I Joined Airbnb at 52, Here’s What I Learned About Age, Wisdom, and Tech Industry

Post by elmerland » Tue, Apr 25, 2017, 4:15 AM UTC

wiz21z wrote: post #72

elmerland wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would say that non-technical competencies are not optional and they will help your career one way or another. Maybe a better question to ask ourselves is how do I continue to add value in the environment I'm in? I doubt the answer to that remains constant throughout a long career.

It all depends on what you mean by "value". If value means helping the marketing team at apple to sell more useless (but admitedly super-technological) phones, then count me out :-)

lol fair, I was working under the assumption that you believe in the product the company you work for is making/selling.

Post by mwfunk » Sat, Apr 29, 2017, 4:16 AM UTC

lj3 wrote: post #83

mwfunk wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It depends on what they're curious about. An incurious person who only learns new stuff when it's forced on them will eventually lose relevance. Their knowledge base is literally defined in terms of their environment and the forces that it exerts on them. They are like coastal rock formations shaped over the years by the tides- they don't shape themselves, they are shaped. A more curious older engineer with a wider s…

> An incurious person who only learns new stuff when it's forced on them will eventually lose relevance. There's always one of these comments when this topic comes up. It's simply not true. There are lots of people still working Cobol jobs out there and there's lots of demand for more. C# hasn't changed much in decades. Neither has C++. The only part of tech that moves at breakneck pace is web development and serious…

I'm no advocate of rapid change for its own sake. I mostly do POSIX systems programming, and the churn of web development frameworks does not appeal to me at all.

However, I still want to at least aspire to learn new stuff and stay informed about what other people in my field are doing. Every technology has an expiration date, and as I get older and more ensconced at work, I've been getting paranoid about getting too comfortable. Specifically, I'm paranoid that I know relatively little about web development, period. I am not some twentysomething hipster web guy, I'm a weird middle-aged Unix guy.

Although I've rarely pushed myself to learn about something because I felt like I had to- I'm just interested in software and have always enjoyed learning about it. I don't have to force myself to do it, and I probably wouldn't be productive if I did. The only thing that really matters is doing whatever makes you happy. If it has pragmatic side effects, great, but if it doesn't make you happy then it's not worth doing.

Re: I Joined Airbnb at 52, Here’s What I Learned About Age, Wisdom, and Tech Industry

Re: I Joined Airbnb at 52, Here’s What I Learned About Age, Wisdom, and Tech Industry