I just looked at [ANONYMOUS PERSON]’s donations. The amount that this person has donated in their life is more than double the amount that I have ever earned in my life. This person appears to be roughly the same age as I am (we graduated from college ± one year of each other). Oof. It makes me wish that I had taken steps to become a software developer back when I was 15 or 18 or 22.
Oh, well. As they say, comparison is the thief of joy. I’ll try to focus on doing the best I can with the hand I’m dealt.
Hi Joseph :) Based on what you’ve written I’m going to guess you have probably donate more than 99% of the world’s population to effective charities. So you’re probably crushing it!
Because my best estimate is that there are different steps toward different paths that would be better than trying to rewind life back to college age and start over. Like the famous Sylvia Plath quote about life branching like a fig tree, unchosen paths tend to wither away. I think that becoming a software developer wouldn’t be the best path for me at this point: cost of tuition, competitiveness of the job market for entry-level developers, age discrimination, etc.
Being a 22-year old fresh grad with a bachelor’s degree in computer science in 2010 is quite a different scenario than being a 40-year old who is newly self-taught through Free Code Camp in 202X. I predict that the former would tend to have a lot of good options (with wide variance, of course), while the latter would have fewer good options. If there was some sort of ‘guarantee’ regarding a good job offer or if a wealthy benefactor offered to cover tuition and cost of living while I learn then I would give training/education very serious consideration, but my understanding is that the 2010s were an abnormally good decade to work in tech, and there is now a glut of entry-level software developers.
I just looked at [ANONYMOUS PERSON]’s donations. The amount that this person has donated in their life is more than double the amount that I have ever earned in my life. This person appears to be roughly the same age as I am (we graduated from college ± one year of each other). Oof. It makes me wish that I had taken steps to become a software developer back when I was 15 or 18 or 22.
Oh, well. As they say, comparison is the thief of joy. I’ll try to focus on doing the best I can with the hand I’m dealt.
Hi Joseph :) Based on what you’ve written I’m going to guess you have probably donate more than 99% of the world’s population to effective charities. So you’re probably crushing it!
Haha, thanks for bringing a smile to my face.
❤️
Why not start taking those steps today?
Because my best estimate is that there are different steps toward different paths that would be better than trying to rewind life back to college age and start over. Like the famous Sylvia Plath quote about life branching like a fig tree, unchosen paths tend to wither away. I think that becoming a software developer wouldn’t be the best path for me at this point: cost of tuition, competitiveness of the job market for entry-level developers, age discrimination, etc.
Being a 22-year old fresh grad with a bachelor’s degree in computer science in 2010 is quite a different scenario than being a 40-year old who is newly self-taught through Free Code Camp in 202X. I predict that the former would tend to have a lot of good options (with wide variance, of course), while the latter would have fewer good options. If there was some sort of ‘guarantee’ regarding a good job offer or if a wealthy benefactor offered to cover tuition and cost of living while I learn then I would give training/education very serious consideration, but my understanding is that the 2010s were an abnormally good decade to work in tech, and there is now a glut of entry-level software developers.