I’m outliving my usefulness
Wednesday, January 20, 2016 by Frogboy | Discussion: Personal Computing
I’m officially a cranky old man.
Everything. Is. Crap.
Sometimes I just feel so much despair because of the sheer incompetence I see with companies with vastly more resources than I do wallow in. If, for instance, Microsoft can’t write a freaking search algorithm for the Windows store or some high profile game’s trailer looks like it was put together by marketing interns it tells me that my dream of retiring and throwing money to hire people to do the things in the areas I have 20 years of experience is just a dream.
There’s an interesting book called Outliers. It makes a compelling case that people who are awesome at a given thing (hockey, music, etc.) are that way only partially due to native talent but mostly because they’ve got 10,000 hours of expertise in that area. At some point, after that level of expertise has been reached, the individual moves on. They sell their business or change careers or retire.
So I’m pretty depressed about the whole thing. I’ve been doing this for 25 years now. You can collect a lot of 10,000 hours in lots of areas. Some useful (budgeting) some not so useful (OS/2 device drivers). But at some point, everything starts to become frustrating. You don’t want to have to re-explain, for the thousandth time, an algorithm you’ve written dozens of times or the tricks needed to do video editing fast or the right tools to crank out an article quickly or how the proper layout for a website or any other number of things.
I have seen this issue creeping up for years. I just had hoped that I would eventually just throw money at the problem. What really brought the despair home was seeing the new Star Trek Beyond trailer. Such total crap. It means even marketing departments with massive resources still can’t grasp their own demographic. There’s no hope.
Anyway, I’m just ranting. I’m getting old. I can’t believe it’s happening but it’s true.
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Reply #22 Thursday, February 11, 2016 11:48 PM
Froggie, I know where you're coming from (especially on the OS/2 shit). I have a LOT more than 10,000 hours in development and constantly ran into people fresh out of college that 'knew' more than I ever learned the hard way. Problem is that I've never been diplomatic in the face of ignorance.
My solution? When the wife left I just blew it off and retired -- with the intention of keeping on writing code. Did write a lot of code for a project that will never be commercial. Now I read and write a lot of English (and a little code) and play a lot of GC. And wish I could still create something that mattered.
Yah done good, boy. Do some more before you retire, please, for us old farts.
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Reply #21 Thursday, February 11, 2016 4:19 AM
It's ok, not to fret. We will one day be all obsolete. The more that computers and all of the algorythms and code replace jobs that used to involve human finesse and skill, not only will the product look a lot less unique and inspired, but we will work ourselves right out of jobs. But maybe our AI overlords will be kind to us.
FYI, I'm really not this paranoid. I'm just in one of those moods today.