Maybe someone on LW could recommend you a better job. Either here (but you would have to tell us at least what country are you from) or at a local meetup.
Well, I pulled the trigger yesterday. While it felt great to actually speak my mind and have a real discussion regarding all of these issues (it was actually pretty amazing- no yelling or anyone getting upset- there was actual discourse), I will now be jobless in a month, and I really don’t know the answer to what’s next.
I’m debating between staying in my current area which would be a finance/accounting/operations type of role or just scrapping that whole path and try to go the programming route (close to zero expertise as of now). I’ve spent a lot of time working towards different credentials (CPA being the main one) so it’s hard to walk away from that even though I don’t think I’m learning anything all that useful.
I’ve never met anyone from these communities (Lesswrong/EA), but I spend a lot of time here, so yeah I would definitely be open to talking with anyone here about general strategy (I’ve read all of 80000 hours) or specific opportunities if someone stumbles across this and has an idea. I will use more conventional methods as well, but I wanted to at least put this out there.
You may want to post your question in an Open Thread. Maybe it would be more strategic to skip the current one which already contains over 200 comments, and wait for the new one to appear on Wednesday 19th; so more people will see it. Better than here in a thread that started three weeks ago.
I know almost nothing about the situation in “finance/accounting/operations type of role”. I have mostly been a programmer, so now my availability bias screams at me that “everyone is a programmer, and everything outside of IT is super rare”, which is obviously a nonsense. If there is a website in your country with job offers, perhaps you could try to imagine that you already have 3 years of experience, and look how many opportunities are there for each option and how well they pay.
My experience with programming in Java was that about 50% of jobs available are programs for some kind of financial institutions. (But this may be irrelevant for you; I am describing Eastern Europe.) The companies usually need some analyst to talk with the customer and explain their needs to the programmers. If you have a good financial backgroud, this could be the right job for you.
Programming could be risky, because it’s not for everyone. You should probably try it first in your free time. (Hint: If you don’t like programming in your free time, then the job probably is not the right one for you.) Also, after a few years the programmers usually hit the salary ceiling, and want to switch to managers or analysts. (Again, in Eastern Europe; I don’t know how universal this is.) If you could start as an analyst, you would be already ahead of me in the IT career, and I am almost twice your age with about 20 years of programming experience.
I have a friend who works in IT and makes more money than I do despite being a worse programmer, because he is a specialist: in his case it is finance and databases; also he is willing to travel to a customer in a different country whenever necessary. So the lesson is—don’t throw your specialization away just because you want to go to IT; instead try finding a place where they will value your specialization.
Also, tell us where you live, so the people living near you can contact you. Networking: it’s what brings the good jobs (as opposed to random jobs).
I thought you had issues with the financial services industry—if you are an accountant you can work as an accountant in any industry you want including non-profits.
Maybe someone on LW could recommend you a better job. Either here (but you would have to tell us at least what country are you from) or at a local meetup.
Well, I pulled the trigger yesterday. While it felt great to actually speak my mind and have a real discussion regarding all of these issues (it was actually pretty amazing- no yelling or anyone getting upset- there was actual discourse), I will now be jobless in a month, and I really don’t know the answer to what’s next.
I’m debating between staying in my current area which would be a finance/accounting/operations type of role or just scrapping that whole path and try to go the programming route (close to zero expertise as of now). I’ve spent a lot of time working towards different credentials (CPA being the main one) so it’s hard to walk away from that even though I don’t think I’m learning anything all that useful.
I’ve never met anyone from these communities (Lesswrong/EA), but I spend a lot of time here, so yeah I would definitely be open to talking with anyone here about general strategy (I’ve read all of 80000 hours) or specific opportunities if someone stumbles across this and has an idea. I will use more conventional methods as well, but I wanted to at least put this out there.
You may want to post your question in an Open Thread. Maybe it would be more strategic to skip the current one which already contains over 200 comments, and wait for the new one to appear on Wednesday 19th; so more people will see it. Better than here in a thread that started three weeks ago.
I know almost nothing about the situation in “finance/accounting/operations type of role”. I have mostly been a programmer, so now my availability bias screams at me that “everyone is a programmer, and everything outside of IT is super rare”, which is obviously a nonsense. If there is a website in your country with job offers, perhaps you could try to imagine that you already have 3 years of experience, and look how many opportunities are there for each option and how well they pay.
My experience with programming in Java was that about 50% of jobs available are programs for some kind of financial institutions. (But this may be irrelevant for you; I am describing Eastern Europe.) The companies usually need some analyst to talk with the customer and explain their needs to the programmers. If you have a good financial backgroud, this could be the right job for you.
Programming could be risky, because it’s not for everyone. You should probably try it first in your free time. (Hint: If you don’t like programming in your free time, then the job probably is not the right one for you.) Also, after a few years the programmers usually hit the salary ceiling, and want to switch to managers or analysts. (Again, in Eastern Europe; I don’t know how universal this is.) If you could start as an analyst, you would be already ahead of me in the IT career, and I am almost twice your age with about 20 years of programming experience.
I have a friend who works in IT and makes more money than I do despite being a worse programmer, because he is a specialist: in his case it is finance and databases; also he is willing to travel to a customer in a different country whenever necessary. So the lesson is—don’t throw your specialization away just because you want to go to IT; instead try finding a place where they will value your specialization.
Also, tell us where you live, so the people living near you can contact you. Networking: it’s what brings the good jobs (as opposed to random jobs).
I thought you had issues with the financial services industry—if you are an accountant you can work as an accountant in any industry you want including non-profits.