Life Lessons from a 97-Year-Old Lobsterman (2019)
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A life well lived, I would say.
The 'simple life' jobs are also taxing, but just in different ways. Bosses yelling at you to get work done ASAP, union bullshit, and reletivly low pay (unless you own your own business).
While there are some days I wish I was doing some head math and watching a lathe make cuts on a electric motor shaft, in the end I'm happy with where I ended up.
Just posted this so you know that the grass isn't always greener 100% of the time!
In school for welding while also working at the machine shop. Making ~10.20/hr machining parts to repair electric motors. I start thinking about my future a bit more as I was making money (lol @ me thinking 10.20/hr was money but I was 19 and working more than I ever did). I started thinking about the doomsday scenarios where if this machine shop closed down, what would I do? The world was going more toward CNC machining. While today there is a place for a manual machinist, what place will it have when I'm 50? This fact, alongside the fact I could make more at Arby's, led me to quit.
I decided to give another trade a shot, which was plumbing. A family friend was a solo plumber and I inquired about being a helping hand. I enjoyed the work, but my boss wasn't exactly pleasant to work for. I got a decent pay raise in comparison to my last job, but exactly 0 vacation or benefits. In the beginning I was fine with this as he was 'doing me a favor' by showing me the ropes, but in the end it didn't work out.
When that job was winding down, I decided to go back to school for computers. I built computers in my day and I knew my way around which led me to pick this 'trade' up next. I started applying for L1 help desk jobs and got in with this company doing internal IT. Very thankful I ended up here as it was NOT a call center. We fielded maybe 10 calls a day, sometimes we had as little as 2, so I had a lot of downtime to study up on the next role. I signed up for LinuxAcademy and grinded courses.
LinuxAcademy has cloud servers, where I learned Linux on. The corporate security team caught that (oops), which is where I met them. Eventually they had an opening for a SecOps Analyst and now I'm here :).
Congratulations!
While very different fields a lot of the skills to be successful at one are applicable to the other.
On YouTube I discovered a channel of a cobbler called Bedo's Leatherworks. It's relaxing to watch I thought this is a calming thing to watch during these crazy times plus my dad is ill (not making for less stress! I'm literally cracking my own teeth).
I thought what a great job it's working with your hands, artistic, and useful.
Leave the Valley, get a real company/job.
The rest of the world does not operate like Rome.
Clue - what others think about you now (or ever) won't matter a dime. What kind of lifestyle you project externally won't either. Life is damn too short, and it gets 'faster' as we get older.
Another clue - most people when old end up regretting at least some parts of their lives. Only you can know what it means not ending up like one of them.
If anything it’s less important as you’re less likely to see 80 than any preceding year.
As with most human motivators, there is the cheap version (fame across everyone) and the sustainable one (respect among true, trusted peers)
Edit: looks like you might enjoy reading "How will you measure your life?". Tweet summary here [0] - I made it this morning [1].
[0]: https://twitter.com/booktweets6/status/1330600066176880641
At 18 entered college to do computer programming, dropped out and at 19 joined Air Force to be an aircraft mechanic. After 4 years back to college as an aerospace engineer student. Graduated and then started the job jumping for 6 years because the jobs were boring. At age 35 I became a firefighter - paramedic (did PM classes at night - the fire department trained me to be a FF). About 4 years in to this career I saw a lot of people get injured, mainly with back injuries from repetitive, awkward positions so I decided to get a Master's in Computer Science online from DePaul University. It took me 5 years to complete. I started working part-time remote as a programmer.
When Covid hit I decided that it was time to go and I found a full-time, remote programming job making good money. I thoroughly enjoy it. I still think FF-PM is the best job ever but with serious chronic health issues I couldn't risk getting sick. Also a constant sleep schedule is AWESOME!
I spent 14 years as FF-PM. I am now 50 yo. I don't ever plan on retiring because I enjoy working and don't really have any hobbies beyond reading and programming. I do worry about being able to get a job when I'm older, but I'll find something to do.
Some people seem so focused and without doubts, I just feel so far away on the other side of that spectrum.
When I was contemplating becoming a FF-PM I had a wife and 1 year old child. I was far from being in shape but I passed the requirements to be selected (if I had to do it today I'm not sure I would pass. They up their game on entrance requirements!). It didn't help that my mom was telling me that I shouldn't do it and that I should think about my family. But it was actually my family I was thinking of. I knew if I didn't do it right then and at that moment I would never do it and would regret it for the rest of my life.
Fast forward to April 2020 and the department agrees to pull me out of the field because of Covid since I have a chronic liver disease. I thought I got a new lease on life as I was getting tired of the field. But it was more frustrating "upstairs" than in the field and I started applying for almost all remote programming jobs.
When I finally got a legit job offer came doubt again. As a FF-PM in good standing with the department there was little chance of ever getting laid off or fired (the dept has a high, high rate of turnover). Now I had to decide to leave a secure job or take a job in the private sector. From money standpoint it was a no brainer, but from a security standpoint not so much. Ultimately I made the decision to leave the department.
Look at where you are and where you would rather be in 1 year, 5 year and/or 10 years and work backwards from there. What can you do today to move you toward that 1 year, 5 year or 10 year position?
Don't give up and don't stay in something you don't like.
That milestone really highlighted for me Silicon Valley’s weird relationship with age. It’s absurd to imagine 80 year old engineers working here. We’ll vote for a 78 year old to run the country, but won’t trust them to write code. Heck, it’s a bit shocking to see someone over 50 in my office. As someone who got into software engineering late in life, that’s worrying, and I suppose it’s time to start preparing for my third act.
Moreover with the slowing of Moore's law, I think it'll be reasonable to keep up-to-date. Experience with 33Hz punch-card machines is not very transferrable to modern systems, but I'm willing to bet that in 50 years desktop CPUs will be in the same order of magnitude, and we'll be using keyboard + monitor.
Anecodotal evidence: As a 19 year old I learnt programming on a 20 year old VBA program built by an IBM punch-card veteran, and was mentored by a scientist with a similar background who could not fathom what classes are.
But yeah code will still be code, on similar platforms, don't expect anything radical compared to VMs of these days. Probably.
I imagine that having a simple practical mind as an adult must feel like childhood but I will never know.
Nature, solitude, psilocybin mushrooms, & you'll know.
With software, you can tweak the rules that create a forest and press a button to have - in your hand - a board that’s better than the last: solid, straight, and knot-free.
These are things that take decades in simpler disciplines.
Was I accidentally arguing that tech is more important than a well-lived life?
I got out of software when I was 27, got back in when I was 30 and then out again at 34. I won't go back.
I drive around the world instead, writing about what I do, and teaching others how they can do it too.[1]
It's never too late. I met people in their 70s driving around Africa, having a great time!
[1] youtube.com/theroadchoseme
I urge you to put your skills to good use at your leisure and for your own pleasure, not as a job, but as an art. You can make the world a better place.
Thank you for sharing your YouTube channel, I find it inspiring.
These days most of my efforts go into photography and writing (I've just finished my second novel). I find working on the "real" world a lot more satisfying than purely digital where not a lot is tangible.
Good luck!
In a lot of jobs, your thoughts are free to wonder and you can think about whatever you feel like, whilst also working. Not so in software development, to do a good job your thoughts must only be about the task in hand and those thoughts can persist long after the task is over.
It's a funny sentence, when you hear about a son helping his father out in his fishing business I don't think you often imagine someone who is already 70 himself.
I'm wondering why no one in the comment section commented on the fisherman's content for dying.
He was ready to go at any moment and still defeated death when he was staring at him. I think that was the most remarkable and most wholesome aspect of the article.
The occupations where you are out and about carry a big risk: physical injury can put you out of work and cause debilitating pain for the rest of your life. Granted that it happens less will continue to trend down with improving oversight and safety standards, but it is still a risk. Perhaps we do not realise this or think clearly about it when we yearn for working with our hands/work outdoors?
I come from a different career (mechanical engineering degree and then worked in infosec consulting) and i observed that software engineers have the following advantages: 1. highest degree of freedom in their working conditions. 2. The most intellectually challenging work there often is in the entire company. those are the reasons that have drawn me to this industry and they continue to hold true for me :)
And yes, the body and mind needs balance from intellectual work. For me it works best to do sports and spent time with family.
There is something to that.
Unfortunately, not yet!
(Actually, I wonder if it's easier for a chatbot AI to emulate the writing of someone like me who is on the spectrum, than neurotypical writing)