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I think we are reaching the golden age of the older developer. Companies are learning how much more great developers are worth than poor ones. Retention bonus
by MetaCosm 13y ago
I think we are reaching the golden age of the older developer. Companies are learning how much more great developers are worth than poor ones. Retention bonuses have gone crazy (getting a 3 year / 250k bonus package isn't even that interesting).
The evergreen underpinnings, the basic knowledge of how to build systems floats through languages and technologies.
- timr 13y agoAgree with you about the value of older devs, but I wish I could say I saw "the industry" paying for experience. The examples of ridiculous grants I know about have all gone to people who are in their 20s and early 30s. Granted, there's some selection bias going on: I don't see many 40-something programmers in SOMA. That said: I don't see many 40-something programmers in SOMA.
- MetaCosm 13y agoRampant speculation, but while drinking me and some developer friends came up with a theory on this. There was a sweet spot, a golden age if you will where a lot of things came together for kids / young adults to drive them to be developers. They are 25 to 40 now. Computers became cheap enough to have at home. BBSs and then the Internet took off. Computers were doing stuff -- but not common place yet. It was an odd window during a technologies birth that I think got people hooked in a way that is hard to emulate. Too early, you are on punch-cards and computers are rare. Too late, and you have app stores and iphones and stuff just generally works so it can be treated as a dumb tool. Sheer luck.