Ask HN: What were/are you doing at age 25? What would you change?

State at 25: Pursuing a PhD, in large parts because I won a non-negligible prize for my Masters thesis and the non-PhD billionaire prize-maker encouraged me to pursue academics instead of business; also, nobody in my family had ever pursued a PhD. Overall a waste of many, many years. Should have followed his example, not listened to his words.

Advice: Don't waste your time with academics and the petty politics of university faculties. Go create; market and sell; make money.

[added] Up to the end of college I had been writing code since high school, fully financing my studies with software sales and royalties.

be prepared to move where the action/great people are and optimize for learning. the connections/friendships and knowledge you acquire now will compound over the rest of your career.

i'd rather work with people i like working with on interesting things, than "dig holes" for slightly more compensation.

disclaimer: current 25 year old.

Currently 25. Not really sure where I'm going or even what I'm doing (remote dev job, currently), but I think one thing I'm starting to learn and appreciate is that personal meaning and fulfillment matters a lot more than money or even "career". (Though I also appreciate that a majority of people can't flexibly make such a choice and need to provide for their families.) Also that I shouldn't hesitate leaving jobs I'm seriously dissatisfied with.

On my second job, learning how to code better. Still needed to learn how to be less of a jerk...

Be in a business area that is expanding, where you are working with and continually learning from top quality people (colleagues and clients)

If you feel like you're treading water, or are in a back room kept far away from clients, move on !

1. Playing World of Warcraft all day, every day.

2. Stop.

Go out more, meet more people, take more chances. Your social life will likely never be as lively as it is now, especially if you build a family at some point. Try different things. If you don't like your job, quit; your best moments always come when you overcome laziness enough to throw yourself into deep waters.

I had just moved to Ann Arbor and started at Arbor Networks after the failure of the first company I founded. My son was 2 years old and my daughter had just been born.

I'd have done a much better job handling my personal relationships.

Nothing I did at age 25 had really any material impact on my career. I liked A2 and the people I worked with at Arbor but I can sum the career value up as "can occasionally write an authoritative-sounding comment on HN about ISP backbone networks or DDoS attacks".

The relationship stuff though, that stuff stuck. It is kind of a miracle my marriage survived 25-year-old me. Lots of my friendships didn't survive.

I was working at a coupon code website in Austin, Texas. I don't have any good professional advice for me back then. I'm pretty sure I did all the right stuff. I had a company fly me out to the Bay Area for a job interview, and then snuck some time during that visit to interview with another company for a job with a better title and salary, a relocation bonus, and a less despicable vertical (the other one was in "debt relief").

It wasn't a great job, but I stuck it out until I didn't have to pay back the relocation bonus, and then enjoyed a couple of amazing jobs in SF before having my fill of the Bay Area.

Moved to London, started several side projects, joined a startup that was actually paying very well and was doing an interesting technology.

What would I change? Probably nothing, but I would want to change what I was doing at ~21, where computer games were dominating my spare time, I wish I started working on side projects early on. Nowadays I find building things more rewarding.

Working on megayachts as a deck officer spending summers in the Med and winters in the Caribbean. Eleven years later I'm a lawyer working in house.

Suffering from untreated anxiety/panic disorder, still working on finishing a BS. I would gently and firmly tell my former self to take a break, get some help, and return to school when I was better.

And more generally, to anyone struggling against personal problems (mental illness, substance abuse, family issues, etc.) while trying to achieve a career goal: at some threshold of severity, it's a better use of your time to focus on fixing those issues, and only _then_ returning the focus to career. Not to mention that it will save you some suffering.

Luckily for me, things eventually worked out, but I wasted several years trying to ride two horses at once.

(I'm 28.)

I'd tell myself to focus a bit more on finishing up my PhD than following dead ends. That and go outside more and eat better. It took ~2-2.5 years after graduating to regain sanity and lose ~50 pounds.

And I'm pretty happy with my current job.

Generally, I'd say that's advice I'm going to try to stick to (whether it's a job, PhD, whatever): focus more, go outside more, and maybe eat some vegetables every once in a while.

I left the UK for Spain whilst working remotely. Best decision I ever made, wouldn't change a thing!

You have to take risks if you want to lead an interesting life. 25 is the perfect age to do some "crazy" things like moving to another country.

At 25 I was completing my sophomore year in college. This was because my father decided to stop filing his taxes for the 10 years (1995-2005) that my sister and I would have gone to college, so we had no ability to even apply for college loans. Her and I have no idea why he did that, and I'm not sure how to ask him today.

So I worked at Safeway until I could start paying for college at 23, then could file as an independent student at 24 and started getting financial aid.

The advice I'd give myself is to go back to when I was 15, when this all started, and file my parents taxes for them.

It was 2009, and I was working odd jobs to support myself while trying to be an artist. I was incredibly depressed at the time. I had graduated with a fine arts degree in 2008, and the recession made it extremely difficult to find even normal work, much less anything arts-related.

The best advice I would have for myself, both then and now, is to work smarter, not harder.

I'm 28 now and I switched jobs 3 times at the age of 25, got my first serious girlfriend, moved out of my parents apartment.

Back then it felt like everything happens super fast, three years down way more things happen even faster.

Could I give a 25-year-old some short-sighted advice? Probably, but 25-year-old me wouldn't listen, I've always believed everyone is different so you can't really just hand advice like it's a life manual, things eventually happen to you. I think(much like others in this thread) that most things you do at that age will probably not impact your life as much as you might think.

At age 25 I was trying to figure out how to really get into the game. I had a promising job offer in the mountain west and decided instead to move to Portland and wait for the awesome tech job offers to flow into my inbox.

I ended up moving to PDX and burning through my savings, finally taking a job at a company that turned out to be deeply unethical. They spied on personal phone calls, asked employees if they were on birth control, you name it. The IT guy was something of an Edward Snowden who opened up an encrypted channel with me just to vent. What he shared with me blew my mind.

A few short months later my in-laws offered to let my wife and I live in their home rent-free in a town in California that no one's ever heard of. We had weirdly good "vibes" about this offer even though we couldn't explain it. We had no jobs lined up but my wife knew lots of people there and the in-laws were traveling internationally and free rent would allow us to stretch our little savings for a while longer.

After we moved here I started working as an independent hire-a-webmaster. It's so rural here that people still use that term. It turned into a very successful business and I found out that I really love living in a rural area. I also hired a coach and had an amazing experience working with him to understand my business and learning to make the most of who I am.

My life changed a lot after that and I'm now a coach myself, but for 20-something-years advice: I'd say I think I could have done a lot better for myself had I more readily shared my problems with others and listened to them more. I wish I would have hired my own coach earlier, someone who would hold me accountable, and help me accelerate my self-knowledge.

If you're in a pit, keep doing what you're doing here, consulting outside sources and listening to what they have to say. Then try out the ideas, make observations, and develop theories. Soon you'll have a reliable model for who you are and what powers your problem-solving and achievement processes. It's important to actively test out others' ideas and reflect on the results, because most advice you get will be of the "be like me" variety; it's not necessarily suited to your personal psychology. Good luck.

I was 25 when I took my first big "risk" of my career - leaving my comfy job at Amazon to work at a startup. This took the form of a 'forcing function', to get me to learn new coding skills and hone in on my chosen industry.

I'm 28 now, and after 3 such startup gigs, I've finally landed one with a lot of promise and upside, and have also tripled my income. Seems that your 20s are a great time to take a big risk.

Living in a beachfront apt on the East coast of Florida with my gf/wife (we were married when I was 25). Trying to learn how to surf. Working on a glorious tan. For a kid from Appalachia it was a glorious time.

I made the rent via my first post-college job as a fresh EE in a miserable military contractor firm. Did I make huge career strides? No way & I wouldn't change it.

I was working at a large defense contractor, living in DC, going to school at night getting my master degree.

Looking back, I should have made more of an effort to exercise (I didn't get into running and real exercise until I was 27), read more, drank less, and picked a better girl friend. I should have learned Spanish or Swedish also -- I lived in Columbia Heights and it was the main language, gf spoke the ladder. Also, even though it didn't exist in 2007, if I could go back I would show my younger self SRS (ANKI).

Unhappy in a relationship, stuck in the UK after a couple of glorious years working overseas. (I got real lucky in my early 20s.)

At 27 – I'm cheating, sorry – I packed it all in and went on holiday. Backpacker style, South-East Asia then Australia. Some time later I found myself in Melbourne, and I'm still here.

As a result, my career basically re-started. I'm now 41. It's worked out incredibly well.

You have to enjoy where you are. You have to enjoy what you do. If you have those two things, the success – whatever that means to you – will come. Don't chase something you think you should be chasing just because that's what you read in tech forums. That's bullshit. And don't stay somewhere you're unhappy because, in the history of the world, that never just magically got better. That's not how it works.

Find your place. Find your people. Don't worry about the rest.

Edit: I missed the advice question. Advice to younger self: leave relationships when you know they're not good. Stringing it out helps neither party.

I had been at Microsoft for four years, and I was getting ready to quit to join an early stage startup.

As for the second question, what advice would you give a 25 year old you?

Stay the course, but be sure to have interests and hobbies that don't involve sitting in front of a computer. I wouldn't change anything about my career trajectory. I'm glad I spent four years in a huge corporation, and I'm glad that I've had the opportunity to work in (and create) companies of all different sizes subsequently.

It's not even a regret, per se, but I wish I'd gotten more serious about photography in/around 2007 instead of dithering for another six years.

Spend more time getting laid and less time at a terminal. Youth is wasted on the young.