71–80 of 242 posts
TL;DR if you spend 35 years as an engineer, you'll still need to work for a living, but if you spend 35 years as an entrepreneur or VC, you'll likely be retired long before that. In other words, it's better to be at the top of the pyramid than working for someone at the top.
This post is touching on two issues that are somewhat related but different: 1. Finding ANY job when you're 60 is hard; 2. Engineers (who are still engineers) at 40+ will often be passed over in favour of twentysomethings. Engineering is such a young industry that I'm not sure we've really faced (1) yet (since the number of people who started engineering in the 70s is but a drop in the ocean compared to the number in…
In tech you are trying to make something no one has done before so you want the young hungry engineer.
What have some of you more career-advanced HNers done to ensure yourselves employment as you guys age? I'm looking for tips to take into consideration through the years.
There's no need to have hardware at home faster than work. Software that's newer or more complicated than at work, sure.
Keep up with changes in the industry, just like any engineering career. I never fail to be amazed at meeting people who have no idea whats going on in tech outside their work department. They're doomed in the long run.
This post is touching on two issues that are somewhat related but different: 1. Finding ANY job when you're 60 is hard; 2. Engineers (who are still engineers) at 40+ will often be passed over in favour of twentysomethings. Engineering is such a young industry that I'm not sure we've really faced (1) yet (since the number of people who started engineering in the 70s is but a drop in the ocean compared to the number in…
In an industry like O&G or energy experience is highly valued. When you have you have potentially billions of dollars on the line and many peoples lives with an oil platform you want someone who has done it before. In tech you are trying to make something no one has done before so you want the young hungry engineer.
Alternatively, choose the older engineer with the experience to know: "You know what? Fundamentally, what we're building here is the same as this thing from 10 years ago".
I've never understood why for many professions age/experience is coveted but engineers are assumed to have such a short shelf life. Nobody prefers a 30 year old lawyer or doctor over a more experienced one but an engineer of the same age needs to start planning a career transition...where is the logic in this?
Doctors and lawyers gain skill as they get older because the problems and solutions don't change quickly, and the fields have such depth that expertise takes decades to acquire. We work in an industry where the state-of-the-art is perpetually accessible to 20-somethings who haven't done anything, because the technology gets blown up once a decade (or so). Even if you stay up to date, why would anyone pay you a salary…
The nature of SW is to create abstractions that are reusable. So if you've built a good reusable abstraction, no one needs to know what's "under the hood" except in rare circumstances.
Ask your frontend web dev to explain some differences between the x86 and ARM ISA. Most won't have clue. Even much higher up the stack, most probably couldn't explain how TCP/IP work. For the most part it's irrelevant.
Other fields don't/can't build on lower levels in such a way that practitioners never have to learn the lower levels at all. How many surgeons are there that don't know cell biology?
Your best hope is to either continuously churn with the latest trends. Or pick a part in the stack that is likely to not change, and be a niche expert (aka, a networking guru, or x86 god). Your job opportunities will be much smaller, but if you can find your team (e.g., compiler architect or processor performance analyst) you'll likely to have a job for as long as you like.
TL;DR if you spend 35 years as an engineer, you'll still need to work for a living, but if you spend 35 years as an entrepreneur or VC, you'll likely be retired long before that. In other words, it's better to be at the top of the pyramid than working for someone at the top.
SICP, which, when it was published, summed up a lot of what I had learned as an undergrad. Nobody reads it to write a mobile app. Since I read it, I had jobs or book contracts that depended on knowledge of LISP machines, bit slice, the original Macintosh OS, Windows telephony API, edge routers, core routers trying to be edge routers, J2ME, Linux on ARM, and Android. Android will be around another 10 years, maybe a bit more or less, and it too will be a museum piece.
My shortest trajectory from zero to Noted Authority and back to zero was when I had a book contract to write about Visual J++. Thank you, Sun's lawyers, for that short trip.
All that said, if you don't know anything about project management tools, estimating market size, or how to write, or critique, a cash flow and P&L projection, your knowledge is going to be hard to package in a form that has high value.
"""When not even a Stanford or MIT engineering degree is good enough to keep an engineer employed at 60, there is genuinely no market for engineers that age. Plan accordingly.""" Wait, what I did 40 years ago won't guarantee my employment now?!? What is this insanity, I thought once I got my degree in 1973 I was done with all this "learning" nonsense. How can I be expected to just keep updating my skills?
Why does Google still care about people's undergraduate GPAs from 25 years ago? When my friend interviewed at Google (they did hire him), the recruiter wanted to know how many hours per week he worked (to pay his tuition) at university 25 years ago to account for his "low" undergraduate GPA (3.0 - 3.5).
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why does Google still care about people's undergraduate GPAs from 25 years ago? When my friend interviewed at Google (they did hire him), the recruiter wanted to know how many hours per week he worked (to pay his tuition) at university 25 years ago to account for his "low" undergraduate GPA (3.0 - 3.5).
What would happen if you didn't remember your gpa? It is shocking that they would ask something like that though.
I'm not buying it. I'm about to turn 50 - doing better work than ever and more in demand. The tools today are so good compared to 5-10 years ago. Now I have these awesome tools, and understand sales/marketing/management/finance. ps - could I get a job as a developer? probably not. but there are other (better) alternatives.
I turn 41 next month and have been a developer for the two decades that I have been in IT. A 50 year old up to date on the latest tools seems to be the rare exception. The rule at my current employer seems to be after hitting 50-55 that they really have their eye set on retirement. Learning a new skillset has such low dividends that they don't believe it is worthwhile. They show up to work right on time at 8 am, they…
Yes of course there are lots of clock-punchers out there. We used to call that mentality 'terminate and stay resident'. (maybe only 50+ will get that reference...)
I suppose if I was employed by a large company, I might have grown cynical over time. But I'm working on my own stuff and having a lot of fun with it. The tools are so good I can do things that used to take a team to accomplish. And I can execute way better than I could earlier in my career, just by knowing how to shut down distractions and stay focused.