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So long, and thanks for all the bytes

chethaase.medium.com

11–20 of 160 posts

Re: So long, and thanks for all the bytes

#11

The idea that another multi-millionaire tech worker would think that leaving their job is something people would be interested in is… strange. He’s letting the world know that in the second worst tech downturn in history, he’s going to retire and pursue comedy writing. Feels more appropriate for a Facebook post to this friends rather than a medium post.

It's actually fine for someone to post something you don't personally want to read.

Re: So long, and thanks for all the bytes

#12
post #2

Because of the downturn, I wonder how many people have given up on their careers at Tech? How many more will respond to the call of a different professional life that pays less, but that will be more fulfilling? Even as recent as yesterday I heard a past-colleague tell me "maybe Tech isn't for me, after all. I'll try my hand at this other thing."

I wouldn't over-generalize. But there is some belt tightening at companies. Many companies have grown/changed. People may not feel up for a late career reboot even if, under different circumstances, they might have put some more years in.

Re: So long, and thanks for all the bytes

#13
post #10
post #2

Because of the downturn, I wonder how many people have given up on their careers at Tech? How many more will respond to the call of a different professional life that pays less, but that will be more fulfilling? Even as recent as yesterday I heard a past-colleague tell me "maybe Tech isn't for me, after all. I'll try my hand at this other thing."

I suspect there will be quite a few people in this situation, but it won't be the majority of people simply for financial reasons. If your idea of a fulfilling career isn't tech, law, finance, medicine or business/management, it may simply be impossible to do it full time and have a decent quality of life in many places. For instance, writing jobs pay terribly overall, with the quantity of them going down a lot due t…

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Re: So long, and thanks for all the bytes

#14
post #2

Because of the downturn, I wonder how many people have given up on their careers at Tech? How many more will respond to the call of a different professional life that pays less, but that will be more fulfilling? Even as recent as yesterday I heard a past-colleague tell me "maybe Tech isn't for me, after all. I'll try my hand at this other thing."

I would assume that he just earned so much money that he’s rich and can now do something else with his life without caring about money. Good for him.

Re: So long, and thanks for all the bytes

#15
post #2

Because of the downturn, I wonder how many people have given up on their careers at Tech? How many more will respond to the call of a different professional life that pays less, but that will be more fulfilling? Even as recent as yesterday I heard a past-colleague tell me "maybe Tech isn't for me, after all. I'll try my hand at this other thing."

Even in the best of times, the best engineers I've worked with basically we’re just putting up with companies and management because the work was interesting and pay was good.

With so many people looking for work at the moment, I think a lot of these same companies have kind of a big head about themselves. Interviewing always sucks, but having to jump through a bunch of hoops, be ignored, or ghosted by some dopey SaaS company is really discouraging for a lot of people.

I myself decided to take a sabbatical so as not to deal with all this right now.

Re: So long, and thanks for all the bytes

#16

The idea that another multi-millionaire tech worker would think that leaving their job is something people would be interested in is… strange. He’s letting the world know that in the second worst tech downturn in history, he’s going to retire and pursue comedy writing. Feels more appropriate for a Facebook post to this friends rather than a medium post.

To quote Gervais' bit:

On Twitter, people sometimes say, “Why don’t you keep your opinions to yourself?” I go, “You’re following me. I didn’t tweet at you.” That’s like going to a notice board in the middle of town, seeing a sign for guitar lessons, and yelling, “I DON’T WANT guitar lessons!” Well, it wasn’t for you.

Maybe hard to believe, but for a lot of people, it's way more interesting than hearing yet another self-proclaimed radical communist go on another rant about people making money.

Re: So long, and thanks for all the bytes

#18
post #15
post #2

Because of the downturn, I wonder how many people have given up on their careers at Tech? How many more will respond to the call of a different professional life that pays less, but that will be more fulfilling? Even as recent as yesterday I heard a past-colleague tell me "maybe Tech isn't for me, after all. I'll try my hand at this other thing."

Even in the best of times, the best engineers I've worked with basically we’re just putting up with companies and management because the work was interesting and pay was good. With so many people looking for work at the moment, I think a lot of these same companies have kind of a big head about themselves. Interviewing always sucks, but having to jump through a bunch of hoops, be ignored, or ghosted by some dopey Saa…

It's not 2001 but it's almost certainly harder for a later career person in particular get hired than, say, 5 years ago. I know quite a few people who presumably feel comfortable financially and have walked away from at least full time involvement with tech.

Re: So long, and thanks for all the bytes

#19

The idea that another multi-millionaire tech worker would think that leaving their job is something people would be interested in is… strange. He’s letting the world know that in the second worst tech downturn in history, he’s going to retire and pursue comedy writing. Feels more appropriate for a Facebook post to this friends rather than a medium post.

I'm not sure why it did, but it's not his fault that this has made the top spot on HN.

Re: So long, and thanks for all the bytes

#20

Chet's book on the early days of Android is super interesting. Lots of crazy OS building stories. He must have interviewed 50 people who worked on the first couple releases of Android. I had him share parts of that story on the podcast and result is one of my favorite episodes. I always thought of Android as, of course it succeeded, it was a big google project. But the story is far more interesting. They were somewha…

I joined Android in April 2012. Looking back, at that time Android was incredibly lean for what it was accomplishing. The entire Frameworks team reported to one manager, and we would fit in a medium size conference room. That included all of UI toolkit and the bulk of the Java APIs an app would call into, including Binder. (Networking, phone, graphics, Bluetooth, etc were other teams, but we worked closely together. And I think graphics was like 5 people). At the time I was slightly worried that I had joined a mature project and that it had already seen most of its success. Little did I know. (Disclosure: Chet was my manager for a couple years, until I left in late 2016 to join Fuchsia, largely because I was impatient to develop in Rust).

Chet is a great comedian, I think he'll do well in his new interest. I'll bend the norms here and tell a joke. It'll be funny to Android insiders, apologies otherwise.

At one point, he hosted a get-together in his house, which was one of many things that led to incredible team cohesion. It was somewhat chilly, and we were sitting around in our jackets shivering a bit. One person said, "we should have an Android app for turning on the heat to warm us up." My response: "we already do, it's called GMSCore."

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