jobs are also incredibly hard to get - you usually have to do years of seasonal work to accrue enough seniority to get considered for a permanent position.

But the benefits? Being able to crack open a drink after a long day and look up at more stars than I _ever thought existed_ \- I spent many nights on the front porch of my cabin looking up at the Milky Way. Hiking, camping, boating on the weekends are easy because I was right there in the park. Clean air, clean water. A good group of coworkers (for me) who legit really care about protecting these astounding natural resources. And a feeling that you're really making a difference and reaching people.

I did this for a few years and they were among my happiest years prior to my marriage. Ultimately, I ended up going back into tech after things recovered. But there are days that I really miss the outdoors and wearing the uniform.

So I guess my advice would be to forget about skills and whatnot and ask yourself, outside of tech, what do you like to do? I mean really like to do? And can you turn that into a job? Can anyone you know network you into a job?

<comment><AUTHOR> This is an astoundingly relevant answer to my question and thank you for taking the time to tell your story. I don't have an answer yet but this gives me something to think about. I share the same interests outside of the office and the same feeling you had once the bubble burst. I was hoping to find some advice on how I could turn the experience I did have into something beneficial to a potential employer—such as the NPS—but thinking long and hard about what I'm good at, want to do, and who might be able to help me get there is probably a more feasible route.

<comment><USER10> I'd consider also how you can pivot slightly rather than completely. Coming out of my undergrad degree I had absolutely zero interest in writing boiler plate style software suited-up in a large company. Instead I took on jnr research positions in other fields like earth sciences as a research assistant, working with satellite data and high throughput laser scanning. Essentially the computer/robotics guy for people not capable of that but with grand ideas. You can find these sorts of jobs on NewScientist or Nature jobs listings, academics are incredibly accepting of computer literate field swappers. Eventually I realised a PhD was essentially the only way to have freedom in the space of research. So I found the most general explorative course I could, which at the time was a new PhD centre training a large cohort (60+ students over 8 years) in complexity sciences. The experience of being around a load of smart people from various backgrounds all working on interesting problems cannot be under estimated as a morale boost. I now also have a wide network of friends doing cool stuff I can always rely on in a pinch for perhaps finding fun work. The course was super rapid switching between subjects with maths covered the whole time. It gave me exposure to most university departments and the sorts of big problems everyone had. Eventually I came across protein structures and molecular biology which was only something I only had a rough understanding of coming from computer science, self studying the biology behind genetic algorithms. The realities of that field have completely sucked me in forever, like nothing I've really found before. I had a misguided try at doing some robotics before settling on molecular biology. But now post PhD I get to work in companies that are doing really interesting stuff, and on software that's relatively creative and cutting edge to develop compared to what I could have been working on post undergrad. Not all software has to give you that trapped dead end feeling. I've recently switched jobs simply because what I was working on wasnt quite engaging enough and I felt trapped by the higher rents that tend to be common where techy jobs are aplenty. But you really dont have to accept this at all once you have some experience and a network of contacts developed.

<comment><USER11> > But now post PhD I get to work in companies that are doing really > interesting stuff

Isn't it crazy hard to get hired for a research position? I was told in the past that just because you had a PhD didn't mean you would automatically be able to find a job doing interesting research.

> The realities of that field have completely sucked me in forever, like > nothing I've really found before.

In what way?

<comment><USER10> >Isn't it crazy hard to get hired for a research position? I was told in the past that just because you had a PhD didn't mean you would automatically be able to find a job doing interesting research.

It's crazy hard to get hired for a permanent research position in academia at a university people will have heard of. In science and engineering <10% of people go on to PhD and <10% of those PhDs who graduate find a permanent position. If you don't feel like you were the top 1% of your year at uni, then its going to be harder, or you've been under appreciated and are good at research rather than being taught. So yeah to remain in academia being paid little actually takes you being incredibly good. But getting an operational research job in something like an innovation or RnD department, in a company, is about as hard as getting any other job once you have some experience, and are qualified for the work. A PhD is not at all required though. But in life sciences its kind of important right now. The main issue of work being "interesting" is probably if you have directly relevant experience or not, which is a lot less likely as a researcher. If you're like me though and can get interested in almost anything then pragmatism wins. Plenty of knowledge and research skills are completely transferable. Getting a PhD is not really about skill or ability its an endurance race that very few people even sign up for and even less finish. By definition finishing the race means you are capable of doing it. It's a trial by fire.

Nothing is automatic in life. The number of hopelessly incompetent people with a PhD is only slightly less than the number with an undergrad degree or without any higher education. That doesn't change. But yeah if someone sucks, they suck. That's never something that can be overcome with a piece of paper. But a PhD at the very least usually represents a level of dedication to trying to make yourself suck less that others were unwilling to sign up for. That's probably about all its ever recognised as. My experience to date is people with a PhD are hugely self starting, and capable of pushing a project along independently. Which is simply a product of being left alone floating in a room for several years expected to solve something independently.

> In what way?

The main way is that I come from an AI background by training. Many of the concepts from that field set you up for sort of reverse engineering how things might be working in molecular biology. It's not that cells and proteins are remotely like computers, but they are doing heavy computation in a strange way and AI is essentially the field of understanding strange computation. The main thing I was interested in when I was doing an AI degree were optimisation problems and specifically genetic algorithms. Turns out evolution of molecular biology -the real thing- is just vastly more interesting and complex in a way you wish you could get genetic algorithms to behave. Better yet is that the alarming rise of biotech to actually manipulate how life works, means for all intents and purposes theoretical work you do in molecular biology can directly become technology. It's basically what I was looking for in AI.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> You write as if you are trapped in IT. You say you are burnt out. Perhaps the feeling you are trapped is coming from inside you rather than the world?

Burn out comes from using willpower to force yourself to do work that you have no hope will succeed.

The feeling of being trapped comes with that. The Fight Flight Freeze response.

The feeling is inside you. You can fly to another industry but the feeling will go with you and you will remain unsettled.

Because burn out is a physiological phenomenon, one that you feel in your your body, focus on physical recovery. Sleep, go outside, reconnect in your relationships, exercise. Get the adrenaline and blood pressure down.

Then it is worth doing other things to build back the feeling of hope. But use that as the guide. Do I believe this will be fun? That I will succeed at this? You need to retrain your sense of hope in your own efforts.

It takes time. A few months to 2 years perhaps. Forgive yourself daily. You aren't the first or the last person to feel this way and there is nothing wrong with how you feel. It was a way to stop you from continuing doing something self-destructive. The primary lesson is to do things that are self- constructive from now on. Things you want to do. Things you wake up to do. Don't stop yourself from those things any more.

<comment><USER13> "You can fly to another industry but the feeling will go with you and you will remain unsettled." <\- Totally incorrect.

I took a break from software development due to burn out, got my CDL and drove an 18 wheeler for a few months.

The experience was practically a relaxing (after training) paid vacation where I could see the country, and made feel so much better.

I was even able to go back to software development afterwards with renewed drive. So... no, the feeling won't follow you.

<comment><USER12> Agreed. As I wrote, you can and should change scenes but with the __intent __to do something fun or where you feel successful. OP seemingly wants to grind new skills the hard way but that is just more agony.

To regain a sense of __control __and __success __in ones life requires more than following through on feelings of escapism.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Well... I hired a producer, wrote 10 songs, hired a director, filmed 3 music videos and worked harder than I had at any software startup in my life (platform/devops) trying to make it work. Serious long shot, but it's been a ton of fun!

Edit: my last video won "Music Video of the Year" at the Oxford International Film Festival. So here's hoping!

<comment><USER15> You're being polite by not linking, and I appreciate that. However, it's truly good and I think other people will want to give it a watch.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G31_dEOvYuY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G31_dEOvYuY)

<comment><USER16> How did you get the youtube video from his profile? I looked through and couldn't find a way to correlate the two as we don't know what year he won.

<comment><USER15> I just assumed it was this year, and then I noticed he linked to (presumably) his SoundCloud account in another HN comment[1], which I used as (good enough) confirmation that I had found the right video.

1: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12422365](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12422365)

<comment><USER17> Good amount of research there. :D

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I have a comp eng degree but was completely burnt out after graduation. I jumped into digital learning instead; it's ideal for me as it's still "IT" but combined with my other favourite areas, education, product and design. The learning curve wasn't so bad, there are plenty of good WYSIWYG authoring tools with only barebone knowledge of HTML/ CSS/ JS required - although you'll quickly find that that's much less important than the skills to teach and to have a good design eye, for example.

So now, most of my job is to assess training needs, design a programme solution - along with its curriculum, script, storyboard etc - then develop the actual eLearning, test-test-test then launch. So quite similar to a software development cycle - except most often this is a one-man job and shouldn't last more than a couple of months.

Initially I was naive enough to think hey, I got this, but there's a reason why MOOCs generally have high drop-out rates. The bar for eLearning is _extremely_ high. You also have to take account of other limitations, from outdated IT systems to the sizeable number of computer illiterates/ Luddites to the organisation's own conflict of whether the training should look 100% corporate (aka boring) or creative (learners cry hurray!)

But I find that I enjoy navigating through them and finding the right balance. I also learnt a massive amount about how to teach, what good designs mean and how to listen to users. In terms of opportunities - well there's enough I suppose, at least for me I can work on my edtech project - for children, cos hey it's just more fun ;) - with a backup contract work to keep the money going.

<comment><USER19> I just made an account here to reply to your account .Could you please elaborate on how you got into digital learning/edtech or how can a fellow software engineer get into digital learning/edtech?

<comment><USER18> Oh goodness, I'm glad someone found this intriguing, I think I came across as a bit self-promotional before :o

It was mainly accidental that I got into digital learning. I was pretty traumatised from my degree, even today I still feel irrationally reluctant to code.

But I've always been passionate about design and education. I also wanted to "self-heal" if you like, to repair myself as a person and as a learner. And what better way than to learn how to learn and teach??

One of the best parts of my job is I can get away with being "dummy". I tell my subject matter experts that it's helpful to assume this position, so I can be empathic to all types of learners, but really I'm a slow learner myself haha. And yes you do end up designing better eLearning! Being in Learning And Development also gives a good overview of the whole organisation, as you need to understand how it works and where the gaps are in order to tackle them with training (or not.) I learnt a lot, and dare I say I am much more confident as learner, teacher and professional.

Lately though I've been feeling that I have a debt to pay. I consider myself lucky to "survive" depression, and to live in a good country with lots of opportunities. So I am moving to my own edtech project focusing on literacy for children, with lots of interactive eBooks :)) I do have a backup remote gig though.

If you're really interested, google up "Instructional Design" and "eLearning" just to get a flavour of the field. As I said, there are WYSIWYG tools but increasingly organisations are moving towards mobile-friendly courses, which is great news for developers as it means more coding opportunities. Have a look at "Adapt", an open source authoring tool which requires a bit of HTML/ JavaScript knowledge. "Unity" is also increasingly being used ... and there's a growing trend for VR learning.

Hope that's helpful, if not just email me via my profile.

<comment><USER20> Sorry if this comes off as harsh, but do you approach eLearning with this sort of wishy washy that most people tend to have in this field(as far as I observed), or do you know what you are doing, eg. the educational psychology behind it, and basing decisions on empirical evidence?

"Many institutions move towards eLearning" \- the impression I got from this topic is that its pretty much every time one of those "Ipad cases" \- spend $$$ on Ipads even if they are useless, just to show how modern your institution is. Almost every time I hear about this, its some news-article over hyping eLearning that is so badly implemented that the teachers hate it.

If you know what you are doing (not the wishy washy way) then I would really like to ask you some questions.

<comment><USER18> If I know what I'm doing? Hmm, I like to think that I _can_ by paying close attention to the problem itself. Every organisation is unique, and though their problem sounds general and well-defined, it usually isn't. So as part of scoping, you need to dig further in order to gauge the actual problem - <USER2> may even realise that it's a symptom of a deeper problem in which case training isn't always the solution. This does mean that you have to immerse yourself in the organisation to understand the culture, biases, IT system, branding, language and so on - all this will also feed into your final design. And build relationships; rarely what people tell you at first actually match up with the real problem.

My rule is to start from first principles and work my way up as logically as I can. This helps to cut through the bullshit - yep, I agree with you that there is too much of it in L&D. However it's also useful to know core pedagogy theories and the latest fads, because it will help you speak in their language. Some of them are genuinely useful, but I find myself drawing mostly from design and behaviour science.

Digitalisation is a serious strategy though. You will be surprised at how dated some systems are in the biggest companies, and the amount of reluctance to adapt in the workforce. The mistake most companies do is to _rush_ with digitalising their training, when there does need to be a proper transition sensitive to the workforce's needs and perceptions.

Although I've sung praises about eLearning here, personally I prefer blended learning - but the best ones require skill in creating the complementary digital component well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> It's pretty non-traditional, but: in my spare time, evenings and weekends, I wrote a couple of bad novels. This took a long time. Then I took time off between contract jobs to write a good novel. Then I sold the novel, and got a couple of subsequent book deals, enough to spend six years as a full-time novelist, which was pretty great. Then I parlayed that into magazine journalism.

I eventually went back into software -- writing is not great for one's bank balance unless you hit it extremely big; my gross income is now more than triple what it was during those years as a full-time writer -- but I'm still an occasional journalist and even more occasional author, and those were an excellent six years.

I think the tl;dr is to try to turn what you enjoy doing in your spare time into your secondary profession.

<comment><USER22> This is very inspiring! I've written my first bad novel, planning the second, although really loving my engineering job as well :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> The thing I regret not doing is sales. And I mean SALES. Selling plots of land in a swamp. Selling GIs suits of armour on an aircraft carrier. Selling fake Gucci jackets out of the boot of a car. I'm talking Glengarry Glen Ross shit and worse. If I had a career timeout I think that's what I might do.

Bear with me here.

It's like there's two ways of looking at what life is really about. On the one hand life is about stopping to smell the flowers, feel the sand in between your toes, enjoy balmy evenings with friends and family. On the other hand life is about a cruel and monstrous struggle for survival in which every living organism is consuming or parasitising some other organism for its own advantage.

Both these things are true: I feel like people who have the privilege of NOT doing sales, don't see both sides on a regular basis. Don't understand where their incomes really originate.

So I always felt like it's a world I know about, but haven't really experienced. Like sometimes I love walking through an industrial estate at 6am and feeling like this is really where things are happening.

<comment><USER24> As someone who was in sales as a first job working with all kinds of companies, small and Fortune 500, this is absolutely true. Unless you learn to pick up a phone, learn to ask for what you want in an agreement, and learn what it takes to communicate the value of a product effectively you'll have a handicap in starting a company, but also fully understanding any company for which you're working.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> When my family moved to the Bay Area we owned a home. Rather than sell, we engaged a property manager to rent it out. We had a few years of excellent income from that which essentially paid the PITI (principal, interest, taxes, and insurance) on our FHA-financed home (including holding a "reserve" for repairs, vacancy, etc.) plus a (very small) profit. It definitely lit a fire in my belly to switch out. I find software development to be incredibly boring and, worse, having a higher quotient of immature and unjustifiably arrogant people than I find myself able to tolerate lately.

I haven't made the switch just yet, because I want a slightly larger bank account before I draw down from it to finance a couple of purchases. I've also basically self-taught for a real estate license. One doesn't need the license to buy and sell real estate for oneself, but the knowledge is very handy and I may get a license anyway just to be able to work with an agency for the experience of it. Doing this sort of thing requires one to build skills that translate to any industry (sales, "people skills", etc.).

<comment><USER26> Personally, I find going into real estate borderline immoral. Competing with people who want to own homes raises prices and makes people spend less on more interesting and intrinsically valuable pieces of the economy. There is some place for it, but right now there is far far too much money and too many people vying to get maximum profit out of a basic human need.

<comment><USER27> It's not more immoral than any other sales job or being a lawyer, trader, politician, tax accountant, banker, financier... 90% of white-collar jobs are immoral. If you want to be moral, become a garbage collector, builder, janitor, etc...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> As someone who has worked those type of jobs for years, the grass is indeed NOT greener on the other side.

Those jobs have a much lower barrier to entry, so in addition to being paid less, employers can hire and fire much more easily.

Also don't fall for the "sales is such a great skill to have!" When was the last time a salesperson convinced you to buy something?

What will you have to show for the years you're going to waste in these type of jobs besides a few bullet points on your resume?

<comment><USER29> B2B sales is probably a lot more compelling than B2C sales. Big difference in mentality. Consumers don't typically value their time monetarily, whereas businesses are (mostly) only concerned with how much money they'll save if they buy your product.

And then you realise why people will pay $10k for software that saves them even an hour a day. It pays for itself in under a year.

Having done it, I would never get a job in retail again. It's absolutely soul destroying.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> There is a great job that you might be interested in that would be easy to obtain as well as provide opportunities for travel, free accommodation, and give you free time to work on programming, read, or whatever you want. You could stay in BC or move anywhere in the world -- get a job at a hostel.

You don't need any special skills to get a job at a hostel. I think that it would be much more beneficial for personal development than serving coffee or flipping burgers. It's very good for interpersonal and intercultural communication skills. Depending on which shift you work, you could still get in a full day of coding on side projects on some days.

I worked in that industry and was even able to get a European work visa based on it (along with the technical skills). Send me a message if the idea interests you. (@joshhostels on Twitter)

</comment><comment><USER31> I worked as a software developer for 3 years until RSI struck me. It took me one year of rehab to be in a situation to live normal life.

Life decided for me that I can't be a programmmer anymore. I had an engineering degree in Computer Engineering and it was hard for me to convince myself that I can't type anymore. It just wasn't possible physically. So after much furstration I decided to make a change. I went back to school to study. This time I took up Statistics. Now I'm a PhD student in Biostatistics. Much better in terms of job satisfaction and typing is less. The latter is important for my RSI injury which never went away completely.

PS: in my master's I met all kinds of people from all kinds of background studying statistics. It broke my bubble that I'm the only one who has made a change.

<comment><USER32> Have you tried using a different mouse/keyboard or using one of those silicon pads to support your wrist? You could also try to change your posture while sitting.

<comment><USER31> I was awaiting that comment :). Short answer to your question: Yes, my desk looks like I will to fly to Mars any moment. Long answer: I rather not type or I will give myself more pain.

<comment><USER33> I doubt that more technology is the solution. What worked for me was to build up strength in my wrists, hands, and forearms again, with free weights. (I'd actually recommend dumbbells rather than barbells. If I were advising myself 22 years ago, I would tell myself to start really light, and don't work too hard to begin with.) It took a lot of work, but I didn't cause the RSI to flare up again, and within a few months I was able to type at full speed for indefinite periods.

Something else I learned was to not overdo it.

So, that was almost a cure for me, but whether it'll work for you or not is an entirely different thing, depending on what the root of the problem is. You would probably also need to address posture and muscle tension issues, like I do, and you just plain should not attempt any kind of serious rehab without a good physiotherapist helping you.

<comment><USER31> I share your opinion completely.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Maybe what you can do is bring your software development skills to a more "jobby job"? You sound like someone who could easily be a one person back office for a small company/local bank/corporate office, helping with tech, custom software, etc. Might be a good way to utilize your skills, but in a different culture.

I'm with you on the extreme pressure cooker that is tech jobs, and tech recruiting. It's almost as if the dial is either 0 or 11.

<comment><AUTHOR> This is along the lines of what I'm asking myself and what I attempted to communicate in my question. To your second point, what I consider my most successful role was being the "webmaster" for a medium sized retailer. A sports retailer with a very foreign culture. Turns out, I do fairly well when given lots of responsibility with little micromanagement. Doing that again is not something I'd discount as a possibility, though so not something I've thought to pursue again. Perhaps I'll consider this and broaden my IT related search outside software dev. Could be worth a shot. It would certainly contrast your last sentiment which I agree with wholeheartedly.

<comment><USER35> There is a huge amount of research that shows that broad responsibilities (without micro-management) are correlated with high motivation. See the classic paper "One more time, How do you motivate employees" for a starting point.

So much in dev and elsewhere depends on the specifics of the organization structure and who your manager is.

Good luck.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Have you ever tried sales? It should be fairly easy to get a sales job at any retail store near where you live. Spend a year or two getting good at it, then get hired as a technical sales engineer. Sales is a versatile skill and somebody with both sales chops and programming skills is hard to come by.

<comment><USER36> I'd add that sales is quite possibly the most universal of skills. You can move _anywhere_ in the world and get a well paying job if you have sales experience. Well, maybe not North Korea, but you get the drift.

<comment><USER37> well, north korea still has to sell all that coal it pulls out of the ground using slave labor.

<comment><USER38> This interests me, who would I contact to sell that slave coal? Do they use external recruiters? Any pointers would be appreciated

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> > very time intensive interviews with very few compelling companies worth the > effort

You will probably think this is partonizing, but anyway: I don't really get how working for a non-IT company that hurts your body and soul is better than working at a non-hip IT company that only hurts your soul. I can guarantee you that you'll feel worse at "Starbucks, McDonalds, retail" than you have ever felt in your IT job. A vocational job or maybe construction would be more suitable in doing something for your well-being, but not the kind of customer facing jobs you describe.

I dislike the interview circus, too, but there are lots of small worthwhile companies that don't require you to jump through hoops and waste your time with interview marathons.

<comment><AUTHOR> Construction does also fall into this category. Simply slipped my mind when writing the question. I haven't found that smaller "hip" IT companies hurt my soul, but everyone's experience may vary. Body yes, but I have a fairly high tolerance for it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> It's a bit similar to what I'm thinking about right now. I started my career close to 20 years ago, coding dynamic web pages (yes, I worked with php3), and unintentionally broadened my skillset into something like a CTO skillset for specific environments - I never was a really great coder, so I'm not suited for the lead-developer kind of role in an early phase startup.

Now I'm losing more and more interest in "core tech". While I find infrastructure, performance and scaling still kinda interesting on a rather abstract level, I find it more and more enjoyable to work with "people & processes", so: How do people collaborate within an IT department, how does IT collaborate with its stakeholders, how are the roles & responsibilities structured, where are the frustrations, what can be improved, how do we scale the team.

I've been doing this as a freelancer for almost three years now, and I had just two large-ish projects (about 6 months each). Problem is that both projects were started because management thought the problems they were facing were "the IT's fault", so I was hired as an interim CTO to "fix the IT". Management had the impression that I would look at the code and improve it, and then everything would be fine. However in both projects I discovered there were various severe dysfunctions that didn't really have anything to do with what the IT produced.

So staying within the jurisdiction of IT seems reasonable, but I'm also thinking about leaving it completely to become a general "organisational coach". But at the end of the day, I have no idea what to do, since right now it's hard to find clients, since my communication is rather incoherent, and people don't really understand what I have to offer. As soon as I say that I won't even _read_ code, they think I'm completely useless.

<comment> le-mark > However in both projects I discovered there were various severe dysfunctions > that didn't really have anything to do with what the IT produced.

This is very common and it's not funny, it's tragic. IME the problem always comes down to personalities in upper management. They're incompetent, and give rise to incompetent teams.

I once worked with an old mainframe programmer who had re-created himself to be a process evangalist by going off and getting a ph.d from some no name univerisity. When I worked with him he was hired as a senior business analyst. I was very intrigued by how he perceived his role and value add. He used to say his job was to get the right people in meetings to talk to each other, and they would make the decisions. And that's all he did, organize meetings, for the full year he worked there.

In the end he was very adamant about not taking on any other responsiblities and was fired. Luckily, the company was smallish and wised up. Looking at his linkedin, you see a similar pattern, 6-12 month gigs all over town. Maybe he'll land in a suitably Big Dumb Corp someday. My take away was, for that type of role, you really need to DO something. Banal, I know.

<comment><USER40> First of all, getting people together to talk is not doing nothing. It's getting people together and talk. There are companies/departments where people just don't talk to each other anymore, or not about the right things, because many things are so bogged down that people don't bring them up anymore.

Ok, now while I'm typing I see what you might mean: Of course in a management role you actually have to actively "facilitate": You have to challenge things that seem to be stuck, you have to offer solutions by comparing your experience with the situation at hand. Some kind of an "organisational coach with focus on IT teams". But this wouldn't be a permanent position but a freelance one, and 6 months seems to be a reasonable time for an IT team (and its stakeholders!) to resolve a lot of issues and to be able to flourish on their own.

Having the team decide on architectural matters isn't bad management per se in my opinion. At least having most of the ideas - of course management is responsible for the decisions, but if the ideas come from the team, the developers usually feel way more appreciated, and the decisions are supported way better than those that "come from above". But also, management has to facilitate: Have the team explain why they want to do things a certain way, have them lay out alternatives, and challenge their ideas with your experience.

That's just my understanding of an IT manager: You're not a manager because you were the best developer, and so you were promoted - changing into a management role is NOT a promotion, it's taking a different career path, doing a different job. So to my mind an IT manager should not be a lead architect who has all the great ideas, and the team works them off. He's a Servant Leader who helps the team to be the best team they can be.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> Unless your just done with tech, don't give up! Picking up other work happens. I've done it plenty of times and still do it but I know what I can do. Start a side project, start a side business, just don't let the job situation deter you. I'm oldish, at least in tech years. After doing the consulting thing for some time I haven't had much in terms of full-time tech jobs coming my way and switched modes to doing something on my own. I still do odd jobs in the meantime but that doesn't stop me. You got skills, don't forget. ;)

</comment><comment><USER42> I was a 4th-year student in a maths / CS programme in Eastern Europe and had a part-time job as a web developer. Over time, I got the impression that being a dev is a low-prestige job with very slim chances of moving into any position of power. So I abandoned programming entirely, enrolled in a masters' program in economics and in 3 years got a job in M&A advisory at an investment bank.

Getting a finance job was not easy (two full recruitment seasons, 20+ failed interviews - even though I graduated from the top bachelor and master programmes in the country and the financial market was booming those years), mostly due to my lack of people skills. The people's mindset and mode of communication in business are much different from what I was used to in IT and academia. It cost me a lot of time and mental effort to adapt.

Note that I was only 20 years old back then when I started doing my master's in economics but there were much older people around who also succeeded in getting into investment banking, management consulting or other business-like careers of their choice.

Now, after 8 years in finance, I became fed up with it, left the job and am currently trying to break into the IT/startup sector as a CTO/co-founder.

<comment><USER43> > I got the impression that being a dev is a low-prestige job with very slim > chances of moving into any position of power.

It used to be like that in EE (Poland) in the first decade of 2000. Now, with remote jobs paying $10k+ per month and low costs of living, who cares about power? Unless you genuinely want to be "important" and not just well paid.

<comment><USER44> Seriously, $10K/mo for remote engineers in Poland?

If so then hooray for Poland, but most engineers in Germany make less than that.

<comment><USER45> It's not about Poland, it's about remote (as in not a Polish employer).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> ryan-allen When I was young and I had no degree and almost no experience, I made a few web projects and put them together in a portfolio. I showed the beginning-to- end methods I used (pencil sketches and all) to complete the projects on my own. It took a few months but I landed a job with a small company (they cited the portfolio as the main reason they got me in to interview) and have been employed ever since.

Later as a manager who was hiring, the biggest problem I had with hiring juniors was I couldn't easily tell one between another, and even with a degree from a decent University, I was unable to figure out if a) they could solve problems or b) if they could even code at all (surprisingly, many graduates cannot, and I don't have time or inclination to train them).

On the other side of the fence, candidates that put effort into portfolios like the one I described, even for a single project, made it very easy to decide if they were a worthwhile bet because they had already answered my questions with their portfolio piece: that they can solve a problem and that they can actually code.

Even interview phases, I've had seniors whom have aced the interviews and turned out completely rubbish. If only I was able to determine their aptitude from a real project before I've even called them...

Another angle is to find a company that need something built but are not a 'tech company'. Often these, assuming you can pull of the work they need, are less about the 'passing the tech interview' and more 'solving the problems' the small business is having. I started out doing this also (I worked in ad agencies making bespoke things as their only programmer).

There are avenues outside of 'tech companies' if you can do the work, if you love making stuff, don't give up on it yet!

</comment><comment><USER46> Answer: cell phone displaced my career/job

Taking a basic job like McD etc will give you new skills.

There will be plenty of upward mobility in service and retail if you show brains and hard work. You will stand out.

For me, going from office/ professional to service yielded these positives:

Working with young people. Youth keeps me feeling young. Plus i never realized that over50% of my old office environment was filled with adults that failed at marriage. Youth have everything in front of them and bring a great load of fun to work beside.

Feeling accomplished. Its easy to see how you help others in a service job. (i worked on the same system for years and never felt the way i do interacting with human customers.

My time after work. If im not on the clock the time is mine.

If you don't make the money you don't spend the money. It was difficult to see how I could have taken a 60% pay cut before i left the golden handcuffs job, but it was much easier than I fretted over.

But beware! Just like most McD employees could not get a job in tech the reverse is more than true. It is just not as obvious

</comment><comment><USER47> What about doing the physical end of IT/development? Prior to actually getting my first job on the software side of things I did the low voltage wiring for networks and related systems in commercial construction. I have installed several million linear feet of Cat5e, Cat6, RG-11, RG-6, and so on. It's definitely a differerent experience than most have.

</comment><comment><USER48> I went back to school and got a doctorate in botany. Now I am a staff scientist at a large state university. Working in tech gave me a lot of financial success, but it wasn't something I was passionate about.

<comment><USER49> That's wonderful. I'm having trouble finding entry-level science internships as an undergrad because all my past experience has been in tech so I can to what interests me more.

<comment><USER50> That would be a benefit to your CV for a number of positions. Entry-level undergrad science internships tend to be _extremely_ competitive, I was never able to land one. One of the best things you can do is, assuming you're at a university and not a college, become a research assistant at one of the labs on your campus. There's typically no pay, but you can often get credits, and it can sometimes lead to a publication.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> Sell. Sell. Sell.

If you can crack the sales mystery and get good at it, there's nothing you can't have. Good sales folk make $$$$$$$$$$.

<comment><USER52> "It takes brass balls to sell real estate."

</comment></comment><comment><USER53> Got sick of the daily hack, went to an estate sale, found a bunch of rocks and tools that would let me work said rocks, and after a bit of trial, error, and about seven proper youtube videos, here I am.

Made and sold this yesterday - [http://i.imgur.com/byR2660.png](http://i.imgur.com/byR2660.png)

<comment><AUTHOR> This is cool. Do you have a youtube channel or were you watching them to learn?

</comment></comment><comment><USER54> You can do front end developer contract gigs on one of the freelancer sites. You won't make a ton but you can make 2 or 3 times minimum wage (based on Vancouver minimum wage) without trying very hard. You can make a good bit more than that if you get good at contracting. Plus contracting lets you build skills you won't get working as an employee.

Work 4 months out of the year full time, or 10-15 hours a week year round and you'll make as much as you would working at McDonald's. Spend the rest of your time learning whatever you want.

<comment><USER55> What kind of places do you look to find this kind of stuff? I'm based in Melbourne, so I'm not sure how different it is, but last time I looked into it the work on offer seemed overwhelmingly based around inexperienced devs working on shoddy PHP/Wordpress sites for far below minimum wage.

<comment><USER54> Upwork and various sites like it have plenty of people making way above minimum wage. You have to spend some time sorting through the nonsense, but it's there.

If you're in North America, speak fluent English, and you can actually program, steady jobs in the $20-$30 an hour range are easy to find. (note that if you're a decent developer living in North America, I wouldn't advise working for those rates unless you have a specific reason to, e.g., you want easy jobs that are easy to find or you really need money now.

Living in Melbourne it might be a bit harder because of the time zone difference you lose a bit of the advantage North American developers have over eastern Europe, India, and other low cost of living countries.

I still think it's probably doable.

There are jobs on those sites paying decent developer wages as well, but those are harder to come by. I did a bit of work on Upwork and other sites before I started finding work through the Hacker News find a freelancer and upped my rates to $100 an hour.

<comment><USER16> Do you have any experience doing this? I've done lots of work in Unity and Android/iOS but mostly making games (70-75%). I looked at upwork and all the posts for game-related material looked _terrible_. I prefer to _not_ make games but that's what I'm best at right now. Would it still be easy to get into? Or do you recommend getting good at front end, fullstack, or anything else? I do like to learn so that won't be a problem.

<comment><USER54> I can't imagine that upwork is any good for game programming. You're better of finding full-stack and front-end jobs.

Like I said though, I don't actually encourage anyone to work for $20-$30/hour unless they're living in a low cost of living country or have some other compelling reason.

You can find people willing to pay $50+/hour on upwork (or at least you could the last time I looked a year or two ago), but you'll have to spend a lot of time searching.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER56> I'm sort of doing this now. I'm a full-time software engineer, and I have a passion for tea as well. I've been reading a TON about small business, entrepreneurship, etc. My wife and I are in the processes of launching a side- hustle online tea company, and documenting the whole process on our YouTube channel. It may not be a full-time gig, but we want to grow it as far as we can. So, in short, we're sticking with the safe jobs we know and leveraging our free time to build something we love.

<comment><USER44> FWIW there are some people doing small- to medium-sized businesses in Very Serious Tea here in Europe and while it doesn't seem to be Republic of Tea 2.0 money-wise they do seem to really enjoy it.

Example:

[https://zhaozhoutea.com](https://zhaozhoutea.com)

</comment></comment><comment><USER57> Be very careful about such a career transition. Grass always seems greener on the other side. You don't realize what you have until you lose it. Sure there are job related problems in IT but they are nothing compared to other other industry jobs especially the ones that pay minimum wage. Most minimum wage jobs are physically demanding and will drain the hell out of you. Any job that requires dealing with general public is very taxing and offers virtually no flexibility in work hours. You will be more burnt out than in IT. I suggest you take up hobbies in free time (sports, musical instrument etc). Do things that you like and then you will not feel burnt out but you would enjoy the hobbies as well as work. You will also realize that work is not everything. If you view work as something that enables you to do other things in free time you wouldn't mind it so much. And IT is particularly good at that - <USER3> salaries, good working conditions, reasonable work hours. Do not underestimate what you have.

</comment><comment><USER58> Maybe teach English in Asia or drive an Uber? Or go to trade school to become an electrician or mechanic?

Those are the escape routes I daydream about when I'm unhappy at work, anyways :)

<comment><USER59> Teaching is a difficult job, but I really enjoyed it. If you are from an English speaking country, have a university degree and are under 40 then the JET programme (Japan Teaching Exchange) is a pretty soft landing if you get in. Reputable government job, visa sorted out, travel expenses sorted out, accommodation sorted out and higher than normal wages (which... is not saying much -- it's still pretty low). The problem is that it takes a good year from applying to going and in some countries the competition is fairly stiff. Still, I recommend it. I intended to go for 1 year, but stayed for 5 (maximum length of the contract). I never really intended to get out of the software industry but I would happily have continued teaching English if circumstances hadn't led me back to high tech. I still entertain notions of teaching again...

<comment><USER16> Oh man the JET program is amazing compared to the other teaching jobs in Japan. I was never part of the program but considering what they do for you and the market rate, the pay is still pretty good. Can I ask how you got back into tech afterwards? I taught for a few years in Japan and it was quite hard to land my first programming job after (I'm still in Japan).

<comment><USER59> I went to the UK :-). The real story is that I went to Japan only thinking of staying for 1 year. After a couple of months, I knew I was going to stay forever. At that point I quite happily made the decision to give up writing software professionally, do something else and write free software in my spare time. After 5 years, I was actually planning on starting a brewery (I've been a homebrewer since I was 18), but I got married and my wife wanted to learn English (she's Japanese). We ended up going to the UK since I can get a visa to work there. I needed to do something to pay the bills, so I tried to get a software job.

London is chock-a-block with programming jobs. There are also meetups pretty much every day of the week (often with free beer and pizza). I basically went to as many meetups as I could and I also invested in going to some conferences in areas I was interested in (another good way to meet people). I screwed up my first interview very badly and I'm sure that the people involved are convinced I can't program at all :-). But in the end I got lots of interviews and was able to land a job in about a month (though I started a month later).

Of course the biggest question people had was, "Can you still program?" I'd been out for 5 years. Luckily I had been working on a side project in Ruby for that time period. The code was pretty awful (I was experimenting with a few different ideas) and definitely not idiomatic Ruby, but it helped a lot (i.e. it got me a foot in the door). I also needed to create a narrative for my career where teaching English for 5 years made sense. Of course, people don't plan out their lives like that in reality, but it helps people understand that there is some continuity -- you aren't just bumbling around from job to job. In the end, I had to adjust my salary expectations (because London pay is quite low compared to similarly expensive cities in North America and also because my employer was legitimately taking a risk in hiring me). But I've always been more interested in doing interesting work than receiving a large paycheck, so I had no problem with that. If you do good work and are successful, your employer should bump you up the next year. If they don't, you can very reasonably leverage your "I am working in the industry now" status to find a higher paying job.

I'm currently back in Japan, working remotely on contract for that same company. Being married to a Japanese national made it very easy to return. When I was looking for work before I left Japan, I found that recruiters and what-not wouldn't touch me. I suspect that they thought (reasonably) that I didn't have access to a visa. As soon as I touched down in the UK, they were all over me.

I couldn't quite tell if you are working in high tech now or not, but if you are looking, that's my advice (for work outside of Japan) -- work on your portfolio, etc while you are in Japan. Find a busy centre with lots of jobs and an active meetup scene and go there to meet people. Going to the UK _still_ cost me an obscene amount of money, but I'd been very careful about saving while on JET, so it was fine. If you are short on cash, I'd say try to save up -- having enough money to scrape by for 6-8 months in the centre you pick will really help you (and you can live on beer and pizza in the mean time :-) ).

I can't give you any advice on working in Japan, since I haven't tried to get a job here. However, probably the same advice will work. Likely it means working in Tokyo or Osaka, though. Remote work seems to be picking up steam these days, but it's pretty hard from Japan. The timezone is basically the worst. I put in a lot of days where I work to midnight or later so that I can overlap with London. If you were trying to overlap with the west coast US, it would be baker's hours (starting at 3-4 am) _and_ you are a day ahead (so probably you are best working from Tuesday to Saturday). For me, that's by far the hardest part. My current employer is quite liberal about what hours I work, but I find that I'm most effective if I overlap as much as possible, so that's what I generally try to do (taking a week here and there to work Japanese hours to recover).

<comment><USER16> Thanks for the long write-up. I'm actually employed in Japan now but it was quite some work to get a position. I have a very long commute so I'd be much happier with either a remote position or one closer to my home but haven't had any luck (I live in the 'country-side' and work downtown for a fun 2 hour commute each way). I'm from the SF bay area so I'm thinking of looking at remote jobs from the states but they seem hard to land and cut-throat.

<comment><USER59> If you have time, give me a shout (my contact details are on my account page). I'd to chat about what you are doing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER60> Just go do it. I've worked all of those "jobby jobs" on the way to becoming a software engineer. Maybe just get a less aggressive front end developer job? The difference between whats expected of you at different places or different roles is amazing.

<comment><AUTHOR> The expectations do differ that is absolutely true. The question was more about how to take the experience that I obtained first, and work in reverse to form a body of experience that would work on a resume for a "jobby job" company. More about ideas and how than if I should.

</comment></comment><comment><USER61> Aviation.

I'm leaving my cushy software developer gig at a well known defense contractor to become an Army Aviator. It's not so much that I'm tired or bored, but that I'm looking for a new challenge.

</comment><comment><USER62> The biggest obstacle you'll face is that depending on how you present yourself a savvy manager will assume that you'll get a "better" job as soon as you can and leave them high and dry.

Besides that the best advice i think is that getting a "blue collar" job is no different then getting most others. It's about who you know and how much shit you're willing to eat. I've done ever from hanging drywall to writing R code. If you're personable and willing to roll up your sleeeves you can usually get something.

<comment><USER63> I suggest addressing the leaving for a better job issue head on. One possible tactic is something like "Yes, I probably won't be around forever. But as long as I'm working for you, I'll show up when I'm scheduled to work, on time, sober, and ready to go. I have a car in good conditions / live a ten minute bike ride away / am on the X bus line. When I leave, I'll give you two weeks notice so you have time to pull me off the schedule."

<comment><AUTHOR> I like this idea. It would be accurate to say I'd leave once something more relevant comes along (probably) and I think this is an upfront way to handle that concern.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER64> Have you considered going back to school to get a degree in something else that could land you a better job?

<comment><USER65> +1 to this. I got bored with IT/software, went back to school, got an aerospace engineering degree, had a very satisfying 4+ years in it, then a software job came my way that was too good to turn down. Quite a commitment of time and money but for me it was all very much worth it.

<comment><USER66> Did you work part-time while going back?

<comment><USER65> Yes, I did, which helped with expenses. Funny thing is that once I got into the industry, I was the only engineer in my office who was an experienced programmer, so I ended up writing a decent amount of code for the job. It was a very satisfying way to rigorously learn methods of structural analysis, so I didn't feel like I was back to square one. And in the interviews for my subsequent jump back to the software business, when I got some questions about whether I felt rusty (they assumed I hadn't been writing software during school and aerospace), I could truthfully say that I'd programmed frequently enough that I wasn't out of practice.

This brings up a larger point I should have called out earlier: _An experienced dev in a non-software field has a superpower_. I'm no genius but because of my background, I was able to write software that made our engineering team more competitive, and I was able to negotiate good raises as a result. Everybody won.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER67> I'm in Vancouver as well. The transition to minimum wage from developer wage has been pretty difficult for me as I dove into my startup. It's far too expensive here to live on $11/hr without dealing a big shock to your lifestyle. Despite that, it's been incredibly fulfilling, in part because I've diversified my day to day activities into adjacent fields like marketing and sales (which many seem to suggest exploring, I agree).

Want to meet me downtown this afternoon for coffee/patio beer? If you want to explore adjacent fields and not unrelated fields, I've got tons of pending projects in marketing, sales, community building, even physical installation of smart home equipment. Maybe you could find a way to shape a project into something that helps you explore a new skill set. If not, it's always nice to chat to someone else questioning their life decisions. Let me know! (email in bio). I'll be available after 3PM today.

</comment><comment><USER68> How did you become a frontend developer? Did you get a CS degree, did an internship, graduated then landed your 1st job?

Well, if that's the case then this is the answer to your question. How do you switch fields? Forget about CS, it doesn't make you any better regarding other fields. You have to start from scratch there is no shortcut unless you have an amazing network.

So to answer your question, pick up a new field then re-apply the exact same process. Go to school or train for another field. Get an internship then land your 1st job. The main difference is that you should pick something you do outside of work. Don't think about your career, income, etc. pick something you'd be wiling to do for free. If you happen to make money out of it, you'll never burn out.

</comment><comment><USER69> Would you think about working in libraries?

The developer background would be a plus if you wanted to use it in the future* but in the meantime you could apply for front desk type roles. You would develop people skills and it can be a decent paying lifelong career - which retail / food service often isn't.

I don't know what the employment opportunities are like in Canada but you could start by looking here: [https://ca.indeed.com/Library-Assistant-jobs-in- Vancouver,-B...](https://ca.indeed.com/Library-Assistant-jobs-in- Vancouver,-BC)

* see [https://jobs.code4lib.org/](https://jobs.code4lib.org/)

</comment><comment><USER70> Why not get a less demanding front end position?

Even working half time you will make more than at McDonalds.

</comment><comment><USER71> My webdev business has financed a side business in life coaching. Right now it's by referral only and I'm taking it slow, but it's been a nice source of extra income and variety, one where I know I'm making a very direct contribution to others' lives. I have had to pay for multiple certifications and the associated education, and this actually convinced me to pursue web development certification, ongoing education, and memberships in professional societies.

</comment><comment><USER72> Have you considered taking some time off, like a sabbatical and going to travel and working some odd jobs?

I did that 3 times total and had plenty of odd jobs.

      - fruit picking
      - <USER4>
      - <USER5>
      - handy man
      - dive master

Out of those only dive mastering was something that considered taking further and becoming an instructor. I was half serious about it but in the end just didn't go for it.

If I was you I'd take some time off and think about the next direction. Good luck.

</comment><comment><USER73> I still have my web development / programming business too in order support Clients who depend on me, but I opened an Escape Room business about 8 months ago.

Loving life again.

</comment><comment><USER74> Seems like you are time rich - travel?

If money is an issue - set a goal (say $2000) and work until you reach it.

Building simple website / setting up WordPress / educating people on value of online presence - not very scalable but good enough to get you going...

(I believe you have a techie label among your friends and family)

</comment><comment><USER75> Burnt out + HR + oversaturated market + 5 in 1 requirements:

I didnt even bother to move into IT. In so many years I tried just as many different jobs. What doesnt kill you makes you stronger.

You will be fine. Start a trade: plumbing, welding, wood work. Or become a photo model if you are lazy.

</comment><comment><USER43> In this thread: lots of stories, but no one (so far) permanently moving out of coding .

<comment><USER76> There's one right above you: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14390879](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14390879)

</comment></comment><comment><USER77> I'm currently working as a programmer and building a side business in the apparel industry. I didn't suspect how much my technological background would be an advantage, when creating an apparel brand in 2017.

<comment><USER78> Can you share some more details about your apparel business? I've thought about starting a small side business in the fashion industry, but I've been stymied by the lack of informational resources. I don't live in NYC or LA, so I don't have the option of dropping in on factory or anything like that.

<comment><USER79> See here:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14352131](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14352131)

<comment><USER77> Exactly, thank you for that one :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER80> Have you considered other areas in tech like Project Management, where technical skills are an added-benefit?

</comment><comment><USER81> With difficulty, but got there in the end.

My education and first seven or so years of working life were all in IT, and in particular in software development related fields.

However as the internet was starting to really take off (1997 or around that time) I got interested in internet marketing. I think the idea of making a good living from home really appealed, and everyone seemed to be making money online, so why not me!

So while keeping my job, I studied online marketing in the evenings. In particular, I found the mental transition from IT to marketing quite difficult.

It's a huge subject, and a completely different way of thinking about things. I think you can often see that in comments here, when people focus more on the technical aspects of a marketing challenge/problem, rather than the marketing and sales aspect that actually generates the business growth.

(For example - if you're getting leads from Facebook at a cost that makes sense to you, and you're converting those leads into valuable clients, obsessing over click fraud is a waste of time and energy. IMO. Focusing on optimising your marketing, rather than the technical challenge of trying to track down click bots, is a far more productive use of your time, and your business will thank you for it.)

There's a lot more information available on marketing now of course, and there's a lot of overlap between the marketing and technical aspects (AdTech for example). But it's still two very different ways of thinking about things, and if you're too technology or data driven in marketing you can often miss the wood for the trees, and you may be ignoring people's "feelings" as abstract as that sounds, and feelings are what actually drive sales. So taking a step back from the data, and really understanding your market and how they make buying decisions, can be hugely beneficial.

So the transition took a long time, and after a few years (a lot of dabbling, only really getting serious the last year or two) I made the move into online marketing full time (running my own sites...etc.) and slowly over time my income grew. Then moved into consulting with clients, and then into starting and running an agency.

Now I have found having a technical background has been very helpful in many aspects of online marketing, but now my attention is fully focused on marketing and my business, and if a technical challenge would require a significant investment of my time, it generally makes the most sense to my business to outsource that. So being specialised and focused on business results, rather than trying to be good at everything.

So to answer your question - yes, I made the transition. It took a long time, and a new way of thinking. But it certainly paid off.

</comment><comment><USER82> I think the ESL/teaching English abroad thing is always an option.

Being relatively young is def a good thing, imo. Olds are not so attractive to employers, career-switching or not.

i had the chance to do project management after a long time being a dev/whatever, and it was actually really cool. also did some product mgmt and that was cool too. there are often companies looking for 'junior' folks with that stuff -- the main skills needed are tech + 'interested' \+ young (can also be read as: not jaded yet)/cheap.

my advice to all my friends and people i care about is...get out now. that is, get out of tech, get out of wage slavery, get out of anything that allows you to be owned or is about to be automated (everything) -- get into rent-seeking and other horrible stuff b/c that's the way to survive and thrive, unfortunately.

or, move to a less insane country, like somewhere in Scandinavia maybe.

good luck!

<comment><USER83> Regarding the ESL, I guess it depends on where. FWIW I hear[0] that in Czechia there are so many foreigners whose only significant skill relative to locals is that they are native speakers, that the native English on its own is not enough anymore. The language schools now demand (and have for some time) an in-depth grammar knowledge and possibly relevant education as well. I would expect it to be the same in other Central/Western European countries.

[0] An online account of an ESL teacher, confirmed by two others in person.

(EDIT: grammar.)

<comment><USER11> Would an MFA in Writing qualify? Asking for a friend... :D

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER84> This comment has been removed thanks to aerovistae's toxic comment.

<comment><USER85> The phrasing here leaves something to be desired, if not the intention.</comment></comment>


The Wizard of Oz as a Monetary Allegory - <AUTHOR> http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/7933175.stm

<comment><AUTHOR> Also a very excellent documenary titled "The Secret of Oz" can be found here:

[http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/the-secret-of- oz/?utm_source=...](http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/the-secret-of- oz/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+TopDocumentaryFilms+\(Top+Documentary+Films+-+Watch+Free+Documentaries+Online\))</comment>


Kim Stanley Robinson – Making the Fed's Money Printer Go Brrrr for the Planet - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2020-04-22/kim-stanley-robinson-let-the-fed-print-money-for-the-planet <comment><USER2> If a failed businessman can decide he's a stable genius, surely a science fiction writer can decide he's an economist.</comment>


Man pulled aside by police for shouting "Shame on BA" - <AUTHOR> https://www.economist.com/blogs/gulliver/2017/05/going-nowhere <comment><AUTHOR> Somebody asked why I submitted this. I thought it was news that amidst the turmoil of the meltdown, people working for British Airways still managed to call the police on one of their customers.</comment>


Amazon launches Part Finder, using technology acquired from Partpic in 2016 - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2018/07/19/amazons-new-ar-part-finder-helps-you-shop-for-those-odd-nuts-and-bolts/ <comment><USER2> I remember when Amazon bought CDNow ages ago. CDNow let me easily find specific CDs by artist and title AND they even had a great recommendation algorithm. I discovered some great new music that way.

In 2002 Amazon shut down CDNow with the idea that you'd just use Amazon.com. Unfortunately, search has been one of Amazon's weakest features. Sixteen years later and I still miss CDNow. Amazon rarely shows exactly what I've searched for and the filtering is almost entirely useless. I want to sort by price or filter by vendor without having to guess which one of the twenty different categories an item is in (often times it's in multiple categories). I want the price of the item to mach what you've shown in the search results (or an explanation why there's a significant difference). If you can't ship something to California or the USA I want know BEFORE I try to check out. It should go without saying I don't want ads in the search results either.

To me this "fancy" search by picture is not helpful (instead it's entirely useless). If I want a fastener, I want to be able search by its attributes (something Amazon is terrible about in general). Let's say I want a pretty common metric bolt (M8) in a standard thread pitch (1.25mm). I'll go search or "M8x1.25 bolt". I get a bunch of useless filters, including:

Fastener Material: Stainless Steel, Stainless Steel 304, Steel. Right. What sort of stainless steel is the first option?

System Of (sic) Measurement: Metric. Nice that this is unchecked and the only option.

Fastener Thread Size - Mating (eh?): No Thread Size Selected, M8-1.25. This one is a combo box with a "Go" button for some reason. I literally just entered the thread size and pitch I wanted in the search query. They can parse a picture but they can't figure out I've entered this information in already? Ugh.

Fastener Grade & Class: Class 10.9. Aside from the lack of selection, this is where the stainless classification SHOULD go.

Categories... well, you've got bolts, hex bolts, eyebolts... Powersports Wheel Spacers? AmazonFresh? WTF?

Meanwhile rather important filters are missing like: finish and length.

Edit: Contrast this with Grainger (whose site is good, but not great) or McMaster-Carr (the gold standard).

<comment><USER3> What you're describing is called "faceted search". For that to work properly, two things are needed: The product data needs to be structured properly, so that you can actually find the attributes on each product variant. This has to be consistent for every vendor, of which Amazon has many, of course. So they would have to define a common data format for every vendor selling M8 bolts, or convert their formats into a common standard, making sure all the attributes are there and can be located in the imports.

And second, someone needs to sit down and define which product attributes should be represented as facets for the search and displayed accordingly in the UI, and what input elements should be used to select the range of parameters (checkboxes, sliders, text box etc). This is not easily solved by algorithms which have no knowledge of the semantics of the attributes..

I suppose that a general-purpose, consumer-oriented site like Amazon doesn't put enough priority on something like M8 steel bolts. The facets for, say, computer monitors are much better, for example.

<comment><USER2> > I suppose that a general-purpose, consumer-oriented site like Amazon doesn't > put enough priority on something like M8 steel bolts. The facets for, say, > computer monitors are much better, for example.

It goes beyond that. I was searching for a water pump this evening and hit Amazon out of instinct. Despite only returning 18 results across god-knows- how-many categories, there was no option to filter by manufacturer. Amazon simply doesn't get search.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> While I don't want to be too presumptuous and say this is going to fail, it is definitely not going to defeat Fastenal or McMaster-Carr. Really, it comes down whether it's a generic part, or specifically engineered for a larger assembly. If it's the former, it's going to be significantly easier to use a website like McMaster-Carr where every item is completely organized into a hierarchy. You can quickly drill down and find the exact part you need. Amazon's Industrial & Scientific is a joke in comparison. A iPhone picture is going to have a lot of error in regards to material, coating, grade, threadpitch, etc.

And if it's a bespoke part, you are much better getting the part number from an exploded diagram. Again, this is super fast and accurate (assuming you actually have the diagrams, and that parts are still available). Engineers put a huge amount of work into designing fasteners, and modern vehicles will have thousands of different kinds. For example, Toyota transfer case has two different bolts holding the housing together, one is 27 mm long, the other is 29 mm. A single picture is definitely not going to tell the length.

Maybe someday every single part will have an rfid tag on it. Don't bother putting a barcode on each part, years of grease, corrosion, and wear (the very things that cause you do need a new part) will obliterate it.

<comment><USER5> There are two questions: one whether taking a picture and getting a part to buy would be a desirable workflow for customers - and jeesh, it should be obvious that it would be. The other question is whether the process would work. That's a matter of tech, resolution of cameras and the design of the interface. It's easy to imagine the system displaying multiple options for things like the two nearly identical bolts. As this evolves, the system could even offer the means to distinguish the various options ("count the threads", "take a close-up" etc). And point is something like this could keep improving, both in accuracy and the range of items involved where a hierarchical organization is inherently static.

<comment><USER6> > one whether taking a picture and getting a part to buy would be a desirable > workflow for customers - and jeesh, it should be obvious that it would be.

It's useful for people buying one or two parts. Why chase that market when most of these parts are sold by the thousand?

<comment><USER5> Indeed, that's what a typical part supplier thinks.

But typical individual naturally thinks the opposite. There are probably a billion or so owners of at least one mechanism that require replacement parts at some point. Neither the manufacturer nor the suppliers wish to help them but they have to be a pretty big market altogether so it seems likely someone could profit from this _if_ it was done in an automated fashion.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Amazon launches part print in 2019. Take a picture or use the amazon ODB connect app and have your new parts printed locally and delivered within hours. Optionally have it professionally installed and recycled to make future parts cheaper. /daydream

So many need this. The cost of parts is outrageous. I remember reading some settlements where international part manufacturers were caught price fixing, but have not seen any relief in costs.

If it's emissions related they know you'll pay or many places won't let you register your car.

The cost of repairs has made it so I will never purchase an Infinity vehicle again. The cost of parts has me asking how many O2 sensors a car has in it before I consider it for buying. (that this is an expensive issue is imho dumb)

Local repair shop owner on radio show says they need to markup parts by 30% in order to pay for rent and insurance on the shops, and they need to markup the labor 30% to stay in business. So the only way for those repair shops to stay in business is to charge people more than their vehicle is worth to fix them, and depends on cities forcing emissions tests to make it impossible to drive without replacing expensive parts.

This isn't working well, though I suppose it is helping to sell new cars at the expense of the environment and those who are fine with upcycling older vehicles.

There has got to be a way to bring down the cost of replacement parts.

Are there any initiatives to have standard fit parts they fit multiple vehicles like generic drugs? I'd weigh that in the decision to buy a new car and it would affect the used car market well too.

Catalytic converter for one of my vehicles is $1800 they say, and it should be assumed that although check engine light is warning about one being bad, the second in the car is bound to need replacing very soon as well. Those two parts cost more then the vehicle is worth kelly blue book and such.

Also, is anyone doing a user part runner / grabber service? I contacted several scrap places requesting they pull and send parts from cars they had listed, none replied. Is it only an option to go there and get the part off the other vehicle in person? This process could be better, I'd pay a runner to grab some parts from a few cars.

Oh I hope Amazon continues to disrupt in this space.

<comment><USER8> For new parts, get used to RockAuto.com. Most things I buy there arrive by ground the next day (to MA from a local warehouse) or 2 days. 5% discount codes available just for the 3 minutes of googling. They have "cheap crap" parts as well as quality parts, so be thoughtful about your choice. The good parts are good (OEM is often available) and very competitively priced, with excellent search, and good logistics.

For used parts, there are a couple of online junkyards, but I've found the best plan is to find your local pick-a-parts and figure out which ones will pull parts for you. Most will in my experience, though if you go pick it yourself, you're likely to get it for far cheaper. The one in the town I grew up in had a Friday promotion where anything you could carry 50 feet was $25 (in the late 80s, probably $50 now). You could pull a transmission and get it for $50. You could pull a car hood and pile a bunch of small parts onto it and take that all for one price. The pick-a-part in the NH town I moved to after college had a basic computer system and a network of other yards they worked with. Ebay is another good outlet for some of these yards (with the associated markup). I've replaced a few parts on my wife's CR-V with Ebay junkyard parts with good results.

Even though it's annoying to pay a $1500 repair bill on an old car, if that buys you another year of service for the car, it's still a great financial trade. I do almost all my own work (no bodywork, paint, or tires and limited exhaust work) and find the price of parts quite reasonable.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> It didn't work for me. It's one of those things that would be awesome if it worked with a human or better level accuracy, but they never do. Now I've wasted a few minutes looking for a penny and good lighting to take a picture - I could have just used the calipers to measure the bolt in the first place.

</comment><comment><USER10> From what I understand they are now competing with Granger in the Industrial market.

[https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2018-09-11/amazon- am...](https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2018-09-11/amazon-amzn-makes- good-on-business-to-business-threat)

And now they are getting into Fastenals market it seems, which is a billion dollar industry.

[https://www.fastenal.com/](https://www.fastenal.com/)

I was just recently trying to figure out where to get that little square clip that slides onto the gas cylinder on my Aeron chair to keep the rod from coming out.

<comment><USER2> Grainger has many things in their favor, here's hoping they can fend off Amazon.

* Better search and organization of inventory

* Mail order discount arm (Zoro)

* Brick and mortar presence as well as the logistics to handle this.

* Clear labeling of certifications and country of origin compared to Amazon's persistent problems with counterfeits and that whole mess with third party sellers.

About the only place I'd expect Amazon to be able to compete is on logistics.

<comment><USER11> _About the only place I 'd expect Amazon to be able to compete is on logistics._

Well, there's price too. Every time I look at Grainger I'm reminded how desperately their items must be needed right NOW in order for a customer to justify the price.

McMaster is worth it because the prices aren't quite as high and the site is so delightful to use.

<comment><USER2> > Well, there's price too. Every time I look at Grainger I'm reminded how > desperately their items must be needed right NOW in order for a customer to > justify the price.

Their discount subsidiary, Zoro, offers prices that are quite competitive. Likewise Grainger offers hefty discounts to their volume (a.k.a. business) customers. Amazon is really not all that cheap.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I haven't used it, but hopefully it works. I work a ton on my car and many times, I used to run to a specialty sears hardware store which had four long isles full of screws, nuts and bolts. I have spent literally hours browing for screws and nut/bolts. Unfortunately the store closed last year and I have nowhere else to go.

</comment><comment><USER13> Is there really much profit from selling a $.10 screw that the average person might need once or twice a year when they buy some unassembled product that is missing parts? I assume people who would buy bulk don't need an app to tell them what to buy. Or do they charge an insane markup for these one-offs?

Personally, I love an excuse to go to an old fashioned Ace Hardware store and ask a real person for help.

<comment><USER14> Yeah. You're definitely not the audience for this vertical. Just because this doesn't seem profitable in your niche/individual usage doesn't mean that there are individuals and orgs buying these things in bulk.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Well done TechCrunch, another US website that has a bullshit policy where you can't opt out of _all_ their third party tracking and data sharing with "Foundation Partners", just piss off.

Guess there's no more TechCrunch for me. Mind you, no great loss.

</comment><comment><USER16> Partpic was founded by two non tech founders and Amanzon aqui hired them. Not sure what technology they are brining to the table there.....and of course the buyout was for a non disclosed amount... Typical Atlanta.

<comment><USER17> Dismissing others' success, minimizing the importance of non-technical founders (vision/recruiting/deal-closing), downplaying well-executed technology (computer vision work by [https://twitter.com/nashlie_s](https://twitter.com/nashlie_s)), and a dismissive arrogant tone... Typical HN commenter.

<comment><USER18> Well said! Total respect for her accomplishment.</comment></comment></comment>


Car that runs on air, from the makers of the world's cheapest car - <AUTHOR> http://trak.in/tags/business/2008/07/01/tata-motors-air-car-minicat/ <comment><USER2> I'm sorry but I don't believe them that it can run for 300km in between refuels. Compressed air is just not a very dense fuel. Enough fuel to power a car for that long would be a tank about 1/3 the size of the car.

(My calculation: gasoline stores about 3000 times as much energy as compressed air per volume. But a gasoline engine is also only 10% efficient, an air engine would be much more efficient. Assuming 100% efficient, then gasoline stores 300 times as much. I can go about 300km using 11 or so gallons of gas. Lets assume a lighter car, so 5 gallons per 300km * 300 = 1500 gallons of air, which is about 5.5 cubic meters. So you'd need a box 1.75 meters on each side. Which is about 1/3 of a car.)

Obviously if they can store the air at a higher density then the box can be smaller, but if they did that it would also have to be stronger and thus heavier. (Edit: they are running at about 1/3 more pressure than my numbers assumed.)

And now comes the bigger problem: you waste a tremendous amount of energy by heating the air when you compress it.

And then you let the air cool, and lose again, because as it expands it gets _really_ cold, and won't expand as much. On the plus side running the A/C will be free. But forget about heat in the winter.

Using higher compression makes this much worse.

All in all, I simply don't think this will work for that distance. Maybe as a 30km car it would work fine (and there's a large market for that), but not 300km.

And the heating/cooling losses are really going to hurt efficiency.

And as an aside using vegetable oil is a bad idea. Unless you can seal it away from air (doubtful) it will oxidize and won't be oil anymore.

Now please tell me if I made any mistakes in my calculations.

<comment><USER3> In the winter you compress the air at home and use the heat to keep your house nice and toasty.

Your calculations are off: energy density of gasoline ~35 MJ/L, compressed air at 300 bar ~ .15, so per volume is ~230 times, so w 10x efficiency, it's down to 23X volume required: tank to be used is 340 L : divide by 23 ~= 15 L ~= 4 gal. Much closer to their claim, no?

The compression stations will have heat exchangers, so be able to use at least some of the wasted energy...

(Note: energy density figures from Wikipedia)

<comment><USER2> Man, that's embarrassing. I also got my numbers from wikipedia, but typed .01 instead of .1 in my calculator :(

So yes, now I have to retract what I wrote about the size of the tank. I have new respect for the power of air.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> More info here: <http://www.theaircar.com/acf/air-cars/energy-storage.html>

With all the hype around the Prius, Tesla, etc, I wonder how we never heard of this till now.

<comment><USER5> It's exciting that they're announcing this. I had actually started specifically working on supporting technologies for this (off-grid sustainable refueling strategies) about a month ago.

If anyone is interested, email me for details.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> It doesn't "run on air".

It runs on some traditional power source and stores its energy in the form of compressed air.

<comment><USER7> Well, internal combustion engine cars do not run on fossil fuel, but on solar energy, and they just happen to store it as fossil fuels.

<comment><USER8> The difference being that solar energy has already been stored there for you.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Burning seawater, water "catalysts", cold fusion, and now nothing but compressed air.

 _Please_ take this story with healthy skepticism. Until we see it in mass production, it's more likely than not that this story is not what it seems.

<comment><USER5> The difference between burning seawater, water catalysts, cold fusion, and this, is that this is based on science and technologies that have basically been known for more than a hundred years, and many of the technologies used have already been quite solidly demonstrated. They simply hadn't been put together.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> isn't compressed air pretty dangerous? i.e. if you end up in an accident

<comment><USER11> Few things in the common life of people are as dangerous as 25 gallons of unleaded.

I'd much rather face any compressed air explosion than be soaked in burning gas.

<comment><USER12> I don't quite buy this argument. Gas is far less volatile than people think. In the event of an accident, I would much rather face a tank of gasoline, which most likely wouldn't explode at all, than a tank of compressed air.

In the middle of the fire, however, I'm not so sure.

<comment><USER13> Gas vapors are dangerous. Without the air, you can drop a lit match in a gas tank, without a 'big boom'.

However, in an accident, you'd want to pick the compressed air tank. The tanks are very strong. Gas tanks in cars are built with very flimsy steel.

Industries like welding has been using high-pressure tanks for decades, and bottles rarely fail.

<comment><USER14> Yes industries like welding have been using high-pressure tanks for decades, but that's not high pressure tanks that are traveling at 70 miles an hour in a tight corridor surrounded by hundreds of other cars that likewise are traveling at 70 mph. Can you say chain reaction?

Compressed air is far more dangerous than gasoline. Gasoline is not a guaranteed explosion more likely its a fire.

<comment><USER2> I would like to see that in action, because it seems to me that allowing gas to expand that fast is going to drop the temperature of the gas so low it'll probably freeze CO2 out of the air.

And that process will probably rob a lot of the explosive force.

Can you compress gas so much that if it exploded it would liquefy? With a quick google I couldn't find an equation relating pressure drop to temperature in real air (not ideal gas).

<comment><USER11> I think its worth mentioning that explosion is not the danger we should be thinking about when it comes to gasoline.

Gas is a low viscosity, oily (duh) substance held in flimsy metal or plastic containers that ignites easily and is hard to put out. We are comparing the danger of being injured by the compressed air explosion with the danger of being burned severely by sprayed or leaked fuel.

Sign me up for the shrapnel because burns suck huge.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Compressed air engines are fairly common for both cars and other purposes.

I wouldn't call it bunk science - it's certainly nowhere near as bad as the 'runs on seawater' cars.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compressed_air_vehicle>

</comment><comment><USER16> oh wow.

A pretty cool idea. I wonder how the compressed air is generated. I know that there are some < $100 compressed air generators that run off many other types of power(electricity, petrol etc). I wonder how energy efficient it is in terms of power. I mean, the energy use has just moved from the car to the compressed air generation plants.

It seems they have optimized the car for use in urban areas by making it as lightweight as possible. I wonder if it would pass safety tests in other countries -- with the car being held together with glue, and relying on wireless technology (zigbee maybe)?

Great ideas... it seems to have used a whole bunch of new technologies.

</comment><comment><USER11> Neat. This also opens the door for more energy dense and pressure stable compressed gas fuels like nitrogen and CO2.

<comment><USER2> I'm sorry, but that sentence doesn't make any sense.

What is pressure stable?

And changing the type of gas has almost zero affect on how much energy you can store in it by compressing it.

<comment><USER11> Sorry, its a stupid paintball reference. It probably is meaningless. What its _supposed_ to mean is that as a chemical pressurized (to the point of liquification) boils and creates the pressure in the tank, this pressure remains relatively stable as long as there is some liquid left to boil.

So most paintball markers use CO2 because you need a simple regulator to get an even pressure for most of the tank. Some markers use plain air pressure, they require more complicated regulators because the pressure changes dramatically during the entire use of the tank.

So the dumb jocks say that the CO2 tanks are "pressure stable", I suppose because pressure in the tank is constant around 850psi so long as there is any liquid CO2 in the tank.[1]

I made this comment because this to me seems like a desirable property for a fuel gas in a compressed gas vehicle to possess. I will attempt to be more succinct in the future.

[1] And since we are nitpicking, I am in fact aware that that this figure of 850 is variable based on the _temperature_ of the tank.

<comment><USER2> Ah! That makes a lot more sense.

The only trouble with using a gas like co2 that liquefies easily is that once you reach that point (850psi) you pretty much can't go any farther. And they are running this thing at a much higher pressure than that - about 4500.

I'm sure there are gases that would liquefy at this pressure, but none that you would want to release into the atmosphere.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> (OT: domain extraction doesn't seem to be working with "trak.in")</comment>


Hacked Facebook account: how to repair damage? - <AUTHOR> https://docs.google.com/document/pub?id=1fmPaDvwlNWO5GKWYUC5NW9XfWNgVPsGPya9BsttXRCc

<comment><USER2> Send a message to all your friends from your list.</comment>


On the abandonment and survival of open source projects - <AUTHOR> https://arxiv.org/abs/1906.08058 <comment><USER2> Oh my, it's "bus factor", not "truck factor".</comment>


Ask HN: Native way to tell whether a link has been submitted and discussed before? - <AUTHOR> Sometimes I submit a link and HN jumps me to the page where someone else has submitted it previously. It doesn't always happen. Sometimes I submit a link and someone has to come along and manually comment, "This has already been discussed here: [link]". Short of Googling every time, how do I consistently not re-submit links that were discussed fairly recently? <comment><USER2> HN only recognizes links as duplicates if the URL is exactly the same as a previous submission, so stuff like "#..." at the end of the URL will prevent it from identifying duplicates.

I think the most reliable way of finding out if your article (or a similar article) was submitted recently is to go to the HN search site (hn.algolia.com) and search by date for keywords from the title. It's a bit of a pain to do, but avoiding lots of duplicate stories makes HN nicer for everyone.

<comment><USER3> This. Keywords are the most reliable way, or important parts of the URL (e.g. the author in medium/github/github-pages urls) if the title isn't clear.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Googling?

There's a native search box at the bottom of most HN pages. Pick best keyword, click Search, click sort type "click Popularity to change to Date sort", and you're there.

URL matching is hopeless now, as clickbait sites are all appending bogus fragment identifiers (or using other tricks) now to defeat dupe checking.</comment>