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MIT alumni in their 50s

blogs.law.harvard.edu

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Re: MIT alumni in their 50s

#31

Post by happywolf »

wimagguc wrote: post #6

The other conclusion is, always be hireable. I guess it’s hard to be 50 and pride yourself to work for senior-senior level salary when a 30 year old can easily do your job. Hierarchies worked very well in the uni prof’s favour, but engineering companies tend to apply flatter structures. If there’s nothing that keeps the young folks competing, they will. So for us, engineers it may be a good idea to move to supervisor…

Unfortunately being hireable and getting hired are two separate things. Yes, we can do things better and more thorough, however the sad thing is, most employers (at least in Singapore where I am) don't care. They care about salary and ability to work extra hours. Things could vary in the states though

Re: MIT alumni in their 50s

#32

Post by sokoloff »

shams93 wrote: post #26

Me I had no choice, now I essentially have no career at all because you reach the end game where the industry stops talking to you despite all the money you made people. Pivoting to education would be a logical choice in a civilized society but this is no such place so instead of buying me off the market some poor business is going to wind up losing all their customers because I have no choice but to become a sole fo…

The marginal cost of running the car is much lower than $0.58/mile. If you already have a car and want to drive Uber with it, you'll (likely) be financially better off through the "job".

Of course buying a car solely to drive Uber is a bad business plan.

Re: MIT alumni in their 50s

#33

Post by moron4hire »

pixelscript wrote: post #4

This post reeks of confirmation bias or at least the sample size is too low to draw any conclusions. What if that software engineer didn't want to progress his career and was happy at the level he was? What about those engineers that did go into management? I could be wrong but if you choose to stay in a roll a 30yo can fill why would it be strange that you would be expected to compete with those younger to get a job…

Why wouldn't that also apply to doctors? Maybe a surgeon enjoys the surgery, doesn't want to manage a surgery department of a hospital. I think the relative comparison is still relevant.

Re: MIT alumni in their 50s

#34

Post by brlewis »

whiteheat752 wrote: post #12

As an MIT student... should I not become a programmer? I do feel like I'm nearing the peak of my programming ability, and now would be the time to switch to a field with more "lock-in". What would that field be? Medicine? Mechanical engineering? Consultancy?

As an MIT alumnus at age 47, here's my advice: If you love programming, keep programming. If you don't love it, do something else.

Re: MIT alumni in their 50s

#35

Post by wobbleblob »

vidarh wrote: post #19
wobbleblob wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, that was my thought. If you're still a programmer at age 50, either something has gone very wrong in your career development, or you're such a legend in the field that it would be a loss to the world if you had moved on.

Or you enjoy what you're doing. I've had "director" or "head of" or similar in my titles for the majority of the last 20 years, but I keep finding excuses to code because it's what I enjoy doing the most. Whenever my job responsibilities doesn't let me code, I spend more time coding at home. I'm 40 now, and I can't see that changing. I first started programming when I was 5 years old, and it's an integral, important…

Of course you still program, but your job title on that MIT gathering wouldn't have been 'programmer'.

Re: MIT alumni in their 50s

#36

Post by arethuza »

vidarh wrote: post #19
wobbleblob wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, that was my thought. If you're still a programmer at age 50, either something has gone very wrong in your career development, or you're such a legend in the field that it would be a loss to the world if you had moved on.

Or you enjoy what you're doing. I've had "director" or "head of" or similar in my titles for the majority of the last 20 years, but I keep finding excuses to code because it's what I enjoy doing the most. Whenever my job responsibilities doesn't let me code, I spend more time coding at home. I'm 40 now, and I can't see that changing. I first started programming when I was 5 years old, and it's an integral, important…

Same here - I've had CTO, Director of Engineering, Head of Architecture posts for the last 20 years at everything from start-ups to multinationals and I still keep my hand in investigating bugs (i.e. looking at code and databases) and writing code, most of the latter in my own time.

I wouldn't want a role that had no "hands on" element - personally if you don't occasionally get your hands dirty and stay current with current technology then your capability to make sensible high level decisions decays pretty rapidly.

Re: MIT alumni in their 50s

#37

Post by calinet6 »

pixelscript wrote: post #4

This post reeks of confirmation bias or at least the sample size is too low to draw any conclusions. What if that software engineer didn't want to progress his career and was happy at the level he was? What about those engineers that did go into management? I could be wrong but if you choose to stay in a roll a 30yo can fill why would it be strange that you would be expected to compete with those younger to get a job…

I made the mistake of continuing to read other posts down the page. The author appears to have many biases, and a myopically logical view of people. I am unconcerned.

Re: MIT alumni in their 50s

#38

Post by reuven »

brlewis wrote: post #34
whiteheat752 wrote: post #12

As an MIT student... should I not become a programmer? I do feel like I'm nearing the peak of my programming ability, and now would be the time to switch to a field with more "lock-in". What would that field be? Medicine? Mechanical engineering? Consultancy?

As an MIT alumnus at age 47, here's my advice: If you love programming, keep programming. If you don't love it, do something else.

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 college degree. It's a bit intimidating... until I demonstrate that I can still debug things faster than they can. :-)

Re: MIT alumni in their 50s

#39

Post by calinet6 »

justonepost wrote: post #24

Ugh. Confirmation bias and sample size aside, these are MIT alumni. Aren't they already supposed to be above average? That being said, he didn't exactly say what sort of engineers these folks were. Electrical? Software? Big difference.. Also, one thing that didn't jive, if they are in financially uncomfortable retirement, why exactly are they showing up at a donors gathering?

Alternatively, these are MIT people, so perhaps the problem is that their education and career are both overly specialized.

Breadth would certainly be an asset to deal with change over a longer term. It's another great argument for a broad liberal arts education.

Re: MIT alumni in their 50s

#40

Post by sokoloff »

whiteheat752 wrote: post #12

As an MIT student... should I not become a programmer? I do feel like I'm nearing the peak of my programming ability, and now would be the time to switch to a field with more "lock-in". What would that field be? Medicine? Mechanical engineering? Consultancy?

If you love programming and are good at it, it is the best field there is, bar none. You'd be a fool to turn away from it for a lifetime grind with epsilon better prospects.

I'd do my job for half what I get paid; I just don't have to.

As for nearing the peak of your ability (assuming typical undergraduate age and experience): BWAHAHAHA! You'll be even better than you are now in 5 years, and again 5 years after that. Only then might you consider that you're near the asymptote. These will be "not small" qualitative differences, in my prediction. Come back and read this 5 and 10 years from, please. :)

(context: MIT '93; I just started my 45th orbit of our star.)

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