6 ms·

I was recently working with an older developer. I don't know, maybe of 65 or 70 years. He was working on aerospace network intrusion detection systems, and I wa

by tjr 10y ago

I was recently working with an older developer. I don't know, maybe of 65 or 70 years. He was working on aerospace network intrusion detection systems, and I was helping him set up a simulation system. He was slinging around low-level computer architecture terminology, while I was quickly trying to access what I remembered from a college class 15 years prior, just to keep up with the conversation. Older programmers are worthless, simply due to their age? Ridiculous. I hope to someday be as skillful as this guy.

marvindanig 10y ago
This whole idea of going after young fresh graduates is a ploy from the likes of Facebook or Google to increase their outreach and expand the talentpool they could source from. They are the ones that are on high towers and need people who know react or polymer or stuff like that. Startups usually, though anecdotal, don't discriminate based on age or length of experience. In fact most of the awesome startups that I know hired solely based on experience and that "fit" into the cultural diversity of the company.
HCIdivision17 10y ago
It's a weird experience if you're a clever youngster. I liken it to speed vs torque. I have to rely on being fast and being able to scan a problem as fast as I can to understand it. But an older engineer will just know the lay of the land. I had this happen a lot with an older electrical engineer. He seemed slow and I looked to run circles around everyone, but he could point to things as a root cause before I even understood the problem. I would have to spend time to decompress his observations to backtrack how he figured it out, and you start to realize that his shortcuts and heuristics are just so much better than mine. I wish all young engineers to have the opportunity to be whooped by the tortoise. Sometimes I would spot something he didn't, but it was frequently because I was approaching from a position of ignorance. It worried me that someday I'll lose that edge, but I guess it's why a good team will be diverse and balanced.
- err4nt 10y ago
  sounds like your approach complimented his as much as his complemented yours!
- nervousvarun 10y ago
  This is fundamentally true and basically is a great anecdotal argument for why we have the concept of a PE. Edit: Context is America and also obviously this isn't a thing in software but is very much the normal way of doing business in classical engineering.
  - mitchty 10y ago
    Where I work now we have PE's in software roles and I'm in America.
  - marcell 10y ago
    What is a PE?
    - robotresearcher 10y ago
      Professional Engineer. It's an anointed position from an association of engineers, like an old-time guild. There's a duty to mentor youngsters, and a requirement for youngsters to spend time being mentored before getting PE status themselves.
      - BatFastard 10y ago
        I don't believe the concept of PE extends to software. I know its true for architecture, you need a PE to sign off on big structures. I would LOVE to have it in software.
        robotresearcher 10y ago
        > I would LOVE to have it in software. Sounds good at first thought. Reliable quality and ethics for software engineers, right? On the other hand, you're inviting a special interest group to restrict the supply of software engineers and dictate university curricula. These professional programs/societies tend to be very conservative (engineers, doctors, lawyers) and have their members' interests possibly before society as a whole. Overall it probably still makes sense for the traditional professions. But as a CS prof watching my engineering academic neighbors struggle with scheduling, staffing and difficulty updating things, I really don't want the external constraints on our academic program. Overall, the community has not yet agreed that professional software engineering is a thing, though there have been several attempts to kick start it.
bitwize 10y ago
My father is still a practicing mechanical engineer in his 70s. The 20-something engineers use words like "awesome" to describe him. Of course it helps that his brilliance is God-tier, even without the decades of experience, but still.
alfalfasprout 10y ago
I feel like in the startup space a lot of young people just aren't exposed to just how good highly experienced engineers can be. As a result, they end up just hiring the best youngsters they can find (and afford) and dismiss a lot of people as dated. It's just breathtaking when you watch an experienced engineer slap together a well architected, highly optimized project that passes all tests on the first try. They even keep track of things like code size in the cache, opportunities for vectorization, etc.
- HCIdivision17 10y ago
  Elsewhere in the threads here someone noted that a lot of young teams don't have upper managers. And frankly, I'd believe many simply don't have any proper management. Where "proper" is critical. I've had a lot of managers, but few effective ones. And almost none who led the department. I found my mentors in other departments. It's a real shame, since a great manager will do more for learning and quality of life than anything else, I think.
- ryandrake 10y ago
  Yep, in contrast to the current unfortunate common practice of "hire in quantity and brute force your way to a working app". I've seen places where copy-pasting from StackOverflow was the norm and "getting it to compile" was seen as a milestone worthy of congratulation.

by tjr 10y ago

marvindanig 10y ago

This whole idea of going after young fresh graduates is a ploy from the likes of Facebook or Google to increase their outreach and expand the talentpool they could source from. They are the ones that are on high towers and need people who know react or polymer or stuff like that. Startups usually, though anecdotal, don't discriminate based on age or length of experience. In fact most of the awesome startups that I know hired solely based on experience and that "fit" into the cultural diversity of the company.

HCIdivision17 10y ago

It's a weird experience if you're a clever youngster. I liken it to speed vs torque. I have to rely on being fast and being able to scan a problem as fast as I can to understand it. But an older engineer will just know the lay of the land. I had this happen a lot with an older electrical engineer. He seemed slow and I looked to run circles around everyone, but he could point to things as a root cause before I even understood the problem. I would have to spend time to decompress his observations to backtrack how he figured it out, and you start to realize that his shortcuts and heuristics are just so much better than mine. I wish all young engineers to have the opportunity to be whooped by the tortoise. Sometimes I would spot something he didn't, but it was frequently because I was approaching from a position of ignorance. It worried me that someday I'll lose that edge, but I guess it's why a good team will be diverse and balanced.

err4nt 10y ago
sounds like your approach complimented his as much as his complemented yours!
nervousvarun 10y ago
This is fundamentally true and basically is a great anecdotal argument for why we have the concept of a PE. Edit: Context is America and also obviously this isn't a thing in software but is very much the normal way of doing business in classical engineering.
- mitchty 10y ago
  Where I work now we have PE's in software roles and I'm in America.
- marcell 10y ago
  What is a PE?
  - robotresearcher 10y ago
    Professional Engineer. It's an anointed position from an association of engineers, like an old-time guild. There's a duty to mentor youngsters, and a requirement for youngsters to spend time being mentored before getting PE status themselves.
    - BatFastard 10y ago
      I don't believe the concept of PE extends to software. I know its true for architecture, you need a PE to sign off on big structures. I would LOVE to have it in software.
      - robotresearcher 10y ago
        > I would LOVE to have it in software. Sounds good at first thought. Reliable quality and ethics for software engineers, right? On the other hand, you're inviting a special interest group to restrict the supply of software engineers and dictate university curricula. These professional programs/societies tend to be very conservative (engineers, doctors, lawyers) and have their members' interests possibly before society as a whole. Overall it probably still makes sense for the traditional professions. But as a CS prof watching my engineering academic neighbors struggle with scheduling, staffing and difficulty updating things, I really don't want the external constraints on our academic program. Overall, the community has not yet agreed that professional software engineering is a thing, though there have been several attempts to kick start it.

bitwize 10y ago

My father is still a practicing mechanical engineer in his 70s. The 20-something engineers use words like "awesome" to describe him. Of course it helps that his brilliance is God-tier, even without the decades of experience, but still.

alfalfasprout 10y ago

I feel like in the startup space a lot of young people just aren't exposed to just how good highly experienced engineers can be. As a result, they end up just hiring the best youngsters they can find (and afford) and dismiss a lot of people as dated. It's just breathtaking when you watch an experienced engineer slap together a well architected, highly optimized project that passes all tests on the first try. They even keep track of things like code size in the cache, opportunities for vectorization, etc.

HCIdivision17 10y ago
Elsewhere in the threads here someone noted that a lot of young teams don't have upper managers. And frankly, I'd believe many simply don't have any proper management. Where "proper" is critical. I've had a lot of managers, but few effective ones. And almost none who led the department. I found my mentors in other departments. It's a real shame, since a great manager will do more for learning and quality of life than anything else, I think.
ryandrake 10y ago
Yep, in contrast to the current unfortunate common practice of "hire in quantity and brute force your way to a working app". I've seen places where copy-pasting from StackOverflow was the norm and "getting it to compile" was seen as a milestone worthy of congratulation.