[HN Gopher] The Most Dangerous Email (to my career) I've Sent
___________________________________________________________________
The Most Dangerous Email (to my career) I've Sent
Author : dnoberon
Score : 80 points
Date : 2024-08-30 17:03 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.notyourlanguage.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.notyourlanguage.com)
| dnoberon wrote:
| The title might be a little dramatic, but I poured my heart into
| this article. I had to make some drastic decisions and big
| changes with regards to my career trajectory - and if I can
| inspire others to be true to themselves, then I'll be happy.
| ezekg wrote:
| I'm assuming it went good? Sorry if I missed it in the article.
| dnoberon wrote:
| It went well yeah, it's a little bit at the end that I should
| have spent more time on :). We're stopping the climb up the
| management ladder and are identifying other resources to
| handle those responsibilities.
| jeffreygoesto wrote:
| You already are. Thank you for describing how these thoughts
| can pull you in the two directions and that you could prevent
| to let them tear you apart in the end. I hope you found
| mentor(s) who you could reflect the path forward with without
| having to burn bridges. In fact a sequel how it turned out
| would be interesting.
| x0x0 wrote:
| > _meetings, on-sites, and bureaucracy - leaving very little
| time for actual work which produced any kind of real artifact_
|
| All those things are actual work, they just produce different
| artifacts, eg an aligned team and correct decisions and proper
| risk assessment diffused through an org. Again, nothing wrong
| with choosing the career you want, but I think this perspective
| is simply wrong.
| dnoberon wrote:
| You're absolutely right. I guess those artifacts don't
| resonate with me - and I did mention there's nothing wrong
| with enjoying this in the article. Good catch, I'll see if I
| can't reword it a bit :)
| smodo wrote:
| It definitely resonates. I am afraid of there being an upper
| bound to the amount of management work I can do without burning
| out. And yet I still get promoted every year and continue up
| the ladder... interestingly I have the exact same rationale for
| this: that I need to be untouchable by the time I'm 50. So your
| article is a nice reminder that all that is something I made up
| and keep telling myself.
| foobarian wrote:
| I'm fortunate to be in a company where there isn't a
| stereotypical push for senior dev to "switch to management."
| I'm happily doing the IC thing but feel like I am on the other
| end of the pendulum swing a bit, in that I feel like I maybe
| _should_ look into the management path before I get too old and
| out of date. The main thing that stops me is that so far I 've
| been able to adopt and learn new tech reasonably well (or so I
| think!) so I suppose as long as that continues I shouldn't mess
| with what ain't broken. :-)
| Spooky23 wrote:
| Thanks for doing this. It's hard to talk about this sort of
| thing with yourself, much less the world!
|
| I've been fortunate to be able to reboot a few times within an
| organization, most recently running a division with hundreds of
| people then pivoting to a small, strategic group with a
| specific high priority mission. It's good to reboot sometimes
| and good to be able to tamp down the ego aspects of advancement
| that often keep us doing things we don't like.
| jjulius wrote:
| Good for you for recognizing what you need and shooting for it.
| Like you say in the article, you're one of the lucky who have
| taken that shot and had it work out for you, and I feel like
| I'm in a similar boat.
|
| Our first kid was born two weeks before California shut down
| (the first state to do so) for the pandemic. I was stuck in a
| shitty job with shitty bosses who expected the world (eg, made
| me lay off 75% of my team in 2019 and proceeded to insist I
| produce more than before, while telling me to expect "More of
| the same!", with a perverse enthusiasm, in the coming years
| when I asked what our long-term plan was, but I digress -
| shoutout to Apto Solutions!). We had no family living near us,
| so it was just the two of us raising our first kid in the
| middle of a lockdown while I worked in-office and my wife tried
| to somehow simultaneously work FT from home while caring for a
| newborn. That wasn't tenable, so we uprooted to a more
| affordable region that had us surrounded by family in early
| 2021. I did the stay-at-home-dad thing for the better part of
| 2021 until it was time to get back into the swing of things.
|
| My first interview was at Intel, through a staffing agency, and
| it sounded goddamned miserable as a new-ish father - rotating
| shifts (so I'd be required to do graveyards and swing shifts
| every few weeks), no office (the team I'd be working with said
| that they had to come in every morning and find whatever
| conference room might be available that day to post up in), the
| expectation that on my off days (yes, even vacations) I would
| need to respond to all emails and messages within _one hour_
| (so, how do I fly on a plane or hike in the woods on my day
| off?), and at the end of every week you had to present your
| numbers for the week to Intel staff in a way that sounded a
| hell of a lot like, "Please justify your existence to us and
| convince us that we should keep you here". It sounded goddamned
| miserable.
|
| My next interview was the opposite - for a company in the
| education sector that promoted a healthy work-life balance and
| a focus on family. So, I leaned into it _hard_ - I told my now-
| boss during the interview that I was coming out of a very
| rough, stressful and unreasonable working environment and that
| I have no desire to put up with anything like that ever again.
| I said that my primary focus has to be my family, and that I
| refused to "take home" any stress or work, that I would put
| 110% into my job while I'm in the office but 0% outside, that
| my phone would be set up to not notify me of anything
| afterhours, and that at that point in my life, I had zero
| desire to climb the corporate ladder and would be more than
| content sitting in the same position for a good chunk of time.
|
| I thought for sure that their rhetoric around work-life balance
| and such would be bullshit, but I got the job, and it's
| _exactly like they described_. The flexibility and support for
| all of us to prioritize ourselves, whatever that looks like, is
| amazing, and I feel _incredibly_ lucky to be here. I can shut
| off at the end of the day and, in three years, I 've yet to
| take work home with me in any sense of the phrase.
|
| And now that three years have passed and my kids are a bit
| older, I've been candid about taking more on and maybe moving
| up the ladder a bit (within reason/my sanity), and they've been
| very supportive of it.
|
| All that rambling is to say, lean in to whatever it is that you
| know you need. Reach for it, ask for it, insist on it. It might
| not always work out, but you may get lucky and end up getting
| it, and boy is it damn sweet if you do.
| rekabis wrote:
| You figured out what is right _for you._
|
| Kudos x100.
|
| Far too few people ever recognize their breaking point, and
| just continue trying to push forward because that's the
| capitalist manifesto - growth at any cost.
|
| You learned from your own breaking point, and intentionally
| chose an alternative path that fit you better. That _by
| default_ makes you more self-aware than many.
| Terretta wrote:
| The dangerous thing to me was not the email, it was asserting
| the misunderstanding that additional years results in
| inutility.
|
| "Up or out" doesn't have to mean up the org chart. It can mean
| up your value through mastery, which you clearly feel you have
| within a set of disciplines.
|
| It took some number of years to become "the best" at those
| things you described being good at. Whatever activities you
| were doing those years that made you the best, _keep doing
| them_ ... applied to adjacencies.
|
| Later in life, after people have been good at some things for a
| while, it's an ego boost. They forget what it felt like to be
| _not good_ at things, _and that that was OK_. They become
| inhibited from learning by both ego pain of doing something
| badly, and mental pain of reformatting brain and behaviors to
| fit in new learning.
|
| If at 40 you have 20 years of getting good at things, at 60 you
| can have another 20 years of getting good at additional things.
| Innovation and mastery of systems comes from multi-
| disciplinary, multi-system understanding. The additional years
| _can_ make you more useful, not less.
|
| Arguably, it boils down to: do you like learning, and do you
| like what you do. If yes to both, there's no reason you can't
| keep accumulating ability to deliver value.
| htrp wrote:
| I think this is a great article explaining exactly why it's okay
| to step off the career progression ladder and say this is what I
| want to do.
|
| The alternative is the Peter principle where you end up promoted
| upwards until you fail.
|
| OP, I wonder if you had frank talks with your line management
| about your long term career trajectory or if this was a sudden
| realization?
| dnoberon wrote:
| We talked frequently but I always kept my reservations about
| continually moving up the ladder pretty hidden. It wasn't until
| this realization and acceptance that I finally was extremely
| open and frank about things.
| Xcelerate wrote:
| > The alternative is the Peter principle where you end up
| promoted upwards until you fail.
|
| I mean... to play devil's advocate, if each promotion
| accelerates the compounding of your investments to the point
| where by the time you fail you've already reached financial
| independence, then oh well? Can always go back down the ladder
| or jump to different types of ladders at your convenience then.
| itishappy wrote:
| I'd love to live in a world where failure is free, but this
| aint it. This seems like it has potential to poison your
| image and potentially harm others as well.
| ComputerGuru wrote:
| There are many different types of "dangerous" things you can do
| for your career, and some are worse (and more permanent) than
| others.
|
| The most "dangerous" thing for my career was when I started
| posting about what's happening in Gaza and Palestine on my public
| social media accounts. I've heard similar horror stories from
| others, ranging from being let go from their jobs to missing out
| on new opportunities and positions, specifically or
| "incidentally" as a result of their decision to speak out.
| ebcode wrote:
| Yeah, I wonder if OP could replace "most dangerous" with "most
| honest" and not lose the meaning.
|
| Good on you for speaking out, and thanks for doing so.
| marcellus23 wrote:
| Thankfully it seems like the danger around that is much less
| now than it was in the first few months after October 7. Though
| unfortunately probably still present.
| engineer_22 wrote:
| Yeah, freedom of speech used to be sacred... No longer.
| mikepurvis wrote:
| Freedom of speech has never meant freedom from consequences,
| particularly in one's dealings with private individuals or
| corporations.
|
| At best it's supposed to mean no reprisals from _public_
| institutions, such as the TSA, IRS, DMV, and the like.
| oceanplexian wrote:
| It should if you have some semblance of professionalism. At
| work I don't want to know nor want to know about the
| politics of the people working with me.
|
| If I'm engaged in a business transaction I don't care about
| the personal views of the person I'm buying or selling
| from. Call me old fashioned but the world used to be that
| way before the rise of social media addictions and the
| current online echo chambers in our society.
| 0cf8612b2e1e wrote:
| Pick the "wrong" group you find utterly distasteful
| (Nazi, anti-Nazi, conservative, liberal, gay, homophobic,
| etc).
|
| If I find the person's views abhorrent, not a surprise I
| would choose not to do business with them if I had
| alternatives.
| tpmoney wrote:
| And one should have that right, but whether one should
| exercise that right is another matter. A thought
| experiment: If you could pick any point in history and
| make it so all people expressing socially unpopular views
| were permanently cast out from society, and all other
| people never spoke or traded or dealt with them ever
| again, when would you choose to freeze social opinion?
| Which modern day group of normal every day people, who we
| consider unobjectionable now, would be cast into the
| dustbin of history if societal opinion was frozen at your
| chosen moment of time?
| 0cf8612b2e1e wrote:
| Really upping the ante if my personal morals lead to
| banishment of another. This was in the context of
| choosing business partners when I had the option.
|
| Not all of my beliefs are likely to be perfectly rational
| such that I could objectively defend them. That still
| means I can pick and choose my friends without casting
| the rest to oblivion.
|
| If the question is, "What happens if all of society
| rejects X group for their beliefs", well that's
| civilization. Part of the implicit agreement is that we
| can all reasonably agree on some things. If someone
| rejects that notion, well, there can be consequences
| (even for the "correct" position (say civil rights)).
| tpmoney wrote:
| Sure, but my larger point is that I believe people should
| strive for free speech maximalism even in their private
| dealings, and even within the private dealings, we should
| strive to make the consequences we impose minimally
| "dangerous". There's no bright lines to be had, and
| everyone will have different limits, and every situation
| will have different criteria applied to them. But overall
| I'd rather err (and see other people err) on the side of
| being too permissive rather than not permissive enough.
| On the scale of less to more permissive, I'd probably
| argue that the order would be something like "friends",
| "business partners", "employees", "contractors". The less
| likely you are to be inviting someone over for dinner,
| the more permissive you should probably be over how their
| outside speech impacts your business dealings with them.
|
| People only change by exposure to new ideas, and if all
| the "bad people" and all the "good people" never mix,
| then what hope do the "good people" have that any "bad
| people" will learn to think differently?
|
| Basically, I really don't want to live in a world where
| it's normal for my boss to go trolling through my HN
| comment history before deciding whether I get a promotion
| or not, no matter how much of a right they have to do
| that. I'm not ashamed of the things I've said here (to
| the best of my knowledge), I just don't think that having
| a discussion with other people, about topics that don't
| directly bear on my work should be used when determining
| how to treat me at work. I am not so conceited as to
| think I am right all the time or that my bosses would
| agree with every thought I have. Which is why I have
| these discussions here, with other people engaged in the
| topic and not at work, with my bosses who weren't talking
| about the topic in the first place.
| rekabis wrote:
| > At best it's supposed to mean no reprisals from public
| institutions, such as the TSA, IRS, DMV, and the like.
|
| That is the _ONLY_ purpose of "free speech" - that
| _governments and their institutions_ cannot prevent you
| from speaking freely.
|
| And even there, some small exceptions should be carved out
| in terms of clearly unambiguous hate speech and bigotry.
| But with the Republican Party (in America, specifically)
| becoming Christofascist fundamentalists (Canada has the CPC
| and it's openly racist little sibling, the PPC), good luck
| with blunting the hate speech and rampant bigotry that is
| the conservative platform's bread-and-butter.
| tpmoney wrote:
| > That is the ONLY purpose of "free speech" - that
| governments and their institutions cannot prevent you
| from speaking freely.
|
| I'm not sure I look forward to an America where the
| social norms, when the "Republican Party becoming
| Christofascist fundamentalists" is voted into power
| again, that make it routine for people to be denied
| employment, banking services or promotions because they
| aren't sufficiently Christian.
|
| Freedom from governmental intervention is _ONE_ purpose
| of free speech. But without social norms that encourage
| private restraint as well, we would be living in the very
| same Christofascist hell you already fear. Ask anyone who
| grew up in a small insular town what sort of damage
| "private" individuals can do when the social norm is
| punishing you for speech they didn't like.
| tpmoney wrote:
| Freedom of speech at its _minimum_ is freedom of reprisal
| from government institutions. But it is also (or should be)
| a set of social norms, and a goal to aspire to. A freedom
| which is only enjoyed against the government is useful, but
| without public support is fragile. Without the social norms
| to back it up, it is easier for demagogues and tyrants to
| chip away at those freedoms, until all thats left is
| technicalities and de-minimus freedom.
|
| A world where your every word is analyzed, scrutinized and
| ground through the sausage factory that is current popular
| trends and then used for or against you at arbitrary times
| in arbitrary and distantly connected ways is a world that
| is pure hell. Most of us experienced something similar in
| middle school. Many might have experienced such a world in
| small insular communities where everyone knows your
| business. What good is freedom of speech when social norms
| make it such that exercising that freedom is punished just
| as destructively from society itself as it is from the
| government? If you can lose your income, your livelihood,
| access to food or even your home from private institutions
| reacting to your speech - and that is a normalized thing to
| happen - how is that functionally different from being
| jailed for your speech? At least if the government jails
| you for your speech, they have to house and feed you. If
| your industry blacklists you, and your bank freezes your
| accounts, and your grocer closes the doors in your face,
| then what do you do?
|
| Should apartments disqualify you from renting a place
| because you support Palestine or Israel? Should banks deny
| you a mortgage for what religion you subscribe to? Should
| your boss deny you a promotion because you are a registered
| democrat? Should your company fire you because you are a
| registered republican? Should the local pharmacy refuse to
| serve you because you support the black panthers? Should
| you local grocery store refuse you entry because you donate
| to the salvation army? If you support unions should AT&T
| cut off your phone service? If you support right to repair
| should Amazon stop shipping to you? If you support Net
| Neutrality should your ISP deny you service? These are all
| private individuals or corporations, and of course "freedom
| of speech is no freedom from consequences". They probably
| do (modulo some court cases restricting that in certain
| circumstances) and should have that right if they really
| chose to exercise it but having the right to do something
| is not the same as whether you should do something, or
| whether doing that thing should be a normal thing to do.
|
| Mind you I think no one _should_ post about any major issue
| on social media because I consider posting on social media
| to be the equivalent of trying to hold a debate by way of
| bumper stickers. But people do post about major issues on
| social media. And some non-insignificant fraction of those
| people are going to be "wrong" on one or more of the
| things they post about, and sometimes egregiously so. But I
| don't want to live in a world where it is routine for
| someone who is on the opposite side of an issue as me to be
| denied a mortgage, even if that means they might become my
| neighbor. I don't want to live in a world where someone who
| is "wrong" about some massively complex multi-decade geo-
| political minefield is denied promotions or hiring, even if
| that means I might work with or for them. The personal
| might be political, but not all of us have the luxury of
| being able to live in politics all day long, and only
| associate with the right kinds of people. Not all of us
| have the luxury to be allowed to have the right politics,
| whether because of lack of education, or possibly because
| of those same private individuals and corporations already
| exercising their right to inflict "consequences".
|
| Private companies and individual might and should have the
| ability to make their own association decisions, but that
| doesn't mean I don't want them to hold themselves to high
| standards and aim for impossible to achieve ideals. Because
| the alternative is that we live in a world where either you
| or I are at serious risk of losing everything we have
| because of this exchange.
| sudopluto wrote:
| "about what's happening in Gaza and Palestine" seems like a
| euphemism for some more emotional / inflammatory posts. It's
| not a violation of free speech for a private corporation to
| make an at-will employment decision to protect their PR
| image.
| jules-jules wrote:
| Thank you for speaking out. There are so many who are too
| afraid sadly.
| firesteelrain wrote:
| Since you mentioned Gaza and Palestine, I assume you are
| against Israel's response. I don't want to turn this comment
| section into that at all. I just wanted to say I feel that I
| can't speak in support of Israel. The opposite can also be
| true.
|
| Again, not wanting to turn this into a Palestine/Gaza/Israel
| thing just pointing out that people on the other side feel the
| same way.
| threatofrain wrote:
| In the US the more mainstream position is to support Israel,
| and only recently has there been a semblance in the change in
| trajectory. That's why both major parties come out in support
| of Israel.
| rekabis wrote:
| > In the US the more mainstream position is to support
| Israel
|
| The lobbyists for the military/industrial complex are
| numerous and exceedingly well-paid.
|
| > That's why both major parties come out in support of
| Israel.
|
| Which is how and why campaign contributions have become a
| systemic evil - it chains the platforms of politicians to
| the desires of the wealthy and powerful, thereby
| eliminating any ability for politicians to "do the
| morally/ethically correct thing".
|
| Most of the western world was philosophically "on Israel's
| side" because of the unrelenting evil of Hamas -- Hamas
| does't care if every single Palestinian dies, so long as
| they "win". Plus, genocide of the entire Israeli population
| has been baked into Hamas' DNA from the beginning. But with
| this war, Israel has gone all "hold my beer and watch
| this", and is making a legitimately successful bid at
| becoming the materially greater evil.
|
| It's an ESH situation, with the Palestinian people caught
| in the crossfire.
| ezekg wrote:
| I resonate with this. Thanks for sharing. I had similar emotions
| when I penned my resignation email after I decided to go full-
| time on my business.
| dnoberon wrote:
| I hear that - these moments are hard to forget.
| neilv wrote:
| > _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.
| dnoberon wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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?
| UniverseHacker wrote:
| > 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 wrote:
| 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.
| UniverseHacker wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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)
| mrj wrote:
| This is the way a lot of people feel lately, and it's
| nothing to do with being a dinosaur. It's a whole movement.
|
| I'm wary though, because lots of things start nicely but
| fail to manage complexity of even a moderately sized app,
| and everything grows over time. I feel like a lot of people
| are going to rediscover why we started making everything a
| SPA.
|
| There have been a lot of approaches on the frontend over
| the years and it's been my job too many times to clean up
| where that approach eventually collapsed as the app grew
| larger or ran into limitations. I am looking for the
| upgrade path -- I want to start simple but not risk an
| _entire_ rewrite when the complexity exceeds that pattern.
| To date, very few of these things work well enough together
| to consider it seriously. (htmx+react would work fine but
| you 'd pay a large cost for upgrading a single component,
| like rewriting it and a chunk of new runtime code. And if
| everything eventually gets more complex, somebody starts
| asking "why we have two ways of doing things?? We should
| consolidate!" And the rewrite cycle continues...)
|
| It's a balance between hard-won experience and becoming too
| wary of new things. It's hard to see new frameworks
| completely based on events, for example, and not cry does
| nobody remember that we tried it already? Having a glob of
| untyped context in Angular v1 was always bad, and I refused
| it even when it made me look like a dinosaur back then. But
| React was a great pattern for complex code, and I
| immediately switched to that. I would switch to something
| tomorrow if it kept those good parts, like handling complex
| apps, but didn't have to render everything a minimum of two
| times server and client. Maybe a new winner will emerge.
|
| Experience is still good to have. It doesn't === dinosaur.
| Instead, it has saved me a lot of misadventures.
| arp242 wrote:
| > 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.
|
| I agree; at some point someone said that I'm "like the
| anti-vaxxer of frontend development", because "I'm not
| listening to the experts". Hmkay.
|
| Maybe I'm old and stuck in my ways. But telling people
| they're like anti-vaxxers because they disagree with them
| (with caveats: "SPA is nice for some things, but for many
| template-driven apps are better") means you're just as much
| "stuck in your ways".
| lo_zamoyski wrote:
| I think we _must_ remember to mention "rationality" in such
| conversations whenever we speak of things like "rigidity".
|
| Rigidity is a kind of irrational stubbornness, and
| unwillingness to consider alternatives when reason compels
| otherwise. Someone who is principled and has a reasoned basis
| for his principles isn't stubborn or rigid. He's principled.
| His certainty isn't irrational, because it is rooted in the
| best justifications he has, perhaps even very good
| justifications that have successfully resisted all
| counterarguments he has heard, perhaps justifications that
| necessarily follow and could not be otherwise. Certainty is
| not a sin if rationally justified. Indeed, there is a
| performative contradiction in claiming that it is with
| certainty.
| UniverseHacker wrote:
| Good point, those are totally different things, but it is
| often hard for someone else to tell the difference unless
| you explain.... explaining can also be a complex issue in
| office politics, because some people will see explaining as
| seeking and requiring their approval, and therefore
| subordinating yourself to them.
| umvi wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| yodsanklai wrote:
| Sounds like an extremely prejudiced individual...
| j-scott wrote:
| I've lurked on hacker news for a number of years, and this post
| is what inspired me to finally make an account. Thank you for
| sharing; this aligns with my current situation and reinforces my
| recent decision that I need to make a change.
| dnoberon wrote:
| I hope that the change goes well!
| slibhb wrote:
| The email could have been pared down significantly. The idea that
| a programmer might want to solve problems directly rather than
| manage others should be well known at this point. The company I
| work for has an "individual contributor" career track for this
| reason. You can simply say it straight out without all the fluff,
| which is most of the email.
|
| That aside, I'm happy it worked out and I understand it's hard to
| send an email like that.
| jll29 wrote:
| > The company I work for has an "individual contributor" career
| track for this reason.
|
| I once worked for a large information company that had a split
| between technical career paths (individual contributors to
| architects) and managerial career paths (individual contributor
| to manager to directors). So I stated in my HR profile that I
| aspire a technical career track to make sure, and told my
| management.
|
| A few months on, I was sitting on a beach in Croatia during a
| vacation with my now-wife when my phone rang, and my boss told
| me I was promoted to Director. The reasoning was that the group
| I was leading would be taken more seriously if it was headed by
| someone who was himself at Director level, the same level as
| the peers that I would be doing projects for/with. Thankfully
| my team was small enough so I could stay reasonably technical,
| but I still envied the folks that "were allowed to write code
| every day" a bit.
| martin293 wrote:
| How did it work out for you in the end?
| hluska wrote:
| I enjoyed the article and it reminded me of many experiences in
| my career. However, this sentence bothers me:
|
| "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."
|
| I'm in my forties and none of those things are true about me. Nor
| are they true about any of the other older developers I know.
| There isn't this magic switch that goes off when we turn forty.
|
| When I extrapolate from there, it makes me genuinely wonder how
| many of the writer's problems stem from the position versus how
| many stem from a serious lack of empathy and the communication
| difficulties that creates.
|
| The best management advice that I ever received was to always
| consider if a management problem is actually the sign of a
| personal problem. If it is, it's my job to manage to fix that
| before I make my workplace more toxic.
| recursive wrote:
| Having decades of experience gives me a certain degree of
| skepticism about promises that some shiny new widget will solve
| all my problems. From the outside, this might look like I'm
| stuck in my ways.
| partypete wrote:
| For what it's worth, I am a relatively young engineer who has
| recently been working very closely with other engineers over
| the age of 55 on a daily basis. It has been one of the more
| enriching periods in my career so far. I often wonder if the
| ageism that I see so often referred to on Hackernews is more
| projection than reality because I consistently find it pleasant
| to work with individuals who have a very large body of
| experience to draw from. Ageism in general baffles me as one
| could very well ask the question: "would you rather have a
| carpenter with 2 years of experience working on your house, or
| one with 30 years of experience?" The answer seems obvious to
| me, and the question could easily be applied to software
| engineering.
| howard941 wrote:
| Being on the receiving end of ageism I can assure you it's
| not the victim doing the projecting. Management, that's the
| problem.
| mrj wrote:
| I don't feel that way either. But the 40+ year old devs when I
| was a fresh faced kid where from a whole different world. One
| guy wouldn't let go of Novell running on DOS. There are hard
| paradigm switches sometimes in tech, but many fewer today than
| back then. Every big switch loses some people that decide,
| "nope don't like it" and don't keep up.
|
| I really, really think that most ageism in tech is driven by
| similar memories of the old crowd when we were coming up. I
| mean, I fought for years (years!) to get Linux accepted by the
| older devs and had to sneak Postgres past the Oracle
| greybeards. Yet I am not that person blocking progress now, nor
| do I see the same with my peers. If a new tech has merit, we
| learn it. We grew up with tech and are plenty used to making
| those switches.
|
| If anything, I'm way better at handling change than when I was
| younger and headstrong. And 25 years in industry has given me
| lots of practice.
| pacija wrote:
| To realize one does not want to climb the ladder is fine. To
| realize there isn't any ladder to climb is enlightenment.
| big-green-man wrote:
| It's said that people rise to the level of their incompetence.
| Some leaders might see this and think, this guy is dangerous and
| we can't have that. If I were a leader at his firm and I got that
| email I'd be thrilled. If everyone admit their limits and thought
| like this all companies would run more smoothly. He rises to the
| level of maximum competence, the perfect place for him, he won't
| be bitter about not getting the next promotion and cause trouble
| by leaving for seemingly greener pastures, and he will be
| reliable in handling his work load because he's comfortable with
| it. People like this are valuable assets in an organization, it's
| a shame that a lot of people don't see it, they look upon ladder
| climbing as admirable, but ambition is about taking you where you
| want to be, recognizing when you've achieved that is much more
| admirable.
| arp242 wrote:
| > 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.
|
| There are always people who have a lot of "soft power" just on
| account of years on the job. This probably happens everywhere, in
| all types of jobs. I've also seen this in sales departments and
| warehouses. This is compounded by the fact that incompetency
| tends to chase away the competent (not even "talented", just
| "competent") once the incompetency reaches a critical mass.
|
| I do feel that lack of older programmers saying "steady on there
| kiddo" is a problem. "Stuck in your ways"? Maybe. But there's a
| lot of value in both "proven to work" and "knowing the devil
| you're dealing with".
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