4 ms·

This has to do with the nature of the apps. In the Valley / consumer focused apps - they are often focused on both very young target users - AND - very new fra

This has to do with the nature of the apps. In the Valley / consumer focused apps - they are often focused on both very young target users - AND - very new frameworks and technologies. Plus they work insane hours. I worked in Software in Telecom as a young man, and I was surrounded by middle aged geniuses, I felt useless. My buddy worked at a big consulting firm doing .com stuff, he was a primary lead. So yes, it has a lot do with products, the industry, how fast things change etc.. I enjoy the frothiness of tech, but it's a career danger.

busterarm 9y ago
Having worked at a phone company, I can tell you that as far as career longevity, those folks have us beat. Most of the people I knew working at the telco were in their 60s and started their jobs there out of high school. They were incredible domain experts and had retired from the phone company once already _with pension_. They were all rehired and getting paid huge rates on top of their pensions and some were even going into their second retirement. Forty plus years at one company and these people were making a fortune and their knowledge is literally irreplaceable. Some even were experts across domains because they were smart enough to just move departments when they got bored instead of entire companies. Very stressful job though.
- alexasmyths 9y ago
  Yes - since nobody actually learns telephony any more, and it's a byzantine mess ... tons of guys earning a living being experts in domains we thought were going to go away ... But in 20 years from now, we'll still be installing classic land-lines, in which case, they'll still be around. Idea: build a wireless framework with the robustness of land-line efficiency - good enough for 9/11 calls and emergencies etc..
  - busterarm 9y ago
    It goes way deeper than that though, honestly. It's really just a matter of small failures blowing up bigger and faster. They're 'closer to the metal', in a sense. I've worked with plenty of tech people who just don't grok things as simple as network transmission times or that you can't 'just run a long enough wire (and through any conditions)'. Physics always gets its way. (Side rant: please do your best not to try to send me 20MB of data bounced off of a tin can spinning around the planet, down through dense, negatively-charged clouds to a mixed-elevation terrain through feet of steel and concrete surrounded by 1000 other phones like mine just to view your website/500-word article, plox. kthx) We're very lucky that our systems are resilient (as in fault-tolerant, not inherently-stable) enough that most of us can work at very high level of abstraction and never dig deeper. Phone people have to get this or their systems don't work right away. Same with power transmission. We think of these things like they're separate systems and domains from ours, but we're just very far removed from that layer. Everything we build is a client of these networks. There will be bugs or better designs that elude you if you don't understand this. Just to drive the point home, there's this classic: http://web.mit.edu/jemorris/humor/500-miles http://web.mit.edu/jemorris/humor/500-miles

busterarm 9y ago

Having worked at a phone company, I can tell you that as far as career longevity, those folks have us beat. Most of the people I knew working at the telco were in their 60s and started their jobs there out of high school. They were incredible domain experts and had retired from the phone company once already _with pension_. They were all rehired and getting paid huge rates on top of their pensions and some were even going into their second retirement. Forty plus years at one company and these people were making a fortune and their knowledge is literally irreplaceable. Some even were experts across domains because they were smart enough to just move departments when they got bored instead of entire companies. Very stressful job though.

alexasmyths 9y ago
Yes - since nobody actually learns telephony any more, and it's a byzantine mess ... tons of guys earning a living being experts in domains we thought were going to go away ... But in 20 years from now, we'll still be installing classic land-lines, in which case, they'll still be around. Idea: build a wireless framework with the robustness of land-line efficiency - good enough for 9/11 calls and emergencies etc..
- busterarm 9y ago
  It goes way deeper than that though, honestly. It's really just a matter of small failures blowing up bigger and faster. They're 'closer to the metal', in a sense. I've worked with plenty of tech people who just don't grok things as simple as network transmission times or that you can't 'just run a long enough wire (and through any conditions)'. Physics always gets its way. (Side rant: please do your best not to try to send me 20MB of data bounced off of a tin can spinning around the planet, down through dense, negatively-charged clouds to a mixed-elevation terrain through feet of steel and concrete surrounded by 1000 other phones like mine just to view your website/500-word article, plox. kthx) We're very lucky that our systems are resilient (as in fault-tolerant, not inherently-stable) enough that most of us can work at very high level of abstraction and never dig deeper. Phone people have to get this or their systems don't work right away. Same with power transmission. We think of these things like they're separate systems and domains from ours, but we're just very far removed from that layer. Everything we build is a client of these networks. There will be bugs or better designs that elude you if you don't understand this. Just to drive the point home, there's this classic: http://web.mit.edu/jemorris/humor/500-miles http://web.mit.edu/jemorris/humor/500-miles