Ask HN: Should I cash out my 401K and try to get my dream job?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7532130

by notarockstar • 12 years ago

39 60 12 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

I'm a professional and conscientious engineer who loves developing software. I've been doing this for 13 years. I've worked for a few small software companies, working on commercial software. I know I'm a great developer, but I think the fact that:

* I don't have a GitHub profile, * have not contributed to any OSS projects, * don't answer a ton of question on StackOverflow, * cannot share any of the code I've worked on * and so forth,

...are not helping in the search for my dream job. These are the things that seem to get people to show interest in a developer these days.

I have no time, (or I'm not allowed), to do any of these things while working full-time for an old-school software company. I'm considering cashing out my 401K to live on for the next 6 months and spending all of my time working on these types of things to make myself a more attractive candidate. This would really make me happy, but is quite a gamble given that I have a family.

Thoughts? Has anyone here done something like this?

notarockstar4• 12 years ago

For clarity: my dream job is one that has a great culture, interesting work, is making money, and is remote friendly.

johnatwork• 12 years ago

I'm in the exact same situation. I have a kid and a wife that take up the Lion's share of my time. As well as working at a PCI compliant company that forbids me from showing my best work to anyone else. It's a struggle and a challenge, but I've explained my situation and my frustrations to my wife and we try to carve out a few hours here and there and a few more over the weekends for me to build something that I'm able to show. We thought about quitting and dipping into our savings but for now it works and we can sustain this for a bit longer.

Good luck to you, and I hope that you will reach a resolution soon.

notarockstar4• 12 years ago

I knew I was not alone, but it's good to hear it just the same.

gomox• 12 years ago

I think with the market being what it is, you can probably get a great job that matches your expectations without creating a 6-month-runway-no-retirement-funds stress inducer machine for yourself. Unemployment is a great new job's worst enemy. You can always negotiate from a more comfortable position if you keep your current job.

I can't really give more specific advice with the information you've provided, but spending your retirement savings and risking your family's financial safety in order to get a nicer job seems unnecessary. You can probably engineer a solution without those risks.

I'm sure you are aware of this, but "not having time" is a relative notion.

eshvk2• 12 years ago

great culture

There is no objective measure of great culture or interesting work. I mean, what is "great culture" to you may not be the same to me. For me, I would rather work in an environment where there is a good measure of self-motivated individuals (who get shit done) with a good balance of thinking towards the future (don't experiment too much with a bunch of hipster frameworks that generate a lot of technical debt). And. I like a place that has a great work life balance. On the other hand, there are people who think that great culture means being able to write code in any language, like to work 100 hours a week and who think free food = great culture. Now, I have no problem with that attitude. It is just not my thing.

, interesting work,

Interesting work: This is a hard problem. Again, this is dependent on you. If you are fresh out of school, everything may seem interesting to you. On the other hand, maybe you have worked on specific frameworks for a while (say building CRUD apps for a BigCo) and now feel like interesting is working on iOS stuff. Maybe you want to be a full stack engineer. Maybe you want to specialize?

is making money

Be wary, if you are at all looking at a startup. Very few of them are profitable. Most will quote numbers about funding, IPOs etc. It makes it hard to understand what 40 million in funding actually means. Does it mean that the startup is going to succeed? What does a 100 billion valuation mean? Does it mean the company is making money?

remote friendly.

I think every place in theory is remote friendly for the right candidates. As to whether their culture has ways of workings that make it productive for remote candidates, that is a different issue. If you are a person who is so amazing that you can do your own stuff without face time, almost every tech company will be okay with you being remote. On the other hand, if you are a person who needs to work in a team and work collaboratively, there has to be a culture where the idea that the other person may not be geographically in the same place as you is firmly fixed. E.g. there are small startups in SF where people all come into work at 11 AM and leave at 11 PM. It is a system that works well for them because they all work in sync, talk to each other in person if something needs to be resolved. I like to come to work insanely early, get stuff done, go out and switch off. Some times, I like to get quite time and work from home because I can get a tremendous amount of work done without having to deal with meetings. Again, I wouldn't fit well in the environment that I just listed.

flatline• 12 years ago

I don't see why you would need a github profile, etc., for those things, and if you think that improving your public image as a developer will land you a job with such a company, you may be right, but I think you are looking at the problem the wrong way. Many jobs offer the last two things in your dream job. A few jobs offer one of the first two, often at the expense of the latter. A very few jobs offer all four. How do you expect to tell that a company has all of these attributes? Unless they are a very high-profile company, you have very few data points to go on. Just like you talk yourself up during an interview, the company will talk themselves up, and often misrepresent and overstate what they have to offer.

Case in point, I'm actually in a somewhat similar situation, and am aggressively looking for an out. After returning to school to finish a degree I was hoping to take a different tack in my career. I really wanted to work on scientific applications with something more in mind than just the bottom line. I accepted a position that offered mostly remote work. They already have an established remote workforce, and it appeared to be a true meritocracy, with little management overhead or fixed structure, and lots of very bright talented people working on interesting projects. I had several interviews, including a day long in-person interview. I turned down three other very solid offers to take this job.

Fast forward a few months and the picture they painted could not be further from reality. The people in the office don't have phones, so talking to them directly always involves jumping through hoops and can take a long time to set up. People are often unwilling to talk at all and prefer to hold terse conversations over IM. Lack of management structure translates to lack of communication and support from above. Some things about the job were grossly misrepresented and there was one major outright lie that would have been a deal-breaker from the start if I'd known about it.

But the job looked perfect! I looked like a great fit to them! This is a career, don't count on a quick fix or finding nirvana in a day, or six months. A friend of mine used to say, life is the process of finding the things that don't work. If you put yourself 100% on the line hoping for a big payoff, you are more than likely not going to be happy with the result. Just look at how many startup founders on here have failed over and over before making it, and many never do. I see no reason to over-extend yourself like that for the sake of a salaried position, at least not without some really clear goal at the outset.

thedufer• 12 years ago

We're hiring - http://www.fogcreek.com/Careers/

I think we hit all of your points (although "great culture" is very subjective), and our application process does not hinge on OSS/SO profile/GitHub or anything of the sort.

patio11• 12 years ago

Many of the world's best engineers don't have a Github / OSS contributions / Stack overflow / etc. They're still quite hireable. It is highly likely you are also hireable, even without a portfolio that you can conveniently point to, although that would be an asset.

Do not cash out your retirement account. [Edit: Generic personal finance advice for everyone: Unless your children will starve in the snow otherwise, it is never a good time to cash out your retirement account. It will be very tempting to tap it to pay for your wedding, your first home, a medical emergency, your kids' college, etc etc, but if you do this, you will not have it at retirement. This is far and away the largest risk associated with self-directed retirement accounts.] It is not required to buy coffee for people with the ability to hire engineers. Coffee is cheap and jobs are plentiful in the current environment.

vkjv• 12 years ago

Have all of my up votes. This. A thousand times this. The short answer is, "no, do not cash out your 401k."

The long is answer, is that there is probably another way. Make it a goal and put savings away for specifically that purpose. Find another job that may not be your dream job is friendlier to out of the office work. Maybe consulting?

fsk• 12 years ago

Also, cut your expenses, save 20%+ of salary, build up a 6-12 month emergency fund IN CASH or money market.

Then, if you lose your job or need to take time off, you aren't totally screwed.

Also, after-tax investments lets you fund personal projects without taking the huge penalty for raiding retirement savings.

kirpekar3• 12 years ago

Absolutely not. You will have to pay taxes on withdrawals and a 10% early withdrawal penalty. Depending on the size of the withdrawal, this will immediately set you back 6-7 years of the 13 you contributed. If you have ~30 years to retire, even a small withdrawal will set you back by 10 years at retirement. Run some basic compound interest calculations if you don't agree.

There are many other options: moonlighting, going part-time, reducing your responsibilities at work, taking an unpaid sabbatical, etc.

ronaldx2• 12 years ago

Run some basic compound interest calculations if you don't agree.

Make sure to include basic compound inflation because the figures given here seem to be hyperbolic.

kirpekar3• 12 years ago

100k principal, add 1k every month for 30 years. Compound at 7% --> 2M

50k principal, add 1k every month for 30 years. Compound at 7% --> 1.6M

Withdrawing 50k today costs you 400k in retirement

400k = 20% of 2M = 8 years of your 40 year career

obsurveyor2• 12 years ago

Early withdrawal penalty is 20% now.

kirpekar3• 12 years ago

Not true

http://www.irs.gov/taxtopics/tc424.html

Distributions received before age 59½ are subject to an early distribution penalty of 10% additional tax unless an exception applies.

smileysteve2• 12 years ago

1) Do not cash out of your 401k. The penalty and taxes make this never worth it. Along with you not getting the long term compounded interest it is started as. Instead, work for a few more months to have an "emergency fund" that allows you to live life without an income for a few months.

smileysteve2• 12 years ago

2) If you're willing to quit your job to make contributions to GitHub, you might not care if the company

--A) makes the unlikely discovery that you are putting non work related projects on GitHub

--B) cares that you are coding and posting online in your spare time

--C) decides to terminate you for this.

--If your IP is questionable, you may not want to contribute to large open source projects - or you could ask your HR for an exemption for specific projects.

3) If you don't have time (and especially if you are in a job that you want to quit), make the time. Segment your life as much as possible while your work / hourly expectations are met to a reasonable standard to which you want to work (at any company)

4) This is additional, but if you want to work at a company with a great culture, remote work, and reasonable expectations, it's important that you understand how to do the numbers above in a forward and friendly way.

--A) If you are familiar with working too long, you especially need to learn to segment yourself when working remotely.

--B) If you are familiar with working too long, you especially need to ensure that you don't try to encourage others to not segment their lives. (There are always things to be done, but everybody should be able to go home and spend the evening / weekend with their family)

--C) You will be much happier in your life / job if you have the ability to not have to use your 401k to work a few months.

pdq• 12 years ago

What part of the US or world are you located? Are you wanting to build your own startup, work for a startup, or something else? Are you looking to learn new languages or technologies?

The reason I ask is because if you already have a decent skillset, you may be able to get a new job at a startup and learn new skills at the same time (and thus not need to cash out your retirement fund). Simply contributing to open source projects IMO is not that valuable unless you want to prove experience in a languages you've never used professionally.

officialjunk• 12 years ago

Just a point if clarification: by "cash out" do you mean all/majority of your 401k? If so it's not a good idea. Some small percentage could be considered, by in general you should only do so in an emergency. There are penalties for early withdrawals.

Can you dedicate an hour a day to OSS? Or perhaps spearhead an project at work to be open sourced?

Have you tried applying for positions that qualify as your dream job? If you haven't, you may want to start and see if those open source contributions are as key as you think.

crisnoble2• 12 years ago

Can you dedicate an hour a day to OSS? Or perhaps spearhead an project at work to be open sourced?

He mentioned that he is not allowed to do these types of things while employed at his current employer. I always find that kind of clause crazy. If I want to spend my evenings playing video games the company would be fine with that, if I want to spend it creating video games no dice?

I imagine it is going to be harder and harder for companies to create anti-moonlighting clauses as time progresses.

nimblegorilla• 12 years ago

Don't cash out your 401K.

I think you would be better off finding a sub-par non-dream job that lets you work on things that bring you closer to achieving your real dream job. For instance, if you are interested in javascript technologies you could try to find a contract involving node or angular and become more active in the online communities around those tools. After 3-6 months scope out the market with your new skills/network and see what else is available.

seanmccann• 12 years ago

If you are indeed a good engineer you could do all those things on a single weekend:

1.) Sign up for GitHub, fork a project, and improve it

3.) Answer 2-5 hard questions on StackOverflow

4.) Profit

They just want to see your skill. You shouldn't answer "a ton of questions" on StackOverflow. Just answer a couple hard ones. Somehow prove that you've actually got stuff done over the last 13 years. There are programmers that just started to learned the skill a few weeks ago, with tiny, but active projects in their GitHub.

ps. I hate when people say that they don't have something (GitHub account) that takes 30 seconds to signup for, is free, and is very important to solving their current issue. There's usually a deeper issue at that point.

techwatching• 12 years ago

This. Work before work, after work, on the weekends, once the kids are in bed, whatever. If you have a dream, stretch for it.

crisnoble2• 12 years ago

Can you clarify on your statement "I'm not allowed". Are you barred from moonlighting on OSS or creating software of your own? Or are you not allowed to do these things while at work?

ibmthrowaway218• 12 years ago

My employer (IBM) allows people to do things in their spare time with the following kinds of exceptions (off the top of my head, sure there are more):-

a) Do not use company time or equipment. Pretty obvious that one.

b) No doing something that competes directly with IBM. This has to be more specific than "working with computers". It means I can still get beer money for helping friends/family fix their computers/servers, but I can't start a small consultancy that aims to take possible business away from IBM. I can start a social sports related side project website because IBM aren't in that space. But if I worked on Websphere Application Server (I don't!) I couldn't contribute to, for example, Apache Tomcat/Geronimo or JBoss AS. I could write my own game Apps and sell them through the App Store. Etc.

c) Contributing to OSS in your spare time needs to be cleared with IBM, just in case. The main reason is that everyone loves to sue IBM and OSS is fertile ground given the various OSS licenses and implications. If I do some work on some OSS package in my spare time it means I'm tainted in that area. If I then do any work on a commercial application in the same area then it opens the door for people to claim that the commercial work I've done has some work that could have been influenced by the OSS code and part of the commercial application is therefore derivative of the OSS work. With some OSS licenses this could mean that the entire commercial application is considered a derivative work and, depending on the license, the source code would need to be released or IBM could not charge for the software, etc.

It's not all doom and gloom. I work with some people that have got clearance to work on OSS software, they just have to make sure they avoid working with anything related to it on the commercial side (to the point of not having access to the source code to provide plausible deniability). You also need to think in advance and not work on anything that we could reasonably be working on in the future.

We are also regularly warned to avoid even looking at any OSS related to the commercial code we work on, for fear of tainting. Same for Googling for answers to technical questions and copy-and-pasting code from SO or elsewhere. You've generally got no idea of the copyright/licensing aspects of any code you see in the results.

IBM does use OSS in some of its commercial applications. Its use is always cleared with the lawyers first though. Certain licenses must be avoided simply because they are incompatible with selling commercial software. Where the license is permissive we always make sure we follow the rules and I've personally contributed many bug fixes in the OSS code back to the community as required (or even if not required!); these have often been found as the result of formal code inspections (which IBM is effectively funding by paying employees to perform it), peer review, static analysis tools, or general SQA testing.

columbo• 12 years ago

Do you have a company in mind that you would love to work for? Have you contacted them and did they reject you for any particular reason?

Start with the end in mind. "I want to have X job" is a decent start but you should narrow that down to "I want to have X job, in Y industry and here are N example companies I would love to work for."

Investigate these companies and look at the developers they hire. Do they all have github accounts? Chances are you'll see a lot of blank profiles and the occasional blog last updated in 2008.

If you do see many people with very impressive online personas then start working with these people. Start working on the same OSS projects they are working on. You might find you don't like these people as much as you think you do. On the other hand after a few months they might say "Hey this notarockstar guy is pretty good, maybe we should hire him".

Oh and don't cash out your 401k

eshvk2• 12 years ago

Please don't go by the echo chamber that is the Bay Area based Hacker News. A Github profile is nice, contributing to OSS projects is nice, yet those aren't the only things that matter to acquiring a job. Unless you are targeting specific companies which are so overwhelmingly biased towards hiring people who only fit a certain demographic. There are loads of people, for example who work in Finance, who don't have all these things. They make the transition to tech just fine.

Source: I worked for two years in SF. I am currently working in NYC. A bunch of my co-workers are incredibly smart ex-finance folks who are good at Math and C.S. I am willing to bet that most of them didn't start a github profile until they joined us.

ww520• 12 years ago

Don't cash out your 401K. You will get hit early withdrawal penalty.

To get to where you want, live way under your means and save up your fuck-you fund. When that can last for 12 months, then you can spend 4 to 5 months to do whatever you want.

eplanit• 12 years ago

Listen to those here saying to NOT cash it out. I speak from experience. I kept my startup afloat for almost a year by using up all my 401K savings. I was in my mid-30s, and in that moment the worry of losing momentum on the startup was so strong that I calculated the risk with a strong bias. To make a long story short, the startup fizzled and I found myself in my late 30s with no retirement whatsoever. That was a while ago, and the short-term issues (being broke and with wind gone from the sails) cleared in about 2 years, and my income is again quite fine, and the spirit lives on. However, I will likely have to work until I die as a result of having no retirement savings. What has been built back since the fallout will not be sufficient for a long-term retirement. So now I work new strategies to transfer what I earn to safer investments (real estate) in order to have some assets to liquidate later in order to fund a retirement. All this said, it's not pathetic to me -- I made my decision, and I'm living with it. I expect nobody to provide me any "safety net" (that just wouldn't be genuine living). However, I would strongly discourage anyone from following this same path.

steven2012• 12 years ago

I'm in my 40s. I got a job at a YC startup without a Github, Twitter, any OSS contributions, Stackoverflow activity, and without even knowing the primary language that they develop here.

If you live in an area outside of SV where programming jobs aren't as prevalent, I would be a bit more careful.

Instead of using your 401k which is a terrible idea, you really should have a savings account that you should dip into. Therefore I would continue working for the next year or 2, keep working but save every dime you can so that in 2 years you can take 3-6 months off. In the meanwhile, apply to every single job you can.

justinzollars• 12 years ago

CaptainMath• 12 years ago

No.

You are going to fail.

You'll end up broke, pissed off, and unemployable (because you tasted freedom, and you don't want back in).

Sorry, statistics, history, and personal empirical evidence is on my side.

rhizome• 12 years ago

No, don't.

Wait...what? You want to cash out so you can create a GitHub profile and answer SO questions? Just no.

On first pass I thought you were going to take the money and time to build something. But not this. Here's my advice: don't get a dream job, get one that makes you happier. Not "happy," not "happiest," not "dream job," just a bit better, so you can have a little more time to put stuff on GitHub and answer questions on SO and spend time with your family. It's not just "dream job" and "old-school software company."

whatevsbro• 12 years ago

I'm going to go against the grain here and suggest that if you can invest your 401k wisely, you might as well cash it out.

The reason for this is that you're not going to get that pension anyway, because the Western world's economies are barely holding together even as we speak. No one knows what will happen, but some of us know that something bad is going to happen.

It's fundamentally quite simple. Dozens of trillions of unpaid liabilities are just not going to get paid, and most Western governments are getting even more indebted each year. Using money you don't actually have will have consequences even for governments.

Whether your current plan is a wise investment for that 401k is another matter. I'd consider other plans too.

127001brewer• 12 years ago

Your definition of a "dream job" sounds like it could be any new job.[1] Why not look for a new job instead (since you should be relatively marketable with thirteen (13) years of software development experience)?

1. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7532138

orware• 12 years ago

First off, don't cash out your 401K for all of the reasons already mentioned (in your mind, it shouldn't even exist...that money is for future you).

I started right away with putting money into retirement accounts(partly due to this book: http://www.amazon.com/Automatic-Wealth-Grads-Anyone-Starting...).

While it hurts a bit each month to put money away, in the end I know it'll be good for "Future Me". I currently have 3 different ones: a Roth IRA (I used to put in $400/mo, but now only do $200/mo if I can...the next accounts are all automatic though and I don't skip those), the 2nd is a 403b (similar to a 401k, but available for people in the public sector) which I put $1000 into pre-tax, and the 3rd is my life insurance/savings account which I put $400 into each month (this is a bit extra on top of the regular premium so it'll build value as an additional income source I can tap into down the road). Both 1 and 3 are after taxes and #2 is my only pre-tax one. My savings account right now isn't too great partly because so much goes into the future retirement accounts, but I try and put another $300/mo into that if I can, but some months I end up tapping into that due to extra expenses that come up. (Sounds like maybe we should have a separate thread on how much people put away each month and their reasons for doing so :-).

I think some of the others are correct though, you can definitely start now in your free time with at least creating some accounts and started to do a little bit (the key thing would be being consistent with those actions...as an example, I've always been an HN consumer, but I hardly ever commented...now I'm making an effort to add my own thoughts to posts and share what I have to say because I'd like to build up my karma :-).

I agree with your comments though that it's hard to demonstrate your skills and capabilities to employers when all you have is your resume and not these ancillary profiles and public information spots that seem to be used a lot in determining whether someone's skills are adequate.

Since I work in a college IT department I feel like I'm automatically ruled out because of my background even though I always include a list of the various projects I've worked on over the past 6 years and the increasing levels of responsibility I've acquired.

The other negative I have is I'm probably my own worst critic and don't always see my own accomplishments in their best light (I'll think to myself, "Self, well you don't really have any Ruby on Rails experience so that automatically disqualifies you from all of these jobs, let's see what else is available...". That's kind of a self-imposed problem where I need to do a better job of selling myself.

Actually right now, even though I enjoy my job quite a bit, all I'd really want is the ability to tap into some of the knowledge of Silicon Valley to learn new things (by working part-time remotely and maybe sometimes in person with a company) that I just can't learn here so I can bring those into my current job and apply them, but there don't seem to be too many employers looking for that (though if you know of any, please point me too them :-).

Since I'm way out in stix of SoCal, next to the border, in the desert, in the middle of a mainly agricultural community to have access to all of the good employers/jobs I'd have to move up to the Bay, which isn't too bad (but it's SOOO expensive). I don't mind where I live so much...I just mind that the learning opportunities I have are so limited (so I end up having to find my own ways to teach myself, but that process is a lot slower than having a teacher, aka a willing co-worker, help guide you).

Key takeway though from this thread so far: Don't cash out your 401K and possibly put your family in a precarious position. Having a Happy Dad is important, but so is providing for your family. I would start small and be consistent with the activities you mentioned and treat them like projects. While I tend to forget (until I remember)...if you're consistent with your actions over a period of time you'll be amazed at how much you'll accomplish (of course this is compounded by family time, which takes away from the time you could use, but even if there's just one day a week that you can have some "Daddy Alone Time" that everyone is aware of, and the wife can be your buffer, then that'd be a good start :-).

Good luck buddy (it's tough I know!)

AjithAntony• 12 years ago

and the 3rd is my life insurance/savings account

I'm interested in learning more about life insurance. Did the book you recommend advise storing value in life insurance? Most resources I've studied suggest that any life insurance product other than "term" is not worthwhile, and that it's not worth getting until some stakeholder in your life depends on your lifetime earning potential.

icedchai• 12 years ago

Do this stuff on your own time. Can you spare a couple hours a week?

And how can you "not be allowed"? Just ignore that and do it anyway. Worse case, you are fired and have to live off your 401k, right? Best case, nobody notices.

The probable case is somewhere in the middle. You get a warning: a talking to by an "authority figure." Just tell them you "forgot" you were "not allowed."

sjg007• 12 years ago

What is your dream job?

isuraed• 12 years ago

You should look into https://www.hackerschool.com/

Seems perfect for your situation.

jedanbik• 12 years ago

What are the tax implications? Can you work part-time? Do you attend meetups in your area? Have you been applying for jobs?

onedev• 12 years ago

Don't do it, it will not end up being worth it. Instead make some time on the weekends to learn and build what you want. Maybe wake up earlier and spend an hour each morning on something you want to do. Experiment with your productivity outside of work and try to get things done that way instead of cashing out your 401k and setting your finances back several years.

gdulli• 12 years ago

Github and OSS contributions only seem like they're important because of disproportionate mentions among the monoculture of bloggers, HN commenters, etc. They're not. A good company will hire you if you can demonstrate one way or another that you're worth hiring. A bad company will value mediocre code coming in from those venues and discount other types of substantive achievements.

imsofuture• 12 years ago

I would disagree that any of those things you think are hurting you are that important. They're certainly all nice-to-haves, but if I were looking at your resume I wouldn't think for a second of discounting it just because you didn't have those on there.

Edmond• 12 years ago

My 2 cents: No don't do it.

Six months is a very short period in time, you'll be surprised how quickly it flies by without you haven't accomplished much, at which stage you'll be out of a job and money and little to show for it.

Is there a reason you can't do these projects on weekends and in your spare time?

Even if you manage to finish some projects, what makes you think these would automatically make you a very attractive engineering candidate?

artmageddon• 12 years ago

The other comments in this thread explain it much better than I could, but I will also throw in my 2 cents and add that you should absolutely not cash out your 401K. You're better off finding a better job. Once you do, you won't have to think about dipping into retirement savings for this.

Thrymr• 12 years ago

You are working as a full-time software engineer and you think 6 months of answering StackOverflow questions and working on your GitHub profile are going to be better for your resume than continuing in your job?

Get a new job. If not your dream job (yet), some job that is incrementally better. Apply for jobs. Interview for jobs. That will teach you a lot more than hanging out on SO.

Iftheshoefits• 12 years ago

1) I don't have a GitHub (or Bitbucket, or other "profile" on similar repository hosts), or anything else in your list--at least not that I advertise or share with people. Yet I'm in SV earning in the mid $100k. The kinds of companies who put a lot of weight on the things you list are disproportionately likely to be social media sweatshops with a dogmatic view of development (if it's not <latest fad JS framework>+RoR+Cloud developed on a Macbook Pro, it's not "development"). If you want to work for them, you need those things; otherwise you don't.

I have a full-time job, as I noted, and a toddler at home. Over the last six months I've found a half-hour here, an hour there to do side-projects. One of which (and my only, to-date) I just released to the Google Play store. There is absolutely no reason you can't do this.

What does "I'm not allowed" mean? I can't think of any employment contract that would restrict you from doing any other development work on your own time. Just pick projects that a "reasonable observer" would not think overlap with your "day job" work.

2) You should not cash out your 401k to live on. It is not that kind of savings account (i.e. an "emergency" fund). However, if you have a solid investment opportunity in something (relatively) stable for the long-term, such as real estate, it may be worth it. I've cashed out my 401k three times, two for the wrong reasons (to fund relocations), and one to purchase a home that I now rent out and derive significantly more income (net of taxes and other payments) from than had that money been in my 401k fund.

notarockstar4• 12 years ago

The "not allowed" refers to sharing some of the best code I've written. I find it hard to reproduce that quality of code in a 45 minute code puzzle, like the time I interview for Twitter.

skittles• 12 years ago

This question shows a lack of self confidence. Be confident in your skills when networking and interviewing. Seems like you are latching onto one way of getting a more interesting job. It is a reckless plan and totally unnecessary. Finding a job is like finding a mate. There's a small overlap between what you want and what potential partners want. Willingness to fail, repeatedly, is a big help in these situations. Just keep interviewing. If you are good at what you do, someone will give you a chance.

AznHisoka• 12 years ago

Quitting your current job to hack on a side project that gets you a better job seems completely backward.

I can understand quitting a job to pursue a business that might cash out for millions.

tectonic• 12 years ago

Please send me an email; let's talk!

notarockstar4• 12 years ago

Thank you all for the great advice. I think the cash out of the 401K idea is really a reaction to how miserable my current position is. The culture is terrible and I want out, now. So I'm going to use my vacation time to send out a ton of resumes, practice some coding puzzles, and hack away on some code that I can provide as polished, well thought out work.

I did apply for a job at Twitter months back, but failed miserably at the two 45 minute online "coding to solve a puzzle" interviews. I was nervous, and also was opposed to that style of interviewing, and it did not do well.

I realize I need to get over it, and just accept that some shops may interview that way. It may let me know that it may not be the place for me, or open a door to a good opportunity.

The number one thing for me is culture. That the culture works for me. For any company that I am seriously considering, I will request working on a small project with the team before I accept any offer. If I had done that for my current position, I would have never come on board.

jcizzle• 12 years ago

I cashed out my 401k to start a company. I was in a unique situation where I started contributing to my 401k at the very bottom of the recession (luck). The returns on my 401k contributions were greater than 100% by the time I cashed out because the market had fully recovered. The company I previously worked for had 100% matching up to 15k. So, I looked at the penalty and figured since I had quadrupled my money, 10% didn't seem like a concern next to the possibility of creating a successful business.

Ended up working out. Was able to make that money back 5x in 6 months. It was a risky move and I could see it not panning out more often than not. But, to go against the grain here: there is no such thing as 'never'.

matchagaucho• 12 years ago

Spend 2 hours per night. Don't spend your 401K.

This is basically the equivalent of going back to school and retraining.

colin_mccabe• 12 years ago

The really big open source projects such as the Linux kernel or Hadoop generally are mostly done by paid developers. The interests of the companies and the interests of the developers generally align, and it works out well.

Smaller, personal open source projects may or may not help you get a job. To be honest, I've never been at a company where looking at Github pages was a big part of the hiring process. Maybe it's something recruiters look at? I don't really know. I have a bunch of stuff up on Github myself, but I don't know who looks at it, and I certainly don't rely on it to get me a job.

Similarly, I've never been at a place where the topic of answering questions on Stack Overflow came up. It's like contributing to Wikipedia-- something you do on your own time for the public good. Stack Overflow is a useful resource, but you also need to keep in mind that some of the answers there are kind of misleading or wrong.

Really, what any well-run company is going to try to figure out is whether you are a good fit at the company. If you have done some things in the areas they're interested in, that's going to be a positive. If it's just random stuff, then they are probably not going to have the time or inclination to look at it. I've done a lot of stuff that nobody has ever asked me about in a job interview. And that's ok.

If you are having trouble finding a job, the #1 reason is probably location. There just aren't a lot of jobs in some parts of the country, and most companies don't want remote workers unless they're rockstars. I wish I could give you an easy solution for this, but I really can't. You are probably going to have to choose between your career and your home town, like generations before you.

If you are somewhere in California, you can do open source work in your free time as long as it meets three criteria: 1. own time, 2. own equipment, 3. no use of employer trade secrets. It doesn't matter what they tell you... the worst they can do in California if they don't like your personal project is fire you. In other U.S. states (such as Washington), it's often pretty easy for them to claim your personal work as their own (a lot of employment contracts have this in it).

masters3d• 12 years ago

Thank you for asking this question. I think it crosses everybody's mind at some point. I've learned a lot reading this. Im in my early 30's. I think the best thing to do try to grow within your current company. I think of the story of oscar mayer when he walked into a meat packing company make his company. people wonder what if he would have walked into an icecream shop or a clothing chain. Perhaps now oscar mayer's would be a huge icecream company or clothing chain. Curiosity and a little creativity can go long way but nothing replaces hard work when talking about dream jobs.

Ask HN: Should I cash out my 401K and try to get my dream job?

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