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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

#21

Post by inetknght »

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.

If there are so many people falling through modern society's cracks, then let us figure out how to have them be able to guide themselves to others in similar fashion to help them influence a better solution into being?

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

#22

Post by TheOtherHobbes »

raverbashing wrote: post #18
lj3 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Ah, the cargo-culting of logical fallacies

I think things work differently at the C-suite level.

This guy was never a developer. He was a founder and CEO with a successful exit.

He was hired as a former founder and CEO, by a business working in the same space in which he was a founder and CEO.

It's an interesting story, but unfortunately its relevance to the career trajectory of the average tech old-timer is somewhere close to zero.

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

#23

Post by danderino »

"Many young people can read the face of their iPhone better than the face of the person sitting next to them. I’m not saying young people don’t understand emotions. Our digital world is full of emojis, and the term “emo” didn’t exist back in my schoolyard days. But emojis don’t create interpersonal, face-to-face fluency."

I am really tired of statements like these.

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

#24

Post by ChuckMcM »

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.

That is always possible. I suppose to be really scientific about it I should got through my LinkedIn connections (which I generally curate to only people who I have actually worked with in one way or another) and put beside their name my impression on whether or not I felt they embraced their curiosity, and then to go through all of their profiles, for the ones that were current, and rank their status as unwillingly retired, under employed, employed at scale, or willingly retired. Then go back and see what correlation there was between that and what I had evaluated their natural curiosity level to be.

And thinking through that thought exercise it makes me wonder if anyone at Microsoft has tried to do that sort of analysis of the data set. You might be able to proxy curiosity by looking at how many different kinds of jobs people take or how many different skills they accrue.

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

#25

Post by mythrwy »

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 agree with your point but every time I hear "work smarter, not harder" I can't help but think of a very lazy guy I once knew who said that all the time.

He not only didn't work harder he worked very non smart also.

He used the phrase so often I can't help but associate it with his excuse making years later.

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

#26

Post by kcorbitt »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #24
lj3 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

That is always possible. I suppose to be really scientific about it I should got through my LinkedIn connections (which I generally curate to only people who I have actually worked with in one way or another) and put beside their name my impression on whether or not I felt they embraced their curiosity, and then to go through all of their profiles, for the ones that were current, and rank their status as unwillingly…

I think a lot of us younger engineers would love to see the results of that type of analysis, as biased and incomplete as it inevitably would be.

My career planning will be significantly different under the assumption "as long as I feed my curiosity and stay up to date, I have a reasonable expectation of continuing a primarily technical career until retirement age" vs "it's vital that I've built up some non-technical core competencies by the age of 40, because I may need to depend on them to drive my career at that point."

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

#27

Post by jerf »

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.

You can say this may be survivorship bias. But I at least haven't seen the data that says this is survivorship bias. I haven't seen really solid numbers about how unemployed software engineers are at 50. All I've got are vague and anecdotally-substantiated allegations of age bias in Silicon Valley, which may be localized in the startup arena, and also Silicon Valley is not the entire industry.

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

#28

Post by MattyMc »

danderino wrote: post #23

"Many young people can read the face of their iPhone better than the face of the person sitting next to them. I’m not saying young people don’t understand emotions. Our digital world is full of emojis, and the term “emo” didn’t exist back in my schoolyard days. But emojis don’t create interpersonal, face-to-face fluency." I am really tired of statements like these.

Did you read this on your iPhone? :)

Just kidding; I'm tired of hearing these things too.

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

#29

Post by skmurphy »

This was the best take-away for me:

   I also learned that my best tactic was to reconceive my bewilderment as curiosity, 
   and give free rein to it. I asked a lot of “why” and “what if” questions, 
   forsaking the “what” and “how” questions on which most senior leaders focus. 
   [...]
   My beginner’s mind helped us see our blind spots a little better, as it 
   was free of expert habits. We think of “why” and “what if” as little kid 
   questions, but they don’t have to be.

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

#30

Post by ferentchak »

nunez wrote: post #10
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

+1. Usually the real answers are hidden behind the "whys", hence why a Five Whys exercise can sometimes be really effective.

They also avoid the 'who' which creates a culture of CYA and secrets.
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