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Ask HN: Does this old horse have a few years of useful work left?

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Re: Ask HN: Does this old horse have a few years of useful work left?

#91

Post by iconjack »

andywood wrote: post #86
agentgt wrote: post #61

Big picture... things could be far far worse for you. Its pretty hard to give any sort of advice with such little information. I'll just say you really can't fall in love with the technology but rather you should love solving problems... ie be technology agnostic. There are lots of real world problems still left to be solved. I also have some doubts that you seriously took advantage of working at Microsoft. I can tel…

This was my 2nd go-round at MS. I also worked there for 5 years, earlier in my career, and had a better time. This time, I was working as a contractor, so switching teams was not an option. And again, the day-to-day was so horrific, that soldiering on was also not an option. As far as my goal - that's what I'm trying to figure out. For practical purposes, it may be mostly about avoiding webdev. However, this most rec…

How can you be contacted?

Re: Ask HN: Does this old horse have a few years of useful work left?

#92

Post by brianwawok »

officialchicken wrote: post #62
estefan wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't want to be a downer, but devops is definitely NOT just a new name for being a sysadmin. We've actively recruited for people who are not old fashioned jump-on-a-box-and-make-hot-changes sysadmins. They need to understand automated infrastructure and deployment through code, so it's not a small niche to just pick up easily. If it was that easy, everyone would be doing it and it wouldn't pay so well.

Sure it is. Don't the "DevOps" administer, provision, and manage your systems? Have you ever seen a unix guru who didn't have scripts and use automated tooling? And when a system fails (and they all fail eventually) the routine is the same no matter what you want to call it.

There are two kinds of DevOps.

You have DEVops... think of a web developer who also knows linux.

Then you have devOPS... think of a sysadmin who knows bash and python.

The former is where I think the value comes.. they find ways to automate your infrastructure and do lots of cool things. The later tend to make webs of bash scripts that you have to delete when they quit because no one understands them.

Re: Ask HN: Does this old horse have a few years of useful work left?

#93

Post by broodbucket »

miserable1980 wrote: post #72
broodbucket wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are very, very few Rust jobs. In a few years, maybe, but I wouldn't make a career move on it yet.

Given one of the OPs annoyances is the continuing churn in tech tools, please don't waste time with Rust. The premise of the language (safety) is seductive but it comes at the cost of complexity. I am an experienced dev that spent a month evaluating it and then decided life was too short. Frankly, it is easier for someone with a C background to work in C++ than it is with Rust. That's because you can use the simple f…

As a lifelong C developer who recently had a lot of success starting a new project in Rust, I disagree. Writing "C" in C++ until you need extra features always turns out terribly. In Rust, you have to write code the Rust way from day 1. It takes 20 minutes of fighting with the compiler every time I implement a new feature in Rust, but when it compiles it does what it's supposed to do, the code looks good and there are no memory issues.

Don't even get me started on Go. Most overhyped language ever, with some serious issues.

Re: Ask HN: Does this old horse have a few years of useful work left?

#94

Post by m0nty »

oliwarner wrote: post #51
m0nty wrote: post #24

49 here, I'm not enjoying working in IT nowadays, I think it got old about 5 or 6 years ago. So I quit and I'm pursuing my own projects, doing some programming, and trying not to worry too much. I could have ground it out for a few months more in that lucrative contract I had, but just how long can I put up with being that bored? Personally, if I have to go back to the circus, I'll probably aim for short contracts or…

Just in your reply you've mentioned half a dozen technologies that have only really spring up in the last half-decade. Given this appetite for churning technologies and techniques, it hardly seems like the ideal sector to sunset a career on.

I don't think OP was talking about "sunsetting his career", just that options look limited, so I was trying to suggest some. As for those half dozen technologies - they're not that difficult, which is why I mentioned them.

Re: Ask HN: Does this old horse have a few years of useful work left?

#95

Post by dozzie »

brianwawok wrote: post #92
officialchicken wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure it is. Don't the "DevOps" administer, provision, and manage your systems? Have you ever seen a unix guru who didn't have scripts and use automated tooling? And when a system fails (and they all fail eventually) the routine is the same no matter what you want to call it.

There are two kinds of DevOps. You have DEVops... think of a web developer who also knows linux. Then you have devOPS... think of a sysadmin who knows bash and python. The former is where I think the value comes.. they find ways to automate your infrastructure and do lots of cool things. The later tend to make webs of bash scripts that you have to delete when they quit because no one understands them.

...yet when you start looking at how this automated infrastructure works, it turns out to be sloppily crammed together however the webdev happened to work, be very brittle, failing every now and then, requiring constant attention and adjustment, non-standarized with tremendous ramp-up time for anybody who needs to take over, and with components mingled together without any separation, so it couldn't be replicated somewhere else.

All that because the webdev was learning new Csharp.JS framework like dozen before, being too busy to learn how package system or daemonization or networking or RPC or SSH or push vs. pull architectures worked and what they are good at, or what tools and why a seasoned sysadmin uses for automation.

What you really need is not a dilletante armed with sharp and pointy PHP-du-jour, but a system programmer. There used to be such a profession, the guys who wrote syslog, init, bash, grep, awk, libnss, and tons of other goods people today either use without much thinking or don't know existence of at all.

Re: Ask HN: Does this old horse have a few years of useful work left?

#96

Post by rhapsodic »

justin_vanw wrote: post #89

You are clearly omitting the most important part of your story. Are you an alcoholic? Bipolar? Do you suffer severe depression where you stop showing up for work for weeks at a time? Schizophrenia? I wish you the best, but it is silly for you to act like you 'just can't deal with it' rather than just admitting the real issue and trying to get help.

+1. I'm surprised so many people commenting think this guy needs advice about the job market or different types of technology that might interest him. I wish the OP luck in resolving his problems, but I doubt that they stem mainly from his skillset or the job market.

Re: Ask HN: Does this old horse have a few years of useful work left?

#97

Post by Joof »

theparanoid wrote: post #53

People still get paid for work almost exactly like the TIS-100 game. Notably GPGPU programming. I switched from webdev to playing with h/w chips and mostly haven't looked back. It's more difficult work.

Orly? Cuda type stuff? You caught my interest.

Re: Ask HN: Does this old horse have a few years of useful work left?

#98

Post by monk_e_boy »

volaski wrote: post #83
monk_e_boy wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. But having met a few assembly coders over the years, every story seems to involve tons of work making something simple happen. This guy wants a job. That pays money. Are we all going to tell him that assembler is the path to riches? Maybe for 1% of guys out there.

This just means you haven't met enough people. You probably met some people who worked on embedded systems where they only need to use a simple set of instructions predefined by the device. But imagine doing that for your laptop. Personally I learned assembly when I was into hacking operating systems (not as in the diluted 'hacker' notion people throw around nowadays for merely being able to write a simple html code,…

I don't want to get into a pointless internet argument. But I have been into schools and helped teach coding. Kids pick up assembler a lot quicker than other high level languages. But they are more productive in high level languages.

You can write complex systems in either. I'm sure we could both come up with examples of complexity all day.

Re: Ask HN: Does this old horse have a few years of useful work left?

#99

Post by rejschaap »

brianwawok wrote: post #92
officialchicken wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure it is. Don't the "DevOps" administer, provision, and manage your systems? Have you ever seen a unix guru who didn't have scripts and use automated tooling? And when a system fails (and they all fail eventually) the routine is the same no matter what you want to call it.

There are two kinds of DevOps. You have DEVops... think of a web developer who also knows linux. Then you have devOPS... think of a sysadmin who knows bash and python. The former is where I think the value comes.. they find ways to automate your infrastructure and do lots of cool things. The later tend to make webs of bash scripts that you have to delete when they quit because no one understands them.

You basically just argued there is no such thing as devops, just developers and system administrators.

Re: Ask HN: Does this old horse have a few years of useful work left?

#100

Post by rejschaap »

scrrr wrote: post #38

Hm, I am not bored yet, but I think I might be bored in the future. So I was wondering if I should go back to university and study something interesting, Physics perhaps, or even pursue a new career, like becoming an airline pilot or so..

Airline pilot is probably one of the most boring jobs there is. You are basically babysitting an auto-pilot for hours on end. Maybe try taxi driver, you can at least talk to your passengers. The risk of racking up an insane debt and no job is also much lower.
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