6 ms·

I am curious what counts for “mid career”, he started coding ~6 years ago. Presumably he is in his 20s. Here him talking about leaving philosophy: https://www

by ivalm 6y ago

I am curious what counts for “mid career”, he started coding ~6 years ago. Presumably he is in his 20s. Here him talking about leaving philosophy: https://www.philosophicalhacker.com/2014/04/22/why-im-glad-my-dream-job-didnt-work-out/ https://www.philosophicalhacker.com/2014/04/22/why-im-glad-m... Edit: LinkedIn ~agrees with this estimate

lihaciudaniel 6y ago
>For the past 5 years, I hoped I was going to be a philosophy professor Assuming he goes to university or somewhere. Because most people find it boring he should have chosen history, latin, or simply other humanities subjects. How does one even jump from tech to humanities anyways???
- watwut 6y ago
  > How does one even jump from tech to humanities anyways??? Why would that be impossible or shocking? Most people are able to learn multiple different things and have interest in multiple different things. Universities typically allow you to take courses from different topics too.
  - lihaciudaniel 6y ago
    >Universities typically allow you to take courses from different topics too. But in America I don't think you can do that, some families don't have the privilege to spend so much money on somebody to get a bachelor in philosophy and then have no jobs afterwards.
    - C1sc0cat 6y ago
      My understanding is To get a US degree you have to take courses outside your main topic unlike the UK
- DyslexicAtheist 6y ago
  > How does one even jump from tech to humanities anyways??? when you're the type of person who likes to question everything and who wants to build things to make the world a "better place", then switching to humanities with a tech foundation is a good option. It can be very dangerous though. One is at risk of undoing all the previous conditioning (which costed a lot of time and money) and bring oneself to realize that it takes more than just "an idea for an app", or VC funding to actually contribute to society in a lasting and non-fraudulent way. It also might anger your colleagues who will never admit that they've been conned, drank too much of the corporate/academic kool-aid, and besides nobody likes people swimming against the stream especially when the reward isn't monetary and has even got high potential of working against you in the short term financially. How dare those damn fools who want to be better engineers and also better humans by widening their world-view!
  - eru 6y ago
    Making lots of money is how society tells you what contributions it realy values. A big part of the rest is empty talk. It's easy to say that we value eg teachers or nurses or janitors. Doesn't make us pay them more.
    - lihaciudaniel 6y ago
      Most philosophy professor would be counter culture and want communism or any other idealistic doctrine and wouldn't find his/her self worth on money
    - rubidium 6y ago
      No. It’s how the economy tells you what is valuable. Economy != society. In fact (in the US) we have a terrible economic system right now for our society, but it seems to be better than anything else that’s been tried for large modern nation states.
      - eru 6y ago
        Oh, far from it. There are much more successful economic systems around than the US one. America oddities like government mortgage guarantees, or federal deposit insurance, or licensing for interior designers are not necessary, and in fact not good for the economy. Neither are pervasive price controls. The US would do better, if they moved to a more market based economy.
- SketchySeaBeast 6y ago
  I graduated with a History degree in 2008. Had zero job success, a couple of years later went to a tech school for 2 year Computer Engineering Technologist diploma, the rest is history.... no, wait, the rest is programming.
ido 6y ago
I was also curious, as they didn't mention their age. As the age of retirement is currently ~67 (depends on the country but unlikely to go down in the future) and we assume you start your career after college in your early 20s - let's say 22 - you get ~45 years of work. Let's say the above is closer to a maximum than an average & "generously" go with a round 40 years of work; Then mid-career would be in your 40s.
- bradleyjg 6y ago
  A baseball player might well do something after the majors—coaching, announcing, hawking life insurance—but it’s still reasonable to talk about a “mid-career shortstop” six years in.
  - virgilp 6y ago
    In baseball the average retirement age is 32, maybe slightly more recently - so yeah, 26-27 is "mid-career". For your analogy to work, there would have to be no programmers that are 60years old, and very few that are above 40.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    - bradleyjg 6y ago
      What percentage of people whose job duties are entirely or almost entirely programming would you say are: <40, 40-60, >60?
      - virgilp 6y ago
        Don't know - and I suspect it's heavily dependent on location. Also, if I may add, it's heavily influenced by "production" of programmers (it's really not that old of a job, 40 years ago not that many programmers were graduating from university, compared with 10years ago). Also in the case of my country it's heavily influenced by emigration (basically everybody older than me who could emigrate, did; I'm one of the first generations where it made _some_ sense to stay in the country if you were a programmer). I definitely agree that programmers tend to skew young. But both in my current & previous companies I've worked with plenty "old" programmers - 32 is definitely not retirement age, as it is in baseball. But yes, I also admitted that many tend to move to management, too.
nikanj 6y ago
Ageism in tech is well-established and widely reported. If you're too old for the game by the time you reach 40, your mid-career does indeed fall somewhere in your late 20s/early 30s.
- r0b05 6y ago
  Indeed. One needs to have an exit strategy for after 40s. In this case, early 30s would be mid career.
  - virgilp 6y ago
    Am a programmer. Mid 40s, switched jobs to a better one not long ago(was headhunted/didn't actively look for it). Still coding, don't really plan to stop soon. I guess it depends for everyone, and yes lots of people prefer to go into management, but it's not compulsory by any means.
    - dominotw 6y ago
      same here. I do feel a little embarrassed sometimes that i am being manager by someone 10 yrs younger than me. I have to remind myself to no think like that. Not sure if its cultural/genetic to feel like that or what.
      - virgilp 6y ago
        You should remind yourself that a good manager is there to support you/ make your job easier and more relevant. A manager is not your master. No manager is embarrassed to have an assistant younger than them, so neither should you be about having a younger manager :) Yes, there's the small "problem" that unlike an assistant, the manager also gets to decide your compensation... but you don't want to be working for managers that look for yes-men. There's no winning in that position, those kind of persons are seldom competent and will only drag you down; better find out sooner than later, and move out.
    - fatnoah 6y ago
      I'm in the mid-40's, though I went the management route because that's what I enjoy. I recently interviewed at MS and a couple FAANGs and was very happy to see that all of them had people older than me as core members of their tech teams. Now, on the startup side of things, I'm pretty sure I had domain names older than nearly all of my interviewers.

by ivalm 6y ago

lihaciudaniel 6y ago

>For the past 5 years, I hoped I was going to be a philosophy professor Assuming he goes to university or somewhere. Because most people find it boring he should have chosen history, latin, or simply other humanities subjects. How does one even jump from tech to humanities anyways???

watwut 6y ago
> How does one even jump from tech to humanities anyways??? Why would that be impossible or shocking? Most people are able to learn multiple different things and have interest in multiple different things. Universities typically allow you to take courses from different topics too.
- lihaciudaniel 6y ago
  >Universities typically allow you to take courses from different topics too. But in America I don't think you can do that, some families don't have the privilege to spend so much money on somebody to get a bachelor in philosophy and then have no jobs afterwards.
  - C1sc0cat 6y ago
    My understanding is To get a US degree you have to take courses outside your main topic unlike the UK
DyslexicAtheist 6y ago
> How does one even jump from tech to humanities anyways??? when you're the type of person who likes to question everything and who wants to build things to make the world a "better place", then switching to humanities with a tech foundation is a good option. It can be very dangerous though. One is at risk of undoing all the previous conditioning (which costed a lot of time and money) and bring oneself to realize that it takes more than just "an idea for an app", or VC funding to actually contribute to society in a lasting and non-fraudulent way. It also might anger your colleagues who will never admit that they've been conned, drank too much of the corporate/academic kool-aid, and besides nobody likes people swimming against the stream especially when the reward isn't monetary and has even got high potential of working against you in the short term financially. How dare those damn fools who want to be better engineers and also better humans by widening their world-view!
- eru 6y ago
  Making lots of money is how society tells you what contributions it realy values. A big part of the rest is empty talk. It's easy to say that we value eg teachers or nurses or janitors. Doesn't make us pay them more.
  - lihaciudaniel 6y ago
    Most philosophy professor would be counter culture and want communism or any other idealistic doctrine and wouldn't find his/her self worth on money
  - rubidium 6y ago
    No. It’s how the economy tells you what is valuable. Economy != society. In fact (in the US) we have a terrible economic system right now for our society, but it seems to be better than anything else that’s been tried for large modern nation states.
    - eru 6y ago
      Oh, far from it. There are much more successful economic systems around than the US one. America oddities like government mortgage guarantees, or federal deposit insurance, or licensing for interior designers are not necessary, and in fact not good for the economy. Neither are pervasive price controls. The US would do better, if they moved to a more market based economy.
SketchySeaBeast 6y ago
I graduated with a History degree in 2008. Had zero job success, a couple of years later went to a tech school for 2 year Computer Engineering Technologist diploma, the rest is history.... no, wait, the rest is programming.

ido 6y ago

I was also curious, as they didn't mention their age. As the age of retirement is currently ~67 (depends on the country but unlikely to go down in the future) and we assume you start your career after college in your early 20s - let's say 22 - you get ~45 years of work. Let's say the above is closer to a maximum than an average & "generously" go with a round 40 years of work; Then mid-career would be in your 40s.

bradleyjg 6y ago
A baseball player might well do something after the majors—coaching, announcing, hawking life insurance—but it’s still reasonable to talk about a “mid-career shortstop” six years in.
- virgilp 6y ago
  In baseball the average retirement age is 32, maybe slightly more recently - so yeah, 26-27 is "mid-career". For your analogy to work, there would have to be no programmers that are 60years old, and very few that are above 40.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - bradleyjg 6y ago
    What percentage of people whose job duties are entirely or almost entirely programming would you say are: <40, 40-60, >60?
    - virgilp 6y ago
      Don't know - and I suspect it's heavily dependent on location. Also, if I may add, it's heavily influenced by "production" of programmers (it's really not that old of a job, 40 years ago not that many programmers were graduating from university, compared with 10years ago). Also in the case of my country it's heavily influenced by emigration (basically everybody older than me who could emigrate, did; I'm one of the first generations where it made _some_ sense to stay in the country if you were a programmer). I definitely agree that programmers tend to skew young. But both in my current & previous companies I've worked with plenty "old" programmers - 32 is definitely not retirement age, as it is in baseball. But yes, I also admitted that many tend to move to management, too.

nikanj 6y ago

Ageism in tech is well-established and widely reported. If you're too old for the game by the time you reach 40, your mid-career does indeed fall somewhere in your late 20s/early 30s.

r0b05 6y ago
Indeed. One needs to have an exit strategy for after 40s. In this case, early 30s would be mid career.
- virgilp 6y ago
  Am a programmer. Mid 40s, switched jobs to a better one not long ago(was headhunted/didn't actively look for it). Still coding, don't really plan to stop soon. I guess it depends for everyone, and yes lots of people prefer to go into management, but it's not compulsory by any means.
  - dominotw 6y ago
    same here. I do feel a little embarrassed sometimes that i am being manager by someone 10 yrs younger than me. I have to remind myself to no think like that. Not sure if its cultural/genetic to feel like that or what.
    - virgilp 6y ago
      You should remind yourself that a good manager is there to support you/ make your job easier and more relevant. A manager is not your master. No manager is embarrassed to have an assistant younger than them, so neither should you be about having a younger manager :) Yes, there's the small "problem" that unlike an assistant, the manager also gets to decide your compensation... but you don't want to be working for managers that look for yes-men. There's no winning in that position, those kind of persons are seldom competent and will only drag you down; better find out sooner than later, and move out.
  - fatnoah 6y ago
    I'm in the mid-40's, though I went the management route because that's what I enjoy. I recently interviewed at MS and a couple FAANGs and was very happy to see that all of them had people older than me as core members of their tech teams. Now, on the startup side of things, I'm pretty sure I had domain names older than nearly all of my interviewers.