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Same Stop: Life after 26 years as a programmer for Apple

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Re: Same Stop: Life after 26 years as a programmer for Apple

#371

Post by franciscop »

moffkalast wrote: post #189
tombert wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have no idea if I am considered "young" (32), but I taught a few classes over the last few semesters to students who were unambiguously young, and I can definitely say that young people coding for fun are definitely out there. A few students of mine would show me little games they were working on, or websites they were building. Sure, they might be doing this a bit for resume-fuel, but it was abundantly obvious to…

The "it's for the resume" is a convenient excuse when people ask you why are you spending hundreds of hours on something that seems pointless but is fun to code.

Yeah exactly when "normal" people ask me why I contribute to open source now I tend to mumble something like that, career professional development blabla. When I was at university I would say something like "learning/practice programming", though back then most of my classmates spent their time playing LOL/DOTA/etc, so if I wanted to program for fun no one would care really.

Re: Same Stop: Life after 26 years as a programmer for Apple

#372

Post by lastangryman »

jimt1234 wrote: post #342
asveikau wrote: post #330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The key phrase is they didn't like him. A lot of times it's personal rather than work related. Folks, this is the purpose of performance reviews. It doesn't have much to do with your work or ability to do work. It's a bunch of paperwork to justify how management feels about everybody on a personal, not professional level.

Exactly ^^^ Here's how it went down in my case; it's so bad. ... The dude played in a rock band in his free time. He had a show up in LA (we're in San Diego) on a "school night". The next day, Wednesday morning, he showed up to an 8am meeting looking like shit. He said that he got zero sleep the previous night. He played the show up in LA, packed up his gear (he was a drummer), then drove back to San Diego, got home…

That really sucks you were put in that position.

Re: Same Stop: Life after 26 years as a programmer for Apple

#373

Post by MetallicCloud »

Diesel555 wrote: post #369

> I kept also-busy with woodworking projects Why do programmers tend to enjoy woodworking? They have interesting parallels.

I don't know why, but after being a professional programmer for around 20 years, I have replaced all my hobby programming with woodworking. I love it. There's something about having a tangible object you can touch when you're done that makes it satisfying for me.

Re: Same Stop: Life after 26 years as a programmer for Apple

#374

Post by blastro »

samstave wrote: post #333
princevegeta89 wrote: post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My personal opinion: After looking at my current manager and previous managers in my previous jobs I decided to never become a manager. Being a manager means that I'll have to fill my day with nothing but meetings I cannot skip, keep talking on and on and on, deal with delivery headaches, respond to requests even while on PTO, do a lot of context switching between Slack, email, calendar, documentation, and other thin…

I made the mistake of entering management WAY too early in my career. I wish I had not. it relegated my time to many tasks other than tech implementation. FN having to train CFOs on financially managing cloud environs, managing people, pestering people for status reports, c-level presentations on this that and the other thing, etc... My biggest mistake in my career was thinking I was "climbing the ladder" when accept…

gulp

Re: Same Stop: Life after 26 years as a programmer for Apple

#375

Post by wglb »

This is pretty cool, in my book. I was first paid for programming 57 years ago, and have continued to program. I even was programming while I was CSO (but didn't tell anyone). To this day, I feel vaguely uncomfortable if I haven't programmed for a while. Flow is a bit less due to other responsibilities, but I do enjoy even a little programming.

A while back, I tallied all the languages that I had programmed in and it was like 36 (if I can count the machine languages produced by compilers I worked on). There are a few more, like Snobol and Prolog, that were part of coursework. These days, almost all of what I do is in Common Lisp.

Your System 6 looks quite cool.

And no, I don't plan to actually retire--I'll always be programming.

Re: Same Stop: Life after 26 years as a programmer for Apple

#376

Post by phendrenad2 »

jimt1234 wrote: post #323
jebarker wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for explaining. That's awful. I wonder how common this is in tech companies where IC is a valid career path and terminal levels exist?

I was forced to manage someone out years ago. It was awful. My bosses didn't like this one guy, and honestly, he wasn't the best employee, but just they told me to stop giving work to him. Nothing. No work at all. He would come to me and ask what he was supposed to be working on. I had to just say that I'd get him something soon. I had to tell others not to give him any work or go to him for anything. He sat there at…

Damn, he should have stayed and at least gotten a severance package.

Re: Same Stop: Life after 26 years as a programmer for Apple

#377

Post by phendrenad2 »

jimt1234 wrote: post #342
asveikau wrote: post #330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The key phrase is they didn't like him. A lot of times it's personal rather than work related. Folks, this is the purpose of performance reviews. It doesn't have much to do with your work or ability to do work. It's a bunch of paperwork to justify how management feels about everybody on a personal, not professional level.

Exactly ^^^ Here's how it went down in my case; it's so bad. ... The dude played in a rock band in his free time. He had a show up in LA (we're in San Diego) on a "school night". The next day, Wednesday morning, he showed up to an 8am meeting looking like shit. He said that he got zero sleep the previous night. He played the show up in LA, packed up his gear (he was a drummer), then drove back to San Diego, got home…

I think the takeaways here are that: A lighthearted joke from a director is often power-talk that implies more, and that looking like shit in the office is a big no-no (some phrases that come to mind are "perception is reality" and "the nail that sticks up gets hammered down").

Re: Same Stop: Life after 26 years as a programmer for Apple

#378

Post by kccqzy »

vjk800 wrote: post #224
kstenerud wrote: post #142

In 2 days time I'll mark my 27th year as a professional programmer (and just over 40 years since I started programming). I've worked in small companies, big companies, and mega-corporations. I've been a programmer, manager, team lead and CTO. And in doing so I discovered that I don't like managing people, I don't like meetings, and I don't like paperwork. I like long periods of focus. So I'm a software dev/architect…

I used to love the long periods of focus in my 20s, but ever since more life started happening, I can't do those anymore. It turns out my stress tolerance is incredibly low and when the life outside my work is not completely in order (like it rarely is after the 20s), being able to get into the flow state gets very difficult. I wish I was one of those people who could just forget the problems at home, etc. when they…

I don't have problems at home, yet I am also drawn to people management for similar reasons: when dealing with people rather than code, your brain doesn't have to be 100%; people aren't as exacting as the compiler. I find it a fine compromise when you don't want to give your best to a job.

Re: Same Stop: Life after 26 years as a programmer for Apple

#379

Post by ed_mercer »

samstave wrote: post #333
princevegeta89 wrote: post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My personal opinion: After looking at my current manager and previous managers in my previous jobs I decided to never become a manager. Being a manager means that I'll have to fill my day with nothing but meetings I cannot skip, keep talking on and on and on, deal with delivery headaches, respond to requests even while on PTO, do a lot of context switching between Slack, email, calendar, documentation, and other thin…

I made the mistake of entering management WAY too early in my career. I wish I had not. it relegated my time to many tasks other than tech implementation. FN having to train CFOs on financially managing cloud environs, managing people, pestering people for status reports, c-level presentations on this that and the other thing, etc... My biggest mistake in my career was thinking I was "climbing the ladder" when accept…

I'm not sure there's a better way to climb the ladder though.

Re: Same Stop: Life after 26 years as a programmer for Apple

#380

Post by eska »

vjk800 wrote: post #357
haswell wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like I’m somewhere in this comment. For me, the stress and worry about things going on in my life eventually led to full burnout. Those periods of flow were what kept me going, and when I could no longer find them, it only compounded the stress. I ended up going on a self-funded sabbatical to focus on sorting out my personal and internal life, and the #1 change that has led to rediscovering deep focus was star…

> All of this to say, if you are at all similar to me, it might be worth considering the lack of ability to find flow a big red flag worth actively investigating. I don’t know if I could’ve avoided burnout, but I’m sufficiently convinced now that internal work is one of the most important (and accessible) ways of addressing this. Don't you worry, I have plenty of other red flags besides inability to concentrate to ke…

The instructions always tell me to let go of my thoughts and concentrate on a mantra

I’m confused all instructions you found said this. This is the opposite of what you’re supposed to do.

When you calm down your hamster wheel of a brain will get bored and pull out a thought naturally. There is no point in fighting this.

The point of meditation is usually to become aware of the thoughts we have, metaphorically holding them in front of us and observe them without judging. You’re supposed to think “oh it seems I have that thought, interesting” without analyzing, just being aware. This is similar to hearing someone out instead of immediately trying to solve their problem or argue with them. What you will find after going through some obvious thoughts is that some will appear that you didn’t know you had anymore, because you pushed them away into your subconscious mind.

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