Ever come across people saying:
With age we sort lose our potential to learn new things or with experience comes baggage?
When we started Delium, I realised that it was harder for me to remember syntax of a new programming language — something that should have not been the case and this got me thinking.
Btw the phase didn’t last long however but it got me to ponder:
Does years of work make us wiser but analytically/logically dumber? What is it that makes us feel that its easy to learn new things when we are void of experience to when someone settles in with work for a good number of years?
And then it struck me.
The human brain has only two gears, one is neutral and another is forward gear
meaning we either stagnate or we move. The top gear is when we push ourselves to learn something new or unlearn something that we know. If we do not keep aiming for the next bigger thing — something that is very common with the masses, its impossible to stay in this gear.
The neutral gear is the lazy spot where we tend to settle into in fear of the unknown (mostly out of fear of failure).
Looking at the last 12–15 months before Delium, the neutral gear is what I was getting into — work was end to end assignments and in different flavours but it was never anything that I have not done before.
The neutral gear is actually reverse i.e. the longer you are in it, you sort of move backward with respect to the ever evolving world we live in (be it any profession). Summarised perfectly by Harvey Dent —
Apply this to the boomed IT service industry at least in India and look at the mess we have got ourselves into!
So why all the fuss?
There is a great debate about AI killing jobs and its bad for the society. I feel the biggest threat would be for jobs enjoyed by us in the neutral gear and to be honest I strongly believe that the challenge and our inevitable defeat is good for our children and their children.
So, if you fear the unknown and are sitting on just seniority, AI is definitely coming for you eventually; however you have everything you ever needed to counter — your natural intelligence.
If you are in the neutral for a long time, you have just forgotten how to use it and its your own doing.
From realisation to philosophy (Software engineering @ Delium)
Simple, we engineer such that software can have a fair degree of autonomy. A machine engineered to master this can do everything a person can do in their neutral gear and even better.
So our drive is only to build something that will empower and in the worse case force its users to transition to the top gear thus improving quality of jobs.
Happiness and dignity at work is everyone’s right!
So from “pick the right tools for the right job” to “question the job” to “if its not self drive, it is no drive” has been the evolution of software engineering pillar at Delium
Coming back to what I feel about the quote we started with, the answer could be different to each of us but here is what helped me self retrospect:
- Whats changed from when I felt I was learning faster? How much did I think you knew then? How much do I think you know now? — How empty is my glass?
- How much reading to I do now? Orthogonal reading that is. Bedtime stories when mastered are very powerful tools :P
- Life is about the journey as well (risks and periods of uncertainty are great teachers to the brave).
At the end of the retro, it was so obvious that the our brain’s top gear was all about two things, unlearning & the love for the unknown.
All the ‘mumbo jumbo’ about age, experience are just excuses used by delusional people that require self justification to feel good about themselves.
With time and age, the problems that interest us also evolve, but that does not mean the adventure should keep diminishing (on the contrary, you bigger you challenge the higher the risk). There is a good 30 years for the taking, the neutral gear can wait till when we are 60!
Right now am a software developer and a parent predominantly telling stories, every time a new one ;) — pretty happy to have taken the dive!
Last but not the least, arming my son with ‘the love for the unknown’ and letting him off on his own adventure may be the best learning I could give him.
PS: we are looking for great story scribers, story tellers and story builders at Delium. Do ping, lets chat and lets work together to make better use of natural intelligence!
