Hacker News Reader

Comment by sircastor | Hacker News Reader

>it mainly boiled down to me turning 30 this year, having an existential crisis questioning wtf I’m doing with my life

I cannot count the number of times I had various age-related crises. I’m in my 40s now and I’m starting to be a bit better about it. It’s not until you get a few decades into adulthood that you realize how young 20, 25, 30, 35 are. And I’m sure there are some folks in their 50s or 60s who will tell me that I don’t appreciate how young 40 is…

View on HN

I remember hearing a quote from an architect who was working well into his late 90s (unfortunately I forget his name). He was talking with another architect who had recently turned 50 and said to him, "Ah, to be 50 again, and have your whole life ahead of you!"

People should stop trying to cope and pretend that life is very long when it’s not.

At 30 you’re well into your professional career.

You're kidding right ? We're not footballers or athletes.. at 45 I feel like I only really started to approach the top of my game in the last 10 years and I've no desire to ease up or stop learning. There's an age bias that is quietly unravelling predisposed on IT as a whole being a young industry rather than because young people are better at it.

Funny, at 46 I daydream about retiring every single day and finally escaping the pointless churn of modern software "engineering".

I'm 30 and daydreaming every single day to quit IT. But I don't know anything else with such high salary, so I'll continue pointless job

If I were hating my job at 30 with no prospect of things getting better, I think I'd at least ask myself whether maximizing my salary should really be my priority.

The more you can save and invest before you start the inevitable slide toward disability, the better. It hits many people earlier and harder than they would ever expect.

Having savings is a good idea in general. But that's not necessarily an argument for staying in a career you hate so you can make a bit more money. Maybe it's just a particular job. But people do also choose careers that end up just being a bad fit. If that's the case, you're probably better off changing horses sooner than later.

In my country an SWE job is not "a bit more money", it is a x2-x5 more money.

> The more you can save and invest before you start the inevitable slide toward disability

Where is the fun part though ?

Maybe you should stop doing "engineering" and go somewhere you can do engineering.

At 30 you're less than a quarter into your professional career, and that's assuming you jump straight in after uni/college. I know _lots_ of people who had a tough takeoff after further education and only got into a "career" years later.

Speak for yourself. Some of us live very different lives.

Well, I'm 61, and I feel like I really just started hitting my stride, the last five or six years (which, I'm sure, quite coincidentally, is when I left structured employment, because no one likes to work with boomers).

I'm pretty happy with the work I do now. I feel that it knocks the stuff I got paid to do, into a cocked hat.

The coroner is going to have to rub "YTЯƎWϘ" off my cheek.

Having lots of older peers through my life has been a huge benefit, I think. Both for being able to learn stuff earlier than they did from them, but also getting feedback like "you figured that out decades sooner than I did!" to help find and stay on track. I aim to hit 120 experience-wise while still young enough to benefit from it.

Tech could learn a lot from the people it pushes out way too soon. Even if they're a little crotchety.

I didn't really start my 'real' professional career until I was almost 40. Before that I was just hopping around between different jobs, trying things, and seeing if there was anything out there that I actually wanted to do for a living.

I’m in my 50s and I stopped having the age-doom feelings at about 35. I laugh now - 30 is so young.

I'm the same. I'd like to have a young body that doesn't ache so much, but that's about it, everything else about being young isn't so great.

Even when I was in my 20s, I thought fellow 20 somethings freaking out about being “old” and acting like they’re seasoned in the way of life and must share their wisdom with us all was good for a laugh. I felt like I didn’t know anything and now in my late 40s I feel like I still don’t know anything but am comfortable with that.

> I cannot count the number of times I had various age-related crises. I’m in my 40s now and I’m starting to be a bit better about it.

How much of it do you think that is related to your environment and socioeconomic condition?

I ask that because I'm more or less of your generation and I know exactly what I want and I am disciplined/motivated around that, but due to my demographics/socioeconomic condition, the only crisis that I have is that I do not have the right passport/continent and/or financial resources to pursuit it.

Most of it is just cultural. 1st-world capitalism, telling me I should be a 30-under-30, hustle and work-hard, retire early and live off the interest. Also I was part of a religion at 20 that taught me I should get married young, have children young, so I was panicked early about meeting those two goals, probably to my own developmental detriment.

If you know what you want and are motivated, I think you’re quite am the lucky person indeed.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com