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A Caltech Nobel laureate celebrates his 100th birthday, then gets back to work

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Re: A Caltech Nobel laureate celebrates his 100th birthday, then gets back to work

#151

Post by vasco »

paulryanrogers wrote: post #119
pedrosorio wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This seems like a counterintuitive idea. Older people helping to make more products/services is a downside to society at large? I would understand if “working” was a competition for limited resources. But if it is, in fact, a value generating activity, how does it harm society at large? e.g. Having more doctors work until later, if they are capable, is not a net positive for our society’s ability to provide healthcar…

Some demand for workers scales well, virtually unlimited. Yet many are not. And as tech quickly takes more and more jobs, older workers contribute to the competition for shrinking demand for human labor. Now advances in tech may continue to increase demand for workers elsewhere, once training and workers catch up. Or maybe not as much as roles are lost.

So what if demand scales differently. Should foreigners go back home to leave jobs to nationals? Should women stay home to leave jobs for men? Unless you answer yes to those, why would you choose another arbitrary category like age to do the same?

I hope you're never old with people around you that think the same as you think now. Either you can do the job or not.

Re: A Caltech Nobel laureate celebrates his 100th birthday, then gets back to work

#152

Post by computerdork »

bjelkeman-again wrote: post #143
zw123456 wrote: post #57

Hi there, old person here. Tomorrow is my 65th birthday. I had vowed to myself that I would completely and totally retire, Finally, at 65. But then, this "thing" cropped up and the day after tomorrow, I am pitching my 3rd startup to investors. I wonder, am I crazy. But I feel passion for this project. So, I am throwing myself into the fray again, there is no logical reason to do so. So, Rudy, I understand.

I am 59, and this is my seventh new company, third startup with external funding. We just closed a €1M Euro grant for our work and are well placed for the next funding round during the autumn. You are not crazy, if it is something you are passionate about. I tend to work on things I expect to take a decade or so before I step off. I really don’t feel that being a bit older is a detriment. I work smarter than I did an…

btw, what's (roughly) the new idea you're working on? If you're at liberty to mention it (am just curious:)

Re: A Caltech Nobel laureate celebrates his 100th birthday, then gets back to work

#153

Post by nine_k »

paulryanrogers wrote: post #92
iamflimflam1 wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you’ve still got the energy, why not? I think the most important thing is are you enjoying it? Does it feel fulfilling? There’s a lot of pressure to conform to what’s expected of you and if you can ignore that you’ll probably be much happier than most people.

Because arguably it reduces demand for the next generation to do their thing. And if too many do it then it also becomes a necessity for more in the same age cohort to afford housing and transportation.

"Stepping aside" makes sense if you are in a singular position, like the CEO of a company.

Most positions are not like that. Even though tenured positions in a university is a finite resource, having a highly productive professor on such a position is beneficial, no matter the age. The problem here is in they way science is financed, not in the glut of Nobel laureates refusing to leave.

Re: A Caltech Nobel laureate celebrates his 100th birthday, then gets back to work

#154

Post by nine_k »

csomar wrote: post #113
paulryanrogers wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because arguably it reduces demand for the next generation to do their thing. And if too many do it then it also becomes a necessity for more in the same age cohort to afford housing and transportation.

This assumes the economy is a zero-sum game. It is not, or it shouldn't be.

The problem is that it's not economy, it's academy.

Re: A Caltech Nobel laureate celebrates his 100th birthday, then gets back to work

#155

Post by vasco »

paulryanrogers wrote: post #118
macintux wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given the demographic situation nearly everywhere in the world, there’ll be no shortage of work for the young, and a pronounced need for the old to keep working.

Must it be that way? Can't we settle for less, individually and as a society? Must the numbers always go up, consequences be damned?

Now you're questioning if human nature and pursuit of "better" can be changed. That's like asking "can't we all get along" and get rid of police and armies, which obviously doesn't work.

Re: A Caltech Nobel laureate celebrates his 100th birthday, then gets back to work

#156

Post by lifeisstillgood »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #137
jacquesm wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Tomorrow is my 65th birthday. Congrats! > the day after tomorrow, I am pitching my 3rd startup to investors. I'm still pretty active (58) but there is no way I'm going to do another run, I'm happy tinkering with stuff, spending time with kids and working on average 3 to 4 months per year. I always saw money as a means to an end, just another tool in the toolbox. I don't need more of it so that part of the drive is…

This situation/attitude is exactly the thing that great people end up in. As I've mentioned previously I have known a lot of people that developed enough wealth over time to "retire."[1] And by retire I mean choose to work on what they wanted to work on, and not work if they didn't want to. I once explained as "being a consultant with infinite days of paid vacation." Some folks like Jacques and the GP author are "old…

Are: your member-benefit idea - we live in an extreme mono-culture of company structures and I think any innovation there might help. Tell us more :-)

Re: A Caltech Nobel laureate celebrates his 100th birthday, then gets back to work

#157

Post by teekert »

zw123456 wrote: post #57

Hi there, old person here. Tomorrow is my 65th birthday. I had vowed to myself that I would completely and totally retire, Finally, at 65. But then, this "thing" cropped up and the day after tomorrow, I am pitching my 3rd startup to investors. I wonder, am I crazy. But I feel passion for this project. So, I am throwing myself into the fray again, there is no logical reason to do so. So, Rudy, I understand.

I have this theory: Humans have a spectrum for "worrying about things" or "things deemed important", let's call it 0 to 1. Things you don't worry about are 0. During normal life you worry about some things, and stuff surrounding work may even approach 1. Normal, because your family's well-being may depend on it. Then you retire or become unemployed and the 0 to 1 spectrum starts to drop in scope, the spectrum starts to cover a much narrower reality. Soon you worry and get annoyed by your neighbor not taking good care of his lawn or kids skating through the park... I've seen it happen to people retiring, I was once unemployed for 10 months and I felt it happen to me too.

I then thought: Perhaps for me the working life, life filled with intellectual challenges, may never loose its appeal?! I will just have to make sure to make work more fun by getting rid of the boring parts and focus on the the fun parts. Then, at 67, why would I stop if I got to an almost "pure fun" state? Of course what is fun is also determined by what you are good at so I have no idea what that "work" will look like.

Just a thought from a 41 y/o.

Re: A Caltech Nobel laureate celebrates his 100th birthday, then gets back to work

#158

Post by influx »

teekert wrote: post #157
zw123456 wrote: post #57

Hi there, old person here. Tomorrow is my 65th birthday. I had vowed to myself that I would completely and totally retire, Finally, at 65. But then, this "thing" cropped up and the day after tomorrow, I am pitching my 3rd startup to investors. I wonder, am I crazy. But I feel passion for this project. So, I am throwing myself into the fray again, there is no logical reason to do so. So, Rudy, I understand.

I have this theory: Humans have a spectrum for "worrying about things" or "things deemed important", let's call it 0 to 1. Things you don't worry about are 0. During normal life you worry about some things, and stuff surrounding work may even approach 1. Normal, because your family's well-being may depend on it. Then you retire or become unemployed and the 0 to 1 spectrum starts to drop in scope, the spectrum starts…

I’ve taken off a year and a half from work and similar to your theory, I have the same amount of stress in my life, I just apply it to non work parts of my life.

I was shocked.

Re: A Caltech Nobel laureate celebrates his 100th birthday, then gets back to work

#160

Post by vasco »

gravypod wrote: post #31
spaceman_2020 wrote: post #2

I’ve been fortunate enough to know a few older people who really loved their work and were excellent at it. All of them had one thing in common: they didn’t want to retire. Meanwhile all of my peer group is obsessed with FIRE and dream of retiring early. All of us are also involved in pretty meaningless work that has no measurable impact on the world (five lines of code to a million line codebase is hardly world chan…

> Meanwhile all of my peer group is obsessed with FIRE and dream of retiring early. I'm a SWE and I would love to FIRE one day but the goal of my retirement is very different from others. I want to buy some land with a house and a workshop, learn machining, chemistry, electrical engineering, etc and either contract for startups or start my own projects. Also, I'd like to bring some polish to the free software stack b…

Almost every person I know has the same goal about learning all these new hobbies. What happens instead is people do what they are passionate about and if you never learning X all your life you probably won't start at 65.
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