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How the Valley treats experienced people

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Re: How the Valley treats experienced people

#21

Post by daenz »

cathames wrote: post #13

Luck is a huge part of success. It's mythology that if you work hard enough for long enough that the world will become your oyster. Sweat and ingenuity are often necessary but not necessarily sufficient means to financial gain. No one launches from the same starting line nor runs along the same track. And don't forget that all the other smart folks out there are ravenously competing against you for those hotly desire…

>Luck is a huge part of success.

The sad reality is, no matter how irrational is, people don't want to be around someone who is considered unlucky. Especially at a startup. I don't agree with this at all, but I'm saying it because I don't want to pretend that that psychological influence doesn't exist.

Re: How the Valley treats experienced people

#22

Post by keithpeter »

WalterBright wrote: post #2

Sailing the world sounds boring. It's too passive. I'll be working creating new things until they carry me out in a box. I go out on sightseeing trips now and then, and very predictably at about 10 days I'm itching to go home and get back to work. I did go on a 3 day cruise once. By the third day I was bored out of my mind. I tried to get a tour of the engine room but the crew wasn't having any of that. I also annoye…

A cruise ship is basically a floating hotel. Depending on the severity of the storm, the crew probably did not want to be dealing with a significant number of sea-sick guests.

It used to be possible to take a berth on a cargo ship to/from Liverpool from/to Halifax. The modern equivalent is a ride on a container ship [1]. They will still avoid really bad storms but you are more likely to see some seas around autumn.

[1] https://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/cruises/news/french-freig...

Re: How the Valley treats experienced people

#23

Post by perfmode »

WalterBright wrote: post #20
buoyantair wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Trust me no matter how smart you play, if you are born in this world at a very vulnerable position, like say a marginal group like lgbtq communities in third world or in a war torn area or with disabilities, no matter how smart and hard you work, you are always a few clicks behind those who have the "luck" and everything else on their side. The world is super unfair place and sometimes even if you work really smart a…

I'm talking about the US and being an able-bodied adult.

The US is one of the least egalitarian of developed nations.

Re: How the Valley treats experienced people

#24

Post by williamdclt »

daenz wrote: post #21
cathames wrote: post #13

Luck is a huge part of success. It's mythology that if you work hard enough for long enough that the world will become your oyster. Sweat and ingenuity are often necessary but not necessarily sufficient means to financial gain. No one launches from the same starting line nor runs along the same track. And don't forget that all the other smart folks out there are ravenously competing against you for those hotly desire…

>Luck is a huge part of success. The sad reality is, no matter how irrational is, people don't want to be around someone who is considered unlucky. Especially at a startup. I don't agree with this at all, but I'm saying it because I don't want to pretend that that psychological influence doesn't exist.

I've never seen anybody that had a "lucky" or "unlucky" reputation. Some people are considered to "have been lucky" at some point in time, but nobody considered to have a "luck" or "non-luck" trait.

In other words, I've never observed what you describe, never even heard of it

Re: How the Valley treats experienced people

#25

Post by ramtatatam »

I had a chat with some recruiters recently and they told me there is no future in the industry for people who are 35+ years old. I'm 33 so I just smiled and walked away. I later learned the founder of this recruitment company was 26. Young kids seem to think there is no brains in older people.

On the other hand I always thought the natural progression for the programmer is to move to higher abstraction level, become lead/coach/consultant... or start something on their own.

Re: How the Valley treats experienced people

#26

Post by AmericanChopper »

yulaow wrote: post #9
AmericanChopper wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Shhhh, you’re busting the narrative. But seriously, I’ve worked with some amazing older engineers. I’ve always had great relationships with them, and I’ve learned so much from those kinds of people. In my experience many older engineers are much more chilled out and willing to give their time to help others.

Same here. I must say, in my work experience, I had problems only with engineers as young as me (or around my age) who had a big ego, a very bad personality or the I-am-very-smart syndrome. Instead usually the "old" engineers who stick in a tech position were always extremely humble even if having a ton of domain and company-specific knowledge with the willingness to share all of it.

Yeah. I’m very lucky to have worked with quite a few of them. I’m definitely better off for it. I’d try to spend as much time as I could talking with them.

Even now that I’ve been working in senior positions for years, I’m still just as grateful that I get to work with people who know a lot more about stuff than I do.

Re: How the Valley treats experienced people

#27

Post by Ma8ee »

z3t4 wrote: post #6

When I started programming I was very productive, even more then today, but I was ignorant about performance, data races, xxs, sql injects, lower level programming, sysadmin, general CS, etc. So I think the problem is managers see new guys being more productive, but the old "slow" guys gets paid double.

Of course it is faster to build a solution with bad performance, is hard to maintain and a nightmare to test. The manager who doesn’t know the difference is just a bad manager.

Re: How the Valley treats experienced people

#28

Post by dahdum »

WalterBright wrote: post #2

Sailing the world sounds boring. It's too passive. I'll be working creating new things until they carry me out in a box. I go out on sightseeing trips now and then, and very predictably at about 10 days I'm itching to go home and get back to work. I did go on a 3 day cruise once. By the third day I was bored out of my mind. I tried to get a tour of the engine room but the crew wasn't having any of that. I also annoye…

Sightseeing is nice, but what gets me excited is learning new skills while traveling. Culinary classes, language lessons, local skilled crafts/activities. I never get bored learning new things.

Re: How the Valley treats experienced people

#29

Post by Swizec »

ramtatatam wrote: post #25

I had a chat with some recruiters recently and they told me there is no future in the industry for people who are 35+ years old. I'm 33 so I just smiled and walked away. I later learned the founder of this recruitment company was 26. Young kids seem to think there is no brains in older people. On the other hand I always thought the natural progression for the programmer is to move to higher abstraction level, become…

Older people discover leverage on time.

It doesn’t matter how good you are, a team of 10 well-managed programmers will always out code you. You can hve higher output per hour, if you do the well-managed part.

Or you become a teacher. Make 10 programmers 11% better and you’ve contributed more to the company’s bottom line than you ever could on your own.

Or a consultant. In that one highly specialized area where you are king ... well a team of 10 can’t touch you because your pattern matching solves the problem right away.

Ultimately the older you are the more you understand that hey, maybe if your work is contributing millions to the bottom line, maybe you should be compensated proportionally and that $150k is a joke?

This understanding is a problem for new founders. First of all, they’d like to pay you less moneys and give you kool-aid instead. Team spirit and all that. Second of all, you are likely waaaay overqualified for what they actually need. Makes you hard to keep around and engineering churn is one of the toughest things to work around on a product team. Institutional knowledge is king.

So ageism comes about. Because experienced people are both expensive and unnecessary.

Re: How the Valley treats experienced people

#30

Post by lolc »

keithpeter wrote: post #22
WalterBright wrote: post #2

Sailing the world sounds boring. It's too passive. I'll be working creating new things until they carry me out in a box. I go out on sightseeing trips now and then, and very predictably at about 10 days I'm itching to go home and get back to work. I did go on a 3 day cruise once. By the third day I was bored out of my mind. I tried to get a tour of the engine room but the crew wasn't having any of that. I also annoye…

A cruise ship is basically a floating hotel. Depending on the severity of the storm, the crew probably did not want to be dealing with a significant number of sea-sick guests. It used to be possible to take a berth on a cargo ship to/from Liverpool from/to Halifax. The modern equivalent is a ride on a container ship [1]. They will still avoid really bad storms but you are more likely to see some seas around autumn. […

I did a short container trip and it was great. We did get to see the engine too! As with any ship: Bring lots of books.
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