5 ms·

> remember what they do to engineers that are over 40. May I ask what do you mean by this? I'm an engineer entering my late 30's, what is it exactly that I hav

by jcroll 8y ago

> remember what they do to engineers that are over 40. May I ask what do you mean by this? I'm an engineer entering my late 30's, what is it exactly that I have to prepare for by the time I enter my 40s?

ddebernardy 8y ago
They eventually get fired because too old/too expensive. Get into management/team leadership in a way or another asap. You're probably not feeling this right now because the economy is overheated. But be wary of the next recession if you're still doing the same job - however much better - than a junior for several times their salary. (If you've specialized and valuable skills that are extremely hard to replace you should be fine. But if you're doing generic stuff it's time to take a cold hard look at what your career will be in the next 25 years.) And just to be clear in case one might think this is ageism at work: having seen the difference in productivity, I'd hire a 40+ senior over 3 juniors in a heartbeat most of the time, but budget doesn't always allow one to do so.
- zmmmmm 8y ago
  > having seen the difference in productivity, I'd hire a 40+ senior over 3 juniors in a heartbeat most of the time Honestly I think it's not directly ageism, but indirectly, many people are afraid of managing people with significantly more experience or just plain older than them. So if the team lead is 35 with 10 years eng experience, they will probably be worried about a 45 y/o with 25 years eng experience who will challenge their authority and possibly prevent them from leading the whole team the way they want. Developing the maturity to not just cope with but thrive on managing people with much more experience / knowledge than yourself takes time, especially for engineers who tend to derive their authority primarily from their technical knowledge / experience. Eventually it will happen, but only after those managers replace technical experience with actual management experience as the basis of their self-worth / ego / authority.
  - JohnBooty 8y ago
    > So if the team lead is 35 with 10 years eng > experience, they will probably be worried about > a 45 y/o with 25 years eng experience who will > challenge their authority and possibly prevent > them from leading the whole team the way they want. This was a huge factor at my last job, with myself and other engineers who were much more experienced than the people who were (inexplicably) placed in charge. We had a VP who was so green that he didn't know what he didn't know. He was still in that phase of life where he knew 10% of everything, and since he didn't know the other 90% even existed... he thought his knowledge was 100%. Very difficult to work with, much less for. (And that's even without a "power struggle" happening. Us 40-ish types were explicitly disinterested in becoming management. Nobody wanted to undermine him; we literally just wanted to do our jobs without his incompetent micromanagement)
    - exikyut 8y ago
      An interesting reply to the GP comment. I finished reading the GP and immediately thought "so how do you learn to effectively manage people with more experience than yourself?", and then I read this comment. Hmm. I certainly don't want to end in the position of the manager you're referring to. I'm scared about/by the quantity of things I don't know, though, across the board, so there's that. (One of those things that are hard to sum up as good or bad, heh.) I guess the worst-case I can think of right now, is ending up in a situation where I might think the 10% I know _is_ 100%, and the social dynamics make it difficult for those around me to show me otherwise without treading on my toes, even privately. I wonder how I might counter for situations like that. My understanding of management is of owning a summarized, superset overview of a bunch of areas that I'm (ostensibly) coordinating. To do that effectively I need to be able to discern the difference between "implementational or otherwise safely 'losable' detail" and "piece of data I cannot effectively manage without" (literally). This can be very tricky, especially as the analysis rules change per domain...
      - JohnBooty 8y ago
        > My understanding of management is of owning a summarized, > superset overview of a bunch of areas that I'm (ostensibly) > coordinating. I would most definitely agree with you. A manager doesn't need to have more "in the trenches" knowledge than those that report to them. In fact that's probably not even possible or even desirable. Most of my really good managers have been less technical than me. > Hmm. I certainly don't want to end in the position > of the manager you're referring to. I'm scared > about/by the quantity of things I don't know, though, > across the board, so there's that. (One of those things > that are hard to sum up as good or bad, heh.) If you're concerned about it, that's probably an excellent sign that you'll do what it takes not to fall into that trap. Actually I'll be really specific about the trap our manager fell into. It's SUPER avoidable. Here's what he did: 1. He or his management would present a problem or challenge 2. He would design a solution with his very incomplete knowledge, down to the technical details 3. He would break it up into tasks 4. He would assign those tasks to us You can see the problem there. The people with the actual in-the-trenches knowledge were completely shut out of the design process and his solutions were often terrible. Furthermore, WE were the ones made to look bad by this process. HIS management thought he was this uber-competant guy who could not only manage but architect solutions as well! And even break them up into little bite-sized chunks for the engineers to execute! And WE looked like "negative nancies" who were like, slowing him down by pushing back against these solutions and tasks he handed out. He was like a poor general who was always getting his troops killed, that managed to convince the higher-ups that he was just constantly given bad troops or something. His favorite retort was "well, what's your suggestion?" when we challenged his poorly thought-out solutions. And it was like... I don't know, Ben. I just got handed your shitty solution five seconds ago and you still haven't even told us what you're even trying to accomplish here. We haven't had three hours or three days or three weeks to come up ideas like you have. Obviously, the process ought to have gone like this: 1. He or his management would present a problem or challenge 2. He should present the problem to his team, explaining the technical goals as well as how those goals fit into the big picture of the business 3. The team collectively should have designed and discussed possible solutions. 4a. Through that process he should have acted as advisor and sounding board. He should have recognized our greater domain knowledge. 4b. Of course, that street goes both ways. He should have recognized our greater experience and domain knowledge, but we should have also recognized the need for to prove the viability of our solutions to him before implementing them, just like we'd do with any manager regardless of relative age or experience -- the relationship would not work if we expected him to simply "take our word for it" because we we older or more experienced.
- scarface74 8y ago
  If you've specialized and valuable skills that are extremely hard to replace you should be fine. But if you're doing generic stuff it's time to take a cold hard look at what your career will be in the next 25 years. I agree completely. After ignoring my career and staying at one job for 10 years, I woke up in my mid 30s and realized I was way behind the times. I was a C/C++ bit twiddler. I started over, took a lateral salary move on a path of being a .Net “Enterprise Developer”. Eight years, 4 jobs, a lot of studying, and humbling myself under much younger team lead, I got a job as a dev team lead responsible for building a software development department. After that, I again saw the writing on the wall and knew I needed to make another pivot. I had a choice between another job as an architect leading a team of 10 on a Windows/.Net product paying $15K+ more or being “just a developer” in title making $7K more but with a chance to work with tech that the cool kids were doing. I chose the latter. At this point, all of the standard “full stack developer” jobs are paying less than I make now. But I still need to learn $frontend_framework_of_the_week along with Node to add onto my architecture experience.
  - souprock 8y ago
    "realized I was way behind the times. I was a C/C++ bit twiddler." Say what? We pay good money for that. The other stuff is of almost no value to us. Heck, I almost never touch C++. It's plain C, assembly, or raw opcodes expressed in hexadecimal. This is where the fun is. FWIW, we hire people much older than 40. We have people old enough to have worked with paper tape. (like a cross between punch cards and magnetic tape) If somebody wants to twiddle bits with us all day every day, have a go at it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17912861 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17912861
    - scarface74 8y ago
      I’m not saying their are no jobs for but twiddlers, but there aren’t as many in most major metropolitan areas where most of the jobs are either enterprise developers or yet another software as a service. It was more about the optionality. The skillset is so specialized that I would spend years their an not be as hireable in the wider market.
lowdest 8y ago
I believe the end of that joke is "they take them out and shoot them."
- vram22 8y ago
  "behind the shed", I believe ... :)
- teuobk 8y ago
  The joke as shown in the movie Primer: https://youtu.be/fN-VAdAnoZ4?t=25 https://youtu.be/fN-VAdAnoZ4?t=25
philsnow 8y ago
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fN-VAdAnoZ4#t=26 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fN-VAdAnoZ4#t=26

by jcroll 8y ago

ddebernardy 8y ago

They eventually get fired because too old/too expensive. Get into management/team leadership in a way or another asap. You're probably not feeling this right now because the economy is overheated. But be wary of the next recession if you're still doing the same job - however much better - than a junior for several times their salary. (If you've specialized and valuable skills that are extremely hard to replace you should be fine. But if you're doing generic stuff it's time to take a cold hard look at what your career will be in the next 25 years.) And just to be clear in case one might think this is ageism at work: having seen the difference in productivity, I'd hire a 40+ senior over 3 juniors in a heartbeat most of the time, but budget doesn't always allow one to do so.

zmmmmm 8y ago
> having seen the difference in productivity, I'd hire a 40+ senior over 3 juniors in a heartbeat most of the time Honestly I think it's not directly ageism, but indirectly, many people are afraid of managing people with significantly more experience or just plain older than them. So if the team lead is 35 with 10 years eng experience, they will probably be worried about a 45 y/o with 25 years eng experience who will challenge their authority and possibly prevent them from leading the whole team the way they want. Developing the maturity to not just cope with but thrive on managing people with much more experience / knowledge than yourself takes time, especially for engineers who tend to derive their authority primarily from their technical knowledge / experience. Eventually it will happen, but only after those managers replace technical experience with actual management experience as the basis of their self-worth / ego / authority.
- JohnBooty 8y ago
  > So if the team lead is 35 with 10 years eng > experience, they will probably be worried about > a 45 y/o with 25 years eng experience who will > challenge their authority and possibly prevent > them from leading the whole team the way they want. This was a huge factor at my last job, with myself and other engineers who were much more experienced than the people who were (inexplicably) placed in charge. We had a VP who was so green that he didn't know what he didn't know. He was still in that phase of life where he knew 10% of everything, and since he didn't know the other 90% even existed... he thought his knowledge was 100%. Very difficult to work with, much less for. (And that's even without a "power struggle" happening. Us 40-ish types were explicitly disinterested in becoming management. Nobody wanted to undermine him; we literally just wanted to do our jobs without his incompetent micromanagement)
  - exikyut 8y ago
    An interesting reply to the GP comment. I finished reading the GP and immediately thought "so how do you learn to effectively manage people with more experience than yourself?", and then I read this comment. Hmm. I certainly don't want to end in the position of the manager you're referring to. I'm scared about/by the quantity of things I don't know, though, across the board, so there's that. (One of those things that are hard to sum up as good or bad, heh.) I guess the worst-case I can think of right now, is ending up in a situation where I might think the 10% I know _is_ 100%, and the social dynamics make it difficult for those around me to show me otherwise without treading on my toes, even privately. I wonder how I might counter for situations like that. My understanding of management is of owning a summarized, superset overview of a bunch of areas that I'm (ostensibly) coordinating. To do that effectively I need to be able to discern the difference between "implementational or otherwise safely 'losable' detail" and "piece of data I cannot effectively manage without" (literally). This can be very tricky, especially as the analysis rules change per domain...
    - JohnBooty 8y ago
      > My understanding of management is of owning a summarized, > superset overview of a bunch of areas that I'm (ostensibly) > coordinating. I would most definitely agree with you. A manager doesn't need to have more "in the trenches" knowledge than those that report to them. In fact that's probably not even possible or even desirable. Most of my really good managers have been less technical than me. > Hmm. I certainly don't want to end in the position > of the manager you're referring to. I'm scared > about/by the quantity of things I don't know, though, > across the board, so there's that. (One of those things > that are hard to sum up as good or bad, heh.) If you're concerned about it, that's probably an excellent sign that you'll do what it takes not to fall into that trap. Actually I'll be really specific about the trap our manager fell into. It's SUPER avoidable. Here's what he did: 1. He or his management would present a problem or challenge 2. He would design a solution with his very incomplete knowledge, down to the technical details 3. He would break it up into tasks 4. He would assign those tasks to us You can see the problem there. The people with the actual in-the-trenches knowledge were completely shut out of the design process and his solutions were often terrible. Furthermore, WE were the ones made to look bad by this process. HIS management thought he was this uber-competant guy who could not only manage but architect solutions as well! And even break them up into little bite-sized chunks for the engineers to execute! And WE looked like "negative nancies" who were like, slowing him down by pushing back against these solutions and tasks he handed out. He was like a poor general who was always getting his troops killed, that managed to convince the higher-ups that he was just constantly given bad troops or something. His favorite retort was "well, what's your suggestion?" when we challenged his poorly thought-out solutions. And it was like... I don't know, Ben. I just got handed your shitty solution five seconds ago and you still haven't even told us what you're even trying to accomplish here. We haven't had three hours or three days or three weeks to come up ideas like you have. Obviously, the process ought to have gone like this: 1. He or his management would present a problem or challenge 2. He should present the problem to his team, explaining the technical goals as well as how those goals fit into the big picture of the business 3. The team collectively should have designed and discussed possible solutions. 4a. Through that process he should have acted as advisor and sounding board. He should have recognized our greater domain knowledge. 4b. Of course, that street goes both ways. He should have recognized our greater experience and domain knowledge, but we should have also recognized the need for to prove the viability of our solutions to him before implementing them, just like we'd do with any manager regardless of relative age or experience -- the relationship would not work if we expected him to simply "take our word for it" because we we older or more experienced.
scarface74 8y ago
If you've specialized and valuable skills that are extremely hard to replace you should be fine. But if you're doing generic stuff it's time to take a cold hard look at what your career will be in the next 25 years. I agree completely. After ignoring my career and staying at one job for 10 years, I woke up in my mid 30s and realized I was way behind the times. I was a C/C++ bit twiddler. I started over, took a lateral salary move on a path of being a .Net “Enterprise Developer”. Eight years, 4 jobs, a lot of studying, and humbling myself under much younger team lead, I got a job as a dev team lead responsible for building a software development department. After that, I again saw the writing on the wall and knew I needed to make another pivot. I had a choice between another job as an architect leading a team of 10 on a Windows/.Net product paying $15K+ more or being “just a developer” in title making $7K more but with a chance to work with tech that the cool kids were doing. I chose the latter. At this point, all of the standard “full stack developer” jobs are paying less than I make now. But I still need to learn $frontend_framework_of_the_week along with Node to add onto my architecture experience.
- souprock 8y ago
  "realized I was way behind the times. I was a C/C++ bit twiddler." Say what? We pay good money for that. The other stuff is of almost no value to us. Heck, I almost never touch C++. It's plain C, assembly, or raw opcodes expressed in hexadecimal. This is where the fun is. FWIW, we hire people much older than 40. We have people old enough to have worked with paper tape. (like a cross between punch cards and magnetic tape) If somebody wants to twiddle bits with us all day every day, have a go at it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17912861 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17912861
  - scarface74 8y ago
    I’m not saying their are no jobs for but twiddlers, but there aren’t as many in most major metropolitan areas where most of the jobs are either enterprise developers or yet another software as a service. It was more about the optionality. The skillset is so specialized that I would spend years their an not be as hireable in the wider market.

lowdest 8y ago

I believe the end of that joke is "they take them out and shoot them."

vram22 8y ago
"behind the shed", I believe ... :)
teuobk 8y ago
The joke as shown in the movie Primer: https://youtu.be/fN-VAdAnoZ4?t=25 https://youtu.be/fN-VAdAnoZ4?t=25

philsnow 8y ago

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fN-VAdAnoZ4#t=26 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fN-VAdAnoZ4#t=26