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MIT alumni in their 50s

blogs.law.harvard.edu

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Re: MIT alumni in their 50s

#41

Post by calinet6 »

dba7dba wrote: post #11
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…

Agree. Being always be hireable is one's own responsibility. Not anyone else's.

It's still interesting to consider systemic effects, however.

Re: MIT alumni in their 50s

#42

Post by calinet6 »

zaroth wrote: post #21

Just keep reading the rest of the posts on that page. Wow, some true entertainment there...

My thoughts exactly. I have known people who looked at the world in similar ways, and to put it lightly, it was frustrating to speak with them.

Re: MIT alumni in their 50s

#43

Post by a8da6b0c91d »

vanderZwan wrote: post #18
danielrhodes wrote: post #15

None of this should be particularly surprising: if you choose to be complacent in your career you can't expect stability or increased prosperity over the long term. The path from a junior engineer to a lead engineer is quite short relative to a your typical career length. If you don't wish to move into management or elsewhere, there isn't anywhere else for you to go except laterally. After a certain point the impact…

> If you don't wish to move into management or elsewhere, there isn't anywhere else for you to go except laterally. I find it almost insulting how you imply that "not desiring to be a manager" is the same as "being complacent in your career" Were the doctor, the professor and the attorney forced to move onto management?

> the doctor, the professor and the attorney

You always see loads of this "grass is greener" stuff about other professions in these threads. Attorneys wind up in bad low pay jobs all the time, even after working at BIGLAW and failing to partner. Tons of doctors are scraping by in practices that aren't doing well. People get canned from high paying finance jobs all the time and never get another job paying anywhere near as well.

Life's hard and getting old sucks. I really don't think software engineering as a profession is terribly unique in this regard, not that I have much hard data.

Re: MIT alumni in their 50s

#45

Post by sanoli »

sokoloff wrote: post #40
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.…

> If you love programming and are good at it, it is the best field there is.

I read this and thought, he's right. Then I thought, this is actually true of pretty much any activity. Hadn't thought of it this way.

Re: MIT alumni in their 50s

#46

Post by peter303 »

Note Phil hasn't been in the corporate world himself. He struck it rich with a dot.com in the 1990s boom and worked on several interesting projects since. Among them was photo website, a Thiel-like coders academy, and flying. He has had one of the first and longest running blogs of my fellow MIT students about tech, business, travel, flying and politics.

Re: MIT alumni in their 50s

#47

Post by sanoli »

wobbleblob wrote: post #16
kristopolous wrote: post #7

Do people here anticipate programming being their lifelong career, or do they in good faith, think there will be a switch later? Personally, I've done this for 15 years and I keep doing contracting to pay the bills but really I'm pretty done with it. What about you?

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.

What?? Are you serious? Why would programming be different from other activities/occupations? "Oh, this guy is still operating after 3 decades and never became a hospital director. Something's wrong with the guy."

Re: MIT alumni in their 50s

#48

Post by darkmighty »

calinet6 wrote: post #39
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.

I honestly don't think there are many jobs an experienced MIT engineer couldn't do that a liberal arts graduate could. I think the matter here is most old folks with an MIT degree with a comfortable financial position would rather be unemployed just managing investments and other activities than work a low paying job.

Re: MIT alumni in their 50s

#49

Post by [deleted] »

calinet6 wrote: post #39
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.

[deleted]

Re: MIT alumni in their 50s

#50

Post by plg »

thewarrior wrote: post #9

This post really scares me and part of me wants to quit this industry even though I enjoy coding. Ageism is a brutal reality.

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 you are in the wrong business.
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