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A career-ending mistake

bitfieldconsulting.com

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Re: A career-ending mistake

#141

Post by rglullis »

Attummm wrote: post #78
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 Docs will be superseded, then lost in some CMS migration.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 have to disagree with your premise. The goal of many software engineers is to build software / systems they can be proud of. They love software and the machines it runs on. Many people here have Arduino projects, 3D printers, home servers, and similar hobbies. A few weeks ago, I was looking for compression algorithms for a particular use case and came across Brotli[0]. I was surprised to learn it was developed by G…

> Projects like Brotli aren't built to maximize personal profit;

In the case of Google, they very much are driven by profit. For a small company, reducing your payload size or decompression time by 0.01% may be senseless, but at their scale the benefit will greatly outweigh the costs.

Re: A career-ending mistake

#142

Post by dclowd9901 »

paxys wrote: post #17

"What do you want to be?" is a question we have all constantly been asked since middle school by parents, teachers, career counsellors, professors, recruiters, mentors, managers, HR and lots of other well meaning souls. My answer is the same at 40 as it was at 14 – I don't know. And you know what? I've been fine. I have worked at some great companies, and some not so great ones. A couple FAANGs as well as a 20-person…

I think he covers this early on: if you don't aspire for anything more, congrats. Incidentally I'm in the same boat. Literally told my manager "nope, not really interested in pursuing a promotion. Just want to be paid fairly and continue working at this level." They actually appreciated having one less engineer that they have to try to cultivate a career for.

Re: A career-ending mistake

#143

Post by robocat »

CooCooCaCha wrote: post #45
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…

The only way I know how to deal with this is FIRE. Investing as much as possible and working towards early retirement or semi-retirement so that you can at least live a good chunk of your life. The world we live in still sucks away the best years of your life but at least you don't have to wait until your 60s to live the life you want. You can also work on side projects in your spare time that will hopefully accelera…

> The only way I know how to deal with this is FIRE. Investing as much as possible and working towards early retirement

I retired at 50 and "the dream" of FIRE is almost like someone else's idea of an ideal goal and I'm not that satisfied with it - perhaps because I'm out of sync with my peers (I have gained some retired 65+ friends). I had planned to enjoy investing however I find investing soulless and unsatisfying even though I'm doing well at it, so my life plan needs to change. My hobbies remain hobbies - they are not fulltime.

> The world we live in still sucks away the best years of your life

Some of the most satisfied people I know work in plain jobs.

I could found a startup but that's just creating a job for myself and the benefits of many many millions don't seem like they'd improve my life enough.

Re: A career-ending mistake

#144

Post by hirvi74 »

tokioyoyo wrote: post #97
Attummm wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have to disagree with your premise. The goal of many software engineers is to build software / systems they can be proud of. They love software and the machines it runs on. Many people here have Arduino projects, 3D printers, home servers, and similar hobbies. A few weeks ago, I was looking for compression algorithms for a particular use case and came across Brotli[0]. I was surprised to learn it was developed by G…

> The goal of many software engineers is to build software / systems they can be proud of. Maybe for people <30. Priorities change very fast, as you age. I’ve met a good chunk of very talented engineers through work and other venues who acknowledged that they stopped caring after some point.

I'm in my early 30s and I am so close to hitting this point myself. I entered this field because I found the craft to be fascinating. I learned how beautiful the fields of computer science and programming truly are as well as the mathematics both were built upon.

I fundamentally believe a lot of my issues with our field is partly a skill issue on my part -- if I were talented enough, then I might be able to achieve what I truly desire: to work on projects where people care about quality and care about the problem that is trying to be solved.

However, I feel like my IC career is akin to an assembly-line worker. The people I have worked with do not care about quality nor programming/computer science at all. They just want to get things done as fast as possible while extracting as much money as they can.

So yes, I am about to stop caring. If companies want fast churning, low-quality software, then so be it. I'll just need to get over tying some part of my identity to my work.

Re: A career-ending mistake

#145

Post by dullcrisp »

frmersdog wrote: post #75
Ancalagon wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is IC offensive? I’ve never considered it to be. “Resources”, on the other hand, feels very offensive.

Well, taken at face value, it is a bit of an oxymoron. To contribute is to be part of a group; by definition, a contributor can't be wholly independent, because they're adding to a corpus, not producing it by themselves.

Oh, I take it the other way. To me it implies that management doesn’t contribute anything on their own, which is kind of true but also kind of a funny phrasing.

Re: A career-ending mistake

#146

Post by teractiveodular »

dclowd9901 wrote: post #140
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…

Yep -- this is something I wish I understood earlier on: burn hard, make as much as you can, then do what you _really_ want once you have enough money.

But when do you have "enough" money? There are many traps here.

With lifestyle creep, mortgages or kids' educations to pay for, the sum that would have been "enough" in your twenties isn't in your forties.

Many people work hard for decades and drop dead of a heart attack the first day after their retire.

Others retire too early and find out the hard way that they did not, in fact, have enough money.

Some people get both right and still find themselves bored or spiraling unhealthily (drinking to much etc).

Re: A career-ending mistake

#147

Post by teractiveodular »

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…

Ten years ago, while a junior engineer at a FAANG, I made a tiny change to one of the most popular pieces of software in the world. It's still executed billions of time per day, and I'm never quite sure if I should be proud or a bit sad that the sheer number of CPU cycles spent on this almost certainly vastly outweighs everything else I've ever done in my career combined.

Re: A career-ending mistake

#148

Post by paxys »

dclowd9901 wrote: post #142
paxys wrote: post #17

"What do you want to be?" is a question we have all constantly been asked since middle school by parents, teachers, career counsellors, professors, recruiters, mentors, managers, HR and lots of other well meaning souls. My answer is the same at 40 as it was at 14 – I don't know. And you know what? I've been fine. I have worked at some great companies, and some not so great ones. A couple FAANGs as well as a 20-person…

I think he covers this early on: if you don't aspire for anything more, congrats. Incidentally I'm in the same boat. Literally told my manager "nope, not really interested in pursuing a promotion. Just want to be paid fairly and continue working at this level." They actually appreciated having one less engineer that they have to try to cultivate a career for.

Not following a strict career plan does not mean you aren't aspiring for growth. In fact it may be the exact opposite. Being loyal and jumping through hoops for your current team/manager/company in the hopes of a promotion may mean that you are ignoring other opportunities out there that may be a much better fit for you. Your company's career ladder is designed to get you to stay there for as long as possible while minimizing compensation. It does not prioritize your personal growth over the company's. Especially in today's world, the people most likely to get ahead in life are ones who stay flexible and ready to jump on new opportunities as they arise.

Re: A career-ending mistake

#149

Post by itronitron »

mettamage wrote: post #57

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.…

The more capable you are, the more experience and ability you will have with specialized skills which will result in people that don't have those capabilities to think that your skills are not transferable.

If you find a magic workaround to that, please let us know.

Re: A career-ending mistake

#150

Post by Sebb767 »

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…

> This approach to careers fails to take into account that we inherently change as people.

OP very much talks about this in the last few paragraphs, both in that you can't plan exactly and that you need to course correct as things change.

Also, just because it's okay or may happen that you change tracks within your career, it's still a good idea to optimize the track you are currently on and have an idea of where you want to be. Just coasting because you can't possibly plan your life seems like a strictly inferior option.

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