Ask HN: Have you successfully done a career do-over, and how did you do it?
I&#x27;m not sure what this means: <i>What did you do to redeem yourself in the eyes of your respective industry?</i><p>Are you talking about someone who screwed up enough times that the mean free distance to a negative referral is essentially 1.0 ? I don&#x27;t see industries as having &#x27;eyes&#x27; but I have known industries that are relatively small communities.<p>I have known, and hired, a number of people who have &#x27;redone&#x27; their career when the thing they started with didn&#x27;t pan out, a chemist into a QA person, a semiconductor process engineer into a UNIX developer, a mom into a product manager. That sort of &#x27;do over&#x27;.<p>And I&#x27;ve met folks who &#x27;grew up&#x27; in a company doing one thing for 15 to 20 years and then failed to find an opportunity to continue doing that thing. Only to switch into a different career all together. Most commonly that is, &quot;Hey you weren&#x27;t you 20 years at BigCorp? What are you doing these days, &#x27;mostly consulting&#x27;&quot; sorts of conversations.