3 ms·

The idea that 40 is "old" is hilarious to me.

by symmitchry 9y ago

sotojuan 9y ago
This is the same industry that calls people in their late 20s "senior".
- sokoloff 9y ago
  Late 20s? I've seen title structures where the first promotion is to "senior" and that is often granted ~18 months into working. It's early enough that it can be ambiguous as to whether it means your working title or your year in college.
  - jacquesm 9y ago
    You can blame job ads for that. Since nobody wants to be called 'junior' there are job ads that are clearly targeted at fresh-out-of-school people who somehow are also senior developers. I've seen some amazing young coders that definitely were worthy of that title but they were the exception, not the rule. The tell tale is if the salary that goes with the job is one that you could support a family and a mortgage on. If that's not the case then the position is 'junior'.
  - mattmanser 9y ago
    I saw someone get promoted to a "senior" for rolling his own logging framework. And then starts arguing with me about how long functionality will take when he clearly hasn't got a scooby of what's involved (me 2 months, him 2 days, 2 weeks later and he's still trying to pick apart how the code even works). One of many reasons I bailed from that gig asap.
    - krapp 9y ago
      At a previous gig, I had to explain to my CTO what JSON was and why it was better than the ad-hoc serialization format he made up where every field was delimited by multiple dollar signs. I interned there, and I was probably twice as old as everyone else. Oh, and that JSON was supported natively in PHP. The language they were using.
- psyc 9y ago
  I got my first "senior software engineer" title at the wizened age of 22! I'm not kidding, but it is hilarious.
gjmacd 9y ago
Agree. Especially with startups. I have to say, I'd been to a bunch of local Meetups and have bent the age curve at them. Looking around going, "wow, these could all be my kids...". And most of them are good programmers but terrible at decision making. My only problem with "today's young programmer" is really the lack of experience to know enough to "see this movie before". I've seen a lot of mistakes in companies that I've been at and worked at only to go "Umm... yeah, don't do that..." -- only to see them make the mistake because they haven't had enough time or experience it. It's like watching my kids touch the hot stove for the first time. But the industry loves "young". Don't they? When funding comes for a startup, it appears VC's are willing to dump the money on the 24 year old with a pitch deck that excites them... it's amazing.
- mark-r 9y ago
  Being young has advantages when starting a company. Naivety reduces the barriers to entry, as does having nothing to lose. I've never founded a company, but I was employee #1 once, and I couldn't do that at this point in my life.

The idea that 40 is "old" is hilarious to me.

sotojuan 9y ago

This is the same industry that calls people in their late 20s "senior".

sokoloff 9y ago
Late 20s? I've seen title structures where the first promotion is to "senior" and that is often granted ~18 months into working. It's early enough that it can be ambiguous as to whether it means your working title or your year in college.
- jacquesm 9y ago
  You can blame job ads for that. Since nobody wants to be called 'junior' there are job ads that are clearly targeted at fresh-out-of-school people who somehow are also senior developers. I've seen some amazing young coders that definitely were worthy of that title but they were the exception, not the rule. The tell tale is if the salary that goes with the job is one that you could support a family and a mortgage on. If that's not the case then the position is 'junior'.
- mattmanser 9y ago
  I saw someone get promoted to a "senior" for rolling his own logging framework. And then starts arguing with me about how long functionality will take when he clearly hasn't got a scooby of what's involved (me 2 months, him 2 days, 2 weeks later and he's still trying to pick apart how the code even works). One of many reasons I bailed from that gig asap.
  - krapp 9y ago
    At a previous gig, I had to explain to my CTO what JSON was and why it was better than the ad-hoc serialization format he made up where every field was delimited by multiple dollar signs. I interned there, and I was probably twice as old as everyone else. Oh, and that JSON was supported natively in PHP. The language they were using.
psyc 9y ago
I got my first "senior software engineer" title at the wizened age of 22! I'm not kidding, but it is hilarious.

gjmacd 9y ago

Agree. Especially with startups. I have to say, I'd been to a bunch of local Meetups and have bent the age curve at them. Looking around going, "wow, these could all be my kids...". And most of them are good programmers but terrible at decision making. My only problem with "today's young programmer" is really the lack of experience to know enough to "see this movie before". I've seen a lot of mistakes in companies that I've been at and worked at only to go "Umm... yeah, don't do that..." -- only to see them make the mistake because they haven't had enough time or experience it. It's like watching my kids touch the hot stove for the first time. But the industry loves "young". Don't they? When funding comes for a startup, it appears VC's are willing to dump the money on the 24 year old with a pitch deck that excites them... it's amazing.

mark-r 9y ago
Being young has advantages when starting a company. Naivety reduces the barriers to entry, as does having nothing to lose. I've never founded a company, but I was employee #1 once, and I couldn't do that at this point in my life.