Ask HN: How do I find a new career?

[notsurenymore]

I was laid off from a SaaS company a year ago. Since then, I’ve been unable to find employment. Prior to that, I worked for a variety of non tech companies mostly doing enterprise crapware for internal business processes: a lot of legacy stuff, and low effort, low priority, poorly organized projects. I’ve learned and played with a lot of things outside that, and certain things gave piqued my interest before, but I can never take it far enough to be useful. I have no education, suck at CS, no deep business domain knowledge, and have zero math intuition. I’m decent at figuring things out ad-hoc, but that counts for nothing.

I hate programming. I thought I liked it as a kid, but even then I knew that if tried to turn it into a career it would ruin it for me. I only ended up taking it up as a job because my immediate post high school plans feel through and I didn’t know what else to do, but at this point it seems the only reason I was able to pull that off was because of the ridiculous market conditions of the time.

Now no one will hire me, not even the sort of companies just described I used to work for. I’ve even been rejected from shitty fast food jobs for a variety of reasons at this point. I just feel lost. I don’t know what I want to do or what I can do anymore. The risks and time costs of going back to school are too expensive, no do I believe I have the cognitive ability for any “useful degrees”, and I’m not particularly in the shape to do hard labor.

What are some options I might be overlooking for finding a new career?

[saltbush23]

This is a question I’ve been grappling with for a while.

The biggest challenge for me is what a coworker once called the “golden handcuff”, it’s pretty hard to find similar salaries and if one has grown to need a tech salary to keep afloat, well, it would require major life changes to get out of there.

With that said here are a few of the things that I’ve seen

1. Medical Coding (has nothing to do with code as in programming) This is an interesting one because it seems that one can get in with a few months of training and a $200 certification exam. The initial salary is not horrendous but it can grow quite a bit.

2. Federal jobs (USA based) (usajobs.gov) I was surprised to find such reasonable salaries for such a big variety of roles! Things like administering programs or approving grants or mathematics statistics for the IRS easily and routinely make it to the 6 figures.

3. Completely different career:

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!

[notsurenymore]

> The biggest challenge for me is what a coworker once called the “golden handcuff”

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?

[goatking]

Are you sure that’s a real Masters degree? Can you link it?

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

[keiferski]

Try the trades, especially electrician work. It's tech-adjacent but doesn't require high level math and the training programs are very inexpensive.

I'd also make sure that your current negative feelings RE: the job search aren't being transferred to programming as a whole. The right tech job may make you love programming again.

[notsurenymore]

> I'd also make sure that your current negative feelings RE: the job search aren't being transferred to programming as a whole. The right tech job may make you love programming again.

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.

[lusus_naturae]

Personal shopper, executive assistant, quality control/assurance, factory work, personal assistant? Look into getting a trade license, maybe? I hate the idea of you posting this and not getting a response, so hopefully this one spurs more (and better) responses.

[Djle]

"I’m decent at figuring things out ad-hoc, but that counts for nothing."

That counts for a lot. You shouldn't discount it. Some of the best programmers I every worked with didn't have a degree. However, having said that you need the passion for it. I'm assuming you still like tech, since you are posting on HN?

If you do want to give software a try again, maybe try working on an open source project. Most projects need all kinds of things besides programming. Writing tutorials for example or other developer advocate type things can lead to a different career.

[notsurenymore]

> That counts for a lot. You shouldn't discount it.

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.

[claudiulodro]

Are you capable of doing physical work for a living, or (to be blunt) are you only suited for office-type work? You can make a decent living as a UPS driver or postal worker, tradesperson (requires apprenticeship, but you get paid during it), or plenty of other careers. Competition in the white-collar business fields, where you're competing with the whole world, is much stiffer than competition in the local blue-collar fields, where you're competing with other people in town.

[notsurenymore]

> Are you capable of doing physical work for a living, or (to be blunt)

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)

[cwdegidio]

Maybe make a list of fields or areas that interest you... and then see if anyone in your social network or friends group are in those fields? Buy them a cup of coffee or a beer and pick their brains. See what the like or don't like about it, how they got started, what they would do different, etc.

[notsurenymore]

Unfortunately most of my friends were in a worse position than me prior to the layoffs. Most are more educated than me, but work menial office jobs that don’t pay well.

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.

[quickthrower2]

> enterprise crapware for internal business processes: a lot of legacy stuff, and low effort, low priority, poorly organized projects.

Maybe this could lead to consulting or freelancing. Maybe call them all up and see if they need help, even only part time / temp?

[notsurenymore]

I actually had some people ask me to consult for them earlier this year, but they ghosted me faster than many full time jobs have.

[idoh]

This is impossible to answer without more information. How much money do you need? What’s your personality like? Were there any programming adjacent roles you thought were interesting?

[notsurenymore]

> How much money do you need?

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.

[dotcoma]

I would try to intersect things-you-like _with_ things-there-is-a-need-for _with_ things-that-pay-decently (according to you and nobody else) and give whatever comes up a try. Good luck!

[notsurenymore]

> give whatever comes up a try

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.

[vouaobrasil]

What about going independent like starting a YouTube channel?

[pschuegr]

This seems like a good way to burn out while making no money.

[iamflimflam1]

Hah - yeah. There is no money in YouTube - trust me.