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A career ending mistake

bitfieldconsulting.com

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Re: A career ending mistake

#211

Post by duxup »

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."

>and this feels like something they would write

I was thinking it, just not brave enough to say it outright when I typed my response ;)

Re: A career ending mistake

#212

Post by granshaw »

I think he's missing one big endgame – becoming a [Co-]Founder.

The most risky of the bunch, and with the most variables outside of your control, but it IS there as an option, esp if you have relevant or prestigious experience as a senior IC or PM.

Come to think of it, it's something of a mix of all 3, Independent, Senior IC, Management.

Re: A career ending mistake

#213

Post by JAlexoid »

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…

The irony is that you're nitpicking on the mistakes, while being literally the person who ended one career and started a new one.

Do you know if your new career is a career to your retirement, post retirement or only for a few years?

Re: A career ending mistake

#214

Post by LurkerAtTheGate »

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…

Regarding Forensics - if you were going to work in computer forensics, I did that for a bit after grad school. I didn't last 6 months: aside from a couple corporate espionage cases, everything else was child porn/abuse. Important job, but soul crushing digging through personal machines seeking that for 40 hours a week.

Re: A career ending mistake

#215

Post by JAlexoid »

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."

I can relate to the author, even if I didn't frame my current position as end-of-career. I'm far from being in college.

I don't want or expect to progress. I want to be part of a team, without leading it. As far as I know - the progression part of my career is over, thus my career is over. What next steps I could have taken afterwards are plentiful, but irrelevant.

Re: A career ending mistake

#216

Post by trulyme »

musicale wrote: post #210
asdfman123 wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Staying a productive IC your whole career is fairly straightforward: I really think it comes down to never "coasting" and always being open to learning new things. The problem is a lot of older people seem to believe that once they get to a certain point, they're entitled a position and respect. Is it a wonder why younger people, who might be more up-to-date than them, don't want to work with them? The trick is to ne…

This doesn't pass the smell test for me, for several reasons: Most of the "new" ideas in computing (neural networks, quantum computing, etc.) aren't new at all. Not to mention that Linux and macOS are basically 1960s-style operating systems. Knowledge of short-term technical details and skills at dealing with brand new systems are much easier to acquire than deep understanding of core principles as well as engineerin…

Well it goes both ways. Young people are cocky and dismiss older peoples' experience as irrelevant, and more senior people think they've seen it all already and that there is nothing new that hasn't been around since 60s.

Neural networks are a good example. If you skipped the last decade (/two) and you think you know about ANN because you mastered them in 60s... boy do I have news for you. :) Another paradigm shift for me was React (declarative web frontend development), and let's not even go into the whole Rust thingthing

One of the biggest pitfalls of an experienced person can be lack of curiosity, and it is really easy to fall for it, because let's face it, most of the new things are crap and will be forgotten in a few years. However, there are nuggets to be found in the mud, one just needs to keep looking.

Re: A career ending mistake

#217

Post by amatecha »

danity wrote: post #87

A long time ago, after interviewing for months, I finally landed my first job as a developer. It was VERY hard to get your foot in the door back then. On my first day, I was given someone's old computer that had a bunch of junk on it. While cleaning it up, I accidentally deleted all files on the company's file share. Shortly after, I started hearing murmurs of missing files and then, panicking inside, realized what I…

Damn, dude. If I nuked stuff on the file server I would have immediately gotten up and talked to my team/manager/whatever. I'd be anxious as hell but I'd still do it. If I actually got fired I'd think they are just a trash employer because there's no possible way someone should get fired for an innocent mistake (that never should have been possible anyways -- systemic failure on the employer's part). I know someone who accidentally published private docs to the open web, because they followed the known process for sharing docs with their team, and the process did not correctly identify how to verify/ensure the docs are internal-access-only. They nearly got in trouble, but I told them to adamantly communicate how they followed the official process using the official tools and there was no information about the security/privacy that indicated it wasn't private. There was no way for this person to have known any better, with what the employer had provided. It was even just weeks after some security/privacy training had taken place at the job, proving just how badly the employer failed to educate their staff.

Re: A career ending mistake

#218

Post by granshaw »

asdfman123 wrote: post #144
ebiester wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And it seems to lump tech lead, staff-level individual contributor not leading a team, and architect-level positions that have no direct reports. When I speak about career options to people I lead, I say there is a senior level plateau. At that point, you have to be more intentional about growth. If you want to stay in the field, and you want to progress past senior developer (staying a core contributor is an option!…

Staying a productive IC your whole career is fairly straightforward: I really think it comes down to never "coasting" and always being open to learning new things. The problem is a lot of older people seem to believe that once they get to a certain point, they're entitled a position and respect. Is it a wonder why younger people, who might be more up-to-date than them, don't want to work with them? The trick is to ne…

We’ll, you know, it’s kinda true in other careers, and that’s where the belief comes from.

Needing to constantly keep up is quite unique to Tech, and is a good or bad thing depending on your outlook

Re: A career ending mistake

#219

Post by duxup »

JAlexoid wrote: post #213
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…

The irony is that you're nitpicking on the mistakes, while being literally the person who ended one career and started a new one. Do you know if your new career is a career to your retirement, post retirement or only for a few years?

What is the irony?

Re: A career ending mistake

#220

Post by GCA10 »

ebiester wrote: post #65
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…

And it seems to lump tech lead, staff-level individual contributor not leading a team, and architect-level positions that have no direct reports. When I speak about career options to people I lead, I say there is a senior level plateau. At that point, you have to be more intentional about growth. If you want to stay in the field, and you want to progress past senior developer (staying a core contributor is an option!…

For those of us who are semi-good at all three paths, our long-haul choices depend quite heavily on how the wider world either opens unexpected opportunities for us, or gradually chokes them off.

In my own (non-technical) case, I had a great 15-year run as a top-of-the-heap IC -- and then my outfit got bought by people whose business model had no use for what I did. Time to do something different, and with it being 2008, going independent felt a whole lot smarter than trying to find a new star-IC role in a scared industry.

Going independent was good for 7-8 years, but then my favorite partners at my favorite clients all got to the end of their roads. New faces; new visions, and the unappealing prospect of spending 3-4 years trying to revive a shrunken pool of business into something better.

A star-IC role opened up somewhere else, and it's been a great ride ever since.

It's the career equivalent of summers in Alaska; winters in the Caribbean. Sometimes the key to staying warm and happy is to be willing to move when the temperature changes.

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