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A career-ending mistake

bitfieldconsulting.com

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Re: A career-ending mistake

#181

Post by ponector »

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 depends on the perspective. Global offshoring/outsourcing does an upward pressure in the career curves of tech workers anywhere around the world except few countries.

Re: A career-ending mistake

#182

Post by CooCooCaCha »

ghaff wrote: post #173
CooCooCaCha wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can 100% tell you it will not provide that life to a lot of people. I'm happy for you if it does but others like myself would rather kill themselves than work a 9-5 until they're 60.

And a lot of those people would not have been in a position to start their own companies--much less succeed at it. Have a big trust fund? Sure. If it were from Day 1, depending on the circumstances, 9-5 would have been ehh. But not sure how directed I would have been absent strong parental direction.

[flagged]

Re: A career-ending mistake

#183

Post by ghaff »

CooCooCaCha wrote: post #182
ghaff wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And a lot of those people would not have been in a position to start their own companies--much less succeed at it. Have a big trust fund? Sure. If it were from Day 1, depending on the circumstances, 9-5 would have been ehh. But not sure how directed I would have been absent strong parental direction.

[flagged]

People need to have income in some way, shape, or form. They can earn it themselves whether by working for someone or by being an entrepreneur in some fashion. Or they they can be given it by family.

Re: A career-ending mistake

#184

Post by polishdude20 »

MichaelRo wrote: post #127
tokioyoyo wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

>> Maybe for people This. I read here on HN some time ago an article stating that teenager-ish people crave to find "meaning" in work due to being what in essence can be described as emotionally retarded (although intellectually normal). This all changes fast as they age and/or have kids or other inevitable live event that manages to pull their head out of their ass. Basically Mark Twain's "When I was 17, my father w…

I think it's more to do with the fact that a teenager wants to break free from their family and start working as an adult. They've never worked before in a "career" (most of them). So it's new and exciting.

Then once they reach about 30 they realize family is what mattered the most, work is just a means to an end most of the time and it's really hard to make your "mark" on the world. Why not make your mark in a smaller way that's more guaranteed? By being there for family and friends

Re: A career-ending mistake

#185

Post by noirbot »

lifeisstillgood wrote: post #87
noirbot wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

But why isn’t there a code review process for management decisions? What if code was how decisions were recorded ? What if companies were programmable ?

The most obvious reason, in my mind, is that merely proposing a decision is enough to be a problem. Suggesting we're killing a project a dev has spent months on, or moving someone to another team, or saying we'll miss a major KPI, or not promoting someone aren't things you can have a public full-team review on. Just knowing the manager was considering it is enough to upset people.

If someone writes code that has an error in it, you maybe think a bit worse of them, but it's a learning opportunity and that's what the review is for. If your manager suggests a course of action that you deeply disagree with, that's hard for them to come back from.

Re: A career-ending mistake

#186

Post by noirbot »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #98
lifeisstillgood wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But why isn’t there a code review process for management decisions? What if code was how decisions were recorded ? What if companies were programmable ?

What if there were no hypothetical questions? That is, you can ask hypothetical what ifs all you like, but unless you have a concrete plan for getting there, you're just writing fantasies. And, management decisions get reviewed before implementation all the time. It's just not a code review, precisely because management decisions are not code. Why aren't they code? Because people aren't computers. If you're going to…

It's also that a lot of management "decisions" happen in the moment. Is how they phrase something in a meeting or a one on one. It's how they respond or ignore questions. It's how strongly the push for someone to be promoted.

They're decisions, but often not something you can have sitting for review for days ahead, even if it's only seen by senior management. I've had plenty of times management announced something I agreed with, but the way they explained it was so rancid I came out of it upset.

At the end of the day, management, and in general all human interactions, are a glimpse into who you are. It can go amazingly well, or disastrously poorly. You can try to be very careful and say what's needed, but tone and timing and phrasing will almost always give things away.

Re: A career-ending mistake

#187

Post by layer8 »

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…

Given how much of one’s life time is taken up by working, the highest priority besides making ends meet should be to do something that fills you with purpose and is rewarding in a non-monetary sense. “Making money fast” isn’t that for most people, unless you shoot for retiring very early, which is quite difficult to achieve.

Re: A career-ending mistake

#188

Post by mattgreenrocks »

hirvi74 wrote: post #144
tokioyoyo wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 w…

I hear echoes of myself here. I made it a goal to learn enough about compilers because they were cool, and also to try to escape the thermocline of quality that I saw that was pervasive in industry. The hope was I could build skills in something that isn't easily commoditized. I was somewhat successful: I've worked on some nifty and difficult things, learning a lot of CS along the way.

However, the risk of burnout still exists, but this time, from overwork, because there is essentially an unbounded amount of work that could be done. Additionally, my career growth at my current place is probably stalled out unless I want to do substantially less tech work. This occurs because they have a lot of people who've amassed a lot of specialized expertise, so technical skill is commonplace.

Ultimately, I arrived in a spot in my career that isn't terribly different from most people, despite the amount of work and time put into trying to break away from that. I don't regret it, but there is a sense of wondering whether it was really worth it if my progression, pay, and everything else follows the same age-gated gradient that is prevalent in industry.

Re: A career-ending mistake

#189

Post by 12thhandyman »

Gud wrote: post #151
rakejake wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think the OP is talking about whether to focus on running the race or not, but rather which race to run. As you grow older, the number of open tracks diminishes and that is the point the OP is trying to make. While one can change tracks at any time, success is far from guaranteed. Being a distinguished engineer at 40, one cannot suddenly decide to enter the track for CFO or CEO. The track for that accepted en…

Disagree here. Start your own company, boom, you are the CEO.

Can’t really tell if this is tongue in cheek but starting a company doesn’t make one CEO. It makes them a partner/owner but typically CEO needs a board of directors etc

Re: A career-ending mistake

#190

Post by ido »

12thhandyman wrote: post #189
Gud wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Disagree here. Start your own company, boom, you are the CEO.

Can’t really tell if this is tongue in cheek but starting a company doesn’t make one CEO. It makes them a partner/owner but typically CEO needs a board of directors etc

I don’t see where you get that definition. If you’re the one running the company, you’re the CEO.

You may argue you need employees to be a CEO rather than a consultant but you certainly don’t need a board of directors.

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