Long-Term Career Plans for Programmers? 81
zeno_lee asks: "Over the weekend, I spoke to a successful man in his 50s. He works in finance, but has had jobs in construction, trucking, and accounting. All throughout he has had concrete goals and pursued them vigorously. In his 20s he set a goal to be an expert in his field in finance, and achieved it successfully. I'm in my 20s and he advised me to envision what I want to do when I'm in my 50s, set my priorities and goals, and achieve that vision. He mentioned that success (career wise) depends on carefully planned goals with a vision, not a haphazard obstacle course with no end in sight.
Beyond receiving a paycheck in the short term and steadily gaining expertise in my field, I have not given my long-term career any concrete thought. I don't have a vision of what I will be doing when I'm 50. Has anyone thought of their long-term career thoroughly and are working towards it? By this I don't mean the usual vague response 'I'll probably be in management one day.' I'm looking to hear from both junior 'careerists' in their 20s who have concrete goals, and the older folks in this field who have established careers and have an opinion about this."
having a goal is important (Score:2, Insightful)
But envisioning where you want to be at 50 yo is a little rigid.
I have never been able to get into this mindset... (Score:5, Interesting)
But the reality is that no one really knows what tomorrow brings and it is the small decisions today which make the BIG differences tomorrow. In college, could I have planned to be a Business Analyst? NO! I did not know one existed. But by making the right small choices in life - finishing the things I loved in college, following advice of friends in jobs, working hard at the jobs I had, treating people right, keeping my eyes on God, etc. - I wound up in a very good place.
Is it the place I planned to be? No. I am still unmarried and have not yet written the great American novel. But I have few regrets.
I guess my point is: Feel free to plan, but never forsake now for the far-flung future and never take the low road now assuming you will get back to the high road later. You may not be around to get to your vision in 30 years.
Oh, and for the record, I am 28 now.
Re:I have never been able to get into this mindset (Score:2)
Agreed. It was only in the last decade that my job/career/whatever (web developer) even existed. Could never have planned that, and when I was in my early twenties certainly never would have imagined I would be starting a business. But here I am, with a web company, and happy.
I've always had an aversion to long-term goal setting. I'm not really concerned about where I'll be when I'm 50 (or 60, or 40). I'll know when I get there. No matter how many goals I might have achieved at those points, they'll be empty accomplishments if I haven't enjoyed the journey.
Concentrate on the small things, on how you're getting wherever you're going. It's whether you enjoy life, not how many points you score.
(And read Robert Pirsig).
Re:having a goal is important (Score:1)
for the fun of it, with no end goal
of getting anywhere. Enjoying the ride
is no worse than riding to a destination...
Re:having a goal is important (Score:1)
If you destination is one of enlightenment, then exploring interesting things along the way is, in fact, multiple mini-goals.
Expect Change (Score:3, Insightful)
I expect IT to become much more plug and run and that IT jobs will go the way of typewriter rapair jobs.
Re:Expect Change (Score:2, Insightful)
Programming may change that much too. Unless you enjoy the heck out of programming, I don't think you'd want to write code all day, rather than get a comfy job managing or starting a company.
Expect Change Inside and Out (Score:5, Insightful)
This is quite true. If you are in a fast-paced and relatively new field like programming, you'd better not make your plans too rigid. It's interesting that you mention "typewriter repair jobs" because I was actually going to use the now-defunct Smith Corona Typewriter company as an example of changing technology spoiling the best laid plans.
The person asking the Ask Slashdot question also states that he's "in his 20s". Are you 20 or 29? There's a huge difference. Are you married? Any kids? Not only will technology and the world around you change, but you are certainly going to change in the next 30 years. The goals I set for myself when I was 20-24 are certainly not what I consider my goals are now. And your future family might not be thrilled with your goals if they require 60 hour work weeks during your midlife.
It's nice to give some thought to your long term goals but I would be wary of making rigid plans 30 years down the line. The advice this finance guy gave you about how "success depends on setting long-term goals" sounds like something you'd read in an Anthony Robbins book (or inside a fortune cookie). Life is pretty complicated. You can't expect the secret to professional success to be captured in a single sentence. Be smart. Be able to work with people. Be flexible and adaptable. These suggestions, too, are no guarantee that professional success will come to you but it will help you a lot more than planing for the year 2030.
Good luck,
GMD
Re:Expect Change Inside and Out (Score:2, Interesting)
This struck me. I am just recently not "in my 20's" anymore. My cousin is an undergrad and he is in his early twenties. There is a huge difference. Undergrad days for me were done with a 286 and then later a very expensive 486. Programming was in TurboPascal, Fortran77, QuickBasic (ICK!), and dBase (dobule ICK!). For him, it is Java, OO-this and that, C++ if he is feeling old-school. So much has changed.
Structural changes have occured in the way that "we do what it is we do." How can anyone have specific longterm goals? I have had some success in the past several years by doing what I am good at, what I enjoy, and chasing after opportunities. I run my own company, but I can honestly say that I don't know what my plans are for 5 years from now, let alone 20. I guess I am not saying anything that you haven't...but let me try.
Planning a carreer is a nonlinear optimization problem. There is a functional that denotes value. It rolls up the financial, social, and intellectual rewards that you get from your carreer. This value functional must be integrated over a path from t=18 years to t=55 years. The path that we take should optimize that total value. But, the value space is highly nonlinear. There will be huge numbers of local extrema...making the best of the current situation. There will be paths that seem to be going nowhere and then lead to huge gains or falls.
So, in handling these types of optimization problems, we need to use common sense (gradient methods) to make the most of what we have at hand. But to keep from being locked into the first local extrema we find, we need to shake things up (entropy methods). Philosophically, I think the same recommendations hold for steering your life and carreer. Choose the best path in front of you, but never stop shaking things up, lest you get stuck.
Seeing the end is not nearly as important as seeing ALL of the now.
Philip Greenspun's Guide (Score:4, Informative)
- Career Guide for Engineers and Computer Scientists [greenspun.com] -- a humour look at the role of education in job seeking. Not very serious, but a good read and actually very thought provoking
- How I Became a Scum-Sucking Yuppie Materialist [greenspun.com] and his advice on investing [greenspun.com] are a good and geeky introduction to money.
When all else fails, read Seven Habits of Highly Annoying People.Long term goals are fine, but people change... (Score:2, Insightful)
I am working on a programming degree, but I don't see myself programming for the rest of my life. 30 years from now when I am 50, computers are likely to be as different from today's, as the computers today are different from those of the 1970s. Programming will go through many more revolutions, as the Sofware Development Life Cycle goes through more revisions.
Set long terms goals, but don't let those be written in stone. Plan for tomorrow, but live in the present. Diversification will ensure you can always work in some field. Try to stay current in Hardware, and you can even work in an IT department :-)
John
Re:Long term goals are fine, but people change... (Score:2, Insightful)
Computers are not that different. Programmers have been writing software the same exact way for 50 years, and there's no indication that it will be different any time soon.
Re:Long term goals are fine, but people change... (Score:1)
Re:Long term goals are fine, but people change... (Score:1)
Re:Long term goals are fine, but people change... (Score:1)
The good search engines today even use algorithms that were around 30 years ago. You can't say Scheme won't become the next defacto language [but I doubt it]. The technology world is so volatile that predicting what will happen 10 years from now, and planning for it is nearly futile. I prefer to work along and see where it leads me, hoping it isn't a dead end. Others may set goals and create something new and wonderful, instead of meeting their own dead end. In 30 years I'm sure we'll see more people just working along, than we will see Bill Gates' and Linus Torvalds'.
Re:Long term goals are fine, but people change... (Score:1)
Re:Long term goals are fine, but people change... (Score:1)
Re:Long term goals are fine, but people change... (Score:1)
Joseph Campbell (Score:4, Interesting)
Plans can change (Score:4, Interesting)
While I was in college getting a degree is music I had the goal of owning my own recording studio one day. By the time I graduated that had changed to computer systems design and programming. Recent events have led me in yet another direction...but this time I can finally imagine myself doing this for the next 30 years.
Next week I'll begin classes to get an Emergency Medical Services degree and national certification as a Paramedic.
It's an old cliche, but if you do what you love you'll never have to work a day in your life!
Intl. Fire Rescue and EMS News: http://www.firehouse.com
Plans for 50... (Score:1)
Don't think it won't happen to you
Re: Plans for 50... (Score:1)
my goals (Score:3, Funny)
what? its been done? not like this my friend... you see, the difference here is, i'm selling CAT LITTER... on the INTERNET... it's a guaranteed sell! how many people do you know have cats? and don't they all need cat litter? and everybody has the internet! its a match made in heaven.
Re:my goals (Score:2)
Re:my goals (Score:2, Funny)
Re:my goals (Score:2, Funny)
That, and I know this guy in Nigeria. I gave him $10,000 to cover some legal bills he had, and when he's finished he's going to let me have 10% of a huge fortune that he's filtering through my checking account! I should go check with my bank now to see if the wire transfer has gone through.
With my two pronged approach to quick riches, I can't go wrong!
Re:my goals (Score:1)
I'm told they're only being sent to a select group of people, but you seem nice enough.
They're definately going to go up, someone called Juliane Delsol [mailto] gave me some really good advice.
Older Folks? (Score:2, Funny)
Jeez... just become I'm not im my 20's any more I have to be grouped in with the "older folks?" How depressing.
Uh oh (Score:1)
I think i speek for everyone... (Score:1)
-An overworked code monkey
Re:I think i speek for everyone... (Score:1)
-An overworked code monkey
So to translate, you plan on being an overworked code monkey when you are 50?
Life: the ultimate road trip (Score:3, Interesting)
Anyway, when I was 18, I had goals set for myself. When my personal circumstances changed, that pretty much scuttled whatever goals I had. I had honestly expected to work for a radio station as a disk jockey, and probably doing voice overs for the extra income. I would be married after I turned 25 to a girl I met after high school. (I never really had a high school sweetheart.) At this point, I was to have been through college after a year off to make extra money. I would have long hair and would never cut it.
Silly, naive me. The only thing that is true today is that I have taken a trivial amount of college (some ballet, a Japanese 101 course, and a CIS 111 course that I dropped because the curriculum revolved around things such as "This is a mouse"), and that I am married, but not to that girl I met right after high school. Oh, and I have long hair, but I cut it back in 1998.
And I didn't expect to have that spare tire until I was at least 35.
In retrospect, my dreams of being some rock star, being some multimillionaire, and actually having developed a real working version of Luke Skywalker's land speeder from the first star wars movie that I had when I was 10 were probably more feasible, but I would probably have washed up with the likes of 98 degrees and just built some goofy looking car with nothing to show at the end of the game.
Based on this, I'll give my naive advice. Make plans, but be flexible, and be prepared to adjust as necessary. If you expect that you will be in a spot by the time ten years elapses, you are probably going to be terribly disappointed. On the other hand, consider yourself either lucky or blessed by your respective god if things line up the way you expect.
Or, there is the short version: make the plans, but don't expect anything. (Side effect of this approach: the surprise of having come across an unexpected Good Thing is much more enjoyable than the satisfaction of things going right.)
Re:Life: the ultimate road trip (Score:2)
Timely... (Score:5, Informative)
If you take a long-term approach to your career you can avoid getting caught up in the "now! now! now!" attitude. Take some time to think about the skills and experience that will help you down the road. And it's not learning a new scripting language, it's understanding how to add value to a business.
My two cents anyways...
Re:Timely... (Score:2)
Dude, you're 25 years old, today was your last day at work and you're farting around posting to Slashdot instead of getting shit-faced? Where are your priorities, man? And besides, save the posting to Slashdot to we people at work.
Goals and succeeding. (Score:2, Insightful)
2. Become expert in that industry.
3. Save decent amount of money to start company.
4. Start own company in your industry.
5. Fight as hard to succeed in your company as you would to breathe if you were drowning.
6. Enjoy the ride, 1/2 the fun is getting there.
7. Retire and wonder how your spoiled children will ever respect the value of money.
8. Donate loads of cash to charity
9. Die happy.
10. (unknown, I haven't heard a good explaination yet.)
Re:Goals and succeeding. (Score:1)
11. Profit.
Re:Goals and succeeding. (Score:2)
Why the fuck would you want to start your own company? The vast majority of new companies fail!! I mean if your rich and have some money to waste (or some one elses money to waste maybe), but I promise you your not as smart as you think, and your bright business idea is just as stupid as all those other bozos who's businesses failed.
Re:Goals and succeeding. (Score:1)
He is close to the mark. (Score:2)
Having determined how you would like things to be in your silver years, you should then set shorter term goals that can be used as milestones toward your final goal. You should have a very specific 5 year plan and a slightly more nebulous 10 year plan. These plans should have specific goals and the necessary courses of action that you need to take in order to accomplish them.
Every couple of years, or when there are any major changes in your life, you should then re-examine your goals and courses of action, making whatever changes are desirable or necessary. This will help to keep you on course toward your ultimate goal.
Remember to keep your goals achievable but, not easily so. Your goals should always be a challenge requiring hard work to accomplish them. This will keep you interested, willing to strive to achieve the final goal and healthy. If you miss a short term goal, determine if you need to work harder or if you need to set your sights a little lower. If you acheive your goal, raise the bar slightly on the next goal that you set. For me the best goals are always JUST out of reach. This doesn't work for everyone as some people become overly frustrated but, knowing the kind of person you are you should be able to figure out what's best for you.
The most important thing is to stick to the plan. Too many people are too easily distracted and when you lose focus you just lose.
Bah (Score:1)
the tools matter less than the goals (Score:2, Insightful)
Consider that the tools that will be used to accomplish those goals can and will change drastically in the next thirty years, and to assume that you want to become an expert in some specific programming platform, for example, is very shortsighted. Notice that your friend set out to be an expert in the very broad world of finance, and not a Quicken wiz.
I, personally, would like to spend the rest of my life developing tools to create a free and uncontrolled flow of information, whether that means using the existing Internet, a newer technology, or just reverting back to pidgeons. But the point is, I'm not locking myself into any set of tools to accomplish my goals, so my "career" is hopefully not going to be haphazardly controlled by bleeding edge technology, which always seems to be the thorn in the heel for programmers.
begin with the end in mind (Score:3, Insightful)
It is from what these people say, summarizing your life and all the accomplishments therein, that you can glean precious kernels of wisdom that will help you focus your laser beam attention on whatever it is you wish most to have done.
That being said, I am afraid that I am at least as lost as you are. Frequently, I picture myself at that funeral, and all I can think of is a bunch of people saying "Boy, he just looks great (for a dead guy), doesn't he?"
But thats my problem, not yours. You need to figure out what you want. Then go for it. And if you don't know what you want, then just keep your nose in it and work hard. You know, ANYBODY who does a good job for 30 years at ANYTHING has no cause for shame.
Progress?! Why?! (Score:2, Interesting)
In my first job, for what was then a large U.K. bespoke software house (and is now part of I.B.M.) I started with two 4 day training courses - one was essentially an introduction to the company and its methods, and one was an introduction to VMS, DCL and EDT, which I knew vaguely alreadyas I had uses VAXes at university.
After this I was put onto a project working on an end-to-end image management and processing system for the Ministry of Defence. Essentially I was allowed to design and develop the software without too much supervision.
I have done essentially the same thing i.e. talk to users, analyse requirements, design, develop and debug software for the following 16 years.
I expect to be doing the same for the next n years.
This is not unlike being a dentist e.g.
Day 1 - look in peoples' mouths. Diagnose problems. Drill, fill and extract teeth (etc.)
40 years later - look in peoples' mouths. Diagnose problems. Drill,fill and extract teeth (etc.)
Retire.
Die.
[this is obviously a simplification of what they do and not to denigrate the skills / knowledge of dentists]
I honestly don't see why our 'career' should be any different. I have more experience, obviously, and get paid more (about 5 times as much), but apart from being able to apply the experience I wouldn't claim to be much better at it (but then, I think I was pretty good to start with (!)).
When 50's are your short-term goals (Score:5, Interesting)
- Always know your fire exits. Both literally (when checking into a new hotel while on a trip), figuratively (e.g., always keep an eye open for trucks with loose cargo that can suddenly dump heavy trash in your lane) and in life. Some day your life will depend on it.
- Plan for a rainy day. Hell, plan for a 100-year flood. And know how to recognize when you're in it. This should be automatic to anyone living through the current IT depression.
- Always have a backup plan. Always play with the next move or three in mind.
- Always keep some cash on hand. Liquid funds (before and separate from your "rainy day" funds) in the bank, even a kilobuck or two in a fire safe at home. Cash speaks in situations where nothing else will work.
- Always keep your car in working condition. Nothing is more worthless than an untrustworthy car - you can't use it when you need it, but the upkeep is a constant drain on your resources.
- Always keep a few days worth of emergency rations and water in your house. It will seem to be a wasted effort... until that crazy kid two blocks over blows up the substation and you're without power for a couple days.
- Finally, the little stuff adds up. If you're a regular runner your knees will be beat up unless you always wear good shoes. If you don't workout, you will resemble Jabba the Hutt as you hit middle age.
As for career advice, it's buried in the advice mentioned above. You can (and should) sketch out a general career arc, but don't bother trying to make a detailed prediction 30 years out because too much will change. E.g., what happens to your plan if you're diagnosed with MS (or worse, ALS) in another few years? What if your kid dies tragically in a decade, and you think you can see a way to help others avoid the same cruel fate?All you can do is ensure that you're never "checkmated" because you're stuck in a job you hate but can't afford to quit, with career skills that have become hopelessly outdated, that you aren't caught in an easily avoided layoff, etc.
Re:When 50's are your short-term goals (Score:1)
Some people say work is not everything. If I sleep 8 hours a night (a luxury with 3 kids under 5), then a 40 hour working week becomes 40 / (7 * 16) == 35 % of my waking hours. That doesn't count any time commuting. So you gotta be certain that both the work and the relationships you're in at work that take up 35% + of your life are worth it.
Be prepared to change and enjoy the serendipity of life. For example, the comment about the 100 year flood rings a bell with me. I'd just quit a job with people I didn't like, that required (due to overtime and failings of public transport) a 2 hour commute (each way). I'd just started in a job that required a 1 hour drive each way, and in the 4th week in the job the floods hit
so I now live on the NSW south-coast, earn 6 figures AUD, my wife phones to tell me about the whales she's watching from our living room, and on a bad traffic day, I can get out of bed at 8 AM and be at work for a 9 AM meeting. For what its worth the work involves supporting an MVS/DB2/CICS system, and multiple UNIX and NT based ERP systems, lots of vendor, customer and user contact so that's a wide and interesting range of work.
I guess the biggie is attitude. Its a bit Zen, but what goes around comes around. As a friend of mine says "If you want something out of the favour bank, you gotta put something in to the favour bank". You get the interesting work by being known as someone who gos the extra yard, who knows how to wrap up the loose ends....
And remember, its your life, you only get one.
Make sure you enjoy it.
Goals or Values ? (Score:1)
On reflection, I guess what I was trying to say is that Goals can be limiting. They change, they get met then what etc.
Instead, Have a look at what you value, then live your life by those values.
I have no idea what and where you'll end up, but you will be happy.
50 maybe a bit too long term... (Score:2)
I personally set specific goals for 1 year and 5 years from now, and think of where I want to be when I'm 50 as a much fuzzier target. But it's important to work backwards from 50.
I also wouldn't strictly narrow this to your career. Your career affects other parts of your life and vice versa. If one of your life goals is to spend years meditating at a Shaolin temple, this *may* impede your ability to become CTO of a major financial institution.
Think of it this way. Imagine you are 50 and looking back on your life. What would have liked to have done? Had children? Travelled? Retired? Built high-quality software that millions of people use? Held various challenging roles? Become CIO? Changed software patent laws? What is important to you? (If age 50 is too abstract for you -- it's too abstract for me -- bring that age down to 40 or wherever you can really picture yourself.)
Then think backwards; in order to acheive those goals by age 50, what will you have to do? Save money? Go back to school? Gain experience in managing people? Learn more about business?
Then try to figure out how you can go about gaining those things that you need to acheive your goals. Instantly, you have a plan.
It's like programming -- come up with general requirements, figure out a design that acheives those requirements, and then figure out the implementation.
But remember to be flexible. Your requirements (and hence goals) will change -- I made a sudden switch from coding to marketing last year. All my career goals have changed. But at this stage, I enjoy this more.
This is a time-consuming process which must be reviewed constantly. If your not happy with what your doing, then it may be time to review your goals. If you look at the more senior poeple around you and think "I never want to do what these people do" you may not be on right career path you want to be on.
People change careers (not just jobs, careers) frequently these days. I know a salesperson who used to be a programmer, a tech writer who just quit for teachers college, a forensic psychologist who is a fantastic C++ programmer, a research chemist who became a professional trainer. Goals are important to have in order to acheive what you want, but what you want will change.
Fundamentally unanswerable (Score:2)
House?
Kids?
Spouse?
Travel?
Education?
En
Choose your life, and if you apply a tenth of the willpower in making those hard choices to your career, it will follow naturally.
Choosing a future is a lot like programming... (Score:1)
Be Flexible (Score:3, Insightful)
Most people in their 20's imagine that they will find a suitable life partner within the next few years (if they have not already done so), and start to settle down, have kids, buy homes, etc. That is a very noble plan, but if/when it does not happen then take advantage of the situation. Use the opportunity to achieve other goals (such as travel, save money, or whatever) so that when things do start to fall into place you're ready for the change.
I didn't get married until I was in my late 30's. This was not what I had originally planned, but I used the situation to my advantage and had a lot of fun traveling, etc. Now I'm in my 40's, have two young kids, adequate supply of money, and am very satisfied that I have already seen the world so to speak, so that I can concentrate on what's now important (my family). And I can make decisions driven by that priority (who needs to work like a dog for another promotion).
My point is that no matter what your plan is for life, you probably won't follow it exactly. Be flexible, and when something goes wrong use it as an opportunity.
The concept of "goals" can be more nebulous (Score:3, Interesting)
For me, it seems that setting concrete goals is too limiting. I prefer to change with my situation and try to enjoy it. I try to let my mood (and my personal ethics) rule, to some degree.
My greatest current goals are to raise my son to be respectful, outgoing and happy and to be the best husband that I can be to my wife. Being the best husband and father that I can requires changing with the situation. Spending all my time on career goals may make me richer and provide a level of comfort as far as money and posessions, but I may have found out by later in life that my son would have liked me to be around more to play ball rather than be in the office. My wife may have wished I was around more to provide her with emotional support.
Personally, I feel that a person has to be somewhat fluid in the way they handle the their lives. Iguess you could say I feel the journey is more important than the destination.
Having said all that, I suppose I am very stringent with putting my family ahead of everything else, so I guess that being a good husband and father is my stringent goal. All other things have to bend to fit that goal, however.
Everybody measures success in their own way, however...
Look Around You (Score:3, Interesting)
One place to look for career paths are your (older) co-workers. Look around and see what people with technical backgrounds are doing now.
You probably know some older people who are doing roughly the same job as you. I know several older programmers who have an application that's their baby, they've been working on it forever, etc.
I also know a programmer or two who are still doing technical work, but have gained some authority -- they supervise a group of people, or are heavily involved in deciding future technical directions for projects and infrastructure.
Of course, there's always management. Does your boss have a tech background? Your boss's boss? How did they get there?
Personally (I'm in my mid-twenties, and have a baby daughter), I'm more interested in my quality of life than my career, per se. If they don't work me like a dog, I get to work on interesting stuff, and the money's OK, it's fine with me if I wind up working on the same application for twenty years. I think it's more likely I'd wind up in charge of a small team of programmers, that'd be cool, too.
-Esme
heres what i have seen: (Score:2)
2. code a lot
3. burn out
advice that sounds silly but true (Score:2, Insightful)
1) ask yourself what really sets you on fire. What do you love?
2) and are you really good at it ?
If you can clearly awnser these two question then you have a plan. Whatever it is, it is what you are suppose to be doing. Go after it with a single-minded determination. I am 43. I worked as a research engineer for the US government for 12 years and finally discovered that I loved to teach and was good at it. Now that is what I do in addition to developing educational engineering courseware.
Do what you love or don't do it !
long term careers for programmers (Score:1)
Living with my goals at age 50 (Score:2)
I'll turn 50 in a just a couple of months. I've been through the whole process that you are worried about. I went to school not really knowing what I wanted to be. I found I loved Computer Science and was good at both the practical and theoretical sides. But I was a lot better at the practical side so I studied the emerging field of Software Engineering and concentrated on system software development. I went out into the real world and found that the jobs I really liked, the analysis and design jobs, all required a graduate degree so I went back and got one.
One of my first jobs put me through a lot of psychological tests and asked me about what I wanted to be doing in 20 years so I was forced to face that question. I decided that one day I would like to do research into personal computing. And I kept moving toward that goal. The only thing that got in the way of that goal was life. I got married to wonderful woman who also has career goals so we had to compromise on where we were going to live. Then we had children and decided that we were going to live somewhere that was good for the children. We also decided that we weren't going to move every couple of years. That cut us both off from some of the opportunities we could have had. But, it was the right decision for us.
Oddly enough I got a chance to go to work for a corporate R&D Center/Think Tank, and I jumped at it. We didn't have to move for me to take the job and I was supposed to do applied research (perfect for me) at the intersection of multimedia and telecommunication. I thought I was in heaven. After four years I thought I was in hell. The trouble was that I got to study things, and write reports about them but, I didn't get to develop anything and as far as I could tell no one ever read the reports. In fact I kept getting in trouble for writing reports that said, roughly, the sky is falling, look out! So, I left and tried to go back to being a programmer. (BTW, the company I worked for, a fortune 100 telecom company, is in financial trouble because everything I predicted has happened. I learned a long time ago that being right is worthless if you can't do anything about it. There is little value in knowing a train is coming if you can't convince people to get off the track.)
In my early 40s I had reached the goal I had been working toward since my early 20s just to find out that it wasn't what I wanted at all. Because of the time I spent doing research I'm having to almost start over as a programmer. Which, while frustrating is a lot of fun. The only problem is that all the time I spent doing research, combined with having worked for 6 start ups since 1984, made me very aware of the"Big Picture" and how important the relationship between the business plan and the technology is. This awareness has caused me no end of problems during interviews. People don't seem to want to hire programmers, who are actually very low level employees, who understand too much about their business model. They especially don't like programmers who question their business model. I've also learned that a lot of people can not stand the idea of having someone older than they all working for them. I don't understand that at all.
I've been out of work for most of a year now and I'm very thankful for that wife I mentioned earlier and for the cash part of my savings. I'm nearly 50, I reached the long term goal I had set for myself, I was considered to be very successful. And now I'm almost back to where I was when I was 20. The point? Goals motivate you and they give you a way to measure where your are. Goals are necessary, but don't treat a goal as a straitjacket. The world can change so that your goal becomes impossible. You can change so that your goals are no longer desirable, you can achieve your goals just to find that what you wanted isn't worth having. All in all, I value my wife and children much more than about anything else I've achieved in the last 30 years. With any luck they will be around for a lot longer than my goals will be.
Stonewolf
P.S.
If you are looking for a VERY experience linux/unix programmer or even for a researcher, let me know.
Plans are usually irrelevant. (Score:1)
Two stories to demonstrate this. My father wanted to be an artist. He loved (and still loves) music, painting, and literature; it consumed his life as a kid. His plan was to move to some artsy community, like Minneapolis (yeah, we're from the Midwest, get over it :-) and live the Artist's Life(TM).
Before that happened, he met my eventual-Mom. She's a small-town girl who never really wanted to leave the town she was born in. Being in love with her, they got married and he chose to stay there because that's where she was going to be. As the family started, he got a job doing what he could since he lacked that all-important piece of paper from a college. He spent the next 30 years of his life working in a job he hated to support his family. The older I grew, the more I understood how hard it was for him, particularly after I started reading the stories he'd written and realizing that he'd painted all of the paintings in the house.
Now that he's retired, he's on the Internet constantly. It's allowed him to get in touch with people with similar interests (James Joyce, in particular) and he's helped several doctoral candidates with thier theses and edited a couple of books for the "experts" prior to publishing. He's finally happy and able to do what he wants to, even though he never made it to Minneapolis.
Now, me, on the other hand, I knew what I wanted and, since I'd seen what "settling" did to my father (at the time, that's what I felt he'd done), I swore to myself that I would never allow that to happen to me. I was going to be a musician, come hell or high water. Throughout high school, I got to the point where I was practicing often 8 hours a day because I knew it was necessary to get There, where ever that was.
Then, life interfered and my personal circumstances changed. With the sudden shock, I stopped and thought my life and realized that being a musician as a job didn't really bring me any happiness, so I abandoned my music major. I floundered around for several years, eventually ending up with a nearly worthless degree (I won't mention in what, for fear of the flames), but I had the Sacred Parchment, and I'd mananged to work a bit in the computer labs at school, too.
Since the computer thing wasn't bad and they tended to pay well, I kinda fell into that. Over the course of the next couple of years, between getting married, lots of arguments, getting laid off one month after closing on our first house, working as a conslutant and just trying out jobs at a big corporation that sounded intersting, I've finally gotten into something that I really, really enjoy. And it has nothing to do with music and even less to do with what I got my degree in.
I guess that the point of this cathartic, rambling, bullshit is this: when we started out, neither my father nor I planned on where we would end up and the plans we had actually caused us some amount of grief because we kept focussing on how much we weren't on track. Long-term plans are great mind games, but when it comes to actual implementation, life has a tendancy to interfere.
be flexible (Score:1)
It all depends (Score:1)
If you do not really want such a 'career', like myself, but still want to work in a specific area, then you do not need to plan in the same way. If all you want to do is write code, be a welder, paint cars, etc. your time frame is much shorter and requires much less planning. Although there is still some experience and training involved, but you can get such in only a few years.
On the other hand you may not want to plan out anything and just live from day to day. It mostly has to do with what you want to do.
Keep Pushing for the next level (Score:1)
Something to think about... (Score:2)
Pick any 30 year period and you'll see that a whole lot of stuff happened that few people at the time ever imagined. And there's no reason to believe that history has stopped -- wars, economic crises, revolutionary inventions, etc. will continue to happen.
So while it is good to have a plan for 30 years in the future, it's also important to realize that you will scrap your plan and reform it more than once.
graybeard or management? (Score:2, Insightful)
We've all heard rumblings about age bias in programming--they'd often rather underpay an desperate, overcaffeinated twenty-year-old than have to listen to that old cuss who can explain why the project is doomed. As a colleague (hi Dan!) put it, the two career paths for a programmer are
You can stay focused on coding if you're the local guru who knows the systems inside and out (in fact they might be afraid to try to go on without you), but there's always the risk your expertise will suddenly be obsolete, and many companies don't even realize how much they needed one until they get rid of them.
At 31, I'm slowly picking up project management (mostly by choosing jobs likely to let me do some, and reading), because it's easier to sell (nobody sane thinks they don't need it) and age mostly improves credibility. And somebody's got to oppose the industry's gratuitous complexity (or "cover fire [joelonsoftware.com]", as Joel Spolsky puts it) in favor of the simplest thing [c2.com] that works.
19 January 2038 (Score:1)
If you're younger than around 30, then one of your long-range goals might be retaining enough knowledge of C that you can fix all the time_t bugs in the year 2038 -- just as companies re-employed tons of COBOL experts in 1997-1999 :)
(And remember, if it weren't for C, we'd all have to program in BASI, Pasal, or OBOL.)
Like having a destination and then steering (Score:1)
I think that the other writers have said the major points, and they can be summed up as:
- (3) Whatever you decide to do, remember to have fun. As they say, it's the journey that counts, so make the most of all that you do along the way.
This is why I liken this process to navigating. You can decide to wander around the world without setting destinations and have a great time at it. But you might be better served by setting a goal/destination, and then making adjustments along the way to get there.Hope that helps!
-TS
Setting goals is just a way to trick yourself (Score:2)
What really counts is that you should like your job and give a little more then you are asked for. That accumulates. A lot. That gives you self-confidence. If you loose your self-confidence and don't do anything to recover it you are doomed to fail or never fulfill your dreams. Dreams are dreams and not deliverables!
Proof that God has a sense of humor. (Score:1)