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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

#31

Post by Mz »

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #22
raverbashing wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Given how jobs seem to be dying, self employment may be the wave of the future. It was also something the founders of the U.S. thought was critical as a foundation for a truly free and empowered society. I think this is correct. When I had a corporate job, I worried a lot that they would trip across my online activities and fire me for them for some damn reason. It seriously curtailed my online activities for a time.

I think you see a high correlation between being a founder and having really strong opinions because these people can afford their opinions, both literally and figuratively. They don't have to live in fear that their opinions might leave them unable to provide for themselves and their families.

If the takeaway is "If you want his confidence, then become an entrepreneur," I am very okay with that. There is zero reason we can't create a country of lots of small businesses and consultants. The reality is small businesses provide more jobs and job growth in the U.S. than megacorps do anyway.

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

#32

Post by [deleted] »

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #22
raverbashing wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

[deleted]

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

#33

Post by place1 »

skmurphy wrote: post #29

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…

I often try to ask 'why' and 'what if' questions. Maybe I just suck at talking to people but they often become defensive and think i'm trying to question their solutions when i'm really trying to understand how their solution works (i'm young).

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

#34

Post by user5994461 »

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 wonder if that's not just rationalization for simply not wanting to work longer hours [...]

No it's not. As someone who's had 10 jobs by the time I was 25. I can attest that.

You can be 10 times more productive by picking a solution that achieves the same for 10 times less effort. And that's what you should do all the time.

Whenever you take wrong decisions (let's call that "the design phase"), you have to compensate by doing 10 times the work down the line.

That's where the experiences come in. Whatever you have in mind. Already seen it. Already done it.

In practise, that means I could play ping pong 4 days a week and still be more productive than most people, because they will do work that require a week to be done, while I will do work that require only the last day, to achieve the same result.

The downside is that it's getting boring and irritating to see other people trying to tackle the job in a way known to be wrong (which they can't realize because they don't have the experience).

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

#35

Post by lenzm »

mpweiher wrote: post #14
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…

> 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 a…

The 40 hour work week was introduced because workers demanded it (in the US I'm not sure about other countries). The first strike in North America was workers demanding a shorter work day.

https://www.wikiwand.com/en/1835_Philadelphia_general_strike

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

#36

Post by md2be »

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.

Those of us born in after 1965 are not baby boomers. We are gen x. I don't buy that there much different between gen x and gen y

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

#37

Post by ViViDboarder »

rhizome wrote: post #19
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.

That's a great point. I think it's very much dependant on the audience as well as delivery. One would hope that people you work with are receptive to curiousity, however it's not a given.

In those cases I tend to give a little bit of background as to why I want to know why. It helps show the person that you trust them, but you're curious anyway. Eg. "I think I missed some of the prior meetings on this, why is this the best option?" It adds a little bit of humility that prevents it from sounding confrontational. Sometimes I'll ask something that gets to the bottom of why without asking it directly. Asking "Did we test the other options before choosing this one?" Can help someone to elaborate their why and making yourself an active participant rather than listener only.

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

#38

Post by elmerland »

kcorbitt wrote: post #26
ChuckMcM wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I would say that non-technical competencies are not optional and they will help your career one way or another. Maybe a better question to ask ourselves is how do I continue to add value in the environment I'm in? I doubt the answer to that remains constant throughout a long career.

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

#39

Post by elmerland »

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…

My 2-cents here I would say that working smarter directly related to developing your leadership skills. You can do a lot more by helping lead a group of technical people than you could ever do/code by yourself.

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

#40

Post by nickpsecurity »

jerf wrote: post #27
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.

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.

I saw lots of people commenting about it on job sites in many places that arent Silicon Valley. Others had to train their young or H1-B replacements as their last duty. There's definitely more data out there than Silicon Valley complaints.
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