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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

#601

Post by bregma »

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…

Funny, I'm also 58. I have also hit the ageism wall (although I'm currently at a place where I'm not the oldest, but then the software is also decades old). My plan is to build a bigger war chest while I can then go back full time to my first love, writing Free software. It's what used to be called "retirement" back when businesses were not run by 20-year-olds who plan to live forever.

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

#602

Post by ChrisMarshallNY »

bregma wrote: post #601
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…

Funny, I'm also 58. I have also hit the ageism wall (although I'm currently at a place where I'm not the oldest, but then the software is also decades old). My plan is to build a bigger war chest while I can then go back full time to my first love, writing Free software. It's what used to be called "retirement" back when businesses were not run by 20-year-olds who plan to live forever.

Cool! You have my full support.

I work harder than I ever have in my life, and love it.

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

#603

Post by da39a3ee »

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #572
dxy3 wrote: post #547

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some ideas (from a guy in his 40s who interviews every 6 to 12 months for high paying short-term project work): - 25 years at a single company is working against you. Remove all that from your cv and just list the recent stuff you built. - Most of your cv should be description of the repos with links. Cut out and summarise past experience ruthlessly, like you’re refactoring someone else’s old code. - Remove the link…

Thanks! Well, the long-term work is staying in the CV. I worked for 27 years at one of the most storied and respected Japanese corporations on Earth, at a very deep level. This says a lot about my aptitude, ethics, Honor, Integrity, team dynamics and loyalty. I sure as heck don't want to work for any company that thinks of that as a bad thing. Most of my tech work has been done in the open. I've been doing open-sourc…

To be explicit here, it sounds like you're saying that you don't think you perform well on data structures questions in interviews, for example binary tree questions. Is that right?

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

#604

Post by ChrisMarshallNY »

da39a3ee wrote: post #603
ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #572

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks! Well, the long-term work is staying in the CV. I worked for 27 years at one of the most storied and respected Japanese corporations on Earth, at a very deep level. This says a lot about my aptitude, ethics, Honor, Integrity, team dynamics and loyalty. I sure as heck don't want to work for any company that thinks of that as a bad thing. Most of my tech work has been done in the open. I've been doing open-sourc…

To be explicit here, it sounds like you're saying that you don't think you perform well on data structures questions in interviews, for example binary tree questions. Is that right?

Not really. I just don't practice them. I'm way too busy writing shipping software that has very little use for the kinds of academic exercises in LeetCode/HackerRank stuff.

Sometimes, I do great at them. Most are common sense.

Usually, I'm mediocre.

There's thousands and thousands of energetic folks out there; young and old, that practice these every day, and can usually ace them in an interview.

There's no way that I'm even gonna try to compete with them. They'll smoke me. They worked hard for that, and I respect them. I would hope this is indicative of them being good employees, but I can't really see how these tests would indicate that better than a simple conversation.

That said, since I've been writing deployed/shipping/sold software for decades, I suspect that I might be doing something right.

In fact, today, I am polishing up a simple Observer infrastructure[0] for a mesh networking driver that I'm working on. One of the basics of my workflow, is if I'm working on a project, and see that the part I'm working on might be more generically useful, I stop work on the main project for a day or two, while I break that section out into a general-purpose module. It helps me to write much better software.

I'm rather obsessed with Quality, and this practice is one way to get that.

I'm not sure that there's LeetCode for that kind of practice, and I can't really see it happening in a timed whiteboard test.

It is, however, very easy to see; simply by looking at the GH repo.

[0] https://github.com/RiftValleySoftware/RVS_GeneralObserver

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

#605

Post by johnkpaul »

vocram wrote: post #336
johnkpaul wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, definitely. I feel this way as well. It's not ridiculous at all. Forced withdrawal is the only way to begin recovery and get back sensitivity. People are extremely scared of the word "addiction" though. I feel the same way about sugar and basically all carbohydrates at all and it's very challenging to talk about.

I’m happy to be free from sugar since a few months. I’m adding salt in my oats instead of sugar. Or just fruits. Or cocoa powder. Cutting carbs though, esp. fruits, is way harder.

Congratulations! I’ve been fruit free and almost vegetable free for 3 years and it’s been the best time of my life. I’ve lost over 200 pounds and kept it off for longer than I ever have in 3+ decades of weight loss attempts.

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

#606

Post by djsumdog »

lol636363 wrote: post #446
djsumdog wrote: post #416

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've done this twice: https://battlepenguin.com/philosophy/perspective/a-tale-of-t... Once was backpacking for 11 months with only two bags. The second was 5 months in a car. I did learn a lot both times, but I never got fully independent and it may have set me back some. Still in retrospect, it was a great journey and I'm still glad I made the attempt.

Nice write up. It looks like we did our bachelor's around same time though it seems you don't have any kids yet, right? Having a kid has complicated a few things but hopefully nothing too bad

Thanks! I do not have kids. My old roommate has a daughter and he and his wife lived out of an RV for several years. He got cancer though and had to buy a house near a treatment center (he's find now; full remission for 5+ years) but they still home school.

Another friend I graduated with, still does the RV life. Although they bought a house recently as a home base, but still RV a few months every year. (They're also homeschooling their youngest; oldest went into the military).

I also had a friend who was an English teacher and survived off There are things that make this kind of lifestyle more challenging for sure (and I'm not about to buy an RV; I do not like driving large vehicles at all), but it's possible if you put your mind to it.

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

#607

Post by lrem »

underwater wrote: post #328
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #102

I've been mentoring CS college students and new grad SWEs for a while. It's shocking to see how many of them perpetually feel like they're overwhelmed and short on time, yet they can't account for where they've actually spent their time. It's not uncommon for new grad SWEs to complain that an 8-hour work day is somehow consuming 100% of their weekday hours, leaving them without any time to do anything else. On furthe…

A 9 to 5 job might only be taking 50% of their waking time, but it could be consuming close to 100% of their mental capacity for the day. There seems to be a an expectation that everyone should have a side hustle or has a creative outlet outside of work so they can get ahead or explore their true passions. But employment is structured in a way that your employer gets first dibs on your time and energy.

This so much.

I'm a senior SRE in Google. I've got myself a NAS to back up my photos. Guess how many weeks it has been before I got the first terabyte of stuff onto it... Wrong, I'm still procrastinating on it :(

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

#608

Post by cryptica »

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…

If you consider that almost every job in the tech industry is utterly useless, it makes sense why there is so much ageism.

Tech jobs these days are not about adding value, so your additional experience is worthless... The things that are valuable to companies are youth, optimism, loyalty and self-delusion.

Companies need a big headcount to give themselves leverage over governments and banks. Companies need a young workforce which they can influence and use as bargaining chips to make deals to get access to cheap money from the Fed.

The role of big corporations is to take people in when they're young and distort their worldviews so that they stay passive, childlike, compliant and docile as they get older - They're not going to rebel against the status quo, they're not going to complain about unjust government regulations which drive up the company stock price but at the same time diminish their freedom to leave the company and be independent.

Old people are not good because they can't be indoctrinated as easily and the benefits are much shorter-term since these old people don't have so many years left on this earth. The investment of brainwashing them doesn't yield so much and not for so long.

These big tech corporations are engaging in pure macroeconomics. They don't care about details like projects, clients and customers. In their world, the only things that affect their bottom line are:

- Governments

- Banks

- Investors

- Public opinion

Everything else is a detail which doesn't concern them. Everything that everyone does in those companies is ultimately about pleasing or manipulating these 4 entities in the most superficial way possible.

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

#609

Post by kopos »

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #604
da39a3ee wrote: post #603

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be explicit here, it sounds like you're saying that you don't think you perform well on data structures questions in interviews, for example binary tree questions. Is that right?

Not really. I just don't practice them. I'm way too busy writing shipping software that has very little use for the kinds of academic exercises in LeetCode/HackerRank stuff. Sometimes, I do great at them. Most are common sense. Usually, I'm mediocre. There's thousands and thousands of energetic folks out there; young and old, that practice these every day, and can usually ace them in an interview. There's no way that…

This is so well articulated. Thank you.

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

#610

Post by TurkishPoptart »

WrtCdEvrydy wrote: post #453
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…

Do you want to work together on a thing?

I'm into technical writing, too! What are you working on?
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