Do You Really Want to be Doing this When You're 50?
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Do You Really Want to be Doing this When You're 50?
1–10 of 260 posts
Re: Do You Really Want to be Doing this When You're 50?
#2I just turned 29 and this depressed me.
Re: Do You Really Want to be Doing this When You're 50?
#3Yes, maybe I do! Just need to make the sure you end up being an ageing Rockstar programmer rather than retired Lounge singer
Re: Do You Really Want to be Doing this When You're 50?
#4In short, yes, and I'm in my 40s.
I actually returned to programming after years managing programmers in part because I was unhappy. I realized that the further I got from the machine and _making_ the less happy I was.
So, if you asked me whether I wanted to be 'managing' at 50, I'd say "Hell, no!".
The enjoyment of making things work, learning and shipping it real. I hope I'm still able to feel those things at 80. I never got the same satisfaction and enjoyment from managing people and processes.
Re: Do You Really Want to be Doing this When You're 50?
#5I love programming professionally at nearly 50. I doubt that is going to change. And I'm in the game industry.
Re: Do You Really Want to be Doing this When You're 50?
#6FYI, I am 50 and loving it still. More relevant question IMO is: are you doing what you enjoy doing?
Re: Do You Really Want to be Doing this When You're 50?
#7A bit of a false dichotomy here.
Don't do the work because it's expected of you, because it's sexy, or because it's "interesting". Don't do it because your friends are impressed, because the pay's good, or because your friends are there.
Do it because it enables you to do what you love.
Re: Do You Really Want to be Doing this When You're 50?
#8Late 30s represent, yo. The author of the article mentions high stress. My experience differs.
In my case the stress sort of waned by itself. I think I moved a bit towards Wally character from the Dilbert series. I don't overcommit anymore and I certainly gained resistance to "aggressive schedules" and visions of doom and gloom tied to deadline skips. So I stress out less and less and I believe it comes naturally with age.
Re: Do You Really Want to be Doing this When You're 50?
#9The frustrations of this are less than frustrations of almost every other job I know.
I hope to mitigate the frustrations by simplicity - the idea of a few great tools I know inside and out
Re: Do You Really Want to be Doing this When You're 50?
#10I just turned 29 and this depressed me.
You'll see, turning 40 is even worse ;)