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At 64 years I am still going strong. I consider myself blessed that I have landed a position that allows the to be the leader (I manage a small team) and still

At 64 years I am still going strong. I consider myself blessed that I have landed a position that allows the to be the leader (I manage a small team) and still be hands on with everything: Architecture, desgin, coding, infrastructure, cloud engineering, DevOps engineer, DBA, the list goes on. It is a Goldilocks job. The technologies that we manage and master are miriad. We are a small company and my team owns the entire space. All my years of knowledge and experience enable me to be coach, mentor, and teacher. Over the course of my 44 year career I have played every instrument in the band. I manage with a socratic method which my team enjoys. Because I have been a life long learner, I have sought out and explored new technologies with eagerness and hunger. This enables me to lead the team to adopt some of these technologies in usefull and vaulable (to the enterprise) ways. The team absolutly enjoys learning and applying new and emerging technologies. I could not have asked for more from what will probably be the last gig of my career. I don't intend to retire until 70 (assuming I am that lucky - you'll know what I mean when you get here). I am having so much fun I wish had 30 more years ahead to enjoy what comes next. I always like to say: It's good work if you can get it - not everybody can.

RockingGoodNite 4y ago
People who can manage and code (architect, etc.) are truly rare. I'm not quite at the same age and only play the guitar. Like the article author and where we differ, I am very skeptical of new technologies, if I can't find a use for it in my personal software projects without having to hold my nose, there's no way I will recommend it for work.
- spaetzleesser 4y ago
  "People who can manage and code (architect, etc.) are truly rare." It's not that difficult if you actually can make decisions quickly. It only gets difficult once you are in a bigger company where you have multiple more or less competent stakeholders and every decision get accompanied by multiple meetings.
- indymike 4y ago
  > People who can manage and code (architect, etc.) are truly rare. I disagree with this. I think there are a lot of people who don't like being a leader for lots of reasons... but every time I've promoted a reluctant leader it's been magical for that person and for their team. A lot of times the people that self-promote and like to be in charge should never, ever be given athority. > I am very skeptical of new technologies I used to think that way until I realized that in a lot of cases, we've been re-inventing the same concepts in computing since the 1960s. I think a lot of the re-invention is really being driven by hardware capabilities, languages and fashion. We're seeing it with Rust right now - let's rewrite all the things in Rust! Underneath it all, though, the payoff for using new, less capable tech, is that eventually it will pass up the old in a very meaningful way - and when it does, systems build on the old are washed away.
  - hota_mazi 4y ago
    > > People who can manage and code (architect, etc.) are truly rare. > I disagree with this. I think there are a lot of people who don't like being a leader for lots of reasons... Note that you are talking about different things from OP. OP was talking about managing, you are talking about leading. These are two very distinct skills. Sometimes you can find both in the same person, but these people are few and far between, since each of these roles is already a full time job.
    - indymike 4y ago
      > OP was talking about managing, you are talking about leading. These are two very distinct skills. Everything I've experienced in my professional life has taught me this: managers who can't lead can't manage, and leaders who can't manage cannot lead. Never once have I worked for a manager who didn't see themselves as a leader, and never once have I met someone who called themselves a leader who wasn't management.
      - hota_mazi 4y ago
        I've met all kinds. People who are stellar managers, have extremely high empathy and EQ, understand their engineers, prop them up, help their career, guide them toward both professional and personal growth. They also did not have a single ounce of leadership or charisma in them, very low technical chops, no vision, and not interested in providing team leadership. I've also met stellar leaders, visionaries, who inspired, entranced teams with every single word that came out of their mouth. They provided short and long term directions, technical and product guidance, motivation. And they were absolutely terrible human managers. Could not place themselves in other people's shoes. Didn't really care about managing the career or growth of people on their teams. Were only focused on matters that did not involve any human feelings. These kinds of people both have their places and they complement each other wonderfully. And sometimes, you find these two very distinct, polar opposite qualities, in one single person. But like I said, this is much more the exception than the rule. And of course, the reality is that most people lie on a spectrum between these two extremes.
cholmon 4y ago
I’m interested in hearing more about your Socratic approach to management. Could you elaborate on that a bit?
- iLemming 4y ago
  Socratic approach has something to do with asking questions instead of giving directions. I guess, instead of saying "You're an idiot if you think this works in concurrent setting...", one should say: "What do you think would happen if we run this concurrently? Are you an idiot?" :)
- skirmish 4y ago
  Not to presume what the OP meant but I understood it as: answering questions by asking questions. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socratic_method https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socratic_method
- thread_id 4y ago
  Very little of what we do as developers or software engineers is transactional. This is very creative work we do. So I don't take status about anything that they are doing. Rather I discuss all aspects of the problem they are trying to solve. Or ask questions about how they approach solving those those problems. I usually enter the conversation with the same verbal queue: "indulge me while think out loud about this....". We discuss concepts like technical debt or design patterns or junky data in our database and how to improve data quality. I also deliberately avoid creating artificial time boundaries. Everyone knows I prioritize quality and stability. (faster, better, cheaper - it's always better)
pythonbase 4y ago
You sound fun to work with. More power to you.
deleted 4y ago
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RockingGoodNite 4y ago

People who can manage and code (architect, etc.) are truly rare. I'm not quite at the same age and only play the guitar. Like the article author and where we differ, I am very skeptical of new technologies, if I can't find a use for it in my personal software projects without having to hold my nose, there's no way I will recommend it for work.

spaetzleesser 4y ago
"People who can manage and code (architect, etc.) are truly rare." It's not that difficult if you actually can make decisions quickly. It only gets difficult once you are in a bigger company where you have multiple more or less competent stakeholders and every decision get accompanied by multiple meetings.
indymike 4y ago
> People who can manage and code (architect, etc.) are truly rare. I disagree with this. I think there are a lot of people who don't like being a leader for lots of reasons... but every time I've promoted a reluctant leader it's been magical for that person and for their team. A lot of times the people that self-promote and like to be in charge should never, ever be given athority. > I am very skeptical of new technologies I used to think that way until I realized that in a lot of cases, we've been re-inventing the same concepts in computing since the 1960s. I think a lot of the re-invention is really being driven by hardware capabilities, languages and fashion. We're seeing it with Rust right now - let's rewrite all the things in Rust! Underneath it all, though, the payoff for using new, less capable tech, is that eventually it will pass up the old in a very meaningful way - and when it does, systems build on the old are washed away.
- hota_mazi 4y ago
  > > People who can manage and code (architect, etc.) are truly rare. > I disagree with this. I think there are a lot of people who don't like being a leader for lots of reasons... Note that you are talking about different things from OP. OP was talking about managing, you are talking about leading. These are two very distinct skills. Sometimes you can find both in the same person, but these people are few and far between, since each of these roles is already a full time job.
  - indymike 4y ago
    > OP was talking about managing, you are talking about leading. These are two very distinct skills. Everything I've experienced in my professional life has taught me this: managers who can't lead can't manage, and leaders who can't manage cannot lead. Never once have I worked for a manager who didn't see themselves as a leader, and never once have I met someone who called themselves a leader who wasn't management.
    - hota_mazi 4y ago
      I've met all kinds. People who are stellar managers, have extremely high empathy and EQ, understand their engineers, prop them up, help their career, guide them toward both professional and personal growth. They also did not have a single ounce of leadership or charisma in them, very low technical chops, no vision, and not interested in providing team leadership. I've also met stellar leaders, visionaries, who inspired, entranced teams with every single word that came out of their mouth. They provided short and long term directions, technical and product guidance, motivation. And they were absolutely terrible human managers. Could not place themselves in other people's shoes. Didn't really care about managing the career or growth of people on their teams. Were only focused on matters that did not involve any human feelings. These kinds of people both have their places and they complement each other wonderfully. And sometimes, you find these two very distinct, polar opposite qualities, in one single person. But like I said, this is much more the exception than the rule. And of course, the reality is that most people lie on a spectrum between these two extremes.

cholmon 4y ago

I’m interested in hearing more about your Socratic approach to management. Could you elaborate on that a bit?

iLemming 4y ago
Socratic approach has something to do with asking questions instead of giving directions. I guess, instead of saying "You're an idiot if you think this works in concurrent setting...", one should say: "What do you think would happen if we run this concurrently? Are you an idiot?" :)
skirmish 4y ago
Not to presume what the OP meant but I understood it as: answering questions by asking questions. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socratic_method https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socratic_method
thread_id 4y ago
Very little of what we do as developers or software engineers is transactional. This is very creative work we do. So I don't take status about anything that they are doing. Rather I discuss all aspects of the problem they are trying to solve. Or ask questions about how they approach solving those those problems. I usually enter the conversation with the same verbal queue: "indulge me while think out loud about this....". We discuss concepts like technical debt or design patterns or junky data in our database and how to improve data quality. I also deliberately avoid creating artificial time boundaries. Everyone knows I prioritize quality and stability. (faster, better, cheaper - it's always better)

pythonbase 4y ago

You sound fun to work with. More power to you.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]