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?
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.
Obviously giving life advice based on a couple paragraphs is a little suspect, but it sounds like you have some technical skills and are interested in security, so why not just go in for that? Some thoughts:
- security is really hot right now, my last role was a PM for security, many many companies have serious challenges in this area right now
- people who are in it really love talking about it, it would be pretty easy to talk to some people in the field and see what’s a good fit
- speaking of security, there are so many roles it’s hard to imagine that there isn’t a role for you. Some are really technical, some have 0 coding at all (like program management)
- nobody wants to hire a downer, so work on your confidence game. Or learn to fake it
- consider some certs or some other LinkedIn bait to get recruiters to contact you, applying directly seems like a waste of time generally
- think about your narrative, e.g. you aren’t lost, while you were working you realized that you were really into security and have spent the last X amount of time skilling up on it
- don’t worry about comparing yourself to others, just try to get a little better everyday
- think about how you can get 1% better today in security, and do it, then repeat
- same as above, but for interviewing, attracting recruiters, and also working on your headspace
- nobody ever follows this but use Anki to build skill mastery for everything
- if you are weak in an area but consistenly add in 50 cards a day then you’ll get good fast
That’s my take on it anyway. Good luck. The universe wants you to succeed. Hiring managers are hoping that you are the one that can solve their problems. Recruiters are rooting for you so they can get their bonuses, managers are rooting for you to make them look good. I’m rooting for you and I don’t even know you! And so on.
notsurenymore|2 years ago
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.
idoh|2 years ago
- security is really hot right now, my last role was a PM for security, many many companies have serious challenges in this area right now
- people who are in it really love talking about it, it would be pretty easy to talk to some people in the field and see what’s a good fit
- speaking of security, there are so many roles it’s hard to imagine that there isn’t a role for you. Some are really technical, some have 0 coding at all (like program management)
- nobody wants to hire a downer, so work on your confidence game. Or learn to fake it
- consider some certs or some other LinkedIn bait to get recruiters to contact you, applying directly seems like a waste of time generally
- think about your narrative, e.g. you aren’t lost, while you were working you realized that you were really into security and have spent the last X amount of time skilling up on it
- don’t worry about comparing yourself to others, just try to get a little better everyday
- think about how you can get 1% better today in security, and do it, then repeat
- same as above, but for interviewing, attracting recruiters, and also working on your headspace
- nobody ever follows this but use Anki to build skill mastery for everything
- if you are weak in an area but consistenly add in 50 cards a day then you’ll get good fast
That’s my take on it anyway. Good luck. The universe wants you to succeed. Hiring managers are hoping that you are the one that can solve their problems. Recruiters are rooting for you so they can get their bonuses, managers are rooting for you to make them look good. I’m rooting for you and I don’t even know you! And so on.