Can an old tech guy learn new tricks?

Posted on November 10, 2023 by Derek

Cross posted from Old Programmer

Hi. I’m DJ, an old programmer. I am 55 years old and live with my dog, Monkey. Here we are.

 

I live alone, but I never get lonely. Maybe it’s because I’m an INTJ?

This is my first post. This newsletter is an occasional journal, links to resources I like, discussion of macro trends in tech and advice for people looking to work as a software engineer. If any of that resonates with you please smash that subscribe button below

The Backstory

From 2017 to early 2023 I did commercial real estate investing. That is, I worked with investors to buy and manage properties through a process known as syndication. Previously I spent about 20 years in tech, almost exclusively in startups.

How did I go from tech to real estate? Like this.

In 2016, the startup where I was CTO failed. I was burned out and had started doubting my abilities. I especially worried that I no longer had the relentless drive it takes to build a company from scratch.

To distract myself, I started learning about real estate. I went to meetups, listened to podcasts, joined Bigger Pockets, and learned how properties are valued, bought and sold. I got especially interested in apartments because of scale — why buy one rental when you can buy 100? All the gurus touted how great passive income is, and they made it sound easy as pie.

(It isn’t.)

So rather than go all-in on another tech startup, I… went all-in on a real estate startup.

 

We bought a few properties (after making offers on hundreds), put on some really popular events and built a database of over a thousand investors. The future was bright. Until…

COVID

In March 2020 we were scheduled to close on a 250 unit apartment complex in Oklahoma City. It had been a painful due diligence process that took much longer than planned. We had six figures of earnest money in it, had re-negotiated the price twice (there had been two fires at the property while under contract), and worked really hard to line up the capital needed to close.

Less than two weeks before closing, two of our key partners got spooked by COVID and pulled out. This triggered a a domino effect with other investors and, long story short, the deal collapsed. We lost most of our earnest money.

(Less than a year later the property sold for $1 million above what we had it for. It proved our thesis: this was a great deal! We just failed to execute.)

From there it was one headache after the other. The pandemic hit one of our properties particularly hard because it is in a tourist town. Sadly, our property manager died suddenly from a brain aneurysm. This meant I had to go take over the property and learn property management on the fly. I ended up moving there full time for almost three years.

In the meantime, inflation reared its head and the Fed raised interest rates faster than it had since the late seventies.

This is a Bad Thing for real estate!

I had never worked in an industry that is sensitive to interest rates like real estate. In fact, the only people in real estate who have worked in that environment have been in it since the mid eighties. 95% of today’s investors are in uncharted territory.

It was a learning experience.

What I Learned

I could list all the things I learned in the industry about risk, debt, equity, property management, and so on, but what I really learned is the hard truth:

I’m just not a Real Estate Guy.

I don’t get excited about rehab projects, or combing through listings, or touring houses just for fun. I don’t get pumped up from learning about real estate markets, or pitching to investors, or implementing value-add strategies or running a rehab project. And I really don’t like negotiating.

In my heart of hearts, I’m a software guy who loves to explore the boundaries of technology by digging into the nitty gritty of code.

Usually with a setup like this

So in 2023 we decided to wind down the firm. We still own one property, but it’s mostly in maintenance mode while we wait for the market to reset itself.

A few months back I felt myself stagnating and decide to survey the tech scene to see if I still fit in. I signed up for an online data science course in Python and quickly discovered a few things:

  • Though the technologies continue to evolve, the fundamentals are still the same,

  • Writing code again is like putting on a comfortable pair of slippers,

  • It’s easier than ever to write quality code, and

Ralph Malph I still got it

Gen-Xers get this

On the other hand…

I’m kind of, well, you know, old. I know we in the US of A are supposed to be an open, diverse workforce that welcomes people from all walks of life… and I also know that there’s still a lot of bias in the system.

Tech is generally seen as a young person’s game (I almost wrote “young man’s game”), and I can’t help feeling a little insecure about it. It might all be in my head… but maybe it’s not?

On the other other hand

I love writing code! It invigorates me. I knew I had to get back into it when I watched this video about lambdas in functional programming. To most people, this kind of thing is as stimulating as cleaning out the dryer lint catcher, but to me it’s manna from Heaven. I discovered it while reading The Imposter’s Handbook, which I will write more about in a future post.

What Next?

Wow, you made it to the end! I’m flattered. I will be writing more about what it’s like to be an Old Programmer. Please subscribe, and let me know what you think!

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