Ask HN: Turning 40 soon – seeking personal and professional life advice
Hi HN - I have always enjoyed being part of this community. I am turning 40 within a month and would love to have any personal and /or professional life advice you might have to give a curious person (and a techie) who is married and a father of two. Look forward to all you have to offer!
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[ 106 ms ] story [ 2474 ms ] threadAs for advice; stay mobile.
Could you explain what you mean? This seems important, but I don't understand the phrase at all.
If they’re 10+ I’d suggest taking one with you to visit old friends. It can be a great way for them to learn indirectly about their father and I’m sure they’ll look back on it fondly as well. Nothing beats hearing salacious stories of one’s old man from eyewitnesses. They’ll appreciate it years from now.
edit: and teach your kids curiosity... So many kids stare at screens and seem to lose the spark I think I had at their age. Pardon my navel gazing.
I have a couple of questions I hope you could shed some light on. Thanks!
1. Health. Your health is the most important thing. Yes it's more important than your family. You're no good to your family sick or dead.
2. Family and friends. It's a lot easier finding another job than another wife. You're at the age where you should be working smart not hard. You're too old to be sacrificing your time and your health to make a corporation money by working 60 hour weeks.
As far as friends, I've had to make an effort to keep in touch with friends and cultivate friendships. It's well known that men don't focus on deep friendships like women do.
3. Work. Keep your skills up, study, and stay current with technology. By the way, you don't have to keep up with the cool kids. There are plenty of boring corporate jobs where you can put in your 40 hours a week and go home. As long as you keep your skills up, you really don't have to worry about ageism.
I find it’s quite hard to narrow the focus to activities that truly fall in these three buckets as anything could technically fit in one of these, generally speaking. I keep trying though and put myself back on the focus path when I find myself veering off.. any tips to stay focused are welcome.
On a side note I had reduced item 2 in your list to just “relationships”.
Health - I use to be a part time fitness instructor up until my mid 30s when I got married. I saw first hand the difference between people who let their bodies get in disrepair from years of neglect and people who were running and teaching dynamic classes in their mid 50s and people who are still running in their mid 60s. I turned one of our spare bedrooms into a gym that I use regularly.
Family. My wife and I are both on our second marriages. We both know how emotional devastating divorce is. In some cases it happens because only one person is willing to put in the work, in others it's because the couple doesn't make a conscientious effort to put each other first. We both make an effort to raise a red flag when outside obligations are interfering with our time and keep us from investing in our relationship.
Career. I've also seen first hand older developers who got comfortable, got blindsided by a layoff and had trouble getting a job because they didn't keep themselves marketable. That happened to me at 34. I stayed at a job for 9 years, stop learning after two and my skill set was woefully out of date. I studied for six months, took what was an entry level job after being in the industry for 12 years and aggressively learned and job hopped for the next nine.
What happened in 2008?
Movie recommendations: Margin Call https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hhy7JUinlu0 The Big Short https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MesrrYyuoa4
Another movie that came out about the same time that was marketed as being a comedy, but turned out to be disturbing (or at least I found it to be so)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=102fYNaBogE
And this is coming from someone who went to a private elementary school.
1] Job gets eliminated just when you have been hitting a nice earning "peak". You now get to look for work along with millions of other out of work professionals and you are overqualified for many of the available jobs.
2] Home loses 40% of its value. I waited this one out and was fortunate to have not upgraded to a bigger home and mortgage when the income was flowing nicely in 2006 to 2008. In my area housing values are just now getting back in the general range of 2007 values. So waiting that one out was both possible and good.
3] Retirement portfolio loses 40% of its value. And, yes I would have been fine if I just waited it out. However, Because I struggled to get any decent paying work during 2008 to 2012 and the expenses of a family with 4 kids doesn't just stop. I ended up cashing out some of my retirement. And, some of the cashing out was done when the stock market was at its worst point. I didn't cash out because I was scared of the market going lower, I cashed out so that we could pay bills and not lose our house.
In retrospect, there are things I could have done better be better prepared when the income was flowing and to manage through the downturn. But, my point is that sometimes life's difficulties hit on multiple fronts and the choices are difficult.
Anyway bud sorry if I sound critical just trying to help but you didn't provide too much info on your skill set and reasons for so little sleep, salary etc.
Good luck would be happy to chat if you'd like.
IMHO, second tier would be around Seattle, the DC area or NYC. But with much higher cost of living, and imho the ratio ovs pay to cost of living isn't as good.
LA and NorCal make very little sense to me for most.
Why that ?
One meal a day & 3-4 hours of sleep sounds brutal. Sorry you're going through that.
Your experience doesn't seem representative of what I personally know, nor that of my friends & coworkers.
Is it you're stuck at a terrible company? Where (roughly) do live & work in LA?
Where does one find those? And how well do they pay?
I’ve been at points in my career where I felt overwhelmed by the need to learn a new thing every other week, and I just wanted to quit and find one of those elusive “40 hour a week comfy corporate job”, but I have no idea where to find that.
Every company these days seems to be rewriting their stack and moving to the cloud and whatnot. Sometimes I wish I could just find a boring job where I just write Java every day and don’t need to care about much else.
https://www.matrixres.com/resources/salary-survey
The cost of living in most of those cities are much lower and there are plenty of jobs.
"A boring job" doesn't mean you don't have to keep learning new technology. A boring job means you can work 40 hours a week and not try to chsnge the world.
It's better than the alternative.
Hard to give generic advice, everyone is different, but just the good ol basics of always making steps (often small ones, but sometimes big) towards the things you want from life, and always be ready to adapt to change, both good and bad.
Enjoy your kids, partner, and family.
40s don't really feel much different from any other age I've been. But good time to reconsider any unhealthy habits you have that you always delay doing something about. It's slowly getting more common that people I know of a similar age are getting things like cancer and other problems.
Tech is always full of opportunity, keep informed ( you are on HN, so you probably are ), keep learning, experiment. But always maintain strong fundamentals.
2. Revisit yourself at ~18, but don't seek their approval. Find out what stunned them and do your best to describe it. If you're unhappy with the description, it's an opportunity to learn.
3. If you could sum up your Profession into a specialty that would take you into retirement, what does that look like? How does it feel?
4. "Don't sweat the petty things" is pretty solid advice at any age. Just another Cheerio under the sofa cushion of life.
5. What was old becomes new again. There are Generations of knowledge locked up in old papers, studies and magazines waiting for the "time to be right". That time is now.
6. Take some time to lay out a map to your passionate understanding of tech for your offspring to discover. Think "Treasure Map" not "Syllabus". (See point 5)
What can I say I am a quick learner.
;)
Prepare to start experiencing age discrimination. Over the next ten years you'll notice it. Especially if you don't stay fit. It's subtle, but you're going to become less relevant, less respected, and gradually fade into the background.
Professionally, you'll see the subtle pressure to become a manager. If you're not already. Decide if you're OK with this. If you are, start a part-time MBA (the stuff on leadership in an MBA course is going to be useful). If you're not, then you need to develop a strategy for not becoming a manager. Get known as a specialist in some niche, join a company that has separate grades for managers and techs.
At some point you'll probably have your mid-life crisis. This can take many forms, but it's basically an assertion of your vitality. You're still strong, fit (did I mention staying fit?) and capable, but your mortality is approaching and you suddenly realise time is limited. But there's time left to get all those things you wanted to do done, if you start right now!
The body is going to do strange things. There's all sorts of odd ailments that hit in the 40's because evolution. Your hair will do things you don't expect. Your libido will drop, and finally you can get five minutes of peace and quiet without thinking about sex all the time. Your wife, assuming she's a similar age, will have the reverse. She'll get horny all the time. Just when you don't want it any more, you can get it whenever you want. Still, it helps with the cardio.
Keep learning. You can cheerfully sink into your comfort zone and let your opinions ossify into grumpy-old-man syndrome. Don't do that, it's not pleasant for anyone. Take up a new hobby, switch technologies, learn something new all the time. Keep stepping outside your comfort zone. It's like staying fit for the brain.
Watch out for your mental health. Depression and anxiety especially hit hard around this time. Exercise really helps with this.
It's fun, though. There's a lot of benefits to it all, too. But I'll let you discover them for yourself.
Well, its a joke, but every joke has a bit of truth in it...
Do you mean to cultivate new hobbies, or keep paths open in your professional life (e.g. become a manager, or have a side project), or grow friendships with common interests that may remain common after ten years (e.g. not drinking buddies)?
Only additional advice is to do some of it at work... part of your job should be to learn. Get your work done, but also keep learning a priority.
However, there's a massive drop in fertility and ability to conceive at 40 - which makes it biologically v significant.
In my limited experience it's when one can no longer get away with ignoring health & fitness without major consequences.
It's pretty close to midlife: UK life expectancy of you were born in 2016 was M 79.1/82.9 (per Google search).
I contend it's not "very young" by any useful metric.
"Do something you love"
All the people I know who are doing something they love have a much better quality of life than the ones who are just earning a living.
Also, perhaps if we do something we love it can help with the big three - health, relationships & family - because we are more satisfied and every day is something to look forward to.
Optimize for the long haul, never take shortcuts.
Your goal is to keep mind, body and soul in balance - everything else will work itself out and not worth worrying about.
I'm 39 and plan for a life span of at least 130 but try to live every day like I'm going to die tomorrow - context matters and helps bring perspective.
[edited last paragraph for clarity]
Having said that, the specific number is less relevant and it's more about putting things into perspective.
If you believe you won't live past 80, 40 is half of your life and you may think it's too late to start something new. However, if you up the number to 130, then 40 seems like just the beginning.
For me, Marcus Aurelius's "Meditations" was a really good book to read at this age (I'm 38). The bullshit a civilized society prods on one has not changed in two millenia, and it's very relatable.
Glad to meet another reader of "Meditations" :D
(But really thanks for the advice everyone, some good stuff here).