Ask HN: I need career advice | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: I need career advice

9 pointsthrowaway2208 comments

I’m currently finishing up my last year of pharmacy school and could really use some advice on what to do next. I initially started my education with the intention of returning home to work for my dad, who owns/operates a rather successful business (revenue = low 8 figures). However, throughout the last 6 years of school I have become increasingly enamored with tech, and have started to toy with the idea of trying to join a startup in the spring. I worked in sales to put myself through school, and am pretty confident I could handle a biz dev role at a healthcare related startup.

To complicate matters, it looks like an opportunity may present itself to open a new pharmacy almost immediately after graduation (unique situation - would be guaranteed yearly revenue of $20m+). I feel like it would be incredibly dumb to pass up this opportunity, but I am a bit wary about moving home immediately without trying other things, as I don’t want to have regrets 15 years down the line (when packing up and uprooting a family won’t really be an option).

If anyone can shed some light on my decision I would really appreciate it. I’ve been mulling it over for a couple months now and really can’t seem to come to a consensus.

Opening a new pharmacy is a really nice opportunity. You get to see how things work at the moment; you get an idea of what a traditional business is like. You get to see the good things, but more importantly you get to see what sucks. That's great experience.

Also - it's a lot of money. If you lived frugally you'd be able to save a lot of cash, and that's always useful. You never know when you'll need it,or what you'll need it for. But having a nice lump sum does make getting more money easier, and it makes startups easier.

Packing up and moving is always possible. For sure, there are unpleasant things about it. Children lose touch with school friends, spouses have to change jobs, etc. But it's possible, and people do it all the time and they're not damaged by it.

TL;DR - Do the pharmacy thing; Take note about good stuff and suckage, make sure to learn from it; save lots of cash; have lots of ideas and do lots of research; use cash and research for new fun stuff.

This is a no brainer. Go home and work for your dad, learn some business chops and earn money.

After a few years you'll have earned some strong managerial skills and have accumulated a nice financial buffer to do whatever startup you want.

I'm going to contradict everyone who's yet replied (5 at the time of writing) because I sense the reason you posted here is because you feel a bit guilty about wanting to jack it all in and jump into technology.

You'll be under a lot of pressure to accept that offer and people will tell you not to do it, but somewhere in your heart there is something saying "I made a mistake doing pharmacy, I should have done CS".

Firstly there are no mistakes in education. I studied art and design, and worked in advertising for 7 years before a learnt a single line of code. I've been in tech ever since.

One regret? Nah. If I hadn't done design there's no way I could reverse engineer any piece of art/digital image just by looking at it. I learnt skills that tech people pay others for.

What I'm trying to say, is that you can do it anyway you want, but somewhere at some time in some place you are going to wish you could code. You'll know it'll put you in a place the competition can't touch, and you'll be glad you did it.

If you're worried about stability, take the job. If you're young enough to pick up the pieces and start over when it doesn't go your way, then jump ship.

They don't just say "fail fast" for a gimmick. It's all about that in tech. You'll know soon enough if it was the right choice for you.

It's hard to understand exactly how my emotions play into this, but I don't think I am particularly concerned about "wasting" my education. My main concern is maximizing my abilities AND my background. If that means I'm best served by doing something completely unrelated to pharmacy, that's fine. However, I tend to think that I can capitalize on the degree/licensure and add more value than if I abandon my background entirely. One of the reasons I initially went into pharmacy was because there seemed to be so much opportunity to improve the process, and so few people interested in doing so. Now that I've experienced a little bit more in life, the prospect of spending my entire life in a pharmacy doesn't seem nearly as interesting as working at a startup. Am I just caught up in the perceived glamour of working in SV, or is this a worthwhile concern?

Can't you combine both? Open your own pharmacy, and after a little while explore the idea of your own health/pharma-related startup? I'm sure that you'll find something in the pharmacy that you can vastly improve with tech. By the time you figured it our, you saved enough money to tinker with it AND you'll have quite some experience in running your own business. I can't think of a better way to get involved in your own startup!

Here is my take on the situation.

At the end of the day everyone wants to be happy. Some people are lucky enough to be happy without money. Others are happy after they get the money, but that is only because of the freedom granted to those with money.

I promise you will regret not earning lots of money while you are young. You are in a great position. You have no debt (that you told us about)and you stand to take up a really great job. If you even only put in 10 years in that really good job you will have bought your freedom in some way. Then you can do whatever you want and your family will be fine. I suggest taking that path...and who knows, your tech enthusiasm could just be a phase. We've all had them...who didn't want to be an astronaut?

Uh, with that kind of money coming in, you could save it and do whatever the hell you want later on, no? It's enough money that you could probably invest in tech startups to stay close to that environment.

To be clear, I would not be a majority owner in the pharmacy. I would be paid salary (low 6 figures) + equity in the realm of 5%. The main benefit would be the experience of opening a business from scratch with low risk, a decent salary, and a little equity.

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