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The Planned Obsolescence of Old Coders

• 781 8y ago
  > He was interviewed by a younger engineer who told him, “I’m always surprised when older programmers keep up on technology.” As someone relatively old, I've been in a lot of developer interviews. I also noticed that older programmers tend to not be as up to date in newer technologies or ways of doing things. I don't think it's strictly limited to technology. How many 50-year old do you know who listen to trap music? Or approve of the way teens dress these days? It's just the classic "older people tend to be more conservative" fact. At some point most people get stuck in the things the were doing/liking when they were younger. The hate new music, they dismiss newer technologies (to open a rats nest: Electron anyone?) I'm sure I'll get comments like "I'm 18 and I hate trap music and Electron". That's not the point, I'm talking about distributions not individual cases.
  • Moru 8y ago
    I think it's more that older coders to a larger degree have more commitments, there's less time to keep up with all new things while doing your job, family and whatever clubs your kids are member of.
    • scarface74 8y ago
      One of my responsibilities to my family (I’m in my mid 40s) is to make sure that we are all fed and have a roof over our head. If that means taking time to keep up with the $cool_kids and stay employable so be it. If you look at my resume over the past 10 years and the tech I’ve used, it’s indistinguishable from younger developers.
      • war1025 8y ago
        To a certain extent you also just need to be aware of where you are and where the market is going. You don't need to keep up with every single new technology, you just need an idea of where you fit in the current market and what skills you will need to pick up if / when you go to switch jobs.
        • scarface74 8y ago
          You need to pick up the skills before you switch jobs because othet people will already know it and be able to hit the ground running. I’m already asking for above median salaries (not talking about FAANG salaries), I need to show a level of architectural efficiency. Meaning no, I am not going to study leetCode and I’ll probably laugh if you ask me to invert a binary tree, but I will draw out and discuss a well design architecture and software development process and answer questions that show I have proficiency at the technologies I claim to know.
  • potta_coffee 8y ago
    You're making a lot of anecdotal generalizations here that contribute to the problem rather than help address it. What kind of music somebody likes or the clothing they're comfortable with shouldn't be part of the conversation at all, and for every anecdotal old-guy that hates Electron, I've met an anecdotal old-guy who's sharp as a tack and pushing the envelope with the latest tech.
    • 781 8y ago
      But the phenomenon I'm talking about is well established in psychology: https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/blog/mr-personality/201410/why-are-older-people-more-conservative https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/blog/mr-personality/20141...
      • gerbilly 8y ago
        The older I get, the more 'liberal' I get. I think it comes from having more and more empathy. The more I live, the less I feel I can judge people and their choices. Even if it is to prefer Mongo over Postgres :-)
        • yxhuvud 8y ago
          Mongo support acid transactions nowadays, so the reason for vitriol has lessened a lot. I like my explicit db schema though.
    • resource0x 8y ago
      The chances that YOU, when you reach same age, will be interested in pushing the envelope with the latest tech, are very low. The chances that you will find "latest tech" absurd and would rather be starving than pushing said envelope, are very high. When I was young, I couldn't even imagine the future with Spring framework, Hibernate, Angular, AWS configuration etc. The profession is dead for me, and has been dead for quite some time. This is my own anecdotal evidence, sorry.
      • potta_coffee 8y ago
  • deleted 8y ago
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  • gerbilly 8y ago
    > I also noticed that older programmers tend to not be as up to date in newer technologies or ways of doing things. I've been doing this a long time and it doesn't matter to me. The newer stuff is most of the time just a variation on a theme that I've seen turnover three or four times since i've been doing this. What older coders have that younger ones do not, is experience. This can often halve the workload on some projects. The older I get in this profession, the more results I get out of less and less code. Also, let's not immediately fetishize the newer stuff. It is often a less well implemented retread of older technology. Seems like people have less patience for learning existing systems, so they just re-write some quick and dirty replacement and call it good. Perhaps it might be better if younger programmers learned the old stuff instead of just badly reinventing the wheel every few years.
    • howard941 8y ago
      This. And older engineers have finer bullshit detectors. ISTM ageism is real, and it's all about the money.
    • unclebucknasty 8y ago
      >Perhaps it might be better if younger programmers learned the old stuff instead of just badly reinventing the wheel every few years. That's pure gold. Not to say there haven't been advances--there certainly have been. But, there's also the issue of the shininess of new tech giving it undue cred, while simultaneously translating to an outsized denigration of the tech it purports to replace. Frankly, a lot of these problems have been solved, and solved well. Look at NoSQL as an example. There are certainly use cases for it, but then people went nuts, exclaiming things like "RDBMS must die" and touting no ACID transactions as a feature/benefit. Then, you get the trickle of reports that maybe NoSQL wasn't the best choice for this or that. Finally, fast-forward to 2018 and you have announcements from MongoDB that they now support ACID transactions. Many older coders have seen enough of these cycles, and have adopted a justifiably-cynical posture of "wait for it...".
      • 420codebro 8y ago
        No ACID as a feature - lol. "My car? Fuck the airbags, fuck the seatbelts! It is fast though!"
  • ergothus 8y ago
    I certainly don't want to chime in with a detraction that misses your point, but I do feel there's a slight difference. (for context, I'm 42) I think the reason older coders don't "keep up" is because you have to lose ground first. If I want to adopt a new technology, I have to first learn how to handle problems I ALREADY KNOW HOW TO SOLVE with my current technologies. The better I am with solving the problems I encounter already, the more I will have to backpedal before I can go forward in a new tech. And while I definitely get better overall from learning a broader base of techs, over time there are definitely diminishing returns. The cost-benefit of learning something new vs spending that time either learning more of what I'm already in, or just solving any of the infinite things I want to get done is a balance that will slide more and more towards not bothering to learn new tech unless there's a real need. Add in that this is an industry rife with Imposter Syndrome that DEFINITELY bites you in the face during any moment of struggling to "get" a new tech, and there are plenty of incentives against embracing new tech beyond just "I don't like change". (though that is definitely present - I'm a JS dev currently, so I'm well familiar with the dismissive and arrogant attitudes that can be tossed around).
    • xtracerx 8y ago
      I hear this from older developers a lot, that the problems we are solving today have been solved already. That may be true to some extent, but I think that is dangerous, the ways the problems are solved again have different characteristics and advantages and generally push the ball forward. I think of it like forest fires clearing out old grown for new, and I think it's best to just have a zen-like mindset of being a constant beginner.
      • ergothus 8y ago
        I completely agree. I'm not giving a rant about society re-inventing the wheel, I'm talking at a personal level. If I know language X, but I'm trying to learn language Y, I have to learn how to do things that I already know how to do in X. It's a change that HAS to happen to learn, and I'll walk away a better coder, but that doesn't make the process of relearning any more enjoyable or more productive. I switched jobs recently and tried to adopt a zen-like attitude of beginners mind. It definitely helped...but I'd be lying if I said I never hit frustration points where I'm trying to go from A to C but I have to learn all about B when I don't WANT to care about B, I want to get to C. A good attitude helps, but I think the underlying reason is still true and is part of why experienced devs aren't adopting new tech at the rate of newer devs.
  • GordonS 8y ago
    I don't know; anecdotally, these days it seems things are not quite like that anymore. I'm pushing 40, and like reggae, acid jazz, electronic. I keep up to date (as far as one can) with tech, programming, cloud and the like. It's not just me - it feels like a lot of older people around me don't match the old stereotypes. Older colleagues are learning Typescript, my grandmother reads erotica... Youth culture is of course always changing, but older people are perhaps more liberal than they used to be, and don't feel like they need to behave a certain way any more more.
    • JustSomeNobody 8y ago
      > ...my grandmother reads erotica... I'm proud of your grandmother, but TMI, man. TMI.
    • potta_coffee 8y ago
      It's not just you. The youngsters in tech are blatantly ageist. They'll be singing a different tune when they're 40 and the generation behind is already chiseling out their headstones.
  • dv_dt 8y ago
    There is a problem of equating being "up to date" with "competent for the position". Up to date might mean you know how to work in the syntax & convention of the stack of interest, but that's largely independent of the level of competence for overall software development & discipline. If an older programmer is solid on the latter, getting up to date really isn't a large amount of time. It's harder to assess, just like its hard to assess in interviews even if the engineer is "up to date" - look at the perennial debate on how best to interview candidates.
  • jiggliemon 8y ago
    If you think newer “technology” (re: programming language or framework) is superior to older “technology” – you are likely agist, and part of the problem.
    • 781 8y ago
      So you think that someone saying that Python or C++ is superior to COBOL is ageist.
      • gerbilly 8y ago
        Depending on the context yes. If your bank has some COBOL systems running to keep accounts up to date, do you really want some team of pinheads to 'fix it' by porting it to python?
  • magduf 8y ago
    >The hate new music That's a different issue. New music really is garbage; the entire industry has changed over the last several decades. There's a reason so many younger people are listening to classic rock.
    • gerbilly 8y ago
      Everyone has different tastes, but there is some nice new music out there. This for example: http://www.hawaiianreggae.org/artists http://www.hawaiianreggae.org/artists Nice and mellow, lots of young new artists. It's a pretty good scene.
      • magduf 8y ago
        These days, to find new music that's actually any good, you have to look really hard, and everything that isn't mainstream has really veered off into very different directions (meaning any given artist/subgenre probably won't appeal to you). It isn't like the "old days" when the mainstream music was actually good. There's a reason all those rockers from the 70s and 80s (and some 60s!) are still touring.
        • 781 8y ago
          Your comment hilariously proves the point. Ask the kids what they think about today's mainstream music. They will say it's amazing. Who do you think drives the charts? Yes, yes, I know, you are or you know a couple youngsters who think anything newer than Pink Floyd is shit. And you think that the charts are not organic, they are "marketing", where the record label pay to get entry and rank.
    • deleted 8y ago
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    • renaudg 8y ago
      Sorry, but this is spoken like a true curmudgeon. Can I ask where it is you live to see hordes of young people finding solace in classic rock (or any sort of purely guitar-based music) ? Except maybe in US rural communities where it's all about country music (always has been, always will be) those days are well and truly over. "Nobody wants an electric guitar anymore" : https://qz.com/1013293/rock-and-roll-is-dead-sales-of-fender-and-gibson-electric-guitars-prove-it/ https://qz.com/1013293/rock-and-roll-is-dead-sales-of-fender... Meanwhile electronic music has taken millenials by storm. Tomorrowland festival sold out nearly 400.000 tickets in 40 minutes a few weeks ago. Same kind of numbers every year for Electric Daisy Carnival in the US. Never in history has there been so much quality music released every day in all genres, because musicians can now do so without the gatekeepers of the past, much like Youtube has shattered the TV networks. The consequence of that is that it's all about fragmented niches and discovery can be challenging. But there is gem after gem in my Spotify "Weekly Discovery" playlist. There has never been a more exciting time to be a music lover !
  • unclebucknasty 8y ago
    >I also noticed that older programmers tend to not be as up to date in newer technologies or ways of doing things. Serious consideration: I wonder how the cost of "older programmers not being as up to date" compares to the cost of younger programmers too quickly adopting newer technologies.
  • DanBC 8y ago
    > That's not the point, I'm talking about distributions not individual cases. But you're not talking about distributions. You talk about the individuals you meet in interviews.
  • waynecochran 8y ago
    As an older software engineer (52) I have developed a good sense of what "new technology" has a fleeting "here today and gone tomorrow" lifespan. I have seen a lot come and go. This is especially true now with "web tech" which I quit paying a lot of attention to because it so ephemeral. It is my math background and numerical computing (e.g., optimization) skills that keep me ahead of the pack. Only the best of the younger generation will keep up with me. Learn things that will be important for forever. Life is a breath and then we are gone.
    • PorterDuff 8y ago
      From the get off my lawn crowd (60) I don't mind being pushed out mostly because the work doesn't look that interesting at this point. I managed for 38 years with nothing in the way of languages (C, C++ when it became available, a whole bunch of assembly languages for exotic processors) by modern standards. Most of the heavy lifting in the workstation and high end embedded world was algorithmic. All they are is dust in the wind.
      • souprock 8y ago
        That is great experience, particularly "a whole bunch of assembly languages for exotic processors". Here, a job listing for you: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19284153 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19284153 Within 10 years here I had encountered more than 10 different CPU architectures. I've lost count now, but it is probably at least a dozen. The same goes for OSes.
  • robseed 8y ago
    45, certain "trap music" is a typo
    • seanmcdirmid 8y ago
      https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trap_music https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trap_music But...it was popular in the late 90s, which corresponds to us mid-40 age people anyways.
  • xorcist 8y ago
    > It's just the classic "older people tend to be more conservative" fact. Can we please kill this myth already? That was extraordinary so during the era when social changes swept through society, but someone who spent their formative years during the 70s will hardly regard today's society anything else than an extension of the changes which took place then. There are many different ways to act conservatively. Resistance to new ideas because "but we've always done it this way" is a lot more common with people whose definition of "always" stretches to five (maybe ten) years. > Electron anyone? Well, let's put it this way: Most ideas are bad. But you can't dismiss all ideas on that statistical ground, because then you would miss the really good ones.
  • deleted 8y ago
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• deanmoriarty 8y ago
  I'm in my early 30s and very aware of this, to the point where if I could go back I'd pick a different career. My strategy is: live in the bay area so I can get paid like crazy, live a very frugal life much below my means, invest diligently, and hopefully have enough money to retire in my late 30s (in a much cheaper area, of course), so that when I'll be told that I'm too old, I'll raise my middle finger and leave the scene with the few million dollars I saved.
  • Moru 8y ago
    Old people don't get useless, they have much needed experience that have to be harvested. Just because you use the latest fad does not mean you don't dig the same pit or just a slightly different pit. The young that realise this will stay ahead.
    • deanmoriarty 8y ago
      For sure, but in this case I apply the investing's theory "the market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent", to something like: "the software engineering labor market can stay irrational towards older people longer than the 2 decades past 40 where I could stay effectively employable".
  • foobiekr 8y ago
    Hi. I’m you from ten years in the future. Do not be afraid. I wanted to pop back in time and say thanks. Yeah you didn’t retire in your late thirties like you thought you would mostly because it’s harder to make FI cash than you thought. The crash of 2020 took a few years to get passed but hey 45 is the new late thirties as they say now. The reason I’m thanking you is you went ahead and struggled and saved anyway while things got tough and now you are free. Just FYI, I texted my QUIT to the HR bot in the Philippines just before I came back to see you. Btw quitting is harder than you think. Just to let you know, I don’t blame you. Not quitting at 40 when you could eke bye because they offered you 2x what you’d ever made to stay; yeah the place was thalidomide for your soul but then your wife (I’m not telling) got pretty sick and that cushion was worth it. Also: take care of your health and sleep more. An extra ten years of long hours at the terminal has left me not as healthy as I’d like.
• SamuelAdams 8y ago
  I work in enterprises with 50,000+ employees and billions in annual revenue. I work with older programmers all the time! They're better at programming in Angular than I am. And they are wonderful mentors! I think what's actually happening is some programmers, who happen to be older, don't keep up with their skills. Then when they interview, they bomb it, or talk about how they could do the same thing in an older stack. That's great, but the company is really invested in the current / new stack, so it doesn't make sense to hire someone who does not have those skills. So they pass them up and find a candidate who knows the software the company is looking for. But the older interview candidate, instead of reflecting on themselves and realizing they need to spend time enhancing their skills, they simply say the company was "ageist" and blame it on age discrimination. Blaming others is generally easier than blaming yourself, I guess.
  • SilasX 8y ago
    I don't remember where I read this, but that reminds me of the "Perl Paradox" -- that if your job listing requires a "Perl programmer", you get worse programmers, even though a good programmer can equally well adapt to any language, including Perl. But if you require such a person, your only applicants will be people who could never adapt to a new language. Edit: Ah, it's actually named that and I found a lot of results for it: https://www.activestate.com/resources/webinars/perl-paradox/ https://www.activestate.com/resources/webinars/perl-paradox/
    • keithnoizu 8y ago
      Interesting. I legitimately liked perl back in the day. The ability to do things like inline c code, etc. was great. But I've been immediately passing on any roles that mention Perl for a long time.
      • SilasX 8y ago
        Whoa, I had never even heard of c-inlining. Then again, I never really got into perl.
• kokokokoko 8y ago
  I'm getting up there in age and have always resigned to the fact that I'll probably be making significantly less money in 10 years or less in a low skilled job unless I get lucky. I don't want to go into a full management role in software so it's just something I've accepted. I'm not sure how I feel about it. Sometimes I just feel fortunate for the career I've had. I mostly wonder if I'll miss it or be glad to move on to a new chapter.
  • JKCalhoun 8y ago
    Same boat — mid 50's. (Crazy how I didn't see that happening.) For me it's a combination of 1) I see the writing on the wall: they don't really want me in this profession any longer and 2) I'm getting tired of it anyway — increasingly less willing to (laterally?) "move my skills". Begrudgingly learned Swift (I like it tho). Begrudgingly learned every new code management system that has come down the pike.... I'll switch careers and move on, go back to "service sector" pay scale. Maybe I worry more for the current crop of programmers. Those of my generation did all right — had fun. The industry is changing and not necessarily in a direction that looks enjoyable.
  • scaryclam 8y ago
    How about moving into consulting? That's pretty much my plan. Older developers have both the experience and the expertise that companies are looking for in a consultant, and it pays pretty well.
  • commandlinefan 8y ago
    Yeah, I'm worried too, here in my mid-40's. I just hope I can hang on to my current salary long enough to get my kids through college. My son is talking about majoring in CS, though - I'm wondering if I should be talking him out of it.
  • burnallofit 8y ago
    Early 50's here. I am switching jobs now, I'm at the top of my game, and getting the biggest money I've ever made. There are several factors, I believe. First, keep up to date. Certain things are really popular right now and therefore attract the best pay, and more jobs are available. Second, be in the right place. For example, SF Bay Area only has so much housing but has a lot of companies who are hiring, so they are competing for the people who are here. Third, project confidence because you are in fact awesome because of all the cool shit you've built. If you walk in to interviews resigned to making less money or a taking a step down, I bet you'll find that actually turns out to be true. Fourth, on a regular basis (once a month or so) you should be having conversations with your manager about your career and next steps, and taking time to work on getting there. One more protip. At a higher level, moving up further does not mean being a better coder. It means talking to people (often on different teams), thinking and generating ideas (and applying for patents), sometimes taking risks to prove those ideas, figuring out how to improve process, and generally communicating. If you believe you're not good at any of these, you can actually study and practice them and get better at them. I did, and it's working out for me.
• wiremine 8y ago
  For context: I'm VP of a software consultancy responsible for delivering software on time and on budget. My take is that older programmers who maintain their skills on new technology are worth their weight in gold. The financial trick is to pair them with younger developers to create an overall cost effective team. If both the older and younger devs go in with the right attitude, it can be wonderful for both the project and their respective careers. I also think it's really, really dumb to push developers into management positions if they can't do the job. I'd much prefer putting younger managers with great management skills into the mix than just rotating older devs into that role. Bottom line: software requires lifelong learning. If you can't or won't stay current, you're in trouble. If you can, then it's just agism or a bad business model that's keeping you out of awesome projects.
  • ticmasta 8y ago
    >> I also think it's really, really dumb to push developers into management positions if they can't do the job. This has been known forever, yet it still happens - Why? >> I'd much prefer putting younger managers with great management skills into the mix... One reason is it is impossible to tell if a young manager has great management skills. It's really hard to tell if an experienced manager has strong skills. As a result, technical proficiency is used as a proxy for management potential. It probably has a stronger correlation than picking a random person, but is not great. The new manager is then really unhappy, quits or is fired or eventually learns the new skills and is successful. Repeat.
    • sp332 8y ago
      Some companies only have one kind of career track. If you want more money, you have to be in a manager position. They don't have a way for experienced programmers to keep moving up in their careers as programmers.
      • sidlls 8y ago
        Is there any tech company where the technical track doesn't plateau below the people-manager track?
• gambler 8y ago
  At this point I am convinced that the stack treadmill most of IT is jogging on gets propped mostly by the people who want to up their salaries by keeping as many people out of their niche as possible. Older devs probably get hit by this harder than most, because I'd imagine the treadmill gets more tiresome as the time goes by, you see more hype cycles, and become more aware of it. But older devs are by no means the only ones who are affected. "Keeping up with with new technologies" is generally a euphemism for "uses a random set of frameworks I chose". Amusingly, devs who demand everyone to learn their frameworks are often the same people who try to stop anyone at their company from using or doing anything genuinely new, because it would undermine their position. This is, BTW, why there is so much talk about the "shortage" of software engineers right now.
  • geodel 8y ago
    > "Keeping up with with new technologies" is generally a euphemism for "uses a random set of frameworks I chose". This is a great point. I feel the same at work where a buzzword laden framework is more valuable than directly using a library underneath that framework.
  • JustSomeNobody 8y ago
    I was typing up a comment and couldn't get it right. You nailed it.
  • fuzz4lyfe 8y ago
    I'll be 30 fairly soon and am I the only one who doesn't find learning new technologies all that hard? Is it going to get harder soon? In my experience a database is a database, even if you call it something else. Really a database isn't too different from flat files with some helper functions to make rooting around them easier. In turn that's not to different from storing the information in RAM. Different ways to get at them but in the end you have the same bits in that string. Same with programming languages, I don't know the specific one you use perhaps but I move between C, Python, Javascript and Go without much friction (Jetbrains IDE's are helpful for when you forget specifics of syntax after a time away from a language). Sure I have to look up some how something is done in the standard library of one language vs another but I've gotten pretty quick at that. If I'm working on a existing codebase I can look how similar problems are solved and replicate that style. Containerization, Lamdba, serverless. It's the same old code running in new ways. I don't know what value to edit in the config file but that's just a google search away. At the end of the day its "I need to hit this endpoint and get this back" same story, different cast of characters. I don't mean to humblebrag or anything but it seems like a non-issue to me. I understand how computing systems work generally and the laws of physics impose some hard limitations that sort of massage any solution to look similar enough to any other that it isn't that hard to figure out what is going on. Sure I'll lack some of the deep knowledge that someone who has focused solely on these set of technologies may have but honestly most of the programmers I meet don't have that to begin with.
• akras14 8y ago
  I got to interview a lot of people in the past 2 years, and I noticed that new grads are REALLY good at solving Leetcode type of problems. The expectation in the industry is that Senior people would be even better at it, because of their years of experience. This,however, is not what I’ve seen on the ground. Most senior devs that I interviewed, who were clearly smart and experienced took much longer than new grads to solve most of the questions. Personally, I try not to hold it against them, if they can clear the bar, but I wonder how many other people do the same. Also, I know in music they do blind interviews, were people perform behind a curtain to avoid any biases they might have (gender, race etc). May be it’s time to do something similar in Software, since we already are prioritizing white board interviews above anything else? Edit: I am not advocating for Leetcode types of questions. I do believe that most companies hire like this (including my current company, where I get minor if any say in hiring process). So just pointing out my observations regarding the status quo.
  • hellllllllooo 8y ago
    Solving leetcode is not software engineering.
  • pault 8y ago
    > The expectation in the industry is that Senior people would be even better at it, because of their years of experience. The fact that a person with years of experience solves an interview question more slowly than a fresh out of college grad should be a huge red flag that our interview questions are bullshit and don't reflect real world challenges.
    • hellllllllooo 8y ago
      Right. Maybe it just shows that the interviewer is too inexperienced to ask questions that are relevant.
    • whatshisface 8y ago
      In one hour, you are supposed to determine what will happen if they are left alone in their office to work for a year. How can you do it?
• hellllllllooo 8y ago
  I've worked with at least 3 older IC software engineers (close to retirement age) and their experience has been invaluable in forseeing issues that younger people don't spot in advance due to limited experience. Also the breadth of the work that these people have been involved in is very useful in being able to pull experience from other areas into an unrelated project. I genuinely don't understand the bias against this unless the person is unwilling to learn new things which hasn't been my experience. Hopefully this attitude will change as the valley ages and people will learn that a lot of software engineering principles don't change as quickly as the buzzwords do.
• 0x8BADF00D 8y ago
  IC doesn’t seem like a viable track. Consulting in a specialized area (i.e. FORTRAN or COBOL mainframe programmers) seems to be where it’s at. Beef up your network and you can setup a gig consulting at upwards of $200/hr on some obscure system that very few people know about.
  • solotronics 8y ago
    Please forgive my ignorance. I taught myself C/C++/python/etc. enough to get paid well to do it. There is of course a ton of easily accessible examples and documents for these languages. Does the same apply to FORTRAN/COBOL? Are there emulators to use to teach yourself? If you were to do this where would you start?
    • dmitriid 8y ago
      I’ve now seen bootcamps that previously taught python/go/java set up courses for COBOL. E.g. this free (!) intensive course in Sweden: https://www.academy.se/artiklar/tieto-och-academy-startar-kostnadsfri-intensivutbildning-for-de-som-vill-sadla-om-till-programmerare https://www.academy.se/artiklar/tieto-och-academy-startar-ko... My hunch that consulting jobs that require COBOL are primarily looking for experience (especially with finance systems) than for 40 years experience specifically with COBOL.
• towaway1138 8y ago
  One possible reason for the lack of interest in older coders is that they're largely white and male. Hardly a sympathetic demographic in the current cultural environment. For myself (note: am old), I'm just following the advice I've always given to other minorities that are discriminated against to various degrees. Which is: don't whine, and play the cards you were dealt as best you can. The FAANGS may not, but many other employers can spot talent when they see it. Keep looking--there's a niche for everyone.
  • dmitriid 8y ago
    I usually joke that “there are always cozy government jobs which are usually starved for good pogrammers”.
  • potta_coffee 8y ago
    There are tons of smaller companies out there that struggle to find competent developers. They're not necessarily super attractive jobs, and aren't as high profile, but you can get paid well in a lower cost-of-living area to solve some interesting business problems.
    • StudentStuff 8y ago
      If you set down any roots, your captive to that company in most lower cost of living areas. There aren't many alternative employers generally, especially around the same pay.
      • potta_coffee 8y ago
        It's kind of true, but every situation is different. I'm in a smaller city, not on the coast, and I'm doing ok. It's definitely more challenging in some ways. I make it through doing great work and networking. It's taken me a while but I'm building up a network and now I've got more opportunities available. YMMV, I know everyone has a different experience.
• botswana99 8y ago
  Try to replace the words "old developer" with "woman developer" or "black developer" and playback the comments people make. It ends up pretty appalling. People who are good at development can't be determined by any outside criteria -- you have to talk, test, and learn about them. At my company, we have developers from early twenties to early sixties. We don't care about any race, gender, background, anything -- all of it's immaterial to whether you can create and code. Join us: https://www.datakitchen.io/company.html#hiring https://www.datakitchen.io/company.html#hiring
• daxfohl 8y ago
  This hasn't been my experience at the larger companies. There's always room to grow and stay in a purely technical role. Prior to this I'd been doing freelance work and there it's more difficult. Especially if you don't have any particular unique skill or tight relationship with a solid client or a high level of marketing savvy, it's hard to compete with kids that are willing to do things at half the price. And I think that's fair: even though I consider myself a very solid coder, most consulting gigs I've worked on could have been handled by someone less skilled and worked out just fine.
• rifung 8y ago
  > But the IC track is flawed. The programmers I spoke with said that promotion is slower on the IC track, and the distinctions between titles are blurry. According to David Golden, a 45-year-old engineer at MongoDB, “In the development-only track, there’s a bigger hurdle for me to move to the next level. It’s not clear how you get from one to the other and whether it’s something you can actually do anything about.” In my opinion, this is both true but not a problem. The reality is that it's much easier to have a large impact as a manager than as an individual contributor. I have worked with L5's, L6's, and L7's, and honestly I couldn't tell the difference between them. That's not to say the higher level people didn't deserve to be higher level as they had more accomplishments, but I personally didn't really feel like they had much more impact, if any. For all but the largest and most complex projects, there aren't really going to be sufficiently difficult problems that it makes a big difference. I don't think I've ever been on a project where there were more difficult problems than engineers capable of solving those problems for any level of difficulty. > Based on interviews with a half-dozen programmers, it is clear to me that companies should create a qualitatively different role for their most senior individual contributors. Candidates for such roles would be judged by their past effectiveness, the same as managers are, not by a fast-churning checklist of skills. Greater clarity would mean engineers could climb the ladder faster, and the prestige and renewed intellectual challenge of each level would keep programmers motivated into their fifties and sixties. > Proven engineers who occupy the most senior roles should be deployed to solve the hardest problems on the most critical projects. At least at Google, being judged based on past effectiveness and being given the hardest problems is already true. Or rather, higher level engineers have greater independence to be able to choose what problems they'd like to solve.
• erikpukinskis 8y ago
  I've been doing some job interviewing lately, at 37. I do find that companies seem to know how to evaluate young programmers: just test them on their knowledge of your tech stack. Any young coder who is good and is working in that stack will know the basics. The bad ones won't. For older coders, I'm not sure that same signal works. I've forgotten more frameworks than most coders will ever learn. I mostly don't care about programming languages, they're roughly the same and I can learn a new one in a couple weeks. I know technologies like Rails and SQL, but I don't play with the new toys as much as I used to, becuase lately I would rather solve a new problem or build a new tool than learn a new tool. But how do you evaluate a coder on their ability to solve problems? Much harder. Even more difficult, how do you get a 24 year old coder who only knows react and FireBase to evaluate a 37 year old coder who has built web frameworks from scratch? It's another world, and a lot of companies just don't bother. Thankfully I have no desire to work at any of those companies. I solve problems. If a company can't hire for that I don't belong there. There are plenty of companies trying to hire people to solve actual problems, not just put coder butts in seats.
  • scarface74 8y ago
    For older coders, I'm not sure that same signal works. I've forgotten more frameworks than most coders will ever learn. I mostly don't care about programming languages, they're roughly the same and I can learn a new one in a couple weeks. Why not? I’m older than you and I have passed plenty of technical interviews on the $latest_tech. Sure you can learn a language in two weeks but a language is far more than syntax. There is the ecosysystem, frameworks, third party packages, etc. And honestly, I would be more concerned about hiring someone who built their own bespoke framework from scratch than someone who used an existing one. Building frameworks rarely adds business value.
    • jgust 8y ago
      > And honestly, I would be more concerned about hiring someone who built their own bespoke framework from scratch than someone who used an existing one It's almost like you're pretending the years between 2008-2012 never happened, but I'm sure that's not the case.
• throwaway-1283 8y ago
  I feel like if you're a knowledge worker who isn't interested in management, the IC path is short-lived in almost any profession (not just SWE), no? To me, the future isn't very bright for anyone who just wants to be an "employee" for the rest of their life, coder or not. OTOH, the manager path is dangerous in recession times. You lose a lot of "hard" skills, and if you lose your cushy manager job at company A it isn't necessarily obvious to company B what value you have when things are tight.
  • forgottenpass 8y ago
    >the IC path is short-lived in almost any profession (not just SWE), no? Depends on where you work. If R&D is core to the business, there will be a non-management ladder and plenty of near-retirement greybeards around the office. Note: many fashionable names in "tech" don't fit that bill.
• MrStonedOne 8y ago
  The doubling rate of programmers has been 5 years for pretty much most of the industries history. This means, right now, half of programmers have been doing it for less than 5 years. This is the primary reason older programmers seem oddly rare, 87.2% of programmers are less than 15 years into their career, 75% less than 10.
  • swagtricker 8y ago
    Now the interesting question is - what's the churn rate for those same programmers? Be it into seat-warming work like management, fluff work like "sales engineering", or exiting the software world completely?
    • thekhatribharat 8y ago
      Why do you think "sales engineering" is fluff? Ref: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sales_engineering https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sales_engineering
• lliamander 8y ago
  1. On keeping up with new technologies There are a lot of skills churn in this industry, and even as someone still on the young side, I'm rather leery of this trend. I imagine much of this trend has to do with the fact that the population of programmers is still increasing at a significant rate. I heard somewhere that the population of programmers has doubled roughly every 5 years for many decades. Add to that the fact that (as pointed out in this article) more and more programmers move into non-dev roles as they get older. It's not too surprising that employers are going to tailor their hiring process to younger engineers if that's what the hiring pool looks like. My focus has tended to be on developing proficiency with older technologies that have stood the test of time (Unix, RDBMs, Erlang, etc.). The fact is that when it comes to technology, the longer it has been used, the longer it will likely continue to be used - this applies as much to COBOL as it does to LISP. It's not that I don't get excited about new technology, but when I do I tend to be more excited about tech that builds on the great ideas of the past rather than tech that purports to be radically new. I don't know how this strategy is going to play out. I certainly do enjoy learning new things (that part of why I got into this business in the first place) but I also want to know that I am increasing my value in the market place by developing mastery in skills that are going to have lasting value. 2. On the weaknesses of promotional tracks for ICs When I was working at HP, I was told explicitly: "We promote people in the management track to see if they can do the job, we promote people in the technical track if they're already doing the job". I'm not sure if this is the right approach, but it definitely does make it more difficult to stay technical. There are many valuable qualities that generally only come from seasoned engineers: qualities like leadership, expertise, communication skills, project management skills, and strong professional networks. The problem is that while time is a necessary ingredient to cultivating those qualities, it is not sufficient. We have to be intentional about shoring up our weaknesses in these areas. This is something I've heard from some of the most respected scientists and technologists - people who are arguably at the pinnacle of success and reputation - say that they wished they had done better in.
• notacoward 8y ago
  I'm 53, which makes me about twice median at my company. A lot of this rings true, but I'll add one more twist on the "hard to keep skills up to date" aspect. Keeping up with all the technological churn across the industry is damn near a full time job. When you come out of college, you might be pretty close to the state of the art because you've been doing nothing other than getting to that exact point. Then it suddenly gets harder, because most of your time is spent working on whatever technology you already have instead of ramping up on new ones (plus eventually family and such). Sure, you can try to weave as much learning as you can into your job, but it's almost never enough. Most people will end up getting further and further behind, or more and more specialized. The harmful effect of the first becomes apparent quickly; the second can actually be quite lucrative for a while until suddenly it isn't. Either way, at some point your knowledge becomes pretty severely devalued until you go back to spending near-full-time to catch up. It's hard to blame employers for favoring newer knowledge over older, but the effect on older workers is still pretty profound.
  • int_19h 8y ago
    One thing that I've noticed is that a lot of "new" stuff gets less exciting over time, because you have seen it before. First time is always exciting, but when it gets rediscovered later with relatively minor incremental improvements, it's kinda meh. And that, in turn, affects the motivation to learn the details (that you need to learn to be able to use that stuff productively).
• TheMagicHorsey 8y ago
  Most older programmers want to be paid more because they are old. Not because they bring added value. That's the issue. I'm over 40. I have no issues getting the compensation I think I am worth. I also am not embarrassed to be paid the same amount as people ten years younger than me. I'm not adding more value than them on a productivity basis ... so I should not get paid more. Truly excellent programmers in my age group are absurdly well paid as consultants. But it takes courage and extreme productivity to live like that. Most people my age don't have the gumption to do that.
• d_burfoot 8y ago
  I wanted to like this article, but I was annoyed by the second sentence, which asserts that the tech industry is extremely white and male. The "male" part may be true, but the "white" part isn't, and that fact is well known to anyone with even a passing familiarity with the industry. The big tech companies are actually LESS white than the US as a whole; it's Asians who are vastly overrepresented. In 2017, Google's tech hires were 47.1% Asian and 42.1% white. The 2018 Facebook tech hires were 51.3% Asian and 42.7% white. This compares to the overall US population which is 72% white and only 5% Asian. I don't want to start a flame war about diversity, I just want to get the facts straight. https://diversity.google/annual-report/ https://diversity.google/annual-report/ https://www.facebook.com/careers/diversity-report https://www.facebook.com/careers/diversity-report https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_ethnicity_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_ethnicity_in_the_Unit...
  • mental1896 8y ago
    FWIW I didn't get that impression. Seemed to me like the author, conscious of the women's holiday today, used the concept of social awareness as a segue into ageism.
    • lliamander 8y ago
      From the author's second sentence: > The organizers know how male and white the tech industry is, so they make a special effort to recruit a diverse speaker lineup. Yes, the author was using social awareness to segue into ageism, but it is still factually incorrect (or at least highly misleading) to state that the industry is predominantly "white".
  • golemiprague 8y ago
    And then it continues with saying that the problem is mainly for women and POC. I just learned to ignore all this noise and quietly hire just who I want which is mostly white or asian men so I don't have to deal with the bullshit. The spotlight is usually on the big companies like facebook, if you are a small or medium company nobody cares what you do, so I just decided to go all 50' madmen, diversity is overrated and women are overrated, you don't really need it to succeed.
• semitext 8y ago
  Employers don't want to hire jr engineers because they're too inexperienced, and are too liable to make mistakes. And employers also don't want to hire older engineers who are too expensive, and are less willing to work nonstop. Those are strong signals about what employers in general think of employees.
• losvedir 8y ago
  Anecdotes are one thing, but I think the data are important. The article brought forth some interesting stats about the median age in the industry. Does anyone know where that data comes from, and if it's tracked longitudinally? What I'm curious about is if older programmers statistically are pushed out of the field, or if it's just the case that the field is growing like crazy and newer college grads are flooding into it.
• jrochkind1 8y ago
  I'm 43, and I'm far better at writing code than I was even 5 years ago (and I've always _thought_ I was good... including now :) ). This is an actual skill/craft, that you get better with with time. I'm not sure what to take from that put against the fact that old coders didn't seem to last as coders.
  • immernerstheime 8y ago
    old coder probably want to relax and drink or something I guess, they last yeah they last longer at the red house street
• droptablemain 8y ago
  Oh christ, this is terrifying. Runs off to to learn a new stack
• VLM 8y ago
  A useful cultural comparison to "coders should be turned into Soylent at 35 that's all they'll be good for" would be Bachelor Nation, which my MiL is a part of, where any show candidate under 25 trying to get married is considered a youthful idiot too unwise to tie their own shoes much less live with a person and become a parent. Under 25 candidates are considered worthless and taking up space for more realistic candidates over 25 preferably around 30. So its an indication of an extreme sickness in a society or culture where younger than 27 is too young and dumb to pick a spouse, then from 27 to 35 is the only economically viable life, then at 35 they're too old to be hired anymore so turn em into soylent they're good for nothing past that. Crazy that our ancestors were productive members of society from 18 to 65, and the most gaslit generation tries to hide the economic decline by claiming its "natural or self evident" that kids these days only get to live as productive adults from 27-35. I mean... pro sports players have longer careers than coastal programmers... Another hilarious analogy is the claim the building trades are horrible because 30 years of that will destroy your knees or whatever; well, the solution to that isn't a 8 year, at most, "career" writing code. Plenty of 50-something electricians making bank decades after their peers who went into programming are utterly unemployable in their field... A similar sickness can be seen in K12 school teaching where the average teacher now has only a couple years experience before getting kicked out for being too expensive and too many kids willing to work cheap. Fundamentally a culture/society that is built on the demand side to have people spend like crazy from ages 18-65, if not 0-85, is utterly doomed to collapse if that culture is only willing to pay a tiny minority of people ages 25-35. I would argue programming is not necessarily a career path any more than being a carpenter or other labor job; some people will be "up or out" in five years, but I'm not sure why someone supposedly can not program for 40 years, any more than I have no idea why a doctor can prescribe for 40 years, or a truck driver can drive for 40 years, or a bean counter can count beans for 40 years. Another cultural trend somehow not mentioned is kids need the baby sitting an open office nursery provides; if everyone older than 40 works as a contractor for more money, its not really a problem that companies only hire children as W-2 employees. I'm probably never going to be a W-2 employee again for a variety of age and race and gender discrimination reasons; I'm OK with that and enjoying making plenty of money outside the W-2 nursery.
• daxfohl 8y ago
  I think to age well you have to consistently push your limits. "Learning new things" and "keeping up with tech" is a bit overrated. If you're 50 and you've spent many years drilling down through increasingly deep scalability and throughput challenges, that will increase your value beyond what any fresh-out could provide. If instead you spent your time learning a new JS framework each year and are proficient at 30 of them by age 50, good for you, but good luck finding a job.
  • joker3 8y ago
    The difference between the two cases you have isn't anything to do with limit pushing. Instead, it's a matter of specialization. If you develop some real depth, then that's a different matter than just being a regular programmer who's been doing slight variations on the same thing for a long time. That's not to say that the specialists have it easy, but they do have an advantage here.
    • daxfohl 8y ago
      I think it does though. Or at least I intended it to. In the first case I didn't particularly mean to specialize, but just to continuously do things you really don't even know if you can, to continually push against what you think is possible for yourself: create a js framework for instance, even a terrible one that you abandon after a year and move on to a completely different project, but that requires you to dig and research and stretch your brain. The second case was more you know it's possible and it's just following a tutorial to get up to speed on the techniques; someone else did the "hard" work, and you're not really getting anything out of it. The first thing gives you skills that age well: you'll learn about lots of gotchas about the internals of how js and presumably other language runtimes work etc, which will help in lots of different positions; the second just gives you a line item on your resume until that fad is gone.
• ummonk 8y ago
  The article seems to imply that companies need to find a way for older programmers to continue advancing up the ladder as ICs. It is not clear that this is justified. What if there are diminishing (or even flat) returns on raw experience as an IC beyond, say, 10 years?
• BXLE_1-1-BitIs1 8y ago
  The smart young coder needs to plan for being tossed on the trash heap somewhere between 35 & 45. So live frugally and build your "on the trash heap" fund.
  • mrmuagi 8y ago
    Sounds like you are describing FIRE -- (Financial Independence, Retire Early).
• lgleason 8y ago
  All of this boils down to the same thing. Labor arbitrage. D&I benefits those trying to increase the supply of coders and via supply and demand reduce the rates. Older engineers are going to want more money etc.. Of course a nice benefit with the movement (for those who want to exert downward pressure on the wages) is that many D&I initiatives also tend to be ageist. IE: accusing the previous generation for enabling bad behavior, stating that the majority of older workers are white/male anyways etc.. Older workers generally are more skeptical of the D&I efforts. The D&I supporters have a penchant for getting people fired etc. for expressing any dissenting views against the cause...even if the person expressing the dissent is an under-represented person. For the ones trying to reduced labor costs it kills two birds with one stone. They get an expanded pool of labor. Plus the D&I crowd does most the dirty work for pushing out older workers. Now rinse wash and repeat with importing workers from low cost countries. The rich get richer and the rank and file engineers get caught up in the battles as either active participants or collateral damage. It has very little to do with doing things that are morally right and all about money. The moral outrage distracts everybody and keeps the infighting going so that the labor does not organize and target the real problem.
• drugme 8y ago
  Blenkhorn says that once she was back on the job market, the ageism she experienced was compounded by sexism. Despite her profound technical achievements, she was dismissed by recruiters as irrelevant and dull, as a “mom.” She recently completed a PhD in computer science and hopes the education will improve her chances in the job market. Which is practically infuriating to read, once you take even a passing glance at her easily findable profile. If recruiters are really saying that about her -- this just shows (yet again) how utterly useless they are at what you would think would be their core function: That is, identifying and promoting technical talent.
• mnm1 8y ago
  > In 2007, Mark Zuckerberg, then 22, said out loud what many in the software industry think: “Young people are just smarter.” How dumb or gullible does one have to be to actually think this? I'm betting it's mostly the 20 something year olds that would ascribe to such stupidity. Let's just accept that there is no track for programmers period. There are no promotions beyond senior at most companies. You peak in your early 30's and then you continue to work at about the same compensation and level for the rest of your career. A few people can find more interesting work, but it will require jumping to different companies and a lot of self-training. Unless it's at FAANG, all that work will be for an extra ten, twenty, or thirty thousand dollars. And raises? I've never hear of such a thing in any industry these days. The best option is to keep on top of your skills, find a job working 25-40 hours a week, possibly remote, and find some meaning in other parts of your life. Work isn't everything. It's not even the most important thing. There are and will be plenty of jobs for older coders. It's a new profession, but older coders who stay on top of the tech are still plentiful. You just need to know where to look. Also, many people don't make it as coders period. If there is a shortage of old coders, it's because people drop out because they can't make it. Even better for the rest of us. As if being in your late thirties is old. What bullshit.
• _bxg1 8y ago
  At age 27, I find myself already qualified for most "senior" job postings I see, which is a bit concerning. Do any of the "older" folks here have advice on orienting one's career to brace against this effect (beyond the typical "always be learning")? Feels like it's coming up quick.
  • pjscott 8y ago
    This industry throws around the term "senior" the way restaurants hand out complimentary breath-mints. It just means someone who has been out of college a few years and hasn't been fired for gross incompetence.
• jeffFrom18F 8y ago
  Maybe a little off topic, but I find it funny how big a deal people make about going to tech conferences. I never got it. For context, I'm 37. I watch conference topics on topics I find interesting but they're often just mildly informative, definitely not the type of thing I'm going to travel halfway across the planet to see live. A lot of the time it seems to be more about making a name for the person or the company they work for. It seems the number and prominence of tech conferences has exploded in the past few years, I don't even remember hearing about these at all when I started out (mid-00s).
  • blihp 8y ago
    For those doing it right, it's about networking and/or making a name for themselves rather than the actual content of the conference. I've gone to a couple and agree that the content itself generally doesn't warrant the trip.
• prestonbriggs 8y ago
  I'm 63. When I was a kid (pick an age), there weren't anywhere near as many programmers as there are now. So while I believe lots of older programmers have gotten out of the field, one way or another, I think the remaining ones are simply hidden in the crowd.
• thegayngler 8y ago
  Umm just wanted to note one of my friends started a meetup group for over 40 coders in NYC. I'll update this post with the link to the meetup. I'm gonna contact him now.
  • thegayngler 8y ago
    Here is the links promised. https://www.meetup.com/certain-coder/ https://www.meetup.com/certain-coder/ https://www.meetup.com/techover40/ https://www.meetup.com/techover40/
• strikelaserclaw 8y ago
  Too many people make the mistake of learning laterally, a little bit of framework X, a little bit of framework Y, language X, language Y, then wonder how they can be replaced by people much younger than them. Learn deeply, this is something that cannot be replicated by people with not a whole lot of experience. Tech is a double edged sword, it rewards people who are good at what they do regardless of their age (this might or might not be a good thing depending on where u stand on the age range).
  • int_19h 8y ago
    The problem is that you can spent a lot of time learning something deeply when it's in a fad stage, only to see it become obsolete in a few years. And then you'll have to learn the new fad, which is completely different from the old fad. OTOH if you learned a little bit about various things, it's very likely that one of them will be that next fad, or its precursor. So when it happens, it'll be that much easier to learn. So it's a balance. Going either too deep or too broad can backfire.
• a3n 8y ago
  > Although I will seek older programmers to speak at PyGotham next year, I don’t yet know where to look. You could look at unemployment and workforce offices that offer job search databases to the unemployed. I went to the Arapahoe County Colorado office a year ago, looking for training grants, and saw pretty big listings for coders.
• sizzle 8y ago
  Wouldn't working remotely solve the ageism problem? Assuming a large component of ageism in tech might be related to narcissism and in-group bias.
  • jpindar 8y ago
    You have to get hired first.
• accnumnplus1 8y ago
  To re-phrase this: kids, if you're getting into tech, you might want to think again.
• pipingdog 8y ago
  I will be 53 this year. I am, strictly speaking, an IC. A leaf node. The company where I work administers a survey of all tech employees every year, then publishes the results as a series of graphs, which can be broken down at any branch in the org chart. The very first question is "how many years of industry experience do you have?" The graph for my team is, shall we say, bimodal. There's a bell curve between 1-4 years, and a spike at 30 years. I've been building things for a long time, and I try to impress upon the other developers on my team (or in my org) that I've never, ever, had an opportunity to build at the scale that they're being asked to build at in their first gig out of school. If I come off as negative, it's only because I can say with surety that X won't work because it didn't work in the past. I expect to learn, with my team, whether we can make things work at now scale. There are times that I miss hours and hours of uninterrupted coding, and being inventive at small scale. My leadership would take me out to the loading dock and kick the shit out of me if I tried to contribute at that level. My job is, essentially, to educate, and slap the team off of local optima. To impress upon them that their customers are king, and that their customer base includes themselves and their teammates, paged out of bed at 3am. And to impress upon their management and the business that we really to need to focus on improving operations, rather than add features from time to time. It is also to observe the progress of, and advocate for the developers on my team. I feel (at the time of writing... Talk to me on Monday afternoon) like I'm lucky that my employer points senior engineers at problems like this.
• torgian 8y ago
  I’m 36 and I kind of consider myself an older programmer, if for no other reason than the fact that others my age also consider themselves older coders. I’m not the greatest, but I get the job done and produce results. That’s what businesses want.still, I wonder how sustainable that is.
• immernerstheime 8y ago
  I think plans are useless and even ... well , I will not say evil because they are not counciously intentionally evil sometimes but they are stupid and most useless and bad for you decisions and making plans can get you killed in a ground gunfire fight battlefied whatever and can get your king in dogstyle position in chess or call it fucked , if you want Anyway coding is kind of evil ; As for all programming is Evil.. But Old Coders Are Good and are God`s Crowd and One of The Most Favourites Crowds of God YES Indeed So I have Launched : 0 Jaja haha A single page application for visual understanding of the 2 important issues hanging and at stake but Not ... well ... no fckng analogies , no analysis , no analogy! Fuck! https://marcobellatrix8.wixsite.com/oorange00ballss https://marcobellatrix8.wixsite.com/oorange00ballss Old coders freewill to come paint the blueprint of future...The Orange Print of Future !!! https://marcobellatrix8.wixsite.com/oorange00ballss https://marcobellatrix8.wixsite.com/oorange00ballss thanks https://marcobellatrix8.wixsite.com/oorange00ballss https://marcobellatrix8.wixsite.com/oorange00ballss thanks EveryOne
• danbmil99 8y ago
  I'm ancient by HN standards, but I still find my skills are in demand. I would categorize myself as a lifelong learner; I got into python over 15 years ago, mongodb almost 10, and I have taken the time to understand what I need to know about front-end frameworks like angular and react. One employer called me a Swiss army knife, and I take that as a compliment. My knowledge is quite broad and quite deep, though I'm not a super expert at any one thing and I can't claim to know everything about everything. However I have several friends around my age who never bothered to learn anything beyond C++, and they are definitely struggling. They either are stuck in jobs because they're the only person who knows how to recompile some ancient module, or they're out of work and freaked out about the future. Ageism is real, but so are some of the stereotypes. Older programmers are often going to be more resistant to change, and can be more sure of themselves even when they're wrong. The flipside is they often have forgotten more than a young programmer even knows. Present Valley hiring practices seem to optimize for general aptitude, and downplay or disregard the value of experience. There's also the undeniable fact that older people in general have built up more obligations and responsibilities, and are often more skeptical of the value of equity because they've been a few startups and their options never amounted to anything. Therefore, they are going to prefer stability and cash over the promise of future rewards.
• kiawe_fire 8y ago
  It seems many people either think older coders are experienced and wise, or old and stagnant. Younger coders likewise either young, foolish "wheel re-inventers" or up-to-date and ambitious. So far, I've not seen any pattern to back this up. I've worked with a few coders in their mid-20s that knew PHP or Java very well, but refuse to learn a front-end framework or Node JS. They act as though the burden of learning a new stack when they've already learned what they know from school was too much to ask. Likewise, I've worked with coders in their 40s and 50s who still love learning new technologies, and are more than happy to learn the new "Javascript framework of the week", especially if they see the benefits it provides over what they currently use. I'm in my early 30s and have a strong distaste for Electron, but I know a mid-40s coder who loves Electron and would never code a desktop app any other way. I find myself reading about Smalltalk and NEXTstep and am continually impressed with the solutions of the generations before me (and their respect for their users' resources) while the coder in his 50s I've worked with loves that we live in a time where trading RAM and CPU for easy maintainability is the norm. What bothers me isn't just the ageism, but also the absolutism based on anecdotes. It seems to me that the same person who would dismiss an older coder based on age, is also the kind of person who would, say, "never hire someone with C# experience even if they have Python experience, because we use Python and anybody with C# experience is slow and inflexible" (real thing a manager once said) or "never hire someone who prefers to use Sublime Text because we use a 'real IDE' like Netbeans" (again, thing a manager once said). Hire the right man or woman for the job. Pick the right tool for the task at hand. Be open to new technologies and using them for their strengths, but also learn from the good and bad things of the past. None of this seems that difficult to me, yet it seems is a continual problem in the field.
• ArenaSource 8y ago
  I would like to see a Bugs vs Age study
• qqqwerty 8y ago
  I have been thinking about this a bit lately as I enter my 'mid-career' stage and am contemplating a minor career shift (same industry, different specialization). Also, I have some recent experience that was rather illuminating regarding agism in the industry. 1. The pool of older programmers is a little bit 'lemony'. The "really talented ones" either move up into cushy roles, move into freelancing/consulting, or start their own thing, etc., so they won't be applying to random job listings. And most 'good to average' individuals will build up a solid professional network throughout their career and if done properly they should have an easy-ish time finding and getting new roles. So that leaves folks who are a) for some reason their network doesn't extend to the job they want (maybe they are trying to switch fields, or they are targeting a small company with no mutual connections) or b) they are a lemon (to put it politely). And to complicate matters, the standard programming quizzes/whiteboard interview doesn't work too well on more experienced programmers. Their raw programming knowledge/ability is usually good enough, generally the issue is with something else (slow, hard to work with etc..). 2. If you are an ambitious 20/30 something doing the hiring, unless you have really good 'job security' (like best friends with the founder or some other leverage) then it's probably easier to hire folks with less experience who won't challenge you for your role. This is somewhat an extension of the 'A's hire A's, B's hire C's' mantra, but on the axis of seniority and experience as opposed to talent. There are plenty of senior programmers that are comfortable being an IC under a younger manager, but there are also plenty that would happily jump on the management track and climb right over you if the opportunity was there. And the 20/30 something manager won't know which one they hired until its' too late. 3. There are plenty of industries and opportunities where seniority and experience is respected, and many of these industries are hiring programmers. You just have to look outside of the SV bubble. Banking, Healthcare, Energy, Construction, etc... And because a lot of these industries operate in more regulated and bureaucratic environments the 'SV 10x ninja' is just not that useful. And some of the 'lemons' mentioned above, who don't fit the SV mold, but who are perfectly serviceable employees in most regards would probably do fine in these environments. I also think we are starting to age out of the 'high school dropout gets $20M in funding' era, which exacerbated the agism-in-programming issue. That sort or worked in consumer web/app tech, but tends to fail spectacularly everywhere else. So at the very least this 'post-40s' agism will probably start to fade, and likely get replaced with the 'post-60's'