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Five of the six people on my team, including me, are over 30; four of us are over 40. I must admit that although devs with that level of experience are "expensi

Five of the six people on my team, including me, are over 30; four of us are over 40. I must admit that although devs with that level of experience are "expensive", they start to look a lot cheaper when you realise the additional value they add due to experience. Software development, as with many things in life, often follows the adage that you get what you pay for. (It should go without saying, but it's a sad inevitability that there will be exceptions.)

andrei_says_ 8y ago
A part of the higher pay grade is that the majority of the mistakes one must make to gain experience points have been paid for. Also, maturity often comes with a reduction of the ego-driven drama friction which can make people so much more pleasant to work with.
tabtab 8y ago
But many startups are "ship first, debug later". When it's a pump-and-dump fashion contest, younger fingers are probably better: a fast BS-nozzle to get VC attention. If instead you want your infrastructure to last 5 or 10 years and not get hacked, then experience will pay off.
- tluyben2 8y ago
  The over 40s I know are also able to produce working crap faster than the young-uns. If you call it a prototype (so the goal is showing functionality that works but later it will be tossed out and redone) then hiring me is probably going to produce a better one (less bugs and will probably last until the startup runs out of money) then it would with a ‘team of young ninjas’. As PR for VCs I can see a bunch of young people might look better (not to many VCs I talk to but I so not live in the US), but if you want ‘faster’, a 35+ who kept up is probably faster and cheaper. In my experience. When the company grows I definitely would not want a CTO under 35/40.
  - tabtab 8y ago
    Re: The over 40s I know are also able to produce working [prototypes] faster... Not necessarily if it has to be built in some stack or language flavor of the month (and VC's check). If you change entire tool-sets every 18 months, I bet the younger folks will be able to re-learn faster. I'm 40+ myself, and am saying this from experience. It's unfortunate our industry is so fad-driven, but I didn't create humans, I just work among them. I recommend one focus on a domain (insurance IT, healthcare IT, etc.) when they get around 40. Your domain knowledge will have market value. Reformatting your head all the time is not a good career strategy for most. (There is some value to some new IT things, but a good portion is hype and gimmicks.)
    - tluyben2 8y ago
      It might be different in different regions and different markets. Here VCs definitely don't check (or care). I find that they are generally more interested in buzzword bingo on a more abstract level; AI, ML, Blockchain etc. That said, I'm not building a religion; if the latest tech is a business goal, then it will happen. And i'm also not sure if it's true that 'we' would be slower to learn these things; I keep on top because, I feel, that as CTO, I need to understand what is out there and if there is something promising that can help us long term, I want to be early to find it. So I do learn every new fad, and, not to sound cocky because I believe it's just experience, there is not much to learn; they are all, in a lot of ways, rehashes. Sometimes you see something really innovative, but that's not the thing that ends up being a fad or even remotely popular. After 30+ years of programming in many different technologies/projects (especially the functional experience helps a lot these days) etc it is easy to recognize the patterns and the goals the programmer was going for when building that new tech. Not that I would want that job as a non-cto at a startup :)
      - tabtab 8y ago
        Maybe you are CTO and I'm not because my brain is not fast enough to keep up. Yes, a lot of it is rehashes of old things, but I keep inter-confusing the old incarnations with the new ones when coding. You can't cross-confuse 2 things if you never met one of them. Plus, its hard to keep enthusiasm up for the 500th reinvention of the wheel. Maybe I'll reinvent stronger coffee; call it "Covfefe 2.0", or "Blockchain Covfefe"...

andrei_says_ 8y ago

A part of the higher pay grade is that the majority of the mistakes one must make to gain experience points have been paid for. Also, maturity often comes with a reduction of the ego-driven drama friction which can make people so much more pleasant to work with.

tabtab 8y ago

But many startups are "ship first, debug later". When it's a pump-and-dump fashion contest, younger fingers are probably better: a fast BS-nozzle to get VC attention. If instead you want your infrastructure to last 5 or 10 years and not get hacked, then experience will pay off.

tluyben2 8y ago
The over 40s I know are also able to produce working crap faster than the young-uns. If you call it a prototype (so the goal is showing functionality that works but later it will be tossed out and redone) then hiring me is probably going to produce a better one (less bugs and will probably last until the startup runs out of money) then it would with a ‘team of young ninjas’. As PR for VCs I can see a bunch of young people might look better (not to many VCs I talk to but I so not live in the US), but if you want ‘faster’, a 35+ who kept up is probably faster and cheaper. In my experience. When the company grows I definitely would not want a CTO under 35/40.
- tabtab 8y ago
  Re: The over 40s I know are also able to produce working [prototypes] faster... Not necessarily if it has to be built in some stack or language flavor of the month (and VC's check). If you change entire tool-sets every 18 months, I bet the younger folks will be able to re-learn faster. I'm 40+ myself, and am saying this from experience. It's unfortunate our industry is so fad-driven, but I didn't create humans, I just work among them. I recommend one focus on a domain (insurance IT, healthcare IT, etc.) when they get around 40. Your domain knowledge will have market value. Reformatting your head all the time is not a good career strategy for most. (There is some value to some new IT things, but a good portion is hype and gimmicks.)
  - tluyben2 8y ago
    It might be different in different regions and different markets. Here VCs definitely don't check (or care). I find that they are generally more interested in buzzword bingo on a more abstract level; AI, ML, Blockchain etc. That said, I'm not building a religion; if the latest tech is a business goal, then it will happen. And i'm also not sure if it's true that 'we' would be slower to learn these things; I keep on top because, I feel, that as CTO, I need to understand what is out there and if there is something promising that can help us long term, I want to be early to find it. So I do learn every new fad, and, not to sound cocky because I believe it's just experience, there is not much to learn; they are all, in a lot of ways, rehashes. Sometimes you see something really innovative, but that's not the thing that ends up being a fad or even remotely popular. After 30+ years of programming in many different technologies/projects (especially the functional experience helps a lot these days) etc it is easy to recognize the patterns and the goals the programmer was going for when building that new tech. Not that I would want that job as a non-cto at a startup :)
    - tabtab 8y ago
      Maybe you are CTO and I'm not because my brain is not fast enough to keep up. Yes, a lot of it is rehashes of old things, but I keep inter-confusing the old incarnations with the new ones when coding. You can't cross-confuse 2 things if you never met one of them. Plus, its hard to keep enthusiasm up for the 500th reinvention of the wheel. Maybe I'll reinvent stronger coffee; call it "Covfefe 2.0", or "Blockchain Covfefe"...