[HN Gopher] Am I too old to become a professional programmer?
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Am I too old to become a professional programmer?
Author : takiwatanga
Score : 27 points
Date : 2022-04-10 20:17 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (ehmatthes.github.io)
(TXT) w3m dump (ehmatthes.github.io)
| speedbird wrote:
| Having been at this for a few years I've seen a couple of
| unfortunate trends.
|
| When i started out it was very common to find women and older
| people in the workforce doing programming and related roles quite
| happily.
|
| We then seem to have gone through a period of the uber-geek /
| nerd and ended up with a very "bro" culture that totally
| alienated women / people with a life outside work. Horrible.
|
| Fortunately in the post Covid world and with a dearth of talent
| to hire this seems to be retreating somewhat.
| lr4444lr wrote:
| What I find about older people who complain about ageism in tech
| is that most of them really just wanna be in management or admin
| and not do the grunt work of actual dev or ops. That or they
| insist that they are relevant despite knowing only the same
| frameworks or methodologies that haven't been in vogue for 15+
| years, and only now they got laid off.
|
| I hate to generalize, but never in my experience (I am over 40)
| have I ever even seen a resume with potential ever get turned
| away due to age.
| supramouse wrote:
| I have once a long time ago, but it was the mixture of age +
| experience and not expecting that the person would actually be
| interested in staying shit-show of a company I was working in
| at the time ( it folded 6 months later anyway)
| ergonaught wrote:
| Just about 20 years ago, "we" (popular open source company)
| were told by big Silicon Valley names we'd all recognize that
| we were "too grey". We were mostly 30s/40s. Didn't have
| anything to do with any of our work or skills (every one of
| them was using and still uses our product). Just age, or the
| appearance of age.
| Mc91 wrote:
| > never in my experience (I am over 40) have I ever even seen a
| resume with potential ever get turned away due to age.
|
| No one has ever told me they turned someone down due to age,
| but probably because it is against the law.
|
| We interviewed a guy who knew what we were doing inside and
| out, and he was older than all of us. On top of this, he had a
| nice, friendly personality. We had been interviewing for this
| position for a while. The lead and manager turned him down. He
| would be paid less than a Google L3 would get paid (this was
| ten years ago, and it was not a tech company). I protested
| saying "what are you looking for? If he isn't good enough, what
| are you expecting to come in? what was wrong with him?" The
| reply was "I don't think he would be happy if we called him at
| 3 AM if some problem came up". The problem was they thought he
| was too old. He was probably in his late 50s.
| nuclearnice1 wrote:
| I'm no expert, but I don't think it works like that. It's not
| December 1955. No one throws away a resume in a public meeting
| declaring she's too old, queer, brown, and Muslim.
|
| But is she a cultural fit? Does he have the energy? A bit too
| senior?
|
| I imagine it plays out like that too much the same effect.
| devoutsalsa wrote:
| > No one throws away a resume in a public meeting declaring
| she's too old, queer, brown, and Muslim.
|
| That's naive. I was a recruiter for 9 years. Discrimination
| at an individual level is rampant, but the type of
| discrimination varies.
|
| One hiring manager told me a woman was the best he'd
| interviewed, but he heard kids in the background & wouldn't
| hire her because he didn't want to risk her going out on
| maternity leave.
|
| A manager told me he threw out all resumes with names
| sounding like they'd be from a specific country because he
| thought they all had poor communication skills.
|
| It's really common for hiring managers to insist on 3 to 5
| years of experience because they're likely to be young and
| willing to work a lot of unpaid overtime.
| jgmmo wrote:
| "culture fit" is how corp america dodges people for all those
| racist, sexist, bigoted reasons, without having to say it.
| Kenji wrote:
| ta988 wrote:
| Lots of companies would not mind. As long as you can do the job.
| Unlikely at big techs or startups but tons of small companies
| need programmers on the long term and not people they can squeeze
| in their coding trough while they are still young.
| kraig911 wrote:
| I'd say in some circumstances yes you can be too old depending on
| where you're trying to get a job. For me as a 40'ish year old
| with 3 kids (1 an infant), 3 dogs, a busy home I can't dedicated
| the time a 20'ish year old could with no responsibilities. Can I
| work for a FANG? or start-up? Probably not. I just depends on the
| culture. I love to code. I envy my earlier years where time
| wasn't as valuable and I had the freedom to try new things.
|
| There's the inverse too of being older programmer with more
| responsibilities at home. It's lost on my wife when I explain to
| her look I want to spend time with you but watching the
| kardashians isn't good together time - so that I'd rather work
| she would take offense. Time is precious.
| nuclearnice1 wrote:
| Let's not mix up Google and a start-up. Google has 20,000
| programmers. Being 40 or having a dog or kids or being
| unwilling to work more than 40 hours are no barrier to entry.
|
| Startup companies on the other hand can demand more.
| [deleted]
| revskill wrote:
| Here we're in Vietnam, where there's no real tech unicorn at all.
| The issue is in the quality of architect/tech leader.
|
| One must be really open minded to continuous learning, learn your
| weakness, fix your mistakes consistently with this in mind:
| There's no easy problem, all depends on context of problem.
|
| That's why it's a real issue with old programmer here, as most of
| companies tend to "go fast and break thing".
| temp8964 wrote:
| The short answer is no. The honest answer is depends. Lots of
| thing can be barriers for becoming a professional programmer. Age
| is one of the factor associated with lots of negative things.
| Your thinking could be slower than your prime time, and you might
| have much less energy to be focused on learning and coding. Your
| memory probably won't be that good. Even your eyes can become a
| problem, and your backs, necks. Also you might have more
| distractions in life.
|
| I am not saying those will definitively prevent all old people
| from becoming a professional programmer. But let's be honest,
| there are lots of negative things associated with being old and
| you will need to overcome them. There could be a few advantages
| though, but I think disadvantages are becoming more significant
| after 60.
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| This article didn't touch on the biggest obstacle for career
| changes: Giving up seniority.
|
| The reality is that someone switching to software development
| mid-career is going to have similar programming knowledge to
| anyone else who has never had a programming job before. If
| they're willing to truly accept going back to junior status with
| junior pay and defer to team leads and managers who might be
| younger than themselves, it's not a problem.
|
| But that's easier said than done for a lot of people. It's hard
| to go back to being a junior and it's hard to be managed by
| someone much younger than yourself. I've worked with a lot of
| great engineers in their 50s who had no problems reporting to
| someone in their 20s, but I've also worked with some grumpy old
| guys who wanted their 2-3 decades of work experience to be the
| trump card in every dispute.
| rhacker wrote:
| It shifts in the 50s. Often earlier though.
|
| 20 - 25: Please please please everyone
|
| 26 - 30: Hey I've been pleasing everyone and everyone loves me
| so I should be a technical lead now. I'm quitting if that
| doesn't happen.
|
| 31 - 35: Hey I'm pretty much doing this perfectly but the major
| problem now is that the management layer has no idea how this
| stuff works. Promote me and I can provide insight into why
| things are going slow and I can help improve things.
|
| 36 - 45: Management layers and potentially vice this or chief
| "tech" that.
|
| 46 - 55: Most major burns and let go for new blood.
|
| 56 - Onward until you no longer want to work: Go back to
| development work and focus more on that getting that pool or a
| house out in the country. I don't care about climbing the
| ladder I just want that huge dev salary and take care of myself
| and wife.
| meerita wrote:
| I didn't know there were a "prime" moment for being programmer. I
| know that if you're too old, but too old, you may have cognitive
| trouble, but in general, if you dedicate yourself to become good
| at it, why not? the market will put you in place anyways. Go for
| it!
| black_13 wrote:
| taneq wrote:
| Too old to change careers into software dev? Probably not, a very
| good friend of mine started out as a nurse and then retrained at
| 30. But too old to compete with others in your age bracket for
| senior positions when you show up as a 60-year-old fresh from a
| 6-month cybersecurity diploma after not coding since the 80s?
| Yeah maybe a little. It's important to set your expectations
| according to current relevant experience.
| gorjusborg wrote:
| When I see this question asked, I immediately mutter, _yep_.
|
| It isn't that anyone is too old, though, it's that they are
| asking permission.
|
| If you want it, make it happen.
| lcuff wrote:
| As someone who started programming professionally at 25, and
| stopped professionally at 60, here is my experience: At 25, I
| could do a decent job of "drinking from the firehose". I could
| learn new things very quickly, and retain what I learned. At 60,
| the time it took to understand stuff grew longer, and the ability
| to retain it basically disappeared. I was programming in Ruby on
| Rails, and learning about a new gem or a new test environment was
| 'fine', but the next day, I needed to return to the documentation
| at length to refresh myself. It made being productive super
| difficult. I still do very small hobby projects, mostly using
| stuff I learned 10 or 15 years ago. This might not be true for
| everyone, but guaranteeing that 'anyone' can program at any age
| is just not true. Especially not in an environment where you need
| (a) a language, possibly 2 or 3 (b) a framework, (c) a test
| framework (d) an IDE, (e) a production environment (f) a source
| control system (g) a problem tracking system. YMMV. You need to
| check it out for yourself if you're considering it.
| zabzonk wrote:
| > As someone who started programming professionally at 25, and
| stopped professionally at 60
|
| Almost exactly my career progression. Mine was Fortran, BASIC,
| C,various assembly languages, ReXX, SQL, various 4GLs, C++ and
| other stuff. So basically, don't stop learning!
|
| Although I have a very fat book called "Crafting Interpreters"
| sitting on my desk right now, that I don't really feel like
| opening. But maybe I will.
| darkerside wrote:
| I am sure age is a factor, but the environment is changing so
| much quicker these days than it used to. That must make it only
| more difficult to stay up on the latest framework, which you
| probably feel understandably confident will be out of style in
| a year based on your experience.
| ahnberg wrote:
| No.
| darig wrote:
| shams93 wrote:
| Nobody is too old especially if you code to build your own
| product. It's never been easier for a single programmer to bring
| a product to market.
| PeterWhittaker wrote:
| TFA hits the most important point: know your strengths. After
| about 20 years consulting, I moved back into development. I
| wasn't a great developer then, and am far far better now.
|
| But my coding skill isn't my strength (somewhat slow, very
| defensive), my subject expertise (SELinux, ICAM, risk assessment)
| is.
|
| If you have specialty skills, you can be well rewarded, even if
| you are slower than the youngsters.
| thenerdhead wrote:
| No such thing as too old. You can be past your prime, but never
| too old to do anything.
| bytehowl wrote:
| I am 112 years old and my joints ache if I so much as think of
| moving. It won't be with a spring in my step like them young
| whippersnappers, but I would sooner die than not climb Mt.
| Everest, darn it!
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