Ask HN: What was your Plan B?
I reckon at least a few of you here were really into programming computers and were certain you wanted that to be your career from an early age. What was your backup plan if things didn't work out as you intended, what else could you have chosen as your profession?
I started programming halfway through high school, I liked it a lot and I was really certain I would succeed, although I screwed myself in doing so because I failed to acquire any other marketable skills.
Now I'm 3 years out of school, unable to attend college, I've unfortunately strayed from my path and I'm failing to find my way back to it.
So I come to you HNers for advice... What alternatives would you have picked?
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[ 7.6 ms ] story [ 1635 ms ] threadI have only one plan, as well said by Mr Einstein:
"Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited, whereas imagination embraces the entire world, stimulating progress, giving birth to evolution."
More concisely: "Logic will get you from A to B. Imagination will take you everywhere."
Out of highschool I wanted to be an architect or civil engineer. I was set-up to spend a few days in a cabinet to have "preview" of my career. I was disillusioned very fast, mainly because of the prevalence of nepotism and corruption (at least in my country of origin).
This is basically the art of persuasion and needed whenever two or more humans interact: resumes, job posts, job interviews, asking someone on a date, etc are all forms of marketing yourself.
I used to think programming was powerful; "precision marketing" (persuasion) is even more powerful. There is a limit to how much you can program yourself. There is almost no limit to how much you can program by persuading others to program for you.
I recommend this book for learning more about "precision marketing." I spent years studying marketing, and this book is like a greatest hits list of the best ideas I learned: https://expertsecrets.com/
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I figured out I wanted to work in UX while getting a degree in CS. Unfortunately, the CS degree kind of pigeon-holed me as a developer with no clear path to a UX career. Even though the companies I worked for had departments and even entire buildings devoted to UX, my managers couldn't help me get there. (Backgrounds in sociology, statistics, psychology, etc were preferred.)
So I pivoted to "precision marketing" when I discovered how closely it resembled good UX: you need to focus on the user, their desires, and obstacles keeping them from their desires.
Which was kind of dumb, I didn't have to wait that long to start writing, I've got several early draft manuscripts now (I struggle with editing, though).
Also I was always big into making my own games, even as far back as like 6, when I was drawing levels for imaginary games on reams of printer paper at my grandparents. I did eventually start doing that, released several games, spent some time in the game industry for a while, pursued board game design (as a professional hobby) for a while, etc.
If board games paid better and if I didn't have so many financial responsibilities and a desire to have money saved up for retirement, I'd probably pursue that full time now, and only program on my own to facilitate that (i.e. make video game versions of my board games, or write simulations to test various mechanisms in my game designs, etc).
I don't really want to code for anyone else now, especially the types of jobs/clients I keep getting offered (i.e. in insurance, health, marketing, or finance). But I need to make money, so for now I still do, while hoping a side project or my wife's side business (of being a writer, funnily enough, which she is much better at writing books that sell than I ever was, I just liked making humorous books, those are hard to sell unless you're a handful of authors) takes off enough that I can afford to jump off (or at least take a paycut and switch back to video games or something).
Originally I wanted to go into astrophysics but had the crippling realization that there wasn’t much money in that field. Coming from a poorer family that put an emphasis on becoming financially stable was “the dream” I went into Comp Sci.
My Plan C (at the time back in college) was in Comp Sci didn’t work out I’d join the military.
>Now I'm 3 years out of school, unable to attend college, I've unfortunately strayed from my path and I'm failing to find my way back to it.
What is your path? Programming? Why can't you get back to it? Just open an IDE and write some code. Or do you not want to write code for money?
(Funny that it was for so many others.)
I tried startups for a while, 3x as a founder and 2x as a first engineer. I found I liked engineering more than business, design, and other roles.
I then joined a big company and fell in love with the work. Engineering with lots of resources and more hard problems than you have time for, in an environment that rewards EQ, is so much fun. I never expected it’s what I’d be doing.
It sounds like you are looking for a Plan B to exercise. If you don't mind my asking, what is holding up Plan A?
FWIW my resolve was certainly shaken early in my career after the dot bomb, but I managed to find a job through a prior coworker in another city 6 months after.
I've been in love with coding since forever so I had no plan B. Still don't have a plan B even though in the past I did write (and typeset myself, back in the Quark XPress days on the old, pre OS X, MacOS days and even with typeset one with LaTeX too) a great many books.
So... I'd say my plan B would have been, although I didn't know it, something related to "writing words" instead of "writing code".
I did really enjoy learning typography and typesetting too.
But I don't miss it: I'm glad to be "writing code".
I'm also procrastinating since years on starting a blog for fun (not for profit), which is weird as I've written complete books so a blog doesn't sound intimidating.
plan B - big tech co
plan C - tech at investment bank
plan D - tech at walmart/mcdonalds/etc
I'm actually not really sure what I would do if I wasn't doing programming.
I still get surprised when I see people making money without a computer..it just seems like such an alien concept :-)
I ended up making a lot of coffee and doing a lot of crap work for the best coders in the companies I worked for, just so I could look over their shoulders and learn :-D
I started off in computers... obsessed but never thought I could do anything with them, and I didn't want to end up staring at a computer screen all day. Instead, I went to university and studied psychology, hoping to have more interaction with human beings. Specifically, I wanted to do something with social psychology and industrial-organizational psychology.. something with the workplace and human psychology.
Fast forward a multitude of social jobs, university life, living in another country, and back home to pay student loans... I applied for any job relating to the psychology field across the board. Bachelors degree ain't gettin' you much in this field.
So with my bills due, I fell to an old friend. A skill I taught myself when I was 12: programming in Visual Basic 3. I landed a job for a software company programming in VB 6 for a year or so. Eventually, I started to have an interest in web design and development, and that's where I've been for over a decade.
I started my own company developing web applications too though I can't say I've monetized them to the point where I could quit any day jobs. So while I'm still in the field of web dev, I'd dabbled in the stock market since I was in my 20s and made enough money to get myself into real estate, and my next endeavour is owning a portfolio of properties with mountain views... and renting them out for passive income. I'm working on my third property right now.
Honestly interested in this. Would you say that renting out a property is another full-time job and not a "passive income"?
You choose whether you want to pay all utilities or include them for which there are pros and cons. If you can imagine yourself having one monthly bill, would you prefer that?
So you can do this in two ways:
1) DIY (easy, moderate, hard): this requires you write up your own contracts and agreements which can be automated through rental management software such as Zillow. You can list on there too. Most of these online software companies will do the background check and you decide if you want them as a tenant. This also requires that you be on point such as being strict on rent and establish some rules as well as try to think of several scenarios that could go wrong. You can either rent a furnished place or an unfurnished place. The furnished places where you include utilities and the Internet can go for a lot more. A lot of travel people love those. Especially if you can come in as competition to a hotel/motel. You at least have the kitchen. It also means that you maintain and upkeep your place, so any of their complaints you must handle.
For this, there is a dark side of DIY.
There are things that can go wrong and there are plenty of people who will take advantage if you are not strict. For example, I was actually still living in my house renting a room out. I went away for a month to take care of my family. I come home and there's a random person living in my house. I have no idea who she is. I ask her and it turns out she's a friend of the roommate. So I ask her if she's ready to sign a lease. She says she's still looking for a job. I tell her she has a week and we'll talk. A week later, I go to hand her the lease which would be due on the first (giving her a full 2 weeks before rent is due) and she says she's been paying rent. To whom, I ask? You guessed it! So you have to have to harden your heart and say, "See this contract right here? The one you and I both signed? Where does it say you can sublet? Where does it say there is an authorized tenant besides you?" Then you have to do all the legal work as you can't just kick them out depending on the laws in your state. It's usually like 30 days notice so then you have to hope they don't destroy your home knowing they have to get out of it eventually. Not much protects you except maybe your insurance. Everything is pretty much by notice but certainly helps you when you have to go to court. Oftentimes, as much as you "don't care", you legally can't just kick someone out into the cold overnight.
2) Hire a property management company (easy): the pricing varies usually from 10% to 25% of the total rent or a monthly fee but they do all the work for you. Some even offer to furnish the place for an extra fee if it's not already furnished. You can opt out of that and have someone move their stuff in. The issue with this type of renting is that moving around heavy ass furniture can damage your flooring. There are pros and cons to furniture but the way many people are nowadays: they don't want to even worry about it. But these types of companies will do all the work from listing the property to signing a tenant into the lease, collecting the rent, and even doing the monthly or tri-monthly inspections, maintenance, as well as possible evictions. For this, you're just paying the mortgage and supplying the home. If you financed at a reasonable rate, you could make $300+ a month after all is said and done and once you pay off the mortgage, it's just pure profit. If you send extra towards the mortgage, you'll be that much quicker to getting there. However, you might want to even just save the extra money and start putting money down on another place.
I have actually tried #1 when I was re...
It's clear that you have a lot of experience with managing rental properties and have learned a lot along the way.
What advice would you give to someone who is considering investing in real estate for the first time? What are some important factors I should consider before making a purchase?
Also, given the potential risks and complexities involved in real estate investing, don't you think it's less worrisome to just invest in stocks?
Thanks again for sharing your expertise on this topic!
Let's start from the bottom up: I love stocks. I love investing into the stock market, but it was a wake up call when the tech stocks crashed and the market was going crazy. Is it better than stocks?
Real Estate is often a bit more stable than the stock market because it can be better predicted. If the houses around you are selling for X dollars... chances are, your house will too. A house is never going to be $0, even some of the houses in really bad shape that still have their structure and foundation cannot go down to $0. Stocks are a bit of a waiting game and they have their advantages and disadvantages, but you can't do anything to make extra money on them.
For a house, make the extra money on it by renting it out, improving on the structure itself, and after you pay off the mortgage (or even if you don't pay it off), sell the house for more or hold on to it. Housing is supply and demand with many opportunities to take advantage of. Most people got a very amazing surprise in 2020, especially those that had just closed on their homes, only to see the values go up by $100,000 the very next day. However, people buying houses at those prices... they might only see a $20k or $30k increase over the next few years. There could also be a housing crash though at this moment, its unlikely.
So now let's get into your top questions: What advice would you give to someone who is considering investing in real estate for the first time? What are some important factors I should consider before making a purchase?
This depends on what type of investor you are. For most appraisers, the only thing they care about is the square footage and everything in between and top to bottom. Thus, they value the house and structure, nothing more, nothing less. For others, they may also include in the view. For me, I love a damn good view. Nothing like waking up in the morning and opening your windows to an ocean or mountain view vs. a bunch of other houses that allow your neighbors to see you naked. I just don't care to be staring at neighbors' houses when I look out of the window. I value privacy more than I value neighbors. I also like to buy places that are "centrally located" meaning they are within walking distance to entertainment, food, movies, gas stations, etc.
I also tend to prefer buying condos than houses, but this comes with the overhead of an HOA fee to maintain the property. Pros and cons to this wherein someone else maintains the property and I just have to worry about insuring the inside walls, but condos are slower to increase in value than houses are. However, I prefer to rent them out, pay off the mortgages, and make the profit from that.
Going back to the stock market real quick: I could've kept money in the stock market and waited to take that out and retired at a certain time. Or I can hold on to mortgage-free places and live off that income every month. Plus, if you hold on to it for 30+ years, inflation and cost of living is going to give you more money in your pocket. Real Estate does require a bit more work upfront, but seems to pay off and is more predictable, while the stock market -- has its ups and downs and its knowing when to hold em and when to fold 'em , as the Late Great Kenny Rogers sang.
So let's talk about two friends I have.
Friend #1: George. Friend #2: Joe.
George is more of a risk taker and a lavish spender, while Joe is more calculated and likes to save his money.
George uses the bank's money all the time. He barely ever uses his own money. He is always pulling the money back out of his properties to re-invest in new properties. The upside is: he's not using much of his own money. The downside is: those houses technically always belong to the bank.
George owns 10 houses. He said, "Every month, it's like Christmas when I get those rent checks coming in...
I must say that currently I am not looking to buy a property as an investment since I live somehow close to Ukraine and am waiting for the situation to cool down a bit. Still, it's my plan to diversify by investing into real estate in the future.
Thanks a lot again!
You can specialize on a certain area (web programming, device drivers, phone apps, etc.) or jump around. Most skills you learn doing one task are helpful as you move on to the next one. Even if find you don't like sitting down at a computer writing code anymore, you can go into project management, consulting, or other related area.
Learned VMS, Unix and Pick because the book systems ran on those OSes. Realized library profession was dying due to what I felt was gatekeeping. Plan C: do IT.
Did IT for a few years, joined a sw company, sysadmined for a bit, realized they were making more money, moved into line of business work and eventually sales.
Am still a shitty programmer.
Alternately, just go for something fun, anything that seems like a good time. And then give it all you got. Trying to join the staff of some big YouTubers or something sounds like a perfectly fine dumb idea.
Some alternatives that don't involve college could be learning a trade like plumbing or electrician work. You could also look into community college at your own pace as you can afford it and find some other shorter term job in the meantime. I would also not give up on programming if it's something you enjoy. You could always try a coding bootcamp (CodeUp is legit) and work your way into the industry via a smaller company where tech is more of a cost center than a core focus area.
At some point I thought I wasn't productive enough at programming (too slow). So I switched towards IT. But I realized that what I enjoyed was automating tasks, that I was good at it, but not much valued in the market I was.
I switched back to Plan A where I am successful.
I wanted to pursue artistic endeavors like writing or photography. But I was told from early age that there is no money in art and art is for rich people.
Somehow I got into video games and then programming to make my own video games. Programming seemed like right at the intersection of science and art. It felt like a good compromise. And now I feel truly lucky on how everything turned out.