Ask HN: Paid Career Advice Services for people in their mid-20s

You keep on posting here man, all with different versions of the same question &quot;How can I become better?&quot; without doing much follow up or immediate change&#x2F;improvement. You&#x27;re in a state of analysis paralysis.<p>At the end of the day you have to suck it up and do it yourself. No answer will ever be satisfactory without effort put into it.

I think you need to approach this from the opposite direction. Conventional path is study, find a job, network to find a better job. I suggest you first network to find where you&#x27;d like end up, and then ask those people for advice on how to get there. It&#x27;s motivating to see the finish line from the very beginning.<p>Try to go to free conferences or meetups or networking events, and be honest that you&#x27;re shopping around for a career change. Some of the people who aren&#x27;t looking for jobs themselves will probably be intrigued enough to offer decent advice and insight.<p>You&#x27;ll get much better and quicker results if you aim for 10x networking and socialization. If it makes you uncomfortable because you feel like a failure, tell people you just felt inspired to do something different. Everyone has that feeling, but few people actually act on it. Don&#x27;t let their choices hold you back.

Get a helpdesk job, work your way up into IT, take on projects as you learn. Youll be a Dev in no time. It doesnt take many special smarts and youll eventually find out that 90+% of people working in tech have no CS degree or educational background in tech. And actually a ton of the work is just &quot;plumbing&quot;. Most of the job is not fancy advanced algorithms and almost all of the practical learning takes place on the job. the stuff a person learns in school has almost no relation to actual every day work in tech.<p>Just get an IT&#x2F;Helpdesk job and you will have a tech career in a few years. It worked for me, and most of the Devs&#x2F;SREs&#x2F;SeniorIT&#x2F;Networking people I know.

&gt; I&#x27;ve begun to talk less to friends because I keep comparing myself to them, and I&#x27;m the example on who you should not try to be.<p>Definitely stop doing that <i>and</i> that. Having people around you who have their act together is helpful. Remember: monkey see monkey do. And that final expression of your self image is the root of the issue. That <i>will not</i> go away if you cut yourself off from friends, it will only get worse.<p>This <i>puzzle of an existence</i> is in the main an entirely private and internal affair. Here&#x27;s an old saw (which is still sharp and of utility): The mind&#x2F;self can be your friend or your enemy. Time to make friends with your mind&#x2F;self.<p>(Never hurts to see a therapist.)

Why do you think you did poorly in your CS degree?<p>CS schools in Spain, France, Italy, etc. differ greatly in terms of difficulty and quality of teaching. You might thrive now if you choose the right environment?<p>Some schools in Northern Europe are free and might be a bit more practical. There&#x27;s also the option to follow a simple 2-year associate degree and then transfer to a real university and get a BSc with a bit of extra coursework.<p>I recommended this option to a friend who had dropped out of his BSc and he did fine this second time. If you need further info, feel free to contact me. Email is on my profile.

I think you are looking for someone to make a decision for you. This is not what career coaches are for. This is usually a quality of bad friends.<p>You have all your options laid out on the table already. Your interests will change, this world is not static. Your skills might also change given your curiosities and exploration. Your job right now is to gain SKILL &amp; CAREER CAPITAL. What is it?<p>- Network<p>- Soft skills<p>- Hard skills<p>- Meta skills (learning how to learn, not shitting your pants when shit hits the fan, dealing with your own insecurities etc.)<p>Consider this:<p>- You are time rich<p>- You are a health millionaire (can hustle)<p>- You are poor money wise<p>This is a normal situation at your age. Pick a path based on your interest and how much potential it has (please don&#x27;t go into fax machine business) and go do it. What ever it is... You are probably wrong about it anyways and in 5 years you realise you want to do something else. That&#x27;s normal. But you need to do something now to land there...<p>Dip your toes into things, experiment, do and build stuff + read `The defining decade` book.<p>Good luck!

There are a lot of jobs in tech that don’t involve programming directly. Marketing, technical writing, support, HR, etc. And a variety of different domain-specific jobs that can be described as “product” or “business development.”<p>From reading your post, I would look into two options:<p>- Technical writing. It’s a fairly solid career and requires technical knowledge but rarely actual programming skills.<p>- Get a job at a specific startup that you like. You mentioned logistics, so perhaps a company like Flexport is interesting to you. Learn how to tailor a job application for a single company (e.g. make a page on your personal website talking about how you love their company and have XYZ useful skills) and then apply.

Obviously, the answer may not be applicable to you, but here I put myself on your shoes.<p>- let&#x27;s see, I&#x27;m 23. I&#x27;m young. How would I like to see myself when I&#x27;m 30? Well, probably with that CS degree I&#x27;m talking about, with some years of experience as a profressional programmer as well. Perhaps with some money saved (little, but something). At 30 I would finally be able to actually start making good money because I would have +7 years of experience, and I wouldn&#x27;t have to worry about getting the degree anymore<p>- One doesn&#x27;t need to be smart&#x2F;intelligent to do programming, I know that for sure. I only need to put hours. Take it seriously, as an adult<p>- I would rather prefer to start working part-time (so I can earn some money plus work experience) and at the same doing the CS degree. Granted, it&#x27;s going to be hard, but it&#x27;s just a matter of perspective: the outcome (me at 30), that&#x27;s the goal I really want to achieve. Maybe at the beginning (first 1 or 2 years) I would have to leave behind some time-consuming activities that slow me down to achieve my goal (e.g., too much videogames, too much social media, too much whatever...)<p>- Spain? That means the CS degree takes (on paper) probably 4 years to get. Probably the first years are the worst (maths, physics, electronics), while the last years are the &quot;easiest&#x2F;more interesting&quot; ones (operating systems, databases, AI). Also, as I get work experience by working part-time, by the time I&#x27;m finishing the CS degree everything will look to me very easy to grasp (e.g., &quot;I&#x27;m at my 3rd CS year. Lecture = &quot;Relational DBs&quot;. Ah well, I have been working with MySQL during the last 2 years at my part-time job, I know what relational DBs are about! This is gonna be fun (and easy)&quot;). So, it will be harder in the beginning (first 2 years), but then you&#x27;ll have fun<p>Plan long term. Commit yourself to spend a significant percentage of your time to achieve your long term goals. As for the commute, are you working as a programmer? If so, there is probably remote-only jobs out there in Spain&#x2F;Europe, find one (use Linkedin, golang.cafe, and similars. Do not use infojobs, monster and similars)

Read some self-help books. Really.<p>I recommend <i>Four Thousand Weeks</i> by Oliver Burkman and <i>Mindset</i> by Carol Dweck.<p>A career coach or counselor will be able to give you information and help you figure out how to achieve your goals, but nobody can actually tell you what YOU want to do with your career, because they don&#x27;t live inside your head. You yourself have to figure that out.<p>For me, the tools in the above books have helped me get a better idea of what I want to spend my time doing and how I&#x27;m going to try and get there.<p>Also, commutes suck - maybe make your first goal getting a job closer to home, or a home closer to work?

If you like tech but are not good at programming, then I would suggest a very unconventional job of Game tester. Big game companies hire people to play the games they are developing. You could look for a job in that domain.<p>Alternatively, think of what you would like to do if there were no constraints. Then try to take a course in that area.<p>Just for motivation purpose, here is a real life example. One of the three people who started DirectX at Microsoft actually started as a support call handler, and later went on to manage the early DirectX team, and then later on a complete business division.

Healthygamer.gg run a careers service and specialise in young people.<p>It&#x27;s supposed to be a long term thing but they have a first session free deal right now you could use to get what you want in an hour. You&#x27;d need to book a block of sessions then get them refunded over email.<p>Very &quot;discover your values&quot; &#x2F; fit your personality to your job.<p>They have a discord run for careers events and discussion groups. Different, less type A vibe than places like r&#x2F;cscareers.

Relax. Your brain is still growing. Give it a few years, try some different things, stop comparing yourself to others and you&#x27;ll find your calling.

You don&#x27;t need a career coach. Your answer lies inside of you. Your strengths, your weaknesses. They were meant to be. You were made for something. It will be made clear to you. Have faith and carry on. Don&#x27;t give up.

I can give you advice and help you overcome many limiting beliefs you have.<p>I have created a dedicated service to people who want to enter

How to Choose a Career Based on Your Personality &gt; <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;hcleadershipessentials.com&#x2F;blogs&#x2F;career&#x2F;how-to-choose-a-career-based-on-your-personality" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;hcleadershipessentials.com&#x2F;blogs&#x2F;career&#x2F;how-to-choos...</a>

I can help you, to find a way forward I have created a service to help people to overcome limiting beliefs, find their own direction<p>Eventually finding a road into programming or other technical direction<p>My email is in my profile, lets talk