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The great displacement is already well underway?

(shawnfromportland.substack.com)
511 points JSLegendDev | 3 comments | 12 May 25 14:32 UTC | HN request time: 0.668s | source
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pclmulqdq ◴[13 May 25 19:42 UTC] No.43976838[source]▶
I have heard from doctors and lawyers that there comes a time in your career when people are no longer interested in people who are older and unremarkable. In many ways it is worse to be a mediocre senior engineer at 45 than a naive junior at 20. You are expensive and you have shown that you have a ceiling.

It sucks that this perception attaches to people at this point in their career. Many become managers at this point because that's an easy way to have broader impact and show career growth when you don't _really_ care about engineering.

If you have spent 20 years as a software engineer amassing wealth (3 houses) and not making significant contributions to your peers or the field, everyone knows where your priorities are. It's okay that you aren't that interested in engineering. It does mean that it's harder to get a job than someone who really is, especially in tight markets. You're also not going to find employment below your level because they know you're going to jump ship when the market shifts. It does mean lowering your standards on certain things, like the "100% remote" requirement.

For the last 20 years, there has been tremendous demand for software engineers that has allowed people to coast. That demand is cooling down for a variety of reasons, AI being one of them (but IMO not anywhere near the most significant). That cool-down really started in ~2021-2022 and really hasn't picked back up. When the market cools down, the unremarkable old-timers are sadly the first ones to be shown the door.

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jere ◴[13 May 25 22:00 UTC] No.43978245[source]▶
> If you have spent 20 years as a software engineer amassing wealth (3 houses) and not making significant contributions to your peers or the field, everyone knows where your priorities are. It's okay that you aren't that interested in engineering.

Lots of unfounded assumptions and snobbery in this.

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1. pclmulqdq ◴[14 May 25 04:54 UTC] No.43980971[source]▶
You seem to think that I am making a negative judgment here. His lifestyle is fine with me and I assume he is a great person. He clearly has made many smart decisions around things like building lasting wealth through real estate and keeping good relationships with his family. He also clearly values his flexibility and his lifestyle, looking for 100% remote jobs almost exclusively. He talks quite a bit about the tax code and his three houses and how he wants to renovate them and use them to make money. However, if you look at the time spent on these things, it pretty strongly suggests that he prefers these things to programming/engineering.

I don't judge him as a person for this. In fact, he's probably better as a friend than many of us who did sacrifice a lot of this stuff for a career. Unfortunately, many careers in knowledge work are "up or out," and if you don't choose "up," "out" will be chosen for you.

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2. jere ◴[14 May 25 13:00 UTC] No.43984024[source]▶
Fair enough, but I don't think you realize how the original comment comes off. There's a lot of wiggle room in the terms "interested", "engineering", and "unremarkable", but the way I take it is: if one hasn't become a legend in their field by age 40, not only do they not deserve a job, they don't deserve to be here (since they're clearly not interested in engineering).

You're right on many of these points and I probably take it personally because I'm coming up on 20 years and am unremarkable. You never know what people went through to get where they are.

I went to a cheap state school, didn't major in CS despite wanting to desperately because my family convinced me it was a bad move, graduated into the GFC, got pigeonholed into QA for a while, spent years getting my masters in CS, wasted energy on side projects for many years, cared for sick family members for many years, struggled with major impostor syndrome and insecurity.

I've done things I'm proud of and I made it to FAANG after all that, but am unremarkable. It's kind of offensive to then hear that I'm not interested in engineering because I'm not a Distinguished Engineer or whatever.

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3. pclmulqdq ◴[14 May 25 13:14 UTC] No.43984158[source]▶
If you made it to a FAANG without going to a top 20 college, there's a near 0 chance you are unremarkable. The rest of the story more than confirms that you aren't coasting.