@phasedephase
I think you make some good points, but you should consider refactoring the tone of voice you used to present them: the current state comes off more like a complaint of your own experience than a helpful critique of the OP's thoughts, and so may not have the impact or interpretation you hoped for.
These are my takeaways from your reply: are they accurate?
Programming may be your only love in life, but it doesn't have to be: you might enjoy spending your time and energy in other ways, too, and that's okay. "Variety is the spice of life," as they say.
Burnout is real, but you don't have to accept it. If you start to feel a slave to your employer, leave: IT is an industry with opportunities everywhere.
IT is a choice to dedicate your life (not just your work) to continuous improvement and learning. The industry and technology landscape is constantly changing, and the pace of change can be dizzying: you don't have to keep up (that's impossible) but you can't expect to thrive by staying still.
If for you "retiring" means "ceasing to work," IT may be the wrong choice to make, as there are very few paths to that goal. In this space, the goal is not to eventually stop working, but rather to reach a point in life where working is optional and on your own terms.
Avoid employers who are not willing to compensate you for learning what you need to do the job they're paying you to do: spending your money and free time on professional development should be a choice, not a necessity.
Always be asking yourself, "Am I in rich soil?" Not all companies provide good-enough environments to satisfy your needs as a person. Optimize for your values, and no one else's: if life after work is important to you, find your balance.
Point taken. Reading the article made me angry by reminding me of so many things that need fixing with our society (was listening to NPR yesterday and there was a report on this retired lady in Detroit who worked since she was 18, who only gets $1,200 in social security, and now lost her home because of some bureaucratic BS... man, I was thinking, you work your whole life and this is what you get in the end? Now that's messed up.)... anyway, hence the tone as the article was reminding me of so many other related social situations.
But yeah, you got most of the points alright, although the gist, without going on a rant ;) is this:
the demands put on the IT workforce are excessive and there seems to be a cottage industry out there trying to normalize that state of affairs as if acceptance were THE solution or even in the best interest of the workforce (everyone please watch the movie In Time, if you haven't--it explores the themes evoked by the article and ensuing discussion);
we should remember that we work to live, and not live to work, at least this is the sane worldview in my book (ok, granted, a workaholic will see it the opposite way); so, it's not so much about the fact that life after work is important, it's more about not sacrificing most of one's time to work related activities, because in the end, it's about freedom to do as one pleases with one's time, and one isn't free if one's life is set to another's schedule and demands (hence the whole 'slave' metaphor);
and IT works isn't all that it's cracked up to be, so i took issue with what i still consider too much of an upbeat tone of voice in the article: it's one thing to be passionate about your FOSS pet project you commit every night to github, and another altogether working for some corporation where you end up reading and maintaining a codebase 80% of the time, and working on something more creative that you truly enjoy only 20% of the time, to use the cliche example about the corporate life we all heard about (ofc startup life or working at Google changes the parameters but TL;DW now applies); so to keep studying and practicing for that kind of a job makes very little sense to me since it takes time away from other things more important in life.
and in a clumsy way, I was also trying to remind the reader that unfortunately we live in an economic system still rife with discrimination (in IT, ageism) and thus the whole 'retiring' thing was not meant to mean 'cease to work' but being able to do whatever one wants and not have to fear for one's survival once the company does not exist anymore, or after they laid you off because anyone > 30 is too old in the IT world and should be replaced (I paraphrase the Zuck's famous quip); and this requires attaining financial freedom, hence hopefully matching passion with an activity where the $ is (but if you don't like AI or hedge funds, then that's not the way ofc), which a regular job is very unlikely to provide enough of, and so, in the spirit of the article, one needs to keep learning... but how much will you be able to or willing to learn once past 50? (hence the quantum computing example).
Speaking of working, I worked too much these past couple days. Man, am tired, so apologies for the less than stellar prose. I'll give it a rest now. Just hope millenials will see what's really important, and it ain't work! Unless it's in the service of humankind and the biosphere, but that's another discussion.
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@phasedephase I think you make some good points, but you should consider refactoring the tone of voice you used to present them: the current state comes off more like a complaint of your own experience than a helpful critique of the OP's thoughts, and so may not have the impact or interpretation you hoped for.
These are my takeaways from your reply: are they accurate?
Programming may be your only love in life, but it doesn't have to be: you might enjoy spending your time and energy in other ways, too, and that's okay. "Variety is the spice of life," as they say.
Burnout is real, but you don't have to accept it. If you start to feel a slave to your employer, leave: IT is an industry with opportunities everywhere.
IT is a choice to dedicate your life (not just your work) to continuous improvement and learning. The industry and technology landscape is constantly changing, and the pace of change can be dizzying: you don't have to keep up (that's impossible) but you can't expect to thrive by staying still.
If for you "retiring" means "ceasing to work," IT may be the wrong choice to make, as there are very few paths to that goal. In this space, the goal is not to eventually stop working, but rather to reach a point in life where working is optional and on your own terms.
Avoid employers who are not willing to compensate you for learning what you need to do the job they're paying you to do: spending your money and free time on professional development should be a choice, not a necessity.
Always be asking yourself, "Am I in rich soil?" Not all companies provide good-enough environments to satisfy your needs as a person. Optimize for your values, and no one else's: if life after work is important to you, find your balance.
Point taken. Reading the article made me angry by reminding me of so many things that need fixing with our society (was listening to NPR yesterday and there was a report on this retired lady in Detroit who worked since she was 18, who only gets $1,200 in social security, and now lost her home because of some bureaucratic BS... man, I was thinking, you work your whole life and this is what you get in the end? Now that's messed up.)... anyway, hence the tone as the article was reminding me of so many other related social situations.
But yeah, you got most of the points alright, although the gist, without going on a rant ;) is this:
the demands put on the IT workforce are excessive and there seems to be a cottage industry out there trying to normalize that state of affairs as if acceptance were THE solution or even in the best interest of the workforce (everyone please watch the movie In Time, if you haven't--it explores the themes evoked by the article and ensuing discussion);
we should remember that we work to live, and not live to work, at least this is the sane worldview in my book (ok, granted, a workaholic will see it the opposite way); so, it's not so much about the fact that life after work is important, it's more about not sacrificing most of one's time to work related activities, because in the end, it's about freedom to do as one pleases with one's time, and one isn't free if one's life is set to another's schedule and demands (hence the whole 'slave' metaphor);
and IT works isn't all that it's cracked up to be, so i took issue with what i still consider too much of an upbeat tone of voice in the article: it's one thing to be passionate about your FOSS pet project you commit every night to github, and another altogether working for some corporation where you end up reading and maintaining a codebase 80% of the time, and working on something more creative that you truly enjoy only 20% of the time, to use the cliche example about the corporate life we all heard about (ofc startup life or working at Google changes the parameters but TL;DW now applies); so to keep studying and practicing for that kind of a job makes very little sense to me since it takes time away from other things more important in life.
and in a clumsy way, I was also trying to remind the reader that unfortunately we live in an economic system still rife with discrimination (in IT, ageism) and thus the whole 'retiring' thing was not meant to mean 'cease to work' but being able to do whatever one wants and not have to fear for one's survival once the company does not exist anymore, or after they laid you off because anyone > 30 is too old in the IT world and should be replaced (I paraphrase the Zuck's famous quip); and this requires attaining financial freedom, hence hopefully matching passion with an activity where the $ is (but if you don't like AI or hedge funds, then that's not the way ofc), which a regular job is very unlikely to provide enough of, and so, in the spirit of the article, one needs to keep learning... but how much will you be able to or willing to learn once past 50? (hence the quantum computing example).
Speaking of working, I worked too much these past couple days. Man, am tired, so apologies for the less than stellar prose. I'll give it a rest now. Just hope millenials will see what's really important, and it ain't work! Unless it's in the service of humankind and the biosphere, but that's another discussion.