4 ms·

I don't doubt this, and I'm truly sympathetic to the author's experience. However it doesn't match my experiences. At this age I find I'm getting better and bet

I don't doubt this, and I'm truly sympathetic to the author's experience. However it doesn't match my experiences. At this age I find I'm getting better and better job offers. Too senior has never been a problem, these offers have been at principal or senior staff levels. I don't think I've been managing my career particularly well (15 years in and 5 jobs), and I've avoided management as best I can, but it doesn't seem to be slowing down. Looking at my peers, there are plenty of people 10+ years older than me in IC positions. I'm curious what the difference is. Is it 40 and only one job? Industry or programming language focus? Location?

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cbm-vic-20 5y ago
Why is one job a problem, as long as that job keeps you up-to-date with the current state of the art?
- dagw 5y ago
  as long as that job keeps you up-to-date with the current state of the art? That is of course the crux. If you're the person that knows how the old stuff works (because you where there when it was the new hotness), you risk being responsible for the old stuff, while the new guy they just hired gets to work on the greenfield Rust project they just started. Had a friend of the family who spent his entire career at a Fortune 500 company. Started programming their back office mainframe systems in the 80s and spent the rest of his career working on those same systems. He knew those systems back to front and was revered as the local mainframe guru. 2002 he lost his job when the company decided to retire that old system and move on to something else. He could not get hired anywhere and ended up having to take a job a petrol station for while.
- m0llusk 5y ago
  But what is state of the art? My interviews since 2013 have let me know that Perl is not any good as a language. Perl is bad and programmers who use Perl are bad. If I describe my experience in the industry from 1993 to 2003 which involved lots of Perl in the abstract then it often sounds good in interviews, but if I describe that experience as having been steeped in Perl then it is a huge, useless turn off. The problem is that the state of the art in programming is whatever is shiny and new and often unnecessary. Lots of employers are hiring for Kubernetes experience when they absolutely do not have enough demand for their services to justify messing around with Kubernetes, but it doesn't matter. They also don't have the patience and depth to bother listening to some old person explain in detail why Kubernetes is the wrong tool for them and a waste of resources. Corporate programming has become all about idols and mystery such that Perl has been cast out and Kubernetes is pure awesome no matter how irrelevant. As long as some old person can suck up to confused young people about what counts as cool code and frameworks then they might count as up to date with the current state of the art. And with this the unfortunate reality emerges that for older and experienced contributors starting a company is becoming as easy or easier than actually getting a job.
mech422 5y ago
same here - over 40 years experience and have more options, better pay, and people stopped looking at me funny for saying 'WFH' :-)

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

cbm-vic-20 5y ago

Why is one job a problem, as long as that job keeps you up-to-date with the current state of the art?

dagw 5y ago
as long as that job keeps you up-to-date with the current state of the art? That is of course the crux. If you're the person that knows how the old stuff works (because you where there when it was the new hotness), you risk being responsible for the old stuff, while the new guy they just hired gets to work on the greenfield Rust project they just started. Had a friend of the family who spent his entire career at a Fortune 500 company. Started programming their back office mainframe systems in the 80s and spent the rest of his career working on those same systems. He knew those systems back to front and was revered as the local mainframe guru. 2002 he lost his job when the company decided to retire that old system and move on to something else. He could not get hired anywhere and ended up having to take a job a petrol station for while.
m0llusk 5y ago
But what is state of the art? My interviews since 2013 have let me know that Perl is not any good as a language. Perl is bad and programmers who use Perl are bad. If I describe my experience in the industry from 1993 to 2003 which involved lots of Perl in the abstract then it often sounds good in interviews, but if I describe that experience as having been steeped in Perl then it is a huge, useless turn off. The problem is that the state of the art in programming is whatever is shiny and new and often unnecessary. Lots of employers are hiring for Kubernetes experience when they absolutely do not have enough demand for their services to justify messing around with Kubernetes, but it doesn't matter. They also don't have the patience and depth to bother listening to some old person explain in detail why Kubernetes is the wrong tool for them and a waste of resources. Corporate programming has become all about idols and mystery such that Perl has been cast out and Kubernetes is pure awesome no matter how irrelevant. As long as some old person can suck up to confused young people about what counts as cool code and frameworks then they might count as up to date with the current state of the art. And with this the unfortunate reality emerges that for older and experienced contributors starting a company is becoming as easy or easier than actually getting a job.

mech422 5y ago

same here - over 40 years experience and have more options, better pay, and people stopped looking at me funny for saying 'WFH' :-)