6 ms·

Still love coding (and still going to be doing it at 56, no choice), but coding at work lost appeal for me -- rat-racing in Agile teams, with every keystroke ac

Still love coding (and still going to be doing it at 56, no choice), but coding at work lost appeal for me -- rat-racing in Agile teams, with every keystroke accounted for in JIra, and no place for a smallest independent idea to try. No wonder there is less and less experienced people on those teams, and the tech landshaft adapts accordingly -- people just don't know anymore how to employ experienced developers. Big old companies are not built that way anymore (am employed by one, multi-national, tried several geos, all the same), and young companies... you know it all, young folks are just smarter. Sorry to sound pessimistic (I am not really, for many reasons, one of them being, I cannnot afford to retire). Side projects, yes. Becoming wilder and wilder with every year, rarely reaching the end. Just for staying sane as someone here mentioned.

m3talsmith 10y ago
When I was young, I wanted to stay away from the old large companies. When I crossed the 35 year threshold, they became the only one's I wanted to work for: every passing year made that desire stronger. Almost 40 now and finally working for one, I couldn't be happier - I could be making more, but not happier.
- timdavila 10y ago
  This is an interesting perspective. Can you share more on your reasoning for wanting to work for a BigCo as you got older?
  - m3talsmith 10y ago
    I've spent most of my career (20+ years) working on or with startups. I loved that environment when it came to building my own startups; I loved diving in and working an insane amount of time to prove my ideas out; I loved networking in the evenings with investors and other startups; and I especially loved getting others excited about the product. The truth is though is that wore me down. I ended up earning myself a chronic illness which severely slowed me down from the startup pace. I also have a family and as my kids grew, so did the time demands. I thought that my partners would understand, given I've put my life into everything I worked on, but that never materialized. In the end, startup after startup, I've found that there's little room for sickness and especially a family. Sure, when you're young it's ok, but as you get older, or as your family ages, there is this idea of your family just has to understand that you have to do this to make all their dreams come true: founders say that family and health comes first, then try to persuade you that those really come second. I really do understand where they are coming from. It's all a high pressure game with very little likelihood of succeeding. First to market matters more than not. Notice how many founders are either single or have marriage issues. Survival comes first for them. I had to ask myself if that's really what I wanted. It turns out, all I really want to do is be good at what I'm working on, support my family, and have coworkers that I can enjoy being around because they value the same things. I found that in larger corporations that weren't about survival anymore. That's what informed my search most of all: the values of the peers I would be working with.
- robbyking 10y ago
  That's one thing I learned from the last tech boom -- if you want something long term and stable, look for it while everyone else is busy chasing IPO's and pitching start-ups.
- taternuts 10y ago
  I'm 30 going on 31, and am currently doing that. I recently came from a start-up gig that worked me until I burned out, then laid off my whole team shortly after launch. I'm at a medium sized company that still does cool things, but doesn't force ridiculous deadlines on you and actually seems to care about the well-being of their employees. Most of the engineers have been there for 2-10 years; I've heard this should be a metric by which you determine your next position, but I hadn't realized just _how_ important that is until I got chewed up and spit out by a 'cool' startup.
  - m3talsmith 10y ago
    Yeah, I'd say the majority of people I deal with have been there for 5+ years. The company promotes from within, so a lot of the vets are in some form of management or research by now. That was one clue that this was the company I wanted to work for. The other was just how real and truly comfortable everyone was working there.
- draw_down 10y ago
  Yes, I'm 35 and really feeling that pull these days. Currently working at a startup (it's 5 years old, so that moniker is debatable) and everyone around me is 25, being exploited 7 ways from Sunday because they don't care and are certain it's all gonna work out for them. And a lot of them were born into money anyway. Crazy work hours, do more with less, etc etc. If something needs to happen, fuck you, drop everything and do it. Of course this is said in a sunny, positive, optimistic way but the reality is the same. I'm the only person on my "team" that should realistically have at least 3 people on it. Soul crushing. I just wanna work 9-5 or 9-6 or whatever and leave it at the office.
lacampbell 10y ago
That's another thing I can resonate with. I love programming but programming at work can be another kettle of fish. Dealing with other peoples code can be very frustrating. I have fringe opinions on software and programming (that may well be wrong ;)) and it can be frustrating when what you think is so obviously the best way of doing something just seems weird and obfuscated to others.
- sqeaky 10y ago
  What are some of your opinions, perhaps the most contentious one's?
  - lacampbell 10y ago
    That objects are a better abstraction than modules+records, that class hierarchies are better than abstract data types, that multiple dispatch is better than pattern matching, and that a lambda can easily be modelled as an object with one useful method called "apply" without anything being lost. The current FP trend has had a lot of benefits, namely in teaching people about immutability (I write immutable objects 95% of the time). But I am convinced that procedures and data belong together, and that it's an easier way to organise code.
    - sqeaky 10y ago
      Those don't really seem that far off from common OO wisdom which still seems prevalent in the industry, except for the lambda thing. Mostly that seems like you are thinking for yourself and have real reasons for what you think, and it happens to be closer to most OO folks, than most FP folks. On the Lambda thing, you are right that it makes no functional difference. I do think it makes a small readability and maintainability difference. Most languages I use don't allow, or at least it is poor practice, to make classes in line. With C++ passing a lambda to and std function is much nicer and easier to read than creating a functor (a separate class with operator() instead of apply() as you described), because it lets you keep the code being passed in the function that cares.

m3talsmith 10y ago

When I was young, I wanted to stay away from the old large companies. When I crossed the 35 year threshold, they became the only one's I wanted to work for: every passing year made that desire stronger. Almost 40 now and finally working for one, I couldn't be happier - I could be making more, but not happier.

timdavila 10y ago
This is an interesting perspective. Can you share more on your reasoning for wanting to work for a BigCo as you got older?
- m3talsmith 10y ago
  I've spent most of my career (20+ years) working on or with startups. I loved that environment when it came to building my own startups; I loved diving in and working an insane amount of time to prove my ideas out; I loved networking in the evenings with investors and other startups; and I especially loved getting others excited about the product. The truth is though is that wore me down. I ended up earning myself a chronic illness which severely slowed me down from the startup pace. I also have a family and as my kids grew, so did the time demands. I thought that my partners would understand, given I've put my life into everything I worked on, but that never materialized. In the end, startup after startup, I've found that there's little room for sickness and especially a family. Sure, when you're young it's ok, but as you get older, or as your family ages, there is this idea of your family just has to understand that you have to do this to make all their dreams come true: founders say that family and health comes first, then try to persuade you that those really come second. I really do understand where they are coming from. It's all a high pressure game with very little likelihood of succeeding. First to market matters more than not. Notice how many founders are either single or have marriage issues. Survival comes first for them. I had to ask myself if that's really what I wanted. It turns out, all I really want to do is be good at what I'm working on, support my family, and have coworkers that I can enjoy being around because they value the same things. I found that in larger corporations that weren't about survival anymore. That's what informed my search most of all: the values of the peers I would be working with.
robbyking 10y ago
That's one thing I learned from the last tech boom -- if you want something long term and stable, look for it while everyone else is busy chasing IPO's and pitching start-ups.
taternuts 10y ago
I'm 30 going on 31, and am currently doing that. I recently came from a start-up gig that worked me until I burned out, then laid off my whole team shortly after launch. I'm at a medium sized company that still does cool things, but doesn't force ridiculous deadlines on you and actually seems to care about the well-being of their employees. Most of the engineers have been there for 2-10 years; I've heard this should be a metric by which you determine your next position, but I hadn't realized just _how_ important that is until I got chewed up and spit out by a 'cool' startup.
- m3talsmith 10y ago
  Yeah, I'd say the majority of people I deal with have been there for 5+ years. The company promotes from within, so a lot of the vets are in some form of management or research by now. That was one clue that this was the company I wanted to work for. The other was just how real and truly comfortable everyone was working there.
draw_down 10y ago
Yes, I'm 35 and really feeling that pull these days. Currently working at a startup (it's 5 years old, so that moniker is debatable) and everyone around me is 25, being exploited 7 ways from Sunday because they don't care and are certain it's all gonna work out for them. And a lot of them were born into money anyway. Crazy work hours, do more with less, etc etc. If something needs to happen, fuck you, drop everything and do it. Of course this is said in a sunny, positive, optimistic way but the reality is the same. I'm the only person on my "team" that should realistically have at least 3 people on it. Soul crushing. I just wanna work 9-5 or 9-6 or whatever and leave it at the office.

lacampbell 10y ago

That's another thing I can resonate with. I love programming but programming at work can be another kettle of fish. Dealing with other peoples code can be very frustrating. I have fringe opinions on software and programming (that may well be wrong ;)) and it can be frustrating when what you think is so obviously the best way of doing something just seems weird and obfuscated to others.

sqeaky 10y ago
What are some of your opinions, perhaps the most contentious one's?
- lacampbell 10y ago
  That objects are a better abstraction than modules+records, that class hierarchies are better than abstract data types, that multiple dispatch is better than pattern matching, and that a lambda can easily be modelled as an object with one useful method called "apply" without anything being lost. The current FP trend has had a lot of benefits, namely in teaching people about immutability (I write immutable objects 95% of the time). But I am convinced that procedures and data belong together, and that it's an easier way to organise code.
  - sqeaky 10y ago
    Those don't really seem that far off from common OO wisdom which still seems prevalent in the industry, except for the lambda thing. Mostly that seems like you are thinking for yourself and have real reasons for what you think, and it happens to be closer to most OO folks, than most FP folks. On the Lambda thing, you are right that it makes no functional difference. I do think it makes a small readability and maintainability difference. Most languages I use don't allow, or at least it is poor practice, to make classes in line. With C++ passing a lambda to and std function is much nicer and easier to read than creating a functor (a separate class with operator() instead of apply() as you described), because it lets you keep the code being passed in the function that cares.