[HN Gopher] A Forty-Year Career (2019) ___________________________________________________________________ A Forty-Year Career (2019) Author : alexzeitler Score : 105 points Date : 2023-04-17 16:37 UTC (6 hours ago) (HTM) web link (lethain.com) (TXT) w3m dump (lethain.com) | aschearer wrote: | Good post. There's an interesting tension in software between the | cynical and idealistic. On the one hand, there's the notion that | writing software is a craft and that what we're doing has an | aesthetic component. On the other hand there's a mercenary | attitude; we're guns for hire, here to make our fortune, and our | loyalty to the job lasts only as long as the paychecks clear. | ipaddr wrote: | I see it more as realist vs idealist. We need to get this done | vs we need the highest quality code base | owlglass wrote: | While loyalty to the craft can have the side effect of | generating more value to an employer, I don't think the two | notions are antagonists. Get better at your craft and you'll | have more opportunity to operate as a mercenary. | aschearer wrote: | Perhaps you're right. Perhaps I am being to literal in my | comparison, but I see tension when I compare craftspeople of | the past / other industries with our own. Instead of honing | our skills under an expert for many years, we swap jobs and | even sub-disciplines frequently. Can we cultivate | "craftsmanship" in that manner? | intelVISA wrote: | A crafts-merc is the ideal, a pure merc won't contribute | beautiful code and a pure crafter won't grasp the business | value of their elegant monads. | bruce343434 wrote: | > At Digg, one mentor gave me the savvy advice that the fastest | path to financial success was working for four years at three | different just-about-to-IPO companies. A surefire way to retire | by forty. (This is, for the record, pretty good advice.) | | Why is it good advice? What is the context in which it operates? | ioblomov wrote: | At venture-funded startups, a generous portion of compensation | will be equity. And four years typically allows said equity to | vest fully. | LanceH wrote: | Yea, all you have to do is pick three consecutive winners. | jfk13 wrote: | Which is trivial, with hindsight. | | Less so in the moment. You could equally well pick three | failures, and end up with close to nothing. | jacobr1 wrote: | Your odds are much better with 3 companies, that one | might succeed. Especially if you are joining late-stage | startups. But at the same time, your equity package will | be smaller, so the exit won't be as impactful. | vvG94KbDUtRa wrote: | [dead] | angarg12 wrote: | I really like all of Will Larson content, and this one post is a | gold mine. I always recommend to mentees early in their career. I | find the sections about Pace and Prestige particularly | insightful. | | Unfortunately during the last decade+ we haven't really talked | that much about long careers in tech. Instead it's been mostly | about FIRE, or people quitting the industry due to burnout. | | When instead of thinking how can you make the most money to quit | your job the fastest, you think how you can sustain and grow in | your job the longest, the whole framing of your career changes. I | personally joined the industry because I love tech, and imagine | myself working on it on some form for a really long time. At the | same time I have been burn out more than once (this is actually | and ongoing issue) so more discussion on how to handle career | long term is appreciated. | [deleted] | itronitron wrote: | Well, for many people, FIRE means Forced Into Retirement Early | so the retire early with financial independence is really the | only winning strategy. | intelVISA wrote: | I'd retire but I don't want to deprive the tech world of my | works of art (microsauvice-spaghetti au cloud) /s | derekisnt wrote: | Great post, thanks for sharing Alex! | [deleted] | markus_zhang wrote: | I think the tip for 40 yr old FIRE is still gold. At 40 I'm | mostly bored by work and just want more time for myself. My | regret is that I messed up most of my time pre 35 so missed tons | of chance. But still cherish what I have right now. | lotsofpulp wrote: | This one? | | > At Digg, one mentor gave me the savvy advice that the fastest | path to financial success was working for four years at three | different just-about-to-IPO companies. A surefire way to retire | by forty. (This is, for the record, pretty good advice.) | | I don't think it has been applicable for many years. | ericmcer wrote: | It was super applicable just 3 years ago, anyone who hopped | into zoom/snowflake/mongodb had a nice few years. | lotsofpulp wrote: | I thought for the past decade or more now, the "surefire" | way to FIRE was to work at a big publicly traded tech | company and keep frivolous expenses low, and a few million | by 40 would have been nearly guaranteed (since you are | earning a couple hundred thousand or more per year). | | Marry a similar high earner to make it even more | guaranteed. | majormajor wrote: | Do you have specifics on size of equity grants and timings | and levels? | | There are lots of recent counter-examples; I have a | relative who joined Uber shortly before IPO, he didn't get | much. The pre-IPO valuation was already high and there were | enough employees that grant sizes were not large. | | Even joining Zoom/Snowflake/Mongo seems like you would've | had to time it _very_ well to make sure you got in before | the peak and vested in time to sell before the fall. | | Some other googling of recent tech IPOs shows a lot of | drops: HashiCorp, Confluent, Monday.com, Squarespace... do | you retire if you join companies like that just before IPO | a few times in a row? | markus_zhang wrote: | I think timing and connections are important. Very difficult | to get right. Anyway I'm pretty far from the "core" of the | crowd. | karaterobot wrote: | > Meeting my new coworkers, they structured their jobs as lottery | tickets bought with their lifeblood, trading tips on managing the | symptoms of work until the pearly gates of liquidity opened. | | That's a true statement and a painful insight. | mynameishere wrote: | It's five mixed metaphors is what it is. | sdwr wrote: | Hey, you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it | switch mid-stream. | influx wrote: | Will Larson was one of the favorite people I met at Uber, and | when he left, it was much darker. | dllthomas wrote: | I have fond memories of him across the foosball table. | DubiousPusher wrote: | IDK. This seems like good advice for a particular kind of person. | One who is content for the vast majority of their human | experience to revolve around software and technology. All these | side gigs add up and this looks like a life with very little time | to broaden oneself. Either that or this person has somehow found | the golden ticket of a boss that actually considers career | development as something they are willing to pay salary for. | | I would have to do these kind of things on the side and I don't | want my whole intellectual inner life and my hobbies to become | software. I don't want to write software blogs in the evening. I | want to read history books and cook dinner. I don't want to do | podcasts on Saturday. I want to tear the drywall off my entryway | and frame in a new window. I don't want to do side hustle | paperwork on Sunday. I want to teach my kid how to shoot. I don't | want to take a day off to go to a developer meetup. I want to go | march for Medicare. | tr_user wrote: | Seems like you're going to have to fight for that kind of | society where having a middle class life affords you free time. | burnte wrote: | This made me think, I'm 45 right now, and this week is 30 years | working in IT for pay, not a hobby. If I'm still in tech (which I | don't see that changing too much) I'll have a 40 year career at | 55. If I retire at 65, that'll be 50 YEARS in tech. Wild how time | both flies and stacks up. | stcroixx wrote: | Do yo see many 55-65 year olds doing technical work at your | company? Or any company you've been at in the past? | kjs3 wrote: | Hundreds where I'm at now. Same as many places in the past. | Not every company sidelines or discards employees based on | age. | JohnFen wrote: | > Do yo see many 55-65 year olds doing technical work at your | company? Or any company you've been at in the past? | | I have. At the last company I worked for, 3/4 of the devs | were over 50. At the company I work for now, about half are. | | Both companies are doing real cutting-edge stuff requiring | skills with modern tools and technologies. | jerhewet wrote: | 67, been paid for throwing code since 1975. Still employed | full-time, still enjoying what I do. Wish my job wasn't 20% | coding and 80% "DEVOPS", but I guess times have changed ... | freedude wrote: | My career in IT didn't exist at my place of business that far | back. That said one of my coworkers is 53 and started in IT | about 15 years ago. | mixmastamyk wrote: | Why wouldn't you, other than ageism? How about other | professionals like lawyers and doctors? | stcroixx wrote: | I don't know, I've seen maybe 10 in my 25 years in the | industry and they were mostly all at the start of my career | in a mainframe shop. I 'taught' them AIX as we moved a | critical system off the big iron onto a RISC system. I | don't think I've seen any in the wild in over 15 years. | Other professions age doesn't seem to matter much at all. | kjs3 wrote: | A couple of years ago I went to a birthday party for a | fellow who was one of my attorneys back it the wild, wild | dot-bomb days. He's still a respected partner, go-to | contract law guy and absolutely as sharp as the day I met | him. He was turning 80. | majormajor wrote: | In software development the other big elephant in the room | is the age of the field itself. | | If the world thirty years ago needed fewer software | developers, then you'd have fewer 20 year old new software | developers - and that strongly reduces the odds of having | as many 50 year old developers today as 20 year old | developers today. | mixmastamyk wrote: | If your definition is focused on javascript slingers, ok. | But it's been ~eighty years since WWII and the Top Secret | Rosies and Bletchley Park. Business and govts got the on | board with automation early. | | Population has vastly increased as well, which affects | all professions. | majormajor wrote: | 80 years is a _very young_ profession, still. How long | have their been lawyers training in university programs? | Doctors? The answer is in centuries and so you 'd expect | a lot more supply/demand equilibrium. | | How many times has that automation resulted in the | business saying "great, things are easier" instead of | "great, that's quicker now, _let 's do more things with | the time we freed up?" I've only seen the latter, which | just breeds _more* need for _more_ automation. | | You can see it in how much software the average business | employee used 40 years ago vs today, even halfway through | your timeline. | mixmastamyk wrote: | Yes, though 80 years of workers is enough for almost | everyone starting to be dead already. So "centuries" is | not quite as biting as it sounds. Engineering does happen | to be that old of course. | | My father ran his two person business with spreadsheets, | word processing, and games (haha) about 40 years ago. | | I think people forget how much tech was around in the old | days. Moon landing and SR-71 happened in the late | sixties. Mythical Man Month talks of the software/PM | angle and most chapters apply directly to today. | jaggederest wrote: | I'm not sure about others, but as a very young programmer I | was lucky enough to be mentored by a succession of 60ish year | old seasoned developers still writing code every day. It was | very formative and helpful to have a guide who had seen the | growth of the modern software industry from infancy forward. | | I now try to pay back that mentoring investment, and I | encourage other people in the last half of their career to do | the same - much of the challenge of software as an occupation | and avocation is self-doubt and mentoring really helps | provide objective feedback and perspective on what is truly | important. | kjs3 wrote: | One of my first jobs was a consulting gig in the mid-80s | with a Very Large Airline that had a strong, effective | "train and promote from within" ethic. That meant a lot of | people who 1) didn't start out it IT (or often in | technology) and 2) lots of folks who had some amount of a | career before getting into IT, so trended older. It was | extremely formative. | | My 2 supervisors were in their 50s, and started out | slinging bags on the tarmac. Knew their stuff cold...not | just about the tech, but how to actually deal with and | manage people. Lots of life experience shared with this | very green kid who on paper was the technical 'expert'. And | because they'd been there and seen waaay more than just the | inside of an office, they understood the business we | supported intimately. "Knew were all the bodies are buried" | was the key phrase. I went on to consult with a Very Large | Telco, which had a similar culture of valuing experience | and worked with some of the most knowledgeable techs I ever | met, most several decades older than me. Shoot...there was | a _lot_ of grey hair at IBM when I was there, before | someone decided ageism as official corporate policy was a | swell idea. | | And that has made all the difference. | JohnFen wrote: | > I was lucky enough to be mentored by a succession of | 60ish year old seasoned developers still writing code every | day. | | I'm in my late 50s and have been programming professionally | for 30 years or so. And, _right now_ , I'm being mentored | by 78 year old engineer still writing code every day! | SimonPStevens wrote: | To be a 60 year old software engineer now you would have to | have started in 1984. (Assuming graduating age 21 and going | straight into work*) | | There just wasn't the same number of developers back then. | | I can't find good numbers, but according to [1], there were | 612,000 developers in the US in 2002, compared to 4.4 million | in 2023 in the. It's reasonable to assume that there were | probably an order of magnitude less again in 1984. So very | little opportunity to become a 60 year old software engineer | in 2023. | | I'd hazard a guess that in another 40 years there will be a | lot more 60 year old developers. (Either that, or zero | because ChatGPT 15 has taken over) | | [1] - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_engineering_de | mogra... | | * Yes, I know this doesn't quite hold as I'm sure people | switched careers. Particularly early on in the computer | industry where I imagine many people switched into software | from more technical electrical/hardware type roles. But I | still think the major point still stands which is the main | reason for the lack of older developers now, is just the lack | of younger developers 40 years ago. | petemir wrote: | Adding anecdata, but my mother just turned 70 and is still | software engineer (Edit: cobol and rpg still pay off! :)). | She never went the manager path, preferring talking with | computers rather than humans seems to run in the family :). | ChrisMarshallNY wrote: | I started in '83 (paid to code, at 84-5). | | I would still be working for someone, except the industry | doesn't believe that I should be. I was frozen out, pretty | hard. | | Instead, I work for free. I really enjoy coding, and it's | actually been vastly freeing, having my own schedule and | structure. | derwiki wrote: | Could you say more about how you were frozen out? (or | link to it if you've already written about it) Thanks in | advance! | ChrisMarshallNY wrote: | Well, it's kind of a well-worn whine, with me. If you | browse through my history, you'll see me mention it, from | time to time. | | TL;DR: I worked four jobs, in my career, with the last | one being 27 years (25 of them as a manager, as well as | tech). That was at a pretty highfalutin joint (a famous | Japanese imaging company). | | I finally got laid off, at 55, and started looking for | work, and found the culture had changed drastically (I | actually had done fairly well at keeping up with the | tech, as that was my job). Old people like me, were | _very_ unpopular. | | The interview process was pretty damn humiliating. It was | made clear, that, even if some company did me the huge | favor of granting me a job, I would be treated like crap. | It was _personal_. People didn 't like me, because of my | age. In a couple of cases, they didn't bother hiding it, | at all. | | I decided "Bugger this for a lark," and retired early. I | had the means, but hadn't been planning on it, for at | least another decade. | | As it has turned out, it was a blessing in disguise. | Being able to do my own designs, process, and releasing, | has been a joy. I've had to keep the scope humble, but | it's really been great. I'm working with a nonprofit | startup, where I'm actually helping a few younger folks | to learn the ins and outs of what it takes to ship | software. | | I like working. I would have been happy to work for a | great deal less than most folks, was willing to take | risks on startups (as I was already set, anyway), had | thirty years' experience shipping, would have been loyal, | honorable, and had a fairly vast array of skills and | experience, but, you know... _eewww_...gray hair... | gopalv wrote: | > be a 60 year old software engineer now you would have to | have started in 1984 | | My uncle is a 60 year old software developer, but he | started writing software much later in life. | | He started off in EE working for Sperry, went with the | divisions wherever they went and switched over at the ripe | old age of 47. | | His previous work was all about state machines, so is his | new work. | | So "40 years of experience" isn't the same as 60 years old | developer. | | There's more of the EE/Physics grad turned software | developer around than people who wrote software in the 80s. | cdkmoose wrote: | I'll be a 60 year old software engineer next year(class of | '87), my brother just retired as a 60 year old | engineer(class of '85). We exist but the educational/career | pathways at that time were very limited. | mnky9800n wrote: | So a bit more than 1% of all Americans is developing | software. I wonder what fraction are truck drivers? | umeshunni wrote: | Quick search: | | > 7.99 million people employed throughout the economy in | jobs that relate to trucking activity in 2021 | | so, about 2.5% | mnky9800n wrote: | fascinating. | ptero wrote: | To nitpick, the number of actual truck drivers is likely | much lower. My guess is 2.5% includes mechanics, loaders, | dispatchers, etc. | mech422 wrote: | I've been programming professionally for 45 years now (55 | atm). Started writing invoicing systems on heathkits and | database systems for real estate on C-64..then | Cobol/PL1,C,Perl,Python.. oh - and I don't have any degree | at all. | | I'm quite optimistic I'll be able to work another 5+ years, | if I choose to.. | ncphil wrote: | Heh. Lots, actually. I'm one of them. Been at my current job | for 25 years. Started in tech as a second career when I was | 41. A colleague who is actually a year younger than me has | been at it for well over 40 years (came on while still in | school as a summer intern). In fact, the one thing my hiring | director said that really got my attention was, "I've got | people out there who are retiring after 30 years". People | sometimes forget that tech isn't just about the FAANGs or | startups. There are lots of us out here who working for big | and small enterprises where 50 years and the gold watch are | the norm. | clemailacct1 wrote: | In my experience the biggest challenge isn't just identifying | that pacing is important (because the author's section on Pace is | a complete gold mine of wisdom) - it's having your direct manager | and/or the company culture support that. | | He correctly states that you should 'change your situation' (your | job) if you're not allowed to pace appropriately - but there's a | real tangible risk to getting recruited if your resume paints you | to look like a mercenary who leaves every year. | | Again, it just feels fuzzy and not black and white. Really great | read though! ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2023-04-17 23:00 UTC)