Ask HN: HN supported initiative to transition ageing developers to legal?
16 comments
But what's the demand like for lawyers who know software development
That can be generated. There are obviously powers at play in US and EU which are lobbying for nefarious goals. This can be counteracted. Perhaps setting up a framework for this could be part of the initiative.
In Compliance Technology, these two skill sets are ideal
Having programmed for 50 years and going strong, why would I want to submerge myself in pettifoggery? It sounds like something to be left to naive young software engineers who need to learn more about the real world.
Depends if you are motivated to leave a legacy and a better world for the next generation or not. I can totally understand why you wouldn't want to do legal work but that doesn't mean it isn't the highest impact thing you could do at the stage you are at in your career.
I'm not sure I want laws to reflect the rigid thinking on display in OP's comment...
Having been a web developer for about 20 years (on and off professionally), I've seen trends where we start off from a point, it's mess, we clean it up and get towards doing 'best practices' and something comes along to totally mess that up. Usually something with the promise of quick and easy and some how it takes hold. While yes, quick and easy to start, but experienced developers know what is quick and easy in the beginning only means a magnitude of work of resolving what that has caused.
> Having programmed for 50 years and going strong...
Wow. That means you started in 1968. Professionally or as a kid? Hats off to you sir!
Wow. That means you started in 1968. Professionally or as a kid? Hats off to you sir!
Thank you. I was a senior at Stanford.
A programmer older than (Unix) time itself.
I think the massive salary drop off will make the late-career transition from engineering to law hard to stomach. Someone in their 40s or 50s with 20-30 years of engineering experience probably has a family, is thinking about their retirement plans, and is commanding the salary of a senior engineer (at least). Very few people are going to be willing to take 3 years off from work to go back to school only to spend another few years as a junior associate making far less than they could as a senior engineer. A lawyer going into policy or any other altruistic area of the law should expect an even larger salary gap.
What about all the 50 year old engineers who have been made redundant and are finding it hard to find work? A combination of this and wanting a sense of purpose could make this an attractive proposition. Also I think forcing someone this experienced to follow the junior associate track is not a good system. Surely there is a better alternative way to leverage the technologists knowledge snd experience. It's exactly things like this that I expect to be discussed here.
Stop looking for a jobs at all of the cool startups and look for boring corporate jobs. I’m 44 and never have any issues finding jobs and know plenty of 50 year old developers. The difference is that we are all aggressive about keeping our skills current.
I'm going to focus on the US since that's what I'm most familiar with. The generalities will translate to other locations such as the EU, but the specifics will be off.
1) As others have mentioned the transition from engineer to lawyer doesn't make much sense for most of the population. Right now, the most influential law schools in the US (think Harvard and Yale Law) cost 60k+/year to attend for 3 years. Once you're finished, the typical engineer will see a salary dropoff along with a major increase in work. This is probably not the way forward in the US.
So let's take another look at the problem we're trying to solve. To restate the problem, regulation/law is made by those who are typically out of touch resulting in regulations that are often actively harmful. We in the tech industry would like to be involved or influential enough in the tech industry to be able to prevent these "bad" regulations from being created in the first place.
Ok, so where does regulation come from? Who do we have to influence? There are two primary sources of regulation, the legislative bodies such as congress and regulatory agencies such as the EPA, FCC and FDA. Secondary sources of regulation are executive orders/actions and the courts (common law courts used by the US and the UK explicitly look at judicial precedent)
There are already several well-known patterns to influence these regulation creators with the patterns in use by industries of every stripe. 1) Funnel more people from tech into careers as either politicians or their staff
To influence regulation created by these there are 3 well-known possibilities. 1) become politicians, 2) lobbying, 3) be an advisor or other person of influence. Option one is definitely a possibility but comes with the downside that many of those that choose this path will be older and out of touch. Option 2 is the one I believe has the easiest path forward. Today Facebook, Google and Microsoft have big lobbying efforts, although they pale in comparison to the lobbying by telecom and big energy. VCs already have informal lobbying they do on certain issues such as immigration and taxes on stock compensation. Grassroots we've seen the ability of tech to organize, especially around net neutrality and SOPA. The tech industry has seen successes, but hasn't been able to sustain it. It could benefit from formal industry-wide lobbying efforts. As for 3, tech could be more active during rule-making sessions and feedback sessions. We need to establish relations with politicians, regulators and their staff.
1) As others have mentioned the transition from engineer to lawyer doesn't make much sense for most of the population. Right now, the most influential law schools in the US (think Harvard and Yale Law) cost 60k+/year to attend for 3 years. Once you're finished, the typical engineer will see a salary dropoff along with a major increase in work. This is probably not the way forward in the US.
So let's take another look at the problem we're trying to solve. To restate the problem, regulation/law is made by those who are typically out of touch resulting in regulations that are often actively harmful. We in the tech industry would like to be involved or influential enough in the tech industry to be able to prevent these "bad" regulations from being created in the first place.
Ok, so where does regulation come from? Who do we have to influence? There are two primary sources of regulation, the legislative bodies such as congress and regulatory agencies such as the EPA, FCC and FDA. Secondary sources of regulation are executive orders/actions and the courts (common law courts used by the US and the UK explicitly look at judicial precedent)
There are already several well-known patterns to influence these regulation creators with the patterns in use by industries of every stripe. 1) Funnel more people from tech into careers as either politicians or their staff
To influence regulation created by these there are 3 well-known possibilities. 1) become politicians, 2) lobbying, 3) be an advisor or other person of influence. Option one is definitely a possibility but comes with the downside that many of those that choose this path will be older and out of touch. Option 2 is the one I believe has the easiest path forward. Today Facebook, Google and Microsoft have big lobbying efforts, although they pale in comparison to the lobbying by telecom and big energy. VCs already have informal lobbying they do on certain issues such as immigration and taxes on stock compensation. Grassroots we've seen the ability of tech to organize, especially around net neutrality and SOPA. The tech industry has seen successes, but hasn't been able to sustain it. It could benefit from formal industry-wide lobbying efforts. As for 3, tech could be more active during rule-making sessions and feedback sessions. We need to establish relations with politicians, regulators and their staff.
Yes I completely agree. I was considering lobbying as an option earlier today. Adding to your thoughts, very early stage and bootstrapped startups need to get their voice out. These are the future power houses unlocking unrealised potential in the economy. Google et al and even VC backed startups operate in a totally different reality.
I have a law degree, but I work as a full-stack developer. The shared logical thinking between law and programming is astonishing.
Nevertheless I transitioned from law to working in IT, because of the salary / career options ( being a successful lawyer is magnitude harder ).
As this seems like a crazy idea, I tend to agree that we need more specialised IT lawyers, understanding what's happening down to the byte. Unfortunately the idea folks are not always lawyers, but mostly politicians and this is quite hard to transition to.
Nevertheless I transitioned from law to working in IT, because of the salary / career options ( being a successful lawyer is magnitude harder ).
As this seems like a crazy idea, I tend to agree that we need more specialised IT lawyers, understanding what's happening down to the byte. Unfortunately the idea folks are not always lawyers, but mostly politicians and this is quite hard to transition to.
>It turns out that regulations are made largely by old lawyers, who are more connected and charismatic than smart and practical, and haven't operated in the real-world for decades. (user: dokein)
Which went like this:
>Maybe that's the career path for aging programmers. Get a law degree. (user: jonhendry18)
Ageism in tech is a huge problem that is widely discussed here as is the disconnect between technology and law makers. It is in fact the perfect intersection which will result in the maximum value add impact for ageing technologists. Given that HN is frequented by many ageing developers and also quite a few lawyers there is an opportunity to create a community supported initiative to make this easier for all involved. I don't quite have ideas on what this would look like so I have created this post to start an open forum discussion where we can collect ideas and see if there is an appetite to make this happen.
Please share you industry/experience specific or general insights, ideas and thoughts.
[0]https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17449457