Ask HN: In mid 40s. What non-tech job can I do?
I worked nonstop for the past 20 years in tech / design space, and wanted a break. I also wanted to spend some time with family.
I'll take at least 6 months off.
But then I'd need to look for a job, but I really don't like the idea of going back to doing the same thing... i.e. web/app design/dev work for larger corporations.
So I'm open to doing something completely different, even if it pays 1/3rd.
Has anyone here made successful transition to field outside technology?
Any advice in general would be appreciated.
126 comments
[ 0.21 ms ] story [ 171 ms ] threadThat said, unless you have a passion for teaching and an enormous tolerance for people making mistakes, I would avoid this.
It'll also a low bar way to test out whether you enjoy teaching, and which age range you prefer to teach.
"One of my sons works in early education. He can talk quite movingly about the stigma that you'll face as a man. People will question your motives. At worst, some people will suggest, either jokingly or not, that you might be motivated by pedophilia. "What is it about young kids that appeals to you?" is the kind of question you hear.
There are some quite nasty stereotypes around men in those professions."
https://www.upr.org/npr-news/npr-news/2022-11-04/men-are-str...
On the other hand, someone who's spent a lot of time honing technical skills probably belongs not teaching preschool & kindergarten but in upper elementary, middle school, or beyond. And I've found that a perfectly welcoming place as a middle school & high school teacher (and running after-school programs for upper elementary).
A dirty little secret, too, is that men often have a much easier time with classroom management, etc, because of cultural biases.
Unfortunately I have heard the same. I know 3 male high school teachers and the stories I hear are unfathomable, you could never convince me to teach at a high school.
Many low-paying social service jobs are filled by spouses of people with high-paying jobs. This can lead to an elitist culture, even in the lower levels.
There is also a lot of overlap between social service orgs and religious orgs which can lead to a conflict between mission and church doctrine.
All in all, I perceive it as being as diverse a field as the rest of society, and filled with many viewpoints. It doesn't seem dominated by one "side" or the other
For the record, I don’t support American liberals or conservatives, who both waste too much time avoiding confrontation with the root problem: capitalism.
I think your goal is to attack the person and and not the idea, which has nothing to do with my experience-based opinion that it's more nuanced than "dominated by liberals".
That said, it feels like the fever is breaking, and unfounded allegations (and generalizations) have become so common that they are still relatively easily ignored. It sucks that anyone must endure this, of course, but c'est la vie. As dark ages go, this one is relatively mild and short lived. Only a few thousand lives unfairly ruined over ~10 years. Not that bad in the scheme of things.
There are no tenured jobs that are easy to get, for the simple reason that firing tenured faculty is intentionally difficult. Tenure-track positions at any reputable university, and even disreputable ones, are highly competitive are require a history of research, in addition to the PhD. Mostly fresh PhDs need to do at least one post-docs in order to be considered for tenure-track. In particular, the offer of a tenure-track position is contingent on the expectation of future research output, which is not consistent with the OP's goal of taking a few months off.
I just commented to say that it appears madengr has been shadow banned.
I have no idea why they are shadow banned but the comment they left here was reasonable.
https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=madengr
I teach computer science and programming. This is a good field to go into, because (a) it applies my knowledge acquired from my earlier life as a developer, and (b) is always in demand. If you want to teach this, you will have no trouble getting a job at a high school, community college, or university.
I would also argue it's not, strictly speaking, a technology job. Teaching is a people-oriented job, regardless of the subject.
Working at a place like this is totally doable, so many bakeries and cafes are desperate for workers that are more competent than high school kids. The work is busy and technical but much lower stress than resolving on-call incidents.
My wife has taught at the high school and community college levels for almost 15 years. Given ten years of her stories and experience (that's how long we've been together; DAMN TIME FLIES!), this is what I have to add:
1. Spend time at /r/professors and /r/teachers in Reddit. Read their stories. Ask questions. Warning: those subs are overwhelmingly negative for a reason.
2. I wouldn't recommend teaching CS at the high school level unless you have complete (and I mean COMPLETE) control over your schedule and curriculum and REALLY REALLY REALLY love teaching growing children. Because most school districts don't offer the former since they teach to national standards, the latter is much more important here.
3. Regardless of the level that you teach at, you'll essentially be casting a huge net hoping to catch a handful of fish. Lots of people only go to school because they have to. They don't care about learning and will suck up a LOT of your time, energy and patience. The only teachers/instructors/professors that universally get lots of love from students are the ones that give easy A's, which given the way that education as a whole is going, might not be a bad idea, unfortunately. (Much more profit-driven, even at the comm college level.)
This is less likely to happen if you teach upper-level courses, like CS2xx or 3xx courses. The students taking them are much more invested and want guidance. At community college, those students are almost-certainly trying to get into a four-year and want to improve their chances of a transfer. They'll be more receptive of your content, and you'll feel more fulfilled teaching it.
4. You probably won't be teaching CS2xx or 3xx levels.
At many schools, there are three rank levels: adjunct, staff, and full-time. Adjuncts are basically 1099s (contractors for the non-US folks) that get paid peanuts with no hope for career progression. Unlike tech, staff is essentially adjunct++. they take the schedules full-time faculty don't want, work as hard if not harder than them, and get paid less to much less for all that trouble. full-time faculty is where you want to be. you make your own schedule, get all of the time off, and get paid the best (though it's still peanuts relative to tech).
Academia is insanely gatekeeper-y about full-time faculty positions. Four-year colleges require Ph.Ds for those roles, no exceptions. Most large comm college networks do as well. Some smaller comm colleges are fine with just a Masters or Bachelors in a related course of study. As far as I understand it, colleges are often fine with hiring staff-level professors with industry experience alone, but you probably won't ever become full-time and will probably not have control over your schedule, courses, and students.
Also, most colleges relegate the upper-level stuff to full-time faculty only.
TL;DR: Do a LOT of research and ask lots of questions before becoming a teacher or instructor. Way more work than people think. Also, sub to /r/professor and /r/teachers on Reddit.
In British academia it is not impossible to get a lecturer position (equivalent to US assistant professor) without a PhD.
Simon Peyton Jones, who is famous for his Haskell / GHC work, got one and progressed all the way to full professor.
The OP might want to consider this. If one aims at CS positions that are mostly / fully devoted to teaching in not-so-prominent universities, it's totally doable. There is a shortage of good programming teachers because of the big pay gap compared to industry.
A lecturer will get ~£40-50,000 gross, whereas a good programming job in London will be more than 2x that figure. However, if you land a lectureship somewhere cheap, in practice the paygap won't be so dramatic.
It makes sense from within. The goal for a majority of Ph.D's is to become a professor at a four-year college and conduct research on government grants (or get tenured so that they can basically get paid to be retired). That can't happen if you have industry vets who can _actually teach these courses, and probably do a better job of it_ taking those spots. So you lock them out of those opportunities entirely and get TAs (for bigger core classes), adjuncts or staff/lecturers to teach everything else.
At the time of application, you know whether the job is permanent. Some lectureships that do not require PhD, or where PhD is optional, are permanent jobs.
But I know a few co-workers did well opening up a pizza shop :). That was many years ago. In anycase, owing a business will even eat more time than working in tech.
* technical writing
* QA
* office manager (Put everything into a ticketing system with reminder alerts. Don't give anyone else access. Nearly everything an office manager does is a ticket with a deadline and a series of subtasks. The difference between an excellent office manager and a terrible one is their attention to detail. Outsource that to a computer.)
* Logistics/shipping management. (Everything I said about office manager, but with more phone calls.)
Going for CFP certification in financial planning could improve one's chances, but the training will take some time & isn't free.
There's a lot of demand for good financial planners, but not sure about real estate sales now that interest rates are on the rise.
Get certified (about $500, NASM or ACE) and become a personal trainer/group fitness coach/similar.
I haven't done this myself but it's at the top of my list when the time is right.
As such, helping worthy causes with their technology problems can be hugely rewarding.
Large companies usually have people with a deep knowledge in one particular skillset, whereas small companies are more likely to be made up of generalists. One person, for example, had worked for 2 decades only in securing IT processes for insurance companies. Another was a project manager with a real gift for spinning a positive story from what I saw as a disaster. I learned a lot, even from people who otherwise mostly frustrated me.
That being said, I've filled that gap with meetups and deliberate networking. I have no regrets about making the trade-off.
The obvious thing is the perks. When I worked in an 8000 person company, I got to go to any tech conference I wanted, got to attend leadership training courses, had more $200/person meals than I’d ever had before in my life, they’d rent out large venues like the Academy of Sciences for company events and just a lot higher comp.
At the 30-person company, there just wasn’t the budget for that stuff. Which isn’t to say that large corporate job is better…none of that stuff makes up for the soul-sucking parts of those big companies, but that doesn’t mean you don’t miss all that excess when you no longer have it.
Get a 4-day, too
Without any research or context, I'd expect a first-time bike mechanic job to pay $18-22 depending on the city. The ski shops nearby are advertising ski tech jobs around $16 and calling it "better than competitive pay"
When I was a teenager, 25 years ago, I used to CNC my own bike parts and also worked as a local bike mechanic. I've only accumulated a lot more fabrication, software, and business experience since then.
Though of course I'd vastly prefer this particular industry transition to happen on the tails of https://www.auxon.io being wildly successful than not.
Often these roles are far less stressful
What did you have in mind specifically? I can’t think of anything myself that doesn’t seem just as or more stressful and with less flexibility.
Project Management can be fun if you are organised, Programme Manager if you want it to be a more senior role
Business Analyst can be great - and can get pretty senior.
In some companies the step out of programming and into architecture can be a very different pace, but all companies will vary. In my current company it seems full on but at the last it seemed a great role.
Strategy is really important and loads of people and companies do it poorly - great opportunities to do it well! Can be a lot of board papers and socialisation of ideas, but the pace will be very different, and while there can be some stress, will not be consistent.
Obviously ymmv - find a good company that you like and things will be a lot easier. Important jobs don't have to be high stress.
I'd agree that the stress of Product roles varies with company. Dealing with clueless, egotistical executives and HiPPos is never enjoyable.
She now writes the customer-visible bug-fixed notes for a very large, very technical software product (with minor releases on the order of every 4 weeks, and major releases annually). A good bug takes 5-10 minutes to write up in an appropriate, customer-friendly, legally and security-appropriate way.
A bad bug might take hours of tracking down engineers who did the work, claimed they did the work, mis-tagged the bug entry, improperly closed the bug, improperly left the bug open, improperly merged the bug...
But at the end of the day, she isn't responsible for fixing the bug, just documenting it properly. The workday is essentially 9-5. And there's always another bug.
The stress turned out to be higher than a 9-5 job though, so think twice :)
[0] https://handmade-seattle.com
There's no way to break into "family" farming (500-2000 acres basef on location/crop/animals)
"Low returns" lololol
Farming is incredibly profitable (b/c good crop prices and the government makes sure it's very hard to go broke, although some people definitely try their hardest) so you will pay top dollar for land (purchase or rent).
I kinda dreamed about taking over our family farm, but the rents my retired parents are getting makes it unlikely to be profitable.
You really need to be farming 20,000 acres with the latest technology. A 500 acre farm is just not going to pencil out except as a hobby farm.
The method is really sound and you can do it within 2-3 hrs together with another person.
There is a book outlining the method. It’s called “Find Your Why: A Practical Guide for Discovering Purpose for You and Your Team“.
I did it with 2 friends. It was pretty eye opening for them.
However, if I were in your position and didn't want to do this work I think I would either get formally certified as an electrician and do electrical work or I would get certified as a paramedic (not merely EMT/EMR) and work as a firefighter.
I think electrician is an easier route - especially if you are not very physically robust - but the firefighter route typically has a very good pension 20 years later.
This is true of most trades, except maybe machinist. That is what I'd look into, personally. If you're a programmer, you can still continue that by learning CNC programming.
I honestly don't know how easy it is to get into trade work in your 40s with no experience though. I think most people in those jobs start straight out of high school.
the pay in fire/ems is not always as high as people think it is, outside of some big cities. getting into a pension firefighter job after age 40 is extremely difficult. Some manage to do it, yes, but it's an uphill battle from the start. In some states where many of the fire jobs are civil service, you cannot even apply after age 36 and the law has upheld this. it's frustrating to say the least.
I started helping my wife baking as well as setting up business selling baked goods online and at the farmers market while zooming with my tech friends on the other side of the planet at night and helping them at the margin with their new startup.
The baking business has been growing that demand is far surpassing our capacity. Right now having hard time hiring people to help in the kitchen. My knee is hurting because of standing and walking in the kitchen for at least 12 hrs non stop at least 5 days a week for the last few months. It's been highly therapeutic and very satisfying though.
Run towards something you like. What that is, depends on you.