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There are two basic flavors of "old guy" in tech. We've all worked with the ex-mainframe guy who still thinks at a punchcard pace and never really wrapped his

There are two basic flavors of "old guy" in tech. We've all worked with the ex-mainframe guy who still thinks at a punchcard pace and never really wrapped his head around all this web stuff. He liked his old, stable job at Epson because they had good benefits and a pension plan, but then the economy took a downturn and now he's on your team. Many of us have worked with the other type too, with 40 years of kicking ass under his belt, who can code you under the table in javascript and ruby as easily as he can in C (or FORTRAN if he feels like messing with you). As you make your way through this world, you get to choose which of those types you'd like to become. If you don't want the New York Times to write sympathy articles about you, I'd suggest going with the latter route.

kabdib 15y ago
I work with a developer who is 70. He kicks butt. It's amazing. My father in law retired at 75, a C coder doing embedded systems for the chip industry. He didn't kick people around, but was respected and was getting stuff done. I'm 50. I'd be happy to be either of those two people. I have little sympathy for the people who say to themselves that they can stuff the career growth at 40 because they're doomed. Screw that, I have role models. One thing that seems to help is: Be on a mission. Be on a fucking mission from God, take charge of design AND do all the little crap. Build system maintenance and code cleanup, who does that? Hint: It's not scutwork to make sure that things are working well, all throughout a project.