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Ask HN: 10k hours rule to master anything. Could I switch career when I am 43?

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Re: Ask HN: 10k hours rule to master anything. Could I switch career when I am 43?

#261

Post by andrew_ »

ghost-towels wrote: post #160
pbhjpbhj wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Meh. You can be as confident as you like, if people won't take on staff as "juniors" who are older, then the whole process of retraining - wrt career change - has been a waste of time. I've never been involved in corporate HR, I'd want advice. Similarly, if I was doing a bungee jump for the first time I'd ask someone to check my harness ... (to spell it out, you seem to be berating someone for doing a reality check,…

This is pretty much where I’m at. I’m mid 40s and been working in the marine industry for almost 30 years (yes I started that young). I’m going for a career change but I have zero experience in a corporate/modern office setting. I am also self taught. It will be a huge change, and I’m concerned that I may not be hireable. All that being said I’m still going for it as I’d like the rest of my working days actually help…

my advice: look for work with startups that have under 20 on staff. you'll avoid corporate nonsense (more often than not with startups of that size), and it's likely they'll be remote so the only "modern office setting" things you'll have to pick up and master are: not being a jerk, communicating effectively asynchronously, and video call etiquette. With companies that size, and there are many out there, they'll likely be more than happy to help you figure out the remote lifestyle.

Be bold

Re: Ask HN: 10k hours rule to master anything. Could I switch career when I am 43?

#262

Post by Retric »

LouisSayers wrote: post #258
Retric wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I personally suspect more people are harmed by self help books etc than helped. Which circles back to the kind of advice I would give someone. It’s easy to fall into the trap of assuming reading advice is inherently beneficial but it needs to result in some net positive behaviors or it’s just wasting time, money, and mental effort.

I suspect a self help guru like Tony Robbins would have actually given similar advice to the root commenter - to consider your options and then to get off the couch and do something. Lumping all self-help resources into not being useful or even harmful doesn't help. There will always be some quacks, but there will always be some people with genuine insights and the ability to help others understand themselves better…

I can’t tell if that was supposed to be a parody or not.

Which is kind of my point. Some material may be better than placebo, but when we are talking about self help as an industry you need to consider the impact of everything from Scientology to actually lethal practices like Breatharianism. The trends within the industry seem to focus on what’s useful as a business rather than what’s helpful to it’s customers. So yes some people are helped, but some people are also financially ruined or even killed.

It’s not that everyone is trying to scam others, just that the same kind of forces that cause clickbait still apply and impact what’s popular.

Re: Ask HN: 10k hours rule to master anything. Could I switch career when I am 43?

#263

Post by ilc »

aerlinger wrote: post #259
ilc wrote: post #256

As someone who is a coder: My "career" switches with each job. I go from Defense, to Logistics, to Mathematics, to Systems Software, to now Databases. I'm not trained in all these to 10,000 hours. I have 25+ years at this, and I still have to learn at every job when I start. So, the most important thing is the core. The very core competencies of a programmer: - Rigor - You must be willing to rigorously think things t…

> But really, Java is miserable without an IDE Very true. It's also miserable with an IDE.

Eh,

It is usable with an IDE. Also it forces OO and interfaces down your throat, which is important when picking up other languages.

The other languages you'd choose to learn in the "Java" slot are:

- C++. I like new programmers too much to suggest this. Even if they know C.

- golang - Not a bad choice, but forced OO is a good thing to learn.

- C# - I haven't done enough of it, but it felt like Java on the CLR to me. Maybe with some warts moved around.

- Common Lisp: Too obscure, too alien to read.

- rust - No... just no. Too early.

- ML, Haskell and friends - Yes, I love you all. But... Understanding a simple type systems is important before taking on Hindley-Milner type system language.

So I'm kinda stuck with Java. It sucks the least. :)

Re: Ask HN: 10k hours rule to master anything. Could I switch career when I am 43?

#264

Post by bmacho »

sophacles wrote: post #171
danesparza wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. Bobby Fisher got there in less than 10 years. https://problogservice.com/2012/03/15/what-malcolm-gladwell-... The problem is, Gladwell never said you needed 10,000 hours to be an expert, you need 10,000 hours to be a phenom. To be so freakishly awesome, to be such a standout among your peers, that sometimes your first name is enough to tell people who you are: Peyton. Tiger. Venus. Kobe. Oprah. But in the mea…

I need 500g of flour to make bread. That doesn't mean I can make bread with just 500g of flour. You are trying to say that someone claiming 500g being necessary to making bread is hogwash because it doesn't also talk about the salt and water (etc).

Why is everyone so pessimistic? I believe that if you, sophacles, had the time, the determination, the money for 10 000 hours of tutoring of a grandmaster, and the mental/emotional/physical okay-being for the time, you could reach a grandmaster level in chess in 10 000 hours. Same for many many areas. (Polgar tried it, for a time his 3 daughters were the 3 best woman chess players, but this doesn't really count since they started very young.)

Re: Ask HN: 10k hours rule to master anything. Could I switch career when I am 43?

#266

Post by bryanrasmussen »

> Gladwell repeatedly refers to the “10 000-hour rule,” asserting that the key to achieving true expertise in any skill is simply a matter of practicing. It could be the greatest practice myth.

Is everyone who has a rewarding career in an in-demand field actually a 'master' of that field? Seems unlikely.

Re: Ask HN: 10k hours rule to master anything. Could I switch career when I am 43?

#267

Post by alexfromapex »

edmcnulty101 wrote: post #82
alexfromapex wrote: post #77

Just do it. I'm planning to switch jobs from Software Engineer to General Contractor, just working on saving up capital for heavy equipment and materials. I took a great training course and now just have to pass the licensing exam. If your passion changes, just change fields, life is short.

This is cool. In construction? Do you plan on doing residential, industrial, or commercial? Do you have previous experience?I would love to build physical things for a living.

Yeah going to do some even smaller projects first like retaining walls and building driveways. There are different license levels and they require different levels of capital. The lowest level mainly lets you build residential and has a limit on the number of stories for buildings and the full price of the project. One cool thing I've learned so far is how complex concrete is. Eventually will ramp up to commercial after things are running smoothly but the first thing I'm learning how to run a small business and it's new and exciting just doing that stuff.

Re: Ask HN: 10k hours rule to master anything. Could I switch career when I am 43?

#268

Post by sillystuff »

NikolaNovak wrote: post #152
WastingMyTime89 wrote: post #86

In my admittedly still short life, I have started to notice something: you can broadly divide the world into two groups - those who do things and those who keep wondering if they should have done things. So for what’s worth, here is my advice to you: drop Gladwell and self-help books, if you want to and can switch to a new job, do it. Should it work or fail, you will have experienced trying. If you don’t feel like it…

I agree with some points of it. However, some people (loosely correlated with age but not strictly) have more unavoidable responsibilities than others. For a very prosaic example, a person without mortgage and kids, all other things equal will have inherently less responsibilities than one with mortgage and kids (while both still have options in principle). Empathy is a massive skill I've been learning late in life;…

And, I'd add that past experiences greatly impacts tolerance to risk. A person who had no money for food and/or was homeless as a child, and a person with a financially secure family to fall back on so there are no consequences for failure are going to have very different risk tolerance.

Even when we are aware of it, fear can control us. And, previously poor people know, from experience, what the consequences of failure can be.

This was demonstrated on a macro level by the generation that grew up in the Great Depression having a high savings rate (emergency fund), repairing rather than replacing things as long as they could, and being otherwise thrifty almost regardless of income.

Re: Ask HN: 10k hours rule to master anything. Could I switch career when I am 43?

#269

Post by sinenomine »

osigurdson wrote: post #81

I believe there is a genetic maximum capability by age (GMCA) for any given endeavour. Certain categories of endeavours require significant time spent in youth (early teens to mid twenties) in order to reach GMCA - let's call these type 1 endeavours. For others, you can start later in life and still nearly reach GMCA (type 2). Other endeavours are more heavily skewed to genetics and may not require a significant time…

Thank you for a rarely heard voice of reason among the sea of self-help-inspired virtue signaling.

I find this culture of explicit expectation of anyone being able to become anything at any age deeply depressing - not just for myself, but for society as a whole. It’s not hard to see the rising depression rates and the obvious relevant pathway towards it - society producing unrealistic expectations in the individual only to be shattered by uncaring reality X years later. This extreme blank slate-ism is simply inhumane at this point.

We should acknowledge your simple model of individual human potential dependent on genetics, age and early learning. We should accept the fact that human neuroplasticity is a rapidly falling curve when plotted by age.

With these truths in place we could develop objective evidence-based models of human potential and derive solid advice from these.

Only such advice I would consider humane, while feel-good verbalizing should be considered abuse.

If you think about it, professional sports training is structured not unlike this scheme. I wonder why we can’t accept this method for broader and more important sections of society.

Re: Ask HN: 10k hours rule to master anything. Could I switch career when I am 43?

#270

Post by [deleted] »

Grustaf wrote: post #217
adamgordonbell wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's Gladwell himself: There is a lot of confusion about the 10,000 rule that I talk about in Outliers. Practice isn't a SUFFICIENT condition for success. I could play chess for 100 years and I'll never be a grandmaster. The point is simply that natural ability requires a huge investment of time in order to be made manifest. Unfortunately, sometimes complex ideas get oversimplified in translation. I don't get why p…

The guy is a walking TED talk. I don't hate him, but he's supremely annoying in his smug triteness.

[deleted]
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