3 ms·

>I used to get called a 10x developer, I was also called a rockstar and a ninja and a 100x dev and every other compliment that was hip. The 10x developer talk

>I used to get called a 10x developer, I was also called a rockstar and a ninja and a 100x dev and every other compliment that was hip. The 10x developer talk is just hype by unscrupulous employers to entice young engineers to have an unhealthy work life balance. Of course they don't tell that to older developers because they would call you on their bullshit. I know a lot of professional developers that are in their 40s, 50s, and 60s. What keeps these engineers employed is not how great they are technically, but that they are humble, flexible, willing to share their experience, and are social inside and outside of work (large networks). >Make a backup plan now. Agreed you should always have a plan B. Here are a few ideas: 1) Ageism is real no denial of that, but so is racism, sexism, ableism. We all have to work through that nonsense. Don't give up. 2) There are a shit-ton more well paying technical jobs that need coders than just software developer roles, expand your horizons. 3) There are public/private sector employers that need software developers badly who are willing to be flexible. (see NJ needs COBOL developers) 4) Remote developer work is taking off. I think they care less about where you live, what you look like, or how old you are.

cjohnson318 6y ago
> 2) There are a shit-ton more well paying technical jobs that need coders than just software developer roles, expand your horizons. For sure, I was a "GeoData Manager" at an oil company for a year. The job didn't have programming as a requirement, but I used Python to do my job, and I became super, super productive. After learning a lot about geometry and mapping, I could do a day's work in under an hour. It paid alright for the area, and I didn't have any other experience. I think there's a lot of analyst roles out there that someone with some programming experience could knock out of the park if they don't mind writing a lot of code to read/write Excel spreadsheets, or scrape data from the web, or do any number tasks like that.
ornornor 6y ago
> see NJ needs COBOL developers NJ wants UNPAID cobol developers. I’ve been researching the cobol market in the last few weeks to see if it was worthwhile and people in the know pretty much agreed that it’s absolutely not worth it. Doesn’t pay well, codebases that run it are hell to work on, and it’s all outsourced to sweatshops in Asia anyway. Not contesting your more general point per se, but cobol is not a good example of that.

cjohnson318 6y ago

> 2) There are a shit-ton more well paying technical jobs that need coders than just software developer roles, expand your horizons. For sure, I was a "GeoData Manager" at an oil company for a year. The job didn't have programming as a requirement, but I used Python to do my job, and I became super, super productive. After learning a lot about geometry and mapping, I could do a day's work in under an hour. It paid alright for the area, and I didn't have any other experience. I think there's a lot of analyst roles out there that someone with some programming experience could knock out of the park if they don't mind writing a lot of code to read/write Excel spreadsheets, or scrape data from the web, or do any number tasks like that.

ornornor 6y ago

> see NJ needs COBOL developers NJ wants UNPAID cobol developers. I’ve been researching the cobol market in the last few weeks to see if it was worthwhile and people in the know pretty much agreed that it’s absolutely not worth it. Doesn’t pay well, codebases that run it are hell to work on, and it’s all outsourced to sweatshops in Asia anyway. Not contesting your more general point per se, but cobol is not a good example of that.