I wanted to help train and mentor people. Went to work in state government as a developer at 47+. Could not be happier. I feel that the obligation of helping tax payers get their moneys' worth is "old school" internet. Being able to present government information the easiest and cleanest way possible on the net. Started doing web dev back around 96 and felt like the ethos have evolved into something I just couldn't ethically believe in anymore. Found a second life doing what I love in state government...oh and they treat me like a human being. Excellent insurance, more time off than I can use, and people (other developers) who believe in what they are building.

I'm in my 40s, working in higher ed, and I feel exactly the same.

As I've gotten older, mission matters more. I don't care about selling ads, I don't care about winning the stock option lottery, and I don't care about chasing only the shiniest newest tech. I care about getting stuff done efficiently with boring tech and helping people solve real problems.

Is higher ed perfect? Certainly not. But I feel like I'm contributing to a broader, useful mission. If I ever leave higher ed, it would almost certainly be for a non-profit or government job.

Not just 40+. I'm just over 30 and I've felt that way for a while. I have a lot on my plate but other than that I live alone so I do have the time and energy to focus on learning the bleeding edge and I do enjoy it. But the truth is, the exact things described in that post kill my motivation. And here's an interesting fact: I spent almost 9 years working in one company. The only reason why I stuck around for so long was the absence of all the ridiculous reporting, filling jira tickets and all that dreadful crap. We had a relatively small but very solid team with simple rules and procedures: everything that needs to be done is done with well-described and documented gitlab issues, each issue gets it's own branch, do what you have to do, push, open a merge request to the lead developer(me for the past several years). Simple and straightforward, releases were always ready well before the deadlines, developers staying with the team for 5+ years on average, even when offered double what they were making. What changed? The exact thing that the reddit post described: new management, endless bureaucratic crap, endless made up acronyms, pointless meetings with tons of questions not worth discussing(ex: "Apple doesn't allow this so we can't do it", followed by 3 hours of discussions as to who should we talk to to get it up anyway) and to top this off: "hey there's this other team that doesn't do anything, we'll mash the two together so they have something to do". As a result all the most senior members(myself included) decided to quit, non-negotiable. it really pains me to see how much ego, bureaucracy and arrogance I see everywhere. Needless to say, I had to make some compromise with all that but it is insanely frustrating.

I feel like most of the software engineering world is going through a Steve Ballmer crisis: the industry is dictated by people who know nothing about the inner workings. As a result unnecessary solutions are pushed down our throats: "We should use X technology". Fine, but why, it will be slow, unmanageable and will leave us pegged to the company that developed it? "Nonsense, it is the best, everybody is using X". And 6 months later...

> Oh, by the way, it's December, so we need you to watch that 45 minute security training video again so you don't accept USB flash drives from strangers in the parking lot.

The ability to mute a tab and have it run in the background is at times a beautiful thing.

Reminds me of "Snow Crash", specifically when Y.T.'s mom games reading a memo at her .gov job:

"Y.T.'s mom decides to spend between fourteen and fifteen minutes reading the memo. It's better for younger workers to spend too long, to show that they're careful, not cocky. It's better for older workers to go a little fast, to show good management potential. She's pushing forty. She scans through the memo, hitting the Page Down button at reasonably regular intervals, occasionally paging back up to pretend to reread some earlier section. The computer is going to notice all this. It approves of rereading. It's a small thing, but over a decade or so this stuff really shows up on your work-habits summary."

I'm always amazed by how long it takes some people to go through these. Just press next as fast as possible to get to the quiz at the end. The questions are always like:

A stranger offers you a free USB stick in the parking lot do you:

A) Put it in the nearest electrical outlet

B) Stick it up your butt

C) Start a fire in your trash can and cast it in

D) Report it to corporate security at extension xxx, notify your manager, and warn coworkers not to use them

Unless you work at Amazon where the training pauses if the tab isn’t actively focused.

I’m convinced that it’s a form of torture.

We have that too. A second computer works wonders here. Worse is the training I'm doing now which lets you run it in the background but makes you push a button every 30s to continue the training.

Up next: a training video that turns on your webcam and pauses if you look away from the screen.

Next step, ever watched "15 million merits", an episode of Black Mirror? If you close your eyes, an excruciating sound requires you to open them again and continue watching.

> pauses

Nit: You spelled "tazes" wrong.

That sounds positively Orwellian.

There is something to be said for employers that are less technologically organized and competent. A friend at a company that did this used a virtual machine to run the training.

> I’m convinced that it’s a form of torture.

Ten years later, you will nostalgically think about the good old trainings in 2020 when the web camera yet didn't watch your eyeballs and analyze your face expressions in order to determine whether you need to watch the training again.

There's no good way to certify people on this knowledge from the organization's perspective. Just get your phone out if you're feeling confident in it.

Just put it on a second monitor and mute it?

You don't even need to do that. I found a demo for the page visibility api[1] (presumably what they use to detect whether the tab is focused), and found that having the window not minimized is sufficient to make the tab think it's focused. That is, all you have to do is move the tab to a new window, and click your main window. Now your training video is in the background and not taking up any screen space (you can mute the tab if you want), but the page doesn't realized it's not focused/visible.

[1] https://jsfiddle.net/0GiS0/cAG5N/

Not saying that these videos are a good thing, but would doing things like this be proof (assuming muting/active viewing is logged somehow) of gross negligence allowing the company to hold you personally liable if you make a mistake that could have been prevented had you watched the video?

If you can turn your monitor sideways (portrait mode) and then full-screen the security video it will be a lot more entertaining.

So true... I’m in my early 30s and already started to refuse any meetings without a clear agenda and call out for none stopping blabbering nonsense. It’s been much better for reducing unnecessary overheads but at the same time it would probably only work for my current project which is small scale and I have the most expertise. I will never move or take a job in large development shop with a beaucratic leadership structure.

I decided to start my midlife crisis after a long FMLA (first eldercare, and then raising my nephews). I just couldn't go back to the daily standup agile velocity kabuki. My work has to mean something, at least to me.

Identity politics have made it even more miserable.

I don't know if there's something special about working in web design/development but I see more identity politics here and in the community than I do anywhere else in my life, or in other industries. My partner works in education - that place of reputed wokeness - and while identity features, there isn't the politics in the school around it.

Perhaps webdev attracted a specific kind of person (who felt comfortable with the anonymity of the web?) - or is software development now the same?

It's an industry filled with highly educated people who spend way too much time idling on twitter and the internet in general.

They don't have money concerns like most people from other walks of life so they need to find something to get worked out about.

I think it's understandable why big tech went in this direction.

Twitter is one of the most mentally detrimental social media platforms even made amplified with socially accepted brigading and censorship.

very low barrier to entry

what does that even mean?

Excessive regard for people's most superficial immutable traits; e.g., racism, sexism, etc, whether "well-intentioned" or not.

People will start drama if you use the wrong words. Either the drama itself or trying to avoid it is an additional source of stress.

Before I left tech the first time I used the wrong pronoun was "free". Second is fireable offense literally classified as hate speech. Most people didn't go to HR unless you are a dick.

I support whatever you want to do, truly. I have a habit of joining a zoom and saying "hey guys hows it going?". It's been really hard to break but I am working on it

Seriously, if I made that mistake the first 5 min of the meeting is attributed to this with some massive history on transsexuality but rarely a mention of Guy Fawkes.

Personally, I think the majority of these people are addicted to their struggle and probably should work on moving past that with a qualified professional.

One of my best friends and most capable mentors came out and I think it's fucking great. Good for her! She handles it healthy and always has a positive anecdote even when I fuck up.

> Personally, I think the majority of these people are addicted to their struggle and probably should work on moving past that with a qualified professional.

A generation that grew up reading about and watching recordings/movies of the civil rights fights of the prior generation(s), with no more such large fights of their own, seeking ever further niche subjects to blow up into something they can fight for.

Lucky for me I'm in a country developed enough by all standards yet largely not affected by this circus.

As my career has progressed, I've moved to places with less and less BS and more grownups. Maybe it helps that I'm not in web apps. Or maybe I've been looking for places like that. Maybe some of both.

Ryan I think you and Adam would get along quite well, there’s similar themes that I bet you’d nod your head as vigorously as I did in this piece:

https://dev.to/bytebodger/why-older-people-struggle-in-progr...

Being on the steep part of the learning curve makes up for a lot of bullshit.

For some, probably, yeah. And good for them. Let the rest of us have this moment, though.

> When we first started we didn't mind the bullshit so much because we were too dumb to realize how much there was.

…

> Oh, by the way, it's December, so we need you to watch that 45 minute security training video again so you don't accept USB flash drives from strangers in the parking lot.

Admittedly, in the early 90s when I got started professionally there actually wasn't so much bullshit, and yearly security training videos are an example of the kind and extent of how the bullshit has evolved and expanded.

34 and I feel pretty happy freelancing. Freelance IMO is closer to real life for most of the devs I’ve talked to. You are not committed to bullshit, often excluded from company brainwash meetings and actually getting paid by the hour, so you can manage the amount of “life you sell”.

Mentioning corona here, I think the society is desperate to find more IT folks around and loosing someone because of shitty interview process ( which I mostly skip because I’m a freelancer ) is quite sad.

What do you do?

When the thought leaders have a “hole in their life” because a cron job and sendmail SAAS shutdown, you know it’s bullshit all the way down:

https://twitter.com/paulg/status/1216714155731890176?s=20

what the actual fuck