4 ms·

Amen to all that. OA> Herein is the source of the problem. The more irrelevant experience a candidate has, the more lopsided the utility/value equation becomes

by wrs 7y ago

Amen to all that. OA> Herein is the source of the problem. The more irrelevant experience a candidate has, the more lopsided the utility/value equation becomes… No, the source of the problem is the idea that 10 years of “C++ experience” is “irrelevant” to a project using Rails, as if development experience is somehow locked to the language you happened to do the development in. Being a valuable senior developer is about 10% what technology you know and about 90% how good you are at working in a team to solve a business problem with a machine, and those fundamental skills haven’t changed much since 1960. As you point out, the more experience you have, the more you realize that all these “different” technologies are mostly the same wine in different bottles. Or, as I like to say, “it’s all just software”.

hinkley 7y ago
I worry the real problem is not that managers are looking for someone who can do the job, but someone they can exploit. The gleeful exuberance over 'new' things is something you can use against a younger programmer. The older one who knows the vintages doesn't get as excited, because it's really not that exciting. You haven't discovered Shangri La. We've kinda already done 90% of this before, just maybe not all at the same time. But there's good exciting and bad exciting, and it takes a while to learn the difference (I work with a bunch of people who apparently have not). What's bad excitement look like? War rooms, for one. But they are the same dopamine hit as Stockholm Syndrome and so the battlescarred have bonded while the rest of us are doing everything we can to stay out of war rooms (I haven't been in one in well over a year). I've started calling these people BASE jumpers, because they're adrenaline junkies. There are not so many older BASE jumpers (I hope it's not because they're all dead). I think you learn to value other things besides adrenaline. Like teamwork.
- polskibus 7y ago
  Maybe the problem is the big tech producers that introduce new technologies over and over, that don't raise productivity but create churn, force software rewrites, etc. Tech history looked at from 40yr perspective, really seems like reinventing wheels over and over. I'm not sure if there is another industry with so much churn yet with a lot of rehashing of old ideas.
  - sedachv 7y ago
    "It used to be the case that people were admonished to "not re-invent the wheel". We now live in an age that spends a lot of time "reinventing the flat tire!"" Alan Kay AMA: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11941199 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11941199
- asdfman123 7y ago
  That's just the startup world. There are a million chill software jobs out there. If you get sick of it, save up a bunch of money and move to Dallas or Atlanta or any other large-ish city and find a quality enterprise shop.
asdfman123 7y ago
I think a lot of problems some older developers have is that the culture has shifted. Maybe I'm off the mark, but I feel like older devs come from a world where programming was all about programming and it was less a formal career than it is now. To succeed in programming, you have to work well in a business. You can't be Linus Torvalds, walking around with a big ego, unless you're so important it's hard to get rid of you. You have to work with people well, and some of the older people I've worked with seem to understand this less. Again, not an insult to older devs. Plenty of them are wonderful. And I could be completely wrong. Just an observation.
- mooreds 7y ago
  There's a big difference between being a developer and a programmer. Wrote about it here: http://www.mooreds.com/wordpress/archives/871 http://www.mooreds.com/wordpress/archives/871
  - duggan 7y ago
    In companies that I've worked in, the traits listed would (very roughly) distinguish a junior from senior developer. There's various ways of describing these levels, but I think programmer/developer is less clear, and seems to suggest programmer almost as a pejorative.
- convolvatron 7y ago
  I agree with your premise but not your reasons. personally I'm a programmer - I know enough about business to know I don't have good insight. everyone I talk to doesn't want* a programmer in the older sense. they want people to integrate external large packages. they don't want to to test, they want to prop something up and see if it makes money. they don't want to talk about architecture and features and make plans - they just want to respond on a dime to what the market is saying. without any value judgement - I personally don't have a lot to offer in that environment. and to varying degrees I think the hiring managers understand that (sadly, quite a number don't)
  - celticmusic 7y ago
scarface74 7y ago
Being a valuable senior developer is about 10% what technology you know and about 90% how good you are at working in a team to solve a business problem with a machine, and those fundamental skills haven’t changed much since 1960. That’s true. But if you haven’t learned that in 10-15 years - there is something wrong. That means the difference between someone with 15 years and 30 years would be marginal.
- blub 7y ago
  Unless working in some subfields of SE which have such depth. The most popular nowadays don't though... mobile & web have a short half life.
- peterbell_nyc 7y ago
  I'm going to disagree. For every year I've spend doing something, I've got better at it. While there are definitely people with "1 year of experience repeated 30 times", I can't believe that you hit a point in software engineering where there is nothing material left to learn and/or where everything left to learn has marginal benefit.
  - scarface74 7y ago
    There are things left to learn, but how many of those things are valuable to an employer who is just wanting yet another software as a service CRUD app, mobile app, or bespoke internal app that will never be seen outside of the company?

by wrs 7y ago

hinkley 7y ago

I worry the real problem is not that managers are looking for someone who can do the job, but someone they can exploit. The gleeful exuberance over 'new' things is something you can use against a younger programmer. The older one who knows the vintages doesn't get as excited, because it's really not that exciting. You haven't discovered Shangri La. We've kinda already done 90% of this before, just maybe not all at the same time. But there's good exciting and bad exciting, and it takes a while to learn the difference (I work with a bunch of people who apparently have not). What's bad excitement look like? War rooms, for one. But they are the same dopamine hit as Stockholm Syndrome and so the battlescarred have bonded while the rest of us are doing everything we can to stay out of war rooms (I haven't been in one in well over a year). I've started calling these people BASE jumpers, because they're adrenaline junkies. There are not so many older BASE jumpers (I hope it's not because they're all dead). I think you learn to value other things besides adrenaline. Like teamwork.

polskibus 7y ago
Maybe the problem is the big tech producers that introduce new technologies over and over, that don't raise productivity but create churn, force software rewrites, etc. Tech history looked at from 40yr perspective, really seems like reinventing wheels over and over. I'm not sure if there is another industry with so much churn yet with a lot of rehashing of old ideas.
- sedachv 7y ago
  "It used to be the case that people were admonished to "not re-invent the wheel". We now live in an age that spends a lot of time "reinventing the flat tire!"" Alan Kay AMA: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11941199 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11941199
asdfman123 7y ago
That's just the startup world. There are a million chill software jobs out there. If you get sick of it, save up a bunch of money and move to Dallas or Atlanta or any other large-ish city and find a quality enterprise shop.

asdfman123 7y ago

I think a lot of problems some older developers have is that the culture has shifted. Maybe I'm off the mark, but I feel like older devs come from a world where programming was all about programming and it was less a formal career than it is now. To succeed in programming, you have to work well in a business. You can't be Linus Torvalds, walking around with a big ego, unless you're so important it's hard to get rid of you. You have to work with people well, and some of the older people I've worked with seem to understand this less. Again, not an insult to older devs. Plenty of them are wonderful. And I could be completely wrong. Just an observation.

mooreds 7y ago
There's a big difference between being a developer and a programmer. Wrote about it here: http://www.mooreds.com/wordpress/archives/871 http://www.mooreds.com/wordpress/archives/871
- duggan 7y ago
  In companies that I've worked in, the traits listed would (very roughly) distinguish a junior from senior developer. There's various ways of describing these levels, but I think programmer/developer is less clear, and seems to suggest programmer almost as a pejorative.
convolvatron 7y ago
I agree with your premise but not your reasons. personally I'm a programmer - I know enough about business to know I don't have good insight. everyone I talk to doesn't want* a programmer in the older sense. they want people to integrate external large packages. they don't want to to test, they want to prop something up and see if it makes money. they don't want to talk about architecture and features and make plans - they just want to respond on a dime to what the market is saying. without any value judgement - I personally don't have a lot to offer in that environment. and to varying degrees I think the hiring managers understand that (sadly, quite a number don't)
- celticmusic 7y ago

scarface74 7y ago

Being a valuable senior developer is about 10% what technology you know and about 90% how good you are at working in a team to solve a business problem with a machine, and those fundamental skills haven’t changed much since 1960. That’s true. But if you haven’t learned that in 10-15 years - there is something wrong. That means the difference between someone with 15 years and 30 years would be marginal.

blub 7y ago
Unless working in some subfields of SE which have such depth. The most popular nowadays don't though... mobile & web have a short half life.
peterbell_nyc 7y ago
I'm going to disagree. For every year I've spend doing something, I've got better at it. While there are definitely people with "1 year of experience repeated 30 times", I can't believe that you hit a point in software engineering where there is nothing material left to learn and/or where everything left to learn has marginal benefit.
- scarface74 7y ago
  There are things left to learn, but how many of those things are valuable to an employer who is just wanting yet another software as a service CRUD app, mobile app, or bespoke internal app that will never be seen outside of the company?