Ask HN: How do I find a new career?

Hasn’t done me any good yet. It doesn’t get me through applications, and it doesn’t help when interviews just want you to regurgitate things with perfect accuracy/timing. Plus it’s hard to put it on a resume, when a lot of the more impressive things I’ve managed to do don’t fit in with my work experience.

I’ve wondered about dev advocate roles before. I don’t see them as much as I used to though. I guess I’m just not sure how to write a resume for something completely different then what my work experience says I’m qualified for.

I remember talking to someone working in insurance claims processing, offering that their company was hiring, but apparently you need a degree to do that.

I wish I could, but whenever I see jobs like this, they always require years of experience I don’t have or years of education I don’t have.

Possibly, but if I can’t even get a job doing what I have experience in, what chance is there of finding the “right” tech job.

The one silver lining is that this market seems to have broken the golden handcuffs on me. I’m not incredibly driven by money, and would gladly take a job I enjoy for less money, but oddly enough, until recently it was always easier to find money than a job I didn’t hate.

> I came across a fascinating masters degree in Coursera which allows me to earn a masters in a field I have no professional experience although I’m quite interested in. There was no requirement for a bachelor’s degree in that field nor the general tedious process of admission to a graduate degree. It simply required that you’d be able to keep up with the course work, like complementing knowledge you don’t have from a bachelor in that area by yourself. This is certainly a longer term commitment but for me sounds fantastic to get to a place where I could match software salaries without ever looking at a software company again!

I’ve wondered how this would look on a resume. “No I don’t have a bachelors, but I have a Masters in X. Wouldn’t this lead to some always conversations that would confuse and raise suspicion?

Any masters I looked at on Coursera had the same application process like a real university, including application + requirements

Maybe, but it would take more time than I’d like to get into shape. I do hear a lot about trade work, but the only jobs I ever see for it want highly experienced people. I even see entry level/experienced jobs ask for a year or two of experience (yeah it’s a big meme, but like I mentioned, I get rejected for fast food/retail jobs that are ostensibly entry level)

Obviously this is a tough question because CoL can vary a lot, but I just want enough to live a middle class lifestyle covering living costs and having some spending money to enjoy, but preferably not something that will eat up all my time (a friend of mine was a nurse which pays well on pepper but she was desperate to get out because of hellish hours)

> What’s your personality like?

I’d like to think I’m easy to get along with, and moderately sociable, but I don’t have outgoingness for something like sales. I’m still a tinkerer/hacker at heart, but I’m just not good enough to be competitive on a job market.

> Were there any programming adjacent roles you thought were interesting?

Yes, there are still even programming roles that I think would be interesting, but “interesting” seems mostly out of reach. I’ve always been interested in security, but not the sort of positions I could get. Occasionally I’ll still see a programming job that I think would be interesting, but they’re usually highly technical senior positions in domains I wouldn’t qualify for anyway.