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Ask HN: Career and life advice for a 30yo

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

#121

Post by enraged_camel »

idoby wrote: post #19

Shit, are you me? You're just being over 30, welcome. Those documentaries you watched on your old CRT TV while growing up were showing you fiction. The tech industry is an ad mill. Academia is about innovation killing fiefdoms. What you need to realize is that for an institution, the first priority is maintaining homeostasis, and that means not letting you do something that might risk resources or upsetting the estab…

Yep. It's worth noting that, had Wozniak stayed in his safe job at HP, he would never have become a legend.

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

#122

Post by dave_4_bagels »

TimJRobinson wrote: post #29

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.

Please do not take this advice, enough engineering hours and talent has been wasted on this "technology".

- as someone who was involved in ETH core starting in 2015

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

#123

Post by Exmoor »

scotty79 wrote: post #109

> entering the industry in the early to mid 2010's i found a landscape filled with self serving product managers, conmen [...] > [...] the hacker ethos was lost. the culture changed I'm 41 so I probably entered the IT industry a decade before you. Nothing changed. It was always like that. And I just strongly suspect it's not just IT. That's basically what 'work' and 'business' is. Basically start having life outside…

Yes, the vast majority of software engineers in the 90's were working on really mundane products guided by selling units. I would argue it was significantly worse back then because it was a lot more difficult to engage with peers outside your own company and the tooling people used was significantly more likely to include a lot of proprietary niche products.

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

#124

Post by sbt »

I can understand the sentiment. My own view is that the industry has seen a dwindling of opportunity that really started with the dotcom boom in 2000. Every year, startups target smaller and smaller opportunities while the big monopolies take an ever increasing share of the pie.

What is needed is a return of anti-trust legislation in the US. Someone should write an opera called Schmidt in Washington.

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

#125

Post by rat9988 »

idoby wrote: post #82
slavoingilizov wrote: post #77

OK. I'll try to play devil's advocate here. Disclaimer: I think of myself as an engineer. I do believe your frustration comes from observing actual issues and you're right to express your disappointment. However, I can see a lot of cynicism in your tone, and I feel there's a huge amount of judgement on those "cons" without trying to peek behind the curtain on what makes them behave like that. To provide a different v…

It's not either/or. Good luck building the next FB/Google/MS/Amazon/Apple without exceptional tech and exceptional tech people. All of those companies had breakthrough tech combined with breakthrough business ideas. Assuming that everything is just about UX, PM and bizdev nets you the kind of mediocrity the OP is talking about. Sometimes what looks like over-engineering to the mediocre actually enables breaking new g…

FB didn't have a breakthrough tech at their beginning.

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

#126

Post by elpatoisthebest »

I've been in a somewhat similar boat. Similar age and experience at least.

I don't have the answers to your career questions, unfortunately, my suggestion is pick something that excites you and do that. Your career (and life) will end one day. Do what makes you happy.

Life advice though, I might have a suggestion while you are looking for the perfect career move.

One thing I've been doing a lot in the last 2 years is making a serious effort to mentor junior developers or people who are interested in programming.

It started with some of the developers on my team. I made sure they knew that I was available after hours (with some boundaries) to help however I can. I've tried really hard to be supportive and do my best to build them up. Everything from code reviews on their personal projects to leet code explanations, how to ask for a raise to resume building. I average about 2 or 3 nights per week where someone at least reaches out for help.

It's been incredibly gratifying. I don't quite feel qualified to be a real mentor in something serious, but I do know web development. Paying that forward has been mentally rewarding. My relationships with these people have grown and I find honest joy when they message me telling me they've gotten the job, raise, or even when they have solved a problem on a project.

It wouldn't be a solution to all your concerns, but if nothing else, you might find some simple joy from inspiring others.

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

#128

Post by cybwraith »

jacknews wrote: post #48
idoby wrote: post #19

Shit, are you me? You're just being over 30, welcome. Those documentaries you watched on your old CRT TV while growing up were showing you fiction. The tech industry is an ad mill. Academia is about innovation killing fiefdoms. What you need to realize is that for an institution, the first priority is maintaining homeostasis, and that means not letting you do something that might risk resources or upsetting the estab…

lol, metoo To some extent it's always been this way, but I think a combination of extreme financialization, globalization, and practices like scrum (which means well, I think, but is often used as a cudgel to 'inspect' developer performance) have made average developer life even less pleasant in the last decade.

I think a huge part of it is the move from desktop apps as a sold product, to disposable web/web-wrapped apps. This happened mostly over the past 10-15 years and while I'm older than OP, I noticed a similar drop in quality of life for programmers with certain values and motivations during this time. Scrum-style and "agile-in-name" processes really hammer it home and are practically designed to create burnout.

I would suggest getting into development for embedded systems. The jobs don't seem as numerous as in VC-fueled web/app start-up style development, but when your product is expected to function without the ability to update its firmware/software near-instantaneously as modern webapps do, I think it changes the style of development cycle pretty dramatically.

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