Make a bet and invest in a new, upcoming technology like Rust. If Rust takes off big, you'll have a head start on teen programming wizards.
Surviving as an ‘Old’ in the Tech World
61–70 of 158 posts
Re: Surviving as an ‘Old’ in the Tech World
#62I'm in the opposite of this situation, I'm among the 10% of the youngest employees in the company, when around 60% of the company will be retiring within a decade. We're also in one of those high cost housing markets, and while I'm very well paid comparatively to others in my particular part of the technology sector - its still not enough to buy a house, or settle down - but they're somewhat unsympathetic when I talk…
If it makes you feel any better, it wasn’t until I was 30 that my wife and I had enough for a downpayment for a house. When I graduated, my salary was $40k. And, 3-bedroom houses, in my economically-attractive, but not extravagent, area were around $300k. Rent for a 2br was about $1000 / month, so saving $60k took quite a few years. Of course, several co-workers had well-off parents who bought them their first house (lucky them), but for many of us, we just had to pay off debt, and save, and save, and be confident that it would work out. It took a while, especially considering the two recessions, and it felt like it would never get better. But, it eventually did. So, although I don’t know your particular situation, I’m confident that people in their 20s today will eventually prevail. The difference is that the younger generation is enormous, and all of those people buying houses at the same time puts demand pressure on prices. But, it will work out.
Re: Surviving as an ‘Old’ in the Tech World
#63The tendency to promote people out of engineering and into management is probably down to the bottom line. At some point, an engineer's economic worth plateaus, and the only way to justify a bigger paycheck is to have him offload the upper management. Managing people is extremely time consuming. Time spent on managing people is time not spent on closing deals, maintaining business relationships, securing investments,…
> At some point, an engineer's economic worth plateaus, and the only way to justify a bigger paycheck is to have him offload the upper management.
Why not just accept a paycheck that plateaus as well? Mine's been pretty flat since I first (prematurely) got to that "senior" title. I'm not anticipating big gains in future.
Re: Surviving as an ‘Old’ in the Tech World
#64Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not just wired. Almost every news site. Ad block, update your host file, etc. Ever since forbes had viruses/malware for ads a few years ago, I don't visit a news site without protection.
I'm using an adblocker, all I get is a brief flash of something and then a blank page. Maybe I'm too old for Wired now.
It happens to me too, even after I log in as a subscriber. Clueless.
With the arrival of Conde Nast and the departure of Anderson, WiReD truly has lost the last of its mojo.
Re: Surviving as an ‘Old’ in the Tech World
#65> Team social events shouldn’t require physical prowess or alcoholic excess—so forget paintball and bar crawls. As a 57 year-old backend engineer I would like to keep the bar crawls, thanks.
I love paintball. You can definitely play without physical prowess — plenty of people sit in the back of speedball fields to "spray or pray" or call out upstream opponent positions to their team. Likewise with the woodsball setting even more so. It's much less physically demanding than one might think... you can be successful at recreation level without running. I've never been athletic but I was stable able to play local tournament-level paintball. I'd love to have it as a company outing.
Re: Surviving as an ‘Old’ in the Tech World
#66Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not just wired. Almost every news site. Ad block, update your host file, etc. Ever since forbes had viruses/malware for ads a few years ago, I don't visit a news site without protection.
I'm using an adblocker, all I get is a brief flash of something and then a blank page. Maybe I'm too old for Wired now.
I use an adblocker and tried turning it off. No dice either way. Some Javascript bug is causing it to happen when I check the `console.log()` output. Luckily Wired is slow enough that I can refresh the page and hit the 'pause' button in the debugger and then read the content. Funny that the links don't work if you hit 'pause' too soon.
Re: Surviving as an ‘Old’ in the Tech World
#67WTF: "an Old" Is that supposed to be "millennial" lingo?
I think old is a gender now.
Re: Surviving as an ‘Old’ in the Tech World
#68Earlier quoted context omitted.
More like, young people have a good smart to self worth ratio, making them easier to exploit.
Not necessarily self-worth - when you're just starting out and you have no track record, no matter how good you know you are, the rest of the world won't believe you until you've proved yourself. So you start wherever you can.
A fair point. So either a feeling of a lack of self worth resulting in reduced assertiveness, or just being rebuffed a bunch.
Re: Surviving as an ‘Old’ in the Tech World
#69"young people are just smarter" Mark Zuckerberg
Please don't introduce recycled flamebait for the millionth time. It never leads to anything new. We're looking for thoughtful reactions, not mechanical reflexes.