4 ms·

Rather than quit or retire, I lingered in hopes of being laid off (letting my high pay level, ageism and existing "we don't need Senior Engineers; we have reall

by cagey 5y ago

Rather than quit or retire, I lingered in hopes of being laid off (letting my high pay level, ageism and existing "we don't need Senior Engineers; we have really smart management to do the thinking ahead etc. for the junior engineers" attitudes run their natural course). I "achieved" being laid off 4 months ago at age 58 and collected a nice (9 months' pay) severance package as a precursor to (this month) finally deciding to retire. I still loved (and was/am capable of) doing the work, but having gone another few rounds of "Leetcode interview process" in the past few months, and having realized that I've reached the end of my willingness to tolerate what seems to be near-pervasive "Agile cargo-cult ceremony" (and everywhere, "Agile is whatever we decide it is") and (less pervasive but still frequently encountered) technically clueless headline-chasing (micro-)management in the presence of increasing active monitoring/collection of (remote) employee activity metrics and pervasive exhortations (mapped to KPIs) to "deliver innovation!" and "do it together!". Why run the Leetcode gauntlet (which seems to closely resemble Final Exams Week from my Uni days, with the same intense cramming prerequisite) only to land in a team/management circumstance of uncertain quality (bail out and do it again?)? Likewise I've realized that maintaining my W2 income via FTE at my age and position would mostly serve to raise my tax bracket and preclude me from taking minimally taxed withdrawals from my IRA starting in a few months (these have to be taken sometime, and the less taxation, the better). The process of "letting go" of my working career and adopting a true retirement mindset has taken me at least the past 4 months (I might not be done with it yet), because I do really love and have excelled at the hands-on work (and being self-taught and very motivated to stay abreast of much of what is changing for the better in SW Dev, I've been operating in long-term independent self-study mode for my entire career, turning this background process off is proving challenging).

rr808 5y ago
I'm a little younger than you but feel the ageism too. 10-20 years ago I had no problem getting jobs now I feel like the guy on the playground who's always picked last when choosing teams.
- cagey 5y ago
  (This probably belongs on one of the many Leetcode interview threads ongoing, but ...) Yes, and while going thru the past few months' "let me see if I can find something that engages me and my interests (w/o too much concern about pay level)" job search, I repeatedly ran into Job Descriptions containing criteria BS/MS CompSci, EE, or equivalent required. I have a BSEE, but in fact, the underlying premise of Leetcode testing is CompSci. So the allowance for EE degreed candidates is IMO bogus/deceptive. I never got near a CompSci Data Structures or Algorithms course during my uni days, and aside from Leetcode, never suffered an inability to get my job done due to that omission.
memonkey 5y ago
Thanks for writing about your experience. It's kind of nice to see some wisdom being dropped about the current/long term affairs of what makes many company experiences very similar. It seems extremely difficult to find something that breaks the mold. And congratulations on retiring! What do you think you'll do now? Given that you're wholly self-taught, I would assume you would dive in to your interests.
- cagey 5y ago
  Thanks. What do you think you'll do now? Given that you're wholly self-taught, I would assume you would dive in to your interests. I have one personal Open Source project that I will likely continue to slowly enhance (I was its only user, and I used it at work, so less need for enhancement going forward). I have some other stuff (CGI Perl) which I run on my home server, which I'll probably enhance. And a few related things I'm thinking of starting work on (in definition phase right now). All very utilitarian stuff just for me. I've sent (had accepted) a tiny PR or two to a project I used daily, but I doubt I'll get more involved than that. But that's looking at the SW Dev side of my life, which has dominated my time for the past 30-odd years; drawing back from that (continuous learning engagement) while understandable (in the sense that breaking any 30-year-old habit is tough, and if no longer being employed in the sector, what's the point?), makes sense. I need to find other things beyond tech stuff to spend time on; home repair is a probable direction, and auto repair too. I did that stuff to some degree always, but always because I was a cheapskate who objects to paying beaucoup for what I (these days anyone capable of watching Youtube can figure out how to) do, and do to my own satisfaction (perfectionism) level (vs. accepting what a contractor is content to deliver). Besides that (which won't consume much time), traveling (by motor vehicle) the western USA with a lot greater frequency is on my agenda. I'm not sure what else might happen; I'm open to opportunities, but not really to frivolities... fortunately now I'm in no rush to achieve any goal.
manuelabeledo 5y ago
> "we don't need Senior Engineers; we have really smart management to do the thinking ahead etc. for the junior engineers" Wow, this bit makes so much sense. In my experience, most managers tend to add more layers, almost as a goal, but pay little attention to the seniority in such layers. For example, one of the managers I work with, restructured the organization in a way that would essentially put him at a VP level, given the company guidelines; but most of the team leads had less than a couple years of experience in their roles. Senior engineers with any experience and weight in the company were a rarity.
- cagey 5y ago
  There was an article which I ran into thanks to HN a few months ago[1] that served to explain something I experienced at my employer 8(?) years ago: my role was abolished (legislated out of existence by HR and/or Finance); the role was unique to me, and I had held it very successfully for about 8 years at the time, but apparently, if you have a role that isn't found in some HR Dept or Finance Dept (or US Federal Dept of Labor?) book enumerating all jobs, even if engineering management finds it valuable, it will be abolished. I was shuttled off into a series of less aligned roles, and within 1 year, left that employer for a startup. From the linked article: Another place the non-fungibility of people causes predictable problems is with how managers operate teams. Managers who want to create effective teams end up fighting the system in order to do so. Non-engineering orgs mostly treat people as fungible, and the finance org at a number of companies I've worked for forces the engineering org to treat people as fungible by requiring the org to budget in terms of headcount. The company, of course, spends money and not "heads", but internal bookkeeping is done in terms of "heads", so $X of budget will be, for some team, translated into something like "three staff-level heads". There's no way to convert that into "two more effective and better-paid staff level heads". If you hire two staff engineers and not a third, the "head" and the associated budget will eventually get moved somewhere else. One thing I've repeatedly seen is that a hiring manager will want to hire someone who they think will be highly effective or even just someone who has specialized skills and then not be able to hire because the company has translated budget into "heads" at a rate that doesn't allow for hiring some kind of heads. There will be a "comp team" or other group in HR that will object because the comp team has no concept of "an effective engineer" or "a specialty that's hard to hire for"; for a person, role, level, and location defines them and someone who's paid too much for their role and level is therefore a bad hire. If anyone reasonable had power over the process that they were willing to use, this wouldn't happen but, by design, the bureaucracy is set up so that few people have power. These observations ring completely true to me. I'm a generalist, not a single-purpose actor, but the value that such an actor brings seems to run directly against the bureaucratic compulsion to categorize each employee. [1] https://danluu.com/people-matter/ https://danluu.com/people-matter/
bee_rider 5y ago
> letting my high pay level, ageism and existing "we don't need Senior Engineers; we have really smart management to do the thinking ahead etc. for the junior engineers" > Why run the Leetcode gauntlet (which seems to closely resemble Final Exams Week from my Uni days, with the same intense cramming prerequisite) It seems like a massive waste that we've decided to essentially kick someone like you, with lots of experience who isn't really all that old, out of the workforce. But that's a dumb thing we decided to do as a society so, not your fault, so enjoy retirement! In a well-run system I guess we'd offer engineers in their mid 50's a role that incrementally decreases the amount of work done directly, and overtime refocuses to an advisor role. Institutionalize that experience. Maybe every couple years decrease the number of days worked per week.
- cagey 5y ago
  Just after being laid off, I was thinking I would love to find part-time work in my profession, but as far as I can tell no such thing exists (for an unknown such as myself). Non-W2 contracting might be as close as I could get, but in that case, it'd be "a few months on (40+ hrs/wk), a few months off" rather than 20 hours per week steady work. Having now experienced the absence of the daily grind for over 4 months (for the first time in my adult life), I am getting so used to being away from it that I realize I would probably have a hard time going back to the grind, regimentation, and employer expectations of "gung ho" spirit pursuing the idealistic mission statement proffered by top management (yes, I'm cynical). So in the end I think where I'm at is good for me for now. I've been blessed to have a successful, lucrative (though perhaps only slightly above average in my field) career that (combined with aggressive saving and investing for that duration) enables me to uncouple from it at this time without financial worry. And you never know when a sufficiently interesting (while simultaneously lacking in BS) opportunity might appear...
granshaw 5y ago
You could be a consultant/contractor instead, not have to go through the leetcode gauntlet, and not buy into corporate culture BS - go in, do the work, rinse and repeat, and switch clients whenever you want
quickthrower2 5y ago
Lol I know someone who lined themselves up to be made redundant much like a surfer manoeuvring to catch a wave. It worked and they too got about 9 months. Not as old.

by cagey 5y ago

rr808 5y ago

I'm a little younger than you but feel the ageism too. 10-20 years ago I had no problem getting jobs now I feel like the guy on the playground who's always picked last when choosing teams.

cagey 5y ago
(This probably belongs on one of the many Leetcode interview threads ongoing, but ...) Yes, and while going thru the past few months' "let me see if I can find something that engages me and my interests (w/o too much concern about pay level)" job search, I repeatedly ran into Job Descriptions containing criteria BS/MS CompSci, EE, or equivalent required. I have a BSEE, but in fact, the underlying premise of Leetcode testing is CompSci. So the allowance for EE degreed candidates is IMO bogus/deceptive. I never got near a CompSci Data Structures or Algorithms course during my uni days, and aside from Leetcode, never suffered an inability to get my job done due to that omission.

memonkey 5y ago

Thanks for writing about your experience. It's kind of nice to see some wisdom being dropped about the current/long term affairs of what makes many company experiences very similar. It seems extremely difficult to find something that breaks the mold. And congratulations on retiring! What do you think you'll do now? Given that you're wholly self-taught, I would assume you would dive in to your interests.

cagey 5y ago
Thanks. What do you think you'll do now? Given that you're wholly self-taught, I would assume you would dive in to your interests. I have one personal Open Source project that I will likely continue to slowly enhance (I was its only user, and I used it at work, so less need for enhancement going forward). I have some other stuff (CGI Perl) which I run on my home server, which I'll probably enhance. And a few related things I'm thinking of starting work on (in definition phase right now). All very utilitarian stuff just for me. I've sent (had accepted) a tiny PR or two to a project I used daily, but I doubt I'll get more involved than that. But that's looking at the SW Dev side of my life, which has dominated my time for the past 30-odd years; drawing back from that (continuous learning engagement) while understandable (in the sense that breaking any 30-year-old habit is tough, and if no longer being employed in the sector, what's the point?), makes sense. I need to find other things beyond tech stuff to spend time on; home repair is a probable direction, and auto repair too. I did that stuff to some degree always, but always because I was a cheapskate who objects to paying beaucoup for what I (these days anyone capable of watching Youtube can figure out how to) do, and do to my own satisfaction (perfectionism) level (vs. accepting what a contractor is content to deliver). Besides that (which won't consume much time), traveling (by motor vehicle) the western USA with a lot greater frequency is on my agenda. I'm not sure what else might happen; I'm open to opportunities, but not really to frivolities... fortunately now I'm in no rush to achieve any goal.

manuelabeledo 5y ago

> "we don't need Senior Engineers; we have really smart management to do the thinking ahead etc. for the junior engineers" Wow, this bit makes so much sense. In my experience, most managers tend to add more layers, almost as a goal, but pay little attention to the seniority in such layers. For example, one of the managers I work with, restructured the organization in a way that would essentially put him at a VP level, given the company guidelines; but most of the team leads had less than a couple years of experience in their roles. Senior engineers with any experience and weight in the company were a rarity.

cagey 5y ago
There was an article which I ran into thanks to HN a few months ago[1] that served to explain something I experienced at my employer 8(?) years ago: my role was abolished (legislated out of existence by HR and/or Finance); the role was unique to me, and I had held it very successfully for about 8 years at the time, but apparently, if you have a role that isn't found in some HR Dept or Finance Dept (or US Federal Dept of Labor?) book enumerating all jobs, even if engineering management finds it valuable, it will be abolished. I was shuttled off into a series of less aligned roles, and within 1 year, left that employer for a startup. From the linked article: Another place the non-fungibility of people causes predictable problems is with how managers operate teams. Managers who want to create effective teams end up fighting the system in order to do so. Non-engineering orgs mostly treat people as fungible, and the finance org at a number of companies I've worked for forces the engineering org to treat people as fungible by requiring the org to budget in terms of headcount. The company, of course, spends money and not "heads", but internal bookkeeping is done in terms of "heads", so $X of budget will be, for some team, translated into something like "three staff-level heads". There's no way to convert that into "two more effective and better-paid staff level heads". If you hire two staff engineers and not a third, the "head" and the associated budget will eventually get moved somewhere else. One thing I've repeatedly seen is that a hiring manager will want to hire someone who they think will be highly effective or even just someone who has specialized skills and then not be able to hire because the company has translated budget into "heads" at a rate that doesn't allow for hiring some kind of heads. There will be a "comp team" or other group in HR that will object because the comp team has no concept of "an effective engineer" or "a specialty that's hard to hire for"; for a person, role, level, and location defines them and someone who's paid too much for their role and level is therefore a bad hire. If anyone reasonable had power over the process that they were willing to use, this wouldn't happen but, by design, the bureaucracy is set up so that few people have power. These observations ring completely true to me. I'm a generalist, not a single-purpose actor, but the value that such an actor brings seems to run directly against the bureaucratic compulsion to categorize each employee. [1] https://danluu.com/people-matter/ https://danluu.com/people-matter/

bee_rider 5y ago

> letting my high pay level, ageism and existing "we don't need Senior Engineers; we have really smart management to do the thinking ahead etc. for the junior engineers" > Why run the Leetcode gauntlet (which seems to closely resemble Final Exams Week from my Uni days, with the same intense cramming prerequisite) It seems like a massive waste that we've decided to essentially kick someone like you, with lots of experience who isn't really all that old, out of the workforce. But that's a dumb thing we decided to do as a society so, not your fault, so enjoy retirement! In a well-run system I guess we'd offer engineers in their mid 50's a role that incrementally decreases the amount of work done directly, and overtime refocuses to an advisor role. Institutionalize that experience. Maybe every couple years decrease the number of days worked per week.

cagey 5y ago
Just after being laid off, I was thinking I would love to find part-time work in my profession, but as far as I can tell no such thing exists (for an unknown such as myself). Non-W2 contracting might be as close as I could get, but in that case, it'd be "a few months on (40+ hrs/wk), a few months off" rather than 20 hours per week steady work. Having now experienced the absence of the daily grind for over 4 months (for the first time in my adult life), I am getting so used to being away from it that I realize I would probably have a hard time going back to the grind, regimentation, and employer expectations of "gung ho" spirit pursuing the idealistic mission statement proffered by top management (yes, I'm cynical). So in the end I think where I'm at is good for me for now. I've been blessed to have a successful, lucrative (though perhaps only slightly above average in my field) career that (combined with aggressive saving and investing for that duration) enables me to uncouple from it at this time without financial worry. And you never know when a sufficiently interesting (while simultaneously lacking in BS) opportunity might appear...

granshaw 5y ago

You could be a consultant/contractor instead, not have to go through the leetcode gauntlet, and not buy into corporate culture BS - go in, do the work, rinse and repeat, and switch clients whenever you want

quickthrower2 5y ago

Lol I know someone who lined themselves up to be made redundant much like a surfer manoeuvring to catch a wave. It worked and they too got about 9 months. Not as old.