I often worry about whether my startup clock is running out. I'm closer to 30 than 20, finishing up graduate school, and for the most part feel young. But other than the pediatrics ward, the only other time I start to feel my age is when attending some of these startup events.
What I try to keep conscious of is knowing what's reported in the media and what isn't, which are often 2 completely different worlds. On TechCrunch, "kid genius makes $100m" is the story they want. It fits this age-old narrative of a child prodigy reaching success in half the time it takes a "normally smart" person to, like Mozart, Einstein.
And that media draws in huge amounts of young people hoping to fit that narrative. But what's not reported are the companies that are typically working on much harder and more boring problems -- problems that require an understanding by people who've been in industries for years. Look at any CrunchBase newsletter about the day's fundraising and acquisitions, and you'll find yourself surprised at how many medical/B2B/etc companies are being bought for $100m+. These aren't companies started by 22yo grads, but by people with extensive industry experience. And the (startup) media doesn't really give a damn about them.
That's not, in any way, to devalue startups started by younger people. There's little-to-no barrier to starting social apps and the like. They have their place in society and have shown to be successful, so I don't blame a fresh grad who wants to try his/her hand at it. But there is a whole world of other startups and companies that are working in more complicated and boring industries that could not have been started by people in their early 20s.
I came up with the idea for my startup when I was 47. I don't expect it to be able to make a living at it until I'm 49. Age? Pffth. Then again, I'm not hacking together "Facebook for cats" and hoping for some zeitgeist to make it magically successful while buckets of venture capital rain down on my head, either.
A college kid would never have come up with what I'm building, because they wouldn't realize the problem I'm trying to solve actually exists. It came to me because I've been in the software industry for nearly two decades and have seen the same problems, over and over. I'm solving a real problem that I understand really well, with a straightforward monetization strategy from obvious customers. It's not something that could be knocked off in a weekend by a couple of dudes at a weekend hackathon.
The experience to see substantial problems and the patience to work on them comes with time. Don't worry about getting old.
That all said, my 40s have been the best creative period of my life, by far. I feel like all the things I learned and experienced in my first 40 years were just setting me up for what I can do today.
"A college kid would never have come up with what I'm building, because they wouldn't realize the problem I'm trying to solve actually exists."
This is such a key point. Sometimes it takes years, if not decades, of experience to even know that the problem exists. Put another way, if the problem can be solved by a 22-year-old with no experience in the field, there's a good chance they've misunderstood the problem.
... And years of work experience to understand organizational dynamics to setup a healthy business helps too. It's more than the idea that matters, but can you build and run the team that will make that idea a reality. I know that when I was fresh out of college I didn't understand organizational dynamics at all. I've read many examples of young startups failing because of rookie management mistakes.
Yes, coming up with the problem is often the hard bit.
But it happens the other way too, in that many young inventors tackle problems because "they didn't realize they were 'impossible'". More knowledgeable folk can do this too, but it requires a certain... disrespect for authority. Like Einstein's flexibility with time and space (though he was young then; he didn't make breakthroughs in later life, possibly because he himself became an authority).
It's not a matter of "didn't realize it's impossible". The problem young startup entrepreneurs have is they don't realize that valuable problems exist. Valuable problems tend to be industry-specific and narrowly defined, so you need to be at least aware of the problems of an industry, and the existing solutions/workarounds. Without industry experience at anything but being a college student and reading HN, how are you going to find problems to solve? That's why you see so many me-too social apps. You solve what you know, and if your most extensive experience with computers is Facebook and Twitter, that's your space for problems.
There are a couple of other factors to consider. First, there are problems that can be solved with new tech that couldn't be solved with old tech. The web opened up a huge front of new solutions over the past 10-20 years. Mobile is opening up another wave of solutions.
And finally, consider the "aspirin or vitamin" question. Vitamins are tempting, but aspirin sells better. Me, I'm working in more or less the monitoring space for configuration management. My key competition isn't other monitoring tools, it's the DevOps movement and automation tools like Chef and Puppet. When people have enterprise configuration management suck, those are the recommended solutions. But they're vitamins being sold as aspirin. Simply getting to where there's organizational buy-in to go to DevOps or to automate what was once manual is a whole fresh sort of pain. My competitive advantage is a near-painless dose of aspirin - immediate relief without having to change the whole model.
There's an obvious reason for Einstein to have gotten stuck: the subject of his later research, a quantum theory of gravity, really was too hard. The problem remains open today.
Which Ensure is formulated to replace food entirely? As far as I can tell, if I drank enough ensure to get 2400 calories, the other nutrients would be out of wack. As in, a given portion does not have the same DV% of each nutrient.
I'd never heard of Fortisip but from what I can tell it and ensure are both considerably more expensive than regular food, and actually more expensive than eating out.
To be fair, $65 is the pre-order price and includes a shaker bottle (worth $10) and free shipping.
Looking at the nutritional info if I drank 6 bottles of Ensure Plus each day I would be ingesting 360% of the recommended amount of Manganese and only 60% of the recommended amount of sodium. The rest of the listed nutrients would be at about 150%.
I don't think Ensure Plus is a substitute good for Soylent. It's a supplement not a food replacement and it's formulated and priced as such.
> Looking at the nutritional info if I drank 6 bottles of Ensure Plus each day I would be ingesting 360% of the recommended amount of Manganese and only 60% of the recommended amount of sodium. The rest of the listed nutrients would be at about 150%
Most nutrients with recommended amounts are healthy at higher than recommended amounts within fairly wide bounds, but the usually-listed recommended amount for Sodium is much higher than is minimally necessary, and is actually the upper limit recommended for about half the US population. So, actually, I'm not surprised that something intended as a broadly-usable food replacement would go over on most nutrients and under on Sodium.
Interim means provisional or temporary. Doesn't exactly inspire confidence. I have no idea whether Soylent is actually safe as a permanent sole-source nutrition solution but that's what they're marketing themselves as, and Ensure is not.
You can keep moving the goal posts but the fact is that Soylent is not new.
> [about use of word "interim"] Doesn't exactly inspire confidence.
> [about safety of Soylent for sole use nutrition] I have no idea whether Soylent is actually safe as a permanent sole-source nutrition solution
This is an amazing sentence. It's fucking mind-boggling the amount of cognitive dissonance that the Soylent marketing guys have created. They deserve the funding for that alone. Like, God-Tier troll and God-Tier marketers.
EAS Myoplex? There are a myriad of other Meal Replacement Powders on the market that has been around for decades, some of them designed to completely replace meals with specific ratios such as 40/40/20 (protein, carbs, fat) or more commonly, low-carb versions. Seriously, go to bodybuilding.com and look under the meal replacement category and you'll find a bunch of products that has figured this shit out decades before soylent.
I'm 46. I came up with my idea at 28 but it was complex and ambitious -- and it just kept growing and changing. It was chaos in my mind. But I would work on it, and then come up a level, see things from a higher perspective and everything would shrink and consolidate, gain order and orthogonality. This happened over and over, till I got it down to nothing. This took a huge amount of time and there is no way I could have come directly to it at 28.
I'm as creative and as smart as I was then, I don't think that has changed. But I'm wiser now -- about Computer Science, about systems -- and I have that perspective, which has made all the difference.
I think you should pivot, catcanhazitrainbook.com is available, and the growing acceptance of domestic purrtnerships is nothing but pure up and to the right. I agree, college kids don't realize that felines have been marginalized in the new twerking paradigm - and how unfair is it that we send all these tweets around with no cats to chase them? You can get out in front of this and really change the world with your rockstar ninja buckets of vc fueled distributed map reduce haskell most viral housepet centered social network ever.
Absolutely. I think what really makes the difference is whether people also carry the youthful mindset of always being ready to spot problems, and do something about it.
I have seen plenty of people with more experience than I have, who have lost the sense that they can actively make things better. It's the people who have experience, and still feel they can shape the world around them, who make things happen.
> whether people also carry the youthful mindset of always being ready to spot problems, and do something about it.
I don't think that's a particularly youthful mindset. Indeed, much of the trend of Silicon Valley right now is the opposite: spot places where you can apply a "social something" even if there's no real underlying problem.
As a practical matter, people who are young tend to lack the experience to know what are the actual problems of the world. Does a 22 year old know what are the things that would, say, improve the efficiency of Intel's designers by 2x? What are the bottlenecks in their workflow or the roadblocks they deal with? They have no idea. Most actual problems, the hard ones, are encountered in contexts that young people have no experience with.
I posit that the youth worship in Silicon Valley has nothing to do with their aptitude for "problem solving." Rather, it has to do with the fact that: 1) advertising is the bedrock of Silicon Valley 2.0; and 2) The 18-25 demographic has long been key to the advertising industry. Who knows better than young 20-somethings what will sell to other young 20-somethings?
Yeah, and I've seen that in Portland and Seattle, but for some reason in the Bay Area plenty of companies are willing to compete on salary so you've got lots of 22-year-olds making at least $90k, but they work 12 to 16 hour days.
I often worry about whether my startup clock is running out. I'm closer to 30 than 20, finishing up graduate school, and for the most part feel young. But other than the pediatrics ward, the only other time I start to feel my age is when attending some of these startup events.
Speaking as a 40 year old who is an early-stage startup founder , I'll say that your clock isn't necessarily close to running out. But, I will also add that time is one thing that you can never get back. I'm not real big on indulging in regret, but if I regret anything about my younger years, it is not being more aggressive and doing the startup thing sooner.
If you have a good idea, and you're 20-something, I'd advise you to go for it. If it doesn't work, well, you probably get another "at bat" or two in your life. If you wait too long, you eventually do start running into limitations, whether it is health issues, or additional commitments you may take on, in terms of raising a family or whatever, etc.
Experience is absolutely helpful, and I'm not sure I'd tell anybody to found a startup just for the sake of doing it, but if you legitimately have something in mind, you're passionate about it, and there seems to be a real shot at succeeding, I say take a crack at it now.
But, I will also add that time is one thing that you can never get back. I'm not real big on indulging in regret, but if I regret anything about my younger years, it is not being more aggressive and doing the startup thing sooner.
I regret not being more aggressive when I was younger. But that doesn't mean I regret the things that I have done. I've still learned from everything I've done in life and still have good memories. So while I regret not being more aggressive before, that doesn't mean I'd necessarily want to trade one set of memories for another.
And adding to that, I think I would have just been full of hot air if I was more aggressive at a younger age. Some people can do it and be authentic. I don't think I was one of those people. And I don't think I'm simply rationalizing.
And adding to that, I think I would have just been full of hot air if I was more aggressive at a younger age. Some people can do it and be authentic. I don't think I was one of those people. And I don't think I'm simply rationalizing.
Yep, that's the infuriating, "catch 22" aspect of the whole thing. There are things you want to do at a certain age, in some regards, but you can't for whatever reason, but then when those reasons change, you've lost that time for good.
I feel the same way to a point... I couldn't have founded the startup I've founded, when I was 25, because I didn't have the technical knowledge, the business knowledge, the general maturity, etc. But the flip-side is, I'm getting older and I kinda look at this attempt as probably my last "at bat" with a chance of really living out the most exuberant of my hopes & dreams for life. I feel like if I fail now, I am probably done with big dreams. There just isn't enough time left on the clock, and I won't have the energy and drive and passion to start over from scratch.
I'm 41. I'm a "hotshot web dev" (backend). Trust me, if you simply try to stay healthy/take care of yourself, there's PLENTY of runway left to start new things.
According to Vivek Wadhwa:
"In a follow-up project, we looked at the backgrounds of 549 successful entrepreneurs in twelve high-growth industries. The average age of male founders in this group was 40, and the average age of female founders was 41. The majority had two or more kids."
http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2011-12-02/national/35284...
> I often worry about whether my startup clock is running out. I'm closer to 30 than 20
To be fair the largest demographic of startup founders is in the 30-39 age bracket. While successful twenty-somethings with big exits is something the press likes to cover, they are very much outliers.
I don't know where you're getting your data and I've forgotten where I got mine but I believe most companies are started by founders who are 50+ years old. Maybe my data includes 60 year olds, etc... As well.
But, we both agree it is not the 20 something demographic. 2 unsoirced opinions on the internet - that agree - have to be correct.
If you want to make money money money you probably shouldn't be spending your time deriving Maxwell's equations for nonlinear media. If you want to do algorithm design but spend all your time doing HPC you are not heading in the right direction. If keep justifying your continued sojourn into a `temporary` field due to the emotion baggage established by time investment (`experience`) it might prevent you from making risky but rewarding choices.
There is something to be said about he dangers of staying in your comfort zone - which is certainly the case for 8 years of university education.
If what we value is not in the direction established by our experience then we may find that experience is a shackle for our dreams and a guide down a path of misery.
Its interesting to note that I recently read the average entrepreneur is age 35. It may just be selection bias by the press that makes it seem younger.
The only real advantage a 20 year old has over a 40 year old is that a 20 year old body can survive insane working hours, skipped sleep, sleeping under the desk, etc. Also, they don't have families and kids yet. That's why some companies want 20 year olds.
Edit: I'm 39, and I'm finally hitting my stride. I'm a far better programmer now than I was even 5 years ago.
In some cultures 32 or even 35 is the age when a person is started to be considered mature. Why so much fuss about the age? 'Start when ready and don't procrastinate' is the moto I like.
The only way your time will run out is if you give up. If you stop learning, advancing and pushing forward then, yes, time is up. Of course, what entrepreneurs get excited about changes with age. I've been starting and testing companies and ideas since I was probably 13 years old (selling custom t-shirts I made in my garage to classmates, for example). What got me excited back then doesn't even move the needle today.
Most of my ideas and entrepreneurial thoughts as I got older tended towards the more complex rather than the opposite. I never, in a million years, would have thought of Instagram. Not in my mental framework. In fact, I probably would have discounted it as a dumb idea. This is to say that there can be value in approaching entrepreneurship from ignorance (not meant as a pejorative). I would say that most of the things I've done that did well are things that, in retrospect, I jumped into with such utter ignorance of the reality of doing that thing that I probably would not have attempted it had I known. That's what I mean when I say that there's value in ignorance.
Now, a little bit about the programming business. Being a programmer is like being a supermodel. Once you reach a certain age, if there isn't something particularly special about you your career prospects can and often do change. In certain circles (SV being a good example) older programmers have a hard time finding work. It is a young man's world. I know many who moved out of the profession or relocated for this very reason. The issue of age discrimination has been discussed many times on HN. It is real. Keep that in mind as you go forward.
There's also another issue. Thirty years ago one could be an entrepreneur and, later in life, go get a job somewhere if needed. Today, things can be brutally different. With entrepreneurs generally plastering their lives all over the internet there is no dumbing-down your resume. No way. Which means that your life, your achievements and struggles will follow you forever. If, as you get older, for whatever reason, you decide you'd like to get off the entrepreneurial train and just get a job for a while it could be tough. People google your right away. In certain domains you'll run into FUD. Middle managers will not want to hire you because they are afraid you might be after their job (after all, you are very capable). Small to mid business owners will be afraid that you might want a job with them to learn about their business and later go off and launch a competing business. I did not realize this was going on until I had a chance conversation with a recruiter who was telling me about one of his customers who simply could not get hired to save his life due to his very public entrepreneurial profile. Obviously someone eventually hired him. Apparently it took a tremendous amount of work and time.
You are 35. Nothing to worry about so long as you don't stop learning. Just be smart about it all.
I turned 40 last year, and I am loving it. I miss the physical resilience of being in my 20s, but I wouldn't trade where I am now to go back to my 20s.
I grew up relatively sheltered in New England, and moved to NYC to teach as soon as I graduated from college. I spent my 20s teaching in the city and bicycling around North America in the summers.
At 29, I moved to Alaska. I spent my 30's climbing mountains, doing mountain rescue work, and continuing to teach.
I just turned 40, and I feel like this decade is about building some things that last. I feel like I came into more serious hacking at just the right time in my life. I now have the experience to know exactly what I want to build, and I have the long-term mindset needed to build important things. After having stood in front of NYC public school classrooms, bicycled around the continent, faced bears in the wild, and dropped out of helicopters onto steep mountains, dealing with servers and such is just another satisfying challenge to play with.
Getting 40 made me just feel old. I no longer have as much energy, keeping my weight got harder and let's not forget the annoying loss of hair. Additional experience is somewhat nice, but doesn't make up for it. Then again I spend most of my 30's getting out of debt because of a failed startup. Which might have given me a more negative view on life (last time I could afford traveling around was ~10 years ago).
Just some unwarranted advice, the energy thing can be changed with proper diet and exercise, I'm 35 and it's amazing what a difference eating paleo and exercising 3+ times a week has made.
Did all of that as well. Stopped smoking (over half a decade ago, so that was around your age I guess), reduced drinking (~1 glas of wine per week), I always did excercises (just have to do it far more seriously now the older I get as I no longer build muscles that easy) and eating far more healthy by now (although somewhat more since I stopped smoking as that had replaced my breakfasts back then). Less general movement due to working from home since a few years (no more walking to a job... that makes some difference, but I still walking a lot as I live without a car).
It all helps - really does. Just doesn't stop aging :-)
Nothing saps your energy like mulling over past mistakes/mis-steps/shouldas-couldas. We all have more of these as we get older, but if you do your best to let go of them you'll free yourself up quote a bit.
Easier said than done, but I speak from experience.
I've gotten buzz cuts since I was little. I used to do it for simplicity. Now I do it because I think it looks better. Some people tell me I look younger than I am (29), so that's a nice byproduct.
You can tell the difference between a bald guy with a shaved head vs. a guy with a full head of hair with a shaved head. I'd bet the social advantages of hair still belong to the full-head-of-hair-shaved guy.
The older guy will almost certainly have more experience, more confidence and more money. A young guy with a shaved head, if he isn't a Marine, is an emo or a hipster.
Living in Germany shaved heads are unfortunately also a right-wing political statement. Neo-nazis are using shaved heads for recognition and are known as "Glatzen" (skinheads). Which I think is one reason that you see only very few other people here doing that. Might be good reason for more people shaving their head so the nazis start to lose this symbol, but that takes some self-confidence.
1) If you are always tired and a little overweight (or more), get checked for sleep apnea issues at a sleep study center. If you have it, it is sapping your energy.
2) If you are like me and don't like exercise much (nor the time investment) but can no longer deny its benefits, do what I'm doing and do HIIT spin cycle 3 times a week for 25 minutes. It totally works. Feel free to google it, there's a lot of interesting research at this point.
Thanks for the hints. I already do regular exercises and keep my weight more or less - it's just getting harder every year. With 30 I never had to think much about this while with 40 it has become an annoying regular routine I have to go through.
If you're not already, look into doing a
couple of resistance training sessions per week. You don't have to be He-man lifting huge weights, in fact you're better not to be. Focus on core and "all of body" movements.
You'll not only feel stronger and look healthier, you'll also burn a lot of energy. And as you get older, maintaing strength and flexibility guards against aches, pains and injury.
As someone in their 20s who spends a lot of time climbing and wondering how that lifestyle is going to work out long term with programming, your story sounds pretty inspiring. Nothing terribly substantive, just wanted to say thanks!
In my most productive periods, I get into this cycle where I climb a mountain right at my limit, scare myself just the right amount, and think to myself, "Man, I don't ever want to climb a mountain again."
Then I go home and work on fun technical stuff right at my current limits. I work at that for a while, until I want nothing more to do with computers, and just want to be outside. Then I head off into the mountains.
Don't worry, you'll eventually grow out of this attitude. Your confidence will increase. You won't have to say stuff like this in an effort to feel better about yourself. Hang in there and good luck.
I don't think it's that different from 30s. In some ways, anything post-college is similar in that your life doesn't revolve around an institution full of single peers.
There's a little bit of magic-numberism that goes on, I suppose: people have ideas about what age means and they'll use it for a proxy (you'll worry about much younger people being annoying or stupid, they'll suspect you'll be staid or weird). But for the most part, everybody who's looking is still basically looking for the right connection.
The only practical effects I've seen are around two clocks:
* the family clock: some people are more anxious to have kids before they get too much older, some people have decided the window is done (which changes who they can pair up with).
* the midlife crisis clock: people start trying harder to see if they can make their life exactly what they want, or insert something they wished they had when they were younger.
These might be the same clock, though. And they have been known to strike well before the 40s. :) YMMV.
I don't know. I got married during my 30s, so I have no need for dating. But at the same time, I'm way more confident and I'm sure I wouldn't suck as badly at it as I did during my 20s.
I just turned 40 as well, and I found that, last year, younger (20-30) year old women seemed more interested in me than ever. While I was in Chicago on a long consulting gig, I briefly dated a gal who was 24 and smoking hot. Didn't seem to bother her.
I was talking to a much younger female friend of mine once, about this subject, and she confirmed something another female friend had told me, which is that women often find older guys more attractive. Apparently you look more "distinguished" as you age. Now there is, obviously, a point of diminishing returns that comes along eventually. But I keep hearing women tell me that a 24 year old woman (for example) will have no objection to dating a 40 year old man.
Being self conscious about this point, I've asked a number of other women (including random women sitting next to me on airplanes, etc., who theoretically have no reason to be dishonest) and time and time again I've been told that this effect is real.
Another female friend also admitted that some women do consider that factor that older men tend to be further along in their careers, and correspondingly have more money, status, power, prestige, etc. OTOH, she was one of the few who said she would not date a guy who was more than about 6 or 7 years older than her, at most. shrug
As we get older the "attractiveness balance" shifts from the young women to the older men. One of the things I wish someone explained to me as hopeless youth.
"The average and median age of U.S.-born tech founders [of companies that have more than $1 million in sales, twenty or more employees, and company branches with fifty or more employees] was thirty-nine when they started their companies. Twice as many were older than fifty as were younger than twenty-five."
I know that LinkedIn culturally didn't work crazy hours to get where they were - does anyone know, are any others listed that started out as '9-5' organizations?
I am skeptical of the 60-80 hours thing. It seems like more of a macho thing than a real requirement. The problem is that when you workaholic yourself your productivity per unit time drops, so you're spending more hours but doing as much as you might do in shorter bursts of more focused time. In some cases it's worse... you get total burnout.
The 60-80 hours thing is how computer peeps express their machismo. If we were jocks, we would do like 1000 pushups or something. If you need to spend that much time getting it off the ground, you are doing it wrong.
I see more value in accomplishing stuff in as little hours as possible. It's not about the hours, it's about what you get done.
And once you get stuck, it can be more productive to leave the computer and get some sleep, eat, walk, take a shower, etc. The best ideas or solutions come to you when you're doing something else.
To me, saying you work 60-80 hours means you're either doing something very simple, or you're not doing much at all.
A cursory glance tells me none. Jimmy Wales already had money from his investment banker career, he build wikipedia to solve a problem with his 'real' startup. LinkedIn was Reid Hoffman 3rd or 4th social startup. Marc Benioff started his first company in high school.
Not surprising. A common theme at Startup School this year (and probably a common theme in general) was that those who succeeded tried and failed many times over. There is no single skyrocket to success, OK there probably is, but the norm, if you can call it that is one of trial and error, and making intentional changes and improvements until you succeed.
Or it's simply luck. If the odds of succeeding are random, say 1%, then the more you try, the greater the odds you will eventually win the lottery. It would make sense that most of the winners had tried multiple times. I'm not sure it follows that the winners are necessarily more talented than the losers.
35 seems like a nice round number for people to self-sort into two bins: people that decided yes, it's time to stop trying, there will be no more sunrises... and then the other set, who think this is just ridiculous and roll their eyes that age has anything to do with it. And even if the second set is wrong, and there is actually something about getting older that actually slows us down or makes us worth less, it's a terrible idea to believe in it. I see no value in thinking about it. How would anyone improve their life by deciding some threshold has been passed? Sounds like a good way to speed up decay.
It's possible that I have an advanced case of "peter pan syndrome", but when I turned 30 things started to take off for me. At 33, I'm just starting to get little hints that I may in fact be a grown-up. I'm working at my first startup right now, having previously worked at more established companies and research institutions. If somehow in 1.75 years I just stop being able to do that, and start fading into a decline, I would be very sad. It's also pretty unlikely.
My personal theory is that it's all about ensuring continued personal and professional growth. I know plenty of people who stoped those in their 20s and seem "old". I also know plenty of people in their 60s and 70s who didn't stop them and I find myself surprised regularly when I remember the number of years they've been alive.
Basically just supporting digitalsushi's point with anecdotal evidence.
This, mate. I'm in the same boat. I didn't realise until last night that we're really a different crowd. I was talking about earnings with my 23yo gf and mentioned that of all my working life, I could finally say that I've earned a million dollars. Then when breaking it down I realised that I'd done over 80% of that in the last ~2 years - since founding a startup software company. Howsat!
Here's how I look at it. It's not the decimal number of years since your birth, but the phase in your life that closes doors.
In tech, you constantly need to keep up to date on the latest technologies, read publications and go to conferences, because experience gets stale very fast. It's also easier (than in fields like medicine or law) for junior techies to get up to speed in experience, because they can skip the decades of now obsolete tech and fast forward to roughly where you are at. This is fine. It can be fun and it's definitely rewarding.
Then by your early thirties, three things change at the same time: you get promoted to a busier, more responsible position, you have small kids, and you get fat. The (waking) time you have for yourself shrinks from 8-10 hrs to about an hour if you're lucky. You can use that hour to study and keep up to date, to do something about that gut and exercise, or you're so tired you just want to relax. Pick one.
In my opinion, this is why middle aged people seem so lazy and boring.
Or you prioritize exercise, and keep your energy levels up. I'm 38. My pace now is higher than it was since I was 20, despite a 4 year old son.
The big difference is for the last 8 years I've put in 3-5 hours of hard exercise (powerlifting) every week before work. I wish I had more time, both for exercise and projects, but these days I can pull all nighters and walk into the gym 7am the following morning and set new personal records a couple of times a week, and keep my energy up all day, whereas at 30 I was worn down to the point where I couldn't walk up a flight of stairs without my knees hurting, and would collapse on the sofa in the evening and not have energy for anything.
Now I am in better shape than most of the kids half my age at my gym, and have early 20's body builders talking about how deep I can squat.
And I go home after work, play with my son, and put in time on my projects after he's in bed.
Sure, I had downtime when my son was smaller, but kids are not an excuse for all that long - when he was younger, I put projects aside and my only "me time" was focused on keeping fit, and I feel it paid off. Now, every day, he can do more stuff for himself, and wants to, and every new achievement means more energy left over for me.
People sort into two bins: Those who make choices, and those who make excuses.
I think it's often the people who think that they should have already won the prize that end up in the latter category. So they spend their time rationalizing why they haven't gotten there, or what is holding them back.
I've realized that there's no prize to win, there's no time limit, and that I can learn new things far more quickly than I could when I was younger. Instead of making excuses, or living in awe of past accomplishments, I just do new things. I take new notes. I learn new languages. I got a keyboard last month, and I started studying music theory and writing some compositions, and I play along with my baby on my knee, trying to play in whatever key it sounds like she's banging her hands on.
Some people complain that chores are hard with a baby. I challenge myself to do the chores one-handed with her held on my hip when she needs to be held. She loves the experience, I get extra exercise, and the chores get done, and I spend time with her, and it's kind of fun to figure out how to do certain things that you expect to have 2 hands for with only one.
I'm no superman, and I don't try to be. I do get to slow down, but I do it without regret.
I try to spend the time that other people take regretting the things that they can't or didn't do to do the things I want to do.
I've had a similar experience. I gave up working late around 30, when I found it wiped me out too much. Now I'm 36 and I've discovered I can do 12-hour days again.
Why? Better diet (Paleo) and daily exercise. Bodyweight and Pilates, in my case, but I'm planning to try powerlifting at some point. (I remain convinced that mind-body exercise like T'ai Chi, Pilates or yoga are one of the best body hacks out there. )
I totally, absolutely agree. Once you give up exercise, it goes downhill fast: mentally, spiritually, and of course, physically.
The morning is the best time to take care of the body. I am a cyclist and I love nothing more than to wake up early (well, somewhat early) and getting in an hour-of-power before breakfast, coffee, and work. I start the day off right and by the end of the day, I feel naturally tired instead of run down (there is a difference).
I've heard this before about exercise. But exercise really tires my brain out - it feels like I can't think at all, like all my effort has gone and I'm just lathargic.
I'm not saying exercise is bad, and I do try and keep up with it, but am I the only one that has to think, "I can't exercise now or else I'll be too tired to code later."?
If I had to guess, you're exercising too hard. Try 10% of what your routine is and then put in some code. Increase it slowly.
The right exercise regiment is important. There's no need to push yourself hard the first three months if you're starting out. Try a couch to 5k run routine over six months.
the "latest technologies" thing is questionable. A COBOL programmer can still charge the highest hourly rate of anyone in the industry, because surviving COBOL programs must be very valuable (or else they would have been replaced.)
In the world where App Academy and the like are churning out iPhone developers, Ruby on Rails programmers, and Javascript (uh, what's the word for person who works in JS?.... ) advocates in eight to twelve weeks doesn't make those sound like skills to hone to get your long-term stability.
Personally, I keep being surprised by how much value there is in just remembering how tech worked in the 1990s and even the early 2000s - Windows and OSX and Linux have changed a lot and iOS and Android seem completely new - but a lot of platform decisions evolved gradually in the changing technical context, and throwback behaviors can seem completely mysterious to someone who's first programming environment was XCode - there's still DOS behaviors hidden in some of these places! I wouldn't be surprised if ye olde mainframe experts had some even subtler knowledge about how-things-really-work-under-there than I do.
A phrase like 'Surviving Cobol programs' suggests you have the wrong idea. The idea that there is dinosaur code from the 1960's still chugging along, and occasionally in need of emergency repair by a highly paid grey haired wizard is a myth. There is still some demand for Cobol programmers because new projects are still being written in Cobol. You'd be surprised about their age as well. Often by smaller to medium sized shops, because they lack the resources to change course and retrain or replace everyone, like the big companies did.
huh! I've met legacy Cobol maintainers, but I haven't heard of any companies doing new development in it. Do you have links? I'm super-curious to find out more.
I believe (not through science, but just to make my world make sense) that time spent on exercising doesn't count against the wall-clock. I tell myself that every hour in the gym is an hour longer I'll live, and all the idle thoughts I have while I am in there are a consolation prize for suffering. It helps get me into the gym. It's petty but it is enough.
Agreed. I feel more energized and motivated when I leave the gym, and my energy levels are vastly higher now at 38 than they were when I started exercising properly at 30.
And there's other things, like how at 30 I had totally lost the ability to squat down unaided - I had to prop myself up with a hand, and now I like to drop down and sit in squat position just because I enjoy the feeling of my newfound strength and mobility... I don't dare think about how drained I'd be from just short amounts of playtime with my son if I didn't exercise regularly.
Exercise is an answer to too little time, not a problem.
Heh, I have a similar experience. I couldn't touch my toes for years - now I actively enjoy bending straight down from the waist to pick things up off the floor!
Another way to look at it - the 35 line on one side is for people who think they're losers, and on the other side for people who think they're going to be losers.
I'm working with a senior person off late. I'm in my late 20's. One of the things that he warned me against is hipster trends. These can really derail a good technically intensive career.
Anyone who is glamorizing hipster practices over genuine experience should go out and build a few embedded systems, a car, or a pacemaker, or a dialysis machine, control system for a nuclear reactor, or a better routing algorithm etc. If you are busy building <insert yet another MVC site here> and refusing to look and learn from other software domains, you will likely never work on any technically meaty projects ever and soon fall victim to age related discrimination.
Building great things requires experience. Its not about impatience, and that thing about 'fail quick, fail fast' - 'quick iterations'. Some of the most significant work happens only at a slow steady pace. With proper planning, fore though about quality/stability of systems you are trying to build. Most importantly its about the seriousness and the impact of the problems you are trying to solve.
I tried talking about this in an earlier draft of my article but found it to be a deep rabbit hole. I'd like to explore this more fully in a future post. I feel that will be more divisive in it's reception :-)
If you take this task you have to do an incredibly deep dive of China vs USA. The US is the global leader primarily because of this focus on the individual and individual achievement. European countries compare somewhat poorly as they're sort of focused on the individual but with huge dollops of government support/intervention. China however is completely unapologetic in its team driven focus and now has significant success to back up that this method can work. I'd be interested in someone who can contrast/compare there.
You have fallen into the trap a little ;) what does it mean to be a global keader? What are the true goals? Scrrr's comment was discussing happiness. Neither China nor the US do nationwide happiness surveys AFAIK.
Unfortunately even though its not, its soon becomes for you when others start doing that.
A few days back, I remember there was a story posted here about a fisher man living the good life, and having the best of time with family, friends and leisure. Only that later another fisher man helped by a business guy started working extra hours, sets up his own company, establishes a monopoly and employs the first fisher man. Soon the first guy sees though he didn't want any of it, he is now a part of that very system.
For philosophical sort of happiness to work, we all need to go into some sort of equilibrium without ever breaking a few rules that are necessary to preserve the equilibrium. That is neither possible, nor good for the larger fate of our society.
Is that focused on the individual? Putting your stamp on the world, success - those seem to me like they might be very social measures.
By contrast, the only people I've found it worthwhile comparing myself with, on any sort of regular basis, are me yesterday, last week and last year. Am I stronger this year than I was last; do I know how to do more? And that, while being a highly individual focused way of doing things, seems to work fairly well. I don't get a crushing sense of not being as good as others or not measuring up to my potential; if I think I'm not as good as I should be at something, then I just get better at that for tomorrow.
There must be only a few behaviors more self centered than wanting to put your stamp on the world. It is all about you, even if you do not care for anyone to know, it is about you.
People seem to have certain tastes for what sort of mark they'd want to leave. How many people want the mark they leave on the world to be a scar - and if your answer to that is quite a few, how do you explain the relative absence of scars on the world?
Of course one can argue that wanting to leave a positive memory is just as selfish as wanting to leave a negative one, but that would seem to me to be arguing in the same sense that wanting to donate to charity is an act of selfishness.
I'm getting past 40 and I don't think the problem will necessarily be with me in the coming years as much as it will with employer bias. While you can keep up with the latest tech stuffs, some employers still don't want to pay for your experience or see your age as a liability vs being able to run a youngin' ragged.
One other thing I took away is that the author seemed that if you didn't make a big world impact no matter your age then you didn't succeed. I get into that mindset every once in awhile and feel rather down about it. Then I realize I'm raising my family, and while I may never be remembered for that amazing startup, I will be remembered by the ones that in the end truly matter.
Yes, the definition of success is something I want to explore more fully. The media/tech portrayal of success is extremely 1 dimensional and results in a great deal of dissatisfaction and anxiety. Personally, I think it has less to do with big wins or press worthy outcomes and more about consistently applying oneself in a manner that you can be proud of. You make sacrifices to fit all the things that are important to you in life and that's fine. Let the public have their judgements. Ultimately, you only have to answer to yourself.
Top managers are traditionally drawn from the ranks of 50-somethings. Sure, that's partly due to a retirement age of 65, and partly a function of institutional ladder-climbing. But not just that. Someone in their 50s has a few decades of experience. Almost every situation or problem reminds them of something they've already seen or solved before. Intuition or gut instinct draws on experience, therefore it improves with experience.
Now, I wouldn't argue that someone in their 50s (or older) is prima facie better than someone younger. Just that they're not automatically worse.
p.s. You could argue that "too much experience" can be a bad thing, and blind someone to innovation. Although that's a good point I'd argue that the issue isn't too much experience, instead it's usually too narrow experience and/or too little ability to process it effectively.
Yes, my grandpa actually said that when you are young you are freer creatively and take greater risks. This doesn't always lead to better outcomes but it gives you access to opportunities you wouldn't get later in life. Likewise, as you've pointed out, when you are older, your experience opens a different set of doors.
This echoes one of my favorite lines from Lawrence of Arabia, at the end, in Damascus:
Lawrence of Arabia:
Prince Feisal: "There's nothing further here for a warrior. We drive bargains. Old men's work.
Young men make wars, and the virtues of war are the virtues of young men. Courage and hope for the future.
Then old men make the peace. And the vices of peace are the vices of old men. Mistrust and caution. It must be so."
China has the reverse of ageism: the Chinese tend to worship the old. A noted Chinese thinker commented that in China, the praise is "He is young but acts old." and in the West the praise is "He is old but acts young."
So in that environment, you can imagine how someone in his twilight years might have an easier time succeeding because people are more willing to listen to him. For the exception of people like Knuth, Lamport, Stallman, Pike, Thompson, etc. most of us in tech have our ears tuned to a much younger population. It might change as our industry gets older.
My life finally kicked into gear when I was 38. NASA hired me.
Since then I finally realized my dream to travel around the world professionally as a developer, participated in multiple startups, wrote a well-received book, found the woman of my dreams, and changed possibly hundreds of lives.
The key though from this story is this bit "Having only been allowed to complete his undergraduate degree, he spent decades doing whatever research and teaching came his way."
One the key differentiators is whether or not people are willing to continue learning. People who learn continue to be useful, people who stop learning eventually aren't. (useful that is)
Precisely. I think his continued application and exploration are the biggest personal rewards. The opportunity that appeared was fortunate and the acclaim a happy byproduct.
I turned 35 a few months back and I've thought the past couple of years were my best yet, with more best to come. I had kids early-ish (my daughter is about to turn 12) and people would always say I missed fun stuff in my 20s. The way I look at it is my kids will be out of the house in my mid-40s while everybody else is getting older _and_ dealing with kids. I'm living in my favorite city, doing kickass things at work, getting less afraid to do more interesting/scary things all the time. I laugh in the faces of kids who think life ends after 29.
As I move towards 30 at a somewhat surprisingly fast rate, I find that my life has changed. I don't do stupid stuff like all-night coding sessions, because it produces bad work and a lousy morning. It always did, but previously the glory of the late night hack outweighed the lousyness of what I made. I've seen things again and again. I'm also fairly positive I am getting smarter, or at mentally more capable. I can conceptualize things today that simply were mentally out of reach for the 20 y/o me. I have a tremendous focus on self-improvement and learning, so I don't expect this to change a great deal in the metanarrative, but I expect to learn new types of things as I move forward with life and move away from learning certain kinds of details.
Unfortunately, there are aspects to our culture that conflate personal value with success; that is, your value as a human being is based on your success. So it's easy to compare to the very visible milestones; Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg, etc. Or to compare to people we know personally; the successful start-up founder with a nice exit, the entrepreneur who got his lifestyle business off the ground and now pays the bills with it.
For me, it's easy to think "I am a failure" compared to these people, especially as the years pass and the number of successes I know increases, but I'm not "one of them". This is a severe error of conflating my external success with internal value.
I prefer to recall the old Taoist saying, "Work is done, then forgotten."
It's not the comparison that's sad, letting it define your worth is.
It's something I struggle with, almost 30 still struggling through my degree and working on minor projects. But personally when I look back a few years painfully grinding through life addicted to meth it makes today's small successes feel like a billion dollars.
I'm almost fifty and I feel like I'm just hitting my stride. But then I felt that as I approached 30 and 40 too.
So yeah, you might not see it while in your 20s but nothing feels better than the combination of intelligence and experience. That is, the result of learning how to learn.
Awesome read. I feel like I struggle with that issue as well. As I'm approaching my birthday next week, I keep thinking about the 18 year olds that made multi-million dollar Apps, and those 20 year olds that revolutionized the tech industry with one idea or another.
It's taking a lot of effort on my side to sit down and relax and realize that everyone on the planet has some achievements to show. Not just the "young". The best case for that is just browsing through Kickstarter projects. Yeah, sure, we're used to seeing people in the early 20s "changing the way everything works" but we also see the veterans coming back to make yet another shift.
I find it's easy to get over the million dollar teenager tech geniuses: Whether it's true or not, I just convince myself that more people have made more money by playing the lottery and winning. And then the lucky/smart/people-there-first that get their millions are just lottery winners and I forgive myself for being normal.
I used to look at those "guitar player wanted (under 30 only)" ads on craigslist when I was in my late 20s and be confused about why there was such a hard line on the people's rock band aptitude.
When I got to be around 35 I realized that if you want to be in a rock band, you need to be ok with working a lot for no money and spending your weekends in a van and those are things I just didn't want to do anymore and probably most people in their 30s have a tapering off tolerance for such things.
But for stuff involving computers? They age much faster than we do and will never judge us by our ages.
"Never trust anyone over 30" is a bit of a rallying cry among musicians. It's often attributed Bob Dylan, The Beatles, Jerry Rubin and a few others during the 1960's, but I'm not sure anyone really knows who said it first. I would guess that people are actually referencing that whole movement when they put it in the Craigslist ads rather than setting a hard and fast restriction.
Or maybe it's a bunch of 22-year-olds who just want to hang out with people their own age.
I wonder what kind of rationalization Bob Dylan, The Beatles, et al went through once they reached 30 years of age. Do they move the goal posts to not trusting anyone over 40? Or do they admit that they were youthful and wrong and state that untrustworthy people, at any age, are the only people that shouldn't be trusted.
The concept in the 60's at least was partly due to change in culture between the young "hippies" vs. the older "man". People were realizing in a big way that "the man" was lying to us... Vietnam War, etc.
Things haven't changed much in that regard, but the corporate/govt media "alliance" has become more sophisticated in dispersing/distracting such anger.
Do this: stop comparing yourselves to Steve Jobs for a moment and go ask your parents, spouse, good friends, and confidants if you are a person of value (forget about "success"), and to give you some examples. This should clear it all up for you.
"In 63 BC as a quaestor in Spain, Julius Caesar is said to have broken down and wept in front of a statue of Alexander the Great, realizing that where Alexander had conquered most of the known world at thirty, Caesar at that age was merely seen as a dandy who had squandered his wife's fortunes as well as his own."
Very inspiring article. Being 24, almost half-way to 30, these past few months I've been thinking to myself "what have I really accomplished outside of work and school"? I think this is due partly to the high expectations I set for myself, but I also believe part of it is due to the current tech culture, where it's easy for those new to the field to misinterpret that if they aren't moving as fast as everyone else, they must be doing something wrong.
I'm coming to understand that everyone is unique, one's career/life progress is no better than another's. Thanks for the refreshing perspective OP.
I'm 35. I've worked for a couple small companies and I am at a startup now. I certainly hope my life doesn't end now. I certainly would love to get something started but I feel I'm old enough where I understand the value of family and sane time limits. Looking back I could see myself taking a shot in the dark on something but I'm not necessarily disappointed that I didn't. I've learned so much and continue to each day. If you want to be a billionaire by 25 you'll kill yourself. The odds are so astronomical it's almost funny. I say spend your years learning what you can, then start something when you have savvy and perspective. But that's just me.
Great reminder. I am turning 32 early next year and started teaching myself programming this year. Sometimes doubt creeps up on me and makes me feel like I am wasting my time, but stuff like this helps. Onward!
I started programming relatively late (at age 26), after becoming unemployed during the recession, for a govt agency in a small town in Florida. But now, at my current age of 30, I have a very lucrative job working for a major movie studio in LA as a software engineer. I have a lot of ambition at 30 than I ever did at 20 and that has been motivated by my failures. I might of missed my "startup years" and hacker culture in general but I'm definitely on track for big things. I hope to soon finally settle down and raise a family as well.
Nice! I'm just starting out as a softie too, also due to the economy, did you start out with the web too? What language, how long until you found the job that kickstarted your career?
Well done, keep it up! I am 30 in a few months and already a developer so it is great to see someone marginally older than me just taking it up. Out of interest, what did you do before?
Still currently in software sales. I am taking the long view and expect to be in sales for the next year or two or three as I begin applying what I am learning to actually building.
Life does not end after 35, but your energy levels and stamina will be lower than in your younger years. Yes, even if you exercise and eat healthy (indeed, you'll have to stay fit just to keep going). Moreover, with age (hopefully) comes experience, and with experience may come a jaded view of society that can kill your dreams on birth. Qohelet wisely stated that "For in much wisdom is much vexation, and he who increases knowledge increases sorrow."
For a start-up it's not age that matters but risk aversion. You need to be happy/able to take on the risks, which are mainly financial. However, there will typically be a relationship between age and risk with the most risk averse period in your 30's and 40's when you are probably having kids. So if you don't feel you succeeded in your 20's and early 30's, hang on in there 'cause you'll get another opportunity later in life.
i'm 27 years old this year, and i graduated recently with a business undergrad degree. i've tried my hand at doing a startup throughout my undergraduate degree but failed, and if i'm being completely honest, i felt like i learned very little from that experience as i was not a technical founder. at 28 next year, i will be returning to school again for a computer science bachelor's and frankly, this 35 year old threshold keeps coming up in my head.
years ago i set myself an ambitious goal of being a self-made millionaire by the time i'm 30, and a billionaire by 40. it's crazy talk to most people, but it was a goal i set for myself. obviously, it doesn't seem that plausible now - it's really more of a fantasy than anything at this moment but still... i find myself feeling old and having wasted many years of my life.
this blog post lifted my spirits a little. i feel that if i begin working really hard now and make the next few decades of my life extremely, exceptionally and extraordinarily productive, i can probably still achieve enough to make up for the last few unproductive years of my life.
Thanks for sharing your experiences. I feel this definition of what it means to be successful is something I need to address properly in a future post. Much of my anxiety in the matter stemmed from setting similar ambitions to your own. I don't think it was wrong of me to set these benchmarks, but today I find myself questioning the "why" more and more.
Increasingly I try to look at success as a more fluid notion. I feel it has many dimensions that constantly evolve with my changing world view and life. It can be valuable to set goals but I think it's just as important not to be myopic to the rest of the world at their expense.
I feel a lot of it comes down to attitude. My grandpa would still have been a happy man had he not had the opportunity to pioneer medical science. Prior to his 60s, his curiosity and willingness explore meant he had a fulfilling life. He wasn't expecting and waiting for a big success. He was focused on what he was able to do and made sure he did it to the best of his abilities.
These are some quick thoughts on a bus and I apologise if it seem like I'm being preachy. I'm only 29 and very much still figuring it all out. I dare say I will be doing that until I die. Please share your thoughts, especially if they run counter to what I've written.
I'd like to think that if you have an open mind and are willing to "think young", I think experience can provide you with a greater reach to build what you want. Young people have a belief everything is possible but may not always have the means. When you are older, you typically have more means but are too grounded in reality of what's possible.
Very nice article, it resonated with me. It seems that talented people have a great burden, which comes in form of often asking yourself "have you done enough with all the talents you have?". It seems to be quite common, and it even made it to the Bible (I think it is called story about three servants). Funny that money in that story is called talent :)
Thanks! I'll look into that. I've been trying to explore this topic in other domains recently. I find sports coaches have done a great deal of exploration into the effects of personal attitude especially in managing one's emotional reactions to outcomes.
Thanks for sharing and I always have this thought at the back of my mind. I am 36 and launched my first serious part-time(gotta pay bills) startup last Dec after working on it for over a year. This was after 2 attempts half-ass ideas with no solid business plan. This article definitely boosts morale.
What a great article. I loved the Chinese idiom too (or whatever you call those four-character things). It's funny, I was watching a video on this today: http://www.wimp.com/getfit/
That made me feel a bit more realistic about life. :-)
Those idioms are called "chengyu" (成语) and there are hundreds (or thousands) of them. Some of them come from ancient Chinese stories and poems and are pretty allegorical in nature; others, like (seemingly) the one mentioned in the article, are self-explanatory (to a Chinese speaker).
end after 35? i am touching 39 and getting ready to start my real startup. My partners are all few years older than me. I never wanted to be in a job and have been running my services company for the last 12 years. While the current business is doing fine, past few years I had this increasing urge to break out from the services mould and "create" something of our own. Couple of months back I took the decision to take this plunge. We have structured our existing business so that it would continue to run in the hands of my partners while I am venturing out and doing our thing. So yes, to outsiders or even friends and family it might feel a little late to start out afresh I am all loving it and living every moment of it!
I'm 36 and things only seem to be getting better for me, and I know things are only going to get way better. My greatest achievements are ahead of me, not behind me.
Sounds cheesy but it's all in your outlook. Good on you gramps for teaching us yet another lesson in that.
I wish I could take this amazing advice for granted.
I'm in my late thirties (36) and still can't afford having a baby.
As you may guess, one cannot wait till his sixties for that...
So, it really depends on what's the meaning of "successful" to you :)
I supported a growing family while beginning my M.S. and the PhD. My wife chose to focus on the children rather than work, and we lived off my stipends. It worked out great. When I completed my doctorate, we had 6 thriving children. We had also learned how to be resourceful and create a great life without a ton of money. We saved up a solid down payment for a permanent home in the meantime.
Now I'm making a solid living, we're finishing paying off our permanent home, and we're expecting our 8th child. (By the way, I'm also 36. We didn't wait exactly because we knew that our time to build a family was limited while our time to make money was less so.)
Disagree for two reasons. One, kids deserve little but a loving home and a few educational toys. Giving them everything they want is recipe for building a little monster.
Two, for beter or worse, govts subsidize families to the detriment of the single. When the wife and kid arrive, you'll get a ~$500 a month tax break, enough to pay for another bedroom and diapers. The total cost is much less than I'd imagined, especially if you avoid buying all the junk thats expected.
I get where you're coming from, but I'm thinking like, college, multi-lingual private schools, a dad that takes time off of work for the sake of time off of work.
Toys are nice too, but we're totally covered. This kid won't know boredom until he's 60.
There is no reason you should bankroll everything your kids deserve. It's ok not to have some things. So many enjoyable things are either free or very cheap, that this doesn't matter
We lived in a small apartment when we had our first. It was simply a choice we made, we wanted to be somewhat younger when our kids grew up. Now we have a house, and I think not starting right off with everything made me appreciate things more.
There's others that do it the other way too. It just depends upon your's and your other half's choice.
Context: In Italy you have free education, healthcare and higher education is dirt cheap (and not necessarily bad) compared to other countries. It's by all accounts a first world country in terms of civil rights and development (regardless of what some italians, and non italians, think).
There are way worse countries to raise a child in (economically speaking). I was raised there with a brother and a sister just with my father's (lower middle class) salary, and I had a fantastic childhood.
In terms of start-ups, career etc I don't think it's impossible to do it in your 40s, but I'd say you're more explicitly aware of the sacrifices involved and typically have more to lose.
People are too obsessed with age. What is the point of telling yourself you CAN'T do something because an arbitrary counter reached an arbitrary point? Useless beliefs are what will limit you.
The immigration process delayed the start of my startup and I'm sure many others are facing that too. Started at 28 even though I'd been in the US since I was 19.
Actually, maybe I am being short-sighted ... but what I get out of this article is that his grandfather WOULD (could) have been just as 'successful' as he was in his 60s much earlier in life if World War II and Mao had not ruined possibilities for his generation.
If he had been allowed to do research from his early 20s wouldn't it still have been possible for him to be just as successful at it? Maybe his 30s would have been his heavy hitting decade?
In general maybe we all get about a decade of heavy hitting and it just happens earlier or later for some? :P
I think that it's fair to say he could have made a bigger contribution in a more permissive environment. What I had initial tried to do with this piece was explore the notion of how we define success. I think the success that my grandpa achieved late in his life was a happy byproduct of being able to apply him self through his career. The enthusiasm he poured into his work prior was the real personal reward and not necessarily the recognition he gained.
These are still unpolished thoughts. I want to explore more fully in a future post.
I worked as a manager at a major semiconductor company in Silicon Valley for many years. I interviewed thousands of candidates, many of who were older than me.
I noticed that older engineers seemed to bifurcate into two groups: the ones who were curious about everything, and the ones who stayed in their box.
The ones who were curious about everything remained great engineers. They tinkered with new technologies, read books about software project management, wrote cool little programs in unusual languages like Haskell or Scheme, etc. These guys were invariably great engineers, and their experience was just icing on the cake.
The ones who stayed in their niche of writing x86 assembly, COBOL applications for mainframes or writing the same class of network drivers for Linux for fifteen years were usually awful.
I don't doubt that there is actual ageism out there. However, when I did interviews I never cared. However, I also noticed that the "lazy engineers" hadn't really done anything in their career to expand their skill set beyond the minimum their employers required them to do, and I could see why they were not employable. The older "curious, passionate" engineers I hired worked out awesome.
The type of people you describe exist not only in the programming field, but in every single walk of life. We simply notice more because our field changes so quickly.
There will always be people who remain curious throughout their lives, as there will always be people who stay close to what they know because they believe it to be safe.
From the title I expected a wishy-washy, pseudo-inspirational blog post and instead my entire concept of success was shaken up and realigned. Great post.
What I try to keep conscious of is knowing what's reported in the media and what isn't, which are often 2 completely different worlds. On TechCrunch, "kid genius makes $100m" is the story they want. It fits this age-old narrative of a child prodigy reaching success in half the time it takes a "normally smart" person to, like Mozart, Einstein.
And that media draws in huge amounts of young people hoping to fit that narrative. But what's not reported are the companies that are typically working on much harder and more boring problems -- problems that require an understanding by people who've been in industries for years. Look at any CrunchBase newsletter about the day's fundraising and acquisitions, and you'll find yourself surprised at how many medical/B2B/etc companies are being bought for $100m+. These aren't companies started by 22yo grads, but by people with extensive industry experience. And the (startup) media doesn't really give a damn about them.
That's not, in any way, to devalue startups started by younger people. There's little-to-no barrier to starting social apps and the like. They have their place in society and have shown to be successful, so I don't blame a fresh grad who wants to try his/her hand at it. But there is a whole world of other startups and companies that are working in more complicated and boring industries that could not have been started by people in their early 20s.
Experience still matters, as unsexy as it is.