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This sounds absolutely wonderful to me. At this point we have 2 generations straining for opportunities and advancement while the wealthiest and luckiest genera

This sounds absolutely wonderful to me. At this point we have 2 generations straining for opportunities and advancement while the wealthiest and luckiest generation in the history of the country sits at the top of the ladder. Time for them to go enjoy their good fortune in Florida and let the rest of us crack into that turf they've been hoarding.

jleyank 5y ago
There are a bunch of 60+ senior developers sitting there occupying positions in the modern software industry? If so, they must have been damn lucky not needing to look for work after they hit 45 or so... Or, are they doing stuff "nobody in their right mind" would be interested in doing, like Cobol or Fortran?
- jason-phillips 5y ago
  > If so, they must have been damn lucky not needing to look for work after they hit 45 or so... Or, are they doing stuff "nobody in their right mind" would be interested in doing, like Cobol or Fortran? I think the key(s), whether you're sixteen or sixty, are natural intelligence and a great work ethic. I'm fifty and am full-stack in whatevers with a side of devops/architecting. I frequently have to walk into a room and in less than thirty minutes figure out what the hell is going on, how I'm going to add value, communicate that to the stakeholders and then deliver. People seem to dig it. Fifty ain't so bad. What's COBOL?
  - jleyank 5y ago
    COBOL is what gets a lot of people paid and probably underpins far too much in govt and larger companies. It’s rumoured to be the reason IBM keeps binary compatibility in their mainframe line as “they lost the source code long ago.” Supposedly, it’s a meal ticket for mostly old fart consultants. FORTRAN, on the other hand, is used to melt compute clusters while trying to make things go boom, or model micro- or macroscopic properties to design various things. Damned language still optimizes or runs large scale better. As you all know, few pay to rewrite code that works well.
- jandrewrogers 5y ago
  That is a bizarre characterization. Many (most?) people designing and building state-of-the-art data infrastructure software, for example, are 40+ and in extremely high demand, the opposite of unhireable and they are paid silly money. This isn’t unusual. Age has nothing to do with it, relevancy does, and some domain expertise is difficult to acquire without decades of experience, even on the bleeding edge.
- SturgeonsLaw 5y ago
  Most workers are not software developers. None of the people in the article were. The comment you were replying to didn't mention devs. Unpopular opinion: Silicon Valley is not the center of the universe.
  - jleyank 5y ago
    No, but on HN it’s safe (appropriate?) to assume than the software/hardware biz is the primary field of endeavour.
- dougmwne 5y ago
  I'm not talking about ICs, who are the grunts and sit at the bottom of the pyramid with little autonomy or budgetary discretion. I'm talking about the leadership and management of course.
paulpauper 5y ago
Not really. Most boomers and are not rich at all. Go to your local food store and you will probably find plenty of older employees...it's not just 20-somethings who are stuck in crappy professions or in a rut. Many boomers did not save for retirement and face the same problems young people do. Also there are plenty of 20 and 30-year-olds on Reddit (such as on investing and FIRE subs) and hacker news who have sizable investments in real estate and stocks. The post-2009 bull market is the biggest and longest ever ,surpassing even the 80s and 90s in terms of real returns. Plenty of young people have and are getting rich from that, plus also the rise of lucrative FAANG jobs and also online marketing, social media, etc. This is not representative of all young people obviously, but to say that young people are being denied wealth due to older generation hoarding it ,is wrong too. There are plenty of opportunities for young people to get rich. Regarding luck, boomers did not have as many ways to become wealthy compared to young people today. Although homes were cheaper , mortgage rate were much higher, inflation was much higher, there was no employer healthcare, real stock and real estate returns were poorer, professional jobs did not pay as well, etc. Adjusted for inflation, college grads 40 years ago made less compared to grads today.Homeownership rates were not higher during the 60s, 70s, and 80s despite homes being cheaper, in part because mortgages were so expensive and wages were not that good.
- futureshock 5y ago
  Your anecdotes are absolutely not backed up by the data: https://www.marketwatch.com/story/this-depressing-chart-shows-the-jaw-dropping-wealth-gap-between-millennials-and-boomers-2019-12-04 https://www.marketwatch.com/story/this-depressing-chart-show...
  - jonas21 5y ago
    By looking only at share of wealth, this is missing the fact that total wealth in the US has grown tremendously over the time period in question. In absolute terms, the inflation-adjusted amount of wealth held by the Baby Boomer and Millennial generations at similar ages is about the same. In 1989 (the first year in the Fed's data), the Baby Boomer generation held $4.33T in wealth, which would be $9.5T in today's dollars, while in 2021, the Millennial generation held $7.47T in wealth [1]. While that's a little bit less, it's important to keep in mind that the median age of the Baby Boomer generation was 34 in 1989, vs 32 for the Millennial generation in 2021. If you linearly extrapolate Millennial wealth growth, the generation would hold $10.5T in wealth at a similar age. So what the linked chart really reflects is that the total size of the pie has gotten much larger in the past 30 years. Most of the increase has gone to older generations, but I think that's neither surprising nor undesirable -- after all, 30 years ago, the Millennial generation ranged from not being born yet to elementary school. Will the pie continue to grow over the next 30 years so that Millennials can see a similar increase in wealth (and hear complaints from the kids being born right now)? I'd imagine that's largely up to the decisions we make today. [1] https://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/z1/dataviz/dfa/distribute/table/#quarter:127;series:Net%20worth;demographic:generation;population:all;units:levels https://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/z1/dataviz/dfa/distr...
refurb 5y ago
This take only makes sense if you assume the next 40 years will be similar to the last 40.
- cercatrova 5y ago
  They probably will be, what will be (truly, materially) different?
  - Pet_Ant 5y ago
    Anything and everything? 50 years people thought we’d have flying cars and unions. Who would have imagined all the automation? It is a world of work that was inconceivable to most people then.
    - throwaway0a5e 5y ago
      50yr ago was 1971. People's takes on flying cars and unions were much more modern (less optimistic) at that time than they were say 70yr ago.
      - bobthepanda 5y ago
        Flying cars had mostly already proven to be impractical, but at that point there was at least some optimism in some areas left (like space) and the massive reality check that was the OPEC oil embargo had not happened yet.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
  - refurb 5y ago
    A big part of older folks wealth is based on gains from housing. Do you think that will continue at the same pace and leave us with an inflation-adjusted doubling or tripling of home prices? Do you think migration trends into cities will continue unabated? Do you think US population growth which drives much of the housing market will continue?
ttyprintk 5y ago
Would have been nice in 2001, when I saw upmost decision makers aging and getting more risk-averse. Would have been nice in 2008-9 when I saw folks 70+ delaying their retirement because of anxiety about their balances. When I started professionally networking, I kept hearing that I needed to weigh the experiences of those close to retirement. I learned the most from people who I could tell would retire before 50.
justshowpost 5y ago
And Millennials are getting their second opportunity [to squander] as the slate is wiped clean by societal collapse.
js2 5y ago
You know what would get folks retiring sooner? Lowering Medicare eligible.

jleyank 5y ago

There are a bunch of 60+ senior developers sitting there occupying positions in the modern software industry? If so, they must have been damn lucky not needing to look for work after they hit 45 or so... Or, are they doing stuff "nobody in their right mind" would be interested in doing, like Cobol or Fortran?

jason-phillips 5y ago
> If so, they must have been damn lucky not needing to look for work after they hit 45 or so... Or, are they doing stuff "nobody in their right mind" would be interested in doing, like Cobol or Fortran? I think the key(s), whether you're sixteen or sixty, are natural intelligence and a great work ethic. I'm fifty and am full-stack in whatevers with a side of devops/architecting. I frequently have to walk into a room and in less than thirty minutes figure out what the hell is going on, how I'm going to add value, communicate that to the stakeholders and then deliver. People seem to dig it. Fifty ain't so bad. What's COBOL?
- jleyank 5y ago
  COBOL is what gets a lot of people paid and probably underpins far too much in govt and larger companies. It’s rumoured to be the reason IBM keeps binary compatibility in their mainframe line as “they lost the source code long ago.” Supposedly, it’s a meal ticket for mostly old fart consultants. FORTRAN, on the other hand, is used to melt compute clusters while trying to make things go boom, or model micro- or macroscopic properties to design various things. Damned language still optimizes or runs large scale better. As you all know, few pay to rewrite code that works well.
jandrewrogers 5y ago
That is a bizarre characterization. Many (most?) people designing and building state-of-the-art data infrastructure software, for example, are 40+ and in extremely high demand, the opposite of unhireable and they are paid silly money. This isn’t unusual. Age has nothing to do with it, relevancy does, and some domain expertise is difficult to acquire without decades of experience, even on the bleeding edge.
SturgeonsLaw 5y ago
Most workers are not software developers. None of the people in the article were. The comment you were replying to didn't mention devs. Unpopular opinion: Silicon Valley is not the center of the universe.
- jleyank 5y ago
  No, but on HN it’s safe (appropriate?) to assume than the software/hardware biz is the primary field of endeavour.
dougmwne 5y ago
I'm not talking about ICs, who are the grunts and sit at the bottom of the pyramid with little autonomy or budgetary discretion. I'm talking about the leadership and management of course.

paulpauper 5y ago

Not really. Most boomers and are not rich at all. Go to your local food store and you will probably find plenty of older employees...it's not just 20-somethings who are stuck in crappy professions or in a rut. Many boomers did not save for retirement and face the same problems young people do. Also there are plenty of 20 and 30-year-olds on Reddit (such as on investing and FIRE subs) and hacker news who have sizable investments in real estate and stocks. The post-2009 bull market is the biggest and longest ever ,surpassing even the 80s and 90s in terms of real returns. Plenty of young people have and are getting rich from that, plus also the rise of lucrative FAANG jobs and also online marketing, social media, etc. This is not representative of all young people obviously, but to say that young people are being denied wealth due to older generation hoarding it ,is wrong too. There are plenty of opportunities for young people to get rich. Regarding luck, boomers did not have as many ways to become wealthy compared to young people today. Although homes were cheaper , mortgage rate were much higher, inflation was much higher, there was no employer healthcare, real stock and real estate returns were poorer, professional jobs did not pay as well, etc. Adjusted for inflation, college grads 40 years ago made less compared to grads today.Homeownership rates were not higher during the 60s, 70s, and 80s despite homes being cheaper, in part because mortgages were so expensive and wages were not that good.

futureshock 5y ago
Your anecdotes are absolutely not backed up by the data: https://www.marketwatch.com/story/this-depressing-chart-shows-the-jaw-dropping-wealth-gap-between-millennials-and-boomers-2019-12-04 https://www.marketwatch.com/story/this-depressing-chart-show...
- jonas21 5y ago
  By looking only at share of wealth, this is missing the fact that total wealth in the US has grown tremendously over the time period in question. In absolute terms, the inflation-adjusted amount of wealth held by the Baby Boomer and Millennial generations at similar ages is about the same. In 1989 (the first year in the Fed's data), the Baby Boomer generation held $4.33T in wealth, which would be $9.5T in today's dollars, while in 2021, the Millennial generation held $7.47T in wealth [1]. While that's a little bit less, it's important to keep in mind that the median age of the Baby Boomer generation was 34 in 1989, vs 32 for the Millennial generation in 2021. If you linearly extrapolate Millennial wealth growth, the generation would hold $10.5T in wealth at a similar age. So what the linked chart really reflects is that the total size of the pie has gotten much larger in the past 30 years. Most of the increase has gone to older generations, but I think that's neither surprising nor undesirable -- after all, 30 years ago, the Millennial generation ranged from not being born yet to elementary school. Will the pie continue to grow over the next 30 years so that Millennials can see a similar increase in wealth (and hear complaints from the kids being born right now)? I'd imagine that's largely up to the decisions we make today. [1] https://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/z1/dataviz/dfa/distribute/table/#quarter:127;series:Net%20worth;demographic:generation;population:all;units:levels https://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/z1/dataviz/dfa/distr...

refurb 5y ago

This take only makes sense if you assume the next 40 years will be similar to the last 40.

cercatrova 5y ago
They probably will be, what will be (truly, materially) different?
- Pet_Ant 5y ago
  Anything and everything? 50 years people thought we’d have flying cars and unions. Who would have imagined all the automation? It is a world of work that was inconceivable to most people then.
  - throwaway0a5e 5y ago
    50yr ago was 1971. People's takes on flying cars and unions were much more modern (less optimistic) at that time than they were say 70yr ago.
    - bobthepanda 5y ago
      Flying cars had mostly already proven to be impractical, but at that point there was at least some optimism in some areas left (like space) and the massive reality check that was the OPEC oil embargo had not happened yet.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- refurb 5y ago
  A big part of older folks wealth is based on gains from housing. Do you think that will continue at the same pace and leave us with an inflation-adjusted doubling or tripling of home prices? Do you think migration trends into cities will continue unabated? Do you think US population growth which drives much of the housing market will continue?

ttyprintk 5y ago

Would have been nice in 2001, when I saw upmost decision makers aging and getting more risk-averse. Would have been nice in 2008-9 when I saw folks 70+ delaying their retirement because of anxiety about their balances. When I started professionally networking, I kept hearing that I needed to weigh the experiences of those close to retirement. I learned the most from people who I could tell would retire before 50.

justshowpost 5y ago

And Millennials are getting their second opportunity [to squander] as the slate is wiped clean by societal collapse.

js2 5y ago

You know what would get folks retiring sooner? Lowering Medicare eligible.