7 ms·

I would say the ending -- the part where you are unemployed and unable to support yourself in your old age because you invested decades of your brainpower into

by hliyan 3y ago

I would say the ending -- the part where you are unemployed and unable to support yourself in your old age because you invested decades of your brainpower into a highly specialised, non-transferrable skill.

michaelteter 3y ago
I should think that years of specialized C++ work in hft environments would have come with impressively high pay… in which case one could retire early and self study anything for fun, not hope to find a job for financial reasons.
- hliyan 3y ago
  Ideally, yes! Unfortunately, there is such a thing as being young and not knowing your own worth / not knowing how to negotiate / not having a manager who looks out for your career growth.
  - michaelteter 3y ago
    Understood. In that case, if web development is your interest, then you have many possible paths. The primary choices are full stack, backend, or frontend. Obviously full stack is most flexible because you can theoretically do it all. But keeping up with so many technologies simultaneously is really tiring. Take a look at Phoenix framework. It is a fantastic way to get started, and it will grow with you into just about any future project need. Plus Elixir is an excellent language built on top of the incredibly powerful Erlang ecosystem.
maaarghk 3y ago
The web stack might give you more transferable skills but how did you calculate the trade off vs the 50% pay cut? Was the salary not actually very high and at a low ceiling compared to web work - i.e. you expect your salary to soon exceed what you made working in HFT? Or was there a serious risk of layoffs happening far in advance of your retirement? If the goal is to support yourself after retirement, are you saying in certain circumstances halving your salary 10 years into a tech career ultimately optimises your entire-career-earnings?
- hliyan 3y ago
  It wasn't such a purely material calculation. Less stress, more time to spend with family and friends, learning more things and doing something that you know actually adds value to the world -- those things matter.
Double_a_92 3y ago
That's mostly the guys fault and not the jobs fault. Even in a bad code base you can start making things better, apply modern techniques and learn new things. Also most of the skill you gain there is transferrable. E.g. just because you have to work with some legacy PHP project, it doesn't mean that you would suck at creating modern applications in JS. It would just take a couple of weeks to get use to it.
- 0x445442 3y ago
  Making things better and applying modern techniques don’t map to a feature story. In the environments being discussed you’ll have to wait for a cadre of architects and program managers to convince the C levels to commit to a multi year, millions of dollar effort to have any hope of improving a code base.
  - Double_a_92 3y ago
    You don't have to rewrite everything, to start fixing things.
    - sumtechguy 3y ago
      'So your story ran over again help me understand where we can improve your work flow'.
    - 0x445442 3y ago
      Must be nice to live in your world of being treated as a professional.
- lelanthran 3y ago
  > Even in a bad code base you can start making things better, apply modern techniques and learn new things All th bad codebase I've seen were a result of fossils who are still with the company gatekeeping anyone from fixing their code. A few years ago, I had one architect stubbornly refuse to use source control, rejected all PRs that didn't use his homegrown buggy C++ libs for strings, refused to let anyone do the http server bits unless they used his C++ server and so on. If there isn't a gatekeeper, you wouldn't have the bad codebase in the first place.
mustafa_pasi 3y ago
Shouldn't you have ample savings, a private pension and social security?
- FrustratedMonky 3y ago
  ? In the US? Maybe not. I'd bet a lot of hot shot young programmers think it will be gravy for ever. Start saving now.
kjksf 3y ago
Being good at C++ is very much a transferable skill. I'm sure he could learn STL (standard C++ library) in a fraction of time it would take someone else to become proficient in C++ in general.
- sumtechguy 3y ago
  It is a transferable skill. But not one many people want to pay for except in very niche areas these days. So if you are out of a job expect to grind for awhile trying to find someone to hire for C++. Unless you have network connections then you might be ok. Being good at C++ only goes so far, you have to have skills in techs people are willing to pay for. Not many companies are willing to wait while you skill up in their stack unless you are willing to work jr but they will not hire you anyway because 'you will jump ship'. Its not great.
Barrin92 3y ago
that part is a complete fiction. People who have a lot of experience in the embedded world or performant but esoteric codebases are highly thought after. Even if the literal job isn't transferable, the skills for sure are. My mother was a COBOL developer and didn't work for 20 years because she stayed home. She recently returned to her old bank she worked for because they are dragging people out of retirement as they can't find anyone else. She earns more than I do now. People are crazy to give a job like that up for generic web dev work.
sidlls 3y ago
Most of my early programming work was with C and C++ (after I left academia, where it was mostly Fortran). I am, simply put, a better programmer for it, objectively so when compared to my peers who've never touched it, at basically every place I've worked at since (including a FAANG-level company, currently, where I'm mostly writing in go and python). At least, that's the feedback I get from them. I think it's fair to say this skill difference is largely from that work in the C family, where I learned a number of different paradigms for design and development in that world, with all its footguns and low-level "gotchas". It has always been easier for me to parse and understand others' code, identify subtle bugs, to use debugging tools, and to identify some optimizations by examining the code that others might spend days using profilers to find. Some of that would come with engineering experience in general, regardless of languages used, but not all of it, but I picked these skills up faster and earlier in my career, thanks to that early work. Skill with C++ is definitely transferrable, in at least some cases.

by hliyan 3y ago

michaelteter 3y ago

I should think that years of specialized C++ work in hft environments would have come with impressively high pay… in which case one could retire early and self study anything for fun, not hope to find a job for financial reasons.

hliyan 3y ago
Ideally, yes! Unfortunately, there is such a thing as being young and not knowing your own worth / not knowing how to negotiate / not having a manager who looks out for your career growth.
- michaelteter 3y ago
  Understood. In that case, if web development is your interest, then you have many possible paths. The primary choices are full stack, backend, or frontend. Obviously full stack is most flexible because you can theoretically do it all. But keeping up with so many technologies simultaneously is really tiring. Take a look at Phoenix framework. It is a fantastic way to get started, and it will grow with you into just about any future project need. Plus Elixir is an excellent language built on top of the incredibly powerful Erlang ecosystem.

maaarghk 3y ago

The web stack might give you more transferable skills but how did you calculate the trade off vs the 50% pay cut? Was the salary not actually very high and at a low ceiling compared to web work - i.e. you expect your salary to soon exceed what you made working in HFT? Or was there a serious risk of layoffs happening far in advance of your retirement? If the goal is to support yourself after retirement, are you saying in certain circumstances halving your salary 10 years into a tech career ultimately optimises your entire-career-earnings?

hliyan 3y ago
It wasn't such a purely material calculation. Less stress, more time to spend with family and friends, learning more things and doing something that you know actually adds value to the world -- those things matter.

Double_a_92 3y ago

That's mostly the guys fault and not the jobs fault. Even in a bad code base you can start making things better, apply modern techniques and learn new things. Also most of the skill you gain there is transferrable. E.g. just because you have to work with some legacy PHP project, it doesn't mean that you would suck at creating modern applications in JS. It would just take a couple of weeks to get use to it.

0x445442 3y ago
Making things better and applying modern techniques don’t map to a feature story. In the environments being discussed you’ll have to wait for a cadre of architects and program managers to convince the C levels to commit to a multi year, millions of dollar effort to have any hope of improving a code base.
- Double_a_92 3y ago
  You don't have to rewrite everything, to start fixing things.
  - sumtechguy 3y ago
    'So your story ran over again help me understand where we can improve your work flow'.
  - 0x445442 3y ago
    Must be nice to live in your world of being treated as a professional.
lelanthran 3y ago
> Even in a bad code base you can start making things better, apply modern techniques and learn new things All th bad codebase I've seen were a result of fossils who are still with the company gatekeeping anyone from fixing their code. A few years ago, I had one architect stubbornly refuse to use source control, rejected all PRs that didn't use his homegrown buggy C++ libs for strings, refused to let anyone do the http server bits unless they used his C++ server and so on. If there isn't a gatekeeper, you wouldn't have the bad codebase in the first place.

mustafa_pasi 3y ago

Shouldn't you have ample savings, a private pension and social security?

FrustratedMonky 3y ago
? In the US? Maybe not. I'd bet a lot of hot shot young programmers think it will be gravy for ever. Start saving now.

kjksf 3y ago

Being good at C++ is very much a transferable skill. I'm sure he could learn STL (standard C++ library) in a fraction of time it would take someone else to become proficient in C++ in general.

sumtechguy 3y ago
It is a transferable skill. But not one many people want to pay for except in very niche areas these days. So if you are out of a job expect to grind for awhile trying to find someone to hire for C++. Unless you have network connections then you might be ok. Being good at C++ only goes so far, you have to have skills in techs people are willing to pay for. Not many companies are willing to wait while you skill up in their stack unless you are willing to work jr but they will not hire you anyway because 'you will jump ship'. Its not great.

Barrin92 3y ago

that part is a complete fiction. People who have a lot of experience in the embedded world or performant but esoteric codebases are highly thought after. Even if the literal job isn't transferable, the skills for sure are. My mother was a COBOL developer and didn't work for 20 years because she stayed home. She recently returned to her old bank she worked for because they are dragging people out of retirement as they can't find anyone else. She earns more than I do now. People are crazy to give a job like that up for generic web dev work.

sidlls 3y ago

Most of my early programming work was with C and C++ (after I left academia, where it was mostly Fortran). I am, simply put, a better programmer for it, objectively so when compared to my peers who've never touched it, at basically every place I've worked at since (including a FAANG-level company, currently, where I'm mostly writing in go and python). At least, that's the feedback I get from them. I think it's fair to say this skill difference is largely from that work in the C family, where I learned a number of different paradigms for design and development in that world, with all its footguns and low-level "gotchas". It has always been easier for me to parse and understand others' code, identify subtle bugs, to use debugging tools, and to identify some optimizations by examining the code that others might spend days using profilers to find. Some of that would come with engineering experience in general, regardless of languages used, but not all of it, but I picked these skills up faster and earlier in my career, thanks to that early work. Skill with C++ is definitely transferrable, in at least some cases.