Age

Posted on 2007/09/29 10:26:13 (September 2007).

[Tuesday 25th September]
This week we had two visitors over from our team in the US. One already had plans for tonight, however the other was at a loose end. So I took it upon myself to take him out this evening - I think this was his first foreign business trip, and I well understood the potential for misery when spending time alone in this situation.

I took him to visit a few pubs, with a bit of a walking tour of London in between - we started out at the Fox and Hounds, then from there walked past Westminister Abbey, the Houses of Parliament and Downing Street, onto the next pub - the Ship and Shovel. From there we then ventured on a little further to the Lamb and Flag. Given that we started late, and had a fair bit of walking between pubs, after a pint in here it was closing time and so we headed back.

We talked about several things during the course of the evening, however the one dominant conversation was about age. This guy himself is in fact an intern, and a mere 20 years old, and yet is already doing really great things at the company, that have received recognition right the way up to the CEO. Similarly, there's a guy on our team in the US who is generally regarded as the most significant of our engineers - he has a finger in every pie, and the only person who really understands how all the parts of our system come together. I'd assumed he was my age or a bit older, but it turns out from tonight's conversation he's only 24. Even one guy on the team here in London, who I'd assumed to be older than me (based on his previous experience etc) is apparently only 26.

When you see people who are older than you and better at doing their job than you are, it can actually be a positive thing - it gives you something to strive towards. You think to yourself that with x years extra experience you could be like that too. On the flip side of that, when you find people who are significantly younger than you, and doing better at their job, it can actually be a bit demoralising! We often have an image of software engineering as a young man's industry, but I never though I would start to feel past it already at 30.

Perhaps I'm just a late bloomer though. When I think back to the sort of quality of work I was doing in my early twenties, it never would have met the bar at the place I work at now, and yet there are people who do join my company fresh out of college, and are somehow able to out-perform the relative "veterans" like me.

So is it the case that I just needed a lot more experience before I could be on a vaguely level playing field with all these child prodigies? Or is it just a problem of attitude? Was I just wasting my time in my twenties? I spent the largest chunk of that decade tootling along with pretty much no real ambition, doing a job which was interesting but not exactly well paid and with no real long term career prospects - whilst at the same time trying to avoid having to do my PhD. Although in the long run the PhD probably did come in handy (the place where I work now is big on that sort of thing, and it probably really helped my chances of getting the job here), I think it shared some of the blame for me not really getting anywhere back then. I just assumed another company wouldn't be interested in taking me on until I had got that out of the way. So in all that time I never even tried to apply for another job.

I suppose if I hadn't decided to move to Japan then I might very well have still been in that same situation now - it forced me to finally get the PhD finished, and then I actually felt I could consider applying for a job at a company with a bit of a higher profile. I just wish I could have pulled my finger out a bit, and done that a year or two earlier.

Still, I'm here now I suppose - I took my time over it, but I got a proper job in the end!

There are times where one must simply look around and acknowledge that there are better people than him/her at a certain task/field. I used to think that if I could apply seriously to anything I could outperform even the professionals. Then now I have changed attitude, I do my thing, trying to work as best as possible, then I revert to the rest of my "life" where fortunately I am the only player and where I have only one person to really come to terms with, myself.
If I am happy I do not care if that comes from unloading dung from a truck or inventing the cold fusion formula, I am able to respect both the latter and the former.

Posted by Lox at 2007/09/29 16:12:00.

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