I kind of feel like the author is referring to Zuckerberg's famous comment about young people being smarter. I don't remember the exact quote, but it was suitably shocking and stupid so it's a candidate anyway. The thing I like about Rachel's take on this is that she gets right to the key thing: regardless of what field you're in, or how you spend your time, the vast majority of us are going to be neither horrible fa…
From a point of view, I might even agree with Zuck's asinine statement. When I was in my 20's, I had no idea how many things I truly did not know. So, in my limited "fresh out of college" way, I was pushing maximum intelligence. As the years have flown by, I've learned just how vast many fields are. Introspectively, I've learned that I'm not the brightest mind in any given room. As a matter of fact, I've just barely…
How the Valley treats experienced people
371–380 of 508 posts
Re: How the Valley treats experienced people
#372Earlier quoted context omitted.
Almost nobody who can afford it chooses to live with roommates after college. People do it because they're financially distressed (relative to their locality). They can't both live alone and save money comfortably. Professionals do it in cities like San Francisco and New York because early-career professionals in those cities are financially distressed relative to property owners in those cities.
I feel like this is one of those "filter bubble" ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filter_bubble ) scenarios. There are many young software engineers working at Google/Facebook who would be able to save significantly more than the median US household income per year while renting their own place but still choose to live with roommates.
Only 16% of adults nationwide live with a roommate or other non-relative, and that number is declining since 1995: http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/01/31/more-adults-....
Re: How the Valley treats experienced people
#373Sometimes you don't make enough money to retire early from a combination of bad luck and poor financial decisions. In my career, I followed a pattern of going to a company just a bit too late to get the really low priced options. I've ended up with dozens of former co-workers who are multimillionaires. I had a family and was (in hindsight) too conservative about when I went to a company. I also was a "paper" milliona…
I got hurt from that time in a different way. the year before graduation companies was asking me if I would come work for them and not graduate. the next year everyone was out of business and I couldn't find a job as I was competing with devs with years of experience. the following year of still not being able to find work was a different problem, why hire me when they can hire a fresh grad? after 3 years I finally found an IT support position for 28,000/year. I eventually crawled my way out of the situation and making great money at a great company, but that really hurt.
when I see kids graduate now making 100k first year out of college mostly because they graduated during the right time in the right place, I am happy for them but they don't realize how lucky they are
Re: How the Valley treats experienced people
#374I kind of feel like the author is referring to Zuckerberg's famous comment about young people being smarter. I don't remember the exact quote, but it was suitably shocking and stupid so it's a candidate anyway. The thing I like about Rachel's take on this is that she gets right to the key thing: regardless of what field you're in, or how you spend your time, the vast majority of us are going to be neither horrible fa…
Zuckerberg said this to attendees at the Y Combinator Startup School event at Stanford in late March, 2007 [1]
"I want to stress the importance of being young and technical," he stated, adding that successful start-ups should only employ young people with technical expertise. (Zuckerberg also apparently missed the class on employment and discrimination law.)
"Young people are just smarter," he said, with a straight face, according to VentureBeat. "Why are most chess masters under 30?" he asked. "I don't know...Young people just have simpler lives. We may not own a car. We may not have family."
Chess masters do commonly mention noticing a decline in what might be called their raw processing power as early as their late 20's, but most results peak in their mid '30's [2] and some peak in their '40's. (And should spending your time playing chess be a marker for intelligence?)
But wisdom is in part knowing what is worth working on (such as should you spend your time playing chess), and that is generally accepted to increase with experience. For example, the average age of entrepreneurs at the time they founded their companies is 42. [3]
[1] https://www.cnet.com/news/say-what-young-people-are-just-sma...
[2] https://theconversation.com/anand-vs-carlsen-the-age-effect-...
[3] https://hbr.org/2018/07/research-the-average-age-of-a-succes...
EDIT: Fixed year of quote reference.
Re: How the Valley treats experienced people
#375Earlier quoted context omitted.
There are some attractive things to some people about living in Birmingham, or abouts. Your hell hole is other people's heaven; navigable traffic, lakes galore, proximity to clear, warm, clear oceans. Backyards with trees, playsets, green grass. Warm to hot 10 months of the year.
I would so have a full fab and electronics shop by now if I lived in a place like birmingham. Last year for thanksgiving we were in Knoxville. Was looking at abandoned warehouses that I could flip. Downtown is tiny but nice and supplemented by the university. I’d have to take up rooting for the vols tho.
Moved from Knoxville to the Bay Area recently. If I had my own startup, it would definitely be in one of those old brick buildings near downtown.
Re: How the Valley treats experienced people
#376Earlier quoted context omitted.
My experience on the hiring manager side suggests that when that happens, what's usually going on is that the experienced dev failed to meet the higher (level 3) bar but seemed like they'd be a solid individual contributor at level 2, and therefore received a SWE2/PR2/Foo2 offer. In other words, "same [lower than they expected] bar, same [lower than they expected] salary" as someone 2-3 years in industry.
The questions being asked have nothing to do with solving the types of problems that my experience is indicative of, or of the teams/projects/products I've lead. Nor are they types of questions that even measure for engineer work experience and how they approach solving the types of real world problems that 10 minutes of white boarding a bit counting and funky array manipulations alg won't show. They are questions th…
I haven't interviewed in a long time, though I read interviewing advice from Nick Corcodilos at AskTheHeadhunter and it seems to make sense. The basic idea is to take control of the interview and start doing the work right there in the interview, just like if you were on your first day of the job. Yes, this takes all sorts of social skills and preparation, but it sure would make you stand out from the crowd of software developers. At least the hiring manager should perk up at such a strategy.
Re: How the Valley treats experienced people
#377This is something that has been bothering me somewhat. The following in particular bothers me a lot: > "Why are you still working?" The answer for me is simple - because I want to. I learned how to program at the tender age of 10 using a book that came with a C64 that my dad got for free from a garage sale. Since those first years, the field at every turn has provided me with new intellectual challenges and as I've p…
I once expressed the "I'm not in it for money, I just want to do a great product" thing to a CEO, and he immediately offered to cut my salary in half.
I got the message. (I had a few more happy years at that place, but never made much money there. I found that other companies could not only be better places to work, but that they paid better, too).
Re: How the Valley treats experienced people
#378I kind of feel like the author is referring to Zuckerberg's famous comment about young people being smarter. I don't remember the exact quote, but it was suitably shocking and stupid so it's a candidate anyway. The thing I like about Rachel's take on this is that she gets right to the key thing: regardless of what field you're in, or how you spend your time, the vast majority of us are going to be neither horrible fa…
Zuckerberg said this to attendees at the Y Combinator Startup School event at Stanford in late March, 2007 [1] "I want to stress the importance of being young and technical," he stated, adding that successful start-ups should only employ young people with technical expertise. (Zuckerberg also apparently missed the class on employment and discrimination law.) "Young people are just smarter," he said, with a straight f…
That was 2007.
Re: How the Valley treats experienced people
#379I kind of feel like the author is referring to Zuckerberg's famous comment about young people being smarter. I don't remember the exact quote, but it was suitably shocking and stupid so it's a candidate anyway. The thing I like about Rachel's take on this is that she gets right to the key thing: regardless of what field you're in, or how you spend your time, the vast majority of us are going to be neither horrible fa…
Zuckerberg said this to attendees at the Y Combinator Startup School event at Stanford in late March, 2007 [1] "I want to stress the importance of being young and technical," he stated, adding that successful start-ups should only employ young people with technical expertise. (Zuckerberg also apparently missed the class on employment and discrimination law.) "Young people are just smarter," he said, with a straight f…
EDIT: parent comment edited it from 2017 to 2007. That makes a lot more sense
Yeesh, in 2017? Zuckerberg was really young when he get vaulted into power and fame, so I've always been a little more sympathetic than most to his various foot-in-mouth moments[1], particularly in the past. But Jesus, 2017 was _last year_: how is he such a slow study at this?
[1] I should not that I have some pretty severe disagreements with my understanding of his worldview and ethics, but I'm speaking strictly of gaffes here.
Re: How the Valley treats experienced people
#380I'm one of those people who doesn't have to work, but I do because I enjoy it. I moved to the silicon valley nine years ago, and in that time I've done half a dozen or so job interviews. I got no offers, so now I run my own company. It was different story each time, but the upshot (IMHO) is that the interview process seemed to assume that I was a fresh-out undergrad. In one case, they asked me to debug some Ruby code…
> I have a solution for that too: hire me as a contractor and give me a week or two to do a real project for you. I really don't understand why more companies don't do that.
Couldn't agree more; it's just not the traditional way of doing things (maybe because it doesn't scale well). It's a great way of picking a small/medium size company you like the look of, and seeing if you and the company fit together well.