Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

A career-ending mistake

bitfieldconsulting.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

201–210 of 211 posts

Re: A career-ending mistake

#201

Post by nickd2001 »

coldcode wrote: post #23

I never intended to have a career as a programmer. I planned to work for two years, save a bit of money, and get a PhD in Chemistry. Forty years later I retired as a programmer. Every step was something new, I had 15 different employers (plus myself for 9 years starting two little companies). There was never a plan beyond finding a better/different/less irritating job, and constantly improving what I could do. I neve…

Agree with the above. Seems to me, the many of us "going with the flow" without a thorough long-term plan, are perhaps applying Agile development principles to our "career" (aka series of jobs) , whereas the author is taking the nowadays-apparently-discredited Waterfall approach , where supposedly you can know where you're going to be at date X. Which of course we now know doesn't actually work out in software. And as for careers, even more so. One cannot predict the overall economy, or who one might marry , how many kids one might have, whether everyone is healthy in extended family, what one might feel like doing to be happy later on etc ;)

Re: A career-ending mistake

#202

Post by lifeisstillgood »

lifeisstillgood wrote: post #195
noirbot wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 e…

But thats politics . Look at every railway, roadway, power station - always supported or opposed by various factions. We think it’s actually healthy for our society, so why is it bad on the scale of companies - some of whom have larger GDP than some countries Having political discussions out in the open is - I hold as an axiom - a positive on balance. This who are “upset” about things - well they are adults in a poli…

I would also suggest that politics is how FOSS works - the only reason Linus was the "CEO" of the kernel was because people voted him in by sending him patches. And kept sending them. There was nothing preventing someone else being voted in except the politics of it all...

I would suggest that the first step in a concrete plan (see below) is that every line manager becomes the place where the next line manager does a git pull from.

Eventually you want to release code, the actual CEO needs to git pull and sign off.

Re: A career-ending mistake

#203

Post by starky »

codingdave wrote: post #58
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 don't find that to be true. I remember many of my co-workers... some fondly, some not, but they are remembered. They added as much flavor to my life as my family and friends, if not more, because we spent more hours together. Their work influenced mine and I learned from them. And their insights helped direct which directions we took the projects. Now, did our presence impact the company? Did our code survive? Or d…

This is something I've discussed with my colleagues that I've worked with for a long time. At the beginning when the company was smaller the group worked so closely in developing the fundamentals of how we make our products that even those that have left still have left a lasting impression on how things are done even if their names aren't associated with it any more. At some point that dwindled and now it is far less likely that someone makes that lasting impact, even a few months after they leave their contributions are just kinda forgotten.

I have to wonder how things will change when the last couple of us from those days move on, as we are the last links to that time.

Re: A career-ending mistake

#204

Post by dclowd9901 »

teractiveodular wrote: post #146
dclowd9901 wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 b…

You're right to ask, because I neglected to elaborate. You do want to know what you really want to do and figure out how much you'll need to do it.

Re: A career-ending mistake

#205

Post by mixmastamyk »

cheema33 wrote: post #178
mixmastamyk wrote: post #124

One thing I didn't anticipate when younger is the extent that other people will prevent your advancement. Whether by being in the way, *isms - a.k.a. refusing to hire you for positions you'd be great at, or very common today... the majority of companies that no longer train or encourage career development. Because you might leave? Advancement seems to be lot of outmaneuvering these folks.

> very common today... the majority of companies that no longer train or encourage career development. I don't get this. What is stopping anyone from doing that themselves? Why does someone else have to do it?

It's investing in your workforce and demonstrates a level of respect and supports loyalty. No, the lack never stopped me from learning. Professional experience however is valued more highly than... yes I fired up ABC at home. Or I led a team doing XYZ and now can do that for my employer.

Re: A career-ending mistake

#206

Post by hirvi74 »

mattgreenrocks wrote: post #188
hirvi74 wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 st…

I kid you not, I am about to start learning more about compilers to myself. I would like to write my own, and I have a few resources to dive into which I hope will help. I am not trying to make the next LLVM or anything, but I hope writing a rather simple compiler would better my current (lack of) understanding of compilers.

> 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

I am going to assume that you are much further along in your career than I am. Not perhaps in years of experience, but rather more in terms of literal career progression. I'm just a small shop code-monkey, so there isn't really any verticality to my position (unless I jump ship).

However, I do sympathize with your questioning the worth of it all. In some ways, I think I have prematurely questioned many of the same ideas. Such questioning has perhaps aided in my procrastination in bettering my situation.

Maybe what I am looking for is purely fantasy and does not exist in a truly feasible manner? I mean, we have only one life on this planet. I often find myself questioning if this is how I one to spend such time. . .

Re: A career-ending mistake

#207

Post by NoPicklez »

snozolli wrote: post #27
Sytten wrote: post #15

Maybe I am a pessimist but I really don't believe you can plan for 20y in the future especially in the tech sector. People fail to realize that we live in a world that changes not in a linear fashion but rather exponential. For all we know in 10y we will only need 1/5 of the coders we have and IC won't be viable, who knows.

IMO, there's no such thing as a career in tech, outside of maybe FAANGs (or whatever they're called now). It's just a series of jobs until accumulated wealth, ageism, or disability ends it.

I disagree, of course you can have a career in tech. It just depends where you work.

You can work a series of jobs in tech, until accumulated wealth, ageism or disability ends it.

Re: A career-ending mistake

#208

Post by Tepix »

mgkimsal wrote: post #83
donatj wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even in small tech. I worked for an agency in the aughts and we would put up websites at roughly the pace of 1 a week. In my time there I'd guess I'd personally built a little over 100 websites and developed our internal framework for us to make doing so easier. Every couple years since, I've gotten a bug in my butt and investigated how many sites still had pieces I'd clearly worked on. On this most recent occasion,…

I left a project in 2003. I can still hit their web login page, and I still see something specific in the URL I put there. I've no doubt they've upgraded some stuff behind the scenes, but they've likely not done huge overhaul, otherwise they'd have simply redone the auth process to whatever an upgraded system uses. They did change some graphics on the login page, and added a google tag thing, and converted some style…

Remarkable. I also have some client side JS app of mine that's still alive and kicking on a very popular website 20 years after i've written it.

But that's the exception, not the rule.

Re: A career-ending mistake

#209

Post by Sebb767 »

tossandthrow wrote: post #199
Sebb767 wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

You make it sound like I implied that one should life their life nihilistically or with indifference - I definitely do not think one should do that. I thnk there is most satisfaction in putting yourself 100% into whatever you do. But what you do is not strictly limited to your work. Sometimes you put yourself 100% into your family, sometimes it is education, and sometimes it is work.

That's fair, but my point is: Irrespective of whether you put 100% or 20% into your work, you should do some planning of your career so that whatever percentage you put into it is reasonably spent. Even when you just plan on spending 10% on your work, planning where you want to end up makes sense.

Re: A career-ending mistake

#210

Post by mattgreenrocks »

hirvi74 wrote: post #206
mattgreenrocks wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 st…

I kid you not, I am about to start learning more about compilers to myself. I would like to write my own, and I have a few resources to dive into which I hope will help. I am not trying to make the next LLVM or anything, but I hope writing a rather simple compiler would better my current (lack of) understanding of compilers. > I don't regret it, but there is a sense of wondering whether it was really worth it if my p…

Early 30s was around the age I started self-teaching compilers. Great time to learn, and the urge to improve one's lot is one of the best fires in the belly you can have.

> Maybe what I am looking for is purely fantasy and does not exist in a truly feasible manner?

I felt those same things. Places where quality work is respected do exist, but they may not be in FAANG. You may need to choose between interesting work and money eventually.

Happy to chat more over email if it is helpful.

Post reply on HN