Ask HN: 40+ Career Advice?

Post by i_made_a_booboo » Sun, Oct 14, 2018, 1:36 AM UTC

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…

Post by firebones » Sun, Oct 14, 2018, 1:53 AM UTC

deanmoriarty wrote: post #144

lastofus wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I would really love to know why this was downvoted? Some bar napkin math: $150k (savings) + $40k (living expenses) = $190k post tax. Assuming 30% goes to taxes (making liberal use of a 401k), that would be $272k salary. @ 35% it would be $292k. I think the reason everyone is annoyed/down voting is the assumption that every developer in the bay area is pulling top end salaries like that. The reality is the median de…

Put it that way, it makes more sense. Thanks for taking the time.

Post by clausok » Sun, Oct 14, 2018, 2:04 AM UTC

zmmmmm wrote: post #152

ddebernardy wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Post by scruffyherder » Sun, Oct 14, 2018, 2:08 AM UTC

stephen82 wrote: post #60

illumin8 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a 44 year old senior engineer, and the one thing I've noticed is that bad managers are almost universal in technology. I've had about 20 managers in my career and I can count only 2-3 that I would consider great managers, the rest ranged from mediocre to incredibly incompetent. This, to me, is the #1 reason I gain much more satisfaction from doing consulting work on the side: I'm my own manager, and I can make de…

"Why good employees leave" - I know that myself first hand! https://imgur.com/gallery/Eh4krvj

Post by gniv » Sun, Oct 14, 2018, 2:12 AM UTC

rdiddly wrote: post #137

A - private office B - WFH C - Android D - few meetings E - good management F - mellow, friendly (probably older) colleagues G - no training of underlings H - low stress I - interesting work Independent contracting/consulting satisfies A and B; some subset satisfies C; D it likely fails; E is orthogonal or maybe slightly negatively correlated (some portion of those who hire consultants, have to do so because they're…