3 ms·

It's illusory to think that we have a choice. It's hard to avoid becoming obsolete over a long timespan.

chrisper 10y ago
I am a bit confused about what you are referring to. Are you saying that we do not have many choices when it comes to work? I am about to graduate, but a lot of people seem to be saying that once you gain experience it is easy to hop to different jobs.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- stonemetal 10y ago
  After a while you get pigeonholed. You can hop jobs easily but it is the same shit, different name on the building. It is often easier to pivot inside a company then jump to a new company.
  - sverhagen 10y ago
    Personally I would appreciate when those who got pigeonholed into finding their consecutive jobs "the same sh*t" don't foreshadow that onto those yet to graduate. It's good that those coming into the job market newly know what to look out for, but the opportunities mentioned by the previous poster also mean that you can steer away from such shotty (I'm going with the auto-complete here) jobs... if you choose so.
    - indemnity 10y ago
      Agreed. I've been a sysadmin, tech support nerd, developer, architect and now product manager. With each switch the value you bring jumps. Next switch is likely starting a business. 37 y.o., still not tired of this! I can see how someone could get bitter if they stayed in the same role/position most of their career, but in my experience this has tended to be people with a negative outlook/attitude/chip on shoulder in general... It really is what you make of it, people are people wherever you go, some are dicks, some are not. Just accept the reality of the game and deal with it. You don't need to spread your aura of doom everywhere you go.
  - eru 10y ago
    I found it pretty easy so far. But I am willing to relocate intercontinentally---so there's less pressure on me to agree to the pigeonholing anyone might want to attempt.
- eru 10y ago
  It is, if you avoid getting stuck in a ghetto. Mobility on your part helps, too. (Both in a metaphorical sense, but also very directly: you are obviously going to have a bigger pool of potential suitors when the world is your oyster than when you are restricting yourself to one metro area.)
thesmallestcat 10y ago
It's illusory to think that we have a choice. Engineers are "dev-ops" now and sysadmins are "site reliability engineers." Everybody has to do everything.
- sofaofthedamned 10y ago
  I do hate the 'devops' prefix. It's used indeterminately by everybody unfortunately, including at a recent client that didnt have devs. It's job title inflation, a bit like calling somebody a barista because they press the coffee button.
  - sverhagen 10y ago
    It's great when used well. I'm a (Java) developer/architect type, but being involved more in infrastructure and deployments makes me a better overall contributor. If I follow your reasoning, my job would have been "deflated", but it doesn't feel that way.
- aisofteng 10y ago
  I disagree with this sentiment. >Everybody has to do everything. Everybody needs to have _at least some degree of familiarity_ with everything, yes. But that has always been the case. There is not and there never has been a job posting for someone to design algorithms and do nothing else, nor to deploy HTTP servers and nothing else. I expect that if you pick any part of any software/hardware stack, anyone with a reasonable amount of experience would be able to give real-world examples where familiarity with several (and sometimes all) other parts of that stack are not only beneficial but sometimes necessary. I also expect that illustrations would be able to found from any point in the history of computing, up to and including now.
pacaro 10y ago
I'm going to define "long timespan" as being ~40 years (roughly how long the boomers expected to work for) I don't think it's "hard" per se, but it does require intentional effort. I can also see how, with a difficult work schedule, or family commitments, it may become hard or even impossible to carve out the time. I'm about 23 years into this journey, and although I still remember plenty of esoteric trivia that was useful programming in the 90's, and is useless now, there still appears to be room to learn new things every day

I am a bit confused about what you are referring to. Are you saying that we do not have many choices when it comes to work? I am about to graduate, but a lot of people seem to be saying that once you gain experience it is easy to hop to different jobs.

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
stonemetal 10y ago
After a while you get pigeonholed. You can hop jobs easily but it is the same shit, different name on the building. It is often easier to pivot inside a company then jump to a new company.
- sverhagen 10y ago
  Personally I would appreciate when those who got pigeonholed into finding their consecutive jobs "the same sh*t" don't foreshadow that onto those yet to graduate. It's good that those coming into the job market newly know what to look out for, but the opportunities mentioned by the previous poster also mean that you can steer away from such shotty (I'm going with the auto-complete here) jobs... if you choose so.
  - indemnity 10y ago
    Agreed. I've been a sysadmin, tech support nerd, developer, architect and now product manager. With each switch the value you bring jumps. Next switch is likely starting a business. 37 y.o., still not tired of this! I can see how someone could get bitter if they stayed in the same role/position most of their career, but in my experience this has tended to be people with a negative outlook/attitude/chip on shoulder in general... It really is what you make of it, people are people wherever you go, some are dicks, some are not. Just accept the reality of the game and deal with it. You don't need to spread your aura of doom everywhere you go.
- eru 10y ago
  I found it pretty easy so far. But I am willing to relocate intercontinentally---so there's less pressure on me to agree to the pigeonholing anyone might want to attempt.
eru 10y ago
It is, if you avoid getting stuck in a ghetto. Mobility on your part helps, too. (Both in a metaphorical sense, but also very directly: you are obviously going to have a bigger pool of potential suitors when the world is your oyster than when you are restricting yourself to one metro area.)

thesmallestcat 10y ago

It's illusory to think that we have a choice. Engineers are "dev-ops" now and sysadmins are "site reliability engineers." Everybody has to do everything.

sofaofthedamned 10y ago
I do hate the 'devops' prefix. It's used indeterminately by everybody unfortunately, including at a recent client that didnt have devs. It's job title inflation, a bit like calling somebody a barista because they press the coffee button.
- sverhagen 10y ago
  It's great when used well. I'm a (Java) developer/architect type, but being involved more in infrastructure and deployments makes me a better overall contributor. If I follow your reasoning, my job would have been "deflated", but it doesn't feel that way.
aisofteng 10y ago
I disagree with this sentiment. >Everybody has to do everything. Everybody needs to have _at least some degree of familiarity_ with everything, yes. But that has always been the case. There is not and there never has been a job posting for someone to design algorithms and do nothing else, nor to deploy HTTP servers and nothing else. I expect that if you pick any part of any software/hardware stack, anyone with a reasonable amount of experience would be able to give real-world examples where familiarity with several (and sometimes all) other parts of that stack are not only beneficial but sometimes necessary. I also expect that illustrations would be able to found from any point in the history of computing, up to and including now.

pacaro 10y ago

I'm going to define "long timespan" as being ~40 years (roughly how long the boomers expected to work for) I don't think it's "hard" per se, but it does require intentional effort. I can also see how, with a difficult work schedule, or family commitments, it may become hard or even impossible to carve out the time. I'm about 23 years into this journey, and although I still remember plenty of esoteric trivia that was useful programming in the 90's, and is useless now, there still appears to be room to learn new things every day