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Comment by antognini | Hacker News Reader

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!"

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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.

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