Ask HN: How do you avoid the 9 to 5 life?
I am currently a first year student at university and wondering what I can do in the next few years to get a career that is not in corporate America. I know that the obvious answer is to start a startup, but wondering if you all have other unorthodox jobs.
My dream has always been to work as a creative. Although I am currently in the business school (parent wanted me to), I have a huge passion for user research, graphic design, and more recently web development.
Thinking about switching out of business school as I have no interest in becoming a consultant or investment banker. In all honestly I do not think I am good enough at math to switch to the engineering school and do computer science. I am taking computer science classes which I really enjoy, but I don't really want to take calculus 3 or differential equations.
Curious to hear the opinions of this community.
93 comments
[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 167 ms ] threadBut not a CS technical role, no. I was an officer in the Medical Corps.
It was awesome - most of my friends with normal jobs got bad graduate blues but I was active and doing things with real impact. It was exactly what I needed.
One way to start: if you're taking cs classes, take programming exercises further, twist the assignment, take it to something you want to use. Make it like a game, pay special attention to graphics.
I haven't worked 'regular 9-5 hours' for any meaningful length of time (i.e. beyond a few days here or there), basically ever, and I entered the field 15 years ago.
I've worked for state & federal government departments, contract agencies, and I now work directly with clients through my company.
Unless you have a specific reason for business, e.g., "I want to be a CPA" or "I want to work on Wall Street", get out. The main value of a business degree is the network you build. If you're not going to do anything that anyone else in that network is doing, then it's much less valuable to you. I also found that most business school students have a particular temperament. If you notice that you don't share that temperament, it's a good sign to switch. Don't let your parents determine your major--especially if they didn't follow that path successfully themselves.
You definitely won't learn anything in business school that helps you work outside of corporate America--it exists primarily to train middle managers.
The technical business skills don't come up much (outside of properly using terms like "gross profit" and managing my personal finances), but I'd say the main thing I learned in the business major was soft skills. Almost all the work we did was in groups. We had to give lots of presentations. We had to study business communication. I've found that these skills are very useful for distinguishing oneself from one's peers, and they apply to almost any profession.
Many of these students do not have an authentic interest in business. To me, business is an intellectual pursuit. I know that this sounds silly and ironic, but I enjoy following the financial markets, learning about monetary policy, testing a business idea by designing a prototype, etc.
What I was getting at in this post is that I have no desire to be a middle manager.
I have friends that are university professors and they actually like it when students give a shit about some things and will help out. Those are your mentors. Then there are the other folks in your degree, some who might be like-minded. Find them and make friends. Those are your peers, and sometimes your (friendly) competition. That network will be invaluable outside of university, not only for any sort of deep friendships you establish but in terms of career networking.
I highly encourage you to study those interests independently, whether you stick with business or not. You'll never have more time to spend in the library geeking out about whatever you like. It's what I miss most about university.
VR/AR are super interesting to me, but my school has very few courses on human computer interaction, which is a shame because I find that stuff super interesting.
I do some personal stuff during the day at the office. I end up also doing some office stuff during the evening at home. I am responsive to emails... close to 18 hours a day, but am also not inherently always "on call"... If I get to an email in my personal time, I get to it. If not, I don't, and obviously it depends on how urgent the email is.
The key thing, IMHO, is that you need to find an employer that values you, and knows you put in the amount of work that earns your paycheck. If you're earning your keep, generally an employer should be flexible with how you do it.
I think that was exactly what the OP wanted to avoid.
People hoping to avoid a 9-5 block of time being locked for work, will probably end up similarly: Still needing to do about eight hours of work a day to make a living, just ideally spread out better or in a more relaxing format.
I have a number of hobbies! I'm writing a home automation system, it runs in my car now as well. I play a fair number of games, am a pretty regular movie theater goer, etc. Don't mistake being reachable for being in a constant state of panic, I actually used to have a job where I'd have to duck out of a movie theater if my phone went off when I was on call, and now it's really not a big deal, I can get to it when I have a few moments.
This exactly. Sure I could go do the undergraduate business thing and live what many would consider a more than comfortable life making 80k a year, but most companies that I would do that for would own me and I would only ever be a pencil pusher. The problem with this, for me, is that I would not really have a life of my own.
I might not even take your call and just assume that if it was something truly important, you'd leave a voicemail.
Don't know if that truly counts as reachable.
Sorry I know this doesn't answer your 9 - 5 part, but don't major in business if you have no desire to do anything related to it.
Calc 1, Calc 2, (Calc 3 or DiffEq), LinAlg, Discrete.
One also needs to take 2 physics courses (Mechanics and E&M) as well as a Chemistry class.
All of us (mostly) have 8 hours work day in contract. Why should anyone of us work more? There is no such reason. So the problem is in you.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/22/t-magazine/art/artist-day...
I think as a first year, it's a little too premature to make a large decision like this. Just go and have a few internships first, then see what's out there.
If you go to work for a startup, it won't be 9 to 5. It's most likely gonna be 9 to 9.
I think most people put in their time in the office grind before building a network and skillset, then disengage over time.
If you're passionate about being a developer, there's lots of ways to avoid being a cubicle drone. Whether that is just having a 9-5 job that is more casual (like at a start-up, though expect longer hours at many of them), or by freelancing/consulting.
I'd advise swapping to computer science whole hog though if you can. If you had 5-10 years experience it would matter less, but as someone that's super green having that piece of paper _will_ help you get that first dev job. "I'm not good enough at Math" is not going to make any employer want to hire you!
It’s the idea that from 9 to 5 you are like a slave and you are not living your own life, you are giving up your time to render a service for someone paying you to do it.
We can sit here and move the hands on the clock and try to make your day look more interesting in all sorts of ways, but in the end you will work those hours, all the same.
So what do you do if you don’t want that life? Find a way to get your income not from services you perform but through other means which are inherently timeless.
In the best case, what this looks like is you living your own life on your own terms while making decisions that feed income into your revenue streams whenever necessary. Before I continue, is this what you want?
One personality trait that has helped me in life I am extremely curious self-starter. When I want to learn something I completely immerse myself in it. I have done this a few times in my life. I did it with DJing, graphic design/ typography, finance, and more recently colleges. I think that the best way to describe this without talking to you in person is that I am able to talk about the things I am interested in such granular detail that it would raise suspicion of autism.
The reason I ask how to avoid the 9 to 5 is that many people, especially on this forum (I assume), are pulling it off. I am wondering how I can take advantage of my intense curiosity to do pull it off myself. I have 4 years to figure it out.