Ask HN: Friends, what is your Plan B?
I'm solidly in the midpoint of my career, I'm seeing the level uncertainty rising. More and more of my day is watching a robot do my job. My company seems to be moving away from PIPs to straight up firings. The bottom hasn't dropped out quite yet, but I'm not liking the trends.
I know I daydream a fair bit about what my alternate career path might be. I know I'd be making less but but maybe that's fine if I don't burn my savings. What's kind of your idea for your post tech industry life?
I'm in engineering in the oil and gas industry rather than IT like most commenters here, but since it's a very highly volatile industry I'm starting to think the same way.
As far as I can tell, staying in the same industry but at a vastly lower level would still net me about 60% of my current salary, and I'd be reasonably confident of still getting 70% with enough searching/networking even in a downturn.
All alternative careers where I'm starting from scratch, I'd be lucky to start on 50% of my current salary.
The smart thing would probably be to turn to some form of entrepreneurship. My skillset is in working with massive high-risk hazardous facilities so it doesn't lend itself at all well to small scale entrepreneurship but setting up on your own is ideal when you're later in your career as you have the financial buffer in case you fail, and you're not fighting against age discrimination.
I don't want to give away my plan so as to increase my competition, but it involves no tech and targets wealthy clients.
save and invest most of my paychecks; and when robots replace most of our IT jobs, move to some of the lowest cost per acre for land counties, to raise chickens and goats.
The trick to avoid needing a plan B is to have no plan A.
I dont have a plan b my friend
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