Start each day with the thought: "if I got fired today do I have what it takes to bridge it through to the next opportunity, and would there be companies out there in need and willing to hire me".
If you can't honestly answer that with "yes" you are either accommodated, or running risks higher than you realize.
In my experience outline.com does a bang up job of getting all that clutter out. I am not in any way affiliated with them and don't even know how they monetize but I hope they stick around for as long as possible.
I love WFH. It helps that I have been happily married for many years, I have home cooked meals, more family interaction (well when I am working I am working but whatercooler conversations in your own kitchen are great). And I can literally work from anywhere, be it visiting relatives or travelling to Europe. I really hope I can continue like this for a long time; I might accept going back to the office - but it better be a real one.
I joke that my career went downhill from when I started. At first I had my own office, with a door, desk, computer desk, bookshelf with books, two chairs in front of my desk for small meetings. Then I had a large, tall cube, with reasonable space. Next I had a small, short walled cube I could barely fit in and would bump into my neighbor. Finally I was in a open space, with tens of other people yapping in their speakerphones many times in the same online meeting, with maddening echo. One person got sick, everyone got sick. If you want to get any work done you need to wear Bose cancelling headphones.
Finally I managed to work from home. Once again I have my private office, silence, communicate via Slack and email, and never been more productive in my life.
When I see the phrase "emailing like a CEO" I imagine mainly not asking for opinions or decisions rather making statements of fact or decisions. For example, I got into the habit of not asking for vacation, rather I say "I am taking time off from day X to day Y", or declaring my design decisions instead of asking for opinions.
In the case of asking for time off, my rationale is to avoid making someone spend time evaluating if my request is acceptable.
We may be looking at this the wrong way. It isn't a question of ageism, rather did that person keep up with the evolution of languages and ecosystems? It is OK to be old(er) as long as one has what companies are looking for. Waiting for the time go by and count on "seniority raises" alone is counterproductive.
I am 55. I am as current as I can be, including when it comes to cloud, nosql, APIs, and the javascript renaissance. I try to do what companies need. My experience is a bonus because of the things I don't do, because of the problems I did not cause, because of the things that didn't happen. These in my experience are valuable even though almost impossible to measure.
Amen to that. Where I work I see people adding await/async all over the place because "performance". So now when you get exception stack traces they are hard to follow or flat out useless.
Here's what have been working well for me. I wear dress pants (not jeans, not chino - Izod for example), colorful shirts (Nautica are my favorite) - always tucked in, good looking but comfortable shoes (not sneakers). I make sure they are always reasonably ironed. And silly socks - Happy Socks are the best. During the summer I use short sleeves, long sleeves in the winter if I feel like.
I never use a tie, but you may if you feel like.
This is software development. We are not professionals, and I sometimes say there is no such thing as "software engineer". I am an engineer by education (EE) and I can tell you software development is a long way from being a regulatable profession. Heck if you want to install an outlet or a faucet in your home you need to be properly licensed and insured. But when it comes to developing software that arguably is having more and more importance on people's lives there is no such thing.
In the company's eyes you should be 100% or even more committed. Perception is everything in this case. But you must do it by creating your own reserve space, where you are really 90% (or less) committed while using the remainder to worry about your next gig, because it will come. That's when you learn to apply proactive procrastination (sometimes it pays off to hold off on something you suspect will be cancelled), and absolutely use all the time estimated and allocated. Say whatever they want, managers and people in general take estimates for what it must be. Therefore you make it so.
I learned the hard way to always be prepared to move on. I keep myself current. I actually assume the project will fail and prepare for it. If it succeed that's great news.
I never had and probably never will have golden parachutes. My insurance is what I know and why I do. It must be valuable for the marketplace, not just for the company I am currently working for. That is my duty.
Yes, absolutely do what your boss expects. But one can be a miracle worker just for so long. In reality you are moving your baseline upwards, and the day you stop being a miracle worker you become a slacker.
I do my best to have someone tell me to fix them. Not because I lack initiative, but because I saw too many times well- intentioned developers get in a lot of trouble by "taking the initiative" to make things better, to fix things. To the point where one place I worked the word "refactor" was spoken with a high degree of suspicion.
I look it this way: if I were good/smart/eager enough to decide if something is stupid or a waste of time, I may think about becoming the entrepreneur myself. I am not that person. I am a tool. Someone is paying me to develop something that it is important at least to them. I am a professional, I get things done for other people.
Oh you learn that "you just don't say things like that". Interviewing is a lot like sales, where you are the product. So it stands to reason that the "truth" is a movable entity. You build the truth your "client" is looking for, you enhance what would be pluses for them, and keep your real reasons for yourself. After all, they are your reasons and no one else's.
As you mention, I do care and put effort. I don't have things coming back to haunt me. I have quite a bit of experience. And I do things fast if I need to. I just don't do them fast just for the sake of it, so I try to be seen as "meeting the targets" as well as "meeting expectations". Because if you are exceeding expectations you are really being underpaid. Well that's my view and my opinion after quite a bit of decades.
"They" like to say yes, that we scrum. Practically I have a manager that calls biweekly meetings and hands out work to be done in one or two weeks. Which usually is more than enough, but I manage to get everything done "on time".
I achieved some level of happiness when I managed to go up the earnings ladder (move frequently, move fast) and stop behaving if it was my own business. It is someone else's business, and I am there to do what they ask me. Which may or may not match to what they need, but that's not for me to decide.
When things go wrong, you either move on or start fixing things, and that perpetuates your job (hopefully). If things take more time, it is their time. I come in at 8am, leave at 4pm. I don't take my laptop home. I don't work from home. I see their inefficiencies as opportunities for me to spend time on things like learning and experimenting.
But that's me. I get paid enough, I don't need or want to go up the "career ladder". Others may have loftier goals.
I wonder how global warming / climate change will end up bringing us back to that. It will be even more sweltering, and I can imagine air conditioning restrictions similar to today's watering restrictions.
Parent of a surgeon here. My son's medical school did away with grades altogether - it's pass / fail. They still have to pass the board exams every year.
At one company I interviewed the director of development was wearing bermuda shorts, flip flops and a worn out T shirt. As I looked around, most all employees were in shorts. All work in a common area.
When I started working I had my own private office and wore a shirt and tie at least. Fridays were "casual" - no tie. I liked it better like that.
Unfortunately many management schools of thought still take the 8 hour as gospel. I worked at a company where my manager's words were "I expect 8 solid hours from developers". Well I gave him 8 solid hours of my physical body, but I allowed my mind to wander whenever if felt like. In a way I was not officially underemployed but I didn't give them "solid 8 hours" - I made sure time expanded to fill up estimates.
I wish I had. That was my first job out of school, and I developed the UI for commands and reports, all through the BAUDOT-code based terminal. Our field test switch sat on a corner, with some more modern electronic telex terminals (they were blue), along with EPROM burners for patching, etc. The big switch was the rest of the floor. So many things I participated in 30+ years ago and didn't have the idea of taking at least a couple of pictures. Such is life.
I worked on a project that replaced an electromechanical Telex switch. Four racks of microcomputer based hardware replaced an entire floor of mechanical relays.
However it was a marvel to see and hear that thing click and clack all day, with technicians with their ear trained to detect issues and replace relays by listening to the switch.
Of course billing was done through a guy on top of a ladder taking large format B&W pictures of the bank of user's (mechanical) counters.
It is paramount. This way I can leave 4:30pm (or earlier) minimizing the perception that I might be slacking off (which I am not). Other guys that get here after me stick around way past 6pm, which for me is a no-no. Since no one has any idea what time I came in, it gets harder to judge. I wish this was not necessary but it is my defense against company culture (8 solid hours, no working from home, regardless of your current work load).
Weekdays, wake up 6:45am. Shower, shave every other day. Take dogs outside. Have breakfast. Drive 25 minutes to work, make sure to be there before everyone else (guaranteed if before 8:30am).
Read HN, LinkedIn, check email. Browse through development items, get stuff done. Have salad for lunch. Some more browsing and some more working.
Leave 4:30pm. Drive ~30 minutes back home.
Get home, have dinner, get ready for other work. The really interesting work, from 6:30pm to 11:30pm-midnight.
Weekends - do more of that really interesting work. At least 8 hours both Saturday and Sunday.