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How the Valley treats experienced people

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Re: How the Valley treats experienced people

#31

Post by gronne »

Ma8ee wrote: post #27
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.

I thought that was the definition of a manager?

Re: How the Valley treats experienced people

#32

Post by lolc »

WalterBright wrote: post #15
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…

It's not about working hard, and never was. It's about working smart. And people make their own luck. You can't get lucky if you're not in the game swinging. I've known plenty of people who just sat at their desks, doing as little as possible, waiting for the boss to direct them, reading hackernews(!), watching the clock till they could go home. They were never going to get lucky. Then there are the ones who are alwa…

I was already lucky: My side-projects were chosen based on interest and benefits. I don't need more money.

Re: How the Valley treats experienced people

#33

Post by CPLX »

WalterBright wrote: post #18
aidos wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Must have been a strange sailboat to have an engine room :-) Sailing the world certainly isn’t a passive activity, especially if you’re sailing around the world . Ocean sailing involves all sorts of skills (and nerves) as you need to nurse a boat around while using your ingenuity to solve the challenges of things breaking that you can’t replace for weeks. You need to prepare all the food (victualling), learn how to s…

I understand that sailing on the ocean is no small feat, but my problem with it is it doesn't actually accomplish anything. I want to do things that matter.

This may be jarring to learn but we all enter the world naked, terrified, and alone, and fairly shortly thereafter leave the world the same way.

An individual might find meaning from travel, or meditation, or religious adherence, another from creating a family, another by being the greatest bullfighter to ever live, or creating an electronic simulation of violent war, but in none of these examples should anyone be incredibly confident that they have become an authority on which things matter more than others.

Re: How the Valley treats experienced people

#34

Post by keithpeter »

lolc wrote: post #30
keithpeter wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Thanks for commenting. I was looking at one of the European multi-port trips myself.

Re: How the Valley treats experienced people

#35

Post by xb10y »

pojzon wrote: post #19

Works pretty well for Google tho. Too bad most companies dont understand that they are not Google! and never will be - most often - dont even have to be. Unfortunately most managers are sheeps, only able to copy ideas of other ppl without thought if its even needed/required. Im in this industry for a few years and already see that all middle level managers should be fired. Software Craftsmen would be a lot better to…

How does it work for Google? Except for the "search+ads" division, which seems too important to ruin, Google gives the impression of a highly unfocused company with internal feuds and fiefdoms that releases one half-baked product after the next.

It seems to me that Google only hires to keep people from working for the competition.

Re: How the Valley treats experienced people

#36

Post by avip »

Ageism is real in many verticals. It is healthy to acknowledge that. It’s equally important to face facts related to age: I am noticeably less focusable, and my memory is not as good. I slowly become less fluent in adopting new tech, and it shows (or feels). Most importantly, I have many out of work responsibilities - parents (not getting younger) and kids (not getting older in sufficient pace). Consequently, odds of me doing after hours learning are diminishing. I don’t do open source any more, nor do I have time for cool side projects. And all that, not the invented stuff in OP, is what makes ageism a thing.

Re: How the Valley treats experienced people

#37

Post by lolc »

pojzon wrote: post #19

Works pretty well for Google tho. Too bad most companies dont understand that they are not Google! and never will be - most often - dont even have to be. Unfortunately most managers are sheeps, only able to copy ideas of other ppl without thought if its even needed/required. Im in this industry for a few years and already see that all middle level managers should be fired. Software Craftsmen would be a lot better to…

Your perspective will grow naturally with your experience. But your attitude will need painful work.

Re: How the Valley treats experienced people

#38

Post by ramtatatam »

avip wrote: post #36

Ageism is real in many verticals. It is healthy to acknowledge that. It’s equally important to face facts related to age: I am noticeably less focusable, and my memory is not as good. I slowly become less fluent in adopting new tech, and it shows (or feels). Most importantly, I have many out of work responsibilities - parents (not getting younger) and kids (not getting older in sufficient pace). Consequently, odds of…

Would you share how old are you? Sorry if you find that question out of place, but I'm 33 and have kids and I don't (yet?) make such observations as yours.

Re: How the Valley treats experienced people

#39

Post by paganel »

WalterBright wrote: post #15
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…

It's not about working hard, and never was. It's about working smart. And people make their own luck. You can't get lucky if you're not in the game swinging. I've known plenty of people who just sat at their desks, doing as little as possible, waiting for the boss to direct them, reading hackernews(!), watching the clock till they could go home. They were never going to get lucky. Then there are the ones who are alwa…

There’s nothing wrong with being a salaried person, there’s nothing actually wrong with trying to make a decent buck so that you can have a roof on top of your head and a computer with access to the internet so you can read HN daily. I work so that I can read HN (among other myriad things that I enjoy doing), I don’t read HN so that I can get more money so that I can do... I don’t know what exactly should I be doing other than reading HN and the myriad other things I just mentioned that I liked.

“Investing” is hard and very risky work that offers almost no intellectual benefits (and I’m pretty sure the index-tracking bubble will burst and create a bigger mess than what happened back in 2008), I’d much rather spend my time mapping the Byzantine coins found over the Northern Balkans (a nice way to re-create regional trade routes from about 1000 years ago) or being undecided whether the people who put the Indo-European “urheimat” just North of the Black Sea were right or wrong (does Anatolia make for a better choice?). There’s nothing wrong with holding an ok job that pays the bills so you can pursuit your real intellectual interests.

Re: How the Valley treats experienced people

#40

Post by [deleted] »

zik wrote: post #11
samatman wrote: post #4

The tech industry has a reputation for being hard on older engineers, and I’m sure there is some of that, but I doubt it’s the problem it’s made out to be. Anectdote, I know, but the older engineers I know are doing fine, one gentleman pushing 70 recently came out of retirement to work on Ethereum. The number of developers has roughly doubled every five years for about thirty years now. Even before you subtract progr…

This kind of ageism isn't really visible to you unless you're the subject of it. Yes, it's real.

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