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MIT alumni in their 50s

blogs.law.harvard.edu

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Re: MIT alumni in their 50s

#121

Post by hga »

wobbleblob wrote: post #80
kristopolous wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's nothing wrong with wanting to do it as a lifelong career. There's plenty of well-adjusted responsible adults that do. I just don't think it will be my decision, personally.

It may not be your choice. At some point it becomes more and more difficult to get a job interview if you don't have more impressive sounding job titles on your resume.

What I discovered after I turned 35 was that erasing all evidence of my age from my resume made a massive difference in getting interviews. Of course, further success depended on being able to fake being young as fortunate genetics helped me to do. Just be careful about specifics in what you talked about, in a 2003 interview I slipped and mentioned PDP-11s, which prompted the interviewer to exclaim "Just how old are you?" I was hired, probably in part because the job was particularly difficult software archaeology, but my younger boss ... well, it didn't last long, or end well.

Re: MIT alumni in their 50s

#122

Post by JoblessWonder »

I'm curious to see if this is as big of an issue 20-30 years in the future as it is now. 30 year olds in America were raised with computers in the schools (if not the classroom and home.) 20 year olds were raised with computers in the home and in their pockets. [1]

Will we continue to see people over 50 (or even 40) as unable to grasp new technology if they were raised in a society that placed such a high value on technology being an integral part of life from a young age? Part of me says no, part of me says yes.

[1] I'm not saying it won't be an issue. Just as sexism and racism are still around in the workplace, ageism will continue to be an issue. I'm just wondering if it won't be seen as the norm.

Re: MIT alumni in their 50s

#123

Post by mcguire »

dba7dba wrote: post #17
IkmoIkmo wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Doctor. Lawyer. Professor. All important, no doubt. But which one of those truly helped advance our society or nation? As in improving GDP or trade balance? Ehh... all three? Try running a country without them and see where your GDP ends up. As for 'truly helped advance' and linking that to just GDP is incredibly myopic. I have all the respect in the world for engineers but let's not fetishise over them.

Eh, maybe I was a bit harsh. But still, consider this. Doctor: Was the doctor in research? Lawyer: No comment. Professor: How good was his research? Or was he one of those the taught from same note year after year and just took credit for work done by grad students? And my mistake in linking it just to GDP. How about advancing the society by building better tools, transportation, medicine, improve efficiency in this/…

Just out of curiosity, have you ever installed a toilet?

Re: MIT alumni in their 50s

#124

Post by Thriptic »

kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #120
sixtypoundhound wrote: post #98

If we reverse the clock back to their 30's, the underlying math of these career choices isn't so kind... - The academic is completing their PHD program, with it's associated vow of poverty and about to start a multi-year tenure cagefight, in low-wage contract instructor roles. Only a small fraction will make it to full tenure; the rest will drop out to pursue industry jobs, 10+ years behind the engineers who went dir…

> Meanwhile, the 30 year old MIT engineer has good odds of making six figures as a senior tech or technical lead. Only in the major urban areas of the left and right coasts. Other places you have to fight to make above 75K.

True, but it's still possible to save quite a lot of money on such a salary because the cost of living is much lower outside of major urban areas on the coasts. My friend who is a chem E in the midwest is taking home about 70K and has already saved 6 figures over 4-5 years because his burn rate is so low ($400 per month rent etc).

Re: MIT alumni in their 50s

#125

Post by hga »

mcguire wrote: post #111
plg wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my experience if an older engineer/programmer is more expensive than a younger one --- but the older one is better --- the older one will be hired. You get what you pay for. As long as your skill set isn't basically a "commodity" (generic web design for example) you will be ok. Put another way---if your decades of experience _don't_ give you some appreciable advantage over a 20-something new guy, then yes maybe yo…

One of the most entertaining conferences I ever attended was Usenix, several years ago. The paper sessions typically went like this: a grad student would stand up and present his and his advisor's research. In the sbsequent question-and-answer period, one of a small number of grey-beards (you'd recognize their names, but I can't remember who exactly it was; I'm old, too) would come to the mic and ask some variant of,…

Indeed. I've worked for more than one company that died because it didn't listen when I said, e.g., this won't work because math. In that case, simple multiplication and comparing the result to currently available IOPS.

A lot of people just don't care until they actually crash into the brick wall, but in a start up that's frequently too late, and never fun. Our host pg has commented that more than a few dot.com failures were in part inevitable due to technical failure. I'm sure that's still the case.

Re: MIT alumni in their 50s

#126

Post by ghaff »

imjk wrote: post #119
sixtypoundhound wrote: post #98

If we reverse the clock back to their 30's, the underlying math of these career choices isn't so kind... - The academic is completing their PHD program, with it's associated vow of poverty and about to start a multi-year tenure cagefight, in low-wage contract instructor roles. Only a small fraction will make it to full tenure; the rest will drop out to pursue industry jobs, 10+ years behind the engineers who went dir…

Agreed. Also, I think the article is more a reflection of the engineering landscape 30 years ago than a comparison of career choices that the author seems to be implying. I think it'd be foolish to make career choices based on the 30 year outcome of people in the previous generation.

My understanding that law in particular has gone from being a pretty solid career path, especially for liberal arts majors who want some structure to get started in the workplace, to one that's relatively bleak for many who don't go to a Tier 1 school (or excel at a Tier 2), land a job of a big city firm, and either make partner or land a good corporate law job.

Re: MIT alumni in their 50s

#127

Post by hga »

[deleted] wrote: post #112

[deleted]

"IT" is particularly bad here because our ruling class has a national consensus that we need to import hundreds of thousands of foreign workers each year to satisfy the demand (for talent on the cheap). E.g. in an area I'm watching, the the serious Republican 2016 contenders are entirely bad, with the most "restrictive" of them, Ted Cruz, wanting to up the H-1B cap to 300K per year.

Yeah, most of these people are slated for "drone" level jobs, but plenty of the very best also get in and do good work. Your ideology might thing this is great, but that doesn't pay your living expenses, especially if you want a family, or a retirement of any quality.

Re: MIT alumni in their 50s

#128

Post by mathattack »

One point he admits in the beginning... There was a slight selection bias in that all those present were people whom an on-campus group was hoping to get donations from.

This doesn't include doctors who quit medical school, academics who got pushed out of the funnel, and lawyers who couldn't get good law jobs. The engineers also may have already been victims of age discrimination by the first dot com bubble.

Re: MIT alumni in their 50s

#129

Post by hga »

danielweber wrote: post #107
reuven wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This 44-year-old alumnus concurs. At the same time, I've been doing more and more training, and less and less day-to-day development, over the last few years. Not only do I enjoy it, but I find that my long-term perspective and experience helps me to explain things to the younger and less experienced developers. That said, it's pretty amazing to see what today's kids have done before they've even finished their first…

I'll pile on, too. Professor Robert Rose had some great advice for me as a freshman: as an MIT student, you can probably succeed at whatever you want, enough to enjoy life. So pick a field that gives you personal satisfaction. Money is valuable and ego-boosting, but when you hit your 30s you will realize that enjoying your workday is much more important than maximizing your paycheck. (But there are also easy ways to…

All tenured MIT professors must be taken with a grain of salt on career advice. They got tenure by being #1 or #2 in their sub-field, as well as a number of other things like being adequate teachers, so the selection bias is extremely strong.

In general Professor Rose is generally right, but there are a lot of exceptions, and he's also much older than us, his experiences might not hold for the America/world of today and the future.

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