3 ms·

Maybe I'm misreading, but this sounds like a defeatist take. Why would a 50yo be slower? I'm in my early 50s and at the absolute top of my game. I'm a principal

Maybe I'm misreading, but this sounds like a defeatist take. Why would a 50yo be slower? I'm in my early 50s and at the absolute top of my game. I'm a principal eng at a medium-ish company and spend a lot of my time mentoring the "kids" and providing direction to engineers that don't have the same well of experience to draw on. I would naturally assume that an IC in their 40s or 50s is much faster than someone in their 20s. But that assumes they've actually been doing IC work. I've had a lot of interviews with people that are very experienced on paper but struggle in the pairing interview; whatever they were doing before, it wasn't hands-on-keyboard work. If you enjoy programming I don't see why there's any limit other than senility or death.

yodsanklai 2y ago
> Why would a 50yo be slower? Well, our intellectual abilities decline as we get older. I don't know at what age effects become apparent but it's unavoidable so maybe i'm a bit defeatist indeed :) In my case, I can feel my memory isn't as good as it used to be and I do feel slightly slower to pick up things. I don't think it affects my job though. Performance isn't unidimensional. Regarding being faster than someone in their 20s, it really depends on what task (and which someone!). Lots of the things I work on are rather new. For instance, if I'm writing Rust or using some internal tools, I'm not at much of an advantage compared to my 25 years old colleague unfortunately. In any case, I try to not worry too much age in general. I do my job the best I can, I treat older and younger colleagues alike and just hope everybody else does the same.
- askvictor 2y ago
  I've noticed the same as I get older; I think/hope the main compensation is that, despite being slower on the low-level tasks, the accumulated wisdom you've got means that you're better at the higher level stuff.
michaelgburton 2y ago
A buddy of mine introduced me to the concept pair of Fluid and Crystallized Intelligence. That's the short answer to your question. An older dev will have more accumulated experience and will be able to make decisions based on experience much better, but a younger dev will adopt new tools and learn new frameworks faster, and the latter tends to be the heavier load for the average job-lifetime (say 2-5 years) in the modern tech industry.
- stickfigure 2y ago
  > younger dev will adopt new tools and learn new frameworks faster I don't believe this one second. After you've worked significant time in a multitude of platforms, languages, and frameworks, you tend to notice what they all have in common. Van Neumann architecture is pretty much the same everywhere. The principles of functional programming are pretty much the same everywhere. Very little is new under the sun. Maybe there's a hypothetical engineer that has spent 30 years doing one thing and has "fossilized intelligence". But I don't think that's the norm, and I'm pretty sure that will show up pretty quickly in an interview.
hilux 2y ago
As someone in that age group, who is also a competitive chess player, it is an objective fact that one's brain significantly slows down over 50. We also have less physical stamina for long hours, all nighters, etc. Experience, wisdom, there may be many benefits to employees over 50 – but we crunch data slower, let's not fool ourselves. > I ... spend a lot of my time mentoring the "kids" and providing direction to engineers That is exactly what I would expect, and that's great. And by the same token, you are NOT spending most of your time doing calculation- or analysis-intensive IC work, where kids have the speed advantage.
- f1shy 2y ago
  Some of the most productive people I know, who can get on the fly the ideas are 50+. So if you are going more slowly, maybe it is on you? I don’t think is a good and fair generalization. Is any?
  - hilux 2y ago
    I don't understand the need to argue about absolutely everything that so many tech dudes have. Who are you trying to convince? Anyone here can can easily Google: does the brain slow down with aging But maybe yours doesn't – maybe you will live forever at 110% efficiency, like Elon, or Bryan Johnson, powered by the blood of young virgins. Good for you.
    - bdangubic 2y ago
      brain aging is not unlike say aging bodies for athletes, eventually you won’t be able to compete at the highest level. but just like athletes change the way they play as they age so do people in professions where they use their brain. michael jordan was ridiculous in his prime, basically outrunning and outjumping everyone. as he aged he was still ridiculous - once he could not outrun and outjump his opponents he developed a fadeaway and lowpost game that carried him through his last few seasons. I am in my 50’s and my brain is definitely aging, I have been feeling it for a decade now… but I have also adjusted to that with almost 3 decades in this industry to use a cliche I work smarter not harder now :)

yodsanklai 2y ago

> Why would a 50yo be slower? Well, our intellectual abilities decline as we get older. I don't know at what age effects become apparent but it's unavoidable so maybe i'm a bit defeatist indeed :) In my case, I can feel my memory isn't as good as it used to be and I do feel slightly slower to pick up things. I don't think it affects my job though. Performance isn't unidimensional. Regarding being faster than someone in their 20s, it really depends on what task (and which someone!). Lots of the things I work on are rather new. For instance, if I'm writing Rust or using some internal tools, I'm not at much of an advantage compared to my 25 years old colleague unfortunately. In any case, I try to not worry too much age in general. I do my job the best I can, I treat older and younger colleagues alike and just hope everybody else does the same.

askvictor 2y ago
I've noticed the same as I get older; I think/hope the main compensation is that, despite being slower on the low-level tasks, the accumulated wisdom you've got means that you're better at the higher level stuff.

michaelgburton 2y ago

A buddy of mine introduced me to the concept pair of Fluid and Crystallized Intelligence. That's the short answer to your question. An older dev will have more accumulated experience and will be able to make decisions based on experience much better, but a younger dev will adopt new tools and learn new frameworks faster, and the latter tends to be the heavier load for the average job-lifetime (say 2-5 years) in the modern tech industry.

stickfigure 2y ago
> younger dev will adopt new tools and learn new frameworks faster I don't believe this one second. After you've worked significant time in a multitude of platforms, languages, and frameworks, you tend to notice what they all have in common. Van Neumann architecture is pretty much the same everywhere. The principles of functional programming are pretty much the same everywhere. Very little is new under the sun. Maybe there's a hypothetical engineer that has spent 30 years doing one thing and has "fossilized intelligence". But I don't think that's the norm, and I'm pretty sure that will show up pretty quickly in an interview.

hilux 2y ago

As someone in that age group, who is also a competitive chess player, it is an objective fact that one's brain significantly slows down over 50. We also have less physical stamina for long hours, all nighters, etc. Experience, wisdom, there may be many benefits to employees over 50 – but we crunch data slower, let's not fool ourselves. > I ... spend a lot of my time mentoring the "kids" and providing direction to engineers That is exactly what I would expect, and that's great. And by the same token, you are NOT spending most of your time doing calculation- or analysis-intensive IC work, where kids have the speed advantage.

f1shy 2y ago
Some of the most productive people I know, who can get on the fly the ideas are 50+. So if you are going more slowly, maybe it is on you? I don’t think is a good and fair generalization. Is any?
- hilux 2y ago
  I don't understand the need to argue about absolutely everything that so many tech dudes have. Who are you trying to convince? Anyone here can can easily Google: does the brain slow down with aging But maybe yours doesn't – maybe you will live forever at 110% efficiency, like Elon, or Bryan Johnson, powered by the blood of young virgins. Good for you.
  - bdangubic 2y ago
    brain aging is not unlike say aging bodies for athletes, eventually you won’t be able to compete at the highest level. but just like athletes change the way they play as they age so do people in professions where they use their brain. michael jordan was ridiculous in his prime, basically outrunning and outjumping everyone. as he aged he was still ridiculous - once he could not outrun and outjump his opponents he developed a fadeaway and lowpost game that carried him through his last few seasons. I am in my 50’s and my brain is definitely aging, I have been feeling it for a decade now… but I have also adjusted to that with almost 3 decades in this industry to use a cliche I work smarter not harder now :)