Would leaving a coding job for a teacher job typecast me from future coding work

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6884842

by thejacenxpress • 13 years ago

5 6 13 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

I've been talking with a recruiter about a potential instructor role at a private company (not a college/university). It's great pay and 3 months vacation...which sounds like fun because I'd really enjoy teaching and learning new things. However, if I'd leave there 2-3 years later for a coding job, I'm worried the 2-3 of teaching years would be looked upon as 'non-coding' time, even with working on side projects. I'm curious to anyones thoughts. Thanks

zellio• 13 years ago

I can only speak for my personal preference but if you could show good works for that period of time I don't see it being an issue. Use the few years and huge vacation to contribute to major open source projects, stay current and keep coding. I don't see why it should be an issue. It shows flexibility, aptitude, and a drive to better the self.

thejacenxpress2• 13 years ago

Thanks :)

malandrew• 13 years ago

These are my thoughts as well. Hacking on an open source project during vacation time sounds awesome and is something I would definitely respect if interviewing a candidate that was previously working as a teacher.

Hacking on open-source and side projects is also an incredibly important thing to do in order to be a good role model for your students. You should make it clear to your new employer that side projects and open-source are a huge part of success in tech and that you need time to work on them and also share them with your students.

What are you going to be teaching and for how long? I would imagine that you don't necessarily want to be teaching the same subject year after year. 1-2 years may be fine, but more than that spent on essentially the same task would strike me as off, but I can't put my finger on why.

Could you hold the position of teacher at the same institution in a way that changes from year to year? If not, could you continue teaching, but change the institution from year to year to make sure you are teaching something new each time? Alternatively, could you maybe alternate doing 1 year of teaching and 2 years of coding to satisfy both itches without ever getting rusty as a professional software engineer?

gypsy_dave• 13 years ago

My experience tell me:

* The Company name/brand can do as much to typecast you as the position. Eg, Dave's Zert Manufacturing vs Trendy Bay Co

* 'Instructor' can simply be a high-end gradient of many different roles. It doesn't necessarily say 'non-coder'. A senior architect can be understood to be an instructor of sorts. How this is all documented on a resume is fairly flexible.

* Academic teaching time would definitely typecast you negatively as a programmer, but not so much with System Administration experience. I'd avoid it unless you are headed into Academia. I don't have any very specific examples of this other than the perception I had of various co-workers who had come from university jobs. They had detectable institutionalization.

My general advice would be to have a clear picture of where you want to end up and do your best to have each link in the chain moving you in the same direction. It's easy to justify getting sidetracked by relationships, geography, and economic considerations.

I'll end with a useless caveat about subjective answers. Everything obviously depends on the specifics of the company and job.

arisAlexis• 13 years ago

I was a coder but i got a job as an ms office teacher for 10 years. I was still coding for fun but that didn't help when I started searching for a job. I wasn't a coder anymore.

thejacenxpress2• 13 years ago

Good to know, appreciate it

Would leaving a coding job for a teacher job typecast me from future coding work

Related Stories