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Ask HN: How are you feeling about your future as a “senior” developer?

• codeonfire 10y ago
  Nope. Not at all. Feels awesome. The whole world is trying to exploit and be the boss of developers and that is power. Power for the developers. Even when I an 75 and about to die someone will be trying to hire me, lol. I already make more money than all my professors and almost everyone I ever went to school with. All I have to do to stay employable is study a few hours a week to stay up to date. Sure, I won't be able to work at established companies that have the luxury of age discrimination, but those are the boring companies with the shittiest managers. Barring a head injury and death there is nothing that can stop me.
• samfisher83 10y ago
  I don't feel good at all. I don't see that many old developers working around me.
  • hoodoof 10y ago
    What do you think happens to them? Do they leave for other industries or are you working for a "young and hip" startup company that tends not to employ older people?
    • samfisher83 10y ago
      No don't work for a hip company. Its a pretty big corporate company. Actually there are some older developer just not very many. I don't really know where they go. They get laid off. It seems me like CS is one of the profession where experience isn't as valued as other industries like business or medicine. I basically built my company 8 million dollars worth of product, but I don't really feel appreciated, but I really don't want to go through the whole white board exercise which I have already done enough of.
      • eb0la 10y ago
        It depends on several factors like country, sector, and who you work. But as you grow older you are forced to either become a manager or sales person. I guess the question is not about age, but wages. In your 20s you still don't know how much money you'll need for a living. When you realize how much you need, you buy a house/car/whatever else expensive enought not to be paid upfront, then unexpectedly have family, then kids and you know you need money. Much more than you get from a technical position. BTW, remember for the business you are an expense, something they need to build the product, but eventually all technical stuff can be bought or outsourced.
        • samfisher83 10y ago
          They did try outsourcing to Infosys. They had so many issues they decided to bring it back in. In fact they ran out Infosys a few years ago. The thing with infosys they just go hire a bunch of people to fill their numbers. Some of those guys aren't really CS guys. A lot of them do it so they can get a good high paying job and it gives them a way out of India. We hired some of their good talent.
    • brianwawok 10y ago
      They never existed to begin with in a lot of cases! Programming was a very niche job until the last 20-30 years. So obviously we would see less old people working in programming compared to a job that has been more stable over time (say Lawyers or Doctors).
• idealboy 10y ago
  I feel great! For me, age doesn't really factor into it. I'll probably push my last code from my deathbed - hopefully in the form of committing my conciousness (kidding, not kidding). My career just keeps getting better. It's not hard to stay up to date if you stay interested and engaged. And if you're interested and engaged, you find yourself not really aging in the way a lot of people do. Another nice benefit of aging that's helped my career is wisdom earned from experience. I started at AOL in '98 when I was 16 (it was cool then) and have worked in the industry since. There's not much in the way of team dynamics or project mishaps I haven't seen, and that gives me clarity and calm during crisis, which tends to make people want to put me in charge. I've also learned a lot about interpersonal relationships, confidence and finding mutual benefit. While those aren't typically skills most people associate with staying relevant as an engineer, they are skills that put you in positions to succeed in any walk of life. I'd say the problem for some veteran developers isn't aging itself, it's getting into a mentality of aging. As long as you embrace the new in technology instead of clinging to old methodologies, you'll be fine. I know developers much younger than me that gripe about new frameworks and libraries like it's a chore to learn. It's still as exciting to me today as the 2400 baud modem I got from my parents in '92.
• mindcrime 10y ago
  I'm 42, and I'm not particularly nervous. But I've made it a point to continue learning aggressively throughout my whole career and to this day I still spend a lot of time on Coursera and EdX taking classes, and I keep subscriptions on Safari, Lynda.com, Pluralsight, Egghead.io, etc. so I can constantly keep updating on new stuff. Lately I've been working pretty hard to expand from my core base as a Java developer, to pick up some skills on the "data science" side of things... R, Octave, (more) Python, machine learning and the like. And for the past 4 years or so my dayjob had me focusing on pretty trendy / sexy stuff like Hadoop, Spark, Neo4J, cloud APIs, etc. So unless something really crazy happens (AI comes along and eliminates all development jobs) I expect I'll be able to stay employed in this field for the forseeable future. And I'm working on a startup of my own on the side anyway. As to whether or not age discrimination is an issue... if it is, I haven't really noticed it as such.
• runjake 10y ago
  Early 40s here. No problems. I get a sense that senior devs who complain about age discrimination are the ones who haven't kept on learning, and haven't been keeping their skills up to date. I could be wrong, but I have no problems finding opportunities. I see others my age or even much older who exhibit enthusiasm and a youthful wonder and they seem to be swimming in opportunities.