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A career ending mistake

bitfieldconsulting.com

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Re: A career ending mistake

#311

Post by AlwaysRock »

onion2k wrote: post #279
hnthrowaway0315 wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not a bad thing. One becomes an expert in one niche domain (I wouldn't say COBOL is niche but you know) and comfortable sit on top of it. One can just work maybe 15, 20 years and retire early.

You also need to be aware that there will be massive pressure on businesses to remove your job though. Every single app written in a lanuage that has a diminishing number of people able to work on is a huge risk. The only reason COBOL devs are still able to fine work is because businesses like banks didn't have the foresight to remove that dependency early enough - they've been running their legacy code for far too l…

> Its unlikely that they'll be keen make the same mistake again.

Companies learning from their mistakes? Large companies learning from their mistakes? Companies learning from the mistakes made 10-20 years ago by a different CEO/CTO/Leadership team? You believe it companies ability to change more than I do.

Re: A career ending mistake

#312

Post by asdfman123 »

Melatonic wrote: post #198
asdfman123 wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We're making a huge mistake when we see mastery as an end goal. I played band in grade school, pushed myself hard, burnt out, etc. Learning classical piano as an adult has been a MASSIVELY instructive experience. Here's why: I'm never going to be a professional classical pianist. Ever. It's far too competitive, I'm probably not talented enough, and it's not worth the effort. Therefore, the ONLY reason I'm doing it is…

You can view mastery as an end goal and still enjoy it - you just have to be willing to do it a bit slower.

Well, sure. Mastery is definitely my end goal, and it's worthwhile one. But my goal isn't to make money or receive acclaim.

I guess the most important part is not caring about how it will "reflect" on you or what others will think: that is, trying to reduce the amount of ego goes into it. It's a subtle distinction.

But in my experience once ego takes over, the more subtle enjoyment can fade away and it can become tied to your self-worth, which can be miserable.

I mean, yeah, goals are still important, but you still have to respect the journey.

Re: A career ending mistake

#313

Post by benibela »

giantg2 wrote: post #92
hinkley wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I recall thinking that my friend who had decided to gamble on Objective-C as his specialization in '95 was being foolish, because NeXT wasn't doing that well, and the hazard pay for being one of the last N experts was probably fraught. Less than 2 years later NeXT merges with Apple, and Steve Jobs has begun the biggest comeback in tech history, including switching Apple to Objective-C. Well then... This sort of thing…

True, but I don't see Filenet and Neoxam ever getting big.

I have specialized on Pascal, XPath, and causal (Bayesian) networks

I do not know how to make a career out of that :/

Re: A career ending mistake

#314

Post by xvector »

giantg2 wrote: post #301
xvector wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree. For me the solution was to stop thinking about my career as much more than a means to an end ($$$). The system is broken, sure, but fixing it isn't my job. I'll work on problems I find interesting, and for all I care, the system can crash and burn. All the while, I'll clock out when I want and go home with a smile on my face.

"The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing,"

That's great. Fortunately for my sanity, I've decided not to take on the burden of caring about being "good" in all things.

Re: A career ending mistake

#315

Post by Kerrick »

bobthepanda wrote: post #266
anonymousDan wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

NNs sure, React and Rust ... uhm no.

React was a pretty big step for frontend-development; people have done good and bad things in React just as they've done in any other framework, but the important thing it (or other frameworks like it) did was establish a better way of tying state to a series of rendered elements that was better than doing CSS-selector-fu and trying to update things that way.

Not only did React not start that, it wasn’t even in the first generation of frameworks that does it.

Re: A career ending mistake

#316

Post by karambahh »

BadCookie wrote: post #52
toomuchtodo wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could be a technical PM. Bit of a “day walker” with a foot in both the tech and people worlds.

It seems like all the technical PM jobs require that you’ve already held that title for several years. Or maybe I take job descriptions too literally.

I have been in a position to hire people repeatedly, and I've done a fair bit of job hopping myself in the last few years.

Never let a job description hold you back from applying. You could bring other things to the company, you can acquire knowledge that you currently lack.

Apply, discuss and see how it goes.

Re: A career ending mistake

#317

Post by ZephyrBlu »

giantg2 wrote: post #11
_abox wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sorry to hear that. I've had many positions where I felt like I belonged including my current. The ones where I didn't were very depressing and stressful. I hope you will find more fulfillment in the future! By the way I never planned anything. I don't think more than a week ahead. Somehow I have fallen into the right places anyhow. I tend to get really bored once I've totally mastered a job so I change a lot. I…

It felt great at first. Once you realize that the company - respected/known as a place that does the right thing - doesn't follow its own policies and screws people over, you realize that every company/job sucks. It won't be better anywhere else. And you wasted your youth on obscure and obsolete tech because the company needed it and you wrongly believed their promises that they would take care of you (retraining, ca…

What kind of company do you work for? Tech company, FAANG, etc.

Re: A career ending mistake

#318

Post by xmprt »

WJW wrote: post #293
xmprt wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I understand what they're saying but I don't trust their math when they claim "simply cutting cable TV and a few lattes would instantly boost their savings to 15%." That implies that cable TV and a few lattes accounts for $2.5k of spending in a year.

Feel free to plug in different numbers of course, preferably numbers from your own life. The point of the article is not to get you pondering about the finances of this hypothetical family and how much they may or may not spend on cable and coffee, but to get you thinking about your own finances in the same way.

The thesis of that article is that early retirement is simple formula and isn't as complex as people make it out to be. When one of the examples they give to explain that claim is to just get rid of cable and a few lattes it makes me think that they don't actually know what they're talking about.

Firstly, very few people still have cable. Also, I don't know anyone who's spending $1200+ per year on coffee (and, $1200 per year is a lot more than just a "few lattes").

I actually somewhat agree with their formula but I don't like how they put it in a condescending way. It's like claiming that losing weight is as simple as having more calories out than calories in. Functionally that's true but it doesn't really help much.

Re: A career ending mistake

#319

Post by xmprt »

chestnuttrees wrote: post #269
xmprt wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I understand what they're saying but I don't trust their math when they claim "simply cutting cable TV and a few lattes would instantly boost their savings to 15%." That implies that cable TV and a few lattes accounts for $2.5k of spending in a year.

$100/mo cable, 5 lattes/week before work at $5/latte… it’s not so far off (unless you decide to litigate the definition of “few” or the average post-tax price of coffee in Nebraska or whatever). It’s illustrative.

Do people still have $100/month cable plans that don't come bundled with Internet? Also, 5 lattes/week is more than a few lattes and $5 per latte is extremely expensive.

Re: A career ending mistake

#320

Post by bobthepanda »

Kerrick wrote: post #315
bobthepanda wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

React was a pretty big step for frontend-development; people have done good and bad things in React just as they've done in any other framework, but the important thing it (or other frameworks like it) did was establish a better way of tying state to a series of rendered elements that was better than doing CSS-selector-fu and trying to update things that way.

Not only did React not start that, it wasn’t even in the first generation of frameworks that does it.

And the iPhone wasn‘t the first touchscreen phone, either. Doesn‘t mean it didn‘t have a big impact.
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