6 ms·

I've worked with some extremely smart older people, who did some awesome stuff in the 70s/80s. My impression is that usually, in my experience, they're very jad

I've worked with some extremely smart older people, who did some awesome stuff in the 70s/80s. My impression is that usually, in my experience, they're very jaded and set in their ways. They seem to like to do things their own way and give the impression that they're infallible because they deconstructed an x stack in y decade, and complain about the cyclical nature of programming. They also seem to usually not go out to happy hours/events with the team to get to know one another as often, so they're excluded a little more, which leads to fewer people getting to know them. I have seen exceptions, one of the PMs on my current team must be in her 60s and she exhibits none of the characteristics above and is a really amazing, smart person. It's just that most of the older people I have personally met seem to have the traits I described above. This would give me a little pause when choosing between equal candidates for, say, an angular dev position where both candidates have equal experience in the stack, but the older one has the baggage(?) of having been a programmer since the 70s and knows COBOL or something. I would likely have an unconscious bias to hire the younger one.

treehau5 10y ago
I see people as young as 25 being set in there ways as well when it comes to the latest hipster trends. For example we had a heated argument about Vue vs React at work the other day. Turns out the other party arguing in favor of Vue had actually never even used React before. They were just blindly recycling the same bike-shedded arguments against JSX as every other middle-tier dev I have ever encountered seems regurgitate. You can get set in your ways at any age. The solution to the happy-hour problem is to have your happy hours during work, not after hours. Even I, who am young, healthy, no kids and loves beer, would get tired of having to go to xyz happy hour at 6p.m just to keep my edge. The other thing: I bet that old guy is the first one in every morning. And probably brings his lunch every day. Also is not interested in an afternoon ping pong break. Translation: He or she probably actually works more, despite being "at work" less.
- 67726e 10y ago
  > Turns out the other party arguing in favor of Vue had actually never even used React before. It's entirely possible to do your research and evaluate a framework, language, or tool without having to use it, just like I don't have to go out and shoot some smack to know that heroin is probably not for me. Being able to evaluate what your needs and wants for a tool are, without having to write a To Do list is a useful skill.
  - viraptor 10y ago
    You're comparing a short experiment with no side effects to getting possibly addicted for life though... Sure, you could research some tech from the books and references, but that's never the same as having an experimental, hands-on experience. Mostly because people almost never have the exact same use case as you, so you may realise what's missing in a few minutes of experimenting - but nobody wrote about it before, because it wasn't relevant for them. Research may be enough. But research + trying a simple prototype is always better.
- doktrin 10y ago
  > I see people as young as 25 being set in there ways as well when it comes to the latest hipster trends I once watched a fistfight almost break out in the office over threads vs. event loops. Both engineers were in their mid 20's (as I was, at the time). From my limited experience, pig headedness seems to be a personality trait - not something intrinsically age related.
- cmiles74 10y ago
  At my office, we play darts and drink beer for the last hour and a half of every Friday. The majority of the time everyone is there and we spend a lot of time chatting while we play. It's fun and I really think it keeps everyone friendly, it's that much easier to remember the other person is a real person when you disagree. Sometime people go out to a bar or something afterwards. I may feel like I'm missing out but it never feels like something I "should" be doing.
- olivierva 10y ago
  Totally true, I sit at my desk at 7am work till 6pm. The kids come in at 11am and do oh so much over time when working till 7pm. And don't get me started about their relationship problems. And this happy hour is the worst social thing ever. I work in London and there are a lot of people here who don't drink alcohol because of religious reasons or it's not a big part of their culture. Happy hour is only social for people who like to get drunk. No problem with that but a company with a drinking culture will never be diverse and will therefor suffer creatively. I once managed a super multi cultural team (9 nationalities and 5 different religions). We socialised by going to a museum or a historical walk through London. That said, I see a lot of young people who can only can do small talk after a couple of drinks. Which is a shame because it shows when new people join the team.
  - nfriedly 10y ago
    > I sit at my desk at 7am work till 6pm. The kids come in at 11am and do oh so much over time when working till 7pm. Why are you working 11-hour days when your colleagues are working 8-hour days?
    - olivierva 10y ago
      Efficiency: I do my thinking/coding/building/writing (not writing emails) in the morning before anyone comes in and can interrupt me. I plan all meetings (which I don't consider proper work) in the afternoons. In short: work first, chatting and socialising afterwards. Some people do like to do it the other way around, which I totally understand and respect. I'm more of a morning person. TDLR; My first 8 hours I start with creating value and at the end of the day I a put in a few extra hours (not always) to socialise ;-)
  - Greed 10y ago
    I don't think that many people would consider 7AM to 6PM a reasonable expectation of work unless you're in the game development industry (and even then not reasonable, just expected). I get that it might be amusing for you when people complain about an overtime that's three hours less than your total workday, but it really is quite unnatural for someone to work for that long. Spending 70% of your waking hours at work is not something to be proud of. The rest is quite good to hear as an anecdote, however. It's great to hear about teams that socialize in a way that doesn't involve beer, pingpong, or partying. Strange sort of frat culture that we live in.
jghn 10y ago
"and complain about the cyclical nature of programming" What is wrong with this? There are cycles in our industry. Sure, it's not exactly the same each time around but the themes go back and forth.
- humanrebar 10y ago
  I agree with you. At the risk of speaking for someone else, my impression is that "cyclical nature" is fighting the last battle filtered through cognitive dissonance. It also comes across as aloof and/or academic to some people.
graycat 10y ago
Knowing Cobol, Algol, Fortran, APL, Lisp, PL/I, several assembler languages, several scripting languages, etc., actually, maybe surprisingly, does not damage the brain! There is a lot in, say, PL/I that should be in more recent languages but is not. Gee, guys, C was always supposed to be a toy language, to run on an 8KB DEC PDP-8 (IIRC), and C++ was originally just a Bell Labs pre-processor to C. In contrast, PL/I was a very carefully designed language. IIRC the Multics and Primos operating systems were written basically in PL/I. Yes, D. Knuth's The Art of Computer Programming is old, but heap sort, the Gleason bound, and AVL trees are all in there and still relevant. Also that is one of the best places to learn the combinatorial and probabilistic math for finding big-O evaluations. But, statistics in Python and R? Some people got started in such things by writing their own code, using the IBM Scientific Subroutine Library, using SPSS and SAS. So, who is better at digging into statistics via Python and R? Also some of the older guys actually took good courses in mathematical statistics and know about minimum variance, unbiased, maximum likelihood, statistical hypothesis tests and the Neyman-Pearson result, etc.
- nickpsecurity 10y ago
  "Primos operating systems were written basically in PL/I." I thought Primos was supposed to be some Fortran dialect (FORTRAN IV in Wikipedia). Then a PL/I variant much later. I've been citing it as an OS written in a Fortran-like language given I had no data countering that. You got some? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRIMOS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRIMOS
  - graycat 10y ago
    The first versions of Primos were written in a slightly tweaked Fortran. The PL/I role was significant but later. I managed a Prime system when I was in grad school and later lead an effort to get a later Prime system when I was a B-school prof.
    - nickpsecurity 10y ago
      That makes sense. Was there anything good or unique you remember about it versus the competition? Or just a boring also-ran of that period?
Retric 10y ago
Years in the stack of choice is almost the worst possible choice when looking for people. Someone with 20 years _ learned stuff during that time period unless they are a drooling idiot. The most practical reason to look for younger workers is to find people willing to work below their market rate because they are bad at negotiation. A decade of 5-10% raises can usually keep them happy which is a huge net win as they end up even further behind what the market would pay them. The problem is they only ever learn your internal system and often become blind to it's issues.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- bbcbasic 10y ago
  I think most tech workers would know the market rates for their position at least 1 year into their first job. Even if they don't want to - e.g. the recruiter who placed them calls them up 6 months later for a friendly chat. "We just want to check that you are happy!".
Animats 10y ago
Complain about the cyclical nature of programming. After you've seen the same mistakes repeated with a cycle of about 15 years, that happens.
- sanderjd 10y ago
  Yeah, maybe instead of complaining about that complaining, it would behoove folks to take it seriously and make a study of prior art a part of their workflow. Those cyclical-nature complainers are a great resource for pointers!
  - nickpsecurity 10y ago
    I've found this to be true. Helped me solve lots of problems in highly-assured systems and INFOSEC. Hint: I just started with stuff people did (currently) almost 40+ years ago with some of foundations nearly 60. A lot of it still worked in similar contexts. It's why I drop so many links and references to prior art here.
    - sanderjd 10y ago
      For what it's worth, I usually find your links very interesting. Thanks!
bogomipz 10y ago
>" ... My impression is that usually, in my experience, they're very jaded and set in their ways. They seem to like to do things their own way and give the impression that they're infallible because they deconstructed an x stack in y decade ..." Remove the word "decade" and that could describe people from just about any demographic in tech - millennials, Gen X, etc. >"and complain about the cyclical nature of programming" How is complaining about that particular thing different or worse than complaining about why language X sucks because it doesn't have generics or feaure ____" or any of the other complaints about various languages or frameworks that come up on HN all the time? >"They also seem to usually not go out to happy hours/events with the team to get to know one another as often, so they're excluded a little more, which leads to fewer people getting to know them." The only way to get to know people is to go drinking after work? You know you can go out for coffee and lunch with people too right? Or is that somehow less meaningful because it doesn't involve booze or craft beers? Honestly your comments come off as ageist.
ludable 10y ago
Glad you recognize it for what it is: bias. This is exactly what prejudice looks like. Take a small sample, derive a generalization, rationalize it, let it affect your judgement. At least you're aware of it, and hopefully fight it within yourself to try and work with the most talented people regardless of background.
- ludable 10y ago
  I want to add something to my snappy answer. Age discrimination is just another facet of lack of diversity and rejection of difference that plagues many industries. Your well-intentioned comment has the pattern: "I've worked with some extremely smart <class of people>, who <positive comment>. My impression is that usually, in my experience, <display a different pattern of thinking to what I expect>. They also seem to usually not go out to happy hours/events with the team to get to know one another as often, so they're excluded a little more, which leads to fewer people getting to know them. It's just that most of the <class of people> I have personally met seem to have the traits I described above. This would give me a little pause when choosing between equal candidates for, say, an angular dev position where both candidates have equal experience in the stack, but the <class of people> one has the baggage(?) of <difference>. I would likely have an unconscious bias to hire the <more similar to the norm> one." Now, replace <class of people> with "women" or "muslims" and think about how it feels for people to be cast in a generalization. If it's not right in those cases, it's not right for experienced developers either.
cmiles74 10y ago
I think this is more of a generational issue, I don't think it's all about age. People in their forties today seem way easier to deal with then the people in their forties that I worked with out of college.
quanticle 10y ago
They also seem to usually not go out to happy hours/events with the team to get to know one another as often, so they're excluded a little more, which leads to fewer people getting to know them. This, right here, is why Silicon Valley has problems with diversity. As a rule of thumb, the only people who actually want to go to happy hour with their co-workers after 8+ hours of taxing mental work are 1) young 2) white and 3) extroverted. In other words, they fit the "brogrammer" stereotype. I've never really liked going out with my co-workers after work. When I'm done, I want to go home and decompress, not deal with another two or three hours of enforced social interaction.
- verylittlemeat 10y ago
  In my experience going out to happy hour suggests young and extroverted not necessarily white.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
gexla 10y ago
If they are set in their ways, how did they get to the point of having the required experience using Angular as well as the rest of the stack?
deepaksurti 10y ago
>> They seem to like to do things their own way and give the impression that they're infallible because they deconstructed an x stack in y decade, and complain about the cyclical nature of programming This should vary with context and one must be humble enough to accept the grey hair's argument backed by facts if it is valid and move on. Win win for everyone. >> They also seem to usually not go out to happy hours/events with the team to get to know one another as often, so they're excluded a little more, which leads to fewer people getting to know them. I dont' understand this craze to know them? Why, for what? If after working/collaborating for 8 hours with some one over days/weeks/months, you cannot figure out their personality and working style and as long as it is not a disruptive one, there is no point in knowing. This knowing is just substitute for loose pointless talk. >> I would likely have an unconscious bias to hire the younger one. We as a software industry must seriously look at how successful sports teams are run and stop this BS about we a family etc whose frailty shows up come layoff time! Every successful sport team is always a MIX of YOUTH and EXPERIENCE.
aswanson 10y ago
I think experience makes you humbler, at least it has in my case. You realize you don't know everything, it's always good to have someone to review/give alternate explanations and methods, and that things are not usually as simple as the appear at first. I'm a far better listener, more openminded, and willing to accept feedback from others than I was when I started my career.

treehau5 10y ago

I see people as young as 25 being set in there ways as well when it comes to the latest hipster trends. For example we had a heated argument about Vue vs React at work the other day. Turns out the other party arguing in favor of Vue had actually never even used React before. They were just blindly recycling the same bike-shedded arguments against JSX as every other middle-tier dev I have ever encountered seems regurgitate. You can get set in your ways at any age. The solution to the happy-hour problem is to have your happy hours during work, not after hours. Even I, who am young, healthy, no kids and loves beer, would get tired of having to go to xyz happy hour at 6p.m just to keep my edge. The other thing: I bet that old guy is the first one in every morning. And probably brings his lunch every day. Also is not interested in an afternoon ping pong break. Translation: He or she probably actually works more, despite being "at work" less.

67726e 10y ago
> Turns out the other party arguing in favor of Vue had actually never even used React before. It's entirely possible to do your research and evaluate a framework, language, or tool without having to use it, just like I don't have to go out and shoot some smack to know that heroin is probably not for me. Being able to evaluate what your needs and wants for a tool are, without having to write a To Do list is a useful skill.
- viraptor 10y ago
  You're comparing a short experiment with no side effects to getting possibly addicted for life though... Sure, you could research some tech from the books and references, but that's never the same as having an experimental, hands-on experience. Mostly because people almost never have the exact same use case as you, so you may realise what's missing in a few minutes of experimenting - but nobody wrote about it before, because it wasn't relevant for them. Research may be enough. But research + trying a simple prototype is always better.
doktrin 10y ago
> I see people as young as 25 being set in there ways as well when it comes to the latest hipster trends I once watched a fistfight almost break out in the office over threads vs. event loops. Both engineers were in their mid 20's (as I was, at the time). From my limited experience, pig headedness seems to be a personality trait - not something intrinsically age related.
cmiles74 10y ago
At my office, we play darts and drink beer for the last hour and a half of every Friday. The majority of the time everyone is there and we spend a lot of time chatting while we play. It's fun and I really think it keeps everyone friendly, it's that much easier to remember the other person is a real person when you disagree. Sometime people go out to a bar or something afterwards. I may feel like I'm missing out but it never feels like something I "should" be doing.
olivierva 10y ago
Totally true, I sit at my desk at 7am work till 6pm. The kids come in at 11am and do oh so much over time when working till 7pm. And don't get me started about their relationship problems. And this happy hour is the worst social thing ever. I work in London and there are a lot of people here who don't drink alcohol because of religious reasons or it's not a big part of their culture. Happy hour is only social for people who like to get drunk. No problem with that but a company with a drinking culture will never be diverse and will therefor suffer creatively. I once managed a super multi cultural team (9 nationalities and 5 different religions). We socialised by going to a museum or a historical walk through London. That said, I see a lot of young people who can only can do small talk after a couple of drinks. Which is a shame because it shows when new people join the team.
- nfriedly 10y ago
  > I sit at my desk at 7am work till 6pm. The kids come in at 11am and do oh so much over time when working till 7pm. Why are you working 11-hour days when your colleagues are working 8-hour days?
  - olivierva 10y ago
    Efficiency: I do my thinking/coding/building/writing (not writing emails) in the morning before anyone comes in and can interrupt me. I plan all meetings (which I don't consider proper work) in the afternoons. In short: work first, chatting and socialising afterwards. Some people do like to do it the other way around, which I totally understand and respect. I'm more of a morning person. TDLR; My first 8 hours I start with creating value and at the end of the day I a put in a few extra hours (not always) to socialise ;-)
- Greed 10y ago
  I don't think that many people would consider 7AM to 6PM a reasonable expectation of work unless you're in the game development industry (and even then not reasonable, just expected). I get that it might be amusing for you when people complain about an overtime that's three hours less than your total workday, but it really is quite unnatural for someone to work for that long. Spending 70% of your waking hours at work is not something to be proud of. The rest is quite good to hear as an anecdote, however. It's great to hear about teams that socialize in a way that doesn't involve beer, pingpong, or partying. Strange sort of frat culture that we live in.

jghn 10y ago

"and complain about the cyclical nature of programming" What is wrong with this? There are cycles in our industry. Sure, it's not exactly the same each time around but the themes go back and forth.

humanrebar 10y ago
I agree with you. At the risk of speaking for someone else, my impression is that "cyclical nature" is fighting the last battle filtered through cognitive dissonance. It also comes across as aloof and/or academic to some people.

graycat 10y ago

Knowing Cobol, Algol, Fortran, APL, Lisp, PL/I, several assembler languages, several scripting languages, etc., actually, maybe surprisingly, does not damage the brain! There is a lot in, say, PL/I that should be in more recent languages but is not. Gee, guys, C was always supposed to be a toy language, to run on an 8KB DEC PDP-8 (IIRC), and C++ was originally just a Bell Labs pre-processor to C. In contrast, PL/I was a very carefully designed language. IIRC the Multics and Primos operating systems were written basically in PL/I. Yes, D. Knuth's The Art of Computer Programming is old, but heap sort, the Gleason bound, and AVL trees are all in there and still relevant. Also that is one of the best places to learn the combinatorial and probabilistic math for finding big-O evaluations. But, statistics in Python and R? Some people got started in such things by writing their own code, using the IBM Scientific Subroutine Library, using SPSS and SAS. So, who is better at digging into statistics via Python and R? Also some of the older guys actually took good courses in mathematical statistics and know about minimum variance, unbiased, maximum likelihood, statistical hypothesis tests and the Neyman-Pearson result, etc.

nickpsecurity 10y ago
"Primos operating systems were written basically in PL/I." I thought Primos was supposed to be some Fortran dialect (FORTRAN IV in Wikipedia). Then a PL/I variant much later. I've been citing it as an OS written in a Fortran-like language given I had no data countering that. You got some? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRIMOS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRIMOS
- graycat 10y ago
  The first versions of Primos were written in a slightly tweaked Fortran. The PL/I role was significant but later. I managed a Prime system when I was in grad school and later lead an effort to get a later Prime system when I was a B-school prof.
  - nickpsecurity 10y ago
    That makes sense. Was there anything good or unique you remember about it versus the competition? Or just a boring also-ran of that period?

Retric 10y ago

Years in the stack of choice is almost the worst possible choice when looking for people. Someone with 20 years _ learned stuff during that time period unless they are a drooling idiot. The most practical reason to look for younger workers is to find people willing to work below their market rate because they are bad at negotiation. A decade of 5-10% raises can usually keep them happy which is a huge net win as they end up even further behind what the market would pay them. The problem is they only ever learn your internal system and often become blind to it's issues.

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
bbcbasic 10y ago
I think most tech workers would know the market rates for their position at least 1 year into their first job. Even if they don't want to - e.g. the recruiter who placed them calls them up 6 months later for a friendly chat. "We just want to check that you are happy!".

Animats 10y ago

Complain about the cyclical nature of programming. After you've seen the same mistakes repeated with a cycle of about 15 years, that happens.

sanderjd 10y ago
Yeah, maybe instead of complaining about that complaining, it would behoove folks to take it seriously and make a study of prior art a part of their workflow. Those cyclical-nature complainers are a great resource for pointers!
- nickpsecurity 10y ago
  I've found this to be true. Helped me solve lots of problems in highly-assured systems and INFOSEC. Hint: I just started with stuff people did (currently) almost 40+ years ago with some of foundations nearly 60. A lot of it still worked in similar contexts. It's why I drop so many links and references to prior art here.
  - sanderjd 10y ago
    For what it's worth, I usually find your links very interesting. Thanks!

bogomipz 10y ago

>" ... My impression is that usually, in my experience, they're very jaded and set in their ways. They seem to like to do things their own way and give the impression that they're infallible because they deconstructed an x stack in y decade ..." Remove the word "decade" and that could describe people from just about any demographic in tech - millennials, Gen X, etc. >"and complain about the cyclical nature of programming" How is complaining about that particular thing different or worse than complaining about why language X sucks because it doesn't have generics or feaure ____" or any of the other complaints about various languages or frameworks that come up on HN all the time? >"They also seem to usually not go out to happy hours/events with the team to get to know one another as often, so they're excluded a little more, which leads to fewer people getting to know them." The only way to get to know people is to go drinking after work? You know you can go out for coffee and lunch with people too right? Or is that somehow less meaningful because it doesn't involve booze or craft beers? Honestly your comments come off as ageist.

ludable 10y ago

Glad you recognize it for what it is: bias. This is exactly what prejudice looks like. Take a small sample, derive a generalization, rationalize it, let it affect your judgement. At least you're aware of it, and hopefully fight it within yourself to try and work with the most talented people regardless of background.

ludable 10y ago
I want to add something to my snappy answer. Age discrimination is just another facet of lack of diversity and rejection of difference that plagues many industries. Your well-intentioned comment has the pattern: "I've worked with some extremely smart <class of people>, who <positive comment>. My impression is that usually, in my experience, <display a different pattern of thinking to what I expect>. They also seem to usually not go out to happy hours/events with the team to get to know one another as often, so they're excluded a little more, which leads to fewer people getting to know them. It's just that most of the <class of people> I have personally met seem to have the traits I described above. This would give me a little pause when choosing between equal candidates for, say, an angular dev position where both candidates have equal experience in the stack, but the <class of people> one has the baggage(?) of <difference>. I would likely have an unconscious bias to hire the <more similar to the norm> one." Now, replace <class of people> with "women" or "muslims" and think about how it feels for people to be cast in a generalization. If it's not right in those cases, it's not right for experienced developers either.

cmiles74 10y ago

I think this is more of a generational issue, I don't think it's all about age. People in their forties today seem way easier to deal with then the people in their forties that I worked with out of college.

quanticle 10y ago

They also seem to usually not go out to happy hours/events with the team to get to know one another as often, so they're excluded a little more, which leads to fewer people getting to know them. This, right here, is why Silicon Valley has problems with diversity. As a rule of thumb, the only people who actually want to go to happy hour with their co-workers after 8+ hours of taxing mental work are 1) young 2) white and 3) extroverted. In other words, they fit the "brogrammer" stereotype. I've never really liked going out with my co-workers after work. When I'm done, I want to go home and decompress, not deal with another two or three hours of enforced social interaction.

verylittlemeat 10y ago
In my experience going out to happy hour suggests young and extroverted not necessarily white.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]

gexla 10y ago

If they are set in their ways, how did they get to the point of having the required experience using Angular as well as the rest of the stack?

deepaksurti 10y ago

>> They seem to like to do things their own way and give the impression that they're infallible because they deconstructed an x stack in y decade, and complain about the cyclical nature of programming This should vary with context and one must be humble enough to accept the grey hair's argument backed by facts if it is valid and move on. Win win for everyone. >> They also seem to usually not go out to happy hours/events with the team to get to know one another as often, so they're excluded a little more, which leads to fewer people getting to know them. I dont' understand this craze to know them? Why, for what? If after working/collaborating for 8 hours with some one over days/weeks/months, you cannot figure out their personality and working style and as long as it is not a disruptive one, there is no point in knowing. This knowing is just substitute for loose pointless talk. >> I would likely have an unconscious bias to hire the younger one. We as a software industry must seriously look at how successful sports teams are run and stop this BS about we a family etc whose frailty shows up come layoff time! Every successful sport team is always a MIX of YOUTH and EXPERIENCE.

aswanson 10y ago

I think experience makes you humbler, at least it has in my case. You realize you don't know everything, it's always good to have someone to review/give alternate explanations and methods, and that things are not usually as simple as the appear at first. I'm a far better listener, more openminded, and willing to accept feedback from others than I was when I started my career.