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Well, it is a workers market right now. Professionally there is nothing special about me except that I really enjoy working, but for the last two remote jobs,

Well, it is a workers market right now. Professionally there is nothing special about me except that I really enjoy working, but for the last two remote jobs, the offer letter I received was more than what I verbally agreed on with HR. Since I am also 70 years old, I take this as good evidence of how pro-worker the job market is right now. I offer free mentoring (see my web site) and always talk about the importance to having a beginner’s/learner’s mind. I think that what companies want is: prioritizing the company’s interests, being flexible, and being observant looking for opportunities to improve the business. Fairly straightforward strategy. Good luck reaching your financial goals/salary number but also please remember money isn’t everything, and is much less important than our relationships with other people.

sidcool 5y ago
Mad respect for you sir. What advice would you give a 35 year old software engineer who's worried about being obsolete in 10 years?
- mark_l_watson 5y ago
  Keep learning new tech. I would expect major retraining to be required much more often than even 10 or 20 years ago. Personally, I am a big fan of Coursera and eDX online courses, but any form of study is good. Someone from HN just emailed me about this HN thread, and I will make the same comment to you as I did in an e-mail: “”” Every morning first thing, I spend a minute or two thinking of everything that I am grateful for, and having a useful job is on my gratitude list. If I don’t do this, then sometimes I find it more difficult to be motivated at my remote job.””” A feeling of gratitude gives me energy to keep learning and maintain curiousity.
  - jason-phillips 5y ago
    I agree. I'm 50 and don't feel as though the sun has set on my usefulness yet. I'm definitely experiencing more demand than ever. My personal philosophy is similar and I very much love the work I do. 1. My role is to help the team. 2. Stay humble. There is always a better way to do something and we're very lucky to be in our position. 3. Practice not talking. Let others have the experience of figuring it out for themselves. Interject if you can help get them unstuck. 4. Always be learning.
    - throwawayboise 5y ago
      I'm 55. I'm tired of learning. I've been learning for 30+ years of professional software work, and none of it applies to any new jobs I might want to seek (I'm talking about specific languages, platforms, buzzwords, etc.) The pace of change is faster than the average person can keep up with and still be competent. I can see that by the time I retire, the knowledge I have spent my adult life acquiring will be useless historical trivia. It's depressing. My plan when I retire is to have nothing whatsoever to do with software. It can't come soon enough.
      - ativzzz 5y ago
        > The pace of change is faster than the average person can keep up with and still be competent. The pace of change is faster than the average person can keep up with each change, but because more and more new technologies and niches are being created, there are more and more opportunities to be competent in a certain niche. It's also so much about your mindset. Seeing the difference in positive and negative mindset between you and the comment root is eye opening. When you think everything is "useless historical trivia" and is "depressing", of course anything you try to learn will be useless, tiring and depressing. One of the things I'm trying to really improve in my own personal life is my mindset. I have/had a mindset similar to yours (I'm much younger too) and I've noticed how draining it is to my overall mental health. I'm trying to be more optimistic and positive about things. Life is too short to be depressed and upset about something you spend 1/3 of your waking hours doing.
        throwawayboise 5y ago
        I used to have that positive outlook. Work was exciting, and fun. Over time, the reality became impossible to deny.
        ativzzz 5y ago
        Yup, that's why I'm trying to make the positive mindset a habit and hopefully keep it as I get older. We'll see how it ends up.
  - sidcool 5y ago
    Thanks for your response. If I may continue to pick your mind, can you elaborate on what you consider new tech? Do you refer to new languages, frameworks, programming paradigms? Also, what is your suggestion for learning algorithms and data structures?
    - mark_l_watson 5y ago
      Examples of "new tech": common use of deep learning models in many types of applications and services, higher level web based tools for managing data and infrastructure, mobile devices that can do on-device deep learning model inferencing and sometimes even training, etc. I like and enjoy several programming languages, but I don't consider new languages and frameworks to be paradigm shifting. Still interesting though. As someone else here mentioned, there are so many new tech niches being created; learn one or two. Having work life balance is super important, but I find that skipping watching movies or TV a couple evenings a week gives me plenty of off-work time to learn new stuff. My wife accepts that a few evening a week I don't join her in watching a movie after dinner (we sit in the same room, and she puts on earphones).
      - xupybd 5y ago
        You touched on something I struggle with. If it's not too personal do you mind if I ask how you navigated that discussion with your wife? I hold great hope that one day I'll be able to spend 5-10 hours a week learning.
        sizzle 5y ago
        Have an honest discussion and don’t make it an argument.
        clarge1120 5y ago
        The best thing I’ve done for the family is set expectations that I’ll only be working for 15 minutes to an hour. I call it “plodding”. Then I really try to get something done in that time. Ever since I started plodding, and stuck to the promise, my wife has been supportive. She’s even supportive of late nights and weekends if I will avoid locking myself in a room for hours at a time.
alasano 5y ago
You're certainly a very inspiring person! "Professionally there is nothing special about me except that I really enjoy working" I think you may be underselling yourself a touch here ;)
- _448 5y ago
  That is a sign of a person who is really good at what they do! In my career I have met few people who are really good professionally, and one common thread between all of them was that they all are really good human beings and humble. Also, all of them are very experienced. This happens because when people have experience and have seen the world, they know that there is lot to learn yet and they don't know everything.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
SMAAART 5y ago
A true Renaissance man! Thank you for making the world a better place.
kevindeasis 5y ago
Hey Mark how the hell did you manage to write 20 books? Im interested in writing books but i cant seem to have enough time to make it a top priority for me also how do you keep healthy at 70? would you also say that in your case, tech is one of your primary hobbies? also any advice on writing your first patent outside of your employer?
- mark_l_watson 5y ago
  I have written 20 books over a 35 year period. Also, since 1998 I have gone on cycles of working a couple of years and then taking lots of time off. I do most of my writing during the time off periods. Re: health: I try to walk or hike five to 8 hours a week, if I have time. I am mostly a vegetarian. I try to get a lot of sleep. Also, my Dad is 100 and in good health so maybe I got lucky in the gene pool. My hobbies are cooking, reading (I have been going nuts with Chinese sci-fi recently), and hiking. Re patents: there is no way I would try for a patent on my own. My patents were all team efforts with the help of highly skilled corporate patent lawyers.
Abishek_Muthian 5y ago
> relationships with other people. Sir, I think that's the most difficult part of being a worker as most can fulfill the technical requirements for a work with practice but investing in relationships is something I feel few can do successfully. And I'm not one of them, I don't like talking and I've almost cut real time-communications completely. Due to which I refuse to indulge in great offers almost every week, As not many would entertain the idea of employing someone who communicates only via email. Besides the pandemic induced remote work has made real time-communication via chat, video calls the de-facto mode for official communication. The stories of managers forcing employees to be online on teams during work hours and most of the day spent on useless online meeting-calls are stuffs of nightmare for me.
jl2718 5y ago
I don’t think you’re talking about the same thing. It appears that you are not a fulltime exclusive salaried “exempt” employee of any one company, and you have not been for many years if ever. Please correct me if I’m wrong.
- mark_l_watson 5y ago
  My last three jobs (including my current role) are as a salaried employee. I decided the overhead was too high getting consulting work and I also wanted to get back into working on teams. That said, I do take long periods off work which is when I do a lot of writing.

sidcool 5y ago

Mad respect for you sir. What advice would you give a 35 year old software engineer who's worried about being obsolete in 10 years?

mark_l_watson 5y ago
Keep learning new tech. I would expect major retraining to be required much more often than even 10 or 20 years ago. Personally, I am a big fan of Coursera and eDX online courses, but any form of study is good. Someone from HN just emailed me about this HN thread, and I will make the same comment to you as I did in an e-mail: “”” Every morning first thing, I spend a minute or two thinking of everything that I am grateful for, and having a useful job is on my gratitude list. If I don’t do this, then sometimes I find it more difficult to be motivated at my remote job.””” A feeling of gratitude gives me energy to keep learning and maintain curiousity.
- jason-phillips 5y ago
  I agree. I'm 50 and don't feel as though the sun has set on my usefulness yet. I'm definitely experiencing more demand than ever. My personal philosophy is similar and I very much love the work I do. 1. My role is to help the team. 2. Stay humble. There is always a better way to do something and we're very lucky to be in our position. 3. Practice not talking. Let others have the experience of figuring it out for themselves. Interject if you can help get them unstuck. 4. Always be learning.
  - throwawayboise 5y ago
    I'm 55. I'm tired of learning. I've been learning for 30+ years of professional software work, and none of it applies to any new jobs I might want to seek (I'm talking about specific languages, platforms, buzzwords, etc.) The pace of change is faster than the average person can keep up with and still be competent. I can see that by the time I retire, the knowledge I have spent my adult life acquiring will be useless historical trivia. It's depressing. My plan when I retire is to have nothing whatsoever to do with software. It can't come soon enough.
    - ativzzz 5y ago
      > The pace of change is faster than the average person can keep up with and still be competent. The pace of change is faster than the average person can keep up with each change, but because more and more new technologies and niches are being created, there are more and more opportunities to be competent in a certain niche. It's also so much about your mindset. Seeing the difference in positive and negative mindset between you and the comment root is eye opening. When you think everything is "useless historical trivia" and is "depressing", of course anything you try to learn will be useless, tiring and depressing. One of the things I'm trying to really improve in my own personal life is my mindset. I have/had a mindset similar to yours (I'm much younger too) and I've noticed how draining it is to my overall mental health. I'm trying to be more optimistic and positive about things. Life is too short to be depressed and upset about something you spend 1/3 of your waking hours doing.
      - throwawayboise 5y ago
        I used to have that positive outlook. Work was exciting, and fun. Over time, the reality became impossible to deny.
        ativzzz 5y ago
        Yup, that's why I'm trying to make the positive mindset a habit and hopefully keep it as I get older. We'll see how it ends up.
- sidcool 5y ago
  Thanks for your response. If I may continue to pick your mind, can you elaborate on what you consider new tech? Do you refer to new languages, frameworks, programming paradigms? Also, what is your suggestion for learning algorithms and data structures?
  - mark_l_watson 5y ago
    Examples of "new tech": common use of deep learning models in many types of applications and services, higher level web based tools for managing data and infrastructure, mobile devices that can do on-device deep learning model inferencing and sometimes even training, etc. I like and enjoy several programming languages, but I don't consider new languages and frameworks to be paradigm shifting. Still interesting though. As someone else here mentioned, there are so many new tech niches being created; learn one or two. Having work life balance is super important, but I find that skipping watching movies or TV a couple evenings a week gives me plenty of off-work time to learn new stuff. My wife accepts that a few evening a week I don't join her in watching a movie after dinner (we sit in the same room, and she puts on earphones).
    - xupybd 5y ago
      You touched on something I struggle with. If it's not too personal do you mind if I ask how you navigated that discussion with your wife? I hold great hope that one day I'll be able to spend 5-10 hours a week learning.
      - sizzle 5y ago
        Have an honest discussion and don’t make it an argument.
        clarge1120 5y ago
        The best thing I’ve done for the family is set expectations that I’ll only be working for 15 minutes to an hour. I call it “plodding”. Then I really try to get something done in that time. Ever since I started plodding, and stuck to the promise, my wife has been supportive. She’s even supportive of late nights and weekends if I will avoid locking myself in a room for hours at a time.

alasano 5y ago

You're certainly a very inspiring person! "Professionally there is nothing special about me except that I really enjoy working" I think you may be underselling yourself a touch here ;)

_448 5y ago
That is a sign of a person who is really good at what they do! In my career I have met few people who are really good professionally, and one common thread between all of them was that they all are really good human beings and humble. Also, all of them are very experienced. This happens because when people have experience and have seen the world, they know that there is lot to learn yet and they don't know everything.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

SMAAART 5y ago

A true Renaissance man! Thank you for making the world a better place.

kevindeasis 5y ago

Hey Mark how the hell did you manage to write 20 books? Im interested in writing books but i cant seem to have enough time to make it a top priority for me also how do you keep healthy at 70? would you also say that in your case, tech is one of your primary hobbies? also any advice on writing your first patent outside of your employer?

mark_l_watson 5y ago
I have written 20 books over a 35 year period. Also, since 1998 I have gone on cycles of working a couple of years and then taking lots of time off. I do most of my writing during the time off periods. Re: health: I try to walk or hike five to 8 hours a week, if I have time. I am mostly a vegetarian. I try to get a lot of sleep. Also, my Dad is 100 and in good health so maybe I got lucky in the gene pool. My hobbies are cooking, reading (I have been going nuts with Chinese sci-fi recently), and hiking. Re patents: there is no way I would try for a patent on my own. My patents were all team efforts with the help of highly skilled corporate patent lawyers.

Abishek_Muthian 5y ago

> relationships with other people. Sir, I think that's the most difficult part of being a worker as most can fulfill the technical requirements for a work with practice but investing in relationships is something I feel few can do successfully. And I'm not one of them, I don't like talking and I've almost cut real time-communications completely. Due to which I refuse to indulge in great offers almost every week, As not many would entertain the idea of employing someone who communicates only via email. Besides the pandemic induced remote work has made real time-communication via chat, video calls the de-facto mode for official communication. The stories of managers forcing employees to be online on teams during work hours and most of the day spent on useless online meeting-calls are stuffs of nightmare for me.

jl2718 5y ago

I don’t think you’re talking about the same thing. It appears that you are not a fulltime exclusive salaried “exempt” employee of any one company, and you have not been for many years if ever. Please correct me if I’m wrong.

mark_l_watson 5y ago
My last three jobs (including my current role) are as a salaried employee. I decided the overhead was too high getting consulting work and I also wanted to get back into working on teams. That said, I do take long periods off work which is when I do a lot of writing.