Hacker News .hnnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin
Ask HN: How would/do you find your niche...
2 points by grumps on Dec 6, 2012 | hide | past | favorite | 2 comments
I've been having issues for the past year or so determining where I'm headed (career wise).

I'm not really sure how to approach finding my Niche, and building on it. Let me give some background: Degree: BS engineering management (basic courses in most engineering disciplines + a little bit of business)

Career: (latest first) -6 Months as technical project manager at web design/dev agency (18 people). --I think this one's fairly straight forward. -1 yr "Big 4" management consulting (150K people) --6 months w/Military Electronic Health Record, as a "Enterprise Architect" basically had to go back and figure out how 64+ systems worked together. blah --6 months as requirements manager/unofficial project manager a Financial oversight agency working with a giant data application think 10+ years of transactions. -3 yrs Systems Engineer in a Aerospace and Defense company working in the communications space. (1500 people) --It doesn't really translate to a non-defense role. Think kind of like a Business Analyst but purely technical, Quality Assurance, quasi project manager

I'm very happy with my job, at the moment, but I do feel that there will come a time when I'm not happy. I'd really like to end up working for myself. I can't "build" anything really myself. I'm working through a Django app right but it's slow going. I also don't see myself coming up with an idea disruptive company. It's not that I'm not creative, I'm more of a "executor" than I am a idea person. Maybe I will come up with something, but who knows.

To jump to the chase...as people in the startup community, where should I focus, or where would you focus, or how would you find your focus. I don't see myself as a developer, but I still see myself as technical.



Do you use any open source software that you could work on if only you knew one or two new languages?


Do I use open source, yes. I run debian, wheezy at home as my only OS. I only operate Android phones/tablets.

If you're referring to writing code, I've worked through Python the hardway, and I'm working on writing a small djanogo app that extends on mezzanine. I also took Fortran in college, but shhhh

For work, I mostly work with Drupal developers, and a single .NET developer. I could probably start picking up python. I can write basic scripts. I can also read most code. Although Front End drives me nuts. Lan




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: