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> For someone whose life obligations preclude selling everything and living on a beach in Thailand or Belize for a year, how do you evaluate a career reaching i

> For someone whose life obligations preclude selling everything and living on a beach in Thailand or Belize for a year, how do you evaluate a career reaching its midpoint? How do you keep programming fresh? How do you market yourself as someone who solves problems instead of someone who transcribes ideas in the language du jour? Or do you leave programming altogether? I had a similar tack in my career and have been asking the same questions lately. I wish I had some of the answers. At this point all I can offer are some coping strategies if you're still thinking about leaving programming (at least for a while): Buy a cheap house and keep your living expenses low. If you want to leave programming and open a bakery you'll at least be able to keep the roof over your head and food on the table. Who knows, maybe you'll be happier? I've been thinking about opening a brick-and-mortar retail game shop and writing on the side. I still keep sharp. I cannot give up programming. I'll read something about sail design, consistency analysis, topology, or constraint propagation and for the next few months I'm knee deep in algorithms and data structures while trying to maintain polite conversation at the dinner table. But in the morning it's all about configuration scripts and CRUD apps and copy changes in templates. Other hackers have jumped ship... jwz comes to mind.

ilikerashers 13y ago
I think this comment actually reflects the point of the article. It's turned into a bun fight in the other comments about marketing yourself, when in reality it's about a developer bored with trends that offer marginal impact to organisations. Something most middle-aged developers face is that chasing those trends becomes tiresome. The value you add to an organisation has a ceiling. If you're a Stanford Grad working his way up his latest hedgefund, you've got a road ahead of you. For most of us it's different flavours of CRUD. The sheer volume of conversations I've had with people in the Bakery scenario is mind boggling. I think most people just get jaded around their mid thirties in any career. It's just some people have the balls to setup bakeries!
- perigrin 13y ago
  "For me, the mechanics of budgeting are easy but the psychology of riding the business cycle is difficult." Running a bakery is effectively like consulting except it pays worse. Starting a Bakery isn't courageous ... it's foolhardy. Sometimes it pays to be foolhardy (lord knows I have been several times), but painting the picture that all of us who may be dissatisfied with our current mid-level careers as technologists would be successful if we just had the courage to abandon a decade and a half of training and effort to chase something new, that's disingenuous.
  - agentultra 13y ago
    Disingenuous how? If the person's goal is to define success by their happiness why not get out of programming if they're not happy doing it? You don't need to make a tonne of money to be happy. Move somewhere cheap, keep your expenses low, and have fun running a bakery. You get to interact with more people, get involved in your community, and people can taste the results of your work.
    - perigrin 13y ago
      Actually there have been studies that have shown that while more money doesn't provide happiness, enough money is a pre-requisite. We're not talking a ton, we're talking enough to pay for food, shelter, and some basic form of entertainment. It's incredibly easy to say "move somewhere cheap, keep your expenses low, and have fun" from the outside. I have been perfectly willing to move for a job. I've changed continents, and failing that moved literally across country (vertically mind you) for another. We even moved when we had a house with a mortgage and rented out the house (at a loss) because the housing market sucked in 2008. Moving that much took a huge toll on my family. We basically decided to stop when my second kid entered school, and my wife opened her retail business. Which is to say, it ain't that simple. Have you started a retail business? I've watched first hand what it takes. My wife works easily 50% harder than I do, for 50% of what I make on a good day. She has finally gotten to the point where she has three part time employees so she can take one day a week off. She cannot simply 1099 contractors, so she has to worry about witholding, workman's compensation, and employee benefits. She has to deal with upstream suppliers, constantly finding new customers, driving business into her shop as well as subsidizing it with external events. She'd be the first to tell you that without my salary backing up the family ... she would have had to shut her doors several times. In our industry we lose site of the actual cost to run a mom-and-pop business because we can throw up a website for $20/mo and a long-weekend of work. (Isn't that what the basic premise of the Lean Startup is? Throw something economically cheap together to test the idea and bootstrap sales?) My wife's business has kept expenses low. She buys all her equipment second hand off craigslist (she's a potter not a baker so thankfully a lot of failed hobbyists make the supply on craigslist reasonable). I'd estimate her expenses before payroll are close to $2k-$3k/month for consumables and rent. Most months she breaks even after payroll, and doesn't pay herself an actual salary. If this description sounds remotely appealing, then by all means stop what you're doing and go that. Programming really is that hateful. However painting it with the rose-tinted glasses of "You get to interact with more people, get involved in your community, and people can taste the results of your work." belies the actual hard work that building a business is. It elides the fact that there will be nights you will lie awake wondering if you'll make enough sales to pay last month's rent ... let alone this month's rent. For some people that is still better than what they were doing before, but pretending that all you need is a little more gumption ... I don't know a better word for it than 'disingenuous'.

ilikerashers 13y ago

I think this comment actually reflects the point of the article. It's turned into a bun fight in the other comments about marketing yourself, when in reality it's about a developer bored with trends that offer marginal impact to organisations. Something most middle-aged developers face is that chasing those trends becomes tiresome. The value you add to an organisation has a ceiling. If you're a Stanford Grad working his way up his latest hedgefund, you've got a road ahead of you. For most of us it's different flavours of CRUD. The sheer volume of conversations I've had with people in the Bakery scenario is mind boggling. I think most people just get jaded around their mid thirties in any career. It's just some people have the balls to setup bakeries!

perigrin 13y ago
"For me, the mechanics of budgeting are easy but the psychology of riding the business cycle is difficult." Running a bakery is effectively like consulting except it pays worse. Starting a Bakery isn't courageous ... it's foolhardy. Sometimes it pays to be foolhardy (lord knows I have been several times), but painting the picture that all of us who may be dissatisfied with our current mid-level careers as technologists would be successful if we just had the courage to abandon a decade and a half of training and effort to chase something new, that's disingenuous.
- agentultra 13y ago
  Disingenuous how? If the person's goal is to define success by their happiness why not get out of programming if they're not happy doing it? You don't need to make a tonne of money to be happy. Move somewhere cheap, keep your expenses low, and have fun running a bakery. You get to interact with more people, get involved in your community, and people can taste the results of your work.
  - perigrin 13y ago
    Actually there have been studies that have shown that while more money doesn't provide happiness, enough money is a pre-requisite. We're not talking a ton, we're talking enough to pay for food, shelter, and some basic form of entertainment. It's incredibly easy to say "move somewhere cheap, keep your expenses low, and have fun" from the outside. I have been perfectly willing to move for a job. I've changed continents, and failing that moved literally across country (vertically mind you) for another. We even moved when we had a house with a mortgage and rented out the house (at a loss) because the housing market sucked in 2008. Moving that much took a huge toll on my family. We basically decided to stop when my second kid entered school, and my wife opened her retail business. Which is to say, it ain't that simple. Have you started a retail business? I've watched first hand what it takes. My wife works easily 50% harder than I do, for 50% of what I make on a good day. She has finally gotten to the point where she has three part time employees so she can take one day a week off. She cannot simply 1099 contractors, so she has to worry about witholding, workman's compensation, and employee benefits. She has to deal with upstream suppliers, constantly finding new customers, driving business into her shop as well as subsidizing it with external events. She'd be the first to tell you that without my salary backing up the family ... she would have had to shut her doors several times. In our industry we lose site of the actual cost to run a mom-and-pop business because we can throw up a website for $20/mo and a long-weekend of work. (Isn't that what the basic premise of the Lean Startup is? Throw something economically cheap together to test the idea and bootstrap sales?) My wife's business has kept expenses low. She buys all her equipment second hand off craigslist (she's a potter not a baker so thankfully a lot of failed hobbyists make the supply on craigslist reasonable). I'd estimate her expenses before payroll are close to $2k-$3k/month for consumables and rent. Most months she breaks even after payroll, and doesn't pay herself an actual salary. If this description sounds remotely appealing, then by all means stop what you're doing and go that. Programming really is that hateful. However painting it with the rose-tinted glasses of "You get to interact with more people, get involved in your community, and people can taste the results of your work." belies the actual hard work that building a business is. It elides the fact that there will be nights you will lie awake wondering if you'll make enough sales to pay last month's rent ... let alone this month's rent. For some people that is still better than what they were doing before, but pretending that all you need is a little more gumption ... I don't know a better word for it than 'disingenuous'.