6 ms·

>Had they instead spent that six months re-tuning old talents, sending out the occasional resume, and building stuff, that seems to get people hired regardless

by tsotha 13y ago

>Had they instead spent that six months re-tuning old talents, sending out the occasional resume, and building stuff, that seems to get people hired regardless of age. There are two problems with that logic. The first is if you have only six months of experience doing something your pay is likely to reflect that. Second, look at it from an employer's perspective. You can hire a twenty year old or a fifty year old. They have the same experience with whatever the latest thing is. The twenty year old has the energy of youth. No wife or children. He may come in hungover occasionally but with enough Red Bull he'll bounce back by noon. The fifty year old is slowing down. He takes drugs for his blood pressure that make him tired. He has ailing parents and teenagers at home. Who do you think is going to be more productive? Who's going to put in 16 hour days at crunch time? You can't play to a young man's strengths if you want to compete with young men when you're over forty. IMO you'd be better off as the last guy who knows COBOL than just like every other mobile programmer with six months of experience except older and slower.

ChuckMcM 13y ago
I'm not sure I see this: > The first is if you have only six months of experience doing something your pay is likely to reflect that. My experience is building things has very little to do with the current frameworks and languages. Building a payroll system with a NoSQL back end and an AWS front end is "different" than building the same with an Xwindows client and an Oracle back end, but the things that may a payroll system "good" or "bad" often have nothing to do with the bricks and mortar and more to do with the kinds of things that typically go wrong or requirements that are left unstated. Someone with 20 years of experience writing programs will often know that part much better than someone who has yet to experience them. > You can hire a twenty year old or a fifty year old. They have the same experience with whatever the latest thing is. The twenty year old has the energy of youth. No wife or children. He may come in hungover occasionally but with enough Red Bull he'll bounce back by noon. That however is what sounds like actual age discrimination, that might be like not hiring a woman because "Darn it she decides to have a kid and then what? Force me to pay maternity leave? No thank you!" or "Hire that blind guy? Really like we all we need around here is someone whose computer keyboard costs more than a Retina Macbook, No thank you!" or any number of people "not like you." > Who do you think is going to be more productive? Who's going to put in 16 hour days at crunch time? That is a good question, but one where the answer might surprise you. One of them might not have to put in 16 hours a day a crunch time, and one of them might be more productive in 6 hours than the other is in 12. But if you assume work performance based on age, gender, race, religion, or sexual orientation, you will always be doing it wrong.
- codygman 13y ago
  Honestly I've found for the most part that those who work 6-9 hours get more done than those who work 10+. Usually those spending 10+ are playing catchup or learning a new technology at the same time.
  - pmiller2 13y ago
    I recently had an interesting experience interviewing with a startup (which shall remain nameless). During the interview process, we had a nice discussion about sustainable development practices, and I talked about my willingness to put in the occasional long day as needed. When we got to the point where they expected me to work 60+ hours a week for the next year, they cut me loose. I could have probably done it, but really only 6-9 hours a day, like you say, would have been actually working on what they were paying me to work on. I'm still not sure how a schedule like that could ever have been considered sustainable for anyone who wants to have any of: a social life, family, or professional development time (going to meetups and such).
- tsotha 13y ago
  >That however is what sounds like actual age discrimination... And? What is this article about? Do you think it's productive for older guys to cry about age discrimination when they can't find a job? All I'm saying is you play to your strengths when you're looking for a job, no matter what your situation is. And being an older guy with just a handful of years in a brand new technology is playing to your competition's strengths. Companies that wouldn't hire an older guy as an Android programmer for $35/hr will shell out $300/hr for that same guy to teach an in-house six sigma class for two weeks. So be the six sigma guy. Does it make sense? No. Does that matter? Again, no. >But if you assume work performance based on age, gender, race, religion, or sexual orientation, you will always be doing it wrong. That's all very nice and totally irrelevant when you're the one looking for a job instead of the one doing the hiring.
joesmo 13y ago
I would still choose the 50 year old. If he has a family, he's more likely to be loyal. If he's not an alcoholic, he's much more likely to produce decent work. In fact, a programmer that has to put in 16 hour days at crunch time is either badly managed or a terrible programmer. Most experienced programmers can do as much or more work in half the time. Finally, there's the issue of experience, one where the younger programmer will always come in second. So the older programmer has the advantage in every case, as an engineer would in any other discipline.
bad_user 13y ago
> Who do you think is going to be more productive? Who's going to put in 16 hour days at crunch time? I'm 31 years old, have been doing lots of crunch times of 16 hour days that lasted for weeks and I really hate this expectation and mentality. I'm more productive than ever, even though I started saying NO to overtime, because fuck you. Yet, I've worked with plenty of beginners and when I say beginners, I'm talking about 5+ years of experience and I have been more productive then all of them, even though they've been more eager than me to work overtime. The difference has been in the following areas: 1. less experienced engineers when facing a hard problem tend to slap some code in place that barely does what the feature request asks for, without thinking of the implications much, like the potential for accidental errors, or how that code interacts with the business logic already in place, or how that functionality will interact with future features already planned. And so every sprint, every release you end up reworking/rewriting/fixing stuff from previous releases, because a rookie skipped the due diligence and slapped a poorly thought out turd. As a consequence, that's why we have software development methodologies, like Scrum, or whatever agile bullshit is the latest fad, because process is required to get good results with average people. 2. no man can keep focusing for more than 7 hours per day on average. Yes, I've been able to stay "in the zone" for more than 12 hours occasionally, however the average for really good people is no more than 7 hours. The rest of the time is filled with "busy work", like pointless meetings, replying to email, reading HN and staring at the monitor stupidly. If you don't believe me, install RescueTime and marvel at the huge amounts of daily jerking off. 3. Solid work requires a well rested mind. I'm at the top of my game when I sleep well at night and I get great ideas in the periods in which I have a good social life. 4. I learn faster than any 20-something, because I have a solid knowledge base. For example it takes me about 2 weeks to become functional in any programming language, that's because I've already worked in production and played with about a dozen thus far and in regards to paradigms, I've already worked with them all. > No wife or children. 5. Pity that you view that as a liability. As a father of a 4-year old boy, I can tell you, a child is the greatest motivation you could ever have, which is why I trust people with children at home more than I trust a 20-something that hasn't felt what true responsibility is like.
- pmiller2 13y ago
  I'd like to know where you work that you can say "fuck you" to overtime during crunch period. Because, you know, I might like to work there. Seriously, contact me. :) My email is in my profile.
pkolaczk 13y ago
"They have the same experience with whatever the latest thing is." This assumption is wrong. They don't have the same experience. Their direct experience (counted as the time they spent hacking with the latest thing) might be exactly the same, but this doesn't translate to the same effective experience / capability. When I was 20, it took me much longer to become productive with any new thing than it is now when I'm 30. A 20-year old with a 6-month experience with a new language would struggle a lot even with basic concepts. A 30 (or better 40) year old, who already knows 10 other languages and a ton of frameworks would pick it up in single days or weeks and became productive very fast, leaving him much more time to dig into the advanced concepts. When I was about 18 years old, I struggled hard with a math proof related to number theory a teacher gave me. I never solved it then when I was at school and soon moved on to some other things. Recently, when on vacation I recalled that puzzle and started thinking about it just for fun. I solved it in a few minutes by just drawing with a stick on the sand. I never studied theoretical maths nor dealt with it professionally, so I had no direct experience in doing math proofs. Somehow, my capability now is much better than it was 10 years ago. I call it "indirect experience".

by tsotha 13y ago

ChuckMcM 13y ago

I'm not sure I see this: > The first is if you have only six months of experience doing something your pay is likely to reflect that. My experience is building things has very little to do with the current frameworks and languages. Building a payroll system with a NoSQL back end and an AWS front end is "different" than building the same with an Xwindows client and an Oracle back end, but the things that may a payroll system "good" or "bad" often have nothing to do with the bricks and mortar and more to do with the kinds of things that typically go wrong or requirements that are left unstated. Someone with 20 years of experience writing programs will often know that part much better than someone who has yet to experience them. > You can hire a twenty year old or a fifty year old. They have the same experience with whatever the latest thing is. The twenty year old has the energy of youth. No wife or children. He may come in hungover occasionally but with enough Red Bull he'll bounce back by noon. That however is what sounds like actual age discrimination, that might be like not hiring a woman because "Darn it she decides to have a kid and then what? Force me to pay maternity leave? No thank you!" or "Hire that blind guy? Really like we all we need around here is someone whose computer keyboard costs more than a Retina Macbook, No thank you!" or any number of people "not like you." > Who do you think is going to be more productive? Who's going to put in 16 hour days at crunch time? That is a good question, but one where the answer might surprise you. One of them might not have to put in 16 hours a day a crunch time, and one of them might be more productive in 6 hours than the other is in 12. But if you assume work performance based on age, gender, race, religion, or sexual orientation, you will always be doing it wrong.

codygman 13y ago
Honestly I've found for the most part that those who work 6-9 hours get more done than those who work 10+. Usually those spending 10+ are playing catchup or learning a new technology at the same time.
- pmiller2 13y ago
  I recently had an interesting experience interviewing with a startup (which shall remain nameless). During the interview process, we had a nice discussion about sustainable development practices, and I talked about my willingness to put in the occasional long day as needed. When we got to the point where they expected me to work 60+ hours a week for the next year, they cut me loose. I could have probably done it, but really only 6-9 hours a day, like you say, would have been actually working on what they were paying me to work on. I'm still not sure how a schedule like that could ever have been considered sustainable for anyone who wants to have any of: a social life, family, or professional development time (going to meetups and such).
tsotha 13y ago
>That however is what sounds like actual age discrimination... And? What is this article about? Do you think it's productive for older guys to cry about age discrimination when they can't find a job? All I'm saying is you play to your strengths when you're looking for a job, no matter what your situation is. And being an older guy with just a handful of years in a brand new technology is playing to your competition's strengths. Companies that wouldn't hire an older guy as an Android programmer for $35/hr will shell out $300/hr for that same guy to teach an in-house six sigma class for two weeks. So be the six sigma guy. Does it make sense? No. Does that matter? Again, no. >But if you assume work performance based on age, gender, race, religion, or sexual orientation, you will always be doing it wrong. That's all very nice and totally irrelevant when you're the one looking for a job instead of the one doing the hiring.

joesmo 13y ago

I would still choose the 50 year old. If he has a family, he's more likely to be loyal. If he's not an alcoholic, he's much more likely to produce decent work. In fact, a programmer that has to put in 16 hour days at crunch time is either badly managed or a terrible programmer. Most experienced programmers can do as much or more work in half the time. Finally, there's the issue of experience, one where the younger programmer will always come in second. So the older programmer has the advantage in every case, as an engineer would in any other discipline.

bad_user 13y ago

> Who do you think is going to be more productive? Who's going to put in 16 hour days at crunch time? I'm 31 years old, have been doing lots of crunch times of 16 hour days that lasted for weeks and I really hate this expectation and mentality. I'm more productive than ever, even though I started saying NO to overtime, because fuck you. Yet, I've worked with plenty of beginners and when I say beginners, I'm talking about 5+ years of experience and I have been more productive then all of them, even though they've been more eager than me to work overtime. The difference has been in the following areas: 1. less experienced engineers when facing a hard problem tend to slap some code in place that barely does what the feature request asks for, without thinking of the implications much, like the potential for accidental errors, or how that code interacts with the business logic already in place, or how that functionality will interact with future features already planned. And so every sprint, every release you end up reworking/rewriting/fixing stuff from previous releases, because a rookie skipped the due diligence and slapped a poorly thought out turd. As a consequence, that's why we have software development methodologies, like Scrum, or whatever agile bullshit is the latest fad, because process is required to get good results with average people. 2. no man can keep focusing for more than 7 hours per day on average. Yes, I've been able to stay "in the zone" for more than 12 hours occasionally, however the average for really good people is no more than 7 hours. The rest of the time is filled with "busy work", like pointless meetings, replying to email, reading HN and staring at the monitor stupidly. If you don't believe me, install RescueTime and marvel at the huge amounts of daily jerking off. 3. Solid work requires a well rested mind. I'm at the top of my game when I sleep well at night and I get great ideas in the periods in which I have a good social life. 4. I learn faster than any 20-something, because I have a solid knowledge base. For example it takes me about 2 weeks to become functional in any programming language, that's because I've already worked in production and played with about a dozen thus far and in regards to paradigms, I've already worked with them all. > No wife or children. 5. Pity that you view that as a liability. As a father of a 4-year old boy, I can tell you, a child is the greatest motivation you could ever have, which is why I trust people with children at home more than I trust a 20-something that hasn't felt what true responsibility is like.

pmiller2 13y ago
I'd like to know where you work that you can say "fuck you" to overtime during crunch period. Because, you know, I might like to work there. Seriously, contact me. :) My email is in my profile.

pkolaczk 13y ago

"They have the same experience with whatever the latest thing is." This assumption is wrong. They don't have the same experience. Their direct experience (counted as the time they spent hacking with the latest thing) might be exactly the same, but this doesn't translate to the same effective experience / capability. When I was 20, it took me much longer to become productive with any new thing than it is now when I'm 30. A 20-year old with a 6-month experience with a new language would struggle a lot even with basic concepts. A 30 (or better 40) year old, who already knows 10 other languages and a ton of frameworks would pick it up in single days or weeks and became productive very fast, leaving him much more time to dig into the advanced concepts. When I was about 18 years old, I struggled hard with a math proof related to number theory a teacher gave me. I never solved it then when I was at school and soon moved on to some other things. Recently, when on vacation I recalled that puzzle and started thinking about it just for fun. I solved it in a few minutes by just drawing with a stick on the sand. I never studied theoretical maths nor dealt with it professionally, so I had no direct experience in doing math proofs. Somehow, my capability now is much better than it was 10 years ago. I call it "indirect experience".