5 ms·

> a number of excellent 50+ y/o workers As an almost-50-year-old, it might be worth reminding you young whippersnappers that folks in their 50's today started

> a number of excellent 50+ y/o workers As an almost-50-year-old, it might be worth reminding you young whippersnappers that folks in their 50's today started college in the 80's, which was about the peak of the computer revolution. You should expect 50+ y/o tech folks to be hyper-competent, rather than being surprised - they learned back when a bit of assembler programming was expected.

dugmartin 4y ago
And more importantly they had to read manuals and think through solutions instead of copying the first answer from Stack Overflow (source: me, I'm 51 and have been programming since I was 7).
ChuckNorris89 4y ago
>You should expect 50+ y/o tech folks to be hyper-competent, rather than being surprise Yeah, tell that to recruiters. The fact you had to learn things the hard way, including assembler and low level hardware, means very little to modern companies who are looking exclusively for experience in modern languages and frameworks meaning you can easily find yourself unemployed if you're lacking the experience that is in demand right now (AWS, Kubernetes, Kafka, Django, etc) despite you being an ace in C & assembler. Ask me how I know.
- commandlinefan 4y ago
  > in demand right now (AWS, Kubernetes, Kafka, Django, etc) Not that I would ever do such a thing, but... it's really hard for a prospective employer to determine whether or not you actually used "X" professionally at your last job or whether you learned it on your own while you were looking for a job.
  - ChuckNorris89 4y ago
    They can figure it out during your probation period when they'll give you tasks and expect output of someone with experience and you'll suck at them because you have no hands on experience on large projects in production as you learned everything on your own off tutorials so you'll either be slow from constantly reading stuff and debugging the codebase to find your way around or you'll be bugging the seniors too much causing them to question your actual experience. Granted that depends on the company and team and their expectations on your output, but it definitely didn't work out for me. It might work out in large companies/projects where you'll only be a small cog in a large machine.
- throwaway5959 4y ago
  It’s up to us as engineers to maintain relevant skills (I say this as I’m pushing 40 and still spending 5-10 hours a week reading outside of work and picking jobs based on opportunities for new tech stacks).

dugmartin 4y ago

And more importantly they had to read manuals and think through solutions instead of copying the first answer from Stack Overflow (source: me, I'm 51 and have been programming since I was 7).

ChuckNorris89 4y ago

>You should expect 50+ y/o tech folks to be hyper-competent, rather than being surprise Yeah, tell that to recruiters. The fact you had to learn things the hard way, including assembler and low level hardware, means very little to modern companies who are looking exclusively for experience in modern languages and frameworks meaning you can easily find yourself unemployed if you're lacking the experience that is in demand right now (AWS, Kubernetes, Kafka, Django, etc) despite you being an ace in C & assembler. Ask me how I know.

commandlinefan 4y ago
> in demand right now (AWS, Kubernetes, Kafka, Django, etc) Not that I would ever do such a thing, but... it's really hard for a prospective employer to determine whether or not you actually used "X" professionally at your last job or whether you learned it on your own while you were looking for a job.
- ChuckNorris89 4y ago
  They can figure it out during your probation period when they'll give you tasks and expect output of someone with experience and you'll suck at them because you have no hands on experience on large projects in production as you learned everything on your own off tutorials so you'll either be slow from constantly reading stuff and debugging the codebase to find your way around or you'll be bugging the seniors too much causing them to question your actual experience. Granted that depends on the company and team and their expectations on your output, but it definitely didn't work out for me. It might work out in large companies/projects where you'll only be a small cog in a large machine.
throwaway5959 4y ago
It’s up to us as engineers to maintain relevant skills (I say this as I’m pushing 40 and still spending 5-10 hours a week reading outside of work and picking jobs based on opportunities for new tech stacks).