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I'm not "young" anymore and not "old" yet, but I'm quite saddened by this point of view: 'The young understand new technologies better than the old do, and are

I'm not "young" anymore and not "old" yet, but I'm quite saddened by this point of view: 'The young understand new technologies better than the old do, and are like a clean slate: they will rapidly learn the latest coding methods and techniques, and they don’t carry any “technology baggage”'. Software business seems mostly about exploitation of the naivety of the youngsters and less about software and programming.

eternalban 11y ago
Yesterday: Finance ran the world and bankers still do. Today: Software runs the world but developers do not. Get the picture?
felixgallo 11y ago
yes, that part is unalloyed nonsense, a just-so story told by the nontechnical to justify ageism. I've got 30 years of experience at this point, and as a result, I grasp new technology faster than most; and the baggage of my years of hard lessons learned is of great worth to my team, employees and employers. As one might expect with any thinking profession.
Udo 11y ago
I'm definitely old - going on 40 this year - and I don't recognize myself in that argument either. I think the reason why these points sound like they're made up is because they are, in fact, made up to justify something that's already been decided based on feeling.
- michaelochurch 11y ago
  31. The fact that 39 is "definitely old" is fucked up. Age discrimination isn't about competence (programmers peak much later than 40) but control. It exists because the VC man-child oligarchy (oddly enough, software inherits the age-discrimination culture from business-culture colonists who'd be "too old" to write code) thinks that people will work harder if this shitty, artificial time pressure is put on them. And, of course, much of the ageism and sexism is unintentional but still exclusionary. See: open-plan offices and the aggressive micromanagement of Scrum. I don't think Scrum and open-plan were devised with ageism in mind, but they contribute massively to the attrition. As people get older, they have less tolerance for macho-subordinate bullshit. This macho-subordinate culture that is imposed on software engineers needs to die. It drives out an incredible amount of talent, makes us an HR nightmare as far as diversity goes, and it has nothing to do with programming; in fact, it detracts from the quality of what is produced. We have to kill it at any cost and professionalize our industry because we can't trust our financial backers.
  - littletimmy 11y ago
    Don't know why you're being downvoted, because this is exactly true. Younger naive fresh graduates are much easier to exploit (or just force to stay in the office longer) than older, experienced people. That is why younger people are preferred.
    - fuxxlux 11y ago
      I agree, I'm also 39. Force isn't obvious and actions are aimed at compliance which demonstrates perceived value. I've never seen myself as being on a "career path", everything in my life is a moving target. Engaged in a company's problems isn't why I woke up this morning.
crdoconnor 11y ago
>Software business seems mostly about exploitation of the naivety of the youngsters and less about software and programming. That's not just the software business.
jp555 11y ago
I feel my age puts me in a unique place because I was lucky enough to grow up with computers as they matured. I have knowledge of the world before and after software ate it. What you call "technological baggage", I call wisdom.
seiji 11y ago
To start a "modern" project today, you have to know programming languages, infrastructure, and packaging systems that didn't even exist five years ago. That's the surface-level "technology" they (VCs) mean. VCs don't care about your deep algorithm knowledge or domain experience unless it can accelerate user-facing interfaces to the moon. If you hire people with 30 years experience, do they know what a Gruntfile is? Do they know the difference between Gruntfile.js, component.json, and package.json? Do they know the relation between Docker and Vagrant and Kubernetes and CoreOS and rkt and etcd? Maybe they still love XML a little too much. Now they have to re-learn the same things they already knew, but with new fads and new syntax and new bugs built-in, all while trying to keep "old ways" vs "new ways" straight in their cluttered heads. Even look a hyper-accelerated areas: Ember? Angular? React? React forks? Become an expert in any single one and you're irrelevant within 3 years unless you want to support "legacy" apps forever. Saying "old" is confusing too. Is "old" 30 years COBOL experience at one company where they wrote everything themselves and can't think any other way? Is "old" 30 years of always chasing the latest fads, master of none? If you have a long work history, and if you are good at something, there's a good chance soon the thing you're good at will be replaced by something you're not good at. Congratulations, now you are "old" and out of touch. Younger people created something new and now your experience isn't relevant. In a way, "experience" is a fool's game. Experience requires a fixed point of deep understanding, but while you're getting experience, the world is moving out from under you. You're almost better starting off as a 15 year old who learns everything new with no historical baggage. Nobody wants to hear old stories about stacks of punchcards and time sharing woes when we've got to deploy and monitor 1,000 instances to AWS in the next 15 minutes. But, you can't go back and become a blank-slate 15 year old every 5 years when the fads change out from under you. Ergo, you're old and out of touch and worthless and go live on a programmer retirement farm in iowa because you're not a culture fit with the 22 year old CEOs anymore. yolo, and you wasted it by not becoming a billionaire by 28.
- guscost 11y ago
  I get where you're coming from, but this should really be qualified by acknowledging that the overwhelming majority of software work is not "modern" by that definition and has nothing to do with any of those newer technologies. Most software products will never have to be deployed on 1,000 AWS instances. For example, I've never used a DevOps stack, a JS module loader or build manager, or an AWS instance in a professional setting. And if I didn't feel like researching those technologies on my own it would be totally fine as long as I didn't try to get hired as a DevOps guru or whatever. I am using React/Flux a lot lately, but that is just one straightforward JS platform, and since in my opinion they absolutely nailed the "pit of success" it's no problem to learn it by making real applications.

eternalban 11y ago

Yesterday: Finance ran the world and bankers still do. Today: Software runs the world but developers do not. Get the picture?

felixgallo 11y ago

yes, that part is unalloyed nonsense, a just-so story told by the nontechnical to justify ageism. I've got 30 years of experience at this point, and as a result, I grasp new technology faster than most; and the baggage of my years of hard lessons learned is of great worth to my team, employees and employers. As one might expect with any thinking profession.

Udo 11y ago

I'm definitely old - going on 40 this year - and I don't recognize myself in that argument either. I think the reason why these points sound like they're made up is because they are, in fact, made up to justify something that's already been decided based on feeling.

michaelochurch 11y ago
31. The fact that 39 is "definitely old" is fucked up. Age discrimination isn't about competence (programmers peak much later than 40) but control. It exists because the VC man-child oligarchy (oddly enough, software inherits the age-discrimination culture from business-culture colonists who'd be "too old" to write code) thinks that people will work harder if this shitty, artificial time pressure is put on them. And, of course, much of the ageism and sexism is unintentional but still exclusionary. See: open-plan offices and the aggressive micromanagement of Scrum. I don't think Scrum and open-plan were devised with ageism in mind, but they contribute massively to the attrition. As people get older, they have less tolerance for macho-subordinate bullshit. This macho-subordinate culture that is imposed on software engineers needs to die. It drives out an incredible amount of talent, makes us an HR nightmare as far as diversity goes, and it has nothing to do with programming; in fact, it detracts from the quality of what is produced. We have to kill it at any cost and professionalize our industry because we can't trust our financial backers.
- littletimmy 11y ago
  Don't know why you're being downvoted, because this is exactly true. Younger naive fresh graduates are much easier to exploit (or just force to stay in the office longer) than older, experienced people. That is why younger people are preferred.
  - fuxxlux 11y ago
    I agree, I'm also 39. Force isn't obvious and actions are aimed at compliance which demonstrates perceived value. I've never seen myself as being on a "career path", everything in my life is a moving target. Engaged in a company's problems isn't why I woke up this morning.

crdoconnor 11y ago

>Software business seems mostly about exploitation of the naivety of the youngsters and less about software and programming. That's not just the software business.

jp555 11y ago

I feel my age puts me in a unique place because I was lucky enough to grow up with computers as they matured. I have knowledge of the world before and after software ate it. What you call "technological baggage", I call wisdom.

seiji 11y ago

To start a "modern" project today, you have to know programming languages, infrastructure, and packaging systems that didn't even exist five years ago. That's the surface-level "technology" they (VCs) mean. VCs don't care about your deep algorithm knowledge or domain experience unless it can accelerate user-facing interfaces to the moon. If you hire people with 30 years experience, do they know what a Gruntfile is? Do they know the difference between Gruntfile.js, component.json, and package.json? Do they know the relation between Docker and Vagrant and Kubernetes and CoreOS and rkt and etcd? Maybe they still love XML a little too much. Now they have to re-learn the same things they already knew, but with new fads and new syntax and new bugs built-in, all while trying to keep "old ways" vs "new ways" straight in their cluttered heads. Even look a hyper-accelerated areas: Ember? Angular? React? React forks? Become an expert in any single one and you're irrelevant within 3 years unless you want to support "legacy" apps forever. Saying "old" is confusing too. Is "old" 30 years COBOL experience at one company where they wrote everything themselves and can't think any other way? Is "old" 30 years of always chasing the latest fads, master of none? If you have a long work history, and if you are good at something, there's a good chance soon the thing you're good at will be replaced by something you're not good at. Congratulations, now you are "old" and out of touch. Younger people created something new and now your experience isn't relevant. In a way, "experience" is a fool's game. Experience requires a fixed point of deep understanding, but while you're getting experience, the world is moving out from under you. You're almost better starting off as a 15 year old who learns everything new with no historical baggage. Nobody wants to hear old stories about stacks of punchcards and time sharing woes when we've got to deploy and monitor 1,000 instances to AWS in the next 15 minutes. But, you can't go back and become a blank-slate 15 year old every 5 years when the fads change out from under you. Ergo, you're old and out of touch and worthless and go live on a programmer retirement farm in iowa because you're not a culture fit with the 22 year old CEOs anymore. yolo, and you wasted it by not becoming a billionaire by 28.

guscost 11y ago
I get where you're coming from, but this should really be qualified by acknowledging that the overwhelming majority of software work is not "modern" by that definition and has nothing to do with any of those newer technologies. Most software products will never have to be deployed on 1,000 AWS instances. For example, I've never used a DevOps stack, a JS module loader or build manager, or an AWS instance in a professional setting. And if I didn't feel like researching those technologies on my own it would be totally fine as long as I didn't try to get hired as a DevOps guru or whatever. I am using React/Flux a lot lately, but that is just one straightforward JS platform, and since in my opinion they absolutely nailed the "pit of success" it's no problem to learn it by making real applications.