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Comment by jsnk | Hacker News Reader

As a developer, on top of 8 to 9 hours of work, I spend 1 to 2 hours reading technical books and coding on a usual weekday. Weekends too are spent on working on side projects. I can do this now as a twenty something, but in my 30s and 40s when there are wife and kids, I am not sure if this is viable.

Are there vocations that doesn't require constant deliberate self-improvement? I can understand casually reading up on books and papers to catch up once in a while, but the expectations imposed on developers to always solve problems, learn completely new tools, frameworks and languages seems undoable for me in the long run.

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It's not viable now, yet you still do it. What will change is that you realize it's not viable. It an abuse inherent in our society and culture that the naive are taken advantage of and exploited by society as a whole, driven by the exponential advantages a few gain from the exploitation of 99% of the rest of us. The only thing that trickles down is the fraud of a ponzi/pyramid scheme. Many people don't realize that our whole society is far more like a ponzi/pyramid scheme than not. Sure, you and I are at various levels of the top tier of that ponzi/pyramid scheme, but even we don't realize the un-realized gains due to us that are being pilfered by those above us on that pyramid. We are just happy we get what we got, which is more than those below us, so we feel good in spite of being defrauded, robbed, and stolen from.

If it wasn't about exploitation then our society would shift towards "performance" based work and lower work hours per week with more free time for family, life, and happiness; but all regular people get when they are productive and efficient is more and more work because there is "always someone willing to work harder"...as the wealthy who employ those people who cause that dynamic tell us. The exploitation comes in the lack of limits and boundaries, our wealthy dealers keep telling us we should do more and try a different drug. It's a rather archetypal form of abuse, nothing is good enough and the bar keeps moving higher and higher and is always just out of reach, like that carrot leading a mule on a plow.

I suggest you might want to consider doing what most do, just enough not to get fired and spend all that energy you have to develop your freedom and liberty from the rat-race and maybe even do it in such a manner that allows you to offer that opportunity to others you employ.

Unfortunately, that is rather diametrically opposed to the interests of the YCombinator and VC symbiotic...parasitic???....relationship, but when you are beholden to someone else who draws 20 ... 30 ... 40 ... 50% of your efforts, gains, and profits.....you can never achieve freedom and liberty. There are frequently warnings of schemes that require you to pay or buy into something, what else are many ...most???... of these VC and incubator programs? Maybe slightly better versions? But they still promise you connections and entry into an otherwise closed community they helped build a fence around.

+1 very well put

I think your view while mostly valid, is too simplistic in regards to the role of VCs.

The relationship between a VC and an entrepreneur is symbiotic, not parasitic. The VC has collected extra cash he wants to risk to produce good returns on. The entrepreneur wants to build a business but does not have the funds to see it through the growth phase on his/her own. The two of you can get together to produce something that neither of you could have done individually. Each getting a slice of a pie that would not have existed if you had not worked together.

One could argue that it's only symbiotic given todays capitalist society as a premise (limited options for investment - as capital is concentrated - and basic needs is not met by society).

The whole point of VC is to live, vampire-like, on the labor of those funded.

> The VC has collected extra cash

How was that cash collected? What is the VC collecting now?

He collected cash from the last batch of "entrepreneurs" and their teams who did all the work and wealth creation. He's doing it with the current guy, which will fund him doing it to the next guy. He's not collecting cash like picking apples from a tree. He's parasitically leeching off the working wealth creators, as are his heir LPs.

The pie is divided up in a certain way. Of course the VC side has it in their interest to tell some story of how deserving they are. Of anything I can think of, I can't think of anything that would motivate people to tell a BS story more than why their pie slice should be a certain size. Anyone who says that there is some omniscient, objective obviousness to some positive quality of VCs is obviously engaging in the most standard argument of all of partisans. We're not doing some repeatable experiment on some hypothesis that everyone has an interest in accepting. It's a zero-sum division of a pie, and if the VC can get over on people that he's so deserving, he wins the game. If we're talking about dividing the pie, everyone piping in with a comment has an agenda, whether hidden or not.

I actually see it as being rather simplistic to assume it's a symbiotic relationship instead of a parasitic one. Parasites can often implement methods to make themselves attractive or initiate the parasitic relationship, precisely, because it is mostly in their own main interest.

We just recently saw the owner of the Klippers expose that same relationship, just because something is on a far larger scale, does not mean that it is any less the same thing underlying it. Yes, _some_ founders get insanely wealthy, but the VCs get even wealthier because they have fine-tuned a formula of exploitation and manipulation. Yes, a lot of investments they make go bust, but that's why they take an arm and a leg and a pound of flesh while they're at it. They are essentially diversifying their investments, but they are also profiteering from a huge arbitrage opportunity. They are essentially trading in the inefficiencies of the market because that is risk they don't want to burden and don't really actually want to do any work to do due diligence to find the good investments. They are in the business of statistical investment..... the more money you throw at it, the higher the likelihood of hitting the bulls eye....simply based on statistical probability.

That is of course offset by various other revenue streams because the scale is not frequent enough to base it purely on statistical probability, but that is the core.

Or alternatively, view the rat race as a fun game to participate in. It's all about your attitude. What's the alternative anyways? Being a hermit or a person who does nothing all day? Seems really boring.

Well, historically people have turned to politics and more fundamental ideals, but I realise that with the superficial politics of today this may not seem like an alternative. A shame really.

Some possible historical role playing class analogies that aren't totally ridiculous:

The academic, which is kind of a non-theistic monk. Tenure is impossible to get considering we produce about 10 PHDs for every tenure job opening, but adjunct work is no big deal. An acquaintance of mine got into teaching once he semi-retired.

The gentleman farmer, at least WRT not needing to do the work for the money, but doing it for fun. I had an uncle like that.

The aristocrat amateur scientist, basically the academic without an institution behind him. This is quite a challenge for a ChemENG but pretty easy for a CS guy or an amateur astronomer. I had another uncle like that, although his variety of landed gentry was more along the lines of "owned several gas stations" rather than owning a barony or dutchy.

The monk, modern version would be that psuedo-homeless guy who hangs out at the local makerspace all day. Basically a techie with a vow of poverty. This vaguely resembles my 20s.

I don't think you know what the rat-race is. The rat race is arbitrage... it is the profiteering from the value you can provide, but don't realize. It is selling yourself for less than the person you work for is selling you net.

The tools and frameworks and languages all start looking the same after a while, especially the ones you can realistically use. It's important to keep an eye out for new developments but this starts to take less and less time.

When it comes to side projects and self improvement, you have to make more targeted decisions on what you want to spend you time on, but I actually found that to be a good thing. It's not as much of a big deal as you might think.

I'm in the position you're curious about, and it seems quite viable to me. Although everyone knows, that everyone knows, that no coder can be hired over 30, none the less at least some get hired anyway. I keep assuming every job will be my last and I'll have to strike out on my own next time, and its always "A heard from B who heard from C that you're available and I've got the perfect job for your skills..." and here I go again...

"learn completely new"

That is the primary mistake. There is no "completely new". If you think "completely new" exists, go ahead, try to disprove me, go retrocomputing some COBOL on MVS, or learn this decades LISP, or this months web framework, or ...

Not going to be spending ALL weekend working on your projects once the wife, kids, house all become a part of life. Or rephrased, maybe one of your projects is going to be soccer practice with the kids. And thats OK. (edited to add, I think you will also learn the meaning of "midnight engineering" although that might only be a EE term)

My lunch hour might be an hour long but I don't need more than 5 minutes. If I'm not exercising (I hike a lot) the remainder of my lunchtime is reading / experimenting / MOOC. Also for a couple decades I've read before sleeping, although I've been told over and over that it will ruin my back, neck, eyes, sleep, sex life, and posture, but so far so good.

Jesus, over 30? Am I already past my theoretical expiration date? I've hardly gotten started.

> There is no "completely new".

I tend to agree with you, the language I know best is one thousand and one years older than me. (N.B. I am nearly 100001 years old).

Hmmmmmm, You mentioned COBOL, I can't remember the last time somebody mentioned the word COBOL on HN. Ooh, you made me feel all warm and fuzzy inside.

Become a manager. :)

Most people with kids and family and whatever else manage to watch television a couple hours a night. Why can't you study or code instead?

If your side projects are truly worthwhile, you can pay people to do them for you.

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