[HN Gopher] How do you handle your Aging in IT?
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How do you handle your Aging in IT?
I've noticed in the last couple of years, the mind's a little
slower, the flame isn't quite as bright, the desire to learn
YetAnotherProduct isn't there. When I was younger, I remembered the
grey haired hackers that were a little abrasive, knew their stuff
and didn't take crap from their employer...and that's starting to
resonate with me. And I'm really not sure I have a forum of people
I can talk to about it. It's not something you want to volunteer at
work, and it's not something someone who isn't in IT might fully
understand. There's a little anxiety in that I've still got a
decade or so before retirement and am afraid of being left
behind....but when you learn your 7th SIEM, they all kinda look the
same after awhile, and most of the administration is getting sewn
up behind the scenes in the cloud. OR should I just suck it up?
Author : Damogran6
Score : 11 points
Date : 2021-02-01 21:44 UTC (1 hours ago)
| horsawlarway wrote:
| So I'm in an interesting position of having watched several of my
| family members deal with this - My father and two of my uncles
| do(/did) software development for a living.
|
| My father ended up starting his own company in partnership with
| several of his then coworkers, he no longer develops and has
| transitioned to a sales position.
|
| One uncle got out of the industry entirely.
|
| One uncle is doing management at a software company started about
| 8 years ago (He absolutely hates it, but doesn't think he can
| swing another job change and is waiting until retirement in a
| year or two).
|
| ----
|
| My take aways from watching them go through this:
|
| - There seems to be a real wall at 45. Many of your early skills
| are expiring, you don't relate as well culturally with the
| younger devs at small shops, and you're too expensive for well
| established companies (why pay you extra for your 20 years of
| experience when they can pay a freshly minted college grad half
| as much?).
|
| - Consulting is an option, but you need a strong grasp of a
| specialty area, and you need to be able to understand business
| and people problems more than software problems in many cases
| (this is essentially the route my father took)
|
| - Management is an option, but A: It's not for everyone (My uncle
| is miserable). B: it's hard to swing a position in management
| without either taking a risky position at a very early stage
| company, working your way into it over several years, or having
| the right contacts within the industry to point you at new
| opportunities.
|
| ---
|
| Personally? My plan is to no longer be in the industry at 45 (I'm
| mid 30s now). Ageism is absolutely real, and it's fairly
| pervasive in the software industry (and if I'm being honest, a
| lot of society in general).
|
| I have 15 years or so to plan, and I've been experimenting with a
| variety of things I think I might enjoy as a breath of fresh air
| - I recently registered a company as an agricultural nursery in
| my state (focused on landscaping plants with a small division set
| aside for locally popular fruiting trees/bushes [blueberries,
| figs, stonefruit]).
|
| I've also been doing hobbyist carpentry for several years, and
| I've recently starting taking commissions from family and friends
| (not really for profit yet, mostly to continue building skills
| and develop a network of contacts).
|
| I'm also investing in property (Tax liens - not rental management
| or flipping).
|
| ---
|
| My kids will be end of highschool by the time I hit 45, and I'm
| not convinced I'll be recommending they attend college, so I plan
| to have expenses drop dramatically.
|
| When I'm ready - I plan to have a frank discussion with my
| employer at the time about cutting hours in exchange for cutting
| salary, with the end goal being to transition income to my other
| activities.
| haecceity wrote:
| Don't age.
| runjake wrote:
| I don't handle it.
|
| I just try to stay fit with exercise and nutrition, get plenty of
| sleep, and do what I can. Mentor where I can, and also learn from
| the youngs and learn their perspectives.
|
| And I don't beat myself up over any perceived shortcomings.
| Damogran6 wrote:
| I'm thinking feeling 'not as sharp' is exacerbating the growing
| skills gap. There's ALWAYS been stuff I didn't know, It's just
| that now that seems to be accelerating and I'm not as well
| equipped to handle it.
|
| Doubly so where security is concerned. You used to secure
| something by knowing all aspects of the application...you knew
| the OS, the software, the firewall rules, you had a small batch
| of logs you could conceivably review.
|
| Now it's fully automated and just....goes. A deceptively small
| action produces a substantial result, 99% of it being
| abstracted away.
| Jtsummers wrote:
| If you're feeling it to be too difficult (or you lack the
| desire) to keep up with all the changes, you still have a lot
| of knowledge and experience. It may be time to change the
| kinds of places you work at and what you work on. As an
| example, I have worked in the defense and aerospace industry
| (so far my whole career, working on changing that). We get a
| _lot_ of people coming to us at 50+ and 60+ years old with a
| lot of useful knowledge that 's more applicable to our domain
| than most other domains, even though they weren't in our
| field before.
|
| This works because, even though many of our projects are new,
| they're still very much "legacy" in the way things work and
| the languages and tools used. You could explore employers who
| have those kind of legacy systems that you have expertise in.
| Either to help extend their useful life, or to help dismantle
| them and migrate to a more "modern" (whatever that means to
| them) system.
| raarts wrote:
| Even though everything kinda looks the same, there's still plenty
| of new tech left that IS fun and interesting. I kept reading HN
| daily, and I still pick up new tech, and ideas. BTW that's also
| the way to stay relevant and keep getting impressed looks from
| the youngsters. Maybe you can't pick up the tech as fast as when
| you were young, but because of your experience you surely can
| pick it up in a better way, get deeper understanding.
|
| Final thought: mentor. Or teach. You have more to offer than you
| realize. Age isn't valued enough in IT.
| Damogran6 wrote:
| I still spend a lot of time with the tech, it's the stuff that
| brings me home a paycheck I'm most concerned about. With the
| cloudification of a lot of these services (security
| specifically, as it's what I've seen the most from vendors
| lately) more and more people need fewer and fewer technical
| resources as it's concentrated in SaaS.
|
| I could see some serious opportunity in teaching. From an OSI
| model standpoint, everybody's hanging out in layers 6 and 7,
| and everything beneath it is 'magic'.
| lucasgonze wrote:
| You have to be sharper than before. Age is a point against you,
| so you have to step up your game.
| kleer001 wrote:
| > OR should I just suck it up?
|
| Why not both?
|
| I'm certain you've got the soft skills to stand up for yourself
| as well as blow off a little steam all while doing your job at a
| satisfactory level.
| Damogran6 wrote:
| Sure, there's plenty of opportunity there, and a little
| pressure to manage. I don't want to manage. That would take the
| last little bit of technical enjoyment and remove it
| completely. That doesn't make sense to me.
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(page generated 2021-02-01 23:03 UTC)