peacemaker

I went and did a masters degree in Ecology (well, Conservation Ecosystem Management specifically) during covid which I really enjoyed. A lot of it was completely out of my comfort zone after 20+ years in tech but a surprising amount did translate, such as the maths/stats and writing R code.

I felt it made me a better 'thinker' if that makes sense? Learned to be more critical (in a good way) and consider subjects I'd never come across before. I even went and created (and won!) a business pitch to a government org to handle some habitat surveys which was a great experience.

ah great, yet another reason to make me feel old today! :) But seriously, 30 years old game and it still holds up really well. OpenTTD is one of those that I always have installed

Well no, I clearly wasn't saying there is no ageism at all. I was taking issue with the comment regarding developers having to leave tech over 50 years old.

I agree, all of those fit in my (admittedly lazy) "and such" part of the statement. Loads of jobs for all ages

The idea that you must retire from tech before 50 is so incredibly false I have difficulty believing this view is even shared here.

Perhaps in some of the "trendy" "bro-culture" startups you'd have a more difficult time as an older developer but even in those places, the level of experience and skills older devs bring can be extremely valuable.

But say you were laid off in your 40's, now what? Well, there are so many bigger, less volatile companies out there with solid pay that are desperate for senior people with experience. There's also consulting for those who have spent a career building up a network of contacts. You can still leverage those old contacts for future opportunities as well.

Governmental work and such is also a place where age is not a concern. Here I agree you might not make as much money but employment is always available to developers who are skilled, experienced and flexible.

I took a break from software to complete a masters degree in ecology a little while ago and loved it. So much potential for software to improve that field. My research was based on using remote sensing to detect change in ecosystems, which proved to be very useful when monitoring raised peat bogs - vitally important ecosystems.

I'm back in the software world now but still spend time doing surveys and trying to think of ways I can combine both skillsets into a viable and impactful business.

+1 for Authy, though I keep the backups and multi-device turned on for convenience.

My old phone died and I had no way of getting into some of my 2FA secured accounts a while back and it was a wakeup call that eventually led to using Authy.

thanks!

Can you share the group?

Absolutely! I made a comment in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32668694 just recently about this. My company hired a guy who passed their tests, yet the guy who joined us for work was barely able to move a mouse around the screen, let alone get stuck in as a "Senior DevOps Engineer".

After we finally fired him I did a little digging. His resume was very similar to 100's of others found across linkedin, a list of devops keywords basically. Almost all of the people he had "worked" with in a previous company had the same text and even looked very similar.

I'm pretty sure that the company gets these people in the door and they try to last as long as possible earning western senior dev salaries. Rince and repeat a few times a year and it probably earns them a decent amount.

My employer hired a guy from this company! I wasn't involved in the interview process but was tasked with mentoring him. His resume was covered with DevOps buzzwords and he obviously said the right things in the interview, but the guy could barely move a mouse around the screen...

He took extremely long to do anything and then when he presented the work, it was very wrong and obviously copied from a bunch of stack overflow answers.

To this day I'm astounded my employer hired him and even more so that it took 2 months to fire him. Just think, he was on a senior salary for a couple of months for doing nothing... not a bad scam if you can do that a few times a year.

This is incredibly well written, how did you learn to write like that? As for the concepts you describe, how did you learn about them?

I recently moved from software dev to devops and this sounds about right! I'm supposed to understand the product teams entire codebase, write the tooling, create/update terraform for the infra, implement CI/CD stuff plus act as some kind of IT guy with AWS access.

Don't get me wrong, it makes a nice change from pure development, but it's clear that in most places, 'DevOps' is not so clearly defined.

dongle

In some countries they banned landlords from evicting tenants during the pandemic to stop stuff like this happening. They then asked banks to provide mortgage holidays so that the landlords could afford to keep non paying tenants. In my opinion this is a good example of government intervention for the greater good.

Is there any political will in the US to do the same? Could something like this ever be considered in congress or would it be seen as too 'socialist' maybe?

I'm currently working on a combined approach - deal with it + fix it via therapy/CBT/Mindfulness. Dealing with it by practicing gratitude for the benefits it provides and the goals it allows me to work towards. Current plan is to use this approach for 5-7 years working towards FIRE and then move into something more fulfilling with less pressure to secure a high salary.

We are lucky that tech pays so well that we could, in theory, retire early. It is very difficult to keep that in mind when you're miserable at work though...

Just wanted to let you know that I'm exactly the same way. In fact, I've even thought perhaps I was the one with the psychological defect where I simply can't stand the 9-5 grind, regardless of the pay, status or type of work. No amount of hobbies, travel or social efforts have made a dent in the deep, existential dread I feel after only a few days in a "normal" job.

Unfortunately, while I have had some successes working for myself, I tend to find down periods come along where I need to work again and I convince myself it will be different this time. It usually never is, the only difference being the length of time I can stomach being employed and even then it's a difference of a few weeks at most.

Is this actually a defect that needs some kind of therapy to correct? Or is it an acceptable way to be? Who knows but I thought I'd let you know that it's not just you.

Easier said than done when you've a large, busy team to manage alongside lots of other work.

Besides, if you're a non-technical leader it can be difficult to understand how things are going unless you have some kind of metrics to track.

Counting lines of code is definitely not a useful metric, however, you can extract a lot of information via the Github API that I believe can help with managing a tech team. It's exactly why I created getdevinsight.com as I think too many managers rely on bad metrics like lines of code and we can do better.

I wanted a way for dev team leaders to see at a glance, in plain english, how their team was doing so I created DevInsight. Feedback and thoughts very much appreciated!

Location: UK (North West)

Remote: Yes, only remote

Willing to relocate: No

Technologies: 20 years software engineering experience. Most recently Laravel/PHP. Historically C++, C#. Loads of experience with SQL, AWS, Deployments, Tooling etc. Mostly Back-end focused but comfortable with JS.

Résumé/CV: Upon request

Email: jamie [at] jamieos [dot] com

I'm moving back into a team leadership role after working for myself a while so probably The Managers Path and Managing Humans. Would love to hear other suggestions for software development managers too!

This is a question I asked myself a couple of years ago and it has led me down a path of intense self-reflection and searching. Unfortunately, it's not something that you can "think" your way to an answer, not entirely anyway.

To save you the pain of my journey (although perhaps the pain is a necessary prerequisite?) I can tell you that what has worked for me is engaging in Mindfulness and having sessions with an expert in Transactional Analysis. Transactional Analysis teaches you to realize you are not just one person all of the time but instead have multiple "Ego States" that you will move through depending on various circumstances. TA has deep scientific grounding and I have found it the only way to explain myself to myself clearly. Understanding TA (with the help of a therapist) can give you some explainations as to why you think, feel and do the things you do.

There is a LOT more to all this but I encourage you to read a couple of books and perhaps reach out to a therapist that specializes in TA for a couple of introductory sessions and see if it works for you.

- Mindfulness: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Mindfulness-practical-guide-finding...

- TA Today: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Today-New-Introduction-Transactiona...

The healthcare part is correct - you'll get that regardless of your working situation. But university is not free in the UK.

Also, if you go for long periods of not paying any "national insurance" (similar to social security) you can actually not receive the govenment pension on retirement.

Still, having the major stress removed of worrying about healthcare is reason enough to enjoy living in the UK over the US.

As other posters have pointed out, getting to another country is likely to be very difficult for you right now so my advice is to think about what you can do where you are to improve your situation.

It seems to me that the answer to your problems is money. Yes, I know that can seem obvious but if you have a goal to earn western wages while living on Indonesian costs you should be able to save a fair bit.

This means you could try freelancing your front-end dev skills out to western clients. There are lots of platforms out there where you can do this.

Alternatively look for a remote only job as these are becoming more and more popular and front-end development is a highly desired skillset.

Thinking outside the box a bit, if you're willing to stay put a little while longer you could potentially build software products, such as WordPress plugins and use a platform like Codecanyon to sell them.

Or if you'd rather use your fitness interest/skills why not consider setting up some kind of bootcamp class? You could create a course on bookmartialarts.com (or similar) that is tailored to foreigners that want to come work out in another country? With your development skills you'd likely have an edge with marketing it and making it look very professional.

You've got a tough but not impossible road ahead of you. Good luck!

Unfortunately that appears to be my natural inclination and now I'm facing a list of more than 50 or so "available paths". This can be equally as daunting as having no options and frankly it has led to decision paralysis.

Some might then say, "well, narrow down the list to 3-5 options". Well, how does one go about doing that? Am I to perform the pre-mortem and value analysis on all 50 of these potential options? Randomly select a few to discard (since having so many options suggests perhaps that all have enough benefits to be viable?), or maybe run some kind of "tournament" where I play off each option against one another, loser is discarded and we continue on until there is a winner?

I appreciate the article and will take some of its lessons into account but I'd love to hear what the author of the piece would think about my situation.

I guess things are basically worth what people are willing to pay so there is no way one way that valuations work.

Any questions? Not really, I've sold and bought businesses in the past so it's pretty straightforward now.

Hey, my email is in my profile. Wasn't aware the contact form didnt work will have to fix that!

Exactly, the one that makes a couple hundred is different because I'm actively trying to sell it and therefore will sell for a reasonable market price.

Well at $3k a month (which it will hit most definitely) most standard valuations would put the price at around $60k or so. Now add on top the fact that I'm not actively looking to sell it, you'd have to make a quite substantial offer above that to make it "really good".

Certainly nowhere near $1,000,000 :) I keep my eye on businesses for sale and have bought and sold a fair few so I have a good idea of what they cost.