Beginning of next year I am setting out as an independent software engineering consultant. As such I am interested in hearing from others who have already done something similar! I have been working as a developer and team lead for more than 10 years of which the last 5 have been focused mostly on the .Net stack. Now I want to expand my horizons a bit more, preferably with a new domain or another tech stack.

What are some suggestions/advice you'd give someone just starting down this path? Anything I should avoid doing? Anything I should definitely do? I suppose the specifics will vary a bit by country, but are there some general things I should be thinking about?

Oh, if you happen to have a need for a senior developer/tech lead, give me a ping!

Long story short I am a web developer that currently makes more money than I've ever made in my life to this point. The downside is that my benefits package is sub-par. Very few vacation days, no health insurance (though we do get $ on our checks to go toward costs), fairly bare-bones retirement plan, etc. I also feel kind of aimless at this job. There is no clear path for raises or promotions. It's too small of a company for that.

I got an offer today for a job with a company that a former manager of mine works at (We both left our previous jobs around the same time, so no poaching concerns there). It's an opportunity to change my specialty from backend development (databases, server-side code) to frontend development (HTML, CSS, JS). I've always enjoyed frontend development more than backend. Feel free to giggle about this terminology because it's definitely ridiculous. The job basically resolves all of my benefits issues. Unlimited vacation, pretty good health insurance, and a more robust retirement plan. There are also very clear paths for raises/promotions. In fact one of the first things you do when you get hired is sit down with your manager and department head and plot out a career track for yourself. So in my case I'm aiming for team management or something along those lines in a few years. So they would cater my training and promotions around that. There's a guaranteed yearly raise, plus a nice 5% bonus at end of the year.

So what's the problem? Because the second job seems perfect, right? Well the second job pays nearly 12% less a year. So what's the problem? Because that's an insane drop in pay, so clearly stay where I'm at, right? Well I was told by my former manager (and potentially new department head) that the plan would be to fast-track me into something closer to my current salary once I'm there for a few months and start excelling at my job. And I trust this guy because he fought for me to get raises twice when I worked under him before. It's rare to work under someone who will go to bat for you, and he was always that guy for me and I've no reason to think he wouldn't be again.

Because the way I see it, once I get a raise or promotion under my belt I should be pretty close to where I'm at now, but with substantially better benefits. And in a place with more of a future for me than my current job.

I just really don't know what to do here. I've "made a decision" in my head about a dozen times today, going back and forth between options. I kind of feel like it's worth taking the hit in the short term to be working at a place that will pay off better in the long term. Not just financially, but I'll get to broaden my skill set and actually have a concrete plan for progressing in my career.

Looking for any advice, or opinions, or whatever. I'm completely torn here.

edit -- Just wanted to thank everyone here. I decided to accept the job offer. My wife and I are working on a plan to weather the loss of income. Next step is writing the resignation letter....which always sucks. I hate disappointing people and it's a small company that I'm leaivng so my departure will be felt.

First off, fuck job applications. It's an awful and tedious charade. Creating accounts on hundreds of websites for the resume parser to not work and have to manually upload that all again, to then write a cover letter that's skimmed at best, for a word to be missing from the resume which their detection tech passes before you're given a real shot.

But regardless that's not why I'm here. I'm in the process of applying to jobs, but for the first time I'm applying to jobs internationally (I'm US based). Have any of y'all applied for and received jobs abroad? What was successful and what wasn't? I'm primarily looking into pharmaceutical research or pharmacovigilance/drug safety because that's where English language jobs are in my area of study, but hope to eventually become fluent enough in a different language so I can move back into infection prevention or disease surveillance.

They ask for years of experience, skills that no Jr would know since, well, it is a Jr and the process to apply for jobs are surreal. Thousands of tests, interviews that goes nowhere and lots of ghosting. And the pay is not that good. No wonder after 2 or 3 years of experience a lot of develpers starts working for companies outside of Brazil.

Last one to contact me sent me a test to do it in 1 week. I went above and beyond and learned a lot of things. Before this, i had some small projects in Go and Python. Now i needed to learn Docker, tests, github actions, Postgresql and other things. Not everything was mandatory, but i did my best and did it all. I finished in 5 days since i have a day job.

Here is the result: https://github.com/crdpa/conservice

Showing the data in the browser was not necessary, but i think it was a nice touch and well made. If this does not land me a job as a junior developer i don't know what else could.

I'm glad i already have a job in another area, but me and my SO are separated by a 4 hour drive and i'm tired. I want to work from home to be near her and our dog. Paying rent in two places is becoming a burden.

I would be happy if you guys could test the application i made. It only needs docker.

And do you guys have any tips from now on?

I've decided I'm going to start looking for a new job. I'm a software product manager in the US and will be looking for senior positions, hopefully remote. Has anyone used a service to help find jobs before? This is the first one I've come across and I'm considering it.
https://www.findmyprofession.com/career-finder/

Any thoughts or feedback welcome. Thanks.

Hey all, I'm transitioning from a plain old software engineer at my company to tech lead (first in responsibility, then eventually in title)!

I'm very excited about the opportunity, but the role is new, both for my company and personally. Would anyone have recommended reading I could peruse? I'd love to get a solid footing for what I should be doing as a tech lead, and how I can do it well!

“Dream” as in something you’d love to do as a job, with no consideration for its feasibility whatsoever. You don’t have to worry about pay, location, requirements, trainings/skill development, etc.

If you could choose the work that you do without having to worry about everything else tied into that decision, what would you do, and why?

Hello, I am a late 20s person from Europe who works part-time at a low-skilled job and is nearing completion of a masters in Financial Mathematics (FM). I also have an undergraduate degree in Economics and a post-graduate degree in Finance.

Previously I’ve worked full-time as an IT consultant, in R&D at an asset management company and in operational risk at an investment bank. I stopped working full-time in early 2018 due to mental health issues such as depression, anxiety disorder and possible Asperger’s. But even before then it was obvious my health was deteriorating and I actually got fired from my second job partially due to these problems. Since then I’ve been slowly working (or at least trying to) on my health, which has improved substantially but not as much as I would like. So in early 2018, with way too much time in my hands, I decided to get the part-time job to partially offset my expenses and also decided to go back to school to study FM.

I went back to school for multiple reasons. I was tired of doing work that was not very technical or quantitative. While working on my health I realized that I don’t do well with work that is subjective, unstructured or involves little interaction (for example doing a lot of reading, specially when I have no clear goal). I did a little programming at previous jobs and more during the masters. So, I can say with some confidence that I enjoyed it. But going back to the FM masters: it is very technical, I was fascinated and curious about it plus it has an excellent track record with regards to employment prospects. I also considered “going back” and doing an undergraduate degree in computer science but decided that it was just too long (minimum 3 years).

So with this “introduction” out of the way let’s get to the heart of this post. I don’t know what to do after I finish my masters. Of course I could just apply for jobs related with what I am studying. However, I think I really want to try working in the technical side of IT. I will admit I don’t know much about the different aspects and careers in IT but I find it interesting. Every time I was doing non-technical work I just wanted to understand and do the work of my technical colleagues. I think it both better suits my personality and aligns well with my long term goals of increased freedom and flexibility (IT generally pays well and you can do a lot of work remotely). I have this idea of maybe becoming a freelancer but I can understand that is not realistic in the short-term. So, working in IT inside a company is probably my best bet at this time. Regardless, another objective of mine is to be able to work less than 40h per week. I think it would be great for me, specially health-wise.

I have to say I got more excited about my ideas when I saw this post here on Tildes: https://tildes.net/~comp/quj/would_any_tilderino_be_interested_in_tutoring_me_in_programming. I am willing to put in the work and it would be awesome to have some tutoring. Another point I took from that post is that IT is a very big field and I honestly don’t know specifically what I want to do inside that space. However, I do know I don’t like dealing with UI or graphical/design aspects.

I guess I will finish by asking direct questions to help people structure their answers around (but if you want to talk about something else I wrote, be free to do so):

• First of all, what technical areas within IT do you think would suit me? If it’s not much of a hassle, please provide a brief description of what people actually do in those areas.
• Is it realistic to start working as a technical IT freelancer and learn as I go? Or are the odds very slim?
• Alternatively, if I decide to take the "safer" and more probable route of nailing a technical IT job, what should I do to put myself in a better position to attain that goal?

Thank you =)

Some years ago, I wrote a book about telecommuting, including a section about the reasons people don't want to be remote workers. High on the list was, "It's too hard to move up in the company" because if you're out of sight, you're out of mind.

Well, now suddenly nearly everybody is a telecommuter, whether or not they like the idea. So that particular skill is particularly relevant. And I've been assigned an article on "How to 'manage up' when you work from home." I'd like your input.

My article is meant to compile practical how-to tips for people working from home on “how to stay on your boss's radar.” What advice do you have to share?

Ideally: Give me a bullet point (“Do XYZ”), why (“It accomplishes this”), and perhaps an anecdote sharing how it made a difference.

Please don’t expend energy telling me why it’s important, or what the barriers are. Take that as a given. I’m looking for solid “Do this” suggestions.

• What are some of the clever, ingenious, or potentially even shameful shortcuts or workarounds that exist in your field (or that you know of from others)?

• What problem or hassle do they alleviate/make easier?

• Is the trick always worth it, or are there significant tradeoffs you have to take into account?

"What do you want to do/be when you grow up?" is a question we've all been confronted with, willingly or not, throughout our lives. It's intercultural, except for the increasingly rare instances where it's culturally or familialy expected that you'll continue a family trade.

And then there are those of us who just can't pick the one true direction, or thought we had it right for a while, then abruptly got bored/burnt out and had to find a new career or calling. I've personally had no fewer than eight different or only tangentially related "careers", sometimes overlapping with hobbies, and I'm floundering a bit to find the next one.

I was just introduced to the "multipotentialite" concept today - see the TED Talk, Why Some of Us Don't Have One True Calling for details, and https://puttylike.com/ for the speaker's site and book information. As the video mentions, polymathy was once highly respected in the Renaissance, but it's been devalued in favor of increasingly narrow specializations in the industrial and information economies.

This thread is for the bewildered, the career peregrinators wandering with or without aim, who've been branded as flakes or losers, or are suffering anxiety/depression because the heavens haven't opened up and rained down purpose and meaningful work.

Tell your story to the extent you're comfortable, ask questions and seek support.

• What is it like to discover a passion?
• What is it like to find yourself losing that passion?
• How did you accommodate the change?
• What carried over successfully from prior careers?
• Did you experience pressure to stay with just one thing?
• Have you had disrupted relationships with family, partners, or friends as a result of these changes?
• Do you feel that you've made unique contributions due to broad experience and/or interdisciplinary knowledge?
• Do you feel discriminated against in the job market for lacking a clear career path?
• Did you suffer damaging mental distress before or as a result of making a career change?
• Is it exciting or frightening to make a change, and has it become more or less so with repeated changes?

This is also open to the people who were seemingly born knowing precisely what they wanted to do - were you successful in pursuing it, or did you have to make accommodations, perhaps discovering something else?

My premise is that you genuinely want to help the company and the next person who moves into your old position. Maybe you got a promotion, or you found an even-better job. In any case, you want the old coworkers to succeed, and you want to make a smooth transition.

So there’s a few pieces to this:

• What do you do when you leave a job?

• What have other people done, when they left/moved on, that gave you the knowledge and skills you needed to excel?

• What did they NOT provide that you wish they had?

It’d be easy for me to focus on “what did you do” but none of us know how successful that was. So tell me, rather, about your experience as the person picking up the reins. What did that teach you about the process?

Anecdotes welcome! (And tell me how to refer to you in the article. Private is fine.)

I'm having a bit of a reckoning where I'm working a call center job, and when I like it, it's okay, and when I don't, it's a drag, but just recently my wrists have started to seriously act up and impact my work and life some, and my work insurance won't cover treatment. On a related note, Mom is willing to love and support bribe me back into going to school since I can go back on her insurance as long as I'm taking classes full time. Normally, I would respectfully decline because I'm prideful and petty, left school on academic probation 4 years ago after blowing off classes and am still nursing an underlying fear of failure and psychological hang-ups due to previous academic overextension. But I do have savings to fall back on, I am at a point where I can reasonably pivot, Mom will likely never let this one die, and my job causes me pain. So, what do?

It’s no secret that data science is a good career path. The jobs are in demand, the salaries are compelling, and the work is interesting. So how does someone break in?

In particular, I’m interested in how an experienced IT professional can move into data science. What advice would you give to someone with, say, five years of computing experience, who wants to break into the field? Tell me about the skills required, where you’d tell your friend to go to acquire them, and how to get a job without a specialized degree. What would make you say, “I want to hire this person, even if the individual lacks the relevant schooling”?

I am going to be graduating with a BA in Economics in May, and I am overwhelmed, like most people, with all the stuff that I am now responsible for. I was mostly wondering what advice you wish you heard when you were 22.

I've recently started taking some IT and programming classes at a local college because I've always been interested in IT as a career but I've never had any sort of professional experience in the field. Are there any skills that I need to definitely know, or any sort of certifications that I can get in order to get my foot in the door and start applying for IT focused jobs?