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Ask HN: 40+ Career Advice?

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Re: Ask HN: 40+ Career Advice?

#151

Post by kalecserk »

person_of_color wrote: post #132
kalecserk wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hello! I am currently 36, working for pay as a software developer since 1999, father of three -- and I would like to reiterate oppositelock's comment: "you're being too picky" I totally understand your frustration with all this "helping other people" buzz but... Ultimately this is the job to be done by you right now :) About the entire open-office culture, since I am a manager I have been granted a private office - w…

You didnt go to college?

I live in Brazil, we have a special kind of high school that will teach you a craft in addition to your tipical scientific preparation. And Yes, I have graduated from college, studied at night ;)

Re: Ask HN: 40+ Career Advice?

#152

Post by zmmmmm »

ddebernardy wrote: post #112
jcroll wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> remember what they do to engineers that are over 40. May I ask what do you mean by this? I'm an engineer entering my late 30's, what is it exactly that I have to prepare for by the time I enter my 40s?

They eventually get fired because too old/too expensive. Get into management/team leadership in a way or another asap. You're probably not feeling this right now because the economy is overheated. But be wary of the next recession if you're still doing the same job - however much better - than a junior for several times their salary. (If you've specialized and valuable skills that are extremely hard to replace you sh…

> having seen the difference in productivity, I'd hire a 40+ senior over 3 juniors in a heartbeat most of the time

Honestly I think it's not directly ageism, but indirectly, many people are afraid of managing people with significantly more experience or just plain older than them. So if the team lead is 35 with 10 years eng experience, they will probably be worried about a 45 y/o with 25 years eng experience who will challenge their authority and possibly prevent them from leading the whole team the way they want. Developing the maturity to not just cope with but thrive on managing people with much more experience / knowledge than yourself takes time, especially for engineers who tend to derive their authority primarily from their technical knowledge / experience. Eventually it will happen, but only after those managers replace technical experience with actual management experience as the basis of their self-worth / ego / authority.

Re: Ask HN: 40+ Career Advice?

#153

Post by sailfast »

ydnaclementine wrote: post #9

My first job out of school was with a consulting company (think SapientRazorfish, Accenture, Deloitte). What I found interesting is the vast majority of my colleagues were 'older' (35-40+), and these positions are primarily remote WFH. Consultancies love more experienced developers because they know they'll get the work done. The pay is definitely above average too. Consulting can sometimes lead to more hours dependi…

Perhaps, but you are almost guaranteed a terrible manager and many, many meetings in this scenario.

Re: Ask HN: 40+ Career Advice?

#154

Post by zmmmmm »

illumin8 wrote: post #78
wisam wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do think is the reason that most managers in technology are bad? I tend to think of management as abstraction. A mid-level manager provides an abstraction of the work for high-level management and at the same time is provided an abstraction of the work by the low-level managers or engineers. Assuming that my understanding is right, are these abstractions leaky? is the lack of technical knowledge the reason why ma…

I think it's because most technology managers are too disconnected from the actual work, and don't understand what their employees actually do. Obviously, there are a few examples of tech leaders that remain hands on, but it seems that when most engineers transition into leadership, after 2-3 years, they've become so disconnected from anything hands on that they are just bad. I'll give an example: a software developm…

I don't necessarily disagree with you but I think there is a second half to the problem. Half the managers are as you describer, but the other half are put in management positions on the basis of only technical ability and actually have no clue how to manage a team and in fact don't really care about doing that at all. Their passion is tech and will always be tech, but they are managing the team for status or career progression or whatever.

Re: Ask HN: 40+ Career Advice?

#155

Post by sosilkj »

oscargrouch wrote: post #106
matt_the_bass wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Great question. IMHO the ruts we are trying to avoid are sticking only to a previously used solution because of the fear of trying new things. Of course that needs to be balanced with the risks/costs of trying new things too. As a mentioned previously we’ve found a lot of senior sw candidates who have 20+ years experience working on a huge legacy technology in a huge beaurocratic organization. Some of those people ha…

> However others are only fluent and comfortable in that one legacy technology and are not really experienced in the fundamentals. A surprising number of those people exist. That’s who we want to avoid. 'The Prince' has a whole chapter about wheter employing mercenary soldiers can be considered a good thing. And he gets into the conclusion that mercenaries must be the last kind of resource you want to employ in an ar…

> "good to avoid people that have a tendency to game things"

Sorry, but most employers essentially "game things": they extract as much value as they can out of you in return for the smallest amount of compensation they can get away with giving you. Yet I don't see you being critical of managers and CEOs, just other engineers. Managers love it when engineers getting into pissing matches about "passion", hackathons, which stack is most l33t, etc. (Erik Dietrich's term "carnival cash" comes to mind.) Meanwhile that business major 10 years your junior with a PMP certificate they got online -- and who couldn't code their way out of a paper bag -- just got promoted to senior project manager and gets to tell you what to do.

By 40, to put it in high-level abstract terms, the most important thing is figuring out what you need to be doing so you're earning the compensation you want/need and living the lifestyle you actually want to live. The "game" that other engineers around us in the marketplace are playing, so to speak, is the one having to do with optimizing compensation and quality of life. I can choose to walk onto the court and play a different game -- one with rules I personally feel are more noble, or something -- but that won't change the external reality around me, and nobody will care, except employers looking to take advantage of engineers willing to prioritize "passion" over things like "compensation" or "spending time with my kids" or "adequate health insurance".

Note: I'm riffing somewhat on the ideas David Sirlin presents in the first chapter of his book called "Playing to Win"; worth a read: https://www.sirlin.net/articles/playing-to-win

Edit: in fact, I'll just quote from Sirlin:

A scrub is not just a bad player. Everyone needs time to learn a game and get to a point where they know what they're doing. The scrub mentality is to be so shackled by self-imposed handicaps as to never have any hope of being truly good at a game. You can practice forever, but if you can't get over these common hangups, in a sense you've lost before you even started. You've lost before you even picked which game to play. You aren't playing to win.

A scrub would disagree with this though. They'd say they are trying very hard. The problem is they are only trying hard within a construct of fictitious rules that prevent them from ever truly competing.

Re: Ask HN: 40+ Career Advice?

#156

Post by [deleted] »

matt_the_bass wrote: post #2

I think these jobs exist. Mine does. We’re a small company that makes high value physical items with a large software component. We encourage remote working but not remote only. I know this is not a popular view on HN, but I think there is huge value with regular irl interaction. It doesn’t need to be every day, but it does need to be regular. We also offer mostly single person offices (interns are currently 2 per ro…

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: 40+ Career Advice?

#157

Post by liangzan »

Well I'm the founder of a startup, funded, and actively hiring. I'm considered old myself(late thirties), so I see the value of experience.

Going through the variables.

A - no. B - no. I tried that in my previous company, it won't work unless everybody buys in. C - no. D - yes. E - toss up. The average age of the management is in the late 30s, the average age of the whole team is in the mid-late thirties. No twenty plus young kids(rarity in startups nowadays). We've seen shit, made many mistakes, so we're hopefully on the way to becoming better managers F - hell yes. Both founders have kids. Principle is "Work hard, and go home" G - Unavoidable I - Blockchain

Please reach me(check my username)!

Re: Ask HN: 40+ Career Advice?

#158

Post by oscargrouch »

sosilkj wrote: post #155
oscargrouch wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> However others are only fluent and comfortable in that one legacy technology and are not really experienced in the fundamentals. A surprising number of those people exist. That’s who we want to avoid. 'The Prince' has a whole chapter about wheter employing mercenary soldiers can be considered a good thing. And he gets into the conclusion that mercenaries must be the last kind of resource you want to employ in an ar…

> "good to avoid people that have a tendency to game things" Sorry, but most employers essentially "game things": they extract as much value as they can out of you in return for the smallest amount of compensation they can get away with giving you. Yet I don't see you being critical of managers and CEOs, just other engineers. Managers love it when engineers getting into pissing matches about "passion", hackathons, wh…

You make a excelent point. People in power positions trying to take advantage of näive.

The recipe here, is that you create a untrue image of a "Emerald City", where everything is possible for the people that work hard, show them the great Wizard of Oz as a example of what you can acomplish, and wait the dreamers like Dorothy to pile over in order to fulfill their dreams. You will have hard-working, starry-eyed workers accepting almost anything.

Sure, the Big Corp™ also use a gaming system to its own advantage, making a feist from the naive.

It's ok to be skeptic when in your environment they actually swallow the dreamer type. We always need to be smart, detect what's really going on and adapt to the environment.

Sometimes you just wasnt lucky to find a good fit for you. But whatever happened its good to survive not only the outside world, but to fight for your inner fire. The thing that will make you move on with a sense of purpose. But of course you shouldnt let people take advantage of that, and a lot of people will actually try, not only professionally.

Re: Ask HN: 40+ Career Advice?

#159

Post by hellogoodbyeeee »

gallerdude wrote: post #40
mattmanser wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a soon-to-graduate student, you'll find out why. You need money when you have rent.

Of course - for the better or worse, money fuels life. I'm just afraid of sticking with my first company for the rest of my life because I'm half satisfied where I'm at, when I could do much more interesting things elsewhere. Maybe I'll just be happy enough with my life that I won't feel a need to take risks. Maybe I'll be courageous enough to pursue greater net happiness.

I think it is important to work for as many different companies as you can during your twenties so you can figure out what is important to you. Then spend your thirties trying to find your way back to your favorite environment so that you can spend your forties in it.

Re: Ask HN: 40+ Career Advice?

#160

Post by sosilkj »

oscargrouch wrote: post #158
sosilkj wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "good to avoid people that have a tendency to game things" Sorry, but most employers essentially "game things": they extract as much value as they can out of you in return for the smallest amount of compensation they can get away with giving you. Yet I don't see you being critical of managers and CEOs, just other engineers. Managers love it when engineers getting into pissing matches about "passion", hackathons, wh…

You make a excelent point. People in power positions trying to take advantage of näive. The recipe here, is that you create a untrue image of a "Emerald City", where everything is possible for the people that work hard, show them the great Wizard of Oz as a example of what you can acomplish, and wait the dreamers like Dorothy to pile over in order to fulfill their dreams. You will have hard-working, starry-eyed worke…

"fight for your inner fire" -- I can agree with that 100%.
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