6 ms·

He seems to have missed making the point in the title. Why would software engineers work for english majors? He thinks that a 20 something english major is a

by nirvana 14y ago

He seems to have missed making the point in the title. Why would software engineers work for english majors? He thinks that a 20 something english major is a better manager for a software engineer than a 40 something software engineer? Plus he seems to completely miss a separate alternative for software engineers over 35-- start their own businesses. I think the perception that 40 year olds are not up to date on technology is laughable-- just look at how resistant 20-sometings are to erlang. This resistance or letting skills get old can come from two sources: First, some people just are kinda blub programmers who never want to learn something new. The second is that its possible to be pigeonholed. I was that way- forced to write windows software for years (several companies who had mac apps who hired me with the promise of working on the mac app then switched me to windows because I had windows experience) until I seriously de-emphasized that experience on my resume, and started outright refusing. The reason companies hire people right out of college is really simple: They want engineers who are going to accept being over worked due to bad management practices. They think it is easier and cheaper to just hire out of college than to fix their broken processes. I've seen this everywhere - from Microsoft where the managers have some technical back ground but the company culture is broken- to Amazon where the managers are DMV rejects and the company culture is broken. (notable exceptions exist in both cases, of course.) It is cheaper to hire someone right out of college than to hire someone with 10 years experience... the problem is, "professional" management thinks both are equally productive. In my experience this is not the case. I had to laugh when, in 2007, Zuckerberg was on the stage at Startup Weekend claiming that 20 year olds were more productive-- at the time he was too young to even know the difference! Standard issue youthful hubris, that.

Drbble 14y ago
You and mchurch should start a YouTube sitcom or something, where you rant about all your horrible experiences.ike a Curb Your Enthusiasm for techies. It would be entertaining and more profitable than just posting on HN. Larry David should love to invest, you've nailed his technique of railing against the firstworldproblems facing people who can't be happy in the most rewarding and comfortable niche around, and brought it from the LA social scene to the Silicon Valley / Seattle office space. And you are good writers.
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
  - wdewind 14y ago
    Huh? Looks like a compliment to me...
    - chc 14y ago
      Nah, you're right, retracted. Sorry, early in the morning for me and I'd seen a couple of actually insulting comments against both of them yesterday and I guess it was still on my mind. Apologies.
silverbax88 14y ago
Me, at 20 years old: "Man, young people are so much quicker and smarter than older people." Me, at 40 years old: "Just wait. You'll see."
- gvb 14y ago
  I always loved the Mark Twain quote "When I was a boy of fourteen, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be twenty-one, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years." http://www.toinspire.com/author.asp?author=Mark+Twain http://www.toinspire.com/author.asp?author=Mark+Twain
jiggy2011 14y ago
Another point to bear in mind is that us programmers can be a vain lot and since it is possible to be highly successful in software very early in your career. This can mean you will be put in a position of doing the hiring early on. We will naturally prefer someone younger and greener than us that we can mentor rather than hire someone 10 years our senior who's experience we might find threatening.
- emmapersky 14y ago
  I see this all the time, and I think it's the least useful way to further your own career. Sure, I understand that notion of the power grab, but why? What real world benefit will you see by asserting unearned power over a new hire. Much better to hire someone who you can learn from, someone who perhaps can mentor you, and help you actually achieve more in your career.
  - jiggy2011 14y ago
    Objectively that may well be true, however if you hire someone more experienced than you then perhaps they should be supervising you and not the other way around. Also I think most geeks like to think of themselves as Jedi Masters. There is also the fear of someone tearing you a new one for the quality of your codebase.
    - emmapersky 14y ago
      I'd like to think in an ideal world we only ever hire colleagues, and our teams are, for the most part, meritocracies without hierarchy. Technical Leads guide development and mentor those less experienced, instead of directing it and passing down tasks. Management should be isolated from the team you work with daily, and should be there only to help long term progress (and other hands off management things). Working with closely on a day to day basis with someone up the management chain from you is miserable. Working with closely on a day to day basis with someone up the technical competence / experience scale from you is fantastic.
      - 14y ago
chaostheory 14y ago
"He seems to have missed making the point in the title." I think his title was more of a gimmick to catch people's eyes; I think it worked. "I think the perception that 40 year olds are not up to date on technology is laughable" I strongly feel that this depends on whether the 40 year old likes programming for its own sake, or they feel that it's just part of a 'clock in' and 'clock out' job. It's also very difficult for many programmers that I've known over the years to step outside of the language that they started with, and start learning and heavily using something new. (Maybe it has something to do with aversion to risk and experimentation? For me, the ease in which a programmer can jump from one language to another, is a key test for their longevity in the field.) Of course this also holds for younger programmers; it's just that their skills are fresher and in my limited experience they tend to be more open minded both technically and to things like longer hours. That said, I've known two programmers in their 50's who could kick any 20 something's ass in any of the latest tech. Sadly in my experience, they are very very rare.
- adrianhoward 14y ago
  I strongly feel that this depends on whether the 40 year old likes programming for its own sake, or they feel that it's just part of a 'clock in' and 'clock out' job Your right. It is. Then again it's equally true of the 20 year old in my experience. Most people in their forties who are still cutting code have been through three or four "fashionable" languages and have done serious work in all of them. You'll be amazed a the number of fresh faced young folk I interview who just know Java. more open minded ... to things like longer hours Nah. It's just that folk in their forties have figured out that longer hours aren't more productive :-)
  - chaostheory 14y ago
    "Most people in their forties who are still cutting code have been through three or four 'fashionable' languages" I'm not sure where you're located, but in my experience even in Silicon Valley this is very rare. Most of the older engineers are either all about C++ or Java. A few may tinker a little with a new language, but they rarely take a risk to do more serious work with them. Moreover, many of them just transition to managerial positions. This is even more pronounced in less progressive metros like the South Eastern US. I feel that one main reason I've been able (and will continue) to avoid this trap of comfort is because I'm a neophile.
Bamafan 14y ago
"Why would software engineers work for english majors?" Maybe it's just me, but I've "worked for" several English majors. OK, perhaps they weren't my direct boss, but I've been on many projects managed by Project Managers with degrees in areas like English and History. (IMO, whoever is managing your project is the person you're "working for"). And I didn't "choose" to work for these guys. Usually I go through a technical interview, then get assigned to a project whose PM is a non-technical person. Perhaps this is unusual at places like Google, MS, etc. But outside of those types of companies, it's not unusual at all in my experience.
frankdenbow 14y ago
Zuckerberg was at Startup Weekend? Did you mean Startup School?
- nirvana 14y ago
  Yes, Startup School.
huggyface 14y ago
Age-related observations tend to be 1% fact, 99% confirmation bias. It is also a short circuit to actual debate by invalidating opposing viewpoints. "John refuses to switch the project to MongoDB. They're too old and complacent."
MattRogish 14y ago
My suspicion is that the "young" developers they speak of (not all of them, obviously) are faster in the same way not writing tests is "faster". You're taking on a lot of debt that you'll have to pay off sooner or later. For most startups, the bad technical decisions younger developers will make won't bite them in the ass until much later - maybe never if they go out of business for not finding product/market fit - and so getting somewhere, anywhere as quickly as possible is perhaps better than having expertise at writing "great" software. Also, Moore's law helps folks ignorant of Big-O, algorithm design, memory management, indexing, etc. push off needing to know that knowledge until much later - if ever. When you can spin up thousands of Amazon servers for pennies it really "doesn't matter" (to biz people) if you improve your search algorithm memory footprint (or performance) by 100%. I think it's possible to have both - older developers that know when to take on debt and how to responsibly manage it can be just as fast as the cowboy younger kids, but that's even harder to find.
- ntkachov 14y ago
  Not worrying about algorithm performance and memory management means one of two things 1) you are making a prototype and couldnt care less, 2) you are a shit developer. I'm still in college and the only time I don't give a hoot about either of those things is for class work when I am not peanlized for it. But anything that goes to production has as small of a footprint as possible. But that may be because I know all of my stuff runs out of an ec2-micro and not on a $100/hr sever cluster.
  - adrianhoward 14y ago
    Or 3) You are an excellent developer who understands the cost as well as the benefit behind optimising for performance and memory. Is the time spent optimising better spent building a new feature (i.e. the money saved through efficiency will be less than the value gained by doing something else)? Is the optimised code going to be less flexible in the face of change? Is the optimised code going to be less comprehensible for future maintenance? And so on... Folk who spend their time making sure that everything has as small of a footprint as possible are a royal pain in the many situations where "small footprint" is not the biggest cost of the system :-)
bicknergseng 14y ago
"He seems to have missed making the point in the title." I hate to say it, but all Bloomberg editors seem to miss making the point in the title.
rayiner 14y ago
> Plus he seems to completely miss a separate alternative for software engineers over 35-- start their own businesses. That's not a super practical option for most people. Not in a country where giving up your job means giving up your health insurance. Not when you have a wife and kids.
- DennisP 14y ago
  The first problem will go away on Jan. 1, 2014, if healthcare reform doesn't get repealed or overturned by the Supreme Court.
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]

by nirvana 14y ago

Drbble 14y ago

You and mchurch should start a YouTube sitcom or something, where you rant about all your horrible experiences.ike a Curb Your Enthusiasm for techies. It would be entertaining and more profitable than just posting on HN. Larry David should love to invest, you've nailed his technique of railing against the firstworldproblems facing people who can't be happy in the most rewarding and comfortable niche around, and brought it from the LA social scene to the Silicon Valley / Seattle office space. And you are good writers.

deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
- wdewind 14y ago
  Huh? Looks like a compliment to me...
  - chc 14y ago
    Nah, you're right, retracted. Sorry, early in the morning for me and I'd seen a couple of actually insulting comments against both of them yesterday and I guess it was still on my mind. Apologies.

silverbax88 14y ago

Me, at 20 years old: "Man, young people are so much quicker and smarter than older people." Me, at 40 years old: "Just wait. You'll see."

gvb 14y ago
I always loved the Mark Twain quote "When I was a boy of fourteen, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be twenty-one, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years." http://www.toinspire.com/author.asp?author=Mark+Twain http://www.toinspire.com/author.asp?author=Mark+Twain

jiggy2011 14y ago

Another point to bear in mind is that us programmers can be a vain lot and since it is possible to be highly successful in software very early in your career. This can mean you will be put in a position of doing the hiring early on. We will naturally prefer someone younger and greener than us that we can mentor rather than hire someone 10 years our senior who's experience we might find threatening.

emmapersky 14y ago
I see this all the time, and I think it's the least useful way to further your own career. Sure, I understand that notion of the power grab, but why? What real world benefit will you see by asserting unearned power over a new hire. Much better to hire someone who you can learn from, someone who perhaps can mentor you, and help you actually achieve more in your career.
- jiggy2011 14y ago
  Objectively that may well be true, however if you hire someone more experienced than you then perhaps they should be supervising you and not the other way around. Also I think most geeks like to think of themselves as Jedi Masters. There is also the fear of someone tearing you a new one for the quality of your codebase.
  - emmapersky 14y ago
    I'd like to think in an ideal world we only ever hire colleagues, and our teams are, for the most part, meritocracies without hierarchy. Technical Leads guide development and mentor those less experienced, instead of directing it and passing down tasks. Management should be isolated from the team you work with daily, and should be there only to help long term progress (and other hands off management things). Working with closely on a day to day basis with someone up the management chain from you is miserable. Working with closely on a day to day basis with someone up the technical competence / experience scale from you is fantastic.
    - 14y ago

chaostheory 14y ago

"He seems to have missed making the point in the title." I think his title was more of a gimmick to catch people's eyes; I think it worked. "I think the perception that 40 year olds are not up to date on technology is laughable" I strongly feel that this depends on whether the 40 year old likes programming for its own sake, or they feel that it's just part of a 'clock in' and 'clock out' job. It's also very difficult for many programmers that I've known over the years to step outside of the language that they started with, and start learning and heavily using something new. (Maybe it has something to do with aversion to risk and experimentation? For me, the ease in which a programmer can jump from one language to another, is a key test for their longevity in the field.) Of course this also holds for younger programmers; it's just that their skills are fresher and in my limited experience they tend to be more open minded both technically and to things like longer hours. That said, I've known two programmers in their 50's who could kick any 20 something's ass in any of the latest tech. Sadly in my experience, they are very very rare.

adrianhoward 14y ago
I strongly feel that this depends on whether the 40 year old likes programming for its own sake, or they feel that it's just part of a 'clock in' and 'clock out' job Your right. It is. Then again it's equally true of the 20 year old in my experience. Most people in their forties who are still cutting code have been through three or four "fashionable" languages and have done serious work in all of them. You'll be amazed a the number of fresh faced young folk I interview who just know Java. more open minded ... to things like longer hours Nah. It's just that folk in their forties have figured out that longer hours aren't more productive :-)
- chaostheory 14y ago
  "Most people in their forties who are still cutting code have been through three or four 'fashionable' languages" I'm not sure where you're located, but in my experience even in Silicon Valley this is very rare. Most of the older engineers are either all about C++ or Java. A few may tinker a little with a new language, but they rarely take a risk to do more serious work with them. Moreover, many of them just transition to managerial positions. This is even more pronounced in less progressive metros like the South Eastern US. I feel that one main reason I've been able (and will continue) to avoid this trap of comfort is because I'm a neophile.

Bamafan 14y ago

"Why would software engineers work for english majors?" Maybe it's just me, but I've "worked for" several English majors. OK, perhaps they weren't my direct boss, but I've been on many projects managed by Project Managers with degrees in areas like English and History. (IMO, whoever is managing your project is the person you're "working for"). And I didn't "choose" to work for these guys. Usually I go through a technical interview, then get assigned to a project whose PM is a non-technical person. Perhaps this is unusual at places like Google, MS, etc. But outside of those types of companies, it's not unusual at all in my experience.

frankdenbow 14y ago

Zuckerberg was at Startup Weekend? Did you mean Startup School?

nirvana 14y ago
Yes, Startup School.

huggyface 14y ago

Age-related observations tend to be 1% fact, 99% confirmation bias. It is also a short circuit to actual debate by invalidating opposing viewpoints. "John refuses to switch the project to MongoDB. They're too old and complacent."

MattRogish 14y ago

My suspicion is that the "young" developers they speak of (not all of them, obviously) are faster in the same way not writing tests is "faster". You're taking on a lot of debt that you'll have to pay off sooner or later. For most startups, the bad technical decisions younger developers will make won't bite them in the ass until much later - maybe never if they go out of business for not finding product/market fit - and so getting somewhere, anywhere as quickly as possible is perhaps better than having expertise at writing "great" software. Also, Moore's law helps folks ignorant of Big-O, algorithm design, memory management, indexing, etc. push off needing to know that knowledge until much later - if ever. When you can spin up thousands of Amazon servers for pennies it really "doesn't matter" (to biz people) if you improve your search algorithm memory footprint (or performance) by 100%. I think it's possible to have both - older developers that know when to take on debt and how to responsibly manage it can be just as fast as the cowboy younger kids, but that's even harder to find.

ntkachov 14y ago
Not worrying about algorithm performance and memory management means one of two things 1) you are making a prototype and couldnt care less, 2) you are a shit developer. I'm still in college and the only time I don't give a hoot about either of those things is for class work when I am not peanlized for it. But anything that goes to production has as small of a footprint as possible. But that may be because I know all of my stuff runs out of an ec2-micro and not on a $100/hr sever cluster.
- adrianhoward 14y ago
  Or 3) You are an excellent developer who understands the cost as well as the benefit behind optimising for performance and memory. Is the time spent optimising better spent building a new feature (i.e. the money saved through efficiency will be less than the value gained by doing something else)? Is the optimised code going to be less flexible in the face of change? Is the optimised code going to be less comprehensible for future maintenance? And so on... Folk who spend their time making sure that everything has as small of a footprint as possible are a royal pain in the many situations where "small footprint" is not the biggest cost of the system :-)

bicknergseng 14y ago

"He seems to have missed making the point in the title." I hate to say it, but all Bloomberg editors seem to miss making the point in the title.

rayiner 14y ago

> Plus he seems to completely miss a separate alternative for software engineers over 35-- start their own businesses. That's not a super practical option for most people. Not in a country where giving up your job means giving up your health insurance. Not when you have a wife and kids.

DennisP 14y ago
The first problem will go away on Jan. 1, 2014, if healthcare reform doesn't get repealed or overturned by the Supreme Court.

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]