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In a weird way, it may have been for the best. It is incredibly frustrating to work with arrogant 20 somethings who don't know squat. Youth doesn't just mean in

In a weird way, it may have been for the best. It is incredibly frustrating to work with arrogant 20 somethings who don't know squat. Youth doesn't just mean inexperience, it can also come with a lot of ego with nothing to back it up.

agentultra 8y ago
I can confirm this. I was 20-something once. I have the blog posts to prove how arrogant I was.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- munchbunny 8y ago
  I'm months away from leaving the 20-something club, and looking back at what I wrote to myself in my journal, it's amazing how much my own views and temperament have changed in even five years. Looking at fresh college grads now, I have moments of realizing "this is how I looked to the senior members of my team." It's humbling. It's also encouraging to extrapolate that into how much more room there is to grow.
  - neilv 8y ago
    Don't be humbled. 20yos interpret humility as weakness. :)
- nostrademons 8y ago
  It's somewhat rational to do this, because when you're a 20-something fresh out of college your biggest challenge is differentiating yourself from all the other 20-somethings fresh out of college and showing that you might actually have some technical skills worth hiring you for. One way to do this is brash confidence bordering on arrogance; as annoying as it is, it seems to be more effective than meekly sending out job applications and hoping some company bites. Another way is to latch onto the things you do know and play them up for attention. When you've got a few years of experience your career progression speaks for itself (hopefully). You're differentiated because of the sequence of jobs you've held, and you can prove you can ship things because you have shipped things. 20-somethings usually don't have those luxuries.
duxup 8y ago
I hear ya there. At least one place never shipped a product and closed down... but god damn they had a lot of toys in their office and everyone was having a great time playing with them. ;) Meanwhile I got a job at a place along side a younger guy who straight up was a way better programmer than me, but he really struggled with stuff like working independently without being told exactly what to do, and just understanding customer business logic / what questions to ask and so forth. Good kid but just needed more experience working. He moved on to a better place for him where he could get more structure.
onion2k 8y ago
In my experience you get arrogant developers who are horrible to work with at all ages and experience levels.
njepa 8y ago
At least from my perspective the environment changed a lot over the last 10 years. Companies (and societies) that invested in people used to be a lot more common. You had at least a chance to get a semi-private office, experienced colleagues and a longer development cycle so you could learn things. Today if you don't adopt a self-serving attitude you aren't going to have a good time commuting to your open office were management just sent you four e-mails trying to disguise their next opportunistic move. I think the reason we often complain about the young is because they are more clairvoyant about what reality is being served. A reality which often reflects badly on us.
doctorpangloss 8y ago
Part of the competitive advantage of the technology industry may be that young people can be management. It could be, indeed, the exact opposite of what you're saying. In literally everything else, hierarchy is by age. Consider that a bad computer program business can still make a bajillion dollars. Maybe the fact that its CEO is young enough to understand the problem matters. Or maybe it's as simple as, young people who are more skilled than older people, and now can be in charge. Most of the value may be tied up in something else, but most of the competitive advantage may be tied up in the age. My feeling is, the ability for young people to be in charge is similar to (but not as impactful as) other historic opening-of-opportunities for people in the workforce.
- tomc1985 8y ago
  Hardly a good thing, though. The last thing we need are inexperienced leaders
- jerf 8y ago
  "In literally everything else, hierarchy is by age." Hierarchy is by age because ability to lead and make good decisions is heavily correlated with age, because that's heavily correlated with experience, one of the most relevant metrics. It is so heavily correlated with age that many companies and/or unions have in various ways institutionalized that connection and reified it beyond what is justified by the facts. There are young people who can lead. I suspect in the vast bulk of those cases a lot of that leadership is the wisdom to listen to more experienced people, and adapt it to their local circumstances. There is nothing wrong with that; it legitimately would put them ahead of their peers and bring great value to both them and whoever hires them. I suspect the number of cases of a brilliant young leader who is truly just doing it on their own is so small as to be not something worth worrying yourself about. Probably a lot of young would-be leaders have been hurt by the idea that it is some Platonic aspect of their youth they should be pursing and the fogies should just be ignored if not actively contradicted; that's very rarely a way to get ahead. The cases I can think of where some young founder "showed them" are not cases where they tore up the old rule book and did everything in a fresh new way, but more cases where they identified a particular inefficiency in the old ways and exploited that, because you really can't make progress by simply doing the opposite of whatever worked in the past. "My feeling is, the ability for young people to be in charge is similar to (but not as impactful as) other historic opening-of-opportunities for people in the workforce." No, I wouldn't think so. Those other "historic" opportunities all revolve around things that are attributes of people that are immutable. Your age is not such an attribute. Indeed, many wish it were immutable. But it's not. Certainly we want to make sure that young people have a path forward into leadership and management, because society's ongoing existence requires it, but they don't need any sort of special management affirmative action program or anything. Time will take care of your youth, in all senses of the term, whether you like it or not.
whateveracct 8y ago
The sniff of ego, arrogance, exceptionalism, etc is a turnoff for me when job hunting. Sadly you don't always see that stuff until you join. And it also feels a bit inevitable - feels like every VPE I encounter does a lot of spouting answers instead of asking questions.

agentultra 8y ago

I can confirm this. I was 20-something once. I have the blog posts to prove how arrogant I was.

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
munchbunny 8y ago
I'm months away from leaving the 20-something club, and looking back at what I wrote to myself in my journal, it's amazing how much my own views and temperament have changed in even five years. Looking at fresh college grads now, I have moments of realizing "this is how I looked to the senior members of my team." It's humbling. It's also encouraging to extrapolate that into how much more room there is to grow.
- neilv 8y ago
  Don't be humbled. 20yos interpret humility as weakness. :)
nostrademons 8y ago
It's somewhat rational to do this, because when you're a 20-something fresh out of college your biggest challenge is differentiating yourself from all the other 20-somethings fresh out of college and showing that you might actually have some technical skills worth hiring you for. One way to do this is brash confidence bordering on arrogance; as annoying as it is, it seems to be more effective than meekly sending out job applications and hoping some company bites. Another way is to latch onto the things you do know and play them up for attention. When you've got a few years of experience your career progression speaks for itself (hopefully). You're differentiated because of the sequence of jobs you've held, and you can prove you can ship things because you have shipped things. 20-somethings usually don't have those luxuries.

duxup 8y ago

I hear ya there. At least one place never shipped a product and closed down... but god damn they had a lot of toys in their office and everyone was having a great time playing with them. ;) Meanwhile I got a job at a place along side a younger guy who straight up was a way better programmer than me, but he really struggled with stuff like working independently without being told exactly what to do, and just understanding customer business logic / what questions to ask and so forth. Good kid but just needed more experience working. He moved on to a better place for him where he could get more structure.

onion2k 8y ago

In my experience you get arrogant developers who are horrible to work with at all ages and experience levels.

njepa 8y ago

At least from my perspective the environment changed a lot over the last 10 years. Companies (and societies) that invested in people used to be a lot more common. You had at least a chance to get a semi-private office, experienced colleagues and a longer development cycle so you could learn things. Today if you don't adopt a self-serving attitude you aren't going to have a good time commuting to your open office were management just sent you four e-mails trying to disguise their next opportunistic move. I think the reason we often complain about the young is because they are more clairvoyant about what reality is being served. A reality which often reflects badly on us.

doctorpangloss 8y ago

Part of the competitive advantage of the technology industry may be that young people can be management. It could be, indeed, the exact opposite of what you're saying. In literally everything else, hierarchy is by age. Consider that a bad computer program business can still make a bajillion dollars. Maybe the fact that its CEO is young enough to understand the problem matters. Or maybe it's as simple as, young people who are more skilled than older people, and now can be in charge. Most of the value may be tied up in something else, but most of the competitive advantage may be tied up in the age. My feeling is, the ability for young people to be in charge is similar to (but not as impactful as) other historic opening-of-opportunities for people in the workforce.

tomc1985 8y ago
Hardly a good thing, though. The last thing we need are inexperienced leaders
jerf 8y ago
"In literally everything else, hierarchy is by age." Hierarchy is by age because ability to lead and make good decisions is heavily correlated with age, because that's heavily correlated with experience, one of the most relevant metrics. It is so heavily correlated with age that many companies and/or unions have in various ways institutionalized that connection and reified it beyond what is justified by the facts. There are young people who can lead. I suspect in the vast bulk of those cases a lot of that leadership is the wisdom to listen to more experienced people, and adapt it to their local circumstances. There is nothing wrong with that; it legitimately would put them ahead of their peers and bring great value to both them and whoever hires them. I suspect the number of cases of a brilliant young leader who is truly just doing it on their own is so small as to be not something worth worrying yourself about. Probably a lot of young would-be leaders have been hurt by the idea that it is some Platonic aspect of their youth they should be pursing and the fogies should just be ignored if not actively contradicted; that's very rarely a way to get ahead. The cases I can think of where some young founder "showed them" are not cases where they tore up the old rule book and did everything in a fresh new way, but more cases where they identified a particular inefficiency in the old ways and exploited that, because you really can't make progress by simply doing the opposite of whatever worked in the past. "My feeling is, the ability for young people to be in charge is similar to (but not as impactful as) other historic opening-of-opportunities for people in the workforce." No, I wouldn't think so. Those other "historic" opportunities all revolve around things that are attributes of people that are immutable. Your age is not such an attribute. Indeed, many wish it were immutable. But it's not. Certainly we want to make sure that young people have a path forward into leadership and management, because society's ongoing existence requires it, but they don't need any sort of special management affirmative action program or anything. Time will take care of your youth, in all senses of the term, whether you like it or not.

whateveracct 8y ago

The sniff of ego, arrogance, exceptionalism, etc is a turnoff for me when job hunting. Sadly you don't always see that stuff until you join. And it also feels a bit inevitable - feels like every VPE I encounter does a lot of spouting answers instead of asking questions.