Yeah, because it's pretty damn remarkable for somebody to learn something at the ripe old age of 35. Imagine that. Still learning new stuff.

It shouldn't be, but 13 years of corporate subordination and forced creative atrophy puts a lot of people into an out-of-shape state that's hard to recover from. There's nothing natural about this sort of premature mediocrity. If we tear the corporate system down, Bastille-style, we'll see a lot more badass older people, which will be a great thing for the world.

Well I'm here to say that you can break the shackles. At 37 I might still toil in the Java mines during the day, but at night I am learning Ruby, Rails, NoSQL, zsh and other Open Source/less than enterprisey stuff.

I might not be able to debug a rails app as fast as I can a JEE app but I can still grok/reason/solve issues on the platform.

You absolutely can break the shackles, and should. I'm just saying it's (admirably) insubordinate.

From a typical boss-man perspective, your performance is reduced by this extracurricular work. You're probably working late into the evening, and thinking about Ruby during the day. You're probably planning a move to something better.

You can't be fired for that alone, but it puts you at risk of being in the socially excluded, not-getting-the-benefit-of-the-doubt category.

One of the issues with side projects is that admitting to having them breaks the Fundamental Subordinate Dishonesty (http://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2012/12/12/fundamental-s...). You're "supposed" to be putting all available energy into your job, or at least respect authority enough to put effort into that illusion. Vacation is okay: that's just taking a break. Off-hours work isn't (in typical workplaces).

I remember talking to a previous boss saying, "I've been thinking of starting skunk works project 'X'. Where 'X' was introducing an ORM, JQuery, or cleaning up some old code/modules. And the answer was always "I'd rather you work on the backlog [of features]."

IMHO, he line of thinking where employers want you only grinding on today's problems rather than additionally incrementally honing the skills to innovate is a broken methodology and does not work for software. The barrier to learning these skills is too low to expect people not to want to do these things and it keeps getting lower.

>> I think when I run a company,

1. What will you pay?

2. Do you allow for remote working?

3. Email is available on my profile.

:-) Thanks for posting the sentiment publicly. Much appreciated.

>> enough of an insubordinate/rebellious streak to protect their creativity and curiosity through their 20s, despite their corporate masters' attempts to destroy it

This is a very nice thing to say (and I consider myself in that category), but people like this are usually the one who come out of life being absolutely clobbered and all.. People like this are very nice to watch from a distance (and admire), but it is a very unpleasant hike to be in our shoes.

Not running a company, now or in the near future. Don't have the money to self-fund, nor the connections to get funding.

I try to bring light to the world in the way I can. Perhaps my ideas will percolate into power over time.

>> Not running a company....etc, etc.

Oh, I got it first time alright. I was just pleased at the mention and wanted to acknowledge it. :-)

>> Perhaps my ideas will percolate into power over time.

Hope springs eternal. ;-)

Why do you think creativity and curiosity require protection through insubordination and rebellion?

Because "fitting in" means exactly that - you fit in space that is just big enough to allow you to work and not much else. Creativity and curiosity require wandering around.

Creative people are willing to follow another's lead if they believe it to be beneficial, as in a mentor/protege relationship where the mentor is clearly superior at the craft. People who will put themselves into the total subordination that the corporate world expects (in which you de-prioritize your own progress, education, and career in favor of managerial-organizational statism) lose their creative capability and rarely are able to get it back.