Career Choices for a Polyglot?

2 points by anal_reactor ↗ HN
Hello.

I always showed talent for learning foreign languages: as a child at school I was miles ahead of other kids in English (and also the quirks of my native language, which is Polish, but that's a different story). At the university I dedicated a lot of time to learning Dutch, after achieving the level of "I don't need to actively study it anymore, I only wish I could practice it more" I moved onto Spanish. That one is work in progress, but when on holiday I was able to effectively communicate with people who didn't speak English. A few months ago I picked up Japanese. It's going to be a long journey, but future me will be proud of current me.

The thing is, I don't really see any way of incorporating these skills into my career. The entirety of tech revolves around English, and even those rare positions that require knowing a language would rather see a native speaker.

Regarding my tech career, back when I was a student I loved low-level programming and wrote a thesis on the topic of compilers. Unfortunately, job market pushed me into being DevOps, and I spend my days with Terraform.

Do you have any suggestions? Or should I only expect foreign languages to stay a hobby of mine?

1 comment

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How about something to to with international deals or financing? Understanding tech, and being able to deal with people in their own language seems very valuable to me - particularly in Japan and Spain.