Work peak and professional decline (2019)

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/07/work-peak-professional-decline/590650/

by fortran77 • 5 years ago

198 155 5 years ago

theatlantic.com

cek2• 5 years ago

There's no real data behind this article. It's basically ageism fueled by self-doubt.

derbOac• 5 years ago

I came to say something similar but less succinct.

I've been in a transitional state career-wise, partially by choice, but I think there's two major factors not really mentioned by the article, and in fact, factors I think the article reinforces.

The first is ageism, like you say. But I think ageism is a lot more subtle than other things, because it's not only an assumption of age-related decline, but more generally an assumption that people can't change. So if you become known for X, it's hard for people to see you as anything but that. You get typecast, and those assumptions become societal constraints. It's like there's career "rails" and if you go off the rails, people don't know how to process it.

The second is a sort of lack of recognition of how much randomness and fads plays a role in certain fields. What I mean by that is that the reasons some people attain relative notoriety and status is often due to butterfly effects or societal viccitudes, and these become revealed only over time.

I think in general, there's a very superficial way we process people and their potential for change or new work. Even when they're capable of it, they're often prevented from doing so because of assumptions and stereotypes.

Sure, cognitive decline happens, but it's not as dramatic as it seems in this article.

Sometimes I feel as I've gotten older it's just a process of seeing more of the wizard behind the curtain. I read articles like this and get depressed only because it perpetuates the societal ills that lead to the problems in the first place.

disabled• 5 years ago

What a trashy article. A lot of elderly Americans, including in the upper middle class, never retire due to Medicare being inadequate. You can quite literally save millions for retirement as an individual, and have coverage for drugs and treatment under Medicare, and still run out of money due to having to pay extortionate prices for covered drugs.

This line in the article is quite revealing and strange, contextually: "Maybe not. Though the literature on this question is sparse, giftedness and achievements early in life do not appear to provide an /insurance policy/ against suffering later on. "

I personally have 2 rare neurological diseases affecting my peripheral nervous system and I require an orphan drug, a blood product, that was covered under Medicare Part D when I lived in America. If I only had traditional Medicare in America, I would be liable for Medicare Part D Catastrophic Coverage Limits, and I would be forced to pay $50,000+/year total for all of my medical care under Medicare.

Technically, yes, I can get a Medicare Advantage plan, which has an out-of-pocket limit. The problem is that the vast majority of these plans are HMOs, and that does not go well with rare disease. Also, one of the rare diseases that I have is very rare, with case reports and cohorts at best in the medical literature. So, if I want to stay alive (like it is a choice?), I really cannot be on an HMO.

By the way, 7-8% of the general population collectively has some sort of a rare disease. There are about 8,000 or so rare diseases. So, it is not uncommon to have a rare disease.

Also, if you have cancer, or are likely to get cancer (elderly, perhaps?) having an HMO via a Medicare Advantage plan is not a good idea if you likewise want to stay alive.

The problem is that once you are on a Medicare Advantage plan, you basically cannot go back to traditional Medicare. This is because Medigap plans (Medicare Part B Supplemental plans) allow medical underwriting even after the Affordable Care Act went into effect, unless you live in 4 US states! So, you basically can never get a Medigap plan again after switching to a Medicare Advantage plan. It is, quite literally, a deadly, but not well known error that Americans make when they are on Medicare.

This is one of the top reasons why I left the US and never plan on living there ever again, even if I have to file and pay taxes as a US citizen. I naturalized and acquired another citizenship over the US healthcare system.

quickthrower23• 5 years ago

This is true to the extent that I think it is OK to lie to get a job or opportunity if you know you can do it. For example there might be opportunities where if I pretended I had no coding experience it might be better than saying I have.

fxtentacle• 5 years ago

Yeah, that and weird examples. Around 1860, so roughly 160 years ago, Darwin felt old in his 50-ies.

But that kind of omits the fact that in our modern day and age, the elderly have a lot more technical help available. For Darwin, it was a decision of leaving his family behind to go on a months-long trip. Nowadays, it'd be a 6 hour flight and you can call your friends while you're on vacation.

So the risk/reward tradeoff has massively changed since Darwin's times.

el_dev_hell2• 5 years ago

I really enjoyed the article overall.

The section on Darwin was an eyebrow raiser. It makes sense to include someone like Darwin (very interesting and well known), but he's not a great example to compare to "normal" people (like the couple mentioned in the opening paragraph).

A 50 year old in the 1800s whose job was catching a ship to the other side of the planet is a little different when compared to a factory worker, software engineer, doctor, etc.

Also, what the fuck is this off-hand remark:

Unfortunately, Mendel’s work was published in an obscure academic journal and Darwin never saw it—and in any case, Darwin did not have the mathematical ability to understand it.

dave_sid• 5 years ago

Well said. How on earth is this article making it to the top of hacker news.

StevePerkins• 5 years ago

"The Atlantic" has seriously fallen off over the past few years. I've been a regular subscriber for two decades now. I've have always enjoyed it as a source of articles from a fairly liberal perspective, yet nevertheless prone to serious introspection and regular challenges to that perspective.

In the Age of Trump, however, it really has just descended into blog-caliber clickbait. The effort at introspection and critical thinking skills just isn't there anymore. Today, the publication just feels like a collection of opinion essays aimed at pandering to Twitter culture.

This month's cover story is titled "Private Schools Are Indefensible" (https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2021/04/private...). The author starts off recalling anecdotes about her experience, teaching the children of hedge fund managers at an elite private school catering to the ultra-wealthy.

In the old Atlantic, you would skim through this sort of thing, waiting for the "meat" of the article to begin. References to hard data, facts and figures. Comparisons and contrasts between these ultra-wealthy private coastal schools, and the mundane private schools accessible to middle-class families in cities and towns across the nation. Perhaps even some interesting counterpoint, about minority families being more likely to choose charter or private school when having the option.

In today's Atlantic, though, you never get to that "meat". The introductory anecdotes simply ARE the article! The author hated teaching the children of multi-millionaires at her elite private school, and thought the school was terrible and twelve kinds of racist accordingly. There is zero effort to tie her experience at this school into the broad "Private Schools Are Indefensible" title. Because if you're in the in target audience these days, then surely you already feel that way, and simply want some fluffy opinion content to reinforce your feeling. Right?

I've held on longer than I probably should have, but I don't believe that I'll be renewing with my current subscription expires next year. Which is terribly depressing to me.

lupire4• 5 years ago

I feel the same way (but wonder how much is me getting wiser as I aged) and I think the death of The Puzzler was a sign of the Atlantic's slide into pseudo-intelllectualism.

exegete• 5 years ago

(2019)

srl• 5 years ago

Previous thread here, with 44 comments: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20227091

lettergram• 5 years ago

One of the most productive engineers I knew (who I’m guessing will read this) was in his 60s when I met him. He’s since “retired” and helped a company obtain a $1B valuation.

Similarly, my 85 year old grandfather still doesn’t own a wheelbarrow and will move stone, dirt, etc every summer. His motto is “keep moving”, I don’t think there’s really anything else to it. Yes you will slow down, but stay engaged and motivated and frankly you’ll outperform anyone because you’ll also have experience.

MisterBastahrd• 5 years ago

Mine wasn't that extreme, but my grandfather was laid low by mesothelioma less than a month after his last day tending his gardens in his mid 80s, and his father in law was doing it until the night before he died, also his mid 80s. My other grandfather took my grandmother out to eat and dance every weekend. He died of spinal cancer in his mid 80s, but she's still around at 104.

velp• 5 years ago

Similar story here, my grandfather played Chamber music with his friends (he played cello) twice a week well into his 90s. He barely lasted weeks after he became too frail to play music.

mortenjorck• 5 years ago

Ultimately, the data for things like this boils down to anecdotes over a wide distribution.

Some people flourish with age; some don't. Each individual's situation arises from a confluence of factors, some within their control (lifestyle, attitude, attention to professional development) and some outside their control (industry changes, ageism, health).

To contribute an anecdote from my own experience: I once worked at a consultancy with a large number of recent grads and one engineer who must have been in his 60s. Through a combination of hard-won expertise and a soft-spoken humility and sense of humor, he had the quiet admiration of all the young people in the office, to the point of coworkers privately raving to me about how great he was to work with.

paxys2• 5 years ago

Genetics is also a major factor that a lot of people ignore. I'm relatively healthy right now and do my best to live an active lifestyle, but am also preparing for a physical and mental decline by 60-65 since that is when my entire extended family going back generations has always started to show their age.

MeinBlutIstBlau• 5 years ago

It's worked for the japanese

john_moscow• 5 years ago

One of the most productive engineers I knew (who I’m guessing will read this) was in his 60s when I met him.

When I visited a hospital recently, the healthiest-looking person in the 106 years old. I know it because the nurse was super excited talking to her and asking if there is any special secret to staying healthy that long. Statistically, though, the health does degrade with age.

Outliers and anecdata are good for storytelling and inspiration, but the type of data you want to use for decision making is relative probabilities on a statistically significant set.

lupire4• 5 years ago

The main thing that >100 yr old people tend to have in common is being born on places with poor record keeping of child births.

cortesoft• 5 years ago

I mean, the United States President is 78... he still seems pretty relevant.

lupire4• 5 years ago

And he was elected to be a placeholder, winning on the strength of his popularity from 13+ years ago.

warble2• 5 years ago

"keep moving" or something similar is the best advice.. growing to my 50s myself, and watching parents and grandparents, this is by far the biggest variable you can control.

Keep learning, keep moving your body. When you're 15 this is easy, you don't really have a choice. When you're 40+ it starts to become more of a deliberate act.

swader999• 5 years ago

A lot of capability comes from the network you develop as you move through your career. This is also true in technical fields.

whimsicalism• 5 years ago

This is a classic MBA-style fluff piece.

porknubbins2• 5 years ago

Yeah its pretty much a privileged boomer concern to fear professional decline and loss of relevance when most millenials I know (with advanced/professional degrees) have had to fight just to keep jobs, much less ever had to worry about being relevant.

thisisnico• 5 years ago

I think this man needs to see that life isn't only your work. The value you provide to others and self-worth shouldn't be tied exclusively to work, there is so much more to life and so much more to give past 60.

tempestn• 5 years ago

After reading the article it seems to me he sees that very clearly; that's why he's trying to make those points to others.

caeril• 5 years ago

Related: The notion of "retirement" is a relatively recent invention.

Traditionally, when you were too old to work the farm or prove the theorem (sorry, cognitive decline is a well-documented thing, and tends to coincide with physical decline[1]), you would "retire" to a productive life in less-demanding pursuits: caretaking of the grandkids, woodworking, food preservation, writing, etc.

It's important to maintain hobbies in your youth such that when the time comes, you can turn those hobbies into productive and enjoyable enterprises. Certainly many would disagree, but such a path seems somehow "better" than popping Metformin in front of a television in a Boca Raton retirement community or tooling around the country in an 8 MPG RV.

[1] Yes, I'm aware that people like Dave Cutler are the exception to the rule. But they are, to be sure, the exception.

etrautmann• 5 years ago

While I share your antipathy for low-efficiency vehicles, why is traveling around the national parks of the west a sad way to spend your retirement years?

rootusrootus5• 5 years ago

low-efficiency vehicles

Tangent: Are these actually low efficiency? Sure, 10 mpg (this is a more typical average, BTW, not 8 mpg) is terrible gas mileage ... for an average car. But a portable house that can drive down the interstate isn't just a car. Per pound, it doesn't seem that bad.

paxys2• 5 years ago

Exactly. The need to be productive for society until the day you die may have been a requirement in the past, but encouraging that today just sounds depressing.

tomc19852• 5 years ago

Personally, RVs kind of miss the point of tooling around nature if one can wimp out and retreat to a house-on-wheels

arcticbull• 5 years ago

No reason you can't pursue your hobbies and pop metformin :)

freddie_mercury3• 5 years ago

Related: The notion of "retirement" is a relatively recent invention.

Not really. The idea of old people who could no longer work effectively but still had many years of their life ahead of them is not a recent invention.

The notion of an old age pension -- whether paid by a company or a government -- that "everyone" got is relatively new. But that doesn't mean "retirement" is new. It was just paid for by individual families before. Go read literature and it is chock full of grandparents from the pre-modern era just hanging out at the multi-generational home not exactly doing a whole lot.

People who say retirement is a new phenomenon point to phrases like "In 1880 the majority of men older than sixty-four toiled in the labor force".

But this statement hides a truth: 25% of men over 65 didn't toil in the workforce, so clearly retirement had already been "invented". And, of course, there is the entire other half of humanity -- women -- who also weren't in the workforce. So the reality is that over 62% of people over the age of 65 didn't participate in the workforce in 1850.

solveit• 5 years ago

25% of men over 65 didn't toil in the workforce, so clearly retirement had already been "invented"

But were they retired by choice or were they just too frail to work?

And, of course, there is the entire other half of humanity -- women -- who also weren't in the workforce.

Kind of true, but not exactly retirement either, and most of them weren't not working, they were working inside the household.

simonsarris• 5 years ago

entire other half of humanity -- women -- who also weren't in the workforce

What on earth? To think the entirety of women of any age group in 1880 did not work is very "not even wrong" territory. They worked all kinds of jobs, inside and outside the home, from a very young age to old age. Many industries employed more women than men.

Flip to page 208 if you want a table.

https://fraser.stlouisfed.org/files/docs/publications/women/...

spullara3• 5 years ago

A woman working at home is not retired by any stretch of the imagination.

ssivark• 5 years ago

For an interesting take on this, see the book Ambition, by Gilbert Brim.

It’s been posted to HN before, and led to interesting discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10967206

aaron695• 5 years ago

such a path seems somehow "better" than popping Metformin in front of a television in a Boca Raton retirement community

The person who doesn't pop Metformin will obviously have retired earlier and be in that retirement community earlier.

tooling around the country in an 8 MPG RV.

Once again the the person who doesn't pop Metformin will be crippled sooner and mentally declined sooner. (Assuming you are degrading tv and RV's)

So I have no idea of the point on this bit.

I also think you romanticise what happens to people "too old to work the farm". You can go check it out today in many developing countries.

Robotbeat2• 5 years ago

It’s too bad electric RVs aren’t much of a thing. They have a lot of roof space for solar panels, often have unfurling extensions that could also have solar, plus RV hookups are essentially 12kW Level 2 chargers which is plenty for a full charge after staying there for a day (although there’d need to be >250kW charging stations on the road) even with a massive battery.

And because of the high fuel consumption of RVs, you’d get greater cost/energy advantage with electric than you would for a small efficient commuter.

fomine3• 5 years ago

You should compare ICE RV vs ICE commuter emissions on a year. ICE RV makes sense if it's emission is at least x2 because it needs huge amount of batteries. I expect x0.5 due to it's rarely used.

AlexTWithBeard• 5 years ago

If somebody is as illiterate as I am: metformin is type II diabetes medicine.

rantwasp• 5 years ago

not sure if this is sarcasm or not, but not knowing what a medicine does is a plus in my book. you have no use for it.

jhayward2• 5 years ago

It has also been withdrawn from the market.

sinenomine4• 5 years ago

Another interesting fact about metformin: it increases lifespan and healthspan in lab mice [1]

1. https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms3192.pdf

stevegalla• 5 years ago

Wow, I keep hearing people like Tim Ferris and Dr. Peter Attia talking about using Metformin. I had no idea it is a diabetes medication. From what I keep hearing on random SV related podcasts, it's some anti-aging drug [1].

https://peterattiamd.com/metformin-and-exercise/

anonfornoreason• 5 years ago

It’s commonly prescribed as an anti-aging drug, which is maybe what the OP meant, though I can laugh either way!

chrisweekly• 5 years ago

Retirement seems like a pretty unimaginative goal. See the Japanese concept of "Ikigai" (ie, raison d-etre or reason to get out of bed in the morning). I don't plan to retire, though I may shift the balance towards my non-economically-oriented interests after putting my children through college.

jasondigitized• 5 years ago

I think of retirement along the same lines. I plan to remain productive, some of which may be economically oriented, but I simply won't be worrying about the outcome or having someone with power over me telling me how and when I am allowed to do it.

denkmoon• 5 years ago

Does one ever get too old for programming?

I suspect I will be doing this until the day I die. Hopefully in my old age I can work on things I want to though.

spullara3• 5 years ago

I will be very surprised if I stop programming.

davidkhess• 5 years ago

I would not underestimate the value of experience. And the older you get, the more of it you have a chance to acquire.

I think the mistake most people make is to deliberately slow down as you get older. Never slow down and you'll keep pulling ahead.

rabidrat• 5 years ago

When I was younger, I would run as fast as I could straight into brick walls. I deliberately go more slowly now, and make wiser decisions. The value of my experience has taught me that it's better to move slow in the right direction than fast in the wrong direction.

ideamotor• 5 years ago

I’m the same. However, I spend much more time deciding what to do and dealing with office politics. I’m not sure that the related time and effort is actually better spent than running into walls. You learn more from doing but perhaps both types of activity qualify. It’s hard to say as you perhaps weave towards a less technical and more managerial role.

tibiahurried• 5 years ago

I wonder why when s*it hits the fan, the most senior and experienced are always on the line fixing stuff. I am in my 40 and the only thing I have noticed is steady increase of my paycheck and responsibilities. I can't really complain.

lumost• 5 years ago

The software industry is now in a somewhat unique historical position in that software is now bigger and more complex than ever before and written in largely the same manner as it was ~20 years ago. Many companies are built through backend web services running on commodity or cloud hardware running linux. Historically the kind of software that was being written at the largest firms changed every 10 years from mainframes to PCs to mobile etc.

While I haven't seen it formally studied, I'd expect software salaries to keep pace with the scale/value provided by the technology and how influential an engineer can be on a given software stack.

softwaredoug• 5 years ago

I’d recommend the WorkLife podcast episode where the host, org psychologist Adam Grant, challenges the author quite a bit[1]

In short, if you were good in your 20s and like your job, you’ll still be good (possibly far better) with 70% raw intelligence but lots of experience and specialized expertise.

Much of the data, Adam argues, is also conflated with people realizing other things are important in life for a time. But many people revisit successful careers after kids move out etc.

1 - https://www.ted.com/talks/worklife_with_adam_grant_career_de...

CyberRabbi• 5 years ago

Thank Goodness

mycologos• 5 years ago

It seems like several comments are reacting to the headline and not the content of the article. The article does not assert that old people are definitely professionally useless, it does not assert that your career is the most important thing in your life, and it's not telling old workers to pack it up and downshift into a soft life.

It's not rigorously backed up by robust longitudinal studies either. Fine, a lot of interesting ideas aren't. But the idea of preparing for a graceful change into a different future self -- maybe not weaker, but definitely not "the same but more", which is how I think we usually imagine a different future self -- seems under-explored to me in modern media. So I like this piece for trying to talk through it a bit.

zwieback• 5 years ago

Not as true for people in technical fields, the author, while smart and accomplished is a social scientist and musician. One interesting idea he mentions is that older, tenured researchers' productivity goes down and universities would love to move budget-hogging oldsters into teaching. Unfortunately, there's not much glory in teaching even though it's precisely the area where experience is valuable.

bsanr2• 5 years ago

I'm 30 and it's already happened. The spoils of being tracked into low-paying, dead-end work.

eloff• 5 years ago

You're too young to throw in the towel. Figure out what you want, make a plan to slowly but steadily move in that direction, and execute it.

kpwagner• 5 years ago

I agree with previous reply. Don't squander your potential because you think it's too late. I empathize; I had a related experience. After failing at my first career out of school, I was broken an aimless. At 30 I found myself working in construction, which was not a good fit for me in many ways. Also, working 70 hrs/week for $30k/year didn't make me feel highly valued. Now, I'm 36 and a few years into a career as a software engineer. Strangely, I feel I have so much more opportunity ahead of me now than I did 10 years ago. Even more strange, I kind of feel bad for people my age who are professionally and financially successful, but don't have a clue what they want to do next: maybe they have golden handcuffs; maybe they just never really took the time to explore the world or know themselves. They have no businesses they want to start, no books they want to write. I'm sure some people look at me and see a loser, but that's true of everyone, so who gives a fuck?

porb121• 5 years ago

Given the hack job that is AEI, I think the author's professional decline arrived much, much sooner than even he thought.

Context_free• 5 years ago

The irony is one of AEI's goals is that the workers who create all created wealth be put out to pasture early so that heirs owning majority shares of corporations can profit. Now he is being hoisted by the petard he fired. Luckily my skills and experience are at a more lucrative point of production than his.

https://www.aei.org/articles/counterpoint-unions-are-irrelev...

"A one-size-fits-all union-type compensation contract with pay determined mostly by seniority and not merit is no longer desirable or relevant for the workers of the 21st century."

jquery• 5 years ago

Does the author struggle with any substance use or abuse? My mental acuity is sharper at 38 than it has ever been. But I gave up all alcohol and substance use a year ago.

randomopining• 5 years ago

Yeah it’s so obvious how much better your body and mind perform when you give it the right inputs and remove the bad.

gilbetron• 5 years ago

50 here and I just read Concurrency in Go this past weekend and absorbed everything faster than I could have in my 20s. I think it is more that the vast majority of people stop using their brains much past the age of 30. (hell, even 25). I'd like to see a software engineering specific version of these studies.

The only thing I lack these days is an intense desire to constantly code - I find there are all kinds of interesting aspects to the creation of software beyond hammering out code.

Johnny5555• 5 years ago

He's in his mid 50's now. You may find that you're not the same person 20 years from now as you are now.

cek2• 5 years ago

Also, who else noticed the poster is @fortran77? Oh, the irony.

(I cut my teeth with Fortran 77 on a VAX 11/780).

fortran77• 5 years ago

As an old timer, I stay gainfully employed by finding niches. Assembly language programming, CUDA, and lately VHDL/Verilog programming. Stuff that "kids today" don't know. Most people with undergraduate CS degrees don't know how to use 'scopes, logic analyzers, etc -- and undergraduates with EE degrees usually aren't so great at programming -- so being able to use this sort of equipment to debug embedded software makes you always relevant and employable.

excalibur• 5 years ago

So what you're saying is if I already don't feel useful in my early 40s I'm pretty screwed.

ketzo2• 5 years ago

If you read the latter half of the article, the author says pretty much exactly the opposite.

ggm• 5 years ago

The vast majority of people I know in physically demanding labour are not looking forward to continuing work at the same pace past age 55, and by age 60-65 they're well over it.

The vast majority of people I know in mentally demanding labour tend to split 50/50 wanting to scale back, and wanting to continue as-is. The latter group tend to resent mandated ageist laws, which is understandable. The former, see them as an unimpeachable way to get off the train.

I know that my motivations in work have changed since I past 55, and as I approach 60, they are most definately not about doing as much, or the same kind of work.

I have perfectly adequate superannuation, and I don't expect to struggle. I also attend financial planning sessions from my funds, and get guidance on realistic income expectations post-work. FIRE is (in many ways) based on the same kind of information: when you do step back, after some intial bust of enthusiastic recreational or debt-clearing spending, most people reduce their core spend (but in the case of aged people, increase their health spend).

Doing nothing is fatal. Hobbies are not "it" for many people, volunteering, or some lower intensity part-time work is a perfectly rational thing to do, even if basically wealthy (I mean in context, having adequate income from your retirement planning. Not, being a FAANG class retiree)

Travel is often best done when younger. Its tiring. Young eyes need experiences. Old eyes can handle mostly memories and a few less intense ones. If you are an adrenalin junkie, none of this applies to you, and keep sky-diving as much as you can.

I definitely feel superceded in the workforce. I have a good position and respect (declining!) but I feel its time to step into a role which lets younger people come to the fore. You need to make way. You even need to let them make mistakes.

kome• 5 years ago

good: i never felt useful.

NoPicklez• 5 years ago

I'm struggling to find anything meaningful in this article.

But it does remind me of a few chapters within Yuval Noah Harari's "21 Lessons for the 21st Century" book which I'd recommend everyone read. But essentially he talks about how we're currently seeing a large influx and requirement for digital or technology related jobs, which will over time take some but not all jobs from traditional jobs (not up for debate). Now many of the people who have worked in traditional jobs such as check outs, clerks, factory workers etc will likely be higher in age and will struggle to reskill to other jobs, not just due to the change in technical requirements but purely due to age and our ability to learn completely new tasks.

Fast forward and the discussion talks about how the current and new workforce might be expected to change jobs many times more than previous generations due to such a rapidly changing world. He therefore raises the point that we all may need to reskill multiple times during our lives and will require significant cognitive strain on older people who may have previously been able to master their professional for decades.

hourislate• 5 years ago

He therefore raises the point that we all may need to reskill multiple times during our lives and will require significant cognitive strain on older people who may have previously been able to master their professional for decades.

Maybe we need to usher in retirement at a much earlier age, 55 perhaps. Of course you can keep working but could also retire if there is that desire.

My view is we are all going to be out of work soon enough. Sam Altman agrees with me. Probably in the next 2-3 decades for sure.

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/03/17/openais-altman-ai-will-make-...

cauliflower2718• 5 years ago

This was not at all the article I was expecting given the title! Given that it's HN, I was expecting projections on when AI will take over which jobs in which order.

ketzo2• 5 years ago

I am quite surprised at the amount of negativity surrounding this piece.

Yes, it's sort of clickbait-y. You don't need to feel like you're about to wither and die because you just turned 44.

Yes, it's deeply anecdotal. Lots of older people are incredibly successful in their fields. That 65-year old engineer you know is great!

But frankly, it doesn't matter who you are, or what you do: you will begin to get worse at it some day. And if you define your value by how good you are at this thing, you're gonna feel pretty shitty when you can't do it any more. For a forum that is defined around the development of technical and business skills, I would think that would resonate a little bit.

It doesn't seem like such a crazy idea to me that we need to redefine our own self worth as we age and change. And I think the author provides some excellent advice in that respect, particularly in his exhortations to Serve and Connect.

readme• 5 years ago

young people think they're invincible

i'm only in my 30s and already started my retirement hobby (wordworking)

i'll take this career as far as I can but you never know when the day will come that you've had enough and can't bare to go to work anymore -- it gets harder to just leave a job for another one if you don't like it when you're in your late 50s.

sinenomine4• 5 years ago

I'm in my late 20's and I notice my mental energy/sharpness being slightly lower compared to what they were at my peak age of 22. I learned to compensate for this with some behavioral and biochemical kludges, but the reality of the trend is pretty obvious at this point.

Ten years ago I picked up biology and recently added to it ageing research as a hobby, we'll see if it pays off eventually. In mice ... many things one wouldn't believe are possible.

Maybe it's the nature of scientific progress - to provide fantastic life-changing results in rodents, often failing to translate to humans in a clinical setting.

AlwaysRock2• 5 years ago

I'm grateful that I have a career outside of engineering where I had success and played a sport at a high level and had success. Both of those are in my past now and when they stopped being a huge part of who I was it was really difficult for a while.

However now I'm much better at enjoying things outside of work and sport. I cant imagine what having that realization at 40 or 50 would be like. It would probably feel like the majority of your life was a lie.

Aperocky• 5 years ago

Sometimes it's really tempting to tie ones value to their own ability, especially when one's pretty successful at it.

But in the end, the ability of one person on the backdrop of the planet and the universe where it reside is minuscule. I've felt content to just marvel at the surrounding, satisfying my own curiosity, and the world has never been a greater place for that. So much knowledge available over just a click, and so much more to come from talented researchers all over the globe. This is how I will feel peace - when my inevitable decline arrives.

Being an observer is also a lot of fun. I love writing rng based simulations for the same reason.

sinenomine4• 5 years ago

This is an article written by a journalist. If we want to get to the bottom of things, we can open Google Scholar and search for related peer-reviewed publications, finding [1][2] in the process.

What do we see in [1] and [2]? A very prominent downward trend ( https://i.imgur.com/avKUvTd.png ) on all but a single cognitive test, which is verbal knowledge. All the important cognitive abilities related to thinking and understanding seem to decline severely with age, by as much as 1.2~2.0 s.d. from the peak. This is 18~30 lost IQ points on a typical 15-s.d. scale. For some people, the naturally gifted (starting point of +2.5 s.d. from the mean) this decline may be merely sad and inconveniencing, but for most of us this reality poses significant challenges to our daily life and autonomy as we approach our late years. I really don't see how this point may be overstated or talked away.

By the way, if we try to delve deeper in our research exercise we can find pretty specific biological mechanisms associated with the cognitive decline, such as cellular senescence, vascular degeneration and BBB breakdown, loss of mitochondrial function, loss of white matter integrity.

In my opinion, as adult human being approaching middle age, this cognitive ability decline due to age cannot be ignored, or cheered away with the usual gung-ho or wished away with wishful thinking. Instead we should acknowledge the obvious process happening to our older relatives and beginning to happen to us, and push our representatives to fund more targeted research grants and biotech investments, to find some remedies.

Some of the necessary research is already happening, if you know where to look [3], but it's really a tenth to hundredth of the effort we could muster, if we cared. If we believed.

1. http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.167...

2. http://www.iapsych.com/wj3ewok/LinkedDocuments/McArdle2002.p...

3. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/acel.13296

peterbell_nyc• 5 years ago

I'm 51 ands my personal experience to date has been that I am way more effective in business now that I have ever previously been. I certainly put in less hours (now only ~40-45/wk as I have a 4.5 year old and various other commitments), but now I have made so many mistakes over the years that I generally focus on what really matters and am finding my impact is substantially greater than it was even though my effort is much lower.

lupire4• 5 years ago

Anothe solution is to return to the millennia old practice of caring for elders.

r-zip• 5 years ago

I think it's important to note that the first graphic you posted doesn't include longitudinal data (i.e., doesn't correct for the Flynn effect). Compare to: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2683339/.

sinenomine4• 5 years ago

Thank you for posting this paper, it is more statistically/psychometrically sound than the one I posted. By testing each person across a significant path of their lifespan, and correcting for test-retest drift, it produces a more defendable result.

Still, it does not make decline disappear into statistical insignificance, just lowers its magnitude to 0.8~1.0 s.d, which is still large, thus sparing the qualitative reasoning in my interpretation. It should also be noted, that the Flynn effect has ended somewhere in the 1990s-2000s, at least in Norway[2], so it is likely that long-term it ceases to be a disturbing factor for between-cohorts comparisons. Test-retest gains will still be an issue though (and there is a viewpoint that a large part of Flynn effect could be explained as a large-scale environmentally-driven test-retest effect acting on the population).

I also like the review[1] of paper you posted, suggesting several measurable histological/neurological/physiological correlates of cognitive aging, aptly summarized on this graph: https://i.imgur.com/CpQ6Upc.png

If you are interested in discussing these papers, or joining a community of like-minded people, feel free to ping me via the email in my profile.

1. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19231030/ (sci-hubbable) 2. http://www.iapsych.com/iqmr/fe/LinkedDocuments/Sundet2004.pd...

barnaclejive• 5 years ago

Perhaps the worst moment in my young but flailing career came at age 22, when I was performing at Carnegie Hall.

Oh please.

fctorial• 5 years ago

At first I thought it was about robots replacing us.

pratik661• 5 years ago

I wonder if the elderly man he’s referring to is Buzz Aldrin. The age and description checks out.

failwhaleshark• 5 years ago

So at 15, I was offered a paid internship at IBM Almaden in the field of dark matter research. Unfortunately, the laws at the time prevented anyone under 15.5 from holding a job (it's since changed to 14). From ages 15-19, I was constantly solicited with interview offers. I could surmise this was based more on youth halo rather than anything else, because what does a kid know?

At 43, I get interview requests for FAANG-level companies several times per year without a LinkedIn account or a résumé. The main things I have going for me are I don't look 43 and I date college girls. Maybe that helps keep me from seeming coasting, declining, and/or stogy. I can't type as fast as I did at 20, but I pace myself (I gave myself RSI from not working-out enough and typing too much without breaks.)

I never want to "retire" but move to different roles and/or fields before either I or the field declines. To me, retirement is death either by boredom, distractions, idleness, or decline.

spullara3• 5 years ago

Play video games. You'll constantly be in competition with the youngest, fastest people on the planet. No better way to stay sharp. Also, I program everyday even as a VC and nearly 50.

Work peak and professional decline (2019)

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