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> I felt like by 40 I needed to move on from engineering because if I didn’t, I’d be like the few older workers I’d dealt with in my career. I felt like they mo

by neilv 2y ago

> I felt like by 40 I needed to move on from engineering because if I didn’t, I’d be like the few older workers I’d dealt with in my career. I felt like they moved too slow, were stuck in their ways, and unable to change - even when faced with evidence to the contrary. If that was your fear, then I'm sorry you had that fear, and I hope it was unfounded. Unfortunately, there's externalities to voicing a negative stereotype in some venues, reinforcing it there.

yodsanklai 2y ago
Sounds like an extremely prejudiced individual...
dnoberon 2y ago
Thank you. I think it is unfounded, but it's still a visceral belief and those can be hard to overcome. I'm hoping with time I can change my feelings on it.
- mcguire 2y ago
  Because I am the bluebird of happiness, there are a couple of things you may want to be aware of here. "I’d be like the few older workers I’d dealt with in my career. I felt like they moved too slow, were stuck in their ways, and unable to change - even when faced with evidence to the contrary." First, keep in mind that many of your co-workers will still feel this way, even if you provide evidence to the contrary. Second, after you have been around the dharma wheel too many times, it becomes difficult to hop onto the hype-train as quickly as you used to, which is one reason many of your co-workers will feel that way. The tech industry has never had a career path for technical people other than directly into management or into a pseudo-management "architecture" roles that are neither technical nor management---you don't get many of the advantages of either and what you can do is mostly based on your personal relationships with managers or technical people. As a result, if you remain technical, you may find that your salary and influence stagnate. Oh, and 40 is still pretty young. I'm 56 and it wasn't until the last 8-10 years that serious burnout set in. (Salary isn't really an important factor in job satisfaction; influence very much is.) Personally, I've never had to write a letter like yours because I shot the suggestion of a more management-oriented position down in flames, twice. Lucky me! :-)
  - cm11 2y ago
    This is only tangentially related to the main topic of the post, but thought I might ask for your thoughts on a similar dynamic. My thesis is that companies should not be (or just be much less) functionally org'd—that is, not divided into Engineering, Marketing, Design, Sales, etc. And that this is the root-ish of many typical problems. I don't really need to argue that's true for my question, but given that most companies are that then leads to functional managers—ie. Engineering Manager or Director of Engineering. The role of that manager sometimes involves being in the weeds of specific work, but mostly doesn't. It's usually not architecting or coding, but mentoring and maybe allocating work. The latter of which might formally be a a responsibility, but is embedded in a network of other people's needs that does some pre-determining. What does that manager do—and I suppose how do they sleep at night if they care about their work—given they're the mentor and blocker of their IC's rise? What I mean is that if the career path for the IC is sorta mythical, how does that manager guide them? If they're honest, then they're also kinda describing their own role as a bit pointless. That would be a reason the IC shouldn't aspire to the role coming from someone who did and now remains (happily?) in it. Engineering is probably the least problematic in this regard because it tends have a bit of power and sometimes isolation within a company. But take something like design, which fights all the time with product because half of the career path/duties for product design (less so brand or visual designers) is blocked by product. So when a designer tells their manager they're having problems with their PM, there is (1) nothing power-wise for the manager to do because neither they nor their bosses are in the chain of command of product and (2) they themselves never resolved this incompatibility. The best they've done is maybe launched something in spite of it. Or maybe (to the company's benefit?) not launched things because of it. Does the functional manager just give (knowingly or unknowingly) pseudo-career-advice out of circumstance because that's the job of maintaining civility? Is this mostly a matter of everyone all around (managers and otherwise) looking the other way because employment?
_yb2s 2y ago
> they moved too slow, were stuck in their ways, and unable to change This goes beyond just engineering- people generally get more like this in all aspects of life as they get older, and I believe you can prevent it by deciding not to be that way, and taking actions to not be that way. Personally, I feel that I was very rigid and closed minded when I was younger, and I've been learning and working on how to be less like that as I get older. I used to get angry when people believed or did things I thought were "wrong" - and I found if I take the time to understand why they think it is the right way, I am not bothered by it anymore, and am more able to work with them and be kind and understanding to them, even if I disagree still.
- stavros 2y ago
  I'm also very wary of being stuck in my ways, but even after all that bias-compensation, I still hold the belief that the fastest/most maintainable/easiest/best for the user way to make web apps is server-side rendered with minimal JS (mostly to enhance components). I don't know if this makes me a dinosaur, but I firmly believe that the best way to make 95% of modern websites is Django+HTMX (or similar), instead of a heavy SPA with an API. Of course, when it comes to web apps, like Google Docs or similar, SPAs all the way, but that's a tiny minority of the web.
  - _yb2s 2y ago
    This is an interesting example, because in this case- I think it could be seen as being stuck in old ways by a younger person that is excited about new stuff, but it sounds like you actually just have more experience and a broader perspective, and so know when something "old fashioned" can be simpler and more effective than using the latest most trendy method. I hate having to use what is basically a simple static page but is effectively a large app that is being downloaded and executed client side- it makes it unresponsive.
  - anothername12 2y ago
    My belief too, as a grey beard 25 years in. I’ve seen all sorts of shit come and go. There’s a lot of “slack” in the industry that we get away with. Ridiculous incidental complexity, far-out frameworks, architectural astronautics etc. But if you care about “adding value” or your business succeeding, tools like Rails/Django are way to go. (And btw, use a RDBMS ffs)
umvi 2y ago
I feel like it's not just ageism - software development itself is so big now that it's fractured to the point that there are now strongly opinionated camps that are "stuck in their ways and unable to change - even when faced with evidence to the contrary. " For example, certain web dev crowds that love (in my very biased opinion) really slow, bloated and/or over complicated tooling to do simple things. But only because they've never ventured outside of their ecosystem to the great beyond and "that's how everyone does it".
- sroussey 2y ago
  The nice thing about the JS ecosystem is there there is no “how everyone does it”. It’s as if you had Ruby where Rails was only 10% of the market. Some people say it’s the problem, but I like the egalitarian aspect of it.
Terretta 2y ago
>> I felt like by forty I needed to move on from engineering [or] be like older workers [who] moved too slow, stuck in their ways, unable to change This is a terrible idea. It's not age, it's attitude and approach. I replied to OP on this here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41405231 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41405231 Not mentioned in that, adding here: You can't invent viable things unless you know the stuff of which they are made. Bigger/harder/newer things are built on more/harder/newer stuff. Deep learning is largely incompressible. Practical (applied) mastery takes 10,000 hours times the things you need to know. Ergo, always keep learning, use "more years" to outcompete by sheer accumulation of understanding what new things are made of and how they work together. Become that staff eng, principal eng, or engineering fellow who can, and does, do more impactful things. But only if it's a fit: https://growthco-op.com/wp-content/uploads/ikigai-1-1024x968.jpeg https://growthco-op.com/wp-content/uploads/ikigai-1-1024x968...

by neilv 2y ago

yodsanklai 2y ago

Sounds like an extremely prejudiced individual...

dnoberon 2y ago

Thank you. I think it is unfounded, but it's still a visceral belief and those can be hard to overcome. I'm hoping with time I can change my feelings on it.

mcguire 2y ago
Because I am the bluebird of happiness, there are a couple of things you may want to be aware of here. "I’d be like the few older workers I’d dealt with in my career. I felt like they moved too slow, were stuck in their ways, and unable to change - even when faced with evidence to the contrary." First, keep in mind that many of your co-workers will still feel this way, even if you provide evidence to the contrary. Second, after you have been around the dharma wheel too many times, it becomes difficult to hop onto the hype-train as quickly as you used to, which is one reason many of your co-workers will feel that way. The tech industry has never had a career path for technical people other than directly into management or into a pseudo-management "architecture" roles that are neither technical nor management---you don't get many of the advantages of either and what you can do is mostly based on your personal relationships with managers or technical people. As a result, if you remain technical, you may find that your salary and influence stagnate. Oh, and 40 is still pretty young. I'm 56 and it wasn't until the last 8-10 years that serious burnout set in. (Salary isn't really an important factor in job satisfaction; influence very much is.) Personally, I've never had to write a letter like yours because I shot the suggestion of a more management-oriented position down in flames, twice. Lucky me! :-)
- cm11 2y ago
  This is only tangentially related to the main topic of the post, but thought I might ask for your thoughts on a similar dynamic. My thesis is that companies should not be (or just be much less) functionally org'd—that is, not divided into Engineering, Marketing, Design, Sales, etc. And that this is the root-ish of many typical problems. I don't really need to argue that's true for my question, but given that most companies are that then leads to functional managers—ie. Engineering Manager or Director of Engineering. The role of that manager sometimes involves being in the weeds of specific work, but mostly doesn't. It's usually not architecting or coding, but mentoring and maybe allocating work. The latter of which might formally be a a responsibility, but is embedded in a network of other people's needs that does some pre-determining. What does that manager do—and I suppose how do they sleep at night if they care about their work—given they're the mentor and blocker of their IC's rise? What I mean is that if the career path for the IC is sorta mythical, how does that manager guide them? If they're honest, then they're also kinda describing their own role as a bit pointless. That would be a reason the IC shouldn't aspire to the role coming from someone who did and now remains (happily?) in it. Engineering is probably the least problematic in this regard because it tends have a bit of power and sometimes isolation within a company. But take something like design, which fights all the time with product because half of the career path/duties for product design (less so brand or visual designers) is blocked by product. So when a designer tells their manager they're having problems with their PM, there is (1) nothing power-wise for the manager to do because neither they nor their bosses are in the chain of command of product and (2) they themselves never resolved this incompatibility. The best they've done is maybe launched something in spite of it. Or maybe (to the company's benefit?) not launched things because of it. Does the functional manager just give (knowingly or unknowingly) pseudo-career-advice out of circumstance because that's the job of maintaining civility? Is this mostly a matter of everyone all around (managers and otherwise) looking the other way because employment?

_yb2s 2y ago

> they moved too slow, were stuck in their ways, and unable to change This goes beyond just engineering- people generally get more like this in all aspects of life as they get older, and I believe you can prevent it by deciding not to be that way, and taking actions to not be that way. Personally, I feel that I was very rigid and closed minded when I was younger, and I've been learning and working on how to be less like that as I get older. I used to get angry when people believed or did things I thought were "wrong" - and I found if I take the time to understand why they think it is the right way, I am not bothered by it anymore, and am more able to work with them and be kind and understanding to them, even if I disagree still.

stavros 2y ago
I'm also very wary of being stuck in my ways, but even after all that bias-compensation, I still hold the belief that the fastest/most maintainable/easiest/best for the user way to make web apps is server-side rendered with minimal JS (mostly to enhance components). I don't know if this makes me a dinosaur, but I firmly believe that the best way to make 95% of modern websites is Django+HTMX (or similar), instead of a heavy SPA with an API. Of course, when it comes to web apps, like Google Docs or similar, SPAs all the way, but that's a tiny minority of the web.
- _yb2s 2y ago
  This is an interesting example, because in this case- I think it could be seen as being stuck in old ways by a younger person that is excited about new stuff, but it sounds like you actually just have more experience and a broader perspective, and so know when something "old fashioned" can be simpler and more effective than using the latest most trendy method. I hate having to use what is basically a simple static page but is effectively a large app that is being downloaded and executed client side- it makes it unresponsive.
- anothername12 2y ago
  My belief too, as a grey beard 25 years in. I’ve seen all sorts of shit come and go. There’s a lot of “slack” in the industry that we get away with. Ridiculous incidental complexity, far-out frameworks, architectural astronautics etc. But if you care about “adding value” or your business succeeding, tools like Rails/Django are way to go. (And btw, use a RDBMS ffs)

umvi 2y ago

I feel like it's not just ageism - software development itself is so big now that it's fractured to the point that there are now strongly opinionated camps that are "stuck in their ways and unable to change - even when faced with evidence to the contrary. " For example, certain web dev crowds that love (in my very biased opinion) really slow, bloated and/or over complicated tooling to do simple things. But only because they've never ventured outside of their ecosystem to the great beyond and "that's how everyone does it".

sroussey 2y ago
The nice thing about the JS ecosystem is there there is no “how everyone does it”. It’s as if you had Ruby where Rails was only 10% of the market. Some people say it’s the problem, but I like the egalitarian aspect of it.

Terretta 2y ago

>> I felt like by forty I needed to move on from engineering [or] be like older workers [who] moved too slow, stuck in their ways, unable to change This is a terrible idea. It's not age, it's attitude and approach. I replied to OP on this here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41405231 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41405231 Not mentioned in that, adding here: You can't invent viable things unless you know the stuff of which they are made. Bigger/harder/newer things are built on more/harder/newer stuff. Deep learning is largely incompressible. Practical (applied) mastery takes 10,000 hours times the things you need to know. Ergo, always keep learning, use "more years" to outcompete by sheer accumulation of understanding what new things are made of and how they work together. Become that staff eng, principal eng, or engineering fellow who can, and does, do more impactful things. But only if it's a fit: https://growthco-op.com/wp-content/uploads/ikigai-1-1024x968.jpeg https://growthco-op.com/wp-content/uploads/ikigai-1-1024x968...