3 ms·

I'm probably older than you (almost 30) and I don't think you're aware of the long-term career risks in this industry. Yes, it's cheaper to go all-in on a start

I'm probably older than you (almost 30) and I don't think you're aware of the long-term career risks in this industry. Yes, it's cheaper to go all-in on a startup, and you might build something that makes life (yours and others') a lot better. There are a lot of great things about living in 2013. There certainly are opportunities that didn't exist 20 years ago. However, what happens when your bootstrapped startup fails is an unholy cocktail of the following: a. Your savings is depleted. b. You learn a lot, which overqualifies you for junior-level work. c. People try to take advantage of (a) and offer you low-level positions. Rapid learning (b) and zero credibility advancement (c) is a recipe for disaster, because you'll probably fail when you get shunted into some bullshit low-level job after having been "spoiled" by the experience of getting do real work. It's the career problems that make this game an unholy mess: the fact that most so-called "tech" jobs are career-killing, subordinate wastes of talent that slowly turn you into an unemployable idiot. It's the risk that you'll be 37 and taking orders from a 25-year-old "tech lead" who only knows half a programming language and won't listen to your ideas. Worst of all, at that age you probably have a spouse and kids, so suicide isn't an ethically defensible option. At that point, you just have to suffer for 40 years and die of natural causes.

gizmo 13y ago
You're not older than me. And if you believe that a career setback means suicide becomes a rational option... I don't know what to say. There are so many things in life that can go horribly horribly wrong that the risk of career setback is completely acceptable in pursuit of a dream. Every kid who decides to major in ancient languages, philosophy or creative arts takes a way bigger risk and nobody bats an eye.
Swizec 13y ago
Wow, bitter much? You don't have to take a low-level job. You don't have to stay at a low-level job. I have noticed people are willing to pay you much more for interesting work than they are for boring work. Just price yourself high enough and the interesting work will start coming.
count 13y ago
Or you could grow up and leave the Valley, and realize the world is a lot larger than you seem to appreciate. Or just kill yourself now, and save us all the whining.
- wglb 13y ago
  Inappropriate.
jdbernard 13y ago
You are my age, and I intend this to be friendly. Gizmo is right. You have too much potential left to be so negative. This negative view of employment in our industry is not unique to software. The same concerns about getting stuck in a career-killing, life-draining job are found in most professions. I don't know you personally, so I am hesitant to put words in your mouth or infer what you are feeling. So I'll just talk about myself. What made the difference for me was attitude. It sounds trite but it's true. Some people are too motivated to let themselves be beaten down by a bad job or a bad boss. They continue to struggle through until they change things for the better. I used to be that kind of person, but I gave up hope. I had to find a way to convince myself that I was smart enough, could work hard enough, and could be persistent enough to force positive change in my life. That I would carve a good path through life with my bare hands if I had to. The other alternative was for that negative view of career option to become a self-fulfilling prophesy. I have three children myself, the oldest of which is 4 years old. For their sake I cannot kill myself no matter how bad I feel about my prospects. But also for their sake I cannot let myself get beaten back into a hopeless corner where I come home depressed every day about my life. If I come home every day dead already, what hope do they have of seeing the wonder and beauty of life that makes it worth living? Even without the responsibility of kids I have seen too much good in life to ever be convinced that death is preferable.
- winter_blue 13y ago
  I know I'm breaking HN guidelines, but thanks for that comment. :)
tbrownaw 13y ago
I'm probably older than you (almost 30) and I don't think you're aware of the long-term career risks in this industry. I'm also almost 30, and am one of the younger people here. Maybe half of the people who were here (on the same team as me) when I started in 2007 are still here, but not all on the same team any more. A couple have been here thru several acquisitions, and long enough to have stories about losing the office we had in the World Trade Center. My direct supervisor has been with the company in various roles (not all IT) longer than I've been alive. It's the career problems that make this game an unholy mess: the fact that most so-called "tech" jobs are career-killing, subordinate wastes of talent that slowly turn you into an unemployable idiot. So don't accept that. My job was supposed to be translating "this field goes here" into Informatica (etl tool) mappings; ie code-monkey on a shitty non-textual turing-incomplete proprietary "language". Instead, after learning Informatica and SQL and PL/SQL all while on the job, I started writing things to automate the more repetitive parts. Now most of my time is spent maintaining and improving a set of tools for the rest of the team, which I (re-)wrote in C#, PL/SQL, Java, and the occasional bit of C, Perl, or Unix shell script. It's the risk that you'll be 37 and taking orders from a 25-year-old "tech lead" who only knows half a programming language and won't listen to your ideas. That seems a bit exaggerated, but I suppose it could happen if management was all technically clueless and you never bothered to learn anything resembling people-skills. Worst of all, at that age you probably have a spouse and kids, so suicide isn't an ethically defensible option. Um... go talk to a psychiatrist? Please?
tptacek 13y ago
You're a 29 year old software developer. You live in a country full of unemployed tool and die engineers, journeyman construction workers, print journalists, steelworkers, and telephony engineers. Your profession, on the other hand, has the lowest unemployment in the country. If you feel like suicide is something that enters the equation for anyone in your profession, I'd like to urge you to talk to a psychiatrist.
- michaelochurch 13y ago
  I'm not worried about now. There are jobs now. I'm worried about the future, because unless you either (a) align a string of high-value projects or (b) move into management, you are toast by a certain age in our industry, no matter how good you are. I know some top-notch programmers who've been utterly screwed. (I'm not in that category, but don't want to end up there in 15 years.)
  - tptacek 13y ago
    Neither of those statements are true. You consistently seem to equate "not in the spotlight" with "screwed"; or, more (or less, depending your POV) charitably, you evince some signs of mental illness (anxiety, depression). It's not really any of my business, but on the off chance that you haven't talked to a professional about that possibility, I think you might consider doing that. You sound deeply unhappy.
ebiester 13y ago
In this world? No. (I am older than you by a little bit.) This is what you do: D. Take a contract with a fortune 1000, spend a year digging yourself out of a hole, and move on. Does it mean that somewhere early along your path, you need to pick up some Java or .Net or Oracle? Sure. But you have decades of productive coding ahead of you; a few years is not going to kill your dreams. Look: not every portion of your life is going to be glamorous, save for the very lucky. It is possible to learn something from everybody, even a "25-year-old who only knows half a programming language." I think what I learned most from spending some time in the developed world is not to be so self-righteous about bullshit like this. You could be parking your ass in front of a subway line telling people, "God Bless you, please buy a packet of Kleenex."
BashiBazouk 13y ago
I had a bunch of friends who worked at the local movie theater when I was in my early 20's. There was this little old guy who took tickets at the door. He was in his late 70's or early 80's. I think most people would look at him and think pity, he didn't have a good enough retirement that he had to take a low end job to make ends meet. Far from the truth. He ran a significant portion of the red cross in the middle east for many years. One of his more interesting stories was he and his wife's car broke down in the Jordan desert. The King's motorcade drove by and stopped. He and his wife had tea with the king and queen in the limo while his men fixed the car. He had a fine retirement but his wife had died and he just needed something to do to feel alive. The guy dined with kings and actually did save the world, at least as much as the world can be saved, and in the end a low paying dead end job was perfectly fine for his happiness. You define your state of mind, not how well your job one ups your peers or the number of zeros on your paycheck...
msabalau 13y ago
Of course, one could have been T.S. Eliot, with a reasonable case to be made that you were the greatest poet of the 20th century, and find yourself working in a sub-basement of a bank for eight years to support yourself while pursuing your true vocation. "So one must find out how to become happy oneself. Wanting to transform the world without discovering one's true self is like trying to cover the whole world with leather to avoid the pain of walking on stones and thorns. It is much simpler to wear shoes." - Ramana Maharshi
- michaelochurch 13y ago
  You make a strong point. Yet there's one crucial difference. In Eliot's time, people didn't have access to a full time series of your professional social status. I'm sure that it sucked for him to work in a bank basement for 8 years, but he never worried that someone would find that out on LinkedIn and he'd be in the basement permanently. There was a time in which it was much more OK to do low-level work, if only because you could pull a Don Draper and reinvent yourself with a different history.
wglb 13y ago
I have been in leading-edge programming since a good bit before you were born. I have been part of many startups, one very successful, another one on hold, a consulting firm that had a nice exit. Very much in contrast what you have said in this post and in other posts that you have offered here, I find the demand for seasoned programmers, developers, architects at an all-time high. I have recently had to turn down two very lucrative engagements due to my apparent unclonability. I have had low spots careerwise--a period of self-unemployment, but I was determined to not get into the negative thinking, as I am sensing in your posts. My wife bought me a fiction book by Garth Stein, The Art of Racing in the Rain. One of the phrases in the book was "Your car goes where your eyes are." If your eyes are on the wall next to the race track, that is where the car will go. To put it in non-racing terms, you are likely to fulfill your expectations.
snowwrestler 13y ago
I'm 37 with a family and I care a lot less about this stuff than I did when I was 25. I just feel very differently about my career now than I did 12 years ago. Am I changing the world, blowing everyone's mind? No. I'm doing work that's pretty fun, working with people I like, and hanging with my family on the weekend. Happiness is a process not a result. If you want to focus on some perceived injustice in your past, that is of course your right, but let's not pretend it's a universal human condition. I mean, let's take your worst-case scenario. Broadly speaking, most jobs in the world are substantially worse than a low-level computer programming job.

gizmo 13y ago

You're not older than me. And if you believe that a career setback means suicide becomes a rational option... I don't know what to say. There are so many things in life that can go horribly horribly wrong that the risk of career setback is completely acceptable in pursuit of a dream. Every kid who decides to major in ancient languages, philosophy or creative arts takes a way bigger risk and nobody bats an eye.

Swizec 13y ago

Wow, bitter much? You don't have to take a low-level job. You don't have to stay at a low-level job. I have noticed people are willing to pay you much more for interesting work than they are for boring work. Just price yourself high enough and the interesting work will start coming.

count 13y ago

Or you could grow up and leave the Valley, and realize the world is a lot larger than you seem to appreciate. Or just kill yourself now, and save us all the whining.

wglb 13y ago
Inappropriate.

jdbernard 13y ago

You are my age, and I intend this to be friendly. Gizmo is right. You have too much potential left to be so negative. This negative view of employment in our industry is not unique to software. The same concerns about getting stuck in a career-killing, life-draining job are found in most professions. I don't know you personally, so I am hesitant to put words in your mouth or infer what you are feeling. So I'll just talk about myself. What made the difference for me was attitude. It sounds trite but it's true. Some people are too motivated to let themselves be beaten down by a bad job or a bad boss. They continue to struggle through until they change things for the better. I used to be that kind of person, but I gave up hope. I had to find a way to convince myself that I was smart enough, could work hard enough, and could be persistent enough to force positive change in my life. That I would carve a good path through life with my bare hands if I had to. The other alternative was for that negative view of career option to become a self-fulfilling prophesy. I have three children myself, the oldest of which is 4 years old. For their sake I cannot kill myself no matter how bad I feel about my prospects. But also for their sake I cannot let myself get beaten back into a hopeless corner where I come home depressed every day about my life. If I come home every day dead already, what hope do they have of seeing the wonder and beauty of life that makes it worth living? Even without the responsibility of kids I have seen too much good in life to ever be convinced that death is preferable.

winter_blue 13y ago
I know I'm breaking HN guidelines, but thanks for that comment. :)

tbrownaw 13y ago

I'm probably older than you (almost 30) and I don't think you're aware of the long-term career risks in this industry. I'm also almost 30, and am one of the younger people here. Maybe half of the people who were here (on the same team as me) when I started in 2007 are still here, but not all on the same team any more. A couple have been here thru several acquisitions, and long enough to have stories about losing the office we had in the World Trade Center. My direct supervisor has been with the company in various roles (not all IT) longer than I've been alive. It's the career problems that make this game an unholy mess: the fact that most so-called "tech" jobs are career-killing, subordinate wastes of talent that slowly turn you into an unemployable idiot. So don't accept that. My job was supposed to be translating "this field goes here" into Informatica (etl tool) mappings; ie code-monkey on a shitty non-textual turing-incomplete proprietary "language". Instead, after learning Informatica and SQL and PL/SQL all while on the job, I started writing things to automate the more repetitive parts. Now most of my time is spent maintaining and improving a set of tools for the rest of the team, which I (re-)wrote in C#, PL/SQL, Java, and the occasional bit of C, Perl, or Unix shell script. It's the risk that you'll be 37 and taking orders from a 25-year-old "tech lead" who only knows half a programming language and won't listen to your ideas. That seems a bit exaggerated, but I suppose it could happen if management was all technically clueless and you never bothered to learn anything resembling people-skills. Worst of all, at that age you probably have a spouse and kids, so suicide isn't an ethically defensible option. Um... go talk to a psychiatrist? Please?

tptacek 13y ago

You're a 29 year old software developer. You live in a country full of unemployed tool and die engineers, journeyman construction workers, print journalists, steelworkers, and telephony engineers. Your profession, on the other hand, has the lowest unemployment in the country. If you feel like suicide is something that enters the equation for anyone in your profession, I'd like to urge you to talk to a psychiatrist.

michaelochurch 13y ago
I'm not worried about now. There are jobs now. I'm worried about the future, because unless you either (a) align a string of high-value projects or (b) move into management, you are toast by a certain age in our industry, no matter how good you are. I know some top-notch programmers who've been utterly screwed. (I'm not in that category, but don't want to end up there in 15 years.)
- tptacek 13y ago
  Neither of those statements are true. You consistently seem to equate "not in the spotlight" with "screwed"; or, more (or less, depending your POV) charitably, you evince some signs of mental illness (anxiety, depression). It's not really any of my business, but on the off chance that you haven't talked to a professional about that possibility, I think you might consider doing that. You sound deeply unhappy.

ebiester 13y ago

In this world? No. (I am older than you by a little bit.) This is what you do: D. Take a contract with a fortune 1000, spend a year digging yourself out of a hole, and move on. Does it mean that somewhere early along your path, you need to pick up some Java or .Net or Oracle? Sure. But you have decades of productive coding ahead of you; a few years is not going to kill your dreams. Look: not every portion of your life is going to be glamorous, save for the very lucky. It is possible to learn something from everybody, even a "25-year-old who only knows half a programming language." I think what I learned most from spending some time in the developed world is not to be so self-righteous about bullshit like this. You could be parking your ass in front of a subway line telling people, "God Bless you, please buy a packet of Kleenex."

BashiBazouk 13y ago

I had a bunch of friends who worked at the local movie theater when I was in my early 20's. There was this little old guy who took tickets at the door. He was in his late 70's or early 80's. I think most people would look at him and think pity, he didn't have a good enough retirement that he had to take a low end job to make ends meet. Far from the truth. He ran a significant portion of the red cross in the middle east for many years. One of his more interesting stories was he and his wife's car broke down in the Jordan desert. The King's motorcade drove by and stopped. He and his wife had tea with the king and queen in the limo while his men fixed the car. He had a fine retirement but his wife had died and he just needed something to do to feel alive. The guy dined with kings and actually did save the world, at least as much as the world can be saved, and in the end a low paying dead end job was perfectly fine for his happiness. You define your state of mind, not how well your job one ups your peers or the number of zeros on your paycheck...

msabalau 13y ago

Of course, one could have been T.S. Eliot, with a reasonable case to be made that you were the greatest poet of the 20th century, and find yourself working in a sub-basement of a bank for eight years to support yourself while pursuing your true vocation. "So one must find out how to become happy oneself. Wanting to transform the world without discovering one's true self is like trying to cover the whole world with leather to avoid the pain of walking on stones and thorns. It is much simpler to wear shoes." - Ramana Maharshi

michaelochurch 13y ago
You make a strong point. Yet there's one crucial difference. In Eliot's time, people didn't have access to a full time series of your professional social status. I'm sure that it sucked for him to work in a bank basement for 8 years, but he never worried that someone would find that out on LinkedIn and he'd be in the basement permanently. There was a time in which it was much more OK to do low-level work, if only because you could pull a Don Draper and reinvent yourself with a different history.

wglb 13y ago

I have been in leading-edge programming since a good bit before you were born. I have been part of many startups, one very successful, another one on hold, a consulting firm that had a nice exit. Very much in contrast what you have said in this post and in other posts that you have offered here, I find the demand for seasoned programmers, developers, architects at an all-time high. I have recently had to turn down two very lucrative engagements due to my apparent unclonability. I have had low spots careerwise--a period of self-unemployment, but I was determined to not get into the negative thinking, as I am sensing in your posts. My wife bought me a fiction book by Garth Stein, The Art of Racing in the Rain. One of the phrases in the book was "Your car goes where your eyes are." If your eyes are on the wall next to the race track, that is where the car will go. To put it in non-racing terms, you are likely to fulfill your expectations.

snowwrestler 13y ago

I'm 37 with a family and I care a lot less about this stuff than I did when I was 25. I just feel very differently about my career now than I did 12 years ago. Am I changing the world, blowing everyone's mind? No. I'm doing work that's pretty fun, working with people I like, and hanging with my family on the weekend. Happiness is a process not a result. If you want to focus on some perceived injustice in your past, that is of course your right, but let's not pretend it's a universal human condition. I mean, let's take your worst-case scenario. Broadly speaking, most jobs in the world are substantially worse than a low-level computer programming job.