Box's 65-Year-Old Android Engineer Gives Your Startup Some Unsentimental Advice | Hacker News Reader

Box's 65-Year-Old Android Engineer Gives Your Startup Some Unsentimental Advice

fastcolabs.com

255 pointsgoronbjorn95 comments

I congratulate this guy.

But I feel like the youngish folks reading hacker news (self included), especially those that get wrapped up in youth-worship and pseudo-libertarianism (not me) should ask themselves, what will we do at 65? It's a fairly uncomfortable question in our field. Whatever the reason we should not tolerate the factors that push older people out, or make excuses for doing so.

Nor should we live in fear. I'm 41, and still doing quite well (as measured in both happiness and dollars) coding every day in a comparatively senior position. I don't expect that to change any time soon, though obviously I recognize that it can.

Do what you love. If you're good at it and willing to compromise reasonably, then the market will accept you. If you're not good at it you will have trouble sustaining a career for the simple reason that "junior" hires are made with the hope that the employee will improve; that prospect seems much dimmer for middle-aged candidates.

And the willingness to compromise is important too. If you are focused on a very narrow field, you may find it dissolve due to technological progress and market conditions. If you are focused on progression inside a single large employer, you may find its culture doesn't want senior hackers. Be broad, be flexible.

Screw "do what you love", and instead "do what you're good at, and become better at it". The enjoyment goes with that, and you get actually paid a decent wage.

(To put it flippantly: I live in L.A. People who "do what they love" without being good at it are the ones who bring food to my table. I don't mean that in a derogatory way - I just wish they took their actual talents and ran with them.)

Fair enough. That's sort of what I meant by "be willing to compromise". From my perspective it's so rare to find people who are truly "good at" something they don't enjoy that I'm not really sure I find the distinction meaningful.

It's meaningful when you _start_ a career, I think. I've seen to many 20-year olds following this advice all starry-eyed, without any idea how to ever actually make "what they love" into a lifetime of meaningful and useful work.

And the issue is not finding people who don't enjoy what they're good at. I agreed that that might be quite rare. (Although there are definitely moments in every career where you hate what you do. It's inevitable)

It's that people abandon something they do enjoy, because it is not what they think they love. It's easy to love from afar, when you have only a passing knowledge. The hard work is keeping the love alive once you get intimate knowledge, in relationships as well as in jobs. So if you start with something you do well, you start with something you already know intimately. It's much easier to keep that working for you than building a new relationship, so to speak.

I hear you. Daniel Pink talks about this in his book Drive. Basically, when it comes to finding a wonderful career, mastery is a big deal. It's not the only factor you need to consider, but it's an important one. There are a lot of happy accountants out there because they consider themselves "masters" of their chosen craft. It's not sexy or dangerous, but they've found meaning in it by becoming skilled at it.

Again, there are other factors in play, but mastery is definitely important. I love running, I run everyday, but I'll never be a professional runner because I lack the skill and determination required to be a master runner. I don't even know if I'll ever be a master at anything, but I do know there are areas where I have a decent shot at it, so I know where to spend my precious time.

I'd say the best thing to master is solving problems.

In the case of developers it may mean that you never become a master at programming, but what's more important: solving a problem or having elegant, well documented non-solutions?

Hackers make things work, and I think that's more important than being a "master" - I don't even like the word master, it almost feels egotistical.

Hackers (by my own definition) make this thing here work now.

A master of his art has the time to design not just his solution, but the task itself, and the experience to understand all the implications of a given solution.

Or do what you love despite the financial consequences.

Some people will happily choose to wait tables in order to do what they love. Ain't freedom grand?

Fortunately it's a choice most of us get to make. If you're good at something, but hate doing it, you can still do it for the money. If you suck at something, and love doing it, you can do it anyway and suffer financially (and perhaps get better at it and then make money). It's a question of priorities.

I know people who don't particularly enjoy what they do, despite being good enough at it to be in the six-figure bracket. They enjoy the six-figure lifestyle and tolerate their work, rather than doing work they love and living a poorer lifestyle. Swings and roundabouts - do what brings the most happiness overall to your life.

Can I ask (as a 41 year old myself) are you freelancing or employee?

I'm a salaried employee. I do "systems" work currently (basically integration and middleware plumbing on embedded systems), which is an area for which there isn't a lot of freelance opportunity. But I've worked in other areas professionally and expect to work in other areas in the future. I certainly wouldn't rule out freelancing.

Well if you do please give me a call - I am thinking of going down the 10xmgmt route

Does anybody who has spent their adult working career in this industry have an excuse for not achieving financial independence by age 65?

In answer to your question, Yes.

A lot of people got wiped out in the dot.com debacle, too highly invested in technology, not enough diversity, the need to eat while the portfolio was at its lowest value. Some people have pursued dreams into new ventures, poured their accumulated net worth into those endeavors and had them not succeed. Some folks have developed medical conditions associated with working long hours in a repetitive environment, or working with components that internally were quite toxic and sometimes externally, and spent their accumulated savings on ever increasing health care. Some folks have spent their excess cash on maintaining an image or a lifestyle which they perceive to be the model of success. Some folks have spent all their income on a combination of their own needs and those of their former spouses and children.

Being an engineer/programmer doesn't make you immune to life's ups and downs. And there is no magic 'pension' that kicks in (under funded or not) after you've put in 15, 20, or even 40 years at your job.

That said, I know a number of people who are both financially independent and working 30 to 60 hrs a week for someone else. They just like the work.

True, true. I certainly have experienced a lot of what you describe, quitting my last job-type-job in December 2008 and promptly watching much of my savings evaporate. And my youngest child's congenital birth defect certainly wasn't part of the master plan.

Life throws you plenty of curveballs, but with the skills people in this industry possess it seems to me you can make choices that enable you to be secure in doing what you love as long as you want, and you shouldn't have to worry about what happens when you age, financially. Or at least as much as anyone can. We could all be wiped out by the next banking crisis, or debt crisis, or asteroid or car crash. There are plenty of variables you can control, including how much you spend maintaining an image or lifestyle or living in an expensive locale such as the Bay area or caring for your personal fitness and diet.

Children, medical problems, divorce, expensive hobbies, stock crashes. Stuff happens. If you expect to live to 85, which is pretty reasonable, and keep paying to live in the Bay Area, do a little traveling, you'd want to pull down $100k or so per year and thus need about $2M in the bank.

True if your $2M sits in an account earning zero interest. In reality you need quite a bit less than $2M if you want to guarantee 20 years at $100k.

At a 7% return you'd still need about $1.5 mil. And that's assuming that your hopefully more conservative investments in retirement earn 7% a year and over that 20 year span there is not a crash... This includes about 3.5% per year for inflation.

85 might even be low-balling it. I heard recently that Girl's born in Australia this decade now have an estimated 50% chance of hitting 100.

Why 65? Why not 25? Why not 15?

Medical problems and family misfortune can do a lot to destroy your finances. All it takes is one trip to the doctors or a split second of stupidity by someone else.

Is there something in the article that made you think this person might not be financially independent other than the fact that he has a job?

I was really replying to the comment asking what will we do at 65 and lamenting the fact that older workers get pushed out of the industry. My point is to put your house in order financially so you can have the luxury of doing what you love at whatever age.

It is true there is certainly often a lack of planning and preparation for retirement until it is too late and we are fortunate that our industry tends to afford more opportunities to prepare than many others.

I'm 35, and I have had to work hard to cultivate relationships with friends who are older. That process has been rewarding, and currently I'm in a blues band with a guy who is just shy of 60 and another guy who is 70 (one of the founding members of The 13th Floor Elevators, how cool is that?).

I'd encourage that effort as a part of what is actionable on the scale of a single person.

It can be very difficult to see across generational lines (or, specifically, it was difficult for me) unless you interact with people who are neither your parents, grand-parents, bosses, employees, or children...

it's not roky erickson, is it?

No. Though that would be pretty neat, too :D

I completely agree with your statement, about not pushing older people out.

I want to add that we all have the ability to build on our own. If a company is stupid enough to fire a good engineer for being older, that engineer has the world as his or her playground thereafter. Build something amazing, start a company, do contract work, teach, etc. I'm admittedly a biased advocate of taking matters into your own hands whenever possible.

These guys have asked themselves the same question: http://www.seniorcreativepeople.com

I took a post-grad marketing course that covered these Senior Creative guys! Doyle Dane Bernbach creative people really changed the business in the 60s and changed the way ads spoke to people. Until they came along nobody had thought of selling products with a combination of intelligence and humor. The ads they did were amazing, unlike that mediocre stuff they "do" on Mad Men! Bet they have some stories to tell.

I agree with you 100%. We don't see many 65-year-olds around. My intuition is that software engineers are intellectual athletes. Like traditional athletes, our abilities start to dwindle after a certain age. We can't learn new technologies overnight, simply because our brain can't process information as quickly. Our memories become faded. It's sad to think about, but definitely worth planning for.

At the point in my life where I'm financially set for life and ready to move on, I plan to become a pilot in some capacity. Probably not for a traditional carrier, but maybe for sightseeing around NYC, or aerial photography. Aside from technology, flying is my other passion. I'm just not pursuing it commercially because it's a terrible career (salaries start at $20k, and you have to go through security every day. yuck!).

Our field hasn't been around long enough to generate all that many 65 year old programmers. But they're out there.

I'll tell you something, you young whippersnapper. There are lots of 45, 55, and yes even 65 year olds out there who can kick your youthful athletic brain's ass, any day of the week, every day of the week.

People like, say, Martin Odersky (54). Simon Peyton Jones (55). Xavier Leroy (45).

Don't worry. Keep learning. Stay interested.

Set for life isn't necessarily permanent.

This is not uncommon at all in academia/research.

Also, for the record, both Martin and SPJ are incredibly active and probably eternally young.

I'd also add that a lot (most?) of the programmers outside of academia that started 20-30-40 years ago have been promoted out of coding jobs - the culture's changing, slowly, but previously the decent salaries were reserved for management, not programmers, and assuming you want to earn more...

i dont agree. Most breakthroughs in Science for example are done by people with massive experience and certainly not in their twenties. There are alot of brilliant scientists older than 40.

Example: http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/lists/laureates_ages/...

I continue to believe that over the next couple of decades the tech community is going to see something it never has before: lots of kick-ass retirement-age programmers.

I'm hoping that we see some great startups come out of it, but whatever happens, it's going to change a lot of things. Programming won't be seen as a college-kid thing, older folks will be able to create interactive tech experiences around their worldviews, and discussions around the impact of technology on society will have many more voices. This guy is just the vanguard of a big crowd to come.

Neat.

I enjoyed this comment: "Maynard says the current generation of startups should be more patient than he was. “Englebert's law of technology prediction says that all technology predictions overpredict what technology will do for you in the short term and underpredict what technology will do for you in the long term," he explains. "I have seen this curve over and over, and lots of startups fail in that gap because they don't keep at it long enough. They think the technology will be there before it's really ready.”

"That is unbelievable--but I think we have lost the idea of the software artist. When the machines were much smaller, I did my game essentially as a one-man team. I did all the art. I did all the programming. I had one other engineer help me with some of the music. I have a friend working with EA today and he is probably working in a team of 120 engineers.”

“Electronic Arts treated the programmer as an artist," he says. "They were the first people to do that.”

First time I've read someone explain this concept...

I'm pretty old myself, started coding with Commodore Pet, 16Kb of memory, C-casette for mass memory. Cost something like $1000 at a time.

You can still do somewhat impressive things yourself because the tools have gotten so much better. One thing I've been stringing along the years is a sokobon puzzle game called Robo-E. I've now implemented it in Java ME (originally for Nokia J2ME phones with 64Kb of memory), then in Javascript + C++ for symbian and Meego, now in Objective-C + C++ for iOS. The iOS version is 17Mb, compared to 48Kb of the original J2ME version, so it is over 300 times bigger just because tools, and hardware has gotten so much more capable.

Modelling tools, programming tools, everything is just so much more capable of nowadays.

Sorry for rambling, I guess I'm getting old :)

Speaking of which, here's David Maynard himself posing (lower-right) in EA's first software-artist-themed "Can a Computer Make You Cry?" advertisement:

http://chrishecker.com/Can_a_Computer_Make_You_Cry%3F

+1 to you for remembering the original Electronic Arts. It's been such a long long time, hasn't it?

I might argue that it was Activision that did it first - certainly for consoles (Atari, etc). They were the first company to explicitly name the programmers ("David Crane's Pitfall!", etc). But EA took it to the next level, and seemed to get behind 'teams' early on - Ozark Softscape, for example.

We still have a strong artist/guru/crusader mythology within hacker/programmer culture. From the inside, we like to think of ourselves as ninjas (XKCD has a comic about Lisp paren being like ancient swords), artists (EA), and at times, knights (white hat, black hat, ...), and even information crusaders. From the outside, however, we are pretty much universally viewed as antisocial janitors (at least in business relationships), and no one wants a janitor who thinks he/she's an "artist."

This reminds me of the Eddie Izzard bit about Europe vs. America and how Americans will make a big deal about something restored to the way it was "over 50 years ago". GASP "Surely, no one was alive back then!"

"OMG this guy is 65 and still codes?". C'mon. There are a lot of older programmers out there. At least the ones who weren't bullied out by management or peer pressure or killed off by the health effects of sitting at your desk for 40 years.

In America you say "elevator", in England we say "lift". In America you say "TV", in England we say "telly". In America you say "'erb", in England we say "herb" because there's a fucking "H" in it.

And yet you say "alf" instead of "half".

Ha. I think it's actually impossible to generalise about British accents because there are too many of them. I definitely pronounce the H in half, though I'll agree that many don't.

And "Bri'ish" because replacing a 't' with a glottal stop is a perfectly reasonable thing to do.

Again, which British. We have more accents than you have states.

we have more accents than we have states too.

The only American pronunciation that stops me in my tracks is "nitch" for 'niche'. Whereas in the UK we'll pronounce it "neesh".

Wow. An example where the British chose the French pronunciation and the US is (a bit spottily) tending to Anglicize a word. I never can think of one when I try.

Thanks for that.

Coupé is my favourite - in the UK it is pronounced the French way whereas in the US it seems to be pronounced as "coop".

"Neesh" is taught as Correct in the US, though it's not universally used.

Here's the clip http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cs5H7cgcpkg

In parts of the US we say herb too

I remember seeing a linguistic graph of the US showing how different regions referred to fizzy sweet drinks (here in Australia, that's 'soft drinks'). The predominant usage was 'soda', fair enough, I can see it. Then there was a fair area of 'pop', which sounds cute and archaic to my ears, but fair enough. The confusing one was a swathe of the US south where they're referred to as 'coke', regardless of the actual drink. I remember someone here on HN relating the story of being asked to get some coke, came back with Coke, and being told he got the wrong thing...

The Coca-Cola Company is based in Atlanta, in the South. It's where the drink has existed the longest. Still crazy, but maybe that gives some perspective.

And somehow that trademark is still not generic.

In the south, you almost always ARE getting a Coke product. Pretty much only at Taco Bell/KFC are you getting a Pepsi product.

The proper exchange is:

"I'll have a coke." "Which kind would you like?"

I live in Atlanta. It's no weirder than Xerox to mean photocopier honestly once you've noticed.

I find it hard to believe that there are too many guys above 65 and coding that aren't Fellows or academics.

Not that I believe that they are in anyway incapable, I'm just thinking once you get to 65 or thereabouts, you're probably looking to retire.

>> I find it hard to believe that there are too many guys above 65 and coding that aren't Fellows or academics.

Being a Fellow or academic sounds to me more like a sentence than a career goal.

Given the benefits you get out of it in certain places, I would surely appreciate it.

It all depends where you work.

Different strokes. Either to me sounds infinitely better than churning out code.

I never plan to retire. I have no family & nothing to look forward to. The day I stop working will be the day I die.

I think the other thing is, a 65 year old developer would have started developing around 1970. While there were certainly people developing software back then, it was nowhere near as many as there are today, so the pool of people 65 and up is obviously going to be quite small.

I'm quite hopeful as the people who started during the boom of the 90's age that the pool of older developers will increase and we'll discover that people aren't really 'aged' out of jobs. I love what I do and have zero interest in management or starting my own company, so I hope to stay gainfully employed as a developer at least until 60 (at which point I may decide to work part time or pick up consulting gigs as I tide myself over to my peak social security withdrawls at age 70).

Here's the clip http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OV2PbKpsMRk

I'm not as old, and MIT's LCS and AI lab were well-established by the time I was an undergrad. But I do feel privileged to be there close enough to the beginning to have written code for some of DEC's oldest products and seen, firsthand, how venture capital and software intertwined and grew together. Maynard does a great job of articulating the perspective that growing up with computing imparts.

I think it is no accident he is making Android code. It's a system you can learn about inside and out. It's elegant in many of the same ways Macintosh was in 1984. It's enjoyable, which is important when you could just decide you are too old to code.

Here's David in EA's iconic "We See Farther" poster, from the company's golden age (the Trip Hawkins era):

http://www.flickr.com/photos/grouchodis/7918145932/in/photos...

I had this poster on my wall in high school; these guys were the original "rockstar" coders.

EA really did used to be a great company. It is a shame how far they've fallen.

Just for the outside. At that same time they were commissioning work from multiple developers for the same project at low fees saying: "We'll make it up in royalties", but canceling those versions they didn't like. None of the developers knew this was the case until they got the cancelation call.

Ethics? Not really.

So they were an incubator.

Heh.

Ha! In a way... it's like losing/winning a race you didn't know you were in.

What advice is he actually giving? Don't introduce new technology too fast? Keep working at a failed startup because it might work longterm?

The title is misleading. I couldn't find "Englebert's law of technology" but basically Douglas Englebart must have taught him "technology predictions overpredict what technology will do for you in the short term and underpredict what technology will do for you in the long term." He goes on to say "I have seen this curve over and over, and lots of startups fail in that gap because they don't keep at it long enough. They think the technology will be there before it's really ready." So yes, keep at it, and timing is everything.

Sounds like Amara's Law: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roy_Amara

[Amara] worked closely with Doug Engelbart on the proposals that led to Engelbart's history-making Augmentation Research Center. http://boingboing.net/2008/01/03/roy-amara-forecaster.html

Maynard is mis-remebering, which is understandable since Amara and Engelbart worked together.

Yes you are probably correct. However it was Doug that explained to me the reason why this law holds. It is because of Moore's law that the technology level grows exponentially but the human mind seems incapable of grokking the exponential curve and thus predicts on a linear basis. The linear line stays above the exponential curve until they inevitably cross. Thus ""We tend to overestimate the effect of a technology in the short run and underestimate the effect in the long run"

We're in the same age bracket and like you, all I've ever wanted to do was write code. I'm thinking about your explanation here and wondering if Moore's law is the most relevant factor or if it's network power laws. I'm not reading a lot of posts saying "I have this great app that will be revolutionary but I need much more speed and memory in mobile devices." But I do read a lot posts about growing a network of users. On the other hand, it's inevitable that there will be much more power in mobile devices, so the it's best to see what code can be written with that target in mind, which is why I don't get involved in the native vs html5 debate. It's clear HTML5 will continue to get better and be sufficient for most applications.

I'm a few years behind you, so I idolized guys like you and Englebart when I was starting out. I kind of miss that ga-ga eyed hero-worship phase of my life. Now I'm older than the President of the United States and that's kind of hard to grasp.

He's also #1 on the company's internal fitbit competititon

That is awesome. Is that a common thing for organizations to have internal fitbit rankings?

Y, I've have several other friends with similar competitions at their companies, prizes handed out every few months. Fitbit isn't the only brand of fitness monitors.

Good HR departments are handing them out as part of Open Enrollment and Health programs.

An informal competition has sprung up among the engineers at my company but we are mostly trying to hack it. Does anyone know what happens when you put a FitBit in a paint shaker?

"But if I had to do it over again today, I might choose bio-informatics or nanotechnology.”

In 20 years from now, IT skills will better be more than common. The internet will be in a post-maturity stage. The new "lack of" won't be of CS folks. It may as well be of what he mentioned.

Is this really true though? I'm sure the internet will be at a mature technology, but there will always be something new that's bound to come up. Programming != Web dev.

I have doubts, given that machines are getting locked down both in terms of hardware and software, preventing users from exploring the guts of their gadgets as their curiosity is piqued by using these devices.

The advances in technology, while making "creation" more accessible than ever, also seems to be enabling fewer people to serve more people than ever before.

I expect more and more to be locked down. Not so much because of desire by companies to lock their product (although that is a motivator), but media sensationalism and politicians need to look like leaders while expending no effort. I look at the case of the startup uploading all the addresses found in the contacts of an iPhone and the reaction to that. I did not see one article asking if someone's Outlook for Windows contacts had ever been uploaded. It was a stupid move for the startup, but given the history of PCs, it seems like something post-PC product managers would overlook. People seem to want to share everything, but have control over privacy. Adding to that, I am sure a push to make absolutely sure security measures (remote wipe, find my phone) cannot be disabled by a thief. All this gets us secure, locked devices, because it is easier than having your C-level executive be lectured to by some member of Congress's committee.

So, I would expect to see less and less of people in the industry who got into like me with and Atari 400. There are certainly no modern day version of the C64, Sinclair Z80, or TI-99/4a (no, Raspberry Pi isn't even close).

iOS provides great software to start every career but the one that makes it sing.

If I were starting college right now, I'd be aiming at the space industry.

I disagree. Technology is advancing at an extremely rapid pace and in the future it will require more knowledge and training to keep up, thus raising the bar to enter. Look at the medical field, for example. 200 years ago it didn't take much education or experience to be considered a doctor. Nowadays you have spend nearly half your life in preparation to become one.

Our industry is definitely becoming more popular but that doesn't mean that the demand is dying down.

Never said it's dying down, on the contrary - the supply of such skills will eventually have to be much more common given strong demand. The new uncommon will be something else though.

Wow, this guy worked with Doug Engelbart and Kelly Johnson!

To set the record straight I worked for Lockheed, and got to meet Kelly Johnson, who is one of my heroes, but I actually did not work with him. I did work for Doug Engelbart. Both true visionaries and engineering Samurais.

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