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Honest, legitimate post that I very much enjoyed. However I do think posts like this feed in ageism. I say this because it posits that the change is that the a

by personZ 12y ago

Honest, legitimate post that I very much enjoyed. However I do think posts like this feed in ageism. I say this because it posits that the change is that the author is older and has more things to do, therefore they've fallen out with technology. The take-away invariably being that people who are older and have more things to do have fallen out with technology, whereas the young are still with it, whatever it is. Let's back up for a moment. I've worked with people throughout my career who never learned a thing that wasn't specifically taught to them on the job. They had very little curiosity, and an email saying something like "try to look into" would get met with derision. "Is this on the test?" they would effectively ask, when really I was just trying to get people interested in something that might have an impact on our work. So soon enough I have to be very specific and guide people along the technology path. They left work and played volleyball and worked on their tuner car and went to family events and so on. They learned exactly what was specifically necessary for their job today and tomorrow. Never beyond. Most of them were 20-ish year olds. I was the prototypical "love technology around the clock" sort, and I was very, very much the exception. Literally, I know no one who I ever worked with who savored technology like I do. But there were moments when I lost interest. One was on a return from my honeymoon. Being away from technology for a couple of weeks, suddenly it was all very "Meh". I could easily have taken that moment and said "Oh well, I guess this is what happens when you turn 27. Guess it's time to look into management." But I didn't because that would be wrong. I lost my mojo and was burned out. Not long after I changed jobs, got recharged, and was at it again. And I love it. I love the change. I love the technology.

nostromo 12y ago
Yes. Somehow "I am less motivated to work hard and learn new things in my 40s" turns into "Everyone is less motivated to work hard and learn new things in their 40s." The author sounds a bit bored. His mind is telling him, "After 15 years of LAMP development, I'm bored, let's do something different!" What should he do? Maybe he should take some time off, learn something new and exciting, or maybe move to the countryside and become an organic farmer. Only he can know.
- gfodor 12y ago
  If you're sick of building CRUD web applications, it's probably a good idea to remind yourself that there are an infinite number of other things you can create with computers.
- personZ 12y ago
  Yes. Somehow "I am less motivated to work hard and learn new things in my 40s" turns into "Everyone is less motivated to work hard and learn new things in their 40s." Yes, it very much is worded exactly like that. If you describe a starting state, and then a change of environment or inputs (getting older, which happens to all of us), and then hold the resulting state as the consequences of that change, you are generalizing, intentional or not. It is simply unavoidable. Sarcasm to this obvious reality isn't helpful. To put it another way -- if a technology ignorant HR recruiter read that piece, they would absolutely think "older, established people are less valuable hires" than "this individual is a less valuable hire". This, of course, could be the cycle turning in on itself, in much the same way that some minorities equate their condition to being a consequence of being a minority, rather than individual, more unique traits.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
AznHisoka 12y ago
Is it ageism? Or is it just experience? If you've been in the industry for 10+ years, there's a certain cynicism that occurs, when you're learning a new framework/language every 2 years that's just an incremental improvement on another language. Just because a boss tells you to. "Oh learn this, it's gonna be the next big thing. It's gonna propel your career. Oh, you're done with that? Now, learn this new thing for your next project. 3 months later.. OK, forget that, we're switching frameworks. Learn this now."
- danielweber 12y ago
  It's very hard to care a lot about the new technology that is just the same as the old technology you used 10 years ago. It's a giant zero-sum game to expect everyone to pour time into running in place to not fall behind, and we're not getting any better.
- daemin 12y ago
  So your boss is basically telling you to learn all of these things so that you will remain a cog in the machine. Like running really fast trying to move ahead, but really you're just on the treadmill and staying in the same place.
  - pling 12y ago
    That's a great way of putting it. It's exactly where I feel I an now. I wish I did C more often. Most of that knowledge has longevity.
    - dwd 12y ago
      My first website made CGI calls to an API written in C. 17 years later, I'm using the same basic model, except with Go.
gordaco 12y ago
I used to have that passion, when I was young (I'm 29 now, so not very young for the tech world, although not old either). And to be honest, it was the 40+ work week what killed it. I never liked specialization, so to me it makes a lot of sense that, if you're already investing that much time in technology, you may spend the rest of the week doing a different thing. I'm getting a new degree (in principle, I don't plan to make a career change, I just want to do something different with my evenings). And this summer I'm learning a bit of Finnish on my own, because why not. Obviously, it's not like I ran out of curiosity, but rather, that I prefer to direct it to several different things than focusing on a single one. If I devoted my free time to technology, I would be doing so just not to become obsolete, not out of genuine interest, and that would be too frustrating. I actually have some tech interests (Scala, Hadoop, any kind of complex algorithm, etc), but when I get home, there is so much I'd rather do, that I don't program at home any more, except on rare occasions. There is a lot of pressure to spend all your waking time on technology and things related to your work or your career (I'd say this is part of the so-called "Californian ideology", maybe I'm wrong). But, in actuality, not that much people is so obsessed with learning the same area, and the competition to not get behind is mostly illusory (ageism is another different problem; and no amount of knowledge will free you from it). So my advice here is that, if you don't feel like devoting your life to a single thing, forget about your job the very moment you close your office's door, and enjoy any other of the million things life has to offer. And of course, if you are really that passionate, keep learning new programming languages or techniques on your free time (just be careful about burnout). Final note: the most tech-passionate guy on my job is one of the oldest (36). It's not a matter of losing it over time, it's a simple matter of people's preferences (and in some cases evolution over time).
- dclowd9901 12y ago
  I think the tech industry discounts the value of expanding your horizons. I have a background in design and writing, and when I choose to incorporate those disciplines into what I do with code, a lot of magic happens. Let's say I order a class like a do a news article (upside down pyramid, aka most important shit first). Or I apply my own design eye to the motion or interactivity of a static design. Or even to how I interpret the structure of the code? Reach out. Learn as much as you can. You end up finding a lot of relationships between a lot of things in life that can apply equally to each other. Right now I'm digging deep into car repair. It's fun to find the correlations between the component systems of a car and software.
flexd 12y ago
I agree completely, you sound exactly like the kind of person I am! I just finished my computer engineering bachelors degree a month ago, I am 26 years old. From all the people I know at school, only a small handful of them has ever done any kind of coding or any thing outside of the school curriculum (more than just reading a tutorial one night). That is, for me at least, a frightening thought. You want to work has a developer but you do not spend any time outside work to learn? Some of us are curious and try things out. I believe those that do are (mostly) the people that can be good developers. A situation that was particularly curious to me was when we had our first Programming 101 (Java) class the semester before Christmas, and then when the second class from around mid-February. In between that time, a huge amount of the class did not look at any Java, or do anything, or even try it out. So unsurprisingly, barely anyone remembered anything. There was just a complete lack of interest, and I can't figure out why they would choose this career path if they did not enjoy it and I do not understand how those people managed to pass classes, or how they are supposed to do good work later. I have had a growing interest in computers since I was a child, and I think I have been coding since I was around 12-13 years old. During my time at university I have attempted to get people more interested in coding by suggesting they figure out some problem they want to solve, and then spend some time making something. I think I managed to get only a few of them to try anything, while the rest were questioning why they would want to do anything like that... I know quite a few of them have gotten jobs directly out of school, but I have no idea how. Edit: I do understand that not everyone has time to nerd out all the time, especially when you get older and have a family. I also like to relax and recharge, so I try to keep busy doing other things like exercising. Sometimes I just get so sick of work, school and everything that I can't seem to write any code at home for personal projects. It is nice to be able to burn of that unspent energy mountain biking for example. And sometimes that just seems to shake loose a solution to a problem I have been having or give me inspiration to create something new.
orbitur 12y ago
> The take-away invariably being that people who are older and have more things to do have fallen out with technology, whereas the young are still with it, whatever it is. But it's still true, in general. Sure, I work with plenty of early 20s people who have (frustratingly) no interest in their domain outside of what is necessary to get them through the work day. These young people exist. But there are also the young people who are actually interested, and, in general, they have a comparatively infinite amount of free time to dig into languages and libraries. If you have a spouse/partner, some of the time you used to spend working on your interests is now spent nurturing your relationship (and if you don't do that, I guess you'll have more free time for yourself again later on). If you have a child, then you must take another chunk of time spent on personal interests, or work. For most people it ends up being their own interests, since they still have bills to pay.
- personZ 12y ago
  But it's still true, in general. At best what you could say is true is that people with no relationships and no "extra-curriculars/external interests" have more free time. This crosses all ages. There are young people with filled social and activity calendars (I've worked with young people who seemingly had filled social calendars at work). There are older people who have all the time in the world. I remember reading once that the best employees are the unhappiest (in life). These were the people with endless time because they had no activities, no family or social relationships, etc. They'd happily burn the candle 120 hours a week because they had nothing else to do. Not sure how beneficial that is to knowledge work.
noname123 12y ago
I'm 27, used to be in tech like the biggest nerd of them all. But not anymore, frankly I'm tired of all of the changes that happened in the industry - it's not that I'm tired of learning but it's that the changes lack substance. Learning a new framework that does the same thing like layout or user design; it's not like learning music and digging into a deeper discipline like moving from acoustic strumming to jazz improvisation, it's just learning new keywords to do the same crap because the old keywords have been remapped. I'm reminded by a writing blog, like writers of popular fiction, programmers aren't creating technology anymore but we are simply selling a idea (e.g., Martha Stewart for home furnishings flash sales sites, fear of missing out for Facebook/Instagram, diversion or outlet for teenage aggression/frustration for iPhone games) that validates a user's idea that is wrapped around technology. Hence, tech trends surrounds consumer tech instead of system programming now and new web frameworks sprouts by the day that emphasize shaving the man-hours of a routine set of mundane tasks down by a fraction of an hour for the benefit of the agile burn-down chart. This is not meant to be depressing nor cynical comment but a liberating one for me. Too often, I or I have witnessed a lot of my mostly younger peers try to reconcile the art and commerce, or to put in blunt way, have our cake and eat it too. I see that as a cowardice or indecisive but perhaps necessary stage in one's journey of growth, not to commit yourself and not to express your personal values through the imperfect tradeoff's and limited circumstances of a finite professional life - but be swayed by the arbitrary trinkets that one's professional guild assigns and equating its idea of worth to your self worth. VB/Pythonistas/Rails/Node.js I've seen them come and go like names on the Billboards charts moving to VH1's "Behind the Music/Where are They Now?". I'm convinced now that you have two routes in this business, 1) make your programming craft secondary to the development of your domain expertise, so learn finance, SEO or sales whatever is the main objective of your business, 2) make your programming craft your domain business and work at companies where their business is the software.
- eru 12y ago
  > Learning a new framework that does the same thing like layout or user design; it's not like learning music and digging into a deeper discipline like moving from acoustic strumming to jazz improvisation, it's just learning new keywords to do the same crap because the old keywords have been remapped. Perhaps you should look into Haskell, Clojure or Erlang for a change?
ascendantlogic 12y ago
"However I do think posts like this feed in ageism" That was my exact thought after I read this as well. I'm 36 and starting to feel the creeping fear of being seen as "too old" to do what I do. People posting "I did PHP for 15 years and don't get Python and don't want to learn DevOps and AWS is so confusing" sounds like a senile old man complaining about the good old days. If you want to be marked as a crotchety old man then great, don't make the rest of us look that way too.
- p1esk 12y ago
  You're never too old to "do what you do", unless you have nothing to show for it. Have you written software that others find awesome and useful? Are you still capable of writing such software? If so, you have nothing to worry about.
  - ascendantlogic 12y ago
    Right, it's not a question of being too old to do the job, it's a question of the PERCEPTION of being too old to do the job.
gburnett 12y ago
"They left work and played volleyball and worked on their tuner car and went to family events and so on. They learned exactly what was specifically necessary for their job today and tomorrow. Never beyond. Most of them were 20-ish year olds." Any idea what happened to your colleagues?
- personZ 12y ago
  Most of them are (if not all...I can't think of a single one who isn't) still developers. Few have made any great impact, and most have had the "people get hired in as my boss" experience a number of times. But they're still in the industry, doing a job, getting paycheck, and supporting a living. Our industry is rather unique in that way that it's a 24/7 job for some, even at the lowest tiers.
thehal84 12y ago
I share the same sentiment and thoughts. Have you ever read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance? If not I recommend it, been a great book to read and think about over the summer.
sequoia 12y ago
> They left work and played volleyball and worked on their tuner car and went to family events and so on. 'They had interests besides developing work skills.' You say this like it's a bad thing. This is a very disturbing aspect of HN/startup culture: the disdain for reasonable life-work balance & non-obsessive programmers. Life goes by fast, I hope you're stopping to smell more than just the new programming frameworks. :)

by personZ 12y ago

nostromo 12y ago

Yes. Somehow "I am less motivated to work hard and learn new things in my 40s" turns into "Everyone is less motivated to work hard and learn new things in their 40s." The author sounds a bit bored. His mind is telling him, "After 15 years of LAMP development, I'm bored, let's do something different!" What should he do? Maybe he should take some time off, learn something new and exciting, or maybe move to the countryside and become an organic farmer. Only he can know.

gfodor 12y ago
If you're sick of building CRUD web applications, it's probably a good idea to remind yourself that there are an infinite number of other things you can create with computers.
personZ 12y ago
Yes. Somehow "I am less motivated to work hard and learn new things in my 40s" turns into "Everyone is less motivated to work hard and learn new things in their 40s." Yes, it very much is worded exactly like that. If you describe a starting state, and then a change of environment or inputs (getting older, which happens to all of us), and then hold the resulting state as the consequences of that change, you are generalizing, intentional or not. It is simply unavoidable. Sarcasm to this obvious reality isn't helpful. To put it another way -- if a technology ignorant HR recruiter read that piece, they would absolutely think "older, established people are less valuable hires" than "this individual is a less valuable hire". This, of course, could be the cycle turning in on itself, in much the same way that some minorities equate their condition to being a consequence of being a minority, rather than individual, more unique traits.

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

AznHisoka 12y ago

Is it ageism? Or is it just experience? If you've been in the industry for 10+ years, there's a certain cynicism that occurs, when you're learning a new framework/language every 2 years that's just an incremental improvement on another language. Just because a boss tells you to. "Oh learn this, it's gonna be the next big thing. It's gonna propel your career. Oh, you're done with that? Now, learn this new thing for your next project. 3 months later.. OK, forget that, we're switching frameworks. Learn this now."

danielweber 12y ago
It's very hard to care a lot about the new technology that is just the same as the old technology you used 10 years ago. It's a giant zero-sum game to expect everyone to pour time into running in place to not fall behind, and we're not getting any better.
daemin 12y ago
So your boss is basically telling you to learn all of these things so that you will remain a cog in the machine. Like running really fast trying to move ahead, but really you're just on the treadmill and staying in the same place.
- pling 12y ago
  That's a great way of putting it. It's exactly where I feel I an now. I wish I did C more often. Most of that knowledge has longevity.
  - dwd 12y ago
    My first website made CGI calls to an API written in C. 17 years later, I'm using the same basic model, except with Go.

gordaco 12y ago

I used to have that passion, when I was young (I'm 29 now, so not very young for the tech world, although not old either). And to be honest, it was the 40+ work week what killed it. I never liked specialization, so to me it makes a lot of sense that, if you're already investing that much time in technology, you may spend the rest of the week doing a different thing. I'm getting a new degree (in principle, I don't plan to make a career change, I just want to do something different with my evenings). And this summer I'm learning a bit of Finnish on my own, because why not. Obviously, it's not like I ran out of curiosity, but rather, that I prefer to direct it to several different things than focusing on a single one. If I devoted my free time to technology, I would be doing so just not to become obsolete, not out of genuine interest, and that would be too frustrating. I actually have some tech interests (Scala, Hadoop, any kind of complex algorithm, etc), but when I get home, there is so much I'd rather do, that I don't program at home any more, except on rare occasions. There is a lot of pressure to spend all your waking time on technology and things related to your work or your career (I'd say this is part of the so-called "Californian ideology", maybe I'm wrong). But, in actuality, not that much people is so obsessed with learning the same area, and the competition to not get behind is mostly illusory (ageism is another different problem; and no amount of knowledge will free you from it). So my advice here is that, if you don't feel like devoting your life to a single thing, forget about your job the very moment you close your office's door, and enjoy any other of the million things life has to offer. And of course, if you are really that passionate, keep learning new programming languages or techniques on your free time (just be careful about burnout). Final note: the most tech-passionate guy on my job is one of the oldest (36). It's not a matter of losing it over time, it's a simple matter of people's preferences (and in some cases evolution over time).

dclowd9901 12y ago
I think the tech industry discounts the value of expanding your horizons. I have a background in design and writing, and when I choose to incorporate those disciplines into what I do with code, a lot of magic happens. Let's say I order a class like a do a news article (upside down pyramid, aka most important shit first). Or I apply my own design eye to the motion or interactivity of a static design. Or even to how I interpret the structure of the code? Reach out. Learn as much as you can. You end up finding a lot of relationships between a lot of things in life that can apply equally to each other. Right now I'm digging deep into car repair. It's fun to find the correlations between the component systems of a car and software.

flexd 12y ago

I agree completely, you sound exactly like the kind of person I am! I just finished my computer engineering bachelors degree a month ago, I am 26 years old. From all the people I know at school, only a small handful of them has ever done any kind of coding or any thing outside of the school curriculum (more than just reading a tutorial one night). That is, for me at least, a frightening thought. You want to work has a developer but you do not spend any time outside work to learn? Some of us are curious and try things out. I believe those that do are (mostly) the people that can be good developers. A situation that was particularly curious to me was when we had our first Programming 101 (Java) class the semester before Christmas, and then when the second class from around mid-February. In between that time, a huge amount of the class did not look at any Java, or do anything, or even try it out. So unsurprisingly, barely anyone remembered anything. There was just a complete lack of interest, and I can't figure out why they would choose this career path if they did not enjoy it and I do not understand how those people managed to pass classes, or how they are supposed to do good work later. I have had a growing interest in computers since I was a child, and I think I have been coding since I was around 12-13 years old. During my time at university I have attempted to get people more interested in coding by suggesting they figure out some problem they want to solve, and then spend some time making something. I think I managed to get only a few of them to try anything, while the rest were questioning why they would want to do anything like that... I know quite a few of them have gotten jobs directly out of school, but I have no idea how. Edit: I do understand that not everyone has time to nerd out all the time, especially when you get older and have a family. I also like to relax and recharge, so I try to keep busy doing other things like exercising. Sometimes I just get so sick of work, school and everything that I can't seem to write any code at home for personal projects. It is nice to be able to burn of that unspent energy mountain biking for example. And sometimes that just seems to shake loose a solution to a problem I have been having or give me inspiration to create something new.

orbitur 12y ago

> The take-away invariably being that people who are older and have more things to do have fallen out with technology, whereas the young are still with it, whatever it is. But it's still true, in general. Sure, I work with plenty of early 20s people who have (frustratingly) no interest in their domain outside of what is necessary to get them through the work day. These young people exist. But there are also the young people who are actually interested, and, in general, they have a comparatively infinite amount of free time to dig into languages and libraries. If you have a spouse/partner, some of the time you used to spend working on your interests is now spent nurturing your relationship (and if you don't do that, I guess you'll have more free time for yourself again later on). If you have a child, then you must take another chunk of time spent on personal interests, or work. For most people it ends up being their own interests, since they still have bills to pay.

personZ 12y ago
But it's still true, in general. At best what you could say is true is that people with no relationships and no "extra-curriculars/external interests" have more free time. This crosses all ages. There are young people with filled social and activity calendars (I've worked with young people who seemingly had filled social calendars at work). There are older people who have all the time in the world. I remember reading once that the best employees are the unhappiest (in life). These were the people with endless time because they had no activities, no family or social relationships, etc. They'd happily burn the candle 120 hours a week because they had nothing else to do. Not sure how beneficial that is to knowledge work.

noname123 12y ago

I'm 27, used to be in tech like the biggest nerd of them all. But not anymore, frankly I'm tired of all of the changes that happened in the industry - it's not that I'm tired of learning but it's that the changes lack substance. Learning a new framework that does the same thing like layout or user design; it's not like learning music and digging into a deeper discipline like moving from acoustic strumming to jazz improvisation, it's just learning new keywords to do the same crap because the old keywords have been remapped. I'm reminded by a writing blog, like writers of popular fiction, programmers aren't creating technology anymore but we are simply selling a idea (e.g., Martha Stewart for home furnishings flash sales sites, fear of missing out for Facebook/Instagram, diversion or outlet for teenage aggression/frustration for iPhone games) that validates a user's idea that is wrapped around technology. Hence, tech trends surrounds consumer tech instead of system programming now and new web frameworks sprouts by the day that emphasize shaving the man-hours of a routine set of mundane tasks down by a fraction of an hour for the benefit of the agile burn-down chart. This is not meant to be depressing nor cynical comment but a liberating one for me. Too often, I or I have witnessed a lot of my mostly younger peers try to reconcile the art and commerce, or to put in blunt way, have our cake and eat it too. I see that as a cowardice or indecisive but perhaps necessary stage in one's journey of growth, not to commit yourself and not to express your personal values through the imperfect tradeoff's and limited circumstances of a finite professional life - but be swayed by the arbitrary trinkets that one's professional guild assigns and equating its idea of worth to your self worth. VB/Pythonistas/Rails/Node.js I've seen them come and go like names on the Billboards charts moving to VH1's "Behind the Music/Where are They Now?". I'm convinced now that you have two routes in this business, 1) make your programming craft secondary to the development of your domain expertise, so learn finance, SEO or sales whatever is the main objective of your business, 2) make your programming craft your domain business and work at companies where their business is the software.

eru 12y ago
> Learning a new framework that does the same thing like layout or user design; it's not like learning music and digging into a deeper discipline like moving from acoustic strumming to jazz improvisation, it's just learning new keywords to do the same crap because the old keywords have been remapped. Perhaps you should look into Haskell, Clojure or Erlang for a change?

ascendantlogic 12y ago

"However I do think posts like this feed in ageism" That was my exact thought after I read this as well. I'm 36 and starting to feel the creeping fear of being seen as "too old" to do what I do. People posting "I did PHP for 15 years and don't get Python and don't want to learn DevOps and AWS is so confusing" sounds like a senile old man complaining about the good old days. If you want to be marked as a crotchety old man then great, don't make the rest of us look that way too.

p1esk 12y ago
You're never too old to "do what you do", unless you have nothing to show for it. Have you written software that others find awesome and useful? Are you still capable of writing such software? If so, you have nothing to worry about.
- ascendantlogic 12y ago
  Right, it's not a question of being too old to do the job, it's a question of the PERCEPTION of being too old to do the job.

gburnett 12y ago

"They left work and played volleyball and worked on their tuner car and went to family events and so on. They learned exactly what was specifically necessary for their job today and tomorrow. Never beyond. Most of them were 20-ish year olds." Any idea what happened to your colleagues?

personZ 12y ago
Most of them are (if not all...I can't think of a single one who isn't) still developers. Few have made any great impact, and most have had the "people get hired in as my boss" experience a number of times. But they're still in the industry, doing a job, getting paycheck, and supporting a living. Our industry is rather unique in that way that it's a 24/7 job for some, even at the lowest tiers.

thehal84 12y ago

I share the same sentiment and thoughts. Have you ever read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance? If not I recommend it, been a great book to read and think about over the summer.

sequoia 12y ago

> They left work and played volleyball and worked on their tuner car and went to family events and so on. 'They had interests besides developing work skills.' You say this like it's a bad thing. This is a very disturbing aspect of HN/startup culture: the disdain for reasonable life-work balance & non-obsessive programmers. Life goes by fast, I hope you're stopping to smell more than just the new programming frameworks. :)