[HN Gopher] How to Know When It's Time to Go
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How to Know When It's Time to Go
Author : kiyanwang
Score : 132 points
Date : 2024-07-14 19:16 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (thecodist.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (thecodist.com)
| peterldowns wrote:
| I respect the OP's vulnerability and the advice. I've felt like
| it was "time to go" before, but as a young man I just assumed it
| was burnout, treated it that way, and got back in the game once I
| had renewed desire.
|
| Right now I feel like I'll never want to stop making things, but
| that if I were rich enough and good enough at creating in a
| different medium other than code, I completely understand the
| desire to walk away from the terminal and never look back. Few
| things have been as frustrating to me as programming. Yet since
| few things have been so rewarding, I persist.
|
| It's a great article because it's making me think about my own
| life. I'll keep pondering. Thanks for posting it.
| ricc wrote:
| Kinda similar to how Kobe Bryant knew it's time to retire from
| the game of basketball. He said in an interview
| (https://youtu.be/Ya8hY0S-8t0?t=54) that he knew it's time when
| during his morning meditations, his mind will not drift to
| basketball anymore.
| Tao3300 wrote:
| Right now I'm in this goofy spot where I'm probably walking away
| from it. Nobody _wants_ backend and API-layer Java devs anymore.
| They probably _need_ them, but they don 't know it in the midst
| of the AI bubble.
| beacon294 wrote:
| It's actually still super popular at many or most large
| companies. Not small companies.
| Tao3300 wrote:
| That's what I'd have thought, but it's looking bleak. Who do
| you have in mind?
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Look for corporate jobs outside of California/SV-type
| places. Financial firms, insurance companies, also
| universities. You won't be blazing any new trails and you
| might be shocked by the pay difference but you'll work 9-5
| with your weekends free and probably good benefits.
|
| You'll have to be able to tolerate some level of Initech-
| style management but if you just accept that and play along
| the work pace is pretty relaxed.
| kridsdale3 wrote:
| Google does.
| imiric wrote:
| This is a great retrospective. Thanks for sharing.
|
| > It's not worth working and being miserable.
|
| Agree 100%. I've quit several jobs after the environment becomes
| more stressful than fun. Over the years my tolerance for BS has
| lowered, possibly to the detriment of my bank account. But I've
| never regretted my decision to leave. The weight off my shoulders
| is priceless.
|
| > Age and ability are not correlated.
|
| I wonder how subjective this is. Cognitive decline with age is
| real, but maybe keeping the brain active with programming can
| help keep it at bay. A study about this would be interesting.
| will1am wrote:
| To prioritize well-being over enduring a toxic or stressful
| work environment
| dagss wrote:
| >> Age and ability are not correlated
|
| > ... cognitive decline..
|
| I know this is not the age groups you thought about, but on the
| topic: I think they ARE correlated, but the other way: At 40 I
| have had time to get to know so ridiculously much more than
| someone starting out in their early 20s. And I see its effect
| very real, people in early 20s (generalizing ofc) can spend so
| long on things on have seen so many times...or spend more time
| making lots of bugs and finding them than just writing the code
| with fewer bugs.
|
| Or spend their brain cycles on the "how to code" part of the
| job, instead of that just being second nature and focusing on
| the underlying ideas.
|
| Or young people may be be competent coders, but completely
| baffled reading and really grasping underlying ideas in
| existing codebases (especially this I know I have progressed at
| with training over the years..)
|
| I feel experience can be undervalued in our industry in a way
| it is not in others. It is valued... but not as much as I feel
| it should be..
|
| Of course this effects drowns a bit in the noise of all of the
| programmers like the OP talks about that barely get by, in all
| age groups. But within the set of skilled coders... from what I
| have seen, I would always prefer working with the older to the
| younger to get a project done..
|
| (Ofc there may be a point where this turns. I lack personal
| experience with coders 20 years older than myself.)
| Scarblac wrote:
| I started programming at 10 and now I'm 50, and right now it
| feels like I've reached this point -- it's boring, I have trouble
| keeping up, I feel the things work lets me work on are not
| important. Interesting work goes to younger colleagues.
|
| The problem is, I have a family and finding fulfilling work that
| you have no experience in, in this country, at 50, is close to
| impossible.
|
| So for now I consider myself lucky and try to rediscover the fun
| things in programming.
| pjmlp wrote:
| Similar age point, the problem is not keeping up, is fighting
| the continuous push to management, which I don't plan to ever
| do, unless forced by life circunstances.
|
| It appears that the only path left for us in many European
| countries, is to go freelancer, and I vouch for the same
| problem regarding skills, forget about having Github repos, or
| open source contributions, if the technology company X is
| looking for isn't the one we haved used in the last 5 years or
| so on day job.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| I'm a bit older, I don't really feel trouble keeping up but
| looking at the landscape it's just not that interesting
| anymore. So many "new" ideas are actually old ideas but the
| people pushing them are too young to know that.
|
| I don't have any doubt in my ability to learn new languages and
| frameworks, but running in that hamster wheel just gets boring
| after a while.
| altdataseller wrote:
| What are some examples of new ideas that are old?
| tra3 wrote:
| Watching web tech evolve is a good example. So much churn
| rebuilding the same thing over and over.
| nine_k wrote:
| Lambdas (in the cloud): see CGI scripts and inetd.
|
| Containers: see BSD jails, Solaris zones.
|
| WASM: see JVM and Smalltalk VM.
|
| Async / futures / actors: see Erlang, Lua, Oz.
|
| The cool type system of Typescript: see OCaml and Haskell.
|
| Numpy: see APL.
|
| Through the list above, there's usually a 20 to 40-year gap
| between the first availability and the turning into "new
| hotness".
| nequo wrote:
| Generally agreed.
|
| About WASM, it is not the first sandboxed bytecode
| interpreter but the first that runs in a browser and that
| has usable toolchains to compile not "browsers first"
| languages into it. I'd argue that that's where the
| novelty is.
| NomDePlum wrote:
| Did Java applets arguably not do this 20+ years ago?
| throw1230 wrote:
| There's always a push and pull between old and new tech
| and I agree some of the hot new tech is regurgitated old
| tech, but most of your examples aren't really comparable.
| sjrd wrote:
| It's not every day that we see Oz mentioned here! I was
| very involved in writing the Mozart/Oz 2.0 VM.
|
| I also wrote a "toy" (read: for school) dialect of Scala
| compiling to Oz and therefore turning every local
| variable or field into what Scala calls a Future, for
| free. Performance was abysmal, though! But in terms of
| language idioms, it was quite nice.
|
| ---
|
| Unrelated: about Wasm, none of what it does is new,
| obviously. What's interesting about it is that
|
| a) browser vendors agree to do it together, and
|
| b) the design grows to accommodate many source languages.
| This used not to be the case but the eventual arrival of
| WasmGC significantly redistributed the cards of the game.
|
| Relevant background here: I'm the author of the Scala to
| JavaScript compiler, and now co-author of the Scala to
| Wasm compiler.
| OnlyMortal wrote:
| I'm 55. Started as a 6502 cracker on the C64.
|
| I still get enjoyment out of some coding - C++ on Linux for
| enterprise applications - but I do miss the "magic".
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| These two perspectives are not incompatible. 49 here and
| still love programming. But only discovered that after
| quitting my Google job and spending a year working on my own
| things. Then housework wasn't getting done because I was
| writing code instead, and I realized I just love doing it,
| still, and I'm a _far far_ better programmer than I ever was
| 20 years ago. I can do things I only dreamt of back then. And
| faster!
|
| _but_ that 's not the same thing as enjoying writing the
| dreck that many employers want, and keeping up with their
| endless stack of messy JIRA issues, planning meetings, poor
| design docs, and management shenanigans....
| nine_k wrote:
| I sometimes think that big corporations pay more because
| the actual work there sucks more for an engineer (likely to
| a manager or a sales, too).
| dqh wrote:
| Are you involved in the still-thriving C64 demo scene at all?
| Possible way to reconnect with the magic if not. Especially
| by attending (in-person, ideally) one of the many demo
| parties around the world.
|
| There are also parallels with embedded device and FPGA work
| that I personally find thrilling.
|
| Plus we on the VICE (open source Commodore emulator) team are
| always looking for devs.
| YZF wrote:
| Same age. Got started on a ZX-81 and a university mainframe.
|
| I still enjoy writing code or shall we say solving problems
| via code. I still get excited about new things. I'm also a
| manager and I enjoy helping others. What I enjoy less is the
| politics.
|
| Building things is fun, I don't think this goes away, it was
| always fun and is still fun.
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| The thing is ... The industry needs us. It's making a mess all
| over and valorizing complexity and novelty. Constantly.
| Programmers with experience in our age range have, I think, a
| better sense of how to manage this and encourage simplicity
| (partially out of necessity). But age and novelty bias in our
| industry means this knowledge doesn't pass on.
|
| It's tough to tell younger engineers that have cut their teeth
| swimming in intricacies and edge cases and integration
| nightmares and constantly surfing on the edge of chaos, and
| managing it, that they're likely contributing to the problem,
| not fixing it. But someone needs to.
|
| I can't remember details like I used to, things mark&sweep out
| of my brain much faster they used to. (Probably not just
| because I'm older but because as a parent, home owner, and
| spouse... I just have a lot to manage on top of it.) But..
| really... a good system, a well-built system ... should be
| resilient to that, and people with experience.. that's
| hopefully what we build.
| alemanek wrote:
| I have been lucky enough to have been the youngest person on
| every team until my mid 30s. I worked with some truly gifted
| engineers, who had almost no ego, over the course of my
| career they just were much older than me.
|
| When I reflect I do cringe a bit at what I was zealous about
| and things I took way too far. But, I do think the
| discussion, sometimes debate, around the fancy/new vs
| tried/true resulted in much better results.
|
| Now that I am old, but not that old, the younger engineers
| who are passionately discovering new tools and "new" design
| patterns keep me interested in software development. Being
| able to share where things come from then we can
| compare/contrast together. It is rarely a straight copy and
| it's fun to see how things get better/worse with reinvention.
|
| So, I think trying to get a mix of ages on a team is really
| beneficial. Passionate young engineers help prevent the old
| engineers from getting too jaded.
| irrational wrote:
| I'm in a similar positions (in my 50s with a family to
| support). For the most part I can get my boring corporate work
| done fairly quickly. Then I spend some time each day working on
| personal programming projects where I get my true satisfaction.
| lenkite wrote:
| I _really_ thought this was going to be a post on The Go language
| when I clicked the link.
| koinedad wrote:
| I was with you on this
| geraldwhen wrote:
| I make $300K/year. I'll leave when I'm ready to retire.
|
| And if I'm lucky enough to get laid off (around retirement time),
| that would be a huge windfall to move me toward retirement.
|
| Programmers planning to work after 50 are fools.
| gambiting wrote:
| You're in like, 0.1% of programmers financially. I know living
| in certain bubbles it feels like everyone makes that kind of
| money, but it's absolutely not. It's like a lottery winner
| telling people that if they plan to work over 50 they are
| fools.
| damezumari wrote:
| By freelancing you can save nice nest egg in most places. I
| did that for 11 years in Europe and now I work because I want
| to, not because I must. Disclaimer: not consulting anymore, I
| moved back to startup grind once more because I feel more
| connected to the work than what you do as a consultant.
| tra3 wrote:
| Freelancing is another bubble I think.
|
| I don't think most developers have the skills necessary to
| freelance and/or most enterprises are not setup to work
| with freelancers.
| 01HNNWZ0MV43FF wrote:
| I don't feel like being my own boss. Shrug emoji
| geraldwhen wrote:
| Even if you make half that, which is a common offer all over
| America, you can retire early.
| gambiting wrote:
| Americans are their own little bubble again - I'd wager
| that most of the world's programmers don't live in US.
| Globally your average programmer will be someone writing
| utterly boring code making same salary as a teacher, maybe
| slightly above that if lucky. Happy to be proven wrong, but
| the whole "If you aren't making 6 figures as a programmer
| you failed at life" meme needs to go away - it's a tiny
| tiny sliver of all programmers that actually manage to
| achieve that.
| jltsiren wrote:
| Retiring early is more about expenses than income. If you
| can't retire early with $100k income, you probably can't do
| it with $300k either.
|
| Most people can't do it, because their expenses grow to
| match their income. They want bigger and better everything,
| and they always find new "mandatory" expenses. Especially
| if they have kids.
| whoknowsidont wrote:
| Programmers haven't always made this much.
| geraldwhen wrote:
| But they have, plus or minus 40% adjusted for inflation. Soul
| sucking corporate jobs have always paid well.
| whoknowsidont wrote:
| There are way, way, way more jobs that make 300k+ in our
| industry than there ever have been.
|
| It's not that these jobs have never existed, it's that they
| are in greater quantities.
| jjtheblunt wrote:
| 40% is a big fraction
| devjab wrote:
| I've been in programming for two decades and one of the things I
| enjoy about it is that things change. I did my stint in both
| architecture and management because I thought what you were
| supposed to do, but I went back to programming because I like
| programming. I've worked on so many different technologies that
| I've probably forgotten more than some people even learn yet I've
| always liked it.
|
| I do get how you can burn out, especially on the business side of
| things. A lot of jobs just aren't important. The trick is to
| avoid them if you can and leave them as soon as possible if you
| can't. Every non-startup / non-economic boom job comes with some
| degree of Kafka, and you're either going to learn to not care
| about it or go crazy. I'm not sure that is especially unique for
| programmers though, this seems to be most things. Unless you're
| extremely talented at the HR part of organisational politics
| (which most programmers aren't) you're also going to have to
| build some really stupid stuff during your career because change
| management is hard. So hard that it's virtually impossible for
| talented HR staff to do when the direction is upwards, which
| it'll always be for programmers. Again, it's something you either
| learn to laugh about or burn out on.
|
| The change in technology, however? Isn't that part of the fun? If
| it isn't, is that because you don't have the time for it? Because
| if don't (and a lot of jobs won't give you this) then you're
| frankly in one of those "leave as soon as possible" positions.
| Even so, niche work rarely dies. The author mentions mainframe
| work, but mainframe work is still some of the highest paid work
| in the world because those grey beards who actually know and want
| to do it are so retired that a lot of them are frankly dead. I'm
| not sure how you could ever work on mainframes for 40+ years and
| then not be able to get paid handsomely by banks.
|
| Anyway to each their own. It's a nice perspective, and it offers
| you a few insights into just how much of a cog in the machine
| you're going to be in virtually any job. Even one where you're
| extremely well liked and rewarded. I think the best thing I
| learned from my stint in management is how everyone, and I do
| mean everyone, is replaceable. It's just a matter of cost. Which
| can sound depressing, but it's also very liberating because it
| teaches you to not get overly attached to jobs or employers.
| hypeatei wrote:
| I recently put in a word for a senior programmer I worked with in
| a previous job and he got hired. Well, it's really clear he
| doesn't care anymore and doesn't find anything about software
| development interesting. Now I'm in a tough spot because he's a
| major burden and my manager wants to give it some more time but I
| don't see it working out.
|
| I heavily relate to this line in the article:
|
| > Some time ago, I knew a programmer with the same number of
| years of experience as me. Yet he seemed unable to comprehend
| what was required of him, and I had to review everything he wrote
| because it rarely worked
| Joeboy wrote:
| Hopefully people will tell me why I'm wrong, but right now
| programming is just feeling like a bit of a dead end in general?
| The demand seems to be for AWS gurus, data analysts, low-code,
| prompt engineering etc. I'm not against learning new things to
| stay employable, but the new things that are in demand don't
| really seem to be programming. I learned a bit of Rust because
| it's kind of new(ish) and exciting, but apparently there's a
| massive glut of Rust devs. Whereas 15 years ago I learned Python
| and my employment prospects rocketed.
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| There's two things going on. One is, yes, I think the quality
| of work mostly sucks all over.
|
| But the other is it's a down part of the cycle and there's just
| a glut of us all, and a bit of disrespect from employers as
| well.
|
| It's been a long time since we had one, and many people either
| didn't work through one before, or have forgotten.
|
| That part will bounce back. In 5 years it'll be a crazy job
| market again, and having Rust on your resume will be valuable.
|
| (To put it in perspective, I learned and wrote Python in 1996,
| 1997. And I really liked it. But nobody even knew what it was,
| and nobody would hire for it. I moved on, and lost my taste for
| dynamically typed languages, and then all the sudden Python was
| huge, and if I'd stuck with that, it would have been a big
| thing for me, I guess. I suspect a similar thing will happen
| with Rust, etc. At least I hope so, since Rust is my day-job
| :-) )
| ghaff wrote:
| Work is work and always has it's plusses and minuses.
|
| But, yes, even if the tech cycle isn't _terrible_ at the
| moment (e.g. 2021 nuclear winter) it 's definitely down. I
| somewhat regret effort and money I put in a couple of years
| ago to get myself setup to do various stuff post "retirement"
| because, while I haven't exactly been beating the bushes,
| opportunities haven't been falling off trees either.
| fifilura wrote:
| What is it that you want to build? I mean if you frown upon AWS
| gurus, analysts and low code?
|
| Programming for the sake of "writing code" is probably going to
| miss the target.
|
| For example "analyst". My take is that is where it all started.
| Someone looking at numbers and needing computers to help making
| sense of them.
| pdimitar wrote:
| > _Programming for the sake of "writing code" is probably
| going to miss the target._
|
| Why do you have to be so demeaning?
|
| I'd argue almost nobody is "writing code for the sake of
| writing code". In my case I love solving problems with code.
| Not by clicking through AWS' terrible website. Not through
| taking a deep breath and trying to reformulate a ChatGPT
| prompt for the 17th time.
| paulsutter wrote:
| > You probably don't know any retired programmers
|
| Ha I know lots of retired programmers. I was one for a while, but
| like most I really wanted to get back to work
| boomersboo wrote:
| _slow clap_
|
| ANYTHING LESS THAN PERFECT IS UNACCEPTABLE. NEVER BE SATISFIED.
|
| These kinds of posts are such utter trash. They certainly aren't
| reflective of how 98% of people can live their lives.
|
| Sure, go ahead boomer, keep telling us how we should leave
| perfectly good jobs because _checks notes_ we're bored.
|
| The most bestest rat in the maze is still just a rat.
| 01HNNWZ0MV43FF wrote:
| Never been so bored and frustrated that you just came in to
| work, dropped off your laptop, picked up your coffee mug, and
| walked out without a word?
| munchler wrote:
| I'm in my late 50's, and I still love making software, maybe even
| more now than when I was younger. What's happened to me over
| decades as a professional is that I've totally lost any interest
| in "career" or the large corporate entity that employs me. Once
| any organization grows beyond about 20 people, it starts to
| become dysfunctional, so I'll be retiring the day I can convince
| my spouse we have enough money. That will give me more time to
| work on things I care about, including software.
| WWWMMMWWW wrote:
| Call it the blackjack rule ... once you cross 21 it's a bust.
| away271828 wrote:
| For me, it was very obvious at the end. Technical but not
| programming. Felt like I was winding down. Circumstances were
| such there wasn't a lot of mobility within the company. Was
| somewhat disappointed that I didn't get a package as part of some
| layoffs but I assume powers that be didn't want to voluntarily
| lose headcount.
|
| Ended up hanging around for a year effectively working part time.
| Not sure that was the right idea or not (had lots of vacation
| which I pretty much all took) but year+ passed by and it was
| pretty obvious at that point I couldn't drag my feet any longer
| and didn't have the interest or need to do a job search.
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