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I'm 63 with a BS in Chemistry and MS in Environmental Systems Engineer. I was a student teacher of microbiology when I was in graduate school. I started coding
by epalmer 10y ago
I'm 63 with a BS in Chemistry and MS in Environmental Systems Engineer. I was a student teacher of microbiology when I was in graduate school. I started coding fortran in HS about 1969 or 1970.
> I'm pretty knowledgeable about paid search and social but I don't think my Political Science degree has anything to do with that. To imply that someone's age precludes them from understanding paid search, mobile advertising, or social is the very definition of ageism.
I run 134+ branded sites (and maybe 20+ other misc sites) some of which do extensive search marketing (extensive for a university). I am a digital native as much as the next person regardless of age.
- overcast 10y agoSorry, you run 154+ sites?
- epalmer 10y agoSure do.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- overcast 10y agoI thought I was busy with ~10.
- epalmer 10y agoIt is not that bad. All are in a push CMS. We have a staff for content and UX. Many sites are small. Probably total 15,000 pages for all sites. These are univeristy sites so they are not complex apps. But there is a lot of backend code and middleware for pushing files to the CDN and to an xml database.
- logicallee 10y agoAll right. I'll be honest, I forgot what thread we were on, I was just in awe at all of the sites you run. My next thought was, "man, I wish I could use some guy like him, but he is just too expensive." One thing is for sure: there are definitely, 100%, no-questions about it, over 1 people who can be reached and who, at least for a few months, would take over 15,000 pages and 154+ sites. (An early 20s hacker). For under $30,000. That excludes nearly everybody: but not everybody. There is 1 person you can find who can do it. However, that one person is not going to be over 50. Over 50 people "aren't stupid" and are not going to do that for you for $30,000 and no other compensation. You can say under twenty people will be "stupid enough" that you can find someone to do it. But more accurately, they have different motivations. There's nothing stupid about working for $30,000 doing a job that's worth half a million, when your friends are earning $20,000 as barristas at starbucks. People's lives change over time. . . .
- nostrebored 10y ago"There's nothing stupid about working for $30,000 doing a job that's worth half a million, when your friends are earning $20,000 as barristas at starbucks." That's patently false. Undervaluing your labor because your friends work in a poorly compensated industry makes no sense. If anything the money you are earning when you are younger is more important to secure for ROI purposes.
- logicallee 10y agoAll right: to the best of my current understanding, there is nothing wrong with ever taking a salary vastly under market in one's twenties, including literally performing CTO-level work worth half a million and equal to the work of many developers under you (or hell, even leading or directing them), for $30,000. There's nothing wrong with that, and it's not a bad life choice. Especially if one's social life is also important and includes many other twenty-somethings in various professions. we're just going to disagree if you think otherwise - we don't have to get into an argument about it. In my world view not everything is about maximizing salary.
- emcrazyone 10y agoso you're the exception to the norm; you're one data point against... ;)
- epalmer 10y agoYou might be right. I run circles around some of the youngsters I work with. Yet I still feel like an imposter.
- skrebbel 10y agois he though? i mean, are you sure about the norm? meet a young colleague who doesn't understand search, you'll say "he has no clue about search". meet an older colleague and you might say "he's too old to understand search".
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- saghm 10y agoReminds me of http://xkcd.com/385/ http://xkcd.com/385/
- blueatlas 10y agoI am 55, CS degree, and also a digital native. I run a digital agency. In this past year, I've been the technical decision maker for development efforts for over 20 web sites/applications, full stack. I can work with decision makers, and I can deep dive to any place in the web stack. I was the technical lead on a cloud deployment for a $1bn government contractor. I have a business partner and am also in the early stages of a SaaS startup. My point. Nobody will ever dictate what I can and cannot do in this complex, wonderful, and growing digital space. Ever.
- otakucode 10y agoThe norm? Which would be the general public? I think you will find anyone who can solve an equation is an exception to the norm. A computer programmer of ANY competence, even an amateur 12 year old, is 3 standard deviations outside the norm. And if you're going to restrict your norm to just computer professionals... you'd best run some numbers before making assumptions.