Don't be a scary old guy: My 40s survival strategy with charm | Hacker News Reader

Don't be a scary old guy: My 40s survival strategy with charm

devas.life

55 pointsashleynewman66 comments

Open articleView on HN

Best advice on this topic:

How to Age Gracefully | CBC Radio https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sycgL3Qg_Ak

[Spoiler]

"Dear 91-year old, don't listen to other people's advice.

Nobody knows what the hell they're doing.

Signed, a 93-year old."

[Edit]

This was originally passed down to me through RSS from:

https://kottke.org/15/08/how-to-age-gracefully

I seem to have become scarier in my old age. People seem to pay more attention and react more strongly to me than they used to, but all I did was get older and uglier. Whatever physicality I had has waned, but moral presence among strangers has waxed. Maybe it's a remaining respect for elders rather than something to do with me. But it has made me more careful with hiding my grumpiness.

Sometime in my late 30's or early 40's I noticed that groups started deferring to me as the arbiter of disputes and decision maker. They also stopped being as playful with me.

I hadn't changed my personality significantly, and I was baffled for a long time. Then I realized that I had become a 40 something man with a touch of grey and some gravel in his voice.

Somewhere along the way people had just automatically started thinking of me as the Boss archetype instead of the Bro archetype.

It was startling to me that my dumbass opinion was suddenly being held in higher regard due to the simple expedient of becoming old.

So earn it.

Yep I hate it. I much rather interact with peers than subordinates. I want people to challenge me and my opinion. I hate making casual comments and everyone in the room is silent as if it was the word of god.

Hear hear.

I find I have turned invisible. But if I die my hair suddenly I'm no longer invisible. Even with just a really bad partially grown out dye job I'm treated like I exist again. But grey hair/grey beard? Invisibility cloak.

As someone who has basically no hair left, I guess I've achieved permanent invisibility. Nice.

Regardless of agreeing with the advice, a 41yo giving advice on surviving the 40s seems a bit arrogant. Being 41 is different from 46 which is different from 49, and he just doesn't know yet. The right title should be "how I feel after a year in my 40s".

It's his strategy going forward. He isn't saying he completed his 40s at the age of 41. You would prefer he share his strategy for 40s at 50? Seems pedantic.

It didn’t feel arrogant at all to me.

"The fewer shared reference points you have with someone, the more important it is to approach them with a soft, relaxed attitude. "

Banger

I don’t understand the HN algo anymore

It's quite simple. No major algorithm, people who tinker vote on things that scratches their minds like this article does.

I don't think it's people who tinker any more. It seems like the "write Business Logic code as fast as you can" type predominate.

Just flag it.

It's not spam, why waste a moderator's time? It's something that people find interesting.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

HN in general has a very strict policy against what "people find interesting":

   On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.

   Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, or celebrities, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic.

News are like addiction, people don't act in their own best interest, they upvote things that they don't really want to see.

Also "just flag it" is not "wasting moderator's time", but the recommended procedure:

    Please don't complain that a submission is inappropriate. If a story is spam or off-topic, flag it.

> anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.

Correct.

HN guidelines are hardly strict. There is so much politics that stays on the front page.

Well, that means hardly anything. Is up to us, and the moderators, to choose what we want HN it to. I find politics interesting, and often are pretty much on topic, e.g. politics related to protecting personal information. But often are not, and full of ad hominem "arguments"

From my POV, there is no doubt HN is getting more and more involved in politics and more and more polarized, which IMHO is not good. But I'm just one of many users... if it keeps going that way, I may have to leave. Is ok. In the meantime I will keep giving my opinion, as that is the very least what I expect from such a site: to be able to give an opinion (respectfully) without being instantly attacked, verbally or downvoted to oblivion. As can be seen in this case, we are reaching the point where that is not possible anymore... Let's see if the honest people or the trolls win the "battle".

It doesn't mean hardly anything, it means exactly what I said. The guidelines are not strict. They are loose guidelines. That's not an attack on them, it's just an observable fact. The guidelines say one thing, but the users vote for another.

Just meant "flag it if you think is off topic"... but no worries. I'm very used of people in HN not able to read in context... seems to be fried brains from too much AI use. Anyway, IMHO was pretty much off topic. I think we are allowed to have different opinions, you little dictator.

I do enjoy potatoes, but not Richards!

You can't imagine why a forum of predominantly adult men in their late twenties to mid forties would be interested in an article about aging gracefully and maintaining warm healthy relationships with their peers?

Because it's so elementary?

it's really not. It's easy for some, sure and you're maybe one of them (or perhaps mistaken!) but many, many MANY people, especially men, even intelligent men struggle with social situations and maintaining healthy social relationships.

Be nice? Don't be a know it all? Even if you don't believe it you've surely heard people say it sometime in the last 40 years. Autism notwithstanding, and that probably accounts for a decent share of the readership

I am, and don't ... but that still doesn't mean it doesn't take effort. There's way more to it than smiling and not being a complete tool.

How long has it been since you called your long lost best friend and caught up? Did you go to his brothers funeral? Check in on him after his divorce? A year after his divorce? 5?

It takes effort and is far from elementary no matter how much rizz you have.

I agree it's effort it's just not hard..... for a 40 year old, remember.

It is for many empirically.

There’s something paradoxical about your comment… :)

One cool thing about aging is you can tell old jokes from ancient shows like Futurama, and the kids think it's original and hilarious.

I steal lines from Cheers on the daily.

Decent advice. Also, get fit.

I hate to admit this but balding has been a really really stressful thing for me getting into 40.

I didn't think it would be, I hardly looked in the mirror at the best of times during my 20s and 30s, but I've been rapidly balding over the past 2/3 years and I can see by this time next year...I'll be bald. I'm at the point I've been considering going to turkey, but I think the most surprising thing to me is just now much it bothers me, consumes considerably too much thought, it's brutal!!

Make sure you're lean and muscular before you lose it all.

Finasteride and minoxidil are a lifesaver

Well, there are risks associated with these unfortunately.

There are risks associated with everything

What's that supposed to mean?

There are definitely less risks in not taking finasteride and minoxidil.

There are risks associated with being bald and depressed

Being bald ≠ depressed

For me it would, I can’t pull it off

Embrace it, friend. Shave it all off and grow a goatee (Breaking Bad style). You'll get your mojo back and be better off for it.

Don't forget to learn to play the base guitar!

I started thinning in my early 20s and by my late 20s I was hanging on for dear life to too little scalp hair.

Then one day I decided enough was enough and I just shaved my head. 20 years later I wouldn't go back to a full head of hair.

It's easier than having a hairstyle, quicker than having a hairstyle, cheaper than having a hairstyle, and best of all, any time I've gotten hot and sweaty, I can just chuck some water over my head in a sink and enjoy whole-scalp-cooling!

Lean into it and shave your head… I started balding at 18 but regret not shaving my head until my mid 30s… it eliminated all of my anxiety about it, and women seemed to find me more attractive.

Acceptance is key with all difficult changes. Leaning into it is good advice :)

Definitely a rough thing to struggle with.

Genuine question, is a smile something people practice? I smile when im happy but it does not come naturally. Also the ad at the end killed any feeling of authenticity.

Nah, be water my friends. Smile when you need to smile.

Jesus. If at 40 you're already seeing yourself old and worried about survival something must be wrong.

At 40 you're barely at the halfway point of your career since we're gonna have to work till our 70's anyway, so buckle up for another 30+ years.

I'm sixty and still don't see myself as old. 41 is still young.

I'm merely 47 and I don't really feel like I'm any older than I was in my 20s. Smarter hopefully, wiser certainly, but I never really completely put away childish things.

This is ageism and it's rampant and very problematic. He is ageist against himself almost as much as society is.

You should not need to do anything special to be a 40 or 50 year old (or whatever) and fit in with a group.

This is one of the last 'isms' that society has yet to tackle. But society will eventually become less ageist as it ages more and more.

> He is ageist against himself almost as much as society is.

I think he's just trying to be proactive with an insurance policy to cushion the blow since societal ageism is completely out of your control.

You might not believe in ageism being real, but if the job market does, then you're shit out of luck, so might as well start prepping for it.

>But society will eventually become less ageist as it ages more and more.

I doubt it. Employers will just demand more immigration that's more youthful and more exploitable or just offshore more.

Where I live in EU, there really isn't a huge market for white collar workers over 50 despite society already skewing quiet old. One compounding issue is that in my country once you hit 50 you get firing protections so nobody wants to hire someone they won't be able to fire, especially if the industry is full of ambitious young blood like in SW.

> But society will eventually become less ageist as it ages more and more.

Society is hundreds to thousands of times older than you or I. The US is a gerontocracy. I don't think the age of society has any relation to how agiest it is. The current and next culture regarding age will die with it's population and the next young generation will come with their own culture surrounding age.

"Forty is the old age of youth. Fifty is the youth of old age."

The thing about 40 is, you're not old, but you see your youth dying. If your identity is in being young, sexy, fit, athletic, then that may be brutal. Depends on what your identity is in, and how you handle the loss of it.

Good news is, I was never sexy, fit or athletic, so I will never be disappointed.

In the Bay Area job market at 40+ you are 4/5 done with your working career at a high level of pay as a IC. It’s cruel, but post 40 and especially post 50 you are at risk of being let go and never find a similar paying job again. Especially in this job market.

Only way to prevent this is to be a director or unusually gifted as an engineer. Otherwise you are the old guy that wants too much money. I hate that the industry is like this but unless you are very high in your field your value to tech employers reaches zero unless your career has developed to a high level.

A bit too many people in my family have died in their 40s and 50s due to health reasons for me to not consider it at least somewhat old.

These are the standard realisations of a teenager

Oof

Reply on news.ycombinator.com