You’re a bit of my hero since I aim to be a dev till at least 60. I barely survive Leetcode interviews now — in fact I can’t think of a single one I’ve passed. Having to interview at 60 plus sounds awful, mostly for the reasons you describe.
I have friends who work in the M&A world (doing due diligence, C-level advise etc) both here in NL (you'll probably know them) and in the US/CA (in identity/credentials), guess I should have a chat with them :-)
But first I'm going to spend a few months doing something good - seeing if we can actually fix interoperability in healthcare in the EU. Lots of interesting things happening in that space ;-)
A soulless job in finance is better if you like(d) ML at all, because then you can keep your interests separate from your job.
Interesting! I never made that connection but now that you mention it it is obvious. Thanks.
I did read somewhere that for someone trying to write a book in their spare time, a job in editing is the worst possible thing to have for a similar reason.
I've been in this area for a couple decades now and have seen technologies come and go, so I see my AI-related job now as just another generation of tools and making pretty sure that I keep my knowledge still valid in other non-AI related area in the tech space, so that I'm not a data-science/AI-framework-plumbing kind of person.
I keep an interest in standard C++ desktop development, which to me seem a safe harbour even time there is a collapse in some trendy technology.
If you keep those going, you'll do well in almost everything.
I'm loath to give more specific advice, because the whole industry is experiencing a bit of a "sea change," right now, and I'm not sure that past performance is a good indicator of future results.
Really? Wow. My anecdotal experience is that most people in tech are blind fans of apple.
In my experience ("filter bubble"), the central reason for the insane hate on Apple rather is that with the iPhone, Apple made the "golden cage" fashionable. When Microsoft attempted to implement similar measures in the past (keywords: Trusted/Trustworthy Computing (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trustworthy_computing), Palladium (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Next-Generation_Secure_Computi...), Trusted Platform Module (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trusted_Platform_Module), ...), a huge outcry among users, and a shitstorm against Microsoft happened.
The acceptance of the golden cage of the iPhone showed that an insane amount of users are willing to be enslaved in a golden cage, and thus all the data activism to keep users in control of their devices was just a paper tiger. The fact that these Apple fanbois actively sabotaged this activism by their buying decisions is in my opinion a very good reason for this insane hate.
When we hang out in echo chambers, we start thinking that there are “a lot” of people that think like us.
Most folks aren’t technologically savvy. They don’t particularly want to be bothered by the “nitty gritty” of tech usership. They just want their tool to do what they want, without any fuss.
This has had a lot of terrible results. Tech moguls have made a lot of money, by taking advantage of this.
But it’s far older than smartphones. Demagogues have used this propensity for thousands of years, to keep most folks on the smelly end of the stick.
The refusal of tech activists to understand this, has, in my opinion, caused an enormous amount of damage.
People aren’t dumb, and we need to understand, and embrace that. Just because they don’t find tech as fascinating as we do, is no reason to dismiss them.
In fact, as I said, some rather rapacious tech robber barons understand this all too well.
Want to be effective? Make security and privacy easy to use. Otherwise, we’re just howling at the moon.
I want a Unix system because I prefer that for programming, I want a laptop because I want to change between offices, and I want to get started asap and get my work done without having to worry about hardware compatibility too much, so I prefer macOS over Linux. Simple as that.
Yes, Apple is expensive, but my company pays that MacBook so I don't care about that either. I get a well-functioning Unix with great usability and nice specs, with hardware and software from the same manufacturer. It works for me, so it's ok for me.
May I ask how you make a living in modern society?
Lots of people contribute to walled gardens to produce the food you eat. Heck, the constructor of your roof literally contributed to your walled garden...
I don't think anyone has a choice, unless you go back 10,000 years and live like a hunter gatherer...
I don't think you know what walled garden means in software context.
I reduce my burden on the environment by buying used rather than new whenever I can (for some reason no one wants to consider the upfront heavy burdens of manufacturing things like e-bikes and EVs when the used markets for both are so healthy). I try to avoid contributing to the workplace suffering of others and the normalization of antisocial, anticompetitive business strategies so I try not to encourage those practices by giving money to those who violate those (e.g. Amazon). I shop at overstock groceries (Grocery Outlet) and department stores (Ross, Marshalls) to circularize the economy that much more.
Everyone has priorities, and especially as we emerge out of the pandemic and I observe the working and spending habits of those around me I see that many people value personal, individual conveniences often at the expense of dignity and comfort for others. I want to think I value those things for myself and others and so try to live in accordance with those values. Everyone must compromise but that doesn't excuse at all where exactly we end up drawing that line.
According to the StackOverflow developer survey, 33% of developers use macOS [0], which is approximately double its overall market share of ~15% [1].
In my experience, every tech company office I’ve ever been to has been a sea of MacBooks.
[0] https://survey.stackoverflow.co/2023/
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_operating_sys....
That still doesn't stop a very vocal minority of folks from spewing hate on us. Heck, just spend five minutes, browsing comments on this very forum, and you'll run into it.
Seriously. Just make a few posts, indicating that you develop Apple software, and see where that takes you.
It’s been interesting (and infuriating), experiencing some of the conclusions that younger techs have reached about me, due to my gray hair.
I’m also a developer of Apple device software. That has resulted in even more abuse. There’s serious hate for Apple amongst techs.
Human nature likes pigeonholing other people into simple “sort buckets,” and we have many ways to do that. It actually takes conscious effort, to avoid it.