6 ms·

There are companies that take this the other way. Companies where everyone is over 40 and has kids. And stability of the prod systems is highly prized. Nobody

There are companies that take this the other way. Companies where everyone is over 40 and has kids. And stability of the prod systems is highly prized. Nobody wants hackathons , we all leave at 5:30pm each day. These companies exist in Bay Area.

joewee 8y ago
Care to list a few for those who might be looking for something like that?
- rrauenza 8y ago
  I like working at VMware. It has a good work/life balance, age distribution seems well distributed, and only a couple hackathons a year -- totally optional.
  - my_usernam3 8y ago
    > only a couple hackathons a year Over one hackathon a year sounds like overkill to me, and I've never heard of a company with over two of them (not saying they don't exist of course)
    - rrauenza 8y ago
      Actually, it is once a year... I was mistaken.
    - tkxxx7 8y ago
      I’m at a company that does them quarterly, but they happen (mostly) during work hours.
- fweespeech 8y ago
  Danaher / Danaher Labs - assuming you can avoid having a bad manager. Our home room would regularly scold us gently for working late / weekends. The problem was, the home room wasn't really in charge.
  - muzz 8y ago
    What's a "home room" in this context?
    - fweespeech 8y ago
      I directly reported to a manager, who in theory, was responsible for my performance/etc. It was his job to play the "good cop" unless I was really fucking up. However, on a day-to-day basis I was reporting to a project lead (IT Director for an OpCo) for all practical purposes for the duration of the project I was on. "Bad cop". In theory, this structure is good for the employee if your homeroom is willing to call BS on the guy running the project. You end up with 2-3 managers evaluating you (depending on scale/# of projects) rather than 1 which can help even things out to "fair". However, if you are in my situation (direct report to CTO) vs. (home room, who is far down on the ladder relatively speaking)...the home room manager ends up protecting himself/career and doesn't push back. So you end up (for all practical purposes) being a direct report to the project lead until the project is done. On the whole, its a better management structure than most places and as long as you don't end up on a bad project it greatly reduces problems. If you end up on a bad project with a bad manager well...it really depends if your home room will defend you or not. 50/50 shot at protection is better than the 0% you get at most places.
- mundo 8y ago
  Just anecdata, but in my experience any company whose product is not software tends this way. Standard Insurance, Kroger, that sort of place - they have large software groups, but those groups report in to traditional executives from non-software backgrounds.
- yellowapple 8y ago
  I work for Grove; company-wide we have a pretty wide age spread (between 20's and 40's/50's from what I can tell without walking around asking people how old they are). Per-department is a bit of a different story, but Engineering seems to be reasonably age-diverse. We're also hiring pretty aggressively right now (grove.co/careers), for what it's worth.
- heddingcal 8y ago
  I work at SAP. I'd say we're pretty neutral on age - I work with people 20 years younger to 2 years older than me. I think I've put in maybe two 40+ hour weeks in the past 5 years. I manage several devs and I hate dashing the younger (or ambitious) ones' dreams of resume driven development. My team handles a legacy system that neither crashes frequently nor needs extensive refactoring. "Sorry, cutting up and containerizing the system and using Kubernetes to deploy isn't worth the headache." I know I'll keep getting promoted (and so will my reports) if I make sure my manager doesn't get calls from his manager asking why there are service outages. Things move very slowly on purpose. It's better to miss delivery dates than to get bad press or run afoul of laws (which begets bad press).
  - JonasJSchreiber 8y ago
    This is great. I just quoted from this during a meeting. Thanks!
  - arandr0x 8y ago
    What do you recommend to the younger or ambitious devs who want to grow in their career -- do you send them to training or let them have a side project of some kind so that they still have a somewhat valuable resume, or is it more a question of trying not to get junior devs (who need the resume building badly) in the first place? I'm curious because I work at a big company but not in a maintenance or operational role so I'm not sure what an "ideal" resume or career track looks like for such people.
- dagw 8y ago
  Insurance companies, logistics companies, civil engineering companies, civil service and government institutions, basically any company that uses a lot of specialized in house software, but don't ship software as part of their core business.
- rwmj 8y ago
  The team I work for at Red Hat has many older developers with children.
- maxxxxx 8y ago
  15 years ago I talked to few guys at Oracle and they said the devs of the core database are pretty old since experience in this area really counts.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
vanadium 8y ago
> There are companies that take this the other way. Companies where everyone is over 40 and has kids. And stability of the prod systems is highly prized. Nobody wants hackathons , we all leave at 5:30pm each day. These companies exist in Bay Area. I'm in Chicago at an agency, and our company is more or less just like this. Moreover, the average age on the team I direct is ~43--not by intention or design; it just happened over the course of inheriting the team and hiring since then. We have safe, risk-mitigated times for deployments, solid production systems, and unless something unexpectedly tanked or you're on flex time, we're all out at 5:00pm. They're out there, but they're not always easy to find.

joewee 8y ago

Care to list a few for those who might be looking for something like that?

rrauenza 8y ago
I like working at VMware. It has a good work/life balance, age distribution seems well distributed, and only a couple hackathons a year -- totally optional.
- my_usernam3 8y ago
  > only a couple hackathons a year Over one hackathon a year sounds like overkill to me, and I've never heard of a company with over two of them (not saying they don't exist of course)
  - rrauenza 8y ago
    Actually, it is once a year... I was mistaken.
  - tkxxx7 8y ago
    I’m at a company that does them quarterly, but they happen (mostly) during work hours.
fweespeech 8y ago
Danaher / Danaher Labs - assuming you can avoid having a bad manager. Our home room would regularly scold us gently for working late / weekends. The problem was, the home room wasn't really in charge.
- muzz 8y ago
  What's a "home room" in this context?
  - fweespeech 8y ago
    I directly reported to a manager, who in theory, was responsible for my performance/etc. It was his job to play the "good cop" unless I was really fucking up. However, on a day-to-day basis I was reporting to a project lead (IT Director for an OpCo) for all practical purposes for the duration of the project I was on. "Bad cop". In theory, this structure is good for the employee if your homeroom is willing to call BS on the guy running the project. You end up with 2-3 managers evaluating you (depending on scale/# of projects) rather than 1 which can help even things out to "fair". However, if you are in my situation (direct report to CTO) vs. (home room, who is far down on the ladder relatively speaking)...the home room manager ends up protecting himself/career and doesn't push back. So you end up (for all practical purposes) being a direct report to the project lead until the project is done. On the whole, its a better management structure than most places and as long as you don't end up on a bad project it greatly reduces problems. If you end up on a bad project with a bad manager well...it really depends if your home room will defend you or not. 50/50 shot at protection is better than the 0% you get at most places.
mundo 8y ago
Just anecdata, but in my experience any company whose product is not software tends this way. Standard Insurance, Kroger, that sort of place - they have large software groups, but those groups report in to traditional executives from non-software backgrounds.
yellowapple 8y ago
I work for Grove; company-wide we have a pretty wide age spread (between 20's and 40's/50's from what I can tell without walking around asking people how old they are). Per-department is a bit of a different story, but Engineering seems to be reasonably age-diverse. We're also hiring pretty aggressively right now (grove.co/careers), for what it's worth.
heddingcal 8y ago
I work at SAP. I'd say we're pretty neutral on age - I work with people 20 years younger to 2 years older than me. I think I've put in maybe two 40+ hour weeks in the past 5 years. I manage several devs and I hate dashing the younger (or ambitious) ones' dreams of resume driven development. My team handles a legacy system that neither crashes frequently nor needs extensive refactoring. "Sorry, cutting up and containerizing the system and using Kubernetes to deploy isn't worth the headache." I know I'll keep getting promoted (and so will my reports) if I make sure my manager doesn't get calls from his manager asking why there are service outages. Things move very slowly on purpose. It's better to miss delivery dates than to get bad press or run afoul of laws (which begets bad press).
- JonasJSchreiber 8y ago
  This is great. I just quoted from this during a meeting. Thanks!
- arandr0x 8y ago
  What do you recommend to the younger or ambitious devs who want to grow in their career -- do you send them to training or let them have a side project of some kind so that they still have a somewhat valuable resume, or is it more a question of trying not to get junior devs (who need the resume building badly) in the first place? I'm curious because I work at a big company but not in a maintenance or operational role so I'm not sure what an "ideal" resume or career track looks like for such people.
dagw 8y ago
Insurance companies, logistics companies, civil engineering companies, civil service and government institutions, basically any company that uses a lot of specialized in house software, but don't ship software as part of their core business.
rwmj 8y ago
The team I work for at Red Hat has many older developers with children.
maxxxxx 8y ago
15 years ago I talked to few guys at Oracle and they said the devs of the core database are pretty old since experience in this area really counts.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

vanadium 8y ago

> There are companies that take this the other way. Companies where everyone is over 40 and has kids. And stability of the prod systems is highly prized. Nobody wants hackathons , we all leave at 5:30pm each day. These companies exist in Bay Area. I'm in Chicago at an agency, and our company is more or less just like this. Moreover, the average age on the team I direct is ~43--not by intention or design; it just happened over the course of inheriting the team and hiring since then. We have safe, risk-mitigated times for deployments, solid production systems, and unless something unexpectedly tanked or you're on flex time, we're all out at 5:00pm. They're out there, but they're not always easy to find.