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Ask HN: For those devs that have left the field, what are you doing now?

by snow_mac on 1/30/23, 10:39 PM with 7 comments

Ask HN: For those devs/programmers that have left the field, what are you doing now?

I'm a principal web developer and am thinking about a pivot long term into something more interesting and helpful to the world, something like quantum engineer, quantum computing, AI research or something with a hard science like chemistry.

What are you doing?

  • by spindle on 1/30/23, 11:10 PM

    I had a job in IT at the University of Cambridge. I moved to Sydney for personal reasons and worked in a government policy job for a few months, and then applied for an IT job at the University of Sydney that was similar to the one I'd had at Cambridge. I wasn't even shortlisted. At around the same time, I was offered me a job as what Americas call an adjunct professor in philosophy, despite having no relevant qualifications. I took that, and it was fun, so I became a philosopher. If there's a moral to this story (and there is!) it's that careers are unpredictable.

  • by anyfoo on 1/30/23, 10:59 PM

    Before you leave the field entirely, consider that it's bigger than just web development.

    A bit over 10 years ago, I took a pivot into web development, since there were a lot of offers in that area. After about 2 years or so, and one too many CRUD web app on top of another ridiculous stack, I went into low level systems programming (something I was interested in and had done in private, but not as an actual job yet). And I don't regret it one bit.

  • by ss108 on 1/30/23, 10:41 PM

    I became a lawyer. Huge mistake, ruined my life, trying to become a dev again.