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One thing I've noticed is that there seem to be a lot more older developers and engineers at hardware-oriented companies. I currently work at Wing Aviation, th

One thing I've noticed is that there seem to be a lot more older developers and engineers at hardware-oriented companies. I currently work at Wing Aviation, the Alphabet drone delivery company. We were originally located in the Google X building, which is the old Mayfield Mall in Mountain View. I used to shop at that mall in the 1970s! X is full of hardware startups, and when I started there I noticed one thing right away: for the first time in a while, I was not the oldest person in the building. Now that we've moved to our own smaller building, I may be the oldest again, but not by a wide margin. There is a lot of gray hair in our teams. I'm 67 and have been programming for 50 years.

blackflame7000 7y ago
That's probably not by coincidence. The cost required to fix a hardware/firmware defect vs a software defect is much more. I'd definitely want to put my best engineers on the product that can't be easily fixed once it's shipped vs software than can always be patched. > I'm 67 and have been programming for 50 years. Also, that's really impressive. You've probably forgotten more than I've ever learned!
- beat 7y ago
  Personally, I find it slightly weird that I've been in the industry longer than some of my co-workers have been alive.
  - iguessthislldo 7y ago
    Related experience in the opposite direction: I'm a relatively new software engineer that works on a 13 year old product. It's fun to see a particular commit and think about what I was doing in middle school, high school, or college at the time it was committed.
asdfman123 7y ago
I mean, I feel like more programmers were working closer to the metal back in the day. In the 80s you needed to understand computer hardware much better and there was a bigger fraction of C++ developers. Now all those people have migrated to hardware (or have kept doing it) because that's where their skills are needed.
- tcbawo 7y ago
  My experience has been that many younger engineers don't want to work closer to the metal as much. They want to work on the bleeding edge, sexier technologies.
  - bpicolo 7y ago
    I would enjoy working close to the metal in some capacity, it's just not really what the majority of modern tech businesses require, and moving in that direction is likely not worth the sort of career reset it would require.
rapind 7y ago
I've noticed that most dev work is "full-stack developer". This usually means that you'll be bouncing between back-end (python, rails, node, go, w/e), front-end (react, css), and possible devops. I'm not sure how satisfying this is. You probably don't get much chance to dig deep and solve tough problems, or craft as you would in a hardware-oriented job. I've never worked in hardware though, so I'm quite possibly complete wrong about their day-in-the-life. Just rampant speculation.

blackflame7000 7y ago

That's probably not by coincidence. The cost required to fix a hardware/firmware defect vs a software defect is much more. I'd definitely want to put my best engineers on the product that can't be easily fixed once it's shipped vs software than can always be patched. > I'm 67 and have been programming for 50 years. Also, that's really impressive. You've probably forgotten more than I've ever learned!

beat 7y ago
Personally, I find it slightly weird that I've been in the industry longer than some of my co-workers have been alive.
- iguessthislldo 7y ago
  Related experience in the opposite direction: I'm a relatively new software engineer that works on a 13 year old product. It's fun to see a particular commit and think about what I was doing in middle school, high school, or college at the time it was committed.

asdfman123 7y ago

I mean, I feel like more programmers were working closer to the metal back in the day. In the 80s you needed to understand computer hardware much better and there was a bigger fraction of C++ developers. Now all those people have migrated to hardware (or have kept doing it) because that's where their skills are needed.

tcbawo 7y ago
My experience has been that many younger engineers don't want to work closer to the metal as much. They want to work on the bleeding edge, sexier technologies.
- bpicolo 7y ago
  I would enjoy working close to the metal in some capacity, it's just not really what the majority of modern tech businesses require, and moving in that direction is likely not worth the sort of career reset it would require.

rapind 7y ago

I've noticed that most dev work is "full-stack developer". This usually means that you'll be bouncing between back-end (python, rails, node, go, w/e), front-end (react, css), and possible devops. I'm not sure how satisfying this is. You probably don't get much chance to dig deep and solve tough problems, or craft as you would in a hardware-oriented job. I've never worked in hardware though, so I'm quite possibly complete wrong about their day-in-the-life. Just rampant speculation.