Ask HN: Why did you join the tech industry?

Entered my community college without any ambitions and had a 0.9 GPA my first semester. My major was undeclared and chose a random assortment of classes, passing my intro to psych class with a B and failing all other with an F. Ended up getting arrested for drug possessions charges. After that turned my GPA (3.92) around graduating from my community college with an AA in Liberal Arts: Humanities degree.

Transferred to another college pursuing a BA in Philosophy. Out of curiosity and to challenge myself decided to take Calculus (I was good at math in HS, but stopped after pre-calc). I did pretty well and enjoyed it. Decided to pursue some more math classes. Also took an intro to programming class since I was somewhat curious in this. Realizing I had a growing debt, $0 to my name, and no real career plans at this point I decided to pursue Math and eventually become an Actuary.

However after a couple more CS classes it was apparent this is what I wanted to be doing with my life, and it depressed me to read about what career advancements in being an actuary actually entailed. Quickly crammed in some more CS classes and graduated with a BS in Math, BA in CS and a minor in Philosophy.

My "decision" to join the tech industry was purely happenstance. I do not believe if it weren't for a series of events happening around those times in a quick succession I would have ended up here.

Edit: Added some detail regarding my original course selection.

My dad was a computer programmer. My mom was before I was born.

In high school I took a Fortran class. It was... all right, I guess. Then the computer science lab got five TRS-80s. I borrowed the Basic manual and read it one day when I was supposed to be paying attention in calculus class. I started using them (I wasn't in any of the CS classes, but they were tolerant of such shenanigans), and it was magic. Turns out the difference between one week of turnaround time and one minute makes a big difference.

Then I didn't do anything much with computers in college. I graduated with a math and physics degree. I felt really smart, because those are hard majors. Then I graduated and found out I was unemployable. So, not so smart after all.

At my dad's suggestion, I interviewed for a computer programming job. The boss said "I don't see a lot of computer classes on your transcript." I said "No, I've got a math degree. I'm mostly self-taught with respect to computers." I figured that was the end of my chances there. Turns out she had a masters in math and was self-taught on computers. I got the job.

The pay's good, the working conditions are a lot better than digging ditches, and I like the work at least some of the time, so I've stayed.

I got a Tandy 56k when I was about 7 years old. I tried following the programming instructions in the book with limited success, but I do wish I had an adult who could have helped me along with it. I wanted to make a game like Excitebike.

In college, depressed and unsuccessful in my chemistry major, Quake found me and I fell in love with pc gaming and thought, once again, that I might make games. In junior year, I decided to take Java but though I got an A in the midterm, I couldn’t even get a program to compile. The next semester I transferred to a public college and started a computer science major using C++ of all things where I did really well, made lifelong friends and found my love for programming.

Today, I’ve yet to make a real game, but the journey to trying has taught me much and I really do enjoy creating applications that make things easier for my coworkers so the dream of making video games is on the back burner.

Like most of us, I wanted to write my own games, which I did until I reached professional age.

Now I deeply regret making a profession out of my hobby, for the following reasons:

- Projects in general are unrewarding and uninteresting. People claim the industry is broken due to the hiring process, but I actually find whiteboard interviewing quite fun and challenging. The question for me is not why the hiring process does not mimic a real work scenario, but rather why are our jobs so boring to begin with.

- The industry is infested by puritan and cult like behaviour. Critical thinking is the fastest way to being an outcast and having an unsuccessful career. Plus everyone seems to have realised that you have to be a self-branding narcissist these days.

- Lack of true passion and love for programming in the field. Talking about, I don't know, compilers for example, rewards you with weird stares and disgusted faces.

- The pay isn't that great in Europe to begin with.

I took an interest in programming was 11-12. Dont know exactly why it started. I guess I always had a fascination of figuring out exactly how things worked and my only hobby at the time was playing games. I was interested in a handful of things as years went on (sciences when I was younger, debated maybe getting into EE as a teenager), but software development was what stuck the hardest, probably because it was so accessible (and became even more so since) and at the time, it seemed like I was good at it. As I grew older and closer to adulthood I did some freelancing and decided I didn't need any education and figured I could just coast on the fact I'd been learning for so long. Ended up getting an job at ~19 after about a year or so of a different, failed venture and have been that for a few years.

Honestly it started as a way to get a better job. I had graduated with a degree in Physics and French, and after attempting to get a policy-related job in DC, I ended up working as a tutor for high school students. During the second year, when I was teaching the same material for the second time, I found that it wasn't as fulfilling and didn't have the kind of long term growth I was interested in.

After entering the industry (self-taught my way to getting paid for front-end work), I've come to greatly enjoy tech and computer science, and since then I've pursued additional formal education and have had some great personal growth. While it started as a way to find gainful employment, I'm very glad that it has blossomed into something much larger than that for me.

Joined because it is the lowest barrier entry for probably the most comfortable 6 figure job you can have in USA.

I was able to spend a couple weeks during my Christmas vacation at a previous job to learn enough to pass my first SE interview. Four years later I've moved around 3 times and I'm making enough money to live comfortably in California and own a Tesla.

Not a huge fan of web development any more, so I've really gotten into understanding how things like databases and geospatial stuff, and diving into mobile app development. Also been learning how all the different moving parts of the tech organization (sales, marketing, engineering, product, support, etc.) work together.

I first got into coding at 15 after chatting with the admin of an MMORPG private server I played on often over IRC on QuakeNet. Eventually I discovered that there was more than QuakeNet, and a group of moderators from forum network I followed had an IRC server. There I made a couple of friends and started learning PHP, getting into building my own websites.

I enjoyed it a lot, and I decided that as I got older I'd start my own company building apps! It grew from there, getting my first job locally and a couple of years later joined a startup.

I enjoyed building websites and working with computers, and realised that the tech industry was the most likely place I could make enough money to live on.

Given the other likely choices were academia, media/journalism and game development, and given the wages and working conditions those fields entail, I think I probably made the right choice.

Finished a PhD in mathematics and wanted to 1) leave academia 2) move back to my country of origin.

Picking up some programming was pretty straightforward, writing code is half (or even less) as frustrating as doing abstract research and pays 3x better here. The choice was easy.

I was actually good at it vs all of my physics classes. When I'm engaged in a project its fun to do.

Did 2 internships and got a job out of college, still at it 5 years later.

My older brother bought an Altair 8800 kit. I wrote some code in the 128B (yes Byte) RAM to do a little game on the low-res tube tv screen. I was hooked. I was 14.

Moved from finance asset management to analytics, under the assumption that working with some coding, is the way ahead. Not sure I agree that much now.

1. Making things with the computer is fun

2. I didn't have a college degree but wanted to make lots of money