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Ask HN: What Happens to Older Designers?

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41–50 of 68 posts

Re: Ask HN: What Happens to Older Designers?

#41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

iOS app? An OS kernel? Anything real-time?

> iOS app? I'm sure you understand that iOS's problem is not technical but business constrains. > An OS kernel? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/JX_(operating_system) > Anything real-time? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Real_time_Java

It’s been a while since I wrote Java, but real time processing was always just a C wrapper with JNI. Maybe it’s changed now?

Re: Ask HN: What Happens to Older Designers?

#42
post #26

I'm 75. You will pull the keyboard out of my cold, dead hands. "Nobody knows you are a dog on the internet" Ditto being aged ~ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Internet,_nobody_knows_... Most of the technologies I play with - HTML5, webGL, Three.js etc - did not exist ten years ago. So it's a level playing field. There's more open source stuff on GitHub that needs help and mentoring than you can shake a keyboard,…

Okay, ultimate form it is then.

Next question.

Re: Ask HN: What Happens to Older Designers?

#43
post #26

I'm 75. You will pull the keyboard out of my cold, dead hands. "Nobody knows you are a dog on the internet" Ditto being aged ~ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Internet,_nobody_knows_... Most of the technologies I play with - HTML5, webGL, Three.js etc - did not exist ten years ago. So it's a level playing field. There's more open source stuff on GitHub that needs help and mentoring than you can shake a keyboard,…

I wish I’ll have your passion at such age. Kudos to you, old man.

I fear this man has the youth in him many of us won’t discover and permanently fear we’ve lost. It is great that he found it though!

Re: Ask HN: What Happens to Older Designers?

#44
post #5

It depends what you compare it against. Software development changes all the time, developers constantly have to upskill. Trends drive demand and NIH runs strong in the industry. There is nothing we're doing today that couldn't be done with Java for example. Design on the other hand is interfacing with humans. Humans are meat sacks who hardly evolve or change, in fact, you might argue, they regress. For this reason,…

I agree with the gist of this. After my initial "10k hours" learning the technical craft, my career progression as a product design engineer (I design hardware, mostly medical devices) has been driven by my ability to understand humans and their interactions with objects, not technical. It's important to keep up on the technical side, but that's not what drives good design and good designers in my field. It's Don Norman mind of stuff. I regularly work with long in the tooth designers, ex-ideo types, and they have a keen understanding of the human side of design that's difficult to teach and pick up quickly, it takes experience, wisdom. It's not about typing faster, clicking faster, or even deep technical details, it's the big picture stuff.

Re: Ask HN: What Happens to Older Designers?

#46

>What happens to ageing / older designers? They will be rounded up and killed as part of the "not economically viable" class when Dalle-10 comes out. Unfortunately the same will happen to us when Copilot 15 hits the market.

I’m going to start smashing virtual looms if this happens

Re: Ask HN: What Happens to Older Designers?

#47
post #14

I feel everyone had an opinion on this thread, but i’d be more interested in hearing a first hand experience with being older and a designer.

I know lots of them, they typically exist outside the typical career politics, bureaucracy, etc. The ones I know still doing it do it amazingly well, and are kept busy with consulting and working for people they've known and met through their careers.

Re: Ask HN: What Happens to Older Designers?

#49

>What happens to ageing / older designers? What is their path if not for an inevitable pivot to management / product management? They are brought to the farm. The slow country life lets them recover from the burnout/stress. In all seriousness, discrimination isn't universal. If someone doesn't hire you because of your skin colour or age, someone else will. Their loss, not your loss.

This is my experience.

Re: Ask HN: What Happens to Older Designers?

#50
post #7
post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> an older designer should have a rolladex full of people who they worked below, beside, and above over the course of their career As a non-traditional professional in a lot of ways, I've found these kinds of assumptions at the core of a lot of discrimination (age and otherwise). A person should be judged based on their skills/value, not based on where someone thinks they "should" be in their life based on stereotype…

You should always be networking over your career, regardless of who you are…

Really? What if you take a few year break from contracting? (a mini-startup, personal projects, perhaps you just get a regular job for few years to sort out your finances or build a house). Are you supposed to keep networking with your previous clients during this time when you know well enough you'll not want to take any jobs they may want to give you?

Then there are all those people that transition between technology stacks. I did that few times so far (Linux to Windows, then Windows to Linux, vmware to aws). Your past clients will most likely want you for the stuff you worked on in the past. Also some people relocate internationally, perhaps to different time zones. Among people I came to know over the years many did that.

So I find this idea of "constant networking" work in a very narrow set of circumstances.

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