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A career ending mistake

bitfieldconsulting.com

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Re: A career ending mistake

#121

Post by nigerian1981 »

Jaruzel wrote: post #118

I hate my job. I don't know how I got here. Like many I started out in small scale IT just as desktop computers were becoming a thing. I transitioned from mainframe support to desktop support, from there I worked through several desktop support roles, wishing I was server support but never managing to get there... over time I became a desktop architect, and then infrastructure architect, and now well.... I just don't…

I know exactly how you feel. Wish I’d chosen a different field such as Mechanical or Electrical Engineering to IT.

Re: A career ending mistake

#123

Post by bckr »

jrm4 wrote: post #94
duxup wrote: post #42

I changed careers at 40+ years old. I'm very happy that I did it. People have all sorts of constructs / ideas about how careers work (based on experience) or how they think it works, or how they want it to work. I talk to some college graduates who tell me what they're planning for and have ZERO clue what industry they're talking about, their description is unrecognizable to me ... even tho I know it is the one I wor…

Right? I teach college students going into IT, and this feels like something they would write. Offhand, I can't think of too many people (myself included) who are a) very happy in their jobs and b) planned very diligently to get to that exact space. Mostly the opposite, "A lot of random stuff happened, I followed through on some stuff that felt right at the time, and just kind of did that over and over."

When you say "the opposite", do you mean that not only were their paths random, but they are not very happy?

Can you think of and describe anyone you know who belongs in xor(a, b)?

Re: A career ending mistake

#124

Post by onion2k »

AlwaysRock wrote: post #109
onion2k wrote: post #23

If you love what you're doing now and don't ever want to change jobs, great: you've reached the end of your career, even if it plays out over many decades. Even if you love what you do and you don't want to change anything, the world around you is going to have other ideas. Especially in tech.

Eh. To some extend yes but largely, no. If you loved COBOL all your life you can still find COBOL work. It's harder now but its out there. You're just not going to be working at a cool start up doing it. So if part of what you love is working at cool cutting edge companies then yeah you have to keep learning new cutting edge things. But if you just want to bang out code in your preferred language there will almost al…

The beauty of your argument is that it's unprovable. No matter what language someone might suggest they enjoy that they can't find a job writing any more, you'll always be able to counter saying "Ah, but you've not looked hard enough! They're out there!" It'll always be the candidates fault for not scouring the world searching for that AP/L role or Shockwave Flash advert.

The assertion that no matter what tech you want to work with there'll certainly be a job writing it somewhere doesn't seem right to me. Not because there won't be some uniquely rare role out there, but because very few people want literally any job, anywhere, on any salary, under any conditions just because they get to a specific language. Unless there's good jobs writing it that you would actually accept then the language might as well be dead.

Re: A career ending mistake

#125

Post by noisy_boy »

> I think there are three main kinds of career destination, at least in the tech industry:

> Independent

> Senior individual contributor (IC)

> Management

I guess I'll stick my neck out and just admit that I don't want to give any more fucks about any of the above and just wake up, sip my tea, read the news and take a bloody nap whenever I want to. Also volunteering/open source but mostly, not doing things I don't want to do any more. Yep, I don't want to be "incredibly excited" about the "next growth chapter of my life" - I just want to live my life in a non-agile way without sprinting towards the end of it. That is about it.

Re: A career ending mistake

#126

Post by larrik »

crrndngmstk wrote: post #21

To me, this reveals an uncomfortable truth: - I know I'm not technically skilled enough to make it to the higher levels of IC - I know I lack the people skills & charisma to make it to the higher levels of management I'm aware I can improve in both and I accept that, to some extent, it's a laziness and confidence issue. But to some people it seems to come naturally and it's hard not to assume I'm in the majority that…

> - I know I lack the people skills & charisma to make it to the higher levels of management

I'm not convinced this is big deal as you think. Just care about the people you work with and care about doing a good job, and you're better than lots of people succeeding in this role.

Re: A career ending mistake

#127

Post by nostrademons »

kosievdmerwe wrote: post #30
tdumitrescu wrote: post #27

Feels like the "senior IC" role described in this article corresponds mainly to today's "3-5 years of experience 'senior' engineer" roles. The reality that I've seen and experienced is that advancing beyond that on an IC track means a lot more people/political work, rather than constant "hands on keyboard" coding as described in the article. It's not the same as management, but it's inevitably more meetings and evang…

This is something people seem hesitant to realize: that after a certain point you can only grow your career by "managing" other people. This is true in a lot of (most?) fields. At some point you cannot become more productive as an individual and you need to start coordinating the work of many people if you want to increase your productivity. This can of course take many forms, but the essence is inescapable.

It's interesting to me how many people miss the other big shift that can increase their earning potential: from labor to capitalist. The ceiling is effectively unlimited for this. A good manager might make double what a good IC under them does, but the shareholder makes orders of magnitude more.

The essence of capitalism is shifting resources from unproductive uses to productive ones, and they operate on global markets, which gives them unprecedented leverage. Capitalism is a skill just like management, and just like management, it consists of a number of subskills. How do you know what the market will value? How can you evaluate the competitive landscape? How do you make yourself aware of technological developments and new suppliers that might affect cost structures? How do you recognize emerging complements? How do you ensure the legal structures of your agreement make sure that you share in the profits of your investment?

The interesting thing is that developing these skills early, in high school and college, helps dramatically even if you don't have any capital to invest. Because you can apply the same questions toward the company you contribute your labor to, and then bargain for stock instead of cash. A junior developer who joined Coinbase in 2016 made a lot more than a manager who joined Facebook.

Re: A career ending mistake

#128

Post by larrik »

> The first phase of your career is probably too early to make serious plans, and any decisions you make at this stage are rarely critical: there's plenty of room to experiment and make mistakes.

I think the decisions you make in the early stages are indeed very critical, but there's basically no way to truly predict their effects, so you shouldn't worry about it.

Re: A career ending mistake

#129

Post by zwieback »

giantg2 wrote: post #72
ghaff wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It sounds like they were very upfront with you about what the job would entail. How is that lying? And the reality at a large company is that many people spend a lot of time coordinating, sharing information, gathering requirements, etc. even if their nominal job is market research or whatever.

I would expect that there would be presentations and meetings to share the products of the research. It's an entirely different thing be primarily performing project and stakeholder management. The only way I found out about the true nature of the position is from an informal informational with a member of that team. The job posting itself mentioned nothing about project management and glossed over the stake holder m…

I've run into this problem, there could be multiple reasons: standard job descriptions that are used over and over, jobs changing shape while the company is screening applicants, unclear objectives on part of the hiring managers, etc.

We try to have the peers review the job descriptions before the reqs go out but often engineers don't spend the time it takes and sometimes there's HR lingo the company wants in the description.

Re: A career ending mistake

#130

Post by sokoloff »

nonameiguess wrote: post #66
znq wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, we're completely open to having partners and kids around at our events. We actually encourage it. I myself have a child now and am looking forward to taking her to our next event. We're also looking into options of having a nanny. Depending on where we go and what we do.

What about employees with physical disabilities? I've got ten screws in my spine and never thought when deciding to work in computing that I'd be expected to be able to ski and surf.

We’ve not done anything that physically demanding, but we’ve definitely had events with short hikes, a chair lift ride up the (summertime) mountain to the lunch spot, or other short diversions from large group discussions. I’ve never gotten any sense that if someone were either physically unable to perform it or just not interested that it would be held against them and in any group of 30+ people you’re likely to have someone who doesn’t want to/can’t do exactly the activity and so you make accommodations.

It’s not like you’re going to be coding while waiting for the next set.

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