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So long, and thanks for all the bytes

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Re: So long, and thanks for all the bytes

#51

Post by dehrmann »

nrjames wrote: post #5
yawz wrote: post #2

Because of the downturn, I wonder how many people have given up on their careers at Tech? How many more will respond to the call of a different professional life that pays less, but that will be more fulfilling? Even as recent as yesterday I heard a past-colleague tell me "maybe Tech isn't for me, after all. I'll try my hand at this other thing."

I'm not sure it's the downturn, necessarily. I used to be enthralled with tech, full of energy to explore new tools, programming languages, etc. I think I slowly awoke to the fact that it's not the tech but the people that make it interesting and rewarding. For me (and I'm not trying to project on anybody else), interactions and activities with people who were doing things that are not tech seemed deeper and more gen…

Do you think remote work has made it less interesting for you?

Re: So long, and thanks for all the bytes

#52

Post by IncreasePosts »

hcks wrote: post #41

I though Google paid decent salaries, but it turns out even after 15 years there you’re still concerned about making ends meet it seems

I've been working at Google about 10 years as "only" an L5 and have about $3M in stock just from stuff I haven't sold

Re: So long, and thanks for all the bytes

#53

Post by zhivota »

UncleOxidant wrote: post #46
away271828 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Rich" is a bit of a loaded term. But, yes, if someone has had a successful 35-40 year career in tech and has managed their finances reasonably, it's not unreasonable that they might decide to pack things in some years early--especially if they're not wild about working at a behemoth company that isn't as much fun as it used to be.

> But, yes, if someone has had a successful 35-40 year career in tech and has managed their finances reasonably, it's not unreasonable that they might decide to pack things in some years early Early? If you've been in tech (or any job, really) for 35 to 40 years you're going to be in your 60s (or close) which is a normal time to retire.

Yeah the real difference with tech, at least as it's been for the last while, is you can do it after 10-20 years. I've had a very middling career overall and after about 15 years I'm very close to being able to just move on and do anything else without worrying about day to day expenses.

Now people who have run faster and faster on the hedonic treadmill with their inflated tech salaries, they are going to be in trouble.

Re: So long, and thanks for all the bytes

#54

Post by jeremyjh »

Mc91 wrote: post #45
hnthrowaway6543 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tangential to the article since that was a voluntary departure, but this is absolutely happening, yes. My partner decided to get "into tech" in ~2018. Her reason more or less amounted to looking at me and determining "it's a cushy job that pays very well." For a while, I tried pointing her to various sources to start learning a bit about software development and programming; there's no barrier to installing PyCharm C…

> Everyone hates him, but you have to begrudgingly admit that Elon successfully demonstrated you don't need massive dev teams to build and run software, even at Twitter's scale. (obviously it has other problems due to Elon's incompetence, but nothing more developers would solve.) Most companies could cut their dev team size by 50% and end up net-positive due to less overhead--the challenge is figuring out which 50% t…

Nothing you said contradicts GP, who didn't claim Elon discovered anything. Elon did recently demonstrate what has been known for a long time - but not widely believed.

Re: So long, and thanks for all the bytes

#55

Post by pickledish »

treprinum wrote: post #47

I always wanted to program, to create great things, got really good at it, but most of the time I was overtaken by folks playing politics that only used tech as a stepping stone to something they always wanted to do but only tech gave them financial resources to do that.

I remember feeling like this a while ago -- like there was something inherently different (...better?) about "us" (who are in tech because we just fundamentally love programming) compared to "them" (who are in tech because there's good money in it). Though over the last couple years I think I've been changing my mind a bit.

I've had the chance to get to know some more people -- people who are indeed in tech for mostly financial reasons, but who are still fantastic developers and care a lot about the craft. I realized that having dreams outside of software doesn't necessarily make you worse at it, or "less deserving" of the job.

And, I definitely wouldn't conflate "in tech for the money" with "playing politics" / stupid ladder-climbing -- I bet there's some nontrivial overlap there, but there are other reasons one might need strong financial stability, like if they don't have any kind of other safety net (from the government, from their family) to fall back on, and thus feel worried without a good foundation.

Re: So long, and thanks for all the bytes

#56

Post by Scubabear68 »

away271828 wrote: post #22
throwaway63467 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would assume that he just earned so much money that he’s rich and can now do something else with his life without caring about money. Good for him.

"Rich" is a bit of a loaded term. But, yes, if someone has had a successful 35-40 year career in tech and has managed their finances reasonably, it's not unreasonable that they might decide to pack things in some years early--especially if they're not wild about working at a behemoth company that isn't as much fun as it used to be.

There is a vast difference - literally vast - between Google employee’s salary over 14 years vs the median salary in IT overall.

This is especially true if you consider salaries world wide vs just the United States.

Re: So long, and thanks for all the bytes

#57

Post by breather »

treprinum wrote: post #47

I always wanted to program, to create great things, got really good at it, but most of the time I was overtaken by folks playing politics that only used tech as a stepping stone to something they always wanted to do but only tech gave them financial resources to do that.

Tech for tech's sake helps nobody. Politics is a fact of nearly every facet of life—you can accept this and play the game or accept that you're in the backseat.

The worst people in the world already know this and run our industry. There's no reason we have to accept them.

Re: So long, and thanks for all the bytes

#58

Post by noncoml »

breather wrote: post #57
treprinum wrote: post #47

I always wanted to program, to create great things, got really good at it, but most of the time I was overtaken by folks playing politics that only used tech as a stepping stone to something they always wanted to do but only tech gave them financial resources to do that.

Tech for tech's sake helps nobody. Politics is a fact of nearly every facet of life—you can accept this and play the game or accept that you're in the backseat. The worst people in the world already know this and run our industry. There's no reason we have to accept them.

> Tech for tech's sake helps nobody

If it wasn’t for science, art and tech for their own sake we would still be on the trees gathering bananas

Re: So long, and thanks for all the bytes

#59

Post by noncoml »

treprinum wrote: post #47

I always wanted to program, to create great things, got really good at it, but most of the time I was overtaken by folks playing politics that only used tech as a stepping stone to something they always wanted to do but only tech gave them financial resources to do that.

I feel lucky and privileged to be in that position. I get to do what I love and get paid very generously.

If it wasn’t for “those people” or for tech being so lucrative to attract them, I would probably still do the same but struggle to make ends meet.

So I’m very grateful that tech is what it is today.

Re: So long, and thanks for all the bytes

#60

Post by chaboud »

raphlinus wrote: post #20
adamgordonbell wrote: post #6

Chet's book on the early days of Android is super interesting. Lots of crazy OS building stories. He must have interviewed 50 people who worked on the first couple releases of Android. I had him share parts of that story on the podcast and result is one of my favorite episodes. I always thought of Android as, of course it succeeded, it was a big google project. But the story is far more interesting. They were somewha…

I joined Android in April 2012. Looking back, at that time Android was incredibly lean for what it was accomplishing. The entire Frameworks team reported to one manager, and we would fit in a medium size conference room. That included all of UI toolkit and the bulk of the Java APIs an app would call into, including Binder. (Networking, phone, graphics, Bluetooth, etc were other teams, but we worked closely together.…

That must have been an amazing ride. Note: in my opinion, a small, lean, focused team is the right way to build an OS. I haven't seen the "throw an army at it" approach succeed for building the core of an OS or platform, as it becomes almost impossible to keep coherence in the system.

And, yeah, that GMSCore joke is too real.

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