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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

#631

Post by ChrisMarshallNY »

xab31 wrote: post #628
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…

Not sure if this will help, but I'll share my very recent story of how ageism looks from the other (youngish people) side, which contains some pitfalls to avoid. I'm 32, and the technical lead of a mid-sized research computing / ML team in quasi-academia. I'm the one who tells the boss whether a hire is technically competent, performing up to standard, is meshing well with the team, etc. So I don't make hire/fire dec…

Thanks for that.

I'd say that's the type of stuff that insecure people do. As a manager (the one that made hire and fire decisions), I saw this type of behavior from folks across the age range. I'd gently suggest that, were you to look around, you'd see others behaving in similar manner; but, for whatever reason, you are noticing it more with this chap.

I remember seeing that attractive folks (of any gender) tended to have these types of behaviors ignored, and "attractive" doesn't just mean someone with whom we want to bump uglies, but also people that satisfy our confirmation bias.

I know that I had to constantly be examining that. I worked in an extremely diverse environment, and managed a lot of folks with a lot of quirks (and brains).

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

#632

Post by acwan93 »

tayo42 wrote: post #153
papito wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Idk if it's just terrified, but I think we're addicted. This probably sounds ridiculous but I recently blocked some apps and sites on my phone and actually felt a little off for a day, like my sleep was weird. I think there was a slight withdrawal from the constant bombardment of stuff. It is helping kill my Facebook habit. I don't even really like the site, I just check it impulsively. It's weird. Reddit is another…

It feels like how I treat junk food and snacks: I’m welcome to have as much as I want, but I have to go out of my way to get it every time. Never stock up, which in this analogy would mean never install the native app or subscribe to newsletters or notifications.

For reddit et al, I only view it on the browser. Sure, I get bombarded by popovers and alerts telling me to install the app, but I have to work my way to get to the content if I really wanted to view it.

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

#633

Post by ChrisMarshallNY »

dennis_jeeves wrote: post #624
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…

Chis, If somebody hires you based on this thread let us (or me) know who the employer is. Like 'headmelted' pointed out, part of 'agiesm' is that it’s just that you’ll be impossible to abuse relative to someone who they know needs the money. Programmers, especially the young are insecure douche bags, and I suspect that their insecurity leads to hiring docile individuals who can be coerced.

Thanks. I suspect not. I'm more interested in things like working on NPO projects and whatnot.

I like helping people help people. What I'm just beginning, now, is a Swift SDK for goTenna devices. These are the types of things that first responders to disasters often use. My goal is to make it open-source, MIT-licensed. I may also work on the Meshtastic project. It's entirely possible that the project may not make it. goTenna likes to play their cards close to the chest. Meshtastic looks good, but I need to get around to flashing these devices, and that's just a pain.

I have some prior art in this kind of thing. I have another project that I did, that is taking off in a big way. It finally got to the point where a bunch of really energetic and talented people piled on, and now it's becoming a world standard.

When projects don't make money, they tend to take longer to get in the air. I started that project over ten years ago. I play the long game, which I learned that from working at a Japanese company.

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

#634

Post by ineedasername »

chii wrote: post #512
ineedasername wrote: post #466

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's always more to lose than just what you own. There's who you are, there's relationships with family & friends, there's time, there's opportunities. All should be put on the scale & weighed against the risks.

> There's who you are Why would you lose who you are if you merely lost on a big bet (say, as an entrepreneur?) > there's relationships with family & friends I think you may be reading too much - you imply that a big bet will always mean sacrificing your friends and family, but i do not believe that to be the case, and in fact, friends and family are what helps you succeed, and including them in your bet is more like…

1) It's not just about making a big financial bet. No one is the same person they were 10 years earlier. The decisions we make along the way change us. You decide to make a big bet, that means you face a whole bunch of different decisions as a result, and then those lead to more, all of which change & become who you are. Many times it's fine, but when it's not, that is something lost beyond money. Do you think no one has ever failed in business and not had an awful impact on them? Some people emerge more determined, some people end up broken.

2) Success changes people. Failure changes people. It also changes how other people look at you. It's not uncommon for people who achieve a certain level of success to make a break with their former lives in some way. Even before success or failure, simply making a big bet then requires a certain amount of focus & drive that can make it difficult, unless you are very careful (and many people are not) to keep your same relationships, to not allow friendships & family connections to lapse. Or let's use something more concrete: many people finance their big bet through family & friends, asking them to make a bet as well. Failure in those cases can be very difficult.

3) You seem to agree with me here: time is always lost, always lost beyond any monetary gain or loss. And it's not just the time lost on the project: Starting from zero means time spent working your way back up. (Perhaps tapping those family & friends for more resources: see above) You only have time for a very small number of big bets. Doing that casually because you believe the potential downside is capped at money is... an incomplete understanding of the risks. If you choose the "big bet" path, it will likely define your life, and what you do day in & day out. And what life is defined purely in monetary terms? None.

So take those risks, all decisions are risks. But consider the costs as well. It's always more than just money.

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

#635

Post by [deleted] »

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #631
xab31 wrote: post #628

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure if this will help, but I'll share my very recent story of how ageism looks from the other (youngish people) side, which contains some pitfalls to avoid. I'm 32, and the technical lead of a mid-sized research computing / ML team in quasi-academia. I'm the one who tells the boss whether a hire is technically competent, performing up to standard, is meshing well with the team, etc. So I don't make hire/fire dec…

Thanks for that. I'd say that's the type of stuff that insecure people do. As a manager (the one that made hire and fire decisions), I saw this type of behavior from folks across the age range. I'd gently suggest that, were you to look around, you'd see others behaving in similar manner; but, for whatever reason, you are noticing it more with this chap. I remember seeing that attractive folks (of any gender) tended t…

[deleted]

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

#636

Post by jstarfish »

xab31 wrote: post #628
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…

Not sure if this will help, but I'll share my very recent story of how ageism looks from the other (youngish people) side, which contains some pitfalls to avoid. I'm 32, and the technical lead of a mid-sized research computing / ML team in quasi-academia. I'm the one who tells the boss whether a hire is technically competent, performing up to standard, is meshing well with the team, etc. So I don't make hire/fire dec…

I don't think age is the problem there; the guy just sounds like a narcissist. #1 and #2 are huge red flags-- "fake it 'til you redefine success [on your terms]" is a sign of someone mimicking competence.

Just wait until one of "his" solutions fails to perform-- then it's inevitably going to be your fault. Somehow.

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

#637

Post by TeMPOraL »

es7 wrote: post #621
TeMPOraL wrote: post #566

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A thought occurred to me today: could it be some kind of "sugar high"? If I'm getting my timeline right (this was 7 years ago), my hyper-productivity period happened about when I stopped being on a ketogenic (carb-minimizing) diet, and got back to eating high-carb food. (During my time on keto, I didn't feel any significant energy loss below the baseline; but I wonder if reintroducing carbs after being deprived of th…

I know for me there is a definite diet aspect on a daily basis, but I don't remember if that's been the case during any of the weeks where I've felt invincible. But on a small-scale basis: - Eating a big simple-carb-heavy meal will absolutely ruin my energy focus the rest of the afternoon - However if I've been running a deficit and feel low-energy, a moderate meal of complex carbs (ex: bowl of pasta) will give me en…

Replying in parallel, because I have further thoughts to share. Ever since this comment thread started I've been thinking a lot about those times of hyperproductivity I've described, and I've identified couple things that were true in both cases, and thus are hypotheses worth checking out:

- In both cases I had a hard deadline and a well-defined set of goals, but there was a big gap between "minimum acceptable outcome" and "best possible outcome", with rewards scaling with the outcome. Something back then made me set my sights on the high end of that spectrum.

- I wasn't really blocking other people - if I didn't meet my deadline, I'd suffer some limited (and mostly non-financial) loss, but nobody else's work would be destroyed by this. I.e. in one case my work was irrelevant to anyone but myself, and in the other it was an optional (though strongly desired) dependency.

- I had people to impress. In one case personally, in the other I wanted to make our group look impressive in the local community.

- Both cases have had a significant "like hell I/we can't do it, just hold my beer and watch this" factor. I.e. the deadline was tight, and relevant people didn't believe it could be done in the time remaining.

These factors are a bit harder to reproduce. Most of situations I encounter these days don't have truly hard deadlines ("there's a release next week" is almost never a hard deadline in practice), and yet at the same time involve potential losses to other people (if the release actually happens and I don't deliver, I might derail it). There's little space to go above-and-beyond, in a way that doesn't feel like setting yourself fake goals for the purpose of self-gamification.

I'll be thinking about ways to test these hypotheses and, if any of them turns out to be a significant factor, to engineer my life to make use of it.

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

#638

Post by RobertKerans »

rumanator wrote: post #571
RobertKerans wrote: post #561

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, that's the original context. It's just that "ok boomer" is very often used to dismiss an older person [older than the person responding] asking someone to do anything (or giving advice in anything). Just as "Karen" is very often just a coded "bitch", used when an woman [older than the person responding] asks someone to do anything

It's extremely disingenuous to try to assert that the "ok boomer" meme is used to dismiss questions or requests or opinions made by older people, or that the "karen" meme is used to dismiss questions or requests made by women. Its in fact a gross misrepresentation of what those memes are and have always been.

No it's not -- it's not my fault people are misusing the memes! They definitely are heavily used to dismiss in the manner I've described as well as being used in their correct original context. You might not like that people aren't deploying the internet memes the way you think they should be deployed, but it's definitely not disingenuous to point out that's what's happening. It's dismissive and mocking (for good reason!) but it's also something that's blown up, and when that happens the original intent and subtleties get rounded off or lost, so in many cases it's now used in any context, not just the ones where it was originally totally applicable.

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

#640

Post by sukilot »

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 told my wife that it was very possible that we would be millionaires by the time we hit 40.

Are you being colloquial?

Being a millionaire by 40 (in 7 years or less) is quite likely for anyone with the talent to launch a startup, by working at a regular big conpany.

Launching a startup lowers those odds by quite a bit (but increases the small chance of being a manymillionaire).

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