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In my 20s I worried about losing my intellectual abilities in my 40s and 50s What you really just lose is patience for BS :) Sure, yeah, you lose 10% of your

In my 20s I worried about losing my intellectual abilities in my 40s and 50s What you really just lose is patience for BS :) Sure, yeah, you lose 10% of your raw intellect if you stay healthy[1]. You probably more than make up for it in experience and wisdom. But hell the thing that demotivates me is the recycled insanity of large organizations, egotistical tech executives, hype cycles, and all the other BS. Eventually you can learn to laugh it off, but you don't take it as seriously as you did when you're younger. It motivates you less. You stay focused on what interests you outside of whatever external factors happen. For some, of course though, this just leads to burnout on the whole field. Seeing one dumb hype cycle after another, with self-described visionaries chasing trends, rather than defining them, heartlessly laying off staff, etc, even when profitable. Its enough to drive you crazy if you let it. 1 - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4906299/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4906299/

rlawson 3y ago
Yes this exactly. Once you've been through a few cycles of madness it is fun to chat with others who have as well (plus helps you keep your sanity and perspective).
fnordpiglet 3y ago
This is what is me as I head into my 50’s. I always knew it was BS, but now I can’t ignore it any more. Corporate culture garbage drives me absolutely to depression now, and I can’t force myself to care any more. I love teaching and mentoring and leading and programming and all those skills. But I can’t muster up to energy to give a crap about anything other than the work itself, the team, the product, etc. I more clearly see the processes that are set up simply to look busy, and I can’t force myself to participate. It’s telling me at some core level it’s time to strike out on my own. But, once you’ve seen the fnords, you can’t unsee them.
- cableshaft 3y ago
  Hello fellow Discordian! Ewige Blumenkraft und ewige Schlangenkraft! I've also seen the fnords. Makes it difficult to drag my ass to work sometimes.
- cgh 3y ago
  I quit my job at a Silicon Valley BigCorp two years ago, almost to the day, for these very reasons. Luckily, we are in a position where I could just do what I wanted during this time, mainly go rockclimbing and help my wife in our worryingly enormous garden. But I miss certain things, like being in the room (whether physically or virtually) with a bunch of smart people and solving problems. And of course I miss the money. But I'm just not sure I can take the BS anymore.
  - fnordpiglet 3y ago
    I’m working on building my own quant/stat arb/HFT trading fund with a few folks from my career as partners, self financed. I think that’s the out. I love what I do but investors, customers, hierarchy, and the band wagon that follows I think is the genesis of a lot of the BS.
radicalbyte 3y ago
I'm 42 and so much better than I was at 22, but nowhere near where I was as an individual at 33. I blame the latter on having three small children. It has taken me a long time to deal with being only above average instead of someone people viewed as a genius. Not sure if I agree with the intellect loss - I've not lost anything, I'm just much better at juggling multiple things and less good at the math-heavy detail work. However I'm still able pick up new skills as fast as ever. A friend of mine is in his mid-50s and has kept working on those things, he's as sharp as ever.
- brodouevencode 3y ago
  I think I've held on to my intellect (mid-40s), just have gotten wiser. And my tolerance for the inane, useless, and just plain stupid has dropped dramatically. I blame/credit that on having small kids too.
  - xpe 3y ago
    Less tolerance? What do you mean? I’ve found my outward tolerance has had to increase. I still have an internal drive to shape outcomes in more meaningful directions. This has driven (or perhaps co-evolved with) the development of a wide range of skills to be persuasive and nudge people. People can be so incredibly narrow-minded, short-sighted, inspiring, and/or wise, sometimes in the span of two sentences. Dealing with this juxtaposition is jarring and requires large levels of empathy. It helps me to remember that many people vastly overestimate their individual influence and conscious awareness of what’s happening with their bodies and minds. I regularly aspire to balance what someone wants in the short run, long run with what larger groups need and expect. Kids teach you this very directly.
    - codr7 3y ago
      This touches upon something I've noticed lately, people skills are at least as important as technology and raw intelligence. I'm 46 and have been writing code pretty much every day since 8yo. I used to think code was the greatest thing, and would gladly write it for free. But I was also very arrogant, too impatient to negotiate, and didn't really give a damn about the team as a whole. These days I find writing code pretty boring, I've already solved most kinds of problems in several different ways. But putting all the pieces together, finding optimal strategies, negotiating with stake holders and making sure the team works well as a whole; I find those very fulfilling and exciting.
javcasas 3y ago
39 here. I'm significantly better than in my 20s. Much more knowledge and wisdom, a bit less raw brainpower. But I know I can force myself through hard stuff (prolog, category theory, ML research papers) but only if I can kick out instant gratification for a while (reddit, hn, videogames). I remember this week more than 10 years ago where my graphics card died, and had to go with this ancient card with zero acceleration, and no videogames. I was surprisingly productive that week.
- spacemadness 3y ago
  Constantly needing to “feel productive” after work by limiting hobbies is also enough to drive you crazy after awhile, unless it’s of real personal interest of course and not just to advance your career.
- makz 3y ago
  37 here. I’m probably slower than in my 20s but somehow I feel smarter. I feel it takes me less time to learn new stuff and solve complex issues.
  - conductr 3y ago
    Agree. I've learned an approach to picking up new things, solving problems, and thinking things through such that I get it right the first time more often. It's a measure twice cut once type approach. Where as, my younger self would just start trying things and would end up getting it right eventually. It felt fast but took longer and might have had some collateral damage depending on situation.
  - gardenhedge 3y ago
    In what way are you slower then?
    - bcrosby95 3y ago
      I'm 43 and probably slower in the sense that I'm slower at producing code. I'm slower because I think more about the code I produce. I have a wider knowledge of the domain I work in, cross cutting concerns, and technical choices that I'm taking into account when producing code. So I arrive at a more-correct solution faster. I would say the tradeoff is worth it, but of course I would because I'm not in my 20s. If faster while missing more security issues, performance problems, and corner cases is what you want, my 20 year old self is probably better.
jmull 3y ago
[flagged]
- granshaw 3y ago
  Yeah try 40-50% instead
  - cableshaft 3y ago
    Have some data on that? This is what I've been able to find, and it suggests 'fluid intelligence' only drops down 10% from your peak in your 20s by age 54, and down 14% by age 64, which is nowhere near what you're suggesting (in fact it never gets that low according to this). And crystallized intelligence much slower than that. "Fluid intelligence or fluid reasoning reflects the ability to solve novel problems, the kind that aren't taught in school," he explains, "whereas crystallized intelligence or crystallized knowledge measures learning and problem solving that are related to schooling and acculturation." These different types of intelligence show different patterns as you get older. Crystallized intelligence "averages 98 at ages 20–24, rises to 101 by ages 35–44, before declining to 100 (ages 45–54), then 98 (55–64), then 96 (65–69), then 93 (70–74), and 88 (75+)," says Kaufman. Fluid intelligence drops much more quickly. Kaufman reveals that it "peaks at ages 20–24 (100), drops gradually to 99 (25–34) and 96 (35–44) before starting a rollercoaster plunge to 91 (45–54), 86 (55–64), 83 (65–69), 79 (70–74), and 72 (75+)." [1]: https://www.sciencealert.com/does-iq-decline-as-we-age-one-type-of-intelligence-peaks-in-your-twenties https://www.sciencealert.com/does-iq-decline-as-we-age-one-t...
    - sarchertech 3y ago
      The numbers there are just population average IQ scores by age. There’s so many potentially confounding variables that the data is close to meaningless.
- inconceivable 3y ago
  lol indeed, i can't even tell which position you're arguing for or against.
lallysingh 3y ago
The problem is, so much of is BS that it's physically painful to keep up. Look, someone reinvented a basic lisp-ism in their mediocre language! Yes, new buzzwords for each part that was a function parameter to the original system! Yay! Now you can reduce your boilerplate by 10%! The system is still an unmaintainable ball of mud, but at least your for() loops can now have ridiculously high jitter and concurrency landmines thanks to multicore use on a system bottlenecked by disk IOPs. Part of you wants to play the curmudgeon and say "I like my old simple ways" instead of yelling "you idiots are spinning wheels on useless APIs instead of learning to do any actual engineering analysis on maintainability or performance." It's tough to balance!
- JohnFen 3y ago
  > Part of you wants to play the curmudgeon Where I currently work, I'm being mentored (even at my age and experience!) by a developer who is in his early 70s. He really is a curmudgeon, but what he actually does is perform. His code is some of the best I've ever seen, and consistently outperforms that of the younger crowd. Then he just points out when he's using an "obsolete" technique to run circles around them.
- asdfman123 3y ago
  I think a lot of reasons older people encounter resistance is they don't want to play along with the BS. Lots of 20-somethings would have no trouble working with a graybeard in his 50s if he was patient, played along, and acted as a mentor. But they don't want to work with him if he's rude and dismissive, and there's more of them than him.
  - hamdouni 3y ago
    What ever is the age, nobody wants to work with a rude and dismissive person.
    - asdfman123 3y ago
      Yep. Too many people think their age and experience gives them an excuse to be rude. You can be "correct" but still a jerk. If the people who you're rude to can influence decisions, they won't go well for you.
tessierashpool 3y ago
> you lose 10% of your raw intellect if you stay healthy this is not true, and not substantiated. maybe you meant “if you don’t stay healthy,” but it’s still not an accurate number, or even a thing which is specific enough that attaching a number to it could mean anything. there is some improvement in cognitive function from exercise, but that applies to all age ranges.
- softwaredoug 3y ago
  My understanding of the research is summed up in this paper[1]. Which states: > The most important changes in cognition with normal aging are declines in performance on cognitive tasks that require one to quickly process or transform information to make a decision, including measures of speed of processing, working memory, and executive cognitive function. Cumulative knowledge and experiential skills are well maintained into advanced age. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4906299/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4906299/
  - tommaho 3y ago
    As a casual reader of the thread, with little or no related knowledge: The years add depth and complexity to our filters for processing new knowledge. Is the delay measurable? Probably. Is that 'decline'? Maybe it looks like it by the simplest standards. Is there a meaningful analogy in neuroscience where simpler and more robust 'structures' - superficially appearing as a degeneration - could be a reflection of efficiency and optimization? I can tackle complexities in my 40s that I couldn't dream of in my 20s. (Maybe I'm a late bloomer.) If my 40s -> 60s is anything like my 20s -> 40s, mentally, I'm just a little bit excited to be honest. Total outsider thinking out loud. The suggestion that our 20's is any sort of peak (besides maybe animal / physical) gives me a laugh. I was a simpleton in my 20s.
    - burnished 3y ago
      From the neuroscience side not that I'm aware of. Getting old is basically the process of your body not being able to repair itself anyway. I think the apparent conflict resolves if you consider that you have learned to be a better problem solver, a better learner, such that a small decrease in some 'raw ability' is completely overshadowed by gains from learning. For a concrete example I'm much better at close reading now. Even if younger me was 10x as intelligent there are problems he'd bounce off that I wouldn't simple because I now know how to slow down and read thoughtfully.
melenaboija 3y ago
> What you really just lose is patience for BS :) 41 here and I agree with most of the comments from the elder. One thing though I think we older people have to acknowledge is that we might have changed the BS bar. It feels a bit to me like saying that there is no music like the one from 20 years ago. I am trying to be positive and that is something I say to myself :)
- shrimp_emoji 3y ago
  I'm 5 years old and I think Tchaikovsky is better than music today
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reactordev 3y ago
You lose 10% of your ability to react and think quickly, not your ability to think. In fact, the older you get the more deep your thinking becomes. This is probably what you see when you think “John is slow to respond at times” (John being the older, 40+ developer). The reality is John remembers the last time someone suggested using MongoDB as a caching store and how well that worked out. John is recalling all those crunchtime meetings in the war room because someone wrote bad code or the software architecturally failed. The slowness to respond is them weighing all the options, for which they have more in the catalog than you. A binary search on 100,000 objects is fast (22 year old), a binary search on 1,000,000,000 is slow (a 40+ year old). Ageism is just fancy employment discrimination. I’m 40 and I continue to experience ageism and discrimination but I endure because I love what I do, others will find value in that, and the money is better than working at 84Lumber.
- tpoacher 3y ago
  You reminded me of that "I'm fast at math" joke :) The joke, for those who don't know: Interviewer: What would you say is your most impressive skill? Candidate: I am ridiculously fast at math. Impressed, the interviewer wants to test this: "Ok then, quick, what's 347+578?" Candidate (confidently): "5!" Interviewer: "w ... what? That's not correct! That wasn't even close!" Candidate: "Yes, but it was ridiculously fast!"
- gardenhedge 3y ago
  I've come across good and bad devs at all ages but the best have always been older than me.
- PantaloonFlames 3y ago
  Yinzer!
asdfman123 3y ago
I think, generally speaking, you get less "hungry" as you get older across the board. Sure, you could become excellent at guitar in your 40s, but unless you're extremely motivated, you probably don't care about learning it as much as a teenager would. Same goes with learning or becoming anything else. (Of course, everything here is on average.)
- softwaredoug 3y ago
  I disagree, the avg age of someone starting a company is 42[1] :) I honestly think its truly just about filtering BS. I get hungry about the right things. Just like I get passionate about the right relationships. But not goin to drop everything for someone that shows the tiniest bit of interest me like maybe when I was young and had no idea what kind of relationship I wanted. 1 - https://www.entrepreneur.com/business-news/this-is-the-average-age-of-successful-startup-founders/446147#:~:text=Using%20confidential%20administrative%20data%20sets,their%20company's%20founding%20is%2042 https://www.entrepreneur.com/business-news/this-is-the-avera....
  - asdfman123 3y ago
    By hunger I mean the raw chutzpah and energy to do something bold, or commit to going in a brand new direction. Not necessarily the capability to do so. Older people typically have more money and connections. If anyone could start a company I guarantee you more young people would start companies. And not to mention experience. You may want to start a company when you're younger, but it's harder when you don't know what you're doing.
    - JohnFen 3y ago
      > By hunger I mean the raw chutzpah and energy to do something bold, or commit to going in a brand new direction I haven't actually noticed a decline in that with age. But what I have noticed is that the more experienced a person is, the sooner they're likely to spot when a new direction is probably a dead end and avoid going that way in the first place. Less experienced people tend to have to actually walk in that direction for a while before realizing it's going nowhere.
euroderf 3y ago
> What you really just lose is patience for BS :) I bailed from coding after full-day Java debugging session that made no progress. Way too stressful at+after some age. So the BS was technical, not peoplal.
bcrosby95 3y ago
My biggest "problem" was when I had kids. I used to spend a lot of my free hours not directly working, but thinking of work problems. So I'd be playing a video game, at a party, or whatever, but in the back of my head I was also thinking of work. After kids those unpaid thought cycles are spent on how I can help my kids grow into better adults. It actually forced me to change my work habits a bit. Before I could be less methodical about working through a problem because I had lots of spare brain cycles outside of work. But now I have to work through problems more diligently.
- kqr 3y ago
  I have a similar experience except with a different outcome. All that thinking about how to be a better human somehow, strangely, is translateable to better (software) product development. I spend more time understanding people and their desires and less time chasing shiny technology.
jillesvangurp 3y ago
It's a tradeoff. Most 20 somethings think they are better than they really are because they lack experience. Having decades of experience makes you better. I'm 48, I'm definitely very much improved as a programmer and engineer relative to when I was 28. You think you know everything when you are 28. When you are 48, you realize you had a lot to learn back then. Anyway, I'll be doing this for at least another 30 or so years. As long as my brain works, I'll be using it. The reason old people become slower is not necessarily that they are old but because they retire and stop using their brains. Not using your brain is bad for your brain. Age related deterioration is of course inevitable. But you can slow things down a lot by just keep on using it and staying active.
uptownfunk 3y ago
So what is motivating to you in your career?
calsy 3y ago
Have you ever EVER heard a 40 year old say 'I was a lot smarter back in my 20s'??? never... more likely they'll reminisce about the stupid things they got up to. Your certainly not losing your intellectual abilities at 40 or 50, far from it. 40 and 50 year olds will just be moving on to the next stage of their career, using their collected experience to manage and pass on knowledge. Coding requires focus which is difficult to come by generally when you're older and juggling many responsibilities that you've created in your life up to this point like family, finances etc. You certainly don't become dumb. All the attributes of big tech organisations you described could be applied to many other fields. When you're at the bottom (like a smart 20 year old) and have no control, it can be frustrating. You can rebel against it, play the game, or go out and do your own thing.
MonaroVXR 3y ago
> What you really just lose is patience for BS :) Well, I lost this way earlier than that already hahaha. Totally agree with your comment by the way.
Accujack 3y ago
"Workin' 9 to 5, what a way to make a livin' Barely gettin' by, it's all takin' and no givin' They just use your mind and they never give you credit It's enough to drive you crazy if you let it 9 to 5, for service and devotion You would think that I would deserve a fair promotion Want to move ahead but the boss won't seem to let me I swear sometimes that man is out to get me Mmmmm..."
egorfine 3y ago
> What you really just lose is patience for BS :) So. Much. This. I'm an "older developer" as well and the one and only thing that gets in my way of learning new things is the amount of useless information in the documentation and code.
jvanderbot 3y ago
I'm moving into old dev land. I'd summarize my transition as moving from "need to impress" to "need to be impressed".

rlawson 3y ago

Yes this exactly. Once you've been through a few cycles of madness it is fun to chat with others who have as well (plus helps you keep your sanity and perspective).

fnordpiglet 3y ago

This is what is me as I head into my 50’s. I always knew it was BS, but now I can’t ignore it any more. Corporate culture garbage drives me absolutely to depression now, and I can’t force myself to care any more. I love teaching and mentoring and leading and programming and all those skills. But I can’t muster up to energy to give a crap about anything other than the work itself, the team, the product, etc. I more clearly see the processes that are set up simply to look busy, and I can’t force myself to participate. It’s telling me at some core level it’s time to strike out on my own. But, once you’ve seen the fnords, you can’t unsee them.

cableshaft 3y ago
Hello fellow Discordian! Ewige Blumenkraft und ewige Schlangenkraft! I've also seen the fnords. Makes it difficult to drag my ass to work sometimes.
cgh 3y ago
I quit my job at a Silicon Valley BigCorp two years ago, almost to the day, for these very reasons. Luckily, we are in a position where I could just do what I wanted during this time, mainly go rockclimbing and help my wife in our worryingly enormous garden. But I miss certain things, like being in the room (whether physically or virtually) with a bunch of smart people and solving problems. And of course I miss the money. But I'm just not sure I can take the BS anymore.
- fnordpiglet 3y ago
  I’m working on building my own quant/stat arb/HFT trading fund with a few folks from my career as partners, self financed. I think that’s the out. I love what I do but investors, customers, hierarchy, and the band wagon that follows I think is the genesis of a lot of the BS.

radicalbyte 3y ago

I'm 42 and so much better than I was at 22, but nowhere near where I was as an individual at 33. I blame the latter on having three small children. It has taken me a long time to deal with being only above average instead of someone people viewed as a genius. Not sure if I agree with the intellect loss - I've not lost anything, I'm just much better at juggling multiple things and less good at the math-heavy detail work. However I'm still able pick up new skills as fast as ever. A friend of mine is in his mid-50s and has kept working on those things, he's as sharp as ever.

brodouevencode 3y ago
I think I've held on to my intellect (mid-40s), just have gotten wiser. And my tolerance for the inane, useless, and just plain stupid has dropped dramatically. I blame/credit that on having small kids too.
- xpe 3y ago
  Less tolerance? What do you mean? I’ve found my outward tolerance has had to increase. I still have an internal drive to shape outcomes in more meaningful directions. This has driven (or perhaps co-evolved with) the development of a wide range of skills to be persuasive and nudge people. People can be so incredibly narrow-minded, short-sighted, inspiring, and/or wise, sometimes in the span of two sentences. Dealing with this juxtaposition is jarring and requires large levels of empathy. It helps me to remember that many people vastly overestimate their individual influence and conscious awareness of what’s happening with their bodies and minds. I regularly aspire to balance what someone wants in the short run, long run with what larger groups need and expect. Kids teach you this very directly.
  - codr7 3y ago
    This touches upon something I've noticed lately, people skills are at least as important as technology and raw intelligence. I'm 46 and have been writing code pretty much every day since 8yo. I used to think code was the greatest thing, and would gladly write it for free. But I was also very arrogant, too impatient to negotiate, and didn't really give a damn about the team as a whole. These days I find writing code pretty boring, I've already solved most kinds of problems in several different ways. But putting all the pieces together, finding optimal strategies, negotiating with stake holders and making sure the team works well as a whole; I find those very fulfilling and exciting.

javcasas 3y ago

39 here. I'm significantly better than in my 20s. Much more knowledge and wisdom, a bit less raw brainpower. But I know I can force myself through hard stuff (prolog, category theory, ML research papers) but only if I can kick out instant gratification for a while (reddit, hn, videogames). I remember this week more than 10 years ago where my graphics card died, and had to go with this ancient card with zero acceleration, and no videogames. I was surprisingly productive that week.

spacemadness 3y ago
Constantly needing to “feel productive” after work by limiting hobbies is also enough to drive you crazy after awhile, unless it’s of real personal interest of course and not just to advance your career.
makz 3y ago
37 here. I’m probably slower than in my 20s but somehow I feel smarter. I feel it takes me less time to learn new stuff and solve complex issues.
- conductr 3y ago
  Agree. I've learned an approach to picking up new things, solving problems, and thinking things through such that I get it right the first time more often. It's a measure twice cut once type approach. Where as, my younger self would just start trying things and would end up getting it right eventually. It felt fast but took longer and might have had some collateral damage depending on situation.
- gardenhedge 3y ago
  In what way are you slower then?
  - bcrosby95 3y ago
    I'm 43 and probably slower in the sense that I'm slower at producing code. I'm slower because I think more about the code I produce. I have a wider knowledge of the domain I work in, cross cutting concerns, and technical choices that I'm taking into account when producing code. So I arrive at a more-correct solution faster. I would say the tradeoff is worth it, but of course I would because I'm not in my 20s. If faster while missing more security issues, performance problems, and corner cases is what you want, my 20 year old self is probably better.

jmull 3y ago

[flagged]

granshaw 3y ago
Yeah try 40-50% instead
- cableshaft 3y ago
  Have some data on that? This is what I've been able to find, and it suggests 'fluid intelligence' only drops down 10% from your peak in your 20s by age 54, and down 14% by age 64, which is nowhere near what you're suggesting (in fact it never gets that low according to this). And crystallized intelligence much slower than that. "Fluid intelligence or fluid reasoning reflects the ability to solve novel problems, the kind that aren't taught in school," he explains, "whereas crystallized intelligence or crystallized knowledge measures learning and problem solving that are related to schooling and acculturation." These different types of intelligence show different patterns as you get older. Crystallized intelligence "averages 98 at ages 20–24, rises to 101 by ages 35–44, before declining to 100 (ages 45–54), then 98 (55–64), then 96 (65–69), then 93 (70–74), and 88 (75+)," says Kaufman. Fluid intelligence drops much more quickly. Kaufman reveals that it "peaks at ages 20–24 (100), drops gradually to 99 (25–34) and 96 (35–44) before starting a rollercoaster plunge to 91 (45–54), 86 (55–64), 83 (65–69), 79 (70–74), and 72 (75+)." [1]: https://www.sciencealert.com/does-iq-decline-as-we-age-one-type-of-intelligence-peaks-in-your-twenties https://www.sciencealert.com/does-iq-decline-as-we-age-one-t...
  - sarchertech 3y ago
    The numbers there are just population average IQ scores by age. There’s so many potentially confounding variables that the data is close to meaningless.
inconceivable 3y ago
lol indeed, i can't even tell which position you're arguing for or against.

lallysingh 3y ago

The problem is, so much of is BS that it's physically painful to keep up. Look, someone reinvented a basic lisp-ism in their mediocre language! Yes, new buzzwords for each part that was a function parameter to the original system! Yay! Now you can reduce your boilerplate by 10%! The system is still an unmaintainable ball of mud, but at least your for() loops can now have ridiculously high jitter and concurrency landmines thanks to multicore use on a system bottlenecked by disk IOPs. Part of you wants to play the curmudgeon and say "I like my old simple ways" instead of yelling "you idiots are spinning wheels on useless APIs instead of learning to do any actual engineering analysis on maintainability or performance." It's tough to balance!

JohnFen 3y ago
> Part of you wants to play the curmudgeon Where I currently work, I'm being mentored (even at my age and experience!) by a developer who is in his early 70s. He really is a curmudgeon, but what he actually does is perform. His code is some of the best I've ever seen, and consistently outperforms that of the younger crowd. Then he just points out when he's using an "obsolete" technique to run circles around them.
asdfman123 3y ago
I think a lot of reasons older people encounter resistance is they don't want to play along with the BS. Lots of 20-somethings would have no trouble working with a graybeard in his 50s if he was patient, played along, and acted as a mentor. But they don't want to work with him if he's rude and dismissive, and there's more of them than him.
- hamdouni 3y ago
  What ever is the age, nobody wants to work with a rude and dismissive person.
  - asdfman123 3y ago
    Yep. Too many people think their age and experience gives them an excuse to be rude. You can be "correct" but still a jerk. If the people who you're rude to can influence decisions, they won't go well for you.

tessierashpool 3y ago

> you lose 10% of your raw intellect if you stay healthy this is not true, and not substantiated. maybe you meant “if you don’t stay healthy,” but it’s still not an accurate number, or even a thing which is specific enough that attaching a number to it could mean anything. there is some improvement in cognitive function from exercise, but that applies to all age ranges.

softwaredoug 3y ago
My understanding of the research is summed up in this paper[1]. Which states: > The most important changes in cognition with normal aging are declines in performance on cognitive tasks that require one to quickly process or transform information to make a decision, including measures of speed of processing, working memory, and executive cognitive function. Cumulative knowledge and experiential skills are well maintained into advanced age. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4906299/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4906299/
- tommaho 3y ago
  As a casual reader of the thread, with little or no related knowledge: The years add depth and complexity to our filters for processing new knowledge. Is the delay measurable? Probably. Is that 'decline'? Maybe it looks like it by the simplest standards. Is there a meaningful analogy in neuroscience where simpler and more robust 'structures' - superficially appearing as a degeneration - could be a reflection of efficiency and optimization? I can tackle complexities in my 40s that I couldn't dream of in my 20s. (Maybe I'm a late bloomer.) If my 40s -> 60s is anything like my 20s -> 40s, mentally, I'm just a little bit excited to be honest. Total outsider thinking out loud. The suggestion that our 20's is any sort of peak (besides maybe animal / physical) gives me a laugh. I was a simpleton in my 20s.
  - burnished 3y ago
    From the neuroscience side not that I'm aware of. Getting old is basically the process of your body not being able to repair itself anyway. I think the apparent conflict resolves if you consider that you have learned to be a better problem solver, a better learner, such that a small decrease in some 'raw ability' is completely overshadowed by gains from learning. For a concrete example I'm much better at close reading now. Even if younger me was 10x as intelligent there are problems he'd bounce off that I wouldn't simple because I now know how to slow down and read thoughtfully.

melenaboija 3y ago

> What you really just lose is patience for BS :) 41 here and I agree with most of the comments from the elder. One thing though I think we older people have to acknowledge is that we might have changed the BS bar. It feels a bit to me like saying that there is no music like the one from 20 years ago. I am trying to be positive and that is something I say to myself :)

shrimp_emoji 3y ago
I'm 5 years old and I think Tchaikovsky is better than music today
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reactordev 3y ago

You lose 10% of your ability to react and think quickly, not your ability to think. In fact, the older you get the more deep your thinking becomes. This is probably what you see when you think “John is slow to respond at times” (John being the older, 40+ developer). The reality is John remembers the last time someone suggested using MongoDB as a caching store and how well that worked out. John is recalling all those crunchtime meetings in the war room because someone wrote bad code or the software architecturally failed. The slowness to respond is them weighing all the options, for which they have more in the catalog than you. A binary search on 100,000 objects is fast (22 year old), a binary search on 1,000,000,000 is slow (a 40+ year old). Ageism is just fancy employment discrimination. I’m 40 and I continue to experience ageism and discrimination but I endure because I love what I do, others will find value in that, and the money is better than working at 84Lumber.

tpoacher 3y ago
You reminded me of that "I'm fast at math" joke :) The joke, for those who don't know: Interviewer: What would you say is your most impressive skill? Candidate: I am ridiculously fast at math. Impressed, the interviewer wants to test this: "Ok then, quick, what's 347+578?" Candidate (confidently): "5!" Interviewer: "w ... what? That's not correct! That wasn't even close!" Candidate: "Yes, but it was ridiculously fast!"
gardenhedge 3y ago
I've come across good and bad devs at all ages but the best have always been older than me.
PantaloonFlames 3y ago
Yinzer!

asdfman123 3y ago

I think, generally speaking, you get less "hungry" as you get older across the board. Sure, you could become excellent at guitar in your 40s, but unless you're extremely motivated, you probably don't care about learning it as much as a teenager would. Same goes with learning or becoming anything else. (Of course, everything here is on average.)

softwaredoug 3y ago
I disagree, the avg age of someone starting a company is 42[1] :) I honestly think its truly just about filtering BS. I get hungry about the right things. Just like I get passionate about the right relationships. But not goin to drop everything for someone that shows the tiniest bit of interest me like maybe when I was young and had no idea what kind of relationship I wanted. 1 - https://www.entrepreneur.com/business-news/this-is-the-average-age-of-successful-startup-founders/446147#:~:text=Using%20confidential%20administrative%20data%20sets,their%20company's%20founding%20is%2042 https://www.entrepreneur.com/business-news/this-is-the-avera....
- asdfman123 3y ago
  By hunger I mean the raw chutzpah and energy to do something bold, or commit to going in a brand new direction. Not necessarily the capability to do so. Older people typically have more money and connections. If anyone could start a company I guarantee you more young people would start companies. And not to mention experience. You may want to start a company when you're younger, but it's harder when you don't know what you're doing.
  - JohnFen 3y ago
    > By hunger I mean the raw chutzpah and energy to do something bold, or commit to going in a brand new direction I haven't actually noticed a decline in that with age. But what I have noticed is that the more experienced a person is, the sooner they're likely to spot when a new direction is probably a dead end and avoid going that way in the first place. Less experienced people tend to have to actually walk in that direction for a while before realizing it's going nowhere.

euroderf 3y ago

> What you really just lose is patience for BS :) I bailed from coding after full-day Java debugging session that made no progress. Way too stressful at+after some age. So the BS was technical, not peoplal.

bcrosby95 3y ago

My biggest "problem" was when I had kids. I used to spend a lot of my free hours not directly working, but thinking of work problems. So I'd be playing a video game, at a party, or whatever, but in the back of my head I was also thinking of work. After kids those unpaid thought cycles are spent on how I can help my kids grow into better adults. It actually forced me to change my work habits a bit. Before I could be less methodical about working through a problem because I had lots of spare brain cycles outside of work. But now I have to work through problems more diligently.

kqr 3y ago
I have a similar experience except with a different outcome. All that thinking about how to be a better human somehow, strangely, is translateable to better (software) product development. I spend more time understanding people and their desires and less time chasing shiny technology.

jillesvangurp 3y ago

It's a tradeoff. Most 20 somethings think they are better than they really are because they lack experience. Having decades of experience makes you better. I'm 48, I'm definitely very much improved as a programmer and engineer relative to when I was 28. You think you know everything when you are 28. When you are 48, you realize you had a lot to learn back then. Anyway, I'll be doing this for at least another 30 or so years. As long as my brain works, I'll be using it. The reason old people become slower is not necessarily that they are old but because they retire and stop using their brains. Not using your brain is bad for your brain. Age related deterioration is of course inevitable. But you can slow things down a lot by just keep on using it and staying active.

uptownfunk 3y ago

So what is motivating to you in your career?

calsy 3y ago

Have you ever EVER heard a 40 year old say 'I was a lot smarter back in my 20s'??? never... more likely they'll reminisce about the stupid things they got up to. Your certainly not losing your intellectual abilities at 40 or 50, far from it. 40 and 50 year olds will just be moving on to the next stage of their career, using their collected experience to manage and pass on knowledge. Coding requires focus which is difficult to come by generally when you're older and juggling many responsibilities that you've created in your life up to this point like family, finances etc. You certainly don't become dumb. All the attributes of big tech organisations you described could be applied to many other fields. When you're at the bottom (like a smart 20 year old) and have no control, it can be frustrating. You can rebel against it, play the game, or go out and do your own thing.

MonaroVXR 3y ago

> What you really just lose is patience for BS :) Well, I lost this way earlier than that already hahaha. Totally agree with your comment by the way.

Accujack 3y ago

"Workin' 9 to 5, what a way to make a livin' Barely gettin' by, it's all takin' and no givin' They just use your mind and they never give you credit It's enough to drive you crazy if you let it 9 to 5, for service and devotion You would think that I would deserve a fair promotion Want to move ahead but the boss won't seem to let me I swear sometimes that man is out to get me Mmmmm..."

egorfine 3y ago

> What you really just lose is patience for BS :) So. Much. This. I'm an "older developer" as well and the one and only thing that gets in my way of learning new things is the amount of useless information in the documentation and code.

jvanderbot 3y ago

I'm moving into old dev land. I'd summarize my transition as moving from "need to impress" to "need to be impressed".