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Half Life of a Tech Worker: 15 Years
Hugh Pickens writes "Matt Heusser writes that when he went to work for Google all the people he met had a sort of early-twenties look to them. 'Like the characters in Microserfs, these were "firstees," young adults in the middle of the first things like life: First job out of college, first house, first child, first mini-van,' writes Heusser. 'This is what struck me: Where were the old dudes?' and then he realized something very important — you get fifteen years. 'That is to say, your half-life as a worker in corporate America is about age thirty-five. Around that time, interviews get tougher. Your obligations make you less open to relocation, the technologies on your resume seem less-current, and your ability find that next gig begins to decrease.' By thirty-five, half the folks who started in technology have gone on to something else — perhaps management, consulting, on to roles in 'the business' or in operations. 'Yet a few stick it out. Half of the half-life is fifty, and, sure, perhaps 25% of the folks who started as line technologists will still be doing that when they turn fifty,' adds Heusser. 'But by the time you turn thirty-five, you'd better have a plan.'"
My (very skilled, very capable, but 8 years younger) lead programmer asked out loud to our team of 4 -- in all sincerity -- "What's the maximum number stored in a byte?"
My fellow programmers -- one the same age as my lead, the other a Java dev, -- didn't have the answer. I said "255!", and they looked at me like I was an alien. "Is that right?"
That's when I knew: "I'm getting old."
I'm only 34!
Hey, I have a lot guns, and I feel like you're demeaning them. Guns are people too, man. They have feelings.
This signature has Super Cow Powers
my knowledge general. I like all things IT, programming, database, networking, OS (Linux and Windows), and all the things those entail
That's way too narrow a focus. You only have one scope. You don't know anything about electronics including analog systems, embedded controllers and their OS, power distribution and backup systems, high performance computing and distributed systems. What about the important OS that move the worlds money, like z/VM, z/OS, OpenVMS, MP, besides the Unix HP/UX, AIX, Solaris? heck, you don't even know BSD? Lazy uninformed git.....
8D
+ Insightful?
Someone deserves to be crippled for life simply for firing an overpayed server-rebooter?