Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

A career-ending mistake

bitfieldconsulting.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 211 posts

Re: A career-ending mistake

#51

Post by toast0 »

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 Docs will be superseded, then lost in some CMS migration.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…

> but for most techies, the most useful goal is to make money fast in a way that doesn't drain your life energy. And most of the time, this means responding to opportunities, not sticking to your guns. For example, a lifetime IC job may be ultimately worth less than a management job that gets you to VP level in a decade.

If you can switch to management without draining your life energy, go for it? I hope you're a good manager.

Personally, all of my experiences managing people have been very draining.

Re: A career-ending mistake

#52

Post by mjr00 »

boredtofears wrote: post #43
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 Docs will be superseded, then lost in some CMS migration.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…

There's no guarantee your code will be rewritten or refactored. I have code written over 15 years ago that I know is still in production because it is stable and core to the application. I suppose one day it probably will be replaced but I'm pretty satisfied with that piece of work and found it to be, if anything, more life affirming than draining. You can have your cake and eat it, too: if your work is satisfying an…

yeah, if anything it's dangerous to assume that your code will get thrown away soon-ish.

as an extreme example I'm aware of, the core AWS infrastructure is still heavily dependent on Perl scripts mashed together 15+ years ago.

Re: A career-ending mistake

#54

Post by rakejake »

Yes, I do find that a lot of people get caught in whatever race they started running in the beginning of their careers and don't care to stop for a bit and try retrospecting/introspecting.

I recently took a break from work with the intention of working on some side projects and also thinking about what it is I like to do (somewhat along the lines mentioned in the article - do I want to stay on my current trajectory and try to hit senior IC, management etc). I am only about 6 years into my career, perhaps a bit early for a sabbatical but I felt this was the right time for it. I had a pretty good reputation in my job and I could have done the thinking while on the job, yet I felt I couldn't. I am helped by not having any financial concerns or other responsibilities.

I am not sure what I expect to gain from this though most people assume that either I must be starting my own business or chilling at home although neither is true. I took care to put some structure into it so I don't while away the time scrolling HN. I don't think I will get a sudden epiphany but feel if I put in some hours without any external constraints, something might happen. The worst that could happen is that I have to write off this time and go back to running the race in my IC track.

Re: A career-ending mistake

#55

Post by cocoto »

kstrauser wrote: post #30
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…

I think that’s largely due to the weird notion that engineers will eventually “upgrade” to management, as though one is the advanced version of the other. There are whole degree programs dedicated to managing and organizing people, but we’re like, “nah, Joe’s a good programmer so we should talk him into stopping that so he can supervise people instead”. Fact is, there’s little relation between the two. A person may h…

Not every programmer can be a good manager, but no non-programmer can be a good manager on a programming project.

Re: A career-ending mistake

#56

Post by paganel »

mjr00 wrote: post #37
paganel wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The very fact of calling "computer programmers" as "ICs" is part of this syndrome, I'm not sure exactly when it started showing up, I'd say it was popularised by FAANGs, so maybe 2015-2016-ish?

Re: A career-ending mistake

#57

Post by mettamage »

I feel the discussion needs to be opened up to other ends of careers.

My favorite career end that I'm naturally working towards to is the ability to jop hob to different roles without having prior experience. One way to do that is to be able to show in an interview that you have transferable skills and learn crazy fast. Another facet of that is that you need to identify companies that are open to this sort of thing.

Another career end is to become rich and not work. It's not achievable for everyone of course. But it is a type of career end.

Other career ends that one becomes disabled and live on disability checks or welfare. To me, it seems that this is a career end that people want to avoid.

I feel digital nomads aren't really represented in this career end. You could put it under independence, but the characterization of independence in this blog post was quite narrow which is why I feel the need to state it explicitly. Some people are in their career end when they can just work remote 4 days and have a decent salary.

There are many more career ends, what could you come up with?

Re: A career-ending mistake

#58

Post by codingdave »

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…

I don't find that to be true. I remember many of my co-workers... some fondly, some not, but they are remembered. They added as much flavor to my life as my family and friends, if not more, because we spent more hours together. Their work influenced mine and I learned from them. And their insights helped direct which directions we took the projects.

Now, did our presence impact the company? Did our code survive? Or documentation? Do people who work there today have any idea we ever existed? No, perhaps not. But really... who cares? The relationships we have with people in our lives matter, as do the impacts we have on each other, regardless of what our impact was on some rando corporation I earned a check from some number of years ago.

Re: A career-ending mistake

#59

Post by paxys »

toast0 wrote: post #51
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…

> but for most techies, the most useful goal is to make money fast in a way that doesn't drain your life energy. And most of the time, this means responding to opportunities, not sticking to your guns. For example, a lifetime IC job may be ultimately worth less than a management job that gets you to VP level in a decade. If you can switch to management without draining your life energy, go for it? I hope you're a goo…

Exactly. If making good money without taking on too much stress was the goal, my advice to everyone would be to become a senior/staff IC at a decent company and stay in that role till retirement.

Re: A career-ending mistake

#60

Post by sokoloff »

paganel wrote: post #56
mjr00 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

The very fact of calling "computer programmers" as "ICs" is part of this syndrome, I'm not sure exactly when it started showing up, I'd say it was popularised by FAANGs, so maybe 2015-2016-ish?

I've heard the term (or "individual contributor") since at least the first dotcom boom in the late 90s.
Post reply on HN