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A career-ending mistake

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Re: A career-ending mistake

#31

Post by paganel »

equestria wrote: post #20

Here's the thing about the average career in big tech: five years after you leave, almost no one will remember you were there . Most of your old team mates will leave for other other jobs. Your code will get refactored or rewritten. Docs will be superseded, then lost in some CMS migration. Before long, it will be as if you have never worked there. I know it sounds preposterous, but ask anyone over the age of 55 or 60…

The problem with that is that it drains away your life energy in your late 20s and throughout your 30s, and in fact it's not only about draining one's energy, let's say that would be fine up to a point, but it drains away your purpose in life, and, in the end, your will to live. I refuse to believe that there are people whose purpose in life is to be a manager/VP, and, if they are, they might as well be walking corpses for all I know.

Re: A career-ending mistake

#32

Post by mathgeek »

foogazi wrote: post #18
hcrean wrote: post #6

This article assumes a lot more self-determinism than is available in practice to most people. Beyond that many of us have been running on fumes for years, I can't lose ten extra hours every week away from seeing my family, so I can up-skill for a new variation on the same career with ultimately the same bull.

What if it’s an article for self-determined people ? Or meant to plant a seed of thought in someone’s mind ? > I can’t lose ten extra hours every week away from seeing my family I hope you find the time to make it work for you. And , I don’t want to assume but so have found “I can’t” attitudes don’t work for effecting change in life. Maybe work on that aspect of your personality.

> And , I don’t want to assume but so have found “I can’t” attitudes don’t work for effecting change in life.

I personally subscribe to framing “I can’t” as “I will not”. Then you can view such things as the conscious choices they are. You can also avoid feeling forced to do things just because they are expected of you.

E.g. “I can’t give up time with my kids” vs “I will not give up time with my kids”.

Re: A career-ending mistake

#33

Post by tonyedgecombe »

fallinditch wrote: post #16

> Most managers are terrible. A sweeping statement indeed, but it does reflect my experience too. Perhaps it's my ingrained deference to authority - when I start a new position I tend to believe that my manager has my best interests at heart. This is a mistake and I now believe it's better to maintain a kind of defensive attitude and to always be assertive in establishing, and if necessary negotiating, the responsibi…

My first manager was really good so it came as quite a shock when the next one turned out to be a lying, conniving bastard. Given enough experience you get hardened to it. Of course it would be better if you didn't need to.

Re: A career-ending mistake

#34

Post by [deleted] »

paganel wrote: post #31
equestria wrote: post #20

Here's the thing about the average career in big tech: five years after you leave, almost no one will remember you were there . Most of your old team mates will leave for other other jobs. Your code will get refactored or rewritten. Docs will be superseded, then lost in some CMS migration. Before long, it will be as if you have never worked there. I know it sounds preposterous, but ask anyone over the age of 55 or 60…

The problem with that is that it drains away your life energy in your late 20s and throughout your 30s, and in fact it's not only about draining one's energy, let's say that would be fine up to a point, but it drains away your purpose in life, and, in the end, your will to live. I refuse to believe that there are people whose purpose in life is to be a manager/VP, and, if they are, they might as well be walking corps…

[deleted]

Re: A career-ending mistake

#35

Post by mupuff1234 »

snozolli wrote: post #27
Sytten wrote: post #15

Maybe I am a pessimist but I really don't believe you can plan for 20y in the future especially in the tech sector. People fail to realize that we live in a world that changes not in a linear fashion but rather exponential. For all we know in 10y we will only need 1/5 of the coders we have and IC won't be viable, who knows.

IMO, there's no such thing as a career in tech, outside of maybe FAANGs (or whatever they're called now). It's just a series of jobs until accumulated wealth, ageism, or disability ends it.

The public sector is probably a decent place for a well defined career.

Re: A career-ending mistake

#36

Post by tonyedgecombe »

la64710 wrote: post #14
tossandthrow wrote: post #2

This approach to careers fails to take into account that we inherently change as people. In periods of ones life other things matters - maybe it is taking an education, starting a family, etc. Other periods work matter. It should be entirely fine to switch it on and off and change tracks throughout life - and in my view it seems like it is! To reach a peak it takes roughly 10 years, but these 10 years can be started…

And also I want to acknowledge everything that ends our career is not in our control .. like the dual forces of global offshoring / outsourcing and relentless automation (including AI driven) will continue to put downward pressure in the career curves of tech workers for next few years/decades.

It's interesting that the common sentiment on HN a couple of years ago was the polar opposite of that. I lost count of the number of comments that affirmed the boom was going to go on forever. Software was eating the world, etc.

Re: A career-ending mistake

#37

Post by mjr00 »

paganel wrote: post #31
equestria wrote: post #20

Here's the thing about the average career in big tech: five years after you leave, almost no one will remember you were there . Most of your old team mates will leave for other other jobs. Your code will get refactored or rewritten. Docs will be superseded, then lost in some CMS migration. Before long, it will be as if you have never worked there. I know it sounds preposterous, but ask anyone over the age of 55 or 60…

The problem with that is that it drains away your life energy in your late 20s and throughout your 30s, and in fact it's not only about draining one's energy, let's say that would be fine up to a point, but it drains away your purpose in life, and, in the end, your will to live. I refuse to believe that there are people whose purpose in life is to be a manager/VP, and, if they are, they might as well be walking corps…

> I refuse to believe that there are people whose purpose in life is to be be a manager/VP, and, if they are, they might as well be walking corpses for all I know.

You could say the same thing about ICs though -- "I refuse to believe there are people whose purpose in life is to spend 5 days a week for 3 years building an enterprise line-of-business app to automate an obscure legacy business process that will be used by 10 people in total, and all 10 of those people will complain about the new app and wish they could go back to doing things the old way"

Re: A career-ending mistake

#38

Post by BurningFrog »

fallinditch wrote: post #16

> Most managers are terrible. A sweeping statement indeed, but it does reflect my experience too. Perhaps it's my ingrained deference to authority - when I start a new position I tend to believe that my manager has my best interests at heart. This is a mistake and I now believe it's better to maintain a kind of defensive attitude and to always be assertive in establishing, and if necessary negotiating, the responsibi…

OTOH, this can be a case of the "if everyone around you is a jerk, the jerk is really you" rule.

If you can't work well with any manager the common denominator is you. It's also the only thing you can change.

Re: A career-ending mistake

#39

Post by noirbot »

mjr00 wrote: post #24
fallinditch wrote: post #16

> Most managers are terrible. A sweeping statement indeed, but it does reflect my experience too. Perhaps it's my ingrained deference to authority - when I start a new position I tend to believe that my manager has my best interests at heart. This is a mistake and I now believe it's better to maintain a kind of defensive attitude and to always be assertive in establishing, and if necessary negotiating, the responsibi…

> A sweeping statement indeed, but it does reflect my experience too. IMO - managers are terrible at the same rate as ICs. But the damage a terrible IC can do is limited in most companies because there's guardrails like automated testing, pull requests, no access to the production database, etc. At worst they end up being a big timesuck for other team members until they get let go. A terrible manager will sink a proj…

There is no code-review process for management decisions. Management is essentially like writing code on the production server all the time. The stakes are maybe a little lower, it's a good bit harder to make disastrous mistakes, but there's no real roll-back or testing for if you're about to ruin your team.

Re: A career-ending mistake

#40

Post by groestl »

equestria wrote: post #20

Here's the thing about the average career in big tech: five years after you leave, almost no one will remember you were there . Most of your old team mates will leave for other other jobs. Your code will get refactored or rewritten. Docs will be superseded, then lost in some CMS migration. Before long, it will be as if you have never worked there. I know it sounds preposterous, but ask anyone over the age of 55 or 60…

> almost no one will remember

And that is true for all memory, I suppose. There is none. It's constant communication, down to the quantum level, a constant vortex of information, and if the vortex stops, all memory is gone.

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