Ask HN: Career and life advice for a 30yo • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: Career and life advice for a 30yo

#21

Post by hn3333 » Wed, Jun 10, 2020, 11:56 AM UTC

rohan1024 wrote: post #18

You may find this essay by pg helpful in making your decision: You Weren't Meant to Have a Boss - http://www.paulgraham.com/boss.html

Without having read the linked post yet (saved for later) I do believe that the headline is right. We are the boss and the computer is our worker. We can have as many as we need (AWS, DigitalOcean, etc.). We just need to give these workers a task that will pay the rent. (And unfortunately the money still comes from people, unless it's about automated stock/crypto market trading bots.)

Re: Ask HN: Career and life advice for a 30yo

#22

Post by _ink_ » Wed, Jun 10, 2020, 11:56 AM UTC

This hits home. I was in a startup together with very smart people, way smarter than me. We tried to pull off the impossible and were succeeding quite well in that. Unfortunately nobody pays you for solving problems that no customer has. So the company ran out of money.

Now I am in a big global company and my life sucks in a way it never has sucked before. I do not know how I will proceed from here, maybe I should leave software development completly and try something else.

But if you haven't done it, try working at a startup. May days there were nearly 100% coding. No pointless meetings, no useless managers, no corporate bullshit. Come in in the morning, fire up the IDE and do the things that need to be done. Fun three years.

Re: Ask HN: Career and life advice for a 30yo

#23

Post by barrkel » Wed, Jun 10, 2020, 11:57 AM UTC

madsohm wrote: post #16

barrkel wrote: post #4

Many companies have interpreted Scrum Agile as a blueprint for a software factory line, where features are drawn up by product management, sprints are scheduled and work items cranked through with little discretion or agency for engineers, for immediate deployment once implemented and off to the next feature on the product management's roadmap. Sprint sprint sprint until sprints are a slog through technical debt, agi…

At my previous company we did Scrum with a capital S. We did planning poker, daily stand-ups (where we actually stood up), bi-weekly retrospectives and so on. However, we (the engineers) had also made it clear to management that we needed time slots for technical debt, which of course we got. It was a pleasure to work in a so oiled machinery. So while we were still chasing features, we also had a say in when to do te…

How often did features come from engineering, from an insight into what the technology could do?

Re: Ask HN: Career and life advice for a 30yo

#24

Post by henriquez » Wed, Jun 10, 2020, 11:57 AM UTC

> my choices are either to open a company of my own, making what i believe in

What do you believe in? Have you thought much on this? If you haven’t I’d recommend it. Introspection and mindfulness can really help you suss our what _you want_ from your career and life in general.

I’m with you on general disillusionment with the tech “industry” as you’ve posed it, but really that’s only part of the picture. There are still people on the fringes doing some pretty cutting edge work. It’s not where the big money is, but is much more engineering focused.

Regardless it’s worth double checking your assumption that you should completely strike out on your own. Chances are if you think about what you believe in, you’ll arrive at what you want, and from there you’ll find people with similar goals working on interesting projects.

Feel free to email me if you’d like to discuss. I’ve gone through a very similar “crisis” recently.

Re: Ask HN: Career and life advice for a 30yo

#25

Post by dcarmo » Wed, Jun 10, 2020, 11:58 AM UTC

It's interesting that your feeling that "academia is dying, and dare i say irrelevant", to me, is exactly what brought us here and to the status quo you're complaining about. Maybe return to academia and improve things there?

Re: Ask HN: Career and life advice for a 30yo

#26

Post by hyko » Wed, Jun 10, 2020, 11:58 AM UTC

The utopian dreams of the 80s and 90s haven't really gone anywhere (in both senses).

What has happened is that the internet as a tool has largely been colonised by corporate interests.

If you’re looking for a business adventure, Don’t look to retread the imagined glories of the past. Look to the future instead and apply the founder effect to some new technological frontier. Good luck!

Re: Ask HN: Career and life advice for a 30yo

#27

Post by madsohm » Wed, Jun 10, 2020, 11:59 AM UTC

barrkel wrote: post #23

madsohm wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At my previous company we did Scrum with a capital S. We did planning poker, daily stand-ups (where we actually stood up), bi-weekly retrospectives and so on. However, we (the engineers) had also made it clear to management that we needed time slots for technical debt, which of course we got. It was a pleasure to work in a so oiled machinery. So while we were still chasing features, we also had a say in when to do te…

How often did features come from engineering, from an insight into what the technology could do?

My team probably did 10-12 tickets per sprint and at least one of those were always technical debt related in some way.

Re: Ask HN: Career and life advice for a 30yo

#28

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Jun 10, 2020, 11:59 AM UTC

santiagobasulto wrote: post #2

> were based on the hacker ethos from the 80's and 90's, where a group of passionate and crazy smart people worked on tough and important problems, pulling engineering miracles daily. This sound a lot like a startup. Being a dev at a startup is very different from the big Coorp. Maybe you only had experience with large companies? If this is going to be your first time at trying something with startups, try to find A…

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: Career and life advice for a 30yo

#29

Post by TimJRobinson » Wed, Jun 10, 2020, 11:59 AM UTC

Get involved in the decentralization space (and not just cryptocurrencies). The hacker ethos is still alive and well there. Plenty of smart people trying to change the world like the hackers of the 80's and 90's and it's all fresh and new. Decentralized services (like IPFS, Sia, Ethereum, Scuttlebutt, Matrix, etc) are the new frontier for development and there's so much cool stuff being created.

Re: Ask HN: Career and life advice for a 30yo

#30

Post by melvinroest » Wed, Jun 10, 2020, 11:59 AM UTC

madsohm wrote: post #16

barrkel wrote: post #4

Many companies have interpreted Scrum Agile as a blueprint for a software factory line, where features are drawn up by product management, sprints are scheduled and work items cranked through with little discretion or agency for engineers, for immediate deployment once implemented and off to the next feature on the product management's roadmap. Sprint sprint sprint until sprints are a slog through technical debt, agi…

At my previous company we did Scrum with a capital S. We did planning poker, daily stand-ups (where we actually stood up), bi-weekly retrospectives and so on. However, we (the engineers) had also made it clear to management that we needed time slots for technical debt, which of course we got. It was a pleasure to work in a so oiled machinery. So while we were still chasing features, we also had a say in when to do te…

At the company I work at, Triply, I also have this experience.

One of the companies I had as a client, Healthy Workers, I had the same experience.

So I wouldn’t say kt is that uncommon in my experience.

Both companies are Dutch. I wonder if it is a culture thing too.