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I Joined Airbnb at 52, Here’s What I Learned About Age, Wisdom, and Tech Industry

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Re: I Joined Airbnb at 52, Here’s What I Learned About Age, Wisdom, and Tech Industry

#11

Post by mbell »

mistersquid wrote: post #7
pcurve wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm in your same age bucket, and when I hear comments like "work smarter rather than just putting in more hours", I wonder if that's not just rationalization for simply not wanting to work longer hours because people in that age group generally have other life obligations, and eventually become overpaid and uncompetitive status. You can't always work smarter day in day out, and expect to beat someone who is both smar…

> when I hear comments like "work smarter rather than just > putting in more hours", I wonder if that's not just > rationalization for simply not wanting to work longer hours > because people in that age group generally have other life > obligations, and eventually become overpaid and > uncompetitive status. When people advise to work smarter than harder, it's often a nod to the fact that longer hours generally produ…

> Working smarter generally means planning before writing code, thinking about how one's work will integrate into the larger system and how to make that code reliable, maintainable, and extensible.

I have a largely different opinion on this, working smarter just means doing the right thing instead of the wrong thing. I realize that is vague and I think the reality is vague here. Investing the time to write 'reliable, maintainable, and extensible' code is the right thing to do when it's the right thing to do, it's the wrong thing to do when the it's the wrong thing to do. Being older shouldn't mean that you always write 'reliable, maintainable, and extensible' code, it should mean that you realize when it's warranted and when it is not. My experience is that this isn't the case, 'older' coders (and I safety quote older because I'm not convinced that age is the true differentiator) tend toward 'reliable, maintainable, and extensible' at all costs. That just isn't the right answer all the time. I'd venture a guess that some of the stigma that exists about 'old coders' is related to this.

Re: I Joined Airbnb at 52, Here’s What I Learned About Age, Wisdom, and Tech Industry

#12

Post by mgbmtl »

scarface74 wrote: post #8
mgbmtl wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know very few people who actually put in lots of hours and who do productive work. It's just that at first, you have to put in more time to find what you're good at. In many non-US cultures, overwork is a symptom of bad time management and incompetence.

I agree that putting in more hours consistently toward an active project seldomly turns out well in the long term, but someone that can put in more hours doing side projects using technology/frameworks that they aren't currently using on their job that allows them to stay current/cutting edge that will make them more competitive. I knew plenty of younger developers who spent nights/weekends doing proofs of concepts t…

Well, same here, after all I'm on HN during the weekend (half-working, planning a conf, while supervising my kid & friend).. There are all sorts of people, but if we're going to generalize, I think the general expectation should be to aim for efficiency and avoid spiralling in overwork. (and I wish I had better time management determination ;-)

Re: I Joined Airbnb at 52, Here’s What I Learned About Age, Wisdom, and Tech Industry

#13

Post by ChuckMcM »

Here you go, the secret to relevance throughout your career: "I’ve spent a lifetime being curious about people and things, which, I guess, means I’m well-read and well connected."

In my own experience being naturally curious has led me down interesting paths to meet interesting people and learn amazing things. As a parent I tried (and apparently succeeded) in nurturing the natural curiosity in my children, never shutting down a legitimate[1] 'why' question with a curt answer.

If you have forgotten how to be curious it can be hard to rekindle but I think it is more a habit than a permanent change to one's brain. If you practice I like to believe it is possible to rehabilitate curiosity (even if I don't have any research to back that up.)

[1] It helps to distinguish the difference between when your child doesn't understand the answer and when they simply don't like the answer. And the best way to do that is to toss it back to them as "What part of the answer didn't make sense to you?"

Re: I Joined Airbnb at 52, Here’s What I Learned About Age, Wisdom, and Tech Industry

#14

Post by mpweiher »

pcurve wrote: post #5
dlevine wrote: post #3

It's interesting to see this sort of perspective. I would like to see more of it. I'm not 52, but I'm in my late 30s and as an engineer who works at startups, I find myself unable/uninterested in doing the things I did in the past. For example, I find myself having to work smarter rather than just putting in more hours than everyone else (which is what I did in my 20s). It's also important to bring my perspective fro…

I'm in your same age bucket, and when I hear comments like "work smarter rather than just putting in more hours", I wonder if that's not just rationalization for simply not wanting to work longer hours because people in that age group generally have other life obligations, and eventually become overpaid and uncompetitive status. You can't always work smarter day in day out, and expect to beat someone who is both smar…

> not wanting to work longer hours

As others have pointed out, working longer hours is actually counterproductive. The 40 hour work week and paid vacations were not introduced out of kindness, they were introduced because employers found out that they actually improved overall productivity.

However, particularly in highly cognitively demanding fields, even 40 hours is likely too much, actual productive work is more around 20-25h per week at best. If you try to do more, you will accomplish less.

> eventually become overpaid and uncompetitive status.

Yes. If you continue to do the same things in the same way, you will definitely be uncompetitive. As you grow and grow older, you should be accumulating at least knowledge and hopefully a little bit of wisdom.

As the old joke goes: "One chalk mark $1; Knowing where to put it $49,999."

Meaning you have to find ways to leverage your hopefully increasing abilities to shift into jobs/roles where you provide more value. Like bringing architectural oversight to teams/projects, mentoring, answering questions. If I can prevent a more junior developer from spending a day or two chasing down a blind alley by giving a couple of minutes of advice, that's pretty valuable. And scalable, because I can give a few minutes of advice to a whole bunch of developers over a given workday.

Or if I manage to introduce an architecture that reduces code by say 50% while at the same time making the code simpler, I've just doubled the team's productivity, with likely more compounded savings in the future.

Re: I Joined Airbnb at 52, Here’s What I Learned About Age, Wisdom, and Tech Industry

#15

Post by mirchiseth »

mbell wrote: post #11
mistersquid wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> when I hear comments like "work smarter rather than just > putting in more hours", I wonder if that's not just > rationalization for simply not wanting to work longer hours > because people in that age group generally have other life > obligations, and eventually become overpaid and > uncompetitive status. When people advise to work smarter than harder, it's often a nod to the fact that longer hours generally produ…

> Working smarter generally means planning before writing code, thinking about how one's work will integrate into the larger system and how to make that code reliable, maintainable, and extensible. I have a largely different opinion on this, working smarter just means doing the right thing instead of the wrong thing. I realize that is vague and I think the reality is vague here. Investing the time to write 'reliable,…

The journey of right someone told me

- do the thing - do the right thing - do the right thing the right way

Re: I Joined Airbnb at 52, Here’s What I Learned About Age, Wisdom, and Tech Industry

#16

Post by paulcole »

>And yet we workers “of a certain age” are less like a carton of milk and more like a bottle of fine wine

What a classically "Baby Boomer" statement. Confusing age with wisdom.

Yeah as a white male boomer you grew up in an insanely prosperous era with basically everything stacked in your favor.

Like if you'd didn't come out of that on top, WTF was wrong with you?

Edit: Now that I've finished reading, this also stands out:

>Wisdom is about pattern recognition. And the older you are, the more patterns you’ve seen.

LOL, coming from an older person, this seems awfully convenient.

Re: I Joined Airbnb at 52, Here’s What I Learned About Age, Wisdom, and Tech Industry

#17

Post by lj3 »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #13

Here you go, the secret to relevance throughout your career: "I’ve spent a lifetime being curious about people and things, which, I guess, means I’m well-read and well connected." In my own experience being naturally curious has led me down interesting paths to meet interesting people and learn amazing things. As a parent I tried (and apparently succeeded) in nurturing the natural curiosity in my children, never shut…

Survivorship bias. There are plenty of older engineers who are still quite curious on the unemployment line.

Re: I Joined Airbnb at 52, Here’s What I Learned About Age, Wisdom, and Tech Industry

#18

Post by raverbashing »

lj3 wrote: post #17
ChuckMcM wrote: post #13

Here you go, the secret to relevance throughout your career: "I’ve spent a lifetime being curious about people and things, which, I guess, means I’m well-read and well connected." In my own experience being naturally curious has led me down interesting paths to meet interesting people and learn amazing things. As a parent I tried (and apparently succeeded) in nurturing the natural curiosity in my children, never shut…

Survivorship bias. There are plenty of older engineers who are still quite curious on the unemployment line.

Ah, the cargo-culting of logical fallacies

Re: I Joined Airbnb at 52, Here’s What I Learned About Age, Wisdom, and Tech Industry

#19

Post by rhizome »

alain94040 wrote: post #2

I think this is great advice regardless of your age: > I asked a lot of "why" and "what if" questions, forsaking the "what" and "how" questions on which most senior leaders focus

Maybe it's just my delivery, but in many contexts I've found people who react to "why" questions as confrontational. So much so that of the 6 W's [sic] I think "why" is the line of inquiry most requiring of diplomacy.

Re: I Joined Airbnb at 52, Here’s What I Learned About Age, Wisdom, and Tech Industry

#20

Post by Consultant32452 »

pcurve wrote: post #5
dlevine wrote: post #3

It's interesting to see this sort of perspective. I would like to see more of it. I'm not 52, but I'm in my late 30s and as an engineer who works at startups, I find myself unable/uninterested in doing the things I did in the past. For example, I find myself having to work smarter rather than just putting in more hours than everyone else (which is what I did in my 20s). It's also important to bring my perspective fro…

I'm in your same age bucket, and when I hear comments like "work smarter rather than just putting in more hours", I wonder if that's not just rationalization for simply not wanting to work longer hours because people in that age group generally have other life obligations, and eventually become overpaid and uncompetitive status. You can't always work smarter day in day out, and expect to beat someone who is both smar…

I'm a mid-30s senior engineer as well. The type of problems I solve now are completely different than the problems I solved in my early 20s. Back then I spent considerable time grinding out dozens of very similar things. These days I figure out how to handle a problem and then some person in India grinds out applying that solution all over the place. Grinding out cookie cutter code takes less effort. I could do that more, but I can't really use my brain more. It wears out too quickly.
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