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This. I see too many older developers who complain about ageism, but what's really going on is that they're essentially the same developer they were 2-3 years i
by curun1r 12y ago
This. I see too many older developers who complain about ageism, but what's really going on is that they're essentially the same developer they were 2-3 years into their career. If you've been working in the industry for over 20 years, employers can and should expect that you've made the most of it. Those developers have very few problems with ageism. It's the ones that have become comfortable and stagnated that have trouble.
- hoprocker 12y agoWho was it that said, "It's not 10 years worth of experience, it's the same year repeated 10 times"?
- spacemanmatt 12y agoSomeone with 10 years of experience, unable to recognize the nuances one picks up by repeating those 10 years of experience with 10 years of context to make better sense of it.
- hoprocker 11y agoExcellent point; that 10 years can make you a specialist.
- scrozier 12y agoI am 57 and quite current. I have launched several startups and kept fresh constantly. My current client has me doing lots of leading edge stuff that some of their younger devs couldn't do. And yet I do feel the ageism. I understand it and I'm not angry about it, but it's real, nonetheless. It's not a good feeling.
- 31reasons 12y agoWhat kind of ageism have you experienced ? Can you describe some experiences ?
- rayiner 12y agoI'm not a programmer anymore, so I don't have a horse in this race, but I cringe when people exhort older programmers to "stay current." If you're spending your free time learning about distributed databases, machine learning, cryptography--fields that existed in the 1990's but are more relevant and developed today because of the web--you're becoming a better programmer. If you're figuring out the latest "compile to JS" language or framework, you're wasting your time. You could do all that stuff in C++ or Lisp or ML. In 1994. Maybe there are lots of programmers who don't stay current. But I also think there are lots of employers who can't distinguish between "staying current" and "keeping up with fashion."
- DannoHung 12y agoUnfortunately for non-fad followers, the people with money want to use the fads. Shouldn't having the knowledge of what you could do in 1994 make you that much better suited to doing it in 2015 even if you have to spend a few days learning the faddish way of expressing the concepts?
- tptacek 12y agoThe point isn't that you can insulate yourself from the fads; the point is that you should spend your career-building time on fundamental skills acquisition, and pick up faddish frameworks and languages on a JIT basis. People who can write compilers generally aren't too intimidated by compile-to-JS languages.
- johngalt 12y agoI am in the middle of these two groups. Often "Stay current", "It's different with modern ideas/methods", etc... Expressions commonly used by people who want to ignore the lessons that other people had to learn the hard way. Ironically claiming they claim the old person is out of touch. When in reality they are trying to prevent newbies from repeating the past.
- pjbrunet 12y agoIf we look at the market adoption curve (Marketing 101) most of the money and most of the demand is in "old" technology. But extremely old tech, extremely new tech, either way there's going to be demand across the spectrum relative to the supply of developers.