Become an instructor. Maintain your skills by teaching others and making money in the process. Almost recession proof, because people go back to school when they don't have work. Start out by teaching a free class somewhere locally, like a public library. Don't say you don't have the social skills to teach. Some of the very best teachers are introverts. Start off as a tutor maybe, but teach. Teaching has this remarkable ability to confer responsibility, whether you want it or not. You can be lazy teaching yourself, but teaching others will light a fire under you. You are now responsible for their well-being, and you have about 10 minutes before they call bullsh-t on you not knowing your stuff. Teaching keeps you on your toes. And yes, you can make a handsome amount of side money. You might like it so much, you become a full-time instructor.

Use your computer skills to help people in disadvantaged communities. I once found myself in San Antonio becoming a de facto employee of Comcast because I was the only person at my apartment complex who had a computer and could speak both Spanish and English. Have you ever tried to figure out your cable bill in English? Try doing that on the phone if English isn't your first language and you can't read English at all. This gave me great satisfaction, to be able to use my computer and language skills to help the disadvantaged.

Here it's important to recognize that the skills you have can seem like magic to people who don't have them. Something as simple as speaking English and knowing how to use a web browser to fill out a cell phone contract (for someone who cannot) is a priceless contribution that, while it might not make the money you seek, will give you far more satisfaction than will code-for-pay.

And when you help people, they help you. The person you help might not make you money, but they might open doors for you that will. That little old lady you helped at the library has tea with the governor's Mom's gardener. That $300,000/year cash-kush job you have now is a indirect result of you having helped her print out a PDF form in the library. And make no mistake! The very best paying job you will ever have will come through someone you know, someone who likes you, someone you've helped. It won't be your favorite job, but it will be the best paying job you will ever have. The world, for all its facets, is still very much an I-scratch-your-back-you-scratch-mine place.

Your professional life really happens in the crevices, those little old ladies, that serendipity, not in the bullet points on your resume, pace dear Tolstoy. If we are brave enough to admit it to ourselves, a resume is a chronology of our "f--k this, i'm outta here" decisions.

I repeat: if you're skilled enough to be reading HN, you have the kinds of skills that are tantamount to magic for others that don't have them.

Go ahead. Try to buy a prepaid mobile phone from AT&T and set it up with a prepaid account on a credit card. You would not believe how ridiculously and stupidly complicated that is, even for very qualified you. There are people that spend days just getting their f---ing prepaid cell phones to work. You can turn that into minutes because you know how to use a computer and a website, and that's very valuable for people, getting rid of their headaches is valuable. It's not a headache for you, it's a simplicity. “Easy for you, difficult for them” is where you make easy money. Don't take that logic too far, please, else you become infected with capitalismus and start believing in that a $300,000 cash-kush is what you want. You do not.

You might not make any money here with the poor, but the tech unsaavy are rich and poor alike and they number in the billions: tech skills have tremendous value for those who don't have them, and they will pay for it.