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I don't find this post inspiring, I find it sad. It's partly self-encouragment, part PR. The fact that it even exists is proof that the author is facing some i

by blub 10y ago

I don't find this post inspiring, I find it sad. It's partly self-encouragment, part PR. The fact that it even exists is proof that the author is facing some issues, no matter how confident they would like to appear. That recipe to stay current looks tiresome. Listen to two podcasts, two webcasts, subscribe to four magazines, teach courses, go to one conference per year, blog regularly, read blogs, follow the latest web trends. Your reward: you are still employable. And why is it that most older people answering on these threads are so passionate about learning and about new technologies and the latest and greatest javascript frameworks. Do they really enjoy having such ephemeral knowledge and basically competing with anyone that's finished a bootcamp or not even that? It all seems fake. Like they're trying to put on a brave face while at the same time being scared and trying to convince themselves that all this new and shiny tech that they work with is awesome. Why not have an honest conversation instead of pretending that learning some thing or another will make everything ok in the end?

daemonk 10y ago
I kinda agree in the sense that I think that a lot of the tech jobs out there are not "difficult" in a way that requires years and years of experience to perform reasonably well at. So maybe someone older should look for jobs that suit their abilities rather than a job that, as you said, anyone who went through a bootcamp can perform. Hopefully with age comes some kind of niche specialization or skill that can't be obtained easily.
- mgkimsal 10y ago
  "Hopefully with age comes some kind of niche specialization or skill that can't be obtained easily." The big issue I've seen played out multiple times is a hiring manager, dev lead or anyone making a hiring decision not being able to tell the difference between what requires experience/skills/specialization and what doesn't. It leads to the all-too-common situation of people with required-experience being passed on in favor of the (generally younger) "hey, this person can definitely do it - they know all this computer stuff!" (slight exaggeration). It gets even more complicated when the person without the required skills tries to bluff their way through (deceptively or just out of sheer desperation).
IshKebab 10y ago
> And why is it that most older people answering on these threads are so passionate about learning and about new technologies and the latest and greatest javascript frameworks. Do they really enjoy having such ephemeral knowledge and basically competing with anyone that's finished a bootcamp or not even that? Nobody enjoys having their hard-earned knowledge become obsolete (hence the "X11/bash/sysvinit/etc were good enough for me so let's never improve them" crowd). But the fact is computer technology does change fairly quickly. You have to keep learning to keep up. If you're really worried there are definitely some technologies that persist for longer than others. If you really hate re-learning stuff then I'd stay far away from the web and javascript. Stick with things like Java, Go, C#, C++ & Rust. Those aren't going away any time soon. Ruby, Docker, React, etc... I give 5 years max. Then you'll have to learn something new.
- rimantas 10y ago
  > Ruby, Docker, React, etc... Just for the record, Ruby is 21 years old. Ruby on Rails is 10 years old.
  - shaftoe 10y ago
    Also, I wouldn't include docker in that list. It's evolving rapidly into a core component of many platform frameworks.
  - user5994461 10y ago
    3 web development technologies :D First tip for elders: don't be in web development.
- blub 10y ago
  I am doing just that (but Go and Rust don't belong on that list). However, if a lot of people are doing things radically differently it starts limiting my options too.
metafunctor 10y ago
Nah. The fact that this post exists is evidence that ageism is a thing. What makes you think older people are passionate about the latest and greatest JavaScript frameworks? That is not my experience at all. New frameworks are just the same old stuff in a new wrapper. We've seen it all several times over. Like, backprop was a cool thing in the late 80s. I, too, find this post sad, but probably not for the same reasons you did. This post, that makes me and you sad, doesn't make it any less of a fact that the young people in this industry think you are a useless dinosaur if you don't know what the new hot thing is about.
- blub 10y ago
  It's tough to communicate this accurately. I've noticed a trend in engineers self-evaluating as old on HN to say things along the lines "I am having more fun than ever learning about the cloud/TypeScript/webfoo". Several people on all these "old in tech" threads. I have the feeling these posts are not at all representative of the domain, and neither are the proposed solutions to just learn more, but it's all I've seen so far. More of the same thing is not bringing us any closer to solving this very real issue.
  - metafunctor 10y ago
    OK, that's probably where our experiences differ. In my experience, the more experienced techies see that there's nothing really new in the new technologies. Many realize that to stay current, they must learn the new tech. But rarely do they really love it, because it's really a step sideways rather than forward. I suppose it's a form of competition that forces new technologies to pop up all the time. I just wish people would take a really close look at what's already there before spending their prime bestowing the world with yet-another-framework or language. By the way, I'm 40. I don't think I'm old. I think Scheme is superior to JavaScript.
- eeZah7Ux 10y ago
  > Nah. The fact that this post exists is proof that ageism is a thing. Indeed, ageism exists and it's a form of discrimination. There are societies (e.g. japanese, korean, central/southern european) where ageism works the other way around, at the expense of younger people. In both cases it's still discrimination and we should acknowledge the problem and fight it instead of trying to look/act younger or older.
kfk 10y ago
Can you explain what's the honest conversation to be had here? That "old" people should be looking for jobs outside of Tech? I am trying to understand your point of view. I can't even start to imagine how hard this gets when you are "old", have a family to take care of and, for god's sake, you'd like some kind of stability in life. I am 30 by the way. I feel way more prepared than 5 years ago. I think experience is important sometimes.
- blub 10y ago
  This could probably only be solved by changing the forever young, fashion-oriented US software development culture. Staying current is just mitigating the problem, not solving it. And staying current should anyway mean growing ones knowledge not replacing it every X years or investing so much time like the author recommends.
smokestack 10y ago
Almost every ageism post I've read on HN ignores the hundreds of thousands of others jobs that exist outside of [hot SV tech companies] (avg age at FB is 28? no way!), and also don't mention those people who are right of the bell curve and working at companies like that (because their experience actually is valuable). Some of these posts are real ageism claims, but most are "I'm old, I'm scared, how am I going to survive with a highly valuable skillset?" It's fear mongering. If you're concerned with job security, go find a job with security in government or in some monolithic non-tech company based in Go-Fuck-Yourself, GA. The "Hi, Fellow Kids" hipster-posing BS isn't going to land you a job at Facebook no matter how old you are.
- otaviokz 10y ago
  Agreed. The deliberate ignoring the whole world outside FB/Google is a alarming sign that the idea is just to get blog reads by piggybacking the last bombastic statement by someone famous in the sw industry.
  - falcolas 10y ago
    > ignoring the whole world outside FB/Google The whole world outside of GAFA looks to those companies for "how to do software development right" - no matter if they are right or not. I've watched more than a few well established companies start to ape Google's hiring practices, or Amazon's churn, or Facebook's development practices just to try and attract new young developers.
- gaius 10y ago
  I'm old, I'm scared ... some monolithic non-tech company Wait, your solution to the problem of ageism in tech is "get out of tech, old fogey"??
  - che_shirecat 10y ago
    I think he's trying to say that ageism isn't as much of a big deal as people make it to be (outside of SV's alternate reality) - everyone in the industry deals with the constantly shifting landscape that engenders feelings of job insecurity for programmers young or old. It's just tougher on older techies that haven't carved out their niche. If you're trying to fit in and compete with fresh bootcamp grads working new frameworks at age 60, you're probably due for retirement - there's a reason why the traditional career path was to engineering management positions for senior engineers. Either management, or something you're really good at that isn't the most hip new tech but still in high demand.
snarfy 10y ago
I've been following the technology my whole career. I am still employable, but it gets old. My advice to younger devs is to focus on general computer science fundamentals and application development skills. Those are the only skills that stay with you and grow as your career advances. The technologies always change so don't memorize them. Keep a reference around instead. Memorize things like design patterns and sorting algorithms.
- Thaxll 10y ago
  Sorting algorithm you serious? No one uses that in his carreer.
  - metaobject 10y ago
    While this is for the most part true, questions regarding sorting algorithms and data structures (debug this left-rotate function that operates on binary trees) still come up during interviews.
  - nsxwolf 10y ago
    You need them for those whiteboarding tech interviews.
    - BipolarElsa 10y ago
      Why the fuck is the hiring culture in programming to test candidates on something they rarely use if ever over the course of their career? What kind of insanity is this? Do they ask psychiatrists how to perform surgery during hiring interviews? Give me a break.
    - amyjess 10y ago
      I misread that as "waterboarding tech interviews", and I thought it was commentary on how whiteboard interviews feel like torture.
  - sulam 10y ago
    I mostly agree, however there are exceptions that prove the rule. Some engineers are working on standard libraries. (someone has to write that code!) Some people are taking advantage of their data set to write special-purpose sorting algorithms that blow generic algorithms out of the water. (guilty!) Some people are putting stuff together in interesting ways that requires them to understand and sometimes even re-implement the standard algorithms to take advantage of internal data structures or other interesting effects. (It's bad practice, but knowing the order a map will iterate things in can be helpful if you don't expect it to change -- and make sure to have a unit test that proves it!)
paganel 10y ago
> Do they really enjoy having such ephemeral knowledge and basically competing with anyone that's finished a bootcamp or not even that? I'm not old, I've just past "il mezzo del cammin della mia vita" (meaning I'm 36), and I have to say that the latest and shiniest JavaScript frameworks are pure and utter shit, and I say that as a guy who finds languages like PHP decent enough. I've started working on a project where the "npm install" thing took 1h and a half and generated 260,000 files (?!?!?). One of the countless modules in there is called Chevron (?!?!), with a capital "C", and I sincerely don't know what it does or what's is supposed to do (to make it clear, Chevron has no relationship with said project). It's just baffling.
- sethammons 10y ago
  Heh. I'm right there with you. I've not done web development in over a decade. Yesterday, I decided to look into React. To generate a hello world took over a minute of pulling down and building dependencies. Things are bizzare and inane now. All I want is a .js file to link in my HTML and for that .js to be editable.
theoh 10y ago
I'd say it's normal and healthy. Many industries in the UK, for example, now have what are called CPD obligations. ("Continuing Professional Development"). To stay current you have to earn a particular number of points each year by attending courses or other public events. Even something light like a public lecture might count, for example, for an architect. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Professional_development https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Professional_development
DanBC 10y ago
> And why is it that most older people answering on these threads are so passionate about learning ...because older people are told all the time, even on HN, that they're too old to learn and that they don't keep up with technology. It's not surprising that they pre-empt these doubts by saying what they do to keep learning. > Why not have an honest conversation What's the honest conversation?
- blub 10y ago
  Well, an honest conversation would involve acting like a regular human, and not a lean mean learning machine ready to go head to head with any younger developer. Because most people want to live their lives, not jump on a learning threadmill.
  - sulam 10y ago
    Life IS a learning treadmill. Have you looked at the state of employment today? Unless you don't care about income at all, you have to be constantly learning, because things are constantly changing. Even outside the employment space, I'm amazed at how fast the world is changing. My little girls get music playing by talking to a tiny box in our kitchen. Do you realize how crazy/cool that is?
  - DanBC 10y ago
    > acting like a regular human, In this thread we see people saying that older people are unsuitable employees because they have families, and would prioritise those families over work. We have people saying that older people are unable to learn new tech. When those people stop being discriminatory the older people can stop being super human.
gaius 10y ago
and the latest and greatest javascript frameworks There are two kinds of learning in play here: learning how to do new things, and learning how to do the same things a slightly different way. Learning a new JS framework is definitely the latter, when 99% of the time the end goal is a CRUD application that could have been done with anything from the last 20-odd years. Because that is all the vast majority of apps are at the end of the day... The former is what older people should be doing, leveraging the experience gained as a springboard.
bubbleRefuge 10y ago
I'm 47 and don't believe its a "macro-domain" issue. Maybe in some micro domains like getting hired at Facebook and Google that is the case. Software is eating the world and in my experience, there is still way more jobs than competent people. I have an older friend who's does c#/.Net/webapps consulting. He's has an endless stream of opportunities and never works for less than 70 an hour which is great wage for the southeast region where he lives.
amyjess 10y ago
I know, right? It's things like these that make me kinda regret going into tech. I should've gone into accounting or something like that instead. I'm 32, and while I'm an excellent mid-level developer, I don't think I'm ever going to be principal or possibly even senior material. And everything I've heard from everyone is that is that by the time you're in your mid-40s, you better either a) go into management or b) hit principal or architect level or you'll be unemployable. I'm probably going to end up unemployable in 20 years, and that frightens me.
sAuronas 10y ago
I agree - I started at 38 (41 now) and work on a team as an iOS dev where we have mobile, backend and machine learning engineers - ALL - under 30. My interview was blind, so no one knew I was old - or black. They couldn't discriminate if they wanted to. That said, I couldn't imagine using all the tools on this list to stay relevant. I find reading HN, Apple docs and related blogs, books on Swift and iOS, and just thinking about tech time-consuming but enough to keep me up-to-date or even ahead of my teammates. I do appreciate what he said - I don't image FB would hire me - but Fuck them. Do your own thing then. That's why I got into tech - to stay employed long enough to create for myself. Still, if you have the right experience, someone will hire you if the big names (or startups) won't.
jameshart 10y ago
I'm not sure if you intend this, but your comment comes across as a bit like "God, it's so embarrassing watching these old guys try to stay trendy by using the latest JavaScript frameworks, it's like seeing an old guy in skinny jeans riding a skateboard. They're not doing it because they enjoy it, they're just trying to act like the kids". Who says using the latest javascript toys is only for the kids? Are you really worried that if you see old coders using the tools you like, that maybe that means they're not as cool as you thought? Is that really how technology works?
clifanatic 10y ago
> That recipe to stay current looks tiresome. ... Your reward: you are still employable. It does make pursuing a career in programming seem dubious, doesn't it? There's an old saying about "clawing your way to the top", but sometimes it feels like I'm clawing my way back to where I started. I feel like I'm expected to have instant answers to any question and immediately comprehend any technology (regardless of its level of documentation or comprehensibility). I actually do enjoy learning about new things (and old things!), but most of the time, we're not paid to learn, we're paid to instantly know, and if you don't instantly know, there are 20 guys lined up around the block who are ready to take your place as soon as you admit that you don't know how to set up pass-through SSL using the undocumented firewall product that was installed last week that you don't have credentials for and we don't have time for you to waste reading documentation because there's a customer deadline and there's no slack in the schedule. The only other career I can think of that you have to put this much ongoing personal effort into is entertainment; it's like we have all the downsides of entertainment careers without any of the upsides. On the other hand, I can't imagine doing anything else - every other job (except maybe astronaut) looks murderously boring to me.

by blub 10y ago

daemonk 10y ago

I kinda agree in the sense that I think that a lot of the tech jobs out there are not "difficult" in a way that requires years and years of experience to perform reasonably well at. So maybe someone older should look for jobs that suit their abilities rather than a job that, as you said, anyone who went through a bootcamp can perform. Hopefully with age comes some kind of niche specialization or skill that can't be obtained easily.

mgkimsal 10y ago
"Hopefully with age comes some kind of niche specialization or skill that can't be obtained easily." The big issue I've seen played out multiple times is a hiring manager, dev lead or anyone making a hiring decision not being able to tell the difference between what requires experience/skills/specialization and what doesn't. It leads to the all-too-common situation of people with required-experience being passed on in favor of the (generally younger) "hey, this person can definitely do it - they know all this computer stuff!" (slight exaggeration). It gets even more complicated when the person without the required skills tries to bluff their way through (deceptively or just out of sheer desperation).

IshKebab 10y ago

> And why is it that most older people answering on these threads are so passionate about learning and about new technologies and the latest and greatest javascript frameworks. Do they really enjoy having such ephemeral knowledge and basically competing with anyone that's finished a bootcamp or not even that? Nobody enjoys having their hard-earned knowledge become obsolete (hence the "X11/bash/sysvinit/etc were good enough for me so let's never improve them" crowd). But the fact is computer technology does change fairly quickly. You have to keep learning to keep up. If you're really worried there are definitely some technologies that persist for longer than others. If you really hate re-learning stuff then I'd stay far away from the web and javascript. Stick with things like Java, Go, C#, C++ & Rust. Those aren't going away any time soon. Ruby, Docker, React, etc... I give 5 years max. Then you'll have to learn something new.

rimantas 10y ago
> Ruby, Docker, React, etc... Just for the record, Ruby is 21 years old. Ruby on Rails is 10 years old.
- shaftoe 10y ago
  Also, I wouldn't include docker in that list. It's evolving rapidly into a core component of many platform frameworks.
- user5994461 10y ago
  3 web development technologies :D First tip for elders: don't be in web development.
blub 10y ago
I am doing just that (but Go and Rust don't belong on that list). However, if a lot of people are doing things radically differently it starts limiting my options too.

metafunctor 10y ago

Nah. The fact that this post exists is evidence that ageism is a thing. What makes you think older people are passionate about the latest and greatest JavaScript frameworks? That is not my experience at all. New frameworks are just the same old stuff in a new wrapper. We've seen it all several times over. Like, backprop was a cool thing in the late 80s. I, too, find this post sad, but probably not for the same reasons you did. This post, that makes me and you sad, doesn't make it any less of a fact that the young people in this industry think you are a useless dinosaur if you don't know what the new hot thing is about.

blub 10y ago
It's tough to communicate this accurately. I've noticed a trend in engineers self-evaluating as old on HN to say things along the lines "I am having more fun than ever learning about the cloud/TypeScript/webfoo". Several people on all these "old in tech" threads. I have the feeling these posts are not at all representative of the domain, and neither are the proposed solutions to just learn more, but it's all I've seen so far. More of the same thing is not bringing us any closer to solving this very real issue.
- metafunctor 10y ago
  OK, that's probably where our experiences differ. In my experience, the more experienced techies see that there's nothing really new in the new technologies. Many realize that to stay current, they must learn the new tech. But rarely do they really love it, because it's really a step sideways rather than forward. I suppose it's a form of competition that forces new technologies to pop up all the time. I just wish people would take a really close look at what's already there before spending their prime bestowing the world with yet-another-framework or language. By the way, I'm 40. I don't think I'm old. I think Scheme is superior to JavaScript.
eeZah7Ux 10y ago
> Nah. The fact that this post exists is proof that ageism is a thing. Indeed, ageism exists and it's a form of discrimination. There are societies (e.g. japanese, korean, central/southern european) where ageism works the other way around, at the expense of younger people. In both cases it's still discrimination and we should acknowledge the problem and fight it instead of trying to look/act younger or older.

kfk 10y ago

Can you explain what's the honest conversation to be had here? That "old" people should be looking for jobs outside of Tech? I am trying to understand your point of view. I can't even start to imagine how hard this gets when you are "old", have a family to take care of and, for god's sake, you'd like some kind of stability in life. I am 30 by the way. I feel way more prepared than 5 years ago. I think experience is important sometimes.

blub 10y ago
This could probably only be solved by changing the forever young, fashion-oriented US software development culture. Staying current is just mitigating the problem, not solving it. And staying current should anyway mean growing ones knowledge not replacing it every X years or investing so much time like the author recommends.

smokestack 10y ago

Almost every ageism post I've read on HN ignores the hundreds of thousands of others jobs that exist outside of [hot SV tech companies] (avg age at FB is 28? no way!), and also don't mention those people who are right of the bell curve and working at companies like that (because their experience actually is valuable). Some of these posts are real ageism claims, but most are "I'm old, I'm scared, how am I going to survive with a highly valuable skillset?" It's fear mongering. If you're concerned with job security, go find a job with security in government or in some monolithic non-tech company based in Go-Fuck-Yourself, GA. The "Hi, Fellow Kids" hipster-posing BS isn't going to land you a job at Facebook no matter how old you are.

otaviokz 10y ago
Agreed. The deliberate ignoring the whole world outside FB/Google is a alarming sign that the idea is just to get blog reads by piggybacking the last bombastic statement by someone famous in the sw industry.
- falcolas 10y ago
  > ignoring the whole world outside FB/Google The whole world outside of GAFA looks to those companies for "how to do software development right" - no matter if they are right or not. I've watched more than a few well established companies start to ape Google's hiring practices, or Amazon's churn, or Facebook's development practices just to try and attract new young developers.
gaius 10y ago
I'm old, I'm scared ... some monolithic non-tech company Wait, your solution to the problem of ageism in tech is "get out of tech, old fogey"??
- che_shirecat 10y ago
  I think he's trying to say that ageism isn't as much of a big deal as people make it to be (outside of SV's alternate reality) - everyone in the industry deals with the constantly shifting landscape that engenders feelings of job insecurity for programmers young or old. It's just tougher on older techies that haven't carved out their niche. If you're trying to fit in and compete with fresh bootcamp grads working new frameworks at age 60, you're probably due for retirement - there's a reason why the traditional career path was to engineering management positions for senior engineers. Either management, or something you're really good at that isn't the most hip new tech but still in high demand.

snarfy 10y ago

I've been following the technology my whole career. I am still employable, but it gets old. My advice to younger devs is to focus on general computer science fundamentals and application development skills. Those are the only skills that stay with you and grow as your career advances. The technologies always change so don't memorize them. Keep a reference around instead. Memorize things like design patterns and sorting algorithms.

Thaxll 10y ago
Sorting algorithm you serious? No one uses that in his carreer.
- metaobject 10y ago
  While this is for the most part true, questions regarding sorting algorithms and data structures (debug this left-rotate function that operates on binary trees) still come up during interviews.
- nsxwolf 10y ago
  You need them for those whiteboarding tech interviews.
  - BipolarElsa 10y ago
    Why the fuck is the hiring culture in programming to test candidates on something they rarely use if ever over the course of their career? What kind of insanity is this? Do they ask psychiatrists how to perform surgery during hiring interviews? Give me a break.
  - amyjess 10y ago
    I misread that as "waterboarding tech interviews", and I thought it was commentary on how whiteboard interviews feel like torture.
- sulam 10y ago
  I mostly agree, however there are exceptions that prove the rule. Some engineers are working on standard libraries. (someone has to write that code!) Some people are taking advantage of their data set to write special-purpose sorting algorithms that blow generic algorithms out of the water. (guilty!) Some people are putting stuff together in interesting ways that requires them to understand and sometimes even re-implement the standard algorithms to take advantage of internal data structures or other interesting effects. (It's bad practice, but knowing the order a map will iterate things in can be helpful if you don't expect it to change -- and make sure to have a unit test that proves it!)

paganel 10y ago

> Do they really enjoy having such ephemeral knowledge and basically competing with anyone that's finished a bootcamp or not even that? I'm not old, I've just past "il mezzo del cammin della mia vita" (meaning I'm 36), and I have to say that the latest and shiniest JavaScript frameworks are pure and utter shit, and I say that as a guy who finds languages like PHP decent enough. I've started working on a project where the "npm install" thing took 1h and a half and generated 260,000 files (?!?!?). One of the countless modules in there is called Chevron (?!?!), with a capital "C", and I sincerely don't know what it does or what's is supposed to do (to make it clear, Chevron has no relationship with said project). It's just baffling.

sethammons 10y ago
Heh. I'm right there with you. I've not done web development in over a decade. Yesterday, I decided to look into React. To generate a hello world took over a minute of pulling down and building dependencies. Things are bizzare and inane now. All I want is a .js file to link in my HTML and for that .js to be editable.

theoh 10y ago

I'd say it's normal and healthy. Many industries in the UK, for example, now have what are called CPD obligations. ("Continuing Professional Development"). To stay current you have to earn a particular number of points each year by attending courses or other public events. Even something light like a public lecture might count, for example, for an architect. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Professional_development https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Professional_development

DanBC 10y ago

> And why is it that most older people answering on these threads are so passionate about learning ...because older people are told all the time, even on HN, that they're too old to learn and that they don't keep up with technology. It's not surprising that they pre-empt these doubts by saying what they do to keep learning. > Why not have an honest conversation What's the honest conversation?

blub 10y ago
Well, an honest conversation would involve acting like a regular human, and not a lean mean learning machine ready to go head to head with any younger developer. Because most people want to live their lives, not jump on a learning threadmill.
- sulam 10y ago
  Life IS a learning treadmill. Have you looked at the state of employment today? Unless you don't care about income at all, you have to be constantly learning, because things are constantly changing. Even outside the employment space, I'm amazed at how fast the world is changing. My little girls get music playing by talking to a tiny box in our kitchen. Do you realize how crazy/cool that is?
- DanBC 10y ago
  > acting like a regular human, In this thread we see people saying that older people are unsuitable employees because they have families, and would prioritise those families over work. We have people saying that older people are unable to learn new tech. When those people stop being discriminatory the older people can stop being super human.

gaius 10y ago

and the latest and greatest javascript frameworks There are two kinds of learning in play here: learning how to do new things, and learning how to do the same things a slightly different way. Learning a new JS framework is definitely the latter, when 99% of the time the end goal is a CRUD application that could have been done with anything from the last 20-odd years. Because that is all the vast majority of apps are at the end of the day... The former is what older people should be doing, leveraging the experience gained as a springboard.

bubbleRefuge 10y ago

I'm 47 and don't believe its a "macro-domain" issue. Maybe in some micro domains like getting hired at Facebook and Google that is the case. Software is eating the world and in my experience, there is still way more jobs than competent people. I have an older friend who's does c#/.Net/webapps consulting. He's has an endless stream of opportunities and never works for less than 70 an hour which is great wage for the southeast region where he lives.

amyjess 10y ago

I know, right? It's things like these that make me kinda regret going into tech. I should've gone into accounting or something like that instead. I'm 32, and while I'm an excellent mid-level developer, I don't think I'm ever going to be principal or possibly even senior material. And everything I've heard from everyone is that is that by the time you're in your mid-40s, you better either a) go into management or b) hit principal or architect level or you'll be unemployable. I'm probably going to end up unemployable in 20 years, and that frightens me.

sAuronas 10y ago

I agree - I started at 38 (41 now) and work on a team as an iOS dev where we have mobile, backend and machine learning engineers - ALL - under 30. My interview was blind, so no one knew I was old - or black. They couldn't discriminate if they wanted to. That said, I couldn't imagine using all the tools on this list to stay relevant. I find reading HN, Apple docs and related blogs, books on Swift and iOS, and just thinking about tech time-consuming but enough to keep me up-to-date or even ahead of my teammates. I do appreciate what he said - I don't image FB would hire me - but Fuck them. Do your own thing then. That's why I got into tech - to stay employed long enough to create for myself. Still, if you have the right experience, someone will hire you if the big names (or startups) won't.

jameshart 10y ago

I'm not sure if you intend this, but your comment comes across as a bit like "God, it's so embarrassing watching these old guys try to stay trendy by using the latest JavaScript frameworks, it's like seeing an old guy in skinny jeans riding a skateboard. They're not doing it because they enjoy it, they're just trying to act like the kids". Who says using the latest javascript toys is only for the kids? Are you really worried that if you see old coders using the tools you like, that maybe that means they're not as cool as you thought? Is that really how technology works?

clifanatic 10y ago

> That recipe to stay current looks tiresome. ... Your reward: you are still employable. It does make pursuing a career in programming seem dubious, doesn't it? There's an old saying about "clawing your way to the top", but sometimes it feels like I'm clawing my way back to where I started. I feel like I'm expected to have instant answers to any question and immediately comprehend any technology (regardless of its level of documentation or comprehensibility). I actually do enjoy learning about new things (and old things!), but most of the time, we're not paid to learn, we're paid to instantly know, and if you don't instantly know, there are 20 guys lined up around the block who are ready to take your place as soon as you admit that you don't know how to set up pass-through SSL using the undocumented firewall product that was installed last week that you don't have credentials for and we don't have time for you to waste reading documentation because there's a customer deadline and there's no slack in the schedule. The only other career I can think of that you have to put this much ongoing personal effort into is entertainment; it's like we have all the downsides of entertainment careers without any of the upsides. On the other hand, I can't imagine doing anything else - every other job (except maybe astronaut) looks murderously boring to me.