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I thought I would have accomplished a lot more today and also before I was 35

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Re: I thought I would have accomplished a lot more today and also before I was 35

#531

Post by fxtentacle »

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #437
bstar77 wrote: post #245

I was incredibly driven about 7 years ago... I was a founder of a startup and had really lofty aspirations. I told my wife that it was very possible that we would be millionaires by the time we hit 40. Fast forward to today and that did not happen. The startup is no more, but mainly due to burnout. We made money and did well, but not well enough. I never made my millions, but did have a substantial aqui-hire opportun…

I like that. Thanks for sharing it. I'm 58. I spent over thirty years, writing and managing software projects that other people generally didn't use well (or mishandled while developing). It was frustrating, but they paid the bills, so there wasn't anything I could do about it. Since leaving my last job, I started to look at working, and immediately , and with extreme prejudice, slammed into the notorious ageism in t…

It's not just age-ism about people, the same prejudices are also applied against software.

I'm currently #1 in "clean EPE matched" on the Sintel AI benchmark - by re-implementing a 2006 paper. I'm taking advantage of the additional computing power that we have nowadays by brute-forcing what used to be a gradient-descent solver. It appears that people have re-invented the AI wheel many times, but nobody checked to see what was there before deep learning became fashionable.

I see the same issue everywhere. Companies have a large agile web 4.0 team using obscure frameworks that I had never heard of before. But all the stuff that they built would have been included in a $9 WordPress hosting plan.

Re: I thought I would have accomplished a lot more today and also before I was 35

#532

Post by renjimen »

DoreenMichele wrote: post #150
core-questions wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It made me question what society accepts as a valid way to spend spare time Well, to be brutally honest with you, it's one thing for you to be proud of yourself for playing video games, but why would anyone else see that as something pride-worthy? Typically, one takes justifiable pride for accomplishments that stand up to external scrutiny. That usually comes in the form of the accomplishment having an element of s…

My sons always said "Video games are our only education" because of the many times I was astonished they knew some obscure historical detail and they had learned it from a video game. My oldest, who is math challenged, was livid when I finally successfully explained to him what Algebra was and he went "I've been doing that for years while playing video games!!!" He's still mad about it and it's probably at least two…

I’m pretty convinced that some games have made me smarter. It sounds daft, but I remember completing The Witness and felt like I had transcended somehow. Still haven’t found the right way to put it on my CV

Re: I thought I would have accomplished a lot more today and also before I was 35

#533

Post by rumanator »

dasil003 wrote: post #528
rumanator wrote: post #524

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You hear responses from younger generations like "Ok Boomer" to their elders' opinions and it is so cringe-worthy. The problem I see is that some elders feel that their personal opinions hold some kind of authoritative value over everyone else's in spite of their lack of substance or reasoning or connection with reality just because they were born further in the past. In fact, the term "OK boomer" originated in eld…

Actually being alive for longer is necessary to achieve wisdom. The problem you are pointing out is that it’s not sufficient.

Wisdom is not a function of age. It's not a present you open on your birthday. You may get wiser as years go by, but that doesn't mean you get to be wiser than those around you. There are plenty of people who are wiser and more knowledgeable and insightful than those who were born earlier. There are also plenty of people that in spite of their age they attained very little wisdom to show for. The "ok boomer" meme originated in cases where this particular blend of people started to rant about younger people basing their attacks and criticisms exclusively on their age difference.

Re: I thought I would have accomplished a lot more today and also before I was 35

#534

Post by [deleted] »

boring_twenties wrote: post #503
cactus2093 wrote: post #411

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, not so surprising that the high risk path is risky. What's surprising is the low risk path is so high reward.

Also, while it might be a lower risk path than the one you took, it certainly wasn't the lowest risk path available. The people who did really well had basically all their net worth tied up in one company's stock for many years. That level of concentration risk is extremely ill-advised no matter how promising the company might be. Sure, it works out great when GOOG goes up 200%, but it could have just as easily gone…

[deleted]

Re: I thought I would have accomplished a lot more today and also before I was 35

#535

Post by headmelted »

fxtentacle wrote: post #531
ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #437

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like that. Thanks for sharing it. I'm 58. I spent over thirty years, writing and managing software projects that other people generally didn't use well (or mishandled while developing). It was frustrating, but they paid the bills, so there wasn't anything I could do about it. Since leaving my last job, I started to look at working, and immediately , and with extreme prejudice, slammed into the notorious ageism in t…

It's not just age-ism about people, the same prejudices are also applied against software. I'm currently #1 in "clean EPE matched" on the Sintel AI benchmark - by re-implementing a 2006 paper. I'm taking advantage of the additional computing power that we have nowadays by brute-forcing what used to be a gradient-descent solver. It appears that people have re-invented the AI wheel many times, but nobody checked to see…

This.

There’s a surprisingly massive amount of money being spent making more expensive, less stable and feature deficient versions of Squarespace everywhere.

I like to think I understand my work pretty well but in all the years I’ve been in this industry I can’t give a genuine reason for 90% of jobs in this industry to exist at all.

Re: I thought I would have accomplished a lot more today and also before I was 35

#536

Post by boring_twenties »

MrMorden wrote: post #530
boring_twenties wrote: post #503

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, while it might be a lower risk path than the one you took, it certainly wasn't the lowest risk path available. The people who did really well had basically all their net worth tied up in one company's stock for many years. That level of concentration risk is extremely ill-advised no matter how promising the company might be. Sure, it works out great when GOOG goes up 200%, but it could have just as easily gone…

Bloomberg wants tools[1], not people who expect to work 40 hours a week and then go have a life. If you're willing to put in that kind of time and can get into a T14 law school[2], then doing biglaw for a few years in a contract or patent practice would open a lot of doors in a lot of places, plus make it very difficult to lose your job to offshoring. The federal government has an annoying habit of preferring contrac…

> Bloomberg wants tools, not people who expect to work 40 hours a week and then go have a life.

I worked there for almost 5 years and that was not my experience at all.

Re: I thought I would have accomplished a lot more today and also before I was 35

#537

Post by fxtentacle »

papito wrote: post #138
voidhorse wrote: post #13

Funny piece. It can be so easy to waste time when we have the internet. I think the most dangerous distractions are the ones that feel productive but don’t actually work toward your goals. For example, browsing hacker news. Such an activity is useful every now and then, but at least for myself I often scroll around only to realize later that it was a massive waste of time I could’ve spent working on something I care…

People are now terrified of putting down a screen and being left alone with their own thoughts for more than 30 seconds. It's horrifying what's bouncing around up in that dome, and having to process it. But this is exactly what we did before. We got bored , we were wasting time, we were experimenting, and that's how great ideas came around.

I see a strong network effect here.

Once all of your friends are hooked on their phone, it becomes very lonely to be the only one that doesn't stare at a screen. But what people naturally yearn for is not to get bored alone, but to get bored as a group. So the "quality of bored-ness" goes down as screen usage expands.

Re: I thought I would have accomplished a lot more today and also before I was 35

#538

Post by alwahi »

bstar77 wrote: post #245

I was incredibly driven about 7 years ago... I was a founder of a startup and had really lofty aspirations. I told my wife that it was very possible that we would be millionaires by the time we hit 40. Fast forward to today and that did not happen. The startup is no more, but mainly due to burnout. We made money and did well, but not well enough. I never made my millions, but did have a substantial aqui-hire opportun…

this, so much this

Re: I thought I would have accomplished a lot more today and also before I was 35

#539

Post by giantDinosaur »

paloaltokid wrote: post #366
balfirevic wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you value relaxed mornings, relaxed evenings, and never feeling rushed before or after work, then there's nothing wrong with that. You're not obligated to go out with friends or allocate hours to hobbies during the weekday. That is entirely reasonable and correct, but it's also really just saying "suck it up". Having a relaxed day vs. doing hobbies on weekdays is a hell of a dichotomy. It's a shitty choice. I th…

> That is entirely reasonable and correct, but it's also really just saying "suck it up". You bet it is. And the sooner you realize that most of life is this way the better off you will be.

Is this a reasonable perspective? What about the labour movements of the 19th and 20th centuries that in many cases were about balancing work with life? Adopting this perspective isn't great unless you want to accept the status quo.

Re: I thought I would have accomplished a lot more today and also before I was 35

#540

Post by headmelted »

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #437
bstar77 wrote: post #245

I was incredibly driven about 7 years ago... I was a founder of a startup and had really lofty aspirations. I told my wife that it was very possible that we would be millionaires by the time we hit 40. Fast forward to today and that did not happen. The startup is no more, but mainly due to burnout. We made money and did well, but not well enough. I never made my millions, but did have a substantial aqui-hire opportun…

I like that. Thanks for sharing it. I'm 58. I spent over thirty years, writing and managing software projects that other people generally didn't use well (or mishandled while developing). It was frustrating, but they paid the bills, so there wasn't anything I could do about it. Since leaving my last job, I started to look at working, and immediately , and with extreme prejudice, slammed into the notorious ageism in t…

I could offer an alternative perspective on this as I’ve seen it done to a lot of people that haven’t much choice in the matter.

It’s entirely possible you’re not getting offers because they know you don’t need them.

I don’t mean to say they’re wanting to give the offers to less fortunate applicants - it’s just that you’ll be impossible to abuse relative to someone who they know needs the money.

“We need you to work until this is done.” “No.” “Chris, it’s very important and will be reflected on your performance review.” “Ok. Still no.”

At the start of my career (ages ago now) I had an employer find out that my university progression was tied entirely to their performance review of my placement, and immediately start to insist on my working all the hours under the sun with the strong implication that if I didn’t play ball the note would be “unfavourable”.

When you’re young it’s not always clear how little crap you should take from people in more senior positions.

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