"others like myself would rather kill themselves than work a 9-5 until they're 60". If its in a corporate hell-hole, I might at times feel like that too. However, not all 9-5s are equal :) Public sector such as govt or academia, or other non-profit, can be fulfilling and not soul-sucking. Or, at some point switch to something only slightly related to tech, such as teaching. People talk about "full fat" FIRE, but thats unrealistic and/or requires some years of miserable sacrifice for most people (being rich before you start, or getting randomly lucky with stocks, doesn't count IMHO). They also talk of "Barista FIRE" - i:e you can't totally retire but can work a supposedly low-stress job (personally, not convinced by it, baristas can still feel "oppressed" at work) . What about the middle road... which is, live frugally (which helps the planet too), over-pay mortgage and avoid other debts, with such an attitude hopefully most techies would by their 40s be able to work in a job with a moderate professional salary, perhaps arguably underpaid for what they do, but, if that's what necessary to be fulfilled at work and not feel like killing oneself, then so be it? ;)
Wow that's even worse :( I got the impression at the time I worked there that 2 weeks was standard, at least in tech. Which didn't seem at all generous...
I think you're giving invaluable info here and doing a public service :) Having lived abroad a few years myself, its exciting, wonderful, broadens the mind etc, for a certain amount of time. But trade-offs emerge. Loneliness is a thing. Its difficult to make "new old friends". Well, at least, takes time! Living abroad contributed to my getting married later (back home) and being an older Dad. Marrying someone from a different country has all the issues you allude to. When I returned home I got reverse culture shock, it was tough, things had changed. Thankfully I kept in touch which some great friends, who are still there now. So grateful to them for not forgetting our friendship. I think these issues BTW, apply within one's own country too. In the UK its traditional for middle-class kids to go to another city for university. They often meet a partner there. Then bingo, one or both settle far from where they grew up. So friends and family are hours away. Now with increased costs , more people are studying nearer home cos they can't afford that. This is often reported as a bad thing but I wonder if being forced to study nearer home therefore meet a partner from nearer, may lead to higher ultimate happiness. When our kids grow up, I 100% wouldn't wanna "clip their wings" or be selfish. But, also kind of hope they don't permanently move far away. But if their true loves come from other countries, well, that's destiny I guess....
Handful of thoughts. :) The best of the 3 above is having a specific skill set. Anything medical - e:g nursing (good one 'cos less time to retrain) is in short supply worldwide and you can get a local job with visa sponsorship many places. As for experimenting with fascism, USA is sadly by no means the only country going that direction, and the USA's political system may be more resilient to such take-overs, guess we will find out... :( Other countries do have the advantage of not having healthcare tied to employer, people work less hours a lot of countries. The USA's mere 2 weeks a year vacation is brutal, no wonder so many people are burned out, but there are ways to get more e:g work for better employers such as public sector, or do short-term contracts.
In my experience, its more the older ones that "just don't care that much about winning an argument at work", because we've learned over time to choose our battles, and "the healthy art of not giving a s**" . Maybe come back in 10 yrs time and see if you still think this? ;)
As someone similar age, if I was job-seeking like you, then if a younger potential boss gave these vibes, I'd be up-front. Seems to me salary can't increase for ever. Sure, more experience may lead to better design decisions which save employers a fortune. However, it's kind of opaque. "Best devs on earth" may be true, but doesn't mean its obvious to management. Maybe they won't pay a higher salary immediately than to a 30-yr-old, but they'll give you a reward later if they can see how much you helped them. Flight risk? Ask 'em about it, how can you ease that fear - generally that comes down to career history - if you look like a job-hopper that can be a problem but its not specifically age-related, right? Less hungry? Well again not sure that's age-related. If they're a sweatshop I suppose they might feel they can push younger ones around more, but who wants to work there anyway? Good luck :)
As an amusing ironic counter-example, I know someone who had the talent to be a pro musician in the 80s, observed many starving would-be rockers and thought "nice idea but no thanks" so pursued medical career, and drove his son's band to gigs. His son's band recently got signed by a major label, given money to live on so they don't have to have other jobs, they've hit the big time. Neither of them ever saw this coming !
What location lets you play "lots of gigs on the streets" ? This would be wonderful, I think a lot of people would have much happier lives, if this were to happen all over the world, but lots of local gov'ts prevent it due to noise complaints, risk assessments etc..
If it causes procrastination, that's a problem. Seems to me, being an entrepreneur requires high levels of self discipline, vs working in some big org where you get told what to do and held to it. I worked at a start-up where my boss who was one of the founders, didn't do what needed doing if it didn't interest him. Suffice to say, the company wasn't ultimately successful. Its understandable that with ADHD people seek to escape the strait-jacket of the conventional workplace, and find somewhere that they can tailor more to their way of working, but I'd caution about entrepreneurship, might be even worse. And if you don't get on with "what you're meant to be doing" you then don't get paid. Whereas in conventional job its easier to work your a* off the next day if you faffed about and had nothing to show one day.
I believe you :) Simply refusing to play "keep up with the Joneses", seems to me can make the difference between being able to buy a home or not. Albeit it can take some inner confidence. I can't remember anyone actually asking me "why do you drive such a s*** car?", but they probably think it. ;) The key thing is not to care. Caveats - (1) this doesn't solve the problem if due to friends and family network you feel a need to live somewhere extortionate e:g London, NY, SF etc (although OTOH all of those have cheaper places 2 hr train ride away) (2) In USA, people can get randomly saddled with huge healthcare bills.
Maybe don't do it till it goes back to sleep but... Mt Adams is one (I think the only one?) of the major volcanoes in WA that you can climb without ropes as it can be accessed by a route free of crevasses. Need an ice axe though as there is a snow field. EDIT -excepting Mt St Helens, but that isn't snow-capped
Personally I feel that "Beating the averages" was an awesome article that was of technical interest and can apply to many things not just making money, and worth reading perhaps by every s/w developer. Whereas this article is of nothing like the same quality, it seems largely money oriented to me.
This is sad. My advice, as an older person, is find a job that doesn't suck, or even is actually fulfilling. Public sector did that for me. Some weeks will drain you, that's what we get paid for, it just needs to be, not all the time :) Then early retirement is less "necessary". This is perfectly compatible with kids (albeit not in a high cost of living area). While kids are young, adventures will be put on hold to some extent, but then having kids and watching them grow up is a delightful adventure in itself :) And you get to share adventures with them later on. I'm glad I travelled and stuff when young, but seeing others without kids, their life seems a bit boring and same-y to me, but that's a personal thing. Important to some to have kids, important to others not to have them. Those "ground down" people you describe probably need a decent holiday to recharge, they also may need to think outside the box , get off the treadmill and realise that chasing promotions and money is a trap, and in fact a middle-of-the-road tech salary combined with some intelligent frugal habits gives a great standard of living despite today's brutal house prices etc. (only caveat - in USA health costs can be major problem for people with certain conditions)
Agreed, there are indeed managers for whom sadly its about control and compliance. However, there are also nice managers who just might feel mildly insecure having a more experienced person as a subordinate. Perhaps the onus is on the older dev to be sensitive to that and find a way to make the manager feel comfortable with sometimes being "managed up"? To know that the experienced person is a helpful ally not someone who'd undermine them. It may be something to be direct about in interviews. Obviously the interviewer is prohibited from raising the subject due to discrimination laws, but there's nothing to stop an applicant saying that they really don't mind having a boss that's a lot younger, and that they just aim to be of help.
Possibly they might like a tactful experienced engineer who's careful not to make them look bad to senior management, but quietly fixes some of the more glaring issues and makes the whole team look good? The trick I guess is showing in a job application that you will behave like that.
Following the KISS principle and making systems as simple as possible therefore easy and cheap to maintain and expand. Which can include, not necessarily using the latest most fashionable tech if it doesn't solve the Use Case better. In my many years of coding, I've found many otherwise highly intelligent capable people, seem to devote herculean mental effort to understanding unneccesarily complex systems and keeping many details in their heads that needn't be there if it was designed sensibly.
Fair point :) Well actually in my experience they were called a "Delivery Manager" or "Scrum Master" but behaved like a Project Manager, if you see what I mean. And as for Sprints in Kanban, yeah, well Jira kinda works like that and it seems helpful to have some bi-weekly ceremonies and review stuff while only having to do "ideally most of the stories that were asked for" because the ones that were put into sprint are important. In other words, truly Agile (or so it seems to me ;) ) , without being fundamentalist.
In my experience as a dev... Kanban is a useful tool that helps teams organise work, break it down, be flexible. It helps the whole team to see what needs doing, identify dependencies and where to help each other out. Scrum OTOH looks similar on the surface, but is a form of micromanagement and becomes a system to be gamed. Project Managers become more concerned with velocity and burndown charts and whether specific stories were done in specific sprints or within the specific story points, than whether actual useful productive work is happening that moves the organisation forward. In the version of Kanban I've been in, you can chuck in the occcasional tech debt story into the so-called "sprint" (basically the 2 weeks between planning meetings) and no-one minds. Thus something that's slowing you down can be fixed. Whereas in Scrum, you'd have to haggle with the project manager to be "allowed" to do something like halve the build time in CI or something.
This is good advice :) There's a lot to like in tech but it can indeed burn people out, and some time away from it doesn't hurt. I also took a sabbatical, years ago, and ultimately returned to tech. I worked the ski season, travelled in summer and lived on little. If you're frugal and do bits of work that pays a little, its possible to do this and have barely eroded savings after a year or so. (caveat- in USA health cover can be an issue)
A compromise exists :) - Public sector (e:g govt or academia). Due to lack of a need to show quarterly profits, its less stressful. But its also challenging. You can work hard, with intelligent people, on stuff that matters, but you won't get asked to work the weekend. Flexible family-friendly working can be a thing. Base pay is usually less than private sector. But pension likely to be better. And, getting burned out and/or laid-off is expensive. As is trying to save tons to get out of a hell-hole. Whereas, chugging along doing interesting fulfilling work for years at the same place with people you get along with, seems a good option for me. I recommend this to everyone :)
Maybe its the "romance" and "excitement" of it? I worked for a startup in Seattle, 20+ yrs ago. It had a fun exciting buzz, and... something special about it... the possibility of being part of something big... and having interesting, excitingly intelligent coworkers, that you can learn a lot from, but then of course , it all went to s** (less customers due to market bust). Ultimately we were all laid off, the options I'd bought at 5c each were worth nothing. I didn't expect any riches, it was just an adventure. And importantly, 30 mins drive to the ski hill which was open at night after work.. so.. not a bad time ;). Some of the early employees were bitter. Some had tried being early employees several times in a row, tried to make it big. To me, they were intelligent people so why they didn't they see it as just a gamble which is largely out of their control? Maybe people like to kid themselves? Its the dream of America to make your fortune out of something new and exciting. Why am I even reading this discussion and commenting here? ;) Becos' there's something intangible but exciting about it all. But a lot of it is fantasy. Maybe people like to work for startups for the same reason they like a good book or movie, you can suspend your disbelief and escape from the boring hum-drum where you do a 9-5 that can be similar year after year?
Interesting reply :) Some thoughts: (1) "The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe" contains in certain ways a re-telling of the Gospels in a way that speaks to children. But its a great story in itself, one can take or leave it's resemblance to the bible, its also enjoyed by atheists. I'd debate seeing it as blasphemy. Why would God object to the bible story being respun by an author who's themselves a Christian with such decent motives for writing? (2) Racial insensitive stereotypes- sure that's a problem in older books, some bad examples too in the highly entertaining "Just William" series, but these can be an opportunity to talk to children about what's appropriate to say , and how thinking has moved on in good ways. I'd support reprints of such books having extra text added to point out that some content would nowadays be considered racist or whatever (3) Hobbit being banned for witchcraft - to be honest, whoever is banning this is nuts IMHO. Should "Hansel and Gretel" be banned too then? You're probably gonna tell me it has been. Kids have enjoyed stories about witches for centuries. Who has the right to tell them that's not allowed? They know its fantasy. (4) I take your point about it being a PITA to look after a library as a school teacher, especially in the current climate particularly in USA. Maybe there needs to be a ban on bans? ;) Apart from restrictions due to age appropriateness, who is anyone to tell someone else what they're allowed to read? (5) "classic books adults think children ought to like" -its a fair point- I can imagine some adults might do that, sure, not all kids like classics. With our kids we just try to guarantee them access to the good stuff new and old, partly just take them to the library and see what they find. If one ever pushes a kid to read, or read a certain thing, they'll rightly push back. Not for adults to force them, just to provide them with quality stuff. I think the original article though was complaining of the market dropping out for content for 9-yr-olds, but really you'd want to read a mix of classics and modern though, right? Same as a symphony orchestra wouldn't play ONLY Beethoven or ONLY 21st century composers?
Wow! I'd no idea the Hobbit was banned anywhere. Madness. Its just a work of art. Hardly even controversial. Kids should be able to make their on judgement about it. People need to be allowed to think critically. I could possibly see why one might disallow, say, Mein Kampf in a school library but even then you could possibly have, for historical purposes, a copy annotated with a lot of warnings and reminders of who the author was and what he did.
You need a bit of both old and new surely? I'd argue, that great literature, whether for kids or adults, is timeless. Our daughter loved learning Greek legends for example in school. The challenge I think with modern stuff can be, finding the good stuff amongst the crp. Whereas classic stuff has stood the test of time, the crp has mostly fallen by the wayside.
Age 9 is about time to get into "The Hobbit". That might save some people ;). Or Terry Pratchet''s "Truckers" ? So much utterly fantastic kids literature out there, most of it not at all new.
I'd think Tolkein's "The Hobbit" would fit this description? Or CS Lewis Narnia series, one-offs like "The Secret Garden", Also Edith Nesbit, fantastic children's author, "The Railway children" probably her most famous. century old at least.