Developement-wise, I can hang with the 20 something crowd, no problems. I just can't compete with the single/no kids thing.
I encounter people and teams that are just unwilling to adopt contemporary development and deployment practices. The article notes that Hipchat was a struggle to get approval for, yet I often run into people at CMS that never log in to it and prefer tons of emails. Deployments aren't automated and still happen for some teams on calls during maintenance periods once a week. I've had people in technical capacities ask what GitHub is.
The problem is institutional, it really has nothing to do with young people working 10 hour days. I care about my work-life balance -- I'm too old to crash on the couch at my startup's office like I did at past jobs in my 20s -- but I also keep up with contemporary development practices, make a point to study a new language every year, read academic papers, and care about my work. I don't think I can say the same about most devs I've encountered in government. The consulting firms are incentivized to build walls and protect the way they do business in order to keep getting that contract money.
If you're an older dev that is intellectually curious in the practice and art of software development I think you'll be fine.
the problem is that labor doesn't scale very well. 2 talented young programmers working all-out 12 hours a day on one project will generally be more productive than 3 talented folks with family working all-out 8 hours a day. (Agile, git, etc. all try to fix this to a degree... ) The current economic situation is that startups have very very deep pockets and will pay an insane premium to have stuff ASAP - which will mean very small, very overworked, very talented "rock stars".
If you want to fix healthcare.gov and the president's reputation is on the line, you'll get the rockstarest rockstars you can find and slave drive them till it's done
If you want a good work life balance I recommend the defense sector - but again - expect a pay cut. (like $120K end of career in SoCal vs. $250K in SF)
There's actually a lot of research that says it's the opposite.[1] The big difference, I think, is that young developers, like the previous poster mentioned, are up-to-date on the latest technology and are willing to change things to work faster.
I've been dealing with 'experienced' Ops trying to maintain control of everything, while slowing down development. The number of hours spent coding doesn't change much if the way development is done is incredibly slow.
1. https://cs.stanford.edu/people/eroberts/cs181/projects/crunc...
.. The link you put up is full of conjectures, but I didn't actually see any numbers... (it's a link to class? .. I don't even understand the website)
I'm thinking more in the vein of
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brooks%E2%80%99_law
"adding manpower to a late software project makes it later"
Another, more descriptive way to formulate this is: some startups are really fighting against time, because they are led by financials who only watch short-scale (10y) ROI, and those will pay a premium to have stuff ASAP, whatever that entails.
Of course, startups (or other orgs) that are not only driven by financials have to manage time and money as well. But they have other plans.
Look what/who you're working for. A sprint, a marathon and a trek are different journeys.
Driving young programmers through 12 hour days is just a recipe for burn out and technical debt that you'll have to pay back later. I've definitely been there.
I guess it all comes down to what you consider a good work-life balance. For me being able to work from wherever an Internet connection exists and the ability to make my own hours is it, and yeah sometimes that'll mean a few weeks of 10-12 hour days here and there. For some it means a strict 9-5 with an hour lunch at an office park off a highway, which I don't judge, but for me sounds like a nightmare.
Again, as long as you're keeping up with contemporary development practices and are pushing your knowledge I think you'll be able to choose whatever definition of work-life balance is for you and be fine.
Dividing them up like this the typical "just shows up" person is purely stimulus driven. Nothing happens if you don't tell them to do exactly something. They won't tell you they're blocked on Bob sending a purchase order for a month. They won't tell you because you didn't ask. You didn't ask so they just... they just do nothing.
Or you have contractors who really don't care[1]. They bill by the hour, and if you don't give them tasks then they can take a second contract and bill more.
Most companies I've seen are full of stimulus-response people.
You don't need to work more than 40 hour weeks to be productive. What you need is managers and coworkers who understand what your job kinda entails. People who when you say during the two week planning meeting that you'll fix a typo and that's it, will call you on it saying "that won't take two weeks, what else?".
I've seen competent people (with children) fall into a comfort zone where they can keep up and "perform well" working just an hour or two a week, because nobody else gets any work done so it's not like they're blocking people. These same people actually perform in better companies.
[1] I'm not saying no contractors care. But they have extra reason not to care if they happened to be paid and aren't "stimulated" (in the simulus-response sense).
I'm sorry but I'd argue that I cared more when I was younger (mostly because I was stupid). I've spent entire days in someone else's cubicle (not so much pair programming as me standing guard against distractions such as business analysts and quality assurance who apparently kept popping in) making sure they finish their part of work.
Actual code writing for me was fairly easy once the roadblocks got out of the way.
I've told people to shut up in meetings when they start going off in tangents. Clearly, it was not good for my career.
It's an awkward situation, I usually just ask "is this relevant to everyone in this room?"
Sometimes a manager says "yes" (it's not) and I just sit there and die quietly inside, otherwise they just say "yeah let's take this offline". Whatever that means. As long as it's not fucking with the meeting ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I think this is one of the main points. Some managers literally abuse the commitment a good worker has toward the company - for any possible reason: first job, belief in career advancement (within the same company), pure love for work (workaholic), etc. However, once you change a couple of companies, and once you see what managers really value, you start to wonder: what am I doing here? who am I kidding here? Your priorities start to shift toward something that becomes more important for you (family, kids, your own person, friends, and so on). My 2 cents. I might be completely wrong, so ignore me :)
In general, I feel that the "proactive" or "reactive" mindset is not always the main reason of such issues occurring at work. Sometimes the environment is so literally fucked up, that you can't do anything, even if you are super proactive. Really, nothing, even when you try to find yourself a task, something to do; and this will kill you inside, until you change job. I believe that good managers make you productive, even when you "literally" work 50% of the time. After all, that's what they are also paid for, isn't it?
I also want to believe that a good manager doesn't let that happen (that you work like hell), for the simple reason he is aware of the consequences.
However, I find it's hard to generalize, it always depends on the case/company/team/person.
Most companies I've seen turn perfectly good work-driven people into stimulus-driven wrecks.
I think it should be punishable, since it's very similar to a more labour-oriented employer creating circumstances where physical accidents happen.
Most 20 somethings know a stack or two but don't have any domain knowledge to understand how to make it useful in the "real world".
Check out: https://hbr.org/2014/11/the-best-performing-ceos-in-the-worl...
Over a quarter of the top CEO's in the world have an engineering background and the median age is 59.
The world is becoming more and more flat with globalization. If you are limiting yourself to pushing code and not learning business skills you are probably replaceable.
From personal experience, it becomes very clear rather quickly who the top team contributor really is. But having those kinds of expectations from other people is rather toxic. You would either have to change your attitude or your job.
I'm far better off in a senior/lead/architect developer role over being in any form of management. I provide better value in that space. What's disappointing to me is that you pretty much cap out and aren't likely to make more anywhere near in proportion to the value you provide.
Really it should be age at which they started to dictate product direction.
What worries me more is when I see colleagues who have children and are _still_ doing the chronic overtime thing. Missing out on getting drunk in the evenings just to make someone else rich is lame. Missing out on the early years of your kid's life just to make someone else rich is a tragedy.
That said, its up to people like me running teams and businesses to set the tone - encourage balance while not squandering inspired work.
Re inspired work: I once made the mistake of telling one of my employees "slow down a little, i don't want you to burn out and hate working here". He had an astute response: "Andy, I'm inspired I have to keep working on this until its done!" He worked weird hours - night and day for 2 or 3 days ..and when it was done I remember him needing some well deserved R&R.
The message from there on out to my teams is - if you're inspired, work. When you're done, rest. I'm not watching when you roll in in the morning, I'm watching the team's accomplishment and morale.
PG talked about it here - http://www.paulgraham.com/vb.html
Fun fact: My son's initials are QA. I made sure the paperwork was signed and out of the room before I pointed that out. ;)
I named my son Nand and my daughter Ada. ;)
I think it is a good trade off to have someone else shoulder all the business risk while I cap out at ~$330k at a reasonable senior level(Staff SE). IMO, $330k is "rich". Most people could retire from 5-10 years of working after reaching the senior level. Once someone reaches the senior level, I assume that the knowledge gained while hustling to achieve the senior level would let him/her dial down to the standard 40 hrs.
The prodigies in the documentary explained that the time when they were practicing all day was exciting and fun. They looked back on that time with nostalgia because after they got older they neither had the time nor the stamina to practice like that again.
"Nobody ever died wishing that they had spent more time in the office" is a popular quote, but I think it is false. I personally know of several people who after they were diagnosed with terminal diseases chose to spend their remaining time working as much as possible.
The key to what you are saying is the "just to make someone else rich". I think if you are looking at it as some kind of equation where "I have to do X in order to get Y", often you lose out because it turns out that Y was not worth it after all (especially if you are trading your life for money). However, if you are looking at it as "I can't believe I get to do this all day long!", then I don't think you will regret it.
This is not to say that those who prefer a "work-life balance" existence over "work is inseparable from life" existence are much different. It's just that you need to spend your time and energy doing what you love -- getting that balance right. Both groups suffer if they divert their attention away from what is important to them.
On the other hand, I'm crafty, and experienced. Also, I think kids that age do respect the idea of a family life -- I just had a chat this morning and said "have to go, family event" -- it's okay.
While some 20 somethings are workaholics, a lot of them are not, they get their work life balance in at other times in other ways, more periodically. I don't think there needs to be a worry about stigma. Different strokes, and good communication are the most important.
I volunteer with the American Red Cross which needs volunteer personnel for all kinds of purposes ranging from two week deployments to disaster areas to occasional help at blood drives. You'd develop all kinds of new skills and meet a lot of great people, all while having a very tangible impact on the world. And that's just one random example from what I personally spend my time doing.
Look around your area, community, and industry, and find more things to do. If nothing else you'll get a lot of good stories to tell. You might just find your purpose on life.
He "worries about the software industry", but my point is that he is worried for the wrong reason.
The problem isn't that you can't do the job with a work life balance. It's that it's so full of incompetent people that someone competent can keep up with no effort at all. And they mask the incompetence. And eventually if you do that for 20 years, you too risk becoming incompetent. Or at least only have a tiny fraction of your potention competence.
I think it takes practice and discipline to really enjoy your life _outside_ of work. I take my kids to school, eat breakfast with my wife, handle my personal business in the morning. Then I go to work, WORK WHEN I AM AT WORK, and go pick up my kids from school and go home.
Working when I am at work being the key point. If I walk around the floor at my office half the people will be reading Facebook or whatever, which I completely understand and I myself do read Facebook from time to time but I don't understand why you'd want to do that while sitting at your desk at work.
Edited to add: and I never attend meetings.
It's clear that the earlier contractors didn't know enough about user-centered design, responsive sites, mobile design, online login systems, modern web scalability requirements, benefits of cloud hosting and much more; which is where the younger developers now start.
Also a minute to thank Stackoverflow, for the amazing work it has done in uplifting software development work.
or they just have a different view of it.
You have no need to be home at any particular hour, and your social life is more evening/night based then why not work 10 hours a day. It's dumb, since you risk burning out, but otherwise I'm not really missing out on anything.