I say ‘feasibly’ because often the upper end of career ladders for Independent Contributors (ICs) could be paraphrased as “we’ll know it when we see it”, which can leave those who haven’t sufficiently proven “it” in a frustrating limbo. I’ve worked very hard to become an engineer and I want to stay here. Developing prototypes to further explore and support ideas that come from that research.
Slowly, gradually, it dawned on me that what I enjoyed was mathematics. The mathematical aspects of CS were what got me excited and kept me up at night working on projects. The Summer after I graduated, I decided I had too much awesome stuff in my head that nobody wanted to hear me talk about at parties, so I started a blog called Math Intersect Programming If someone offered me this deal to write about math and CS, I would take it in a heartbeat. I would never want to retire.
Some of the ideas are a bit contradictory, which I suspect is the nature of all useful advice: you’ll have to work through the conflicts and details yourself. One of the reasons I write online is so that folks can discover me, and being discoverable has lead to many of the best things in my life. if you stay somewhere that you’re very comfortable for too long, then you’re missing out on so much future growth.
Everything is different now, but I am still at my desk. Except with the websites. They separate themselves from the others, because I don’t feel much better at making them after 20 years. My knowledge and skills develop a bit, then things change, and half of what I know becomes dead weight. This hardly happens with any of the other work I do. I don’t bring this up to imply that the young are dumb or that the inexperienced are inept—of course they’re not. But remember: if you stick around in the industry long enough, you’ll get to feel all three situations. Experience, on the other hand, creates two distinct struggles: the first is to identify and unlearn what is no longer necessary (that’s work, too). The second is to remain open-minded, patient, and willing to engage with what’s new, even if it resembles a new take on something you decided against a long time ago. This situation is annoying to me, because my thoughts turn to that young designer I mentioned at the start of my talk. How many opportunities did I have to reproduce what I saw by having legible examples in front of me? And how detrimental is it to have that kind of information obfuscated for her? Before, the websites could explain themselves; now, someone needs to walk you through it.
The leadership track shows up so that communication and decisions can be sensibly organized. In Toxic Title Douchebag World, titles are designed to document the value of an individual sans proof. A title has no business attempting to capture the seemingly infinite ways by which individuals evolve. To allow leadership to bucket individuals into convenient chunks so they can award compensation and measure seniority while also serving as labels that are somehow expected to give us an idea about expected ability. This is an impossibly tall order and at the root of title toxicity. the reality is that you are a collection of skills of varying ability. Titles, I believe, are an artifact of the same age that gave us business cards and resumes. They came from a time when information was scarce. When there was no other way to discover who you were other than what you shared via a resume. Where the title of Senior Software Engineer was intended to define your entire career to date.
“Part of my view is that employees actually prefer this. Expedites career cycle for them. And even if company has some cruft long term. If plays out in 2 years not 20. Employees have more at bats and have more leverage when switching jobs.”
Part of my view is that employees actually prefer this. Expedites career cycle for them. And even if company has some cruft long term. If plays out in 2 years not 20. Employees have more at bats and have more leverage when switching jobs— Kevin Kwok (@kevinakwok) February 18, 2019
“After 8pm, I tend to be very stupid and we don’t talk about this.”
This schedule went viral on Twitter with the caption: “Ursula K. Le Guin’s writing routine is the ideal writing routine.” It’s a lovely, lovely thing, but it should be pointed out that it was an “ideal” routine for her, too, as she says in the 1988 interview it’s excerpted from. (Left out: “I go to
Hi, I'm a lexicographer. You might know me from my greatest hits "Yes, People Still Write Dictionaries" "Language Is Constantly Evolving (And We’re Just Tryin’ To Keep Up)” and “No, That’s Not the Etymology of ‘Posh.’” https://t.co/EH5PTVCDDL— Jane Solomon (@janesolomon) January 20, 2019
Camille Fournier on Twitter: "This reminds me that I have a half-written blog post about being mid-career in tech that has no conclusion because, well, as you can see, it's unclear to me how to best use this time"
“This reminds me that I have a half-written blog post about being mid-career in tech that has no conclusion because, well, as you can see, it's unclear to me how to best use this time”
