8 ms·

Not having a job is my worst nightmare. Realizing your skills are being undercut by a fresh college grad who can get enough pats on the back while skidding alon

by av9 11y ago

Not having a job is my worst nightmare. Realizing your skills are being undercut by a fresh college grad who can get enough pats on the back while skidding along with code that works. Realizing the language you cradled has now become outdated and the other engineers that have found out the new next 9 years of hotness are too good for you to compete with. Having to interview for a new job and realizing that you can't pass the white board questions because you have fallen behind with the expectations of young blood. That's my nightmare, becoming irrelevant.

Splines 11y ago
> Having to interview for a new job and realizing that you can't pass the white board questions because you have fallen behind with the expectations of young blood. That's my nightmare, becoming irrelevant. I'd like to think that interviewing for positions that aren't entirely focused on new-hotness still leans on heavily trod areas of CS. Data structures, sorting and searching.
- nikatwork 11y ago
  A large portion of modern dev jobs are either CRUD apps or data munging. Knowledge of algos are not necessary for those for those domains. It always amuses me when I'm interviewing for some vanilla web app job and they start pitching maths questions. It's filtering on the wrong criteria.
  - gaius 11y ago
    No, they are filtering on the criteria of "recently revised this stuff for an exam" i.e. "we want cheap and easy to exploit 23-year-olds but we can't say that in front of HR".
vidarh 11y ago
I've found the solution (for me at least), while I love spending time on new tech, is focusing on being a "solution provider" rather than focusing on specific technology. The moment you stop including the name of specific tech on your resume and start describing how you helped solve X problem that saved/made the company Y amount of money instead, you open the door to positions that may be as hands on (or not, depending on what you want), but that pay better and where the interviews are not focused on tech trivia at all.
sbuttgereit 11y ago
As much as I hate to say it: it's a healthy nightmare. I have it too, though I came to development late in my career (My career was more managing technologists in IT depts, but I turned out to be good with Oracle and PostgreSQL and other development tasks and now get more requests for that... which pays as well and is more fun to boot). When I was young, I would go into interviews sometimes where the other candidates where there in the lobby, too. Some were older and clearly had been in technology a long time... but never advanced past where they were in their "prime" as you made small talk. They weren't going to get the job nor should they have. They allowed themselves to become as relevant as token ring. As technologists we have to keep ourselves current. That keeping up with the kids is really part of our profession: the technology evolves quickly and so must we. But this is the part I like about technology work. There's always something next to keep things fresh. A new technology, a new architectural style, new needs, unsolvable problems that become solvable. Our profession doesn't tolerate coasting. Good. Other professions have this same problem, just not at our speed. The proverbial buggy whip makers had to evolve with changing realities... they just had more time to see the inevitable. (As an aside, I play poker with a dedicated COBOL developer in his mid-50s... so sometimes you can make old school pay, too :-) ).
- michael_fine 11y ago
  Even if it makes sense for a single company not to hire an old developer, we are losing so much values as an industry if we invest all this money into teaching valuable lessons to devs, then throwing them away and letting newer kids make the same mistakes.
  - sbuttgereit 11y ago
    Yes and no. A guy/gal who spent a decade or two dealing with RPG on a 400 will have judgments contextually relevant to that technology environment. His experience and judgments will have limited applicability to say microservice based architectures on AWS. Yes there will be some generalities that will apply everywhere, but probably not enough to make up for the deficiencies of limited experiences outside of that 400 comfort zone. In fact, some of that prior experience may well prove harmful rather than beneficial in a different environment with different strengths and weaknesses. Unfortunately technology is unlike some professions like, say, warehouse management or construction where techniques evolve with time, but there are more commonalities from one decade to the next. Technology sees highly disruptive change and so I would still argue that without keeping current in your knowledge, your experience has a very short half-life.
lectrick 11y ago
Do you love coding? If you don't, just find something else.
im2w1l 11y ago
Legacy aint gonna maintain itself ;)
seivan 11y ago
Same here, I think that will come soon when we realise most of our jobs run on credit and not profit and the "demand" for engineering is essentially based on crap shoots. I'm genuinely scared and haven't been able to shake this feeling. It keeps me bothered at night.
vcool07 11y ago
This. So much. And by any chance if you are stuck in some kind of "corporate only" domain (ex: telecom, insurance etc) with "system/non-web competency" like C/C++/Linux, your job market narrows down further. Its not impossible to find a job, but your job market becomes very niche. When people say just read up on tech etc, they forget the fact that, most employers are looking for professional experience in that area. Doubt if contributing to OSS, side projects can help convince the employers otherwise !
nazka 11y ago
On top of what have been said, there are two important advantages over young people that old devs should have. The first advantage is that compared to young people your advantage is your long experience in Computer Science. For instance: you should have a better understanding of your stack, you have mastered a lot of the basics of CS with several paradigms in different programming languages, databases SQL/NoSQL, etc... You may have a little bit of knowledge around the edge of your stack and outside... For the second advantage it depends where you want to do. If you want to stay a dev and only code then the best thing to do is to master your stack and learn complex things. By doing that you differentiate yourself and increase the barrier of entry. So for instance to learn C++, AWS, Machine Learning, Hadoop ecosystem, webgl... Depending your field and what can be the next big hard thing with it. Else, the other way is to go up in the hierarchy to be a team leader and maybe to go higher. At first you have been (or should) start to learn how to manage people. You should know how to lead your team when things are doing well but also when things are at the worst. Sometimes you have deadlines that are hard to meet. Sometimes the stress is at the maximum, financially the company is not doing well, or goals and ideas diverge... It's all the experience you need to get to be able to manage these situations and start to be a great leader. Also you -may- start to learn to master git to be a team leader, to be able to fix the problems, and manage the repo for the code reviews. Another point should be to increase your communication skill, every day by talking with your team, by enjoying to write well written emails and speeches. These books [1] are a good start. And also a last point that I think is important is to start to get financial skills with things like financial management, accounting, and if possible to be able to do simple DCFs... [1] http://www.amazon.com/Elements-Style-4th-William-Strunk/dp/0205313426/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1448280515&sr=1-2&keywords=element+of+style http://www.amazon.com/Elements-Style-4th-William-Strunk/dp/0... http://www.amazon.com/Writing-Well-30th-Anniversary-Nonfiction/dp/0060891548/ref=sr_1_8?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1448280196&sr=1-8&keywords=writing+book http://www.amazon.com/Writing-Well-30th-Anniversary-Nonficti... http://www.amazon.com/Pitch-Anything-Innovative-Presenting-Persuading/dp/0071752854/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8 http://www.amazon.com/Pitch-Anything-Innovative-Presenting-P...

by av9 11y ago

Splines 11y ago

> Having to interview for a new job and realizing that you can't pass the white board questions because you have fallen behind with the expectations of young blood. That's my nightmare, becoming irrelevant. I'd like to think that interviewing for positions that aren't entirely focused on new-hotness still leans on heavily trod areas of CS. Data structures, sorting and searching.

nikatwork 11y ago
A large portion of modern dev jobs are either CRUD apps or data munging. Knowledge of algos are not necessary for those for those domains. It always amuses me when I'm interviewing for some vanilla web app job and they start pitching maths questions. It's filtering on the wrong criteria.
- gaius 11y ago
  No, they are filtering on the criteria of "recently revised this stuff for an exam" i.e. "we want cheap and easy to exploit 23-year-olds but we can't say that in front of HR".

vidarh 11y ago

I've found the solution (for me at least), while I love spending time on new tech, is focusing on being a "solution provider" rather than focusing on specific technology. The moment you stop including the name of specific tech on your resume and start describing how you helped solve X problem that saved/made the company Y amount of money instead, you open the door to positions that may be as hands on (or not, depending on what you want), but that pay better and where the interviews are not focused on tech trivia at all.

sbuttgereit 11y ago

As much as I hate to say it: it's a healthy nightmare. I have it too, though I came to development late in my career (My career was more managing technologists in IT depts, but I turned out to be good with Oracle and PostgreSQL and other development tasks and now get more requests for that... which pays as well and is more fun to boot). When I was young, I would go into interviews sometimes where the other candidates where there in the lobby, too. Some were older and clearly had been in technology a long time... but never advanced past where they were in their "prime" as you made small talk. They weren't going to get the job nor should they have. They allowed themselves to become as relevant as token ring. As technologists we have to keep ourselves current. That keeping up with the kids is really part of our profession: the technology evolves quickly and so must we. But this is the part I like about technology work. There's always something next to keep things fresh. A new technology, a new architectural style, new needs, unsolvable problems that become solvable. Our profession doesn't tolerate coasting. Good. Other professions have this same problem, just not at our speed. The proverbial buggy whip makers had to evolve with changing realities... they just had more time to see the inevitable. (As an aside, I play poker with a dedicated COBOL developer in his mid-50s... so sometimes you can make old school pay, too :-) ).

michael_fine 11y ago
Even if it makes sense for a single company not to hire an old developer, we are losing so much values as an industry if we invest all this money into teaching valuable lessons to devs, then throwing them away and letting newer kids make the same mistakes.
- sbuttgereit 11y ago
  Yes and no. A guy/gal who spent a decade or two dealing with RPG on a 400 will have judgments contextually relevant to that technology environment. His experience and judgments will have limited applicability to say microservice based architectures on AWS. Yes there will be some generalities that will apply everywhere, but probably not enough to make up for the deficiencies of limited experiences outside of that 400 comfort zone. In fact, some of that prior experience may well prove harmful rather than beneficial in a different environment with different strengths and weaknesses. Unfortunately technology is unlike some professions like, say, warehouse management or construction where techniques evolve with time, but there are more commonalities from one decade to the next. Technology sees highly disruptive change and so I would still argue that without keeping current in your knowledge, your experience has a very short half-life.

lectrick 11y ago

Do you love coding? If you don't, just find something else.

im2w1l 11y ago

Legacy aint gonna maintain itself ;)

seivan 11y ago

Same here, I think that will come soon when we realise most of our jobs run on credit and not profit and the "demand" for engineering is essentially based on crap shoots. I'm genuinely scared and haven't been able to shake this feeling. It keeps me bothered at night.

vcool07 11y ago

This. So much. And by any chance if you are stuck in some kind of "corporate only" domain (ex: telecom, insurance etc) with "system/non-web competency" like C/C++/Linux, your job market narrows down further. Its not impossible to find a job, but your job market becomes very niche. When people say just read up on tech etc, they forget the fact that, most employers are looking for professional experience in that area. Doubt if contributing to OSS, side projects can help convince the employers otherwise !

nazka 11y ago

On top of what have been said, there are two important advantages over young people that old devs should have. The first advantage is that compared to young people your advantage is your long experience in Computer Science. For instance: you should have a better understanding of your stack, you have mastered a lot of the basics of CS with several paradigms in different programming languages, databases SQL/NoSQL, etc... You may have a little bit of knowledge around the edge of your stack and outside... For the second advantage it depends where you want to do. If you want to stay a dev and only code then the best thing to do is to master your stack and learn complex things. By doing that you differentiate yourself and increase the barrier of entry. So for instance to learn C++, AWS, Machine Learning, Hadoop ecosystem, webgl... Depending your field and what can be the next big hard thing with it. Else, the other way is to go up in the hierarchy to be a team leader and maybe to go higher. At first you have been (or should) start to learn how to manage people. You should know how to lead your team when things are doing well but also when things are at the worst. Sometimes you have deadlines that are hard to meet. Sometimes the stress is at the maximum, financially the company is not doing well, or goals and ideas diverge... It's all the experience you need to get to be able to manage these situations and start to be a great leader. Also you -may- start to learn to master git to be a team leader, to be able to fix the problems, and manage the repo for the code reviews. Another point should be to increase your communication skill, every day by talking with your team, by enjoying to write well written emails and speeches. These books [1] are a good start. And also a last point that I think is important is to start to get financial skills with things like financial management, accounting, and if possible to be able to do simple DCFs... [1] http://www.amazon.com/Elements-Style-4th-William-Strunk/dp/0205313426/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1448280515&sr=1-2&keywords=element+of+style http://www.amazon.com/Elements-Style-4th-William-Strunk/dp/0... http://www.amazon.com/Writing-Well-30th-Anniversary-Nonfiction/dp/0060891548/ref=sr_1_8?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1448280196&sr=1-8&keywords=writing+book http://www.amazon.com/Writing-Well-30th-Anniversary-Nonficti... http://www.amazon.com/Pitch-Anything-Innovative-Presenting-Persuading/dp/0071752854/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8 http://www.amazon.com/Pitch-Anything-Innovative-Presenting-P...