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pauldavidmena
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Modern Elder Academy
I had heard about this sprawling compound in Pescadero before, but this New York Times article describes it as a sort of New Agey Nerd Retreat. Admittedly I fit the "Nerd" prerequisite to a T, but I prefer a lower
profile - and require much less overhead - when I visit Baja.
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Bajazly
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What ever but kudos for Conley's "vision", P.T. Barnum would be proud.
Believing is religion - Knowing is science
Harald Pietschmann
"Get off the beaten path and memories, friends and new techniques are developed"
Bajazly, August 2019
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TMW
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One of the problems of getting older while working in the various technical fields is that many are promoted to supervisor and/or managers. Over time
one does less of the technical stuff and more of the supervisory and management stuff. At some point you feel like the technology has passed you by. I
know of several people in my field retired due at least in part to that feeling. A good friend of mine told me he felt like a hardware guy in a
software world.
Not exactly the same as what the Elder Academy is about but another take on aging.
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pauldavidmena
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If you're spending $5000 on a week in El Pescadero, you're doing it wrong.
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pauldavidmena
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Quote: Originally posted by TMW  | One of the problems of getting older while working in the various technical fields is that many are promoted to supervisor and/or managers. Over time
one does less of the technical stuff and more of the supervisory and management stuff. At some point you feel like the technology has passed you by. I
know of several people in my field retired due at least in part to that feeling. A good friend of mine told me he felt like a hardware guy in a
software world.
Not exactly the same as what the Elder Academy is about but another take on aging. |
I've done (and undone) management 4 times in my 30+ year career. My biggest challenge these days is sorting through the technology sprawl and
determining which pieces I really need to do my job versus the ones that are cool and shiny. That and trying to feel relevant at 60 while surrounded
by mostly 20 and 30-somethings.
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Lee
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Had dinner with Conley at Hierbabuena a few years ago. Dynamic guy.
You might want to do a session there, Paul. Your crowd, so to speak.
At $5k, what price enlightenment, eh?
US Marines: providing enemies of America an opportunity to die for their country since 1775.
What I say before any important decision.
F*ck it.
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StuckSucks
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I'm one of those oldsters working at a software company that they're talking about. But filling an "application" and paying "tuition" to stay in an
overpriced kale and quinoa hotel is not my thing. All I want for is a nice plot of earth to throw my sleeping bag, the more remote the
better.
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Bajazly
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That one!!!
Believing is religion - Knowing is science
Harald Pietschmann
"Get off the beaten path and memories, friends and new techniques are developed"
Bajazly, August 2019
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BajaBlanca
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What a very interesting article.
One of the first things that hit me after living here in La Bocana a number of years and then deciding to teach middle school, was that I was out of
the music loop!
Ageing has to do with your outlook and ability to try new things. I remember having the students tell me who their favorite singer/groups were, going
home and youtubeing for hours to see or rather hear, these unknown to me musicians.
Downloaded the lyrics and used them in our English class.
The hard part of getting old are the aches and pains but feeling of freedom to be is WONDERFUL.
If you haven't seen THE INTERN, please do! It addresses some of these very issues in a funny movie.
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pauldavidmena
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| Quote: Originally posted by BajaBlanca | What a very interesting article.
One of the first things that hit me after living here in La Bocana a number of years and then deciding to teach middle school, was that I was out of
the music loop!
Ageing has to do with your outlook and ability to try new things. I remember having the students tell me who their favorite singer/groups were, going
home and youtubeing for hours to see or rather hear, these unknown to me musicians.
Downloaded the lyrics and used them in our English class.
The hard part of getting old are the aches and pains but feeling of freedom to be is WONDERFUL.
If you haven't seen THE INTERN, please do! It addresses some of these very issues in a funny movie. |
I'm relatively current on indie music thanks to my involvement with MIT radio (mostly as a listener), a fact that baffles most of my co-workers. On
the other hand, I don't play video games, so I'm pretty much left out in that regard. You win some, you lose some, I guess.
I'd like to check out "The Intern", and have often wondered if I could reinvent myself after retirement. My youngest brother plans to retire this year
- at 55 - but as a cop he has several opportunities for cozy gigs. If I do work after retirement, I doubt it will be in software. I still joke about
looking for a position as "beer taster", preferably in a more moderate climate.
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pauldavidmena
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| Quote: Originally posted by Lee | Had dinner with Conley at Hierbabuena a few years ago. Dynamic guy.
You might want to do a session there, Paul. Your crowd, so to speak.
At $5k, what price enlightenment, eh?
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Conley is certainly on to something, but I suspect his motives aren't entirely altruistic. Methinks he's looking to fleece dinosaurs with disposable
income. While I do fit the "dinosaur" label, I prefer to recycle my income. 
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Lee
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| Quote: Originally posted by pauldavidmena | | Quote: Originally posted by Lee | Had dinner with Conley at Hierbabuena a few years ago. Dynamic guy.
You might want to do a session there, Paul. Your crowd, so to speak.
At $5k, what price enlightenment, eh?
|
Conley is certainly on to something, but I suspect his motives aren't entirely altruistic. Methinks he's looking to fleece dinosaurs with disposable
income. While I do fit the "dinosaur" label, I prefer to recycle my income. |
Fleece dinosaurs? Talk about ageist.
About Conley? You're wrong.
US Marines: providing enemies of America an opportunity to die for their country since 1775.
What I say before any important decision.
F*ck it.
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BajaBill74
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I was a programmer for NCR for many years. My manager in San Francisco told me I had the highest performance appraisal in the organization. (so it
wasn't just me that thought I was good)
Eventually I was offered promotions to management.
The problem here is that the skill set for management isn't the same as for technical work. I don't think I could have been among the best of
managers.
I took an early retirement and was self employed as a programmer. It couldn't have turned out better.
My wife and I took a vacation to Cabo San Lucas in 1998. Being self employed you are losing money everyday you arn't working, so this 4 day vacation
was the first I took in over a year.
While there I purchased a time share for a fixed room (great view) on the 13th week of every year.
I don't recommend time shares. However I got this to force me to take vacations. It worked and I'm glad I did.
I think this Pescadero place would be fun to go to and see how many people I could have enjoyable conversations with.
I'm probably to cheap, though.
For any tech people on the board I did COBOL and C++.
What I'm doing at work is so secret, even I don't know what I'm doing!
One should believe in God, because even Google doesn't know everything.
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pauldavidmena
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| Quote: Originally posted by Lee | | Quote: Originally posted by pauldavidmena | | Quote: Originally posted by Lee | Had dinner with Conley at Hierbabuena a few years ago. Dynamic guy.
You might want to do a session there, Paul. Your crowd, so to speak.
At $5k, what price enlightenment, eh?
|
Conley is certainly on to something, but I suspect his motives aren't entirely altruistic. Methinks he's looking to fleece dinosaurs with disposable
income. While I do fit the "dinosaur" label, I prefer to recycle my income. |
Fleece dinosaurs? Talk about ageist.
About Conley? You're wrong. |
"Fleecing dinosaurs" is definitely ageist, although the mental image of woolly dinosaurs getting sheared amuses me.
I'm one of those dinosaurs, by the way. 
As for Conley, I'm willing to see how things turn out for Pescadero in the long term. The thought of a retirement community catering to geeks like me
is obviously enticing, but I'd hate to see it turn into Cerritos Beach. Perhaps that ship has already sailed? 
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pauldavidmena
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| Quote: Originally posted by BajaBill74 | I was a programmer for NCR for many years. My manager in San Francisco told me I had the highest performance appraisal in the organization. (so it
wasn't just me that thought I was good)
Eventually I was offered promotions to management.
The problem here is that the skill set for management isn't the same as for technical work. I don't think I could have been among the best of
managers.
I took an early retirement and was self employed as a programmer. It couldn't have turned out better.
My wife and I took a vacation to Cabo San Lucas in 1998. Being self employed you are losing money everyday you arn't working, so this 4 day vacation
was the first I took in over a year.
While there I purchased a time share for a fixed room (great view) on the 13th week of every year.
I don't recommend time shares. However I got this to force me to take vacations. It worked and I'm glad I did.
I think this Pescadero place would be fun to go to and see how many people I could have enjoyable conversations with.
I'm probably to cheap, though.
For any tech people on the board I did COBOL and C++. |
I started working for Grumman (now Northrup Grumman) as a FORTRAN and Assembly Language programmer in '83. I spent 7 years there, 1 at Rockwell and 5
1/2 at Cray Research, where I was a Systems Administrator. Then a couple of start-ups followed by 11 years in Financial Services (9 at Fidelity) and
the past 10 years at Constant Contact doing DevOps. It feels like even more years than it really is.
Fidelity had some COBOL programmers supporting their mainframes (remember them?), and they were treated like gold until they were no longer needed for
Y2K conversions.
Somewhere in the above mess I found myself working at Wachovia in 2008, a really bad turn of events. Fortunately I lived to see another day - and
hopefully many more in Baja.
[Edited on 3-6-2019 by pauldavidmena]
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pauldavidmena
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Here is another article referencing Modern Elder Academy from Business Insider magazine, although the emphasis isn't as much on El Pescadero as it
is on ageism in the IT industry. I feel that!
Edit: the BI article takes a lazy man's way to journalism, using the NY Times original about Modern Elder Academy to illustrate its hypothesis.
[Edited on 3-7-2019 by pauldavidmena]
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TMW
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| Quote: Originally posted by BajaBill74 |
Eventually I was offered promotions to management.
The problem here is that the skill set for management isn't the same as for technical work. I don't think I could have been among the best of
managers.
|
Exactly right. In my line of work all to often it was the best technical people usually promoted to supervisor and above. Many of them if not most
were really good at fixing stuff but did a poor job of supervising people or doing budgets. I think a lot of the problem is that they never had any
training in supervision, management and leadership. It wasn't until I worked for an owner that I figured out the difference between a General Manager
and an owner.
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pauldavidmena
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| Quote: Originally posted by TMW | | Quote: Originally posted by BajaBill74 |
Eventually I was offered promotions to management.
The problem here is that the skill set for management isn't the same as for technical work. I don't think I could have been among the best of
managers.
|
Exactly right. In my line of work all too often it was the best technical people usually promoted to supervisor and above. Many of them if not most
were really good at fixing stuff but did a poor job of supervising people or doing budgets. I think a lot of the problem is that they never had any
training in supervision, management and leadership. It wasn't until I worked for an owner that I figured out the difference between a General Manager
and an owner. |
In my 36-year (so far) career, I've been a manager 4 times. In nearly all cases, it was seen as a promotion from the technical track, and not the
dramatic career shift it really was. I was an "okay" manager in that I was a good mentor and advocate for my team, but as a natural introvert I
avoided conflict in general and in particular hated the inevitable unpleasant conversation. I've been really fortunate to work for a company that
allowed me to return to being an individual contributor without damaging me politically. What saved me? Being an "elder". 
Which isn't to say I couldn't use a retreat...
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Fatboy
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| Quote: Originally posted by BajaBill74 | I was a programmer for NCR for many years. My manager in San Francisco told me I had the highest performance appraisal in the organization. (so it
wasn't just me that thought I was good)
Eventually I was offered promotions to management.
The problem here is that the skill set for management isn't the same as for technical work. I don't think I could have been among the best of
managers.
...
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While you may or may not have been a good manager, I do not know, but your observation about knowing a topic well does not automatically mean you
would be a good manager is spot on.
Studies seem to indicate most people are promoted one or two positions past their ideal.
Being any effective manager does usually mean knowing the jobs of the people you are managing but that is only one part of being a good and effective
manager.
As we all get older we usually start seeing things come true that we were told to us in our youth by older, more experienced people.
And I see that TMW is making a similar point before me...
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Bubba
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You got that right!
Making America Great Again
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