I'm turning 28 this month and I feel like I'm quite far ahead compared to my peers, yet feel like I'm absolutely still fumbling through life. And when speaking to friends older than me, the majority seem to still be fumbling through as well.
Every rotation around the sun my opinion is solidified that we're all just wingin' it, no matter the age and success can happen whenever.
In my early 20's I was in college. Graduated in 2008 in to the recession and was lucky to have _any_ job. Spent all of my nights learning coding.
In my mid-late 20's, starting in 2011, I finally got a crappy job with a pay cut in tech (sort of) doing ad operations. I worked hard and spent the evenings getting better at Java so I could use the Dart For Publishers SDK to automate things I hated doing at work (inadvertently helped the company make about a million extra bucks that year, I later realized).
In my early 30's, I got married, changed countries, became a Technical Account Manager, studied Python and German in my free time, and eventually became a dev for a video game company.
In my (our, now) mid-30's, we had a kid, and now I spend my free time on that and house repair, etc. I still like coding but after dinner, bath, bedtime stories, maybe 15 minutes chatting with the spouse, and then other chores, I'm going to bed (before anyone asks, I watch 0 TV and do very little by way of social networks).
I have a colleague who's in his late 20's, no kids, and he's on Slack all. the. time. He talks about stuff he worked on (for work, not for hobbies) over the weekend. I don't think I produce as much as him, to be honest. Makes me a bit anxious about where I stand - hard to compare my 40 hours to effectively his whole life.
I think I need a plan B.
(Related discussion - and the article is 10 years old so the young'uns then are getting in to their 30's now) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9361580
Depends on the area though, I guess. Video game companies seem to have a preference for working people into the ground.
The colleague you described who has no life except work rings very familiarly with my time there.
In my experience, wherever I went, there was always a no-lifer on the team(no kids/wife/girlfriend, no sports/hobbies) who used to answer emails after midnight and push to git on a Sunday hoping to get that pat on the back from the managers. Career advancements were difficult as at your performance review he would be used as the benchmark.
I live in Ireland, which was one of the easier places re: visa, cultural integration, language, etc. and it's been pretty good to me all things considered.
(I'm a CS prof.)
Anyone I know that wanted a tenure-track position did get one (and had options). I graduated from an unranked department and had a positive experience on the market.
This list is about some of the most popular writers who were over the age of 35 when they became famous. But I was talking to a successful writer on Reddit. They weren't super famous, but they made a good living from writing and selling some YA and fiction. They weren't overnight millionaires, but they did end up starting a small publishing company. They made a solid living, and they were able to raise a family and save for retirement. I don't think they made it to the top of any bestseller lists, but I would still call them a very successful writer.
This is also one of the reasons why I like the Indie Hackers community [1], and also the SaaS podcast [2]. I really like reading stories about people who are building SaaS products that eventually make it $100k per year in revenue. I find these stories much more interesting and relevant than reading about huge fundraising rounds, or the history of Uber and Facebook. You have a much greater chance of success with a smaller sustainable company instead of a crazy moonshot. But you won't get featured in TechCrunch, and you won't make it onto any of these 30 under 30 lists.
NB Regarding the "fumbling through" feeling, I'm 53 and I think one of the comforting things about getting older is realising that it's not just you but that, in general, everyone is pretty much making life up as they go along :-)
This has also been my observation at 30. I've worked with people all ages and people of all statures and most people are just doing what they think is right and not much is based on facts. Even high ranking people at fortune 500 companies are just doing what feels right to them and often their success is more related to people below them working their asses off than their leadership. The only difference between people who are in control and people who don't, is often that the former don't have a realistic view of why they're successful.
And, as a nuance, there are of course people who are really good at what they do and that have a lot of knowledge. A lot of people, however, just were really lucky (or really good at networking) to get where they are. Even some Nobel Prize winners just got lucky:
With reasons ranging from too risky in terms of expected cost/benefit, to you can't learn as quickly, to family obligations won't give you the time or energy required.
I personally think the learning speed one is bunk -- even if your brain slows down a little (debatable), it seems more than made up for by experience in how you learn most efficiently, on top of general life experience.
So lists like this help remind you that you still can, if you're so inclined. For more inspiration in the creative direction (e.g. writing like in this list), see particularly the well-known book The Artist's Way by Julia Cameron. [1]
[1] https://www.amazon.com/Artists-Way-25th-Anniversary/dp/01431...
And if you are not? Let's say you got to med school, and let's say everything goes PERFECTLY. You are still 47 with $200,000 in student loan debt, what was the point?
Or you to the army because you always wanted to be a Green Beret, now you are 41 with your career dead and a path into management.
You can still take risks, like starting a business, but now the cost is very real. The question of "When do I start living. What's the grind actually for?" starts to become very real.
One of the most impactful realizations I've had in my entire life is that, with _incredibly_ few exceptions, everyone is fumbling. All the time. Regardless of age. Some people are just better at hiding it than others.
After I was able to fully internalize that, life got easier. I stopped putting so much pressure on myself. It became "okay" if I didn't know how to deal with a situation, or felt completely overwhelmed. I'm still fumbling, but I've come to terms with it and I feel much better as a result.
If I ever feel really confident I've "figured out" life, that's when I'll get really worried.
By Western Society norms, yes. But there's no reason to take notice of what other people around you expect you to be doing at a given age. If you feel the need to learn something new, or branch out in a different direction - do it! Or at least start planning to do it.
I'm currently on my 5th career - some may see that as a failure to commit, irresponsible even. I consider it a welcome challenge - a chance to prove myself (again) and an opportunity to grow while having some fun along the way.
> And when speaking to friends older than me, the majority seem to still be fumbling through as well.
This information is only released to people after they pass their 40th birthday; leaking such information to younger people is strictly forbidden!
Have you not noticed the constant barrage of stories like "21-year-old sells billion-dollar company!" or "Teenager discovers new medical breakthrough!"? Or the dozens of "30 under 30" lists?
This seems to be a response to that.
In regards to this article, I would not be at all surprised if the average age of first publishing for successful authors was well above 35. Is apparently around 45, for successful startup founders.
'Research: The Average Age of a Successful Startup Founder Is 45' - https://hbr.org/2018/07/research-the-average-age-of-a-succes...
I also think that success is too broad a term to characterize generally, but if you think about different opportunities and pressures in each logical window of time in an average person's life then it should be apparent that different varieties of success are more probable for each timeframe, even if chance contributes on an equal basis with any other personal attribute.
In any case, being comfortable with wingin' it is probably itself a favored characteristic.
-- https://hbr.org/2018/07/research-the-average-age-of-a-succes...
I’m floating along okay, but I’m deathly afraid of dev jobs and employers locking me out for being too old or not having some TED talk in my field.
If you look into the biographies of successful people, "winging it" is very much not an apt description.
Possibly. For instance, Einstein was essentially done by his 30s.