[HN Gopher] Aging programmer
___________________________________________________________________
Aging programmer
Author : nomdep
Score : 405 points
Date : 2022-09-24 12:35 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (world.hey.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (world.hey.com)
| mathgeek wrote:
| We all benefit from a world where productive developers are
| applauded for choosing between parallel tracks as ICs and
| managers.
| RockingGoodNite wrote:
| Productive developers don't necessarily make good managers.
| Been doing this stuff for a long time and never came across the
| acronym IC, what is it?
| a_e_k wrote:
| "Individual contributor", i.e., not a manager; a leaf on the
| org-tree.
| s1k3 wrote:
| I think more people would choose the IC path of there were more
| authority and autonomy in it.
|
| I've gone the management route because I like making larger
| product decisions (or at least being involved in them). ICs at
| any level rarely get that level kind of input.
|
| I low key blame the onslaught of product management for
| software as the problem. It's pulled all the fun product stuff
| out of engineers hands. :(
| electrondood wrote:
| The only factor that matters is whether you can keep learning.
|
| Developers that "age out" (author is only 40, lol) are those that
| think they can just stick with the same technology forever. Not
| in this industry.
| angarg12 wrote:
| > I have no idea about how effective pair programming is. My
| desire to discover it is zero.
|
| > Similarly, I don't discuss the benefits of getting people in
| the same room to solve a problem, but I am not super interested
| either.
|
| Admitting ignorance is a hallmark of maturity. Boast about it and
| the desire to not learn isn't.
| mathgladiator wrote:
| > My desire to manage people is at all-time lows.
|
| Checks out. Last year, I retired from big tech at 40 because it
| just wasn't worth the headache. Now, I'm wandering, and it's
| fantastic. This is now the tenth month of just wandering, and I'm
| finding my footing with my SaaS which currently is in the red.
|
| My only goal right now is to find partners which don't require me
| to compromise what I like doing (too much).
| krmboya wrote:
| I wonder where the genesis is of this idea that programming is
| young person's game akin to physical sports where speed,
| explosiveness and endurance matter.
|
| It seems to me that it's an intellectual activity where one
| should go on for very long honing their skills and becoming
| better and better at it with age.
|
| Maybe the industry sidelines the older more experienced technical
| folks at a cost, and that's why there seems to be a reinvention
| of the wheel several times in the software industry.
|
| I'm curious if there are other technical fields that are similar
| to programming with regards to ageism.
|
| Wishful thinking maybe, but open-source may help in this regard.
| As more and more of software is being added to the commons, those
| who've been there and done that can have a greater influence in
| driving progress.
| w4ffl35 wrote:
| Younger people with cognitive bias running the hiring shit show
| perhaps?
| tartoran wrote:
| Not only that but the younger are more maleable and gullible
| in some aspects but also have the better capacity (and
| willingness) to adapt to the tower of babel du jour.
| w4ffl35 wrote:
| Is it the hiring manager's objective to hire easily
| controllable apes that can type, or human beings that can
| grasp the product and business goals, shape the culture,
| translate technical jargon into easily understandable
| concepts for the uninitiated and make the employer a shit
| load of money by architecting and programming their vision?
| tartoran wrote:
| Young people aren't apes who can type, they're bright
| young people whose inexperience lends them the qualities
| I mentioned in my previous comment. In many cases they
| perform quite well (but not efficiently IMO)
| w4ffl35 wrote:
| > younger are more maleable and gullible in some aspects
|
| > better capacity (and willingness) to adapt to the tower
| of babel du jour
|
| this all sounds like you're describing people who can
| type and do what they are told.
|
| and: we're all apes who can type.
|
| edit: age is irrelevant. my point isn't that older people
| are better hires. hire for skill.
| voakbasda wrote:
| Weak managers hire weak subordinates.
| macrolime wrote:
| Maybe because a 25 year old can work 12 hours a day, while a 40
| year old often has family obligations that make that
| impossible.
| weatherlite wrote:
| I don't think that many millennials want to work 12 hours a
| day...
| underdeserver wrote:
| Some millennials are 40 years old now.
| jeffbee wrote:
| Yeah but the very last thing you want is an inexperience
| person who types code 12 hours a day.
| awesomegoat_com wrote:
| In my mind, young male have a lot of hormones that make them
| compete and it shows. There seems to be clear behavioral change
| in the average programmer as they age. Later in life
| (oftentimes with family), they do not have biological set-up to
| code 14 hours a day whole year as they did before.
|
| Obviously, outcoding everybody else is sometimes considered as
| a value and other times it is not. Shrug.
| atemerev wrote:
| I never ever coded 14 hours a day except in competitive
| programming. Doing it at work would be insane.
| dahart wrote:
| I did, multiple times for extended periods, and it was
| insane, yeah. Games and movies. I prefer to not do that
| anymore, so in that sense I'm doing less work as I age and
| choose to avoid insane overtime in favor of maxing out at
| mild overtime. I think I'm coding better now though, more
| productive, partly by being more choosy, partly from more
| experience, partly from making more rational decisions when
| not low on sleep and exhausted from overwork and missing
| friends and family. It is sometimes a problem in the
| industry that you can't tell how productive someone is by
| how much time they spend typing code.
| thunky wrote:
| I"m not sure that the common idea is that younger programmers
| are more skilled, but rather that they are more in demand.
| Could be for a variety of reasons, for example:
|
| - cheaper
|
| - less jaded
|
| - easier to "manage"
|
| - more willing to do the boring work that the older devs don't
| want to do
|
| - more likely to be on call or work extra hours
|
| - less likely to retire next year
| LostInTheWoods wrote:
| >more willing to do the boring work that the older devs don't
| want to do
|
| No body wants to do the boring work. I think more experienced
| devs realize that a boring assignment isn't personal, its
| just business.
| thunky wrote:
| I think you're right. I also think that what tends to bore
| an experienced dev may be less likely to bore a junior dev,
| just because it's newer to them.
| somenameforme wrote:
| Chess is a primarily mental competition, but players at the top
| of the world tend to hit their peak at around 35 years old.
| Players can continue playing at an exceptionally high level
| until the end of their life, but on average there is a gradual
| downward slide from that peak. Magnus Carlsen, the current
| world champ and arguably strongest player of all time, has
| decided to simply stop defending his title (held since 2013) at
| the age of 31.
|
| I think something that tech and chess may have in common as
| well is the ever-shifting grounds. Electrical engineering of
| today is not dramatically different than electrical engineering
| of yesterday. But programming (depending on the domain) is
| quite different today than yesterday. This is going to result
| in an age bias because at some point you start to simply become
| jaded learning 'Incremental, overhyped, and not strictly
| necessary new trendy framework/language [that nobody will be
| using in 10 years] #2,743.'
| Tryk wrote:
| The reason Magnus is not defending his title has nothing to
| do with some decline in ability. Last game versus
| Nepomniachtchi he won quite convincingly 7.5 to 3.5.
|
| >"I feel I don't have a lot to gain, I don't particularly
| like [the championship matches], and although I'm sure a
| match would be interesting for historical reasons and all of
| that, I don't have any inclination to play and I will simply
| not play the match," he said on his sponsor's podcast.
| [https://www.npr.org/2022/07/20/1112479750/magnus-carlsen-
| wor...]
| somenameforme wrote:
| For a man that loves winning and competing as much as
| Magnus I find it difficult to imagine he wouldn't be
| playing if he felt himself a significant favorite. His last
| opponent is a character with a well deserved reputation for
| implosion. He was playing no less worse than Magnus for 6
| games, in a 12 game match. He then lost a single hard
| fought game and did his thing, blowing up and losing 3 of
| the next 5 games with abysmal (by his standards) play. That
| _could_ happen again, but I think it unlikely and I 'd say
| Magnus does as well. Nepo seems to have improved his mental
| game, and has been in great form as well - having just
| dominated a very strong field in the candidates with the
| highest score in modern times.
|
| Carlsen is very strong, but his title defenses have never
| really reflected that - ironically with the most recent
| exception. In the two defenses prior, he only managed to
| draw the classical section and relied on tiebreaks. His
| defeat is all but inevitable, and I think he wanted to go
| out undefeated. I think the one opponent he was hoping to
| be able to play against was Alireza Firouzja. Alireza is
| young and will probably become a world champion contender
| at some point. But Magnus would have been able to count on
| Alireza collapsing under the unique pressures of a world
| championship match and let Magnus then go out on top having
| undefeated having defeated champions from 3 generations.
| Instead Alireza collapsed at the candidates, scoring less
| than 50% in spite of being the (at the time) 2nd highest
| rated player in the world.
| unity1001 wrote:
| > Chess
|
| Chess is not a good analogy. It is a singular context. The
| real advantages that being over 35 and programming brings
| are:
|
| - You are able to juggle much larger and different contexts
| at the same time - You have immense foresight that enables
| you to architect larger things
| [deleted]
| fzeroracer wrote:
| Keep in mind that we've seen an interesting phenomenon over
| the past few decades where the average peak age of
| professional players has been going up. This includes
| physical sports like baseball, football as well as things
| like chess, fighting games and various esports.
|
| I think the peak age thing ends up being less due to actual
| aging and more due to the responsibilities of life taking
| time away from practice.
| Joel_Mckay wrote:
| The old industry joke: "if your succeed... you will end up in
| marketing".
|
| Senior staff tend to get better at spotting the standard industry
| cons, but I find it amazing people often think they are somehow
| going to outsmart company contract/IP lawyers. Legal encumbrances
| are often a necessary evil, but some of the agreements fresh
| grads eagerly sign read like a Faustian bargain.
|
| One finds many people tend to disbelieve anyone that contradicts
| their personal biases, and some get indignant when told how the
| churn-rate for large firms will affect them personally. It is
| like wishful thinking bypasses years of statistics training, and
| basic numeracy. Many industries simply rely or a steady stream of
| gullible STEM kids to keep their Youth Employment Tax credits,
| externalize training costs, and provide stock bumps from a
| symbolic layoff for year-end investor reports.
|
| I wish the Tech industry treated people better, but "it is what
| it is". =)
| vsareto wrote:
| >I never understood why some people despise the term full-stack.
|
| More for the role: full-stack has you doing multiple roles, but
| is not compensated as such. You're even removing the
| communication overhead if the role had been split in two. It
| seems to me as a business move to compress roles and pay you less
| for double the capability in exchange for varied work. I don't
| think people should just accept lower comp just because they
| prefer varied work.
| drstewart wrote:
| So do you feel the same way about backend developers who use
| databases? Surely that's two roles: server developer and
| database developer?
|
| Of course, they can't test their own code manually. That's two
| roles: developer and QA!
|
| So a backend developer is at least 3 roles of work. Are you
| making 3x the salary you should be?
| RockingGoodNite wrote:
| It's a commonly accepted view that backend developers know
| databases. Until it is fixed, there are two major realms now
| due to Google (Angular) and Microsoft (TypeScript), backend
| and frontend. I was once a full stack developer but refuse to
| touch Angular gargabe or TypeShit.
| vsareto wrote:
| TBH you could add Architect and DevOps if they're doing
| architecture/writing IaC as well. These all can be individual
| roles. The formula doesn't necessarily have to be salary
| times roles, but it should be higher than specific roles like
| front-end, back-end, DBA, QA, architect which can all ask for
| high salaries on their own. In my experience, full stack jobs
| often have salaries on par with the specific roles which is
| my beef.
|
| The biggest personal reason generalist roles should be priced
| higher is the time you spent to learn multiple things well
| enough to get a job doing them. If you accept a role as full
| stack that pays the same as a backend only role, you're
| essentially devaluing your own time. The other perks are
| reducing head count and giving the business that extra
| flexibility and convenience. If your salary doesn't reflect
| that, you're giving it away _for free_ and we know how much
| businesses make us pay as consumers for convenience.
|
| It might seems strange to consider a lot of factors, but you
| have to remember that generalists can bring quite a lot to
| the table.
| s1k3 wrote:
| I think the rush of boot camp grads all calling themselves full
| stack engineers after 3 months of working on a rails project
| really weakened it's appeal. I used to call myself full stack
| as I genuinely can work across the stack, but I noticed it was
| a bad way to market myself. Now I just tailor my resume to the
| position much more specifically.
| willsmith72 wrote:
| I don't agree about multiple roles, backend/frontend is just
| one way of splitting a system. It's not like you get twice as
| much done in a fullstack role, you just do half as much
| frontend and half as much backend (in an even split role).
|
| But why do you think fullstack is paid less? Is this a
| generally accepted fact?
| DietaryNonsense wrote:
| The reduction of the communication overhead is definitely
| non-trivial. Though many businesses don't seem to measure the
| internal performance of their systems when the programs are
| running on and between humans. So if it works to some vague,
| hand wavey degree, "fine".
|
| By relying on the idea that back/front is "just" a way of
| splitting a system, one could say that SRE/Front is a way of
| splitting a system, or Sales/Support, or Finance/HR, and so
| on. We're of course talking about ways of splitting the
| system(s) involved.
|
| I think the spirit of the original idea is that roles are
| defined by boundaries. The boundaries are definitely "made
| up" but they aren't arbitrary. The degree of expertise and
| volume of knowledge needed to operate effectively (or
| expertly) within a role, and the ease or difficulty of
| obtaining those requirements, should be acknowledged when a
| company describes a role they are hiring for. If the bulk of
| your roadmap is back-end work but you want to hire full-stack
| devs because its nice to have everything, this seems like
| sloppy practice (though totally accepted).
|
| On the other hand there are plenty of full-stack jobs that
| really just mean "back-end but not going to throw a contract
| in our face when you have to drop into the browser debugger
| to solve a problem". This is the kind of full stack I am. I
| wouldn't be okay with being asked to work on our frontend for
| the next year but I'm perfectly comfortable with debugging,
| making recommendations, doing some front-end work if it means
| filling a gap when resources are constrained.
| temporallobe wrote:
| In my 20+ year career, I have met very few programmers who can
| actually justify the claim of being full-stack. Usually it
| means strong back-end that happens to have worked with some
| front-end framework fad, and less often vice versa. Specialists
| (UI/UX, database admins, CI/CD engineers, automation testers,
| just to name a few) are still very much needed and the trend to
| make everybody on the team "full-stack" doesn't work well in
| practice unless everyone is a 10x developer.
| hoosieree wrote:
| I have worked on ASICs, FPGAs, compilers, routers, clusters,
| servers, websites and mobile apps. But I would not describe
| myself as a "full-stack developer". To me that implies a very
| specific thing - a RDBMS backend coupled to heavyweight
| javascript framework frontend.
| indymike wrote:
| May I steal this description of "full-stack developer": a
| RDBMS backend coupled to heavyweight javascript framework
| frontend
| mixmastamyk wrote:
| Fullstack never required a heavy frontend to my mind,
| simply reasonable js, css, and ux knowledge. Depends
| heavily on the product however.
| werber wrote:
| I'm a third generation programmer which is a bit of an odd thing,
| but a bit lovely. My brother is also a programmer. The bits in
| this About just just being "wired " ring so true to me. There are
| things that to me seem biological as to how you view punch cards,
| fortan, whatever video games are made in, and JavaScript
| eludwig wrote:
| 63 year-old career programmer here. I can attest that this list
| is pretty much a straight line to the place where I am at, with
| everything just dialed up a 20 year notch (hehe!)
|
| I do want to add one more thing to the list:
|
| * Find a well-managed team of really nice people that know more
| than you do.
|
| Every part of this requirement is important, especially for
| generalists like me!
|
| If you find this, life becomes lemonade.
| throw_m239339 wrote:
| Challenge yourself, learn new stuff, not how to make your 500th
| ERP in rust instead of Java, but program 3D applications, Virtual
| Instruments, or move to hardware, embedded programming, IOT,...
|
| As demonstrated by Adobe's Figma acquisition, there is plenty of
| opportunities in the authoring/graphic tools. So maybe you'll
| make the next Figma.
| draw_down wrote:
| varajelle wrote:
| I am in a similar position oIf the author and I agree with most
| points
|
| > I have no idea about how effective pair programming is. My
| desire to discover it is zero.
|
| I used to think like that, but then, recently, I started doing
| pair programming with a colleague from time to time using vscode
| live sharing feature, and I find it amazing. Not really for the
| pure implementation work, but rather for the more architecture or
| design of things like API or data structures. I found that we are
| really productive spending about one hour or less together in the
| editor and brainstorming live the ideas.
| davidrupp wrote:
| I don't speak for my company, but in my opinion they still get
| more value from me, net, as a non-manager than they would as a
| manager. I also think some of the most valuable work I do is not
| in the code I write or the systems I build myself, but rather in
| the guidance I can give junior developers on the things they
| build, and the way they approach their careers. If I get can
| someone in her 20's or 30's to adopt a useful technique or
| perspective it took me much longer to acquire, everyone wins. As
| Andy Jassy says, "there is no compression algorithm for
| experience". But there is opportunity to learn from someone
| else's uncompressed experience so that yours going forward is
| that much better.
| jeffbee wrote:
| Why would a programmer at any age be a good manager? Manager is
| a totally different job with unrelated skills.
| davidrupp wrote:
| Because people are more than just the skills they have that
| happen to apply to their current job function. And because
| management requires a skill set that -- like many others --
| can be attained by someone who is willing to work to attain
| it.
|
| I think of it in terms of leverage. If I knew for sure that
| my becoming a manager would let me be a force multiplier for
| my team, that they would all be enough better to more than
| compensate for losing me as an individual contributor, I
| would consider making the switch. Having been a developer
| myself, I would have insight into what gets in their way, and
| I could use my managerial powers For Good(tm) to get those
| things out of their way. At least that would be my intent.
| I've had excellent managers who had been good developers who
| chose this path.
|
| Having said all that, one of my first managers early in my
| career was a high-functioning developer who was moved to a
| leadership role because that was the default expectation. He
| was a terrible manager; he played favorites and treated his
| responsibility as authority to be wielded against those he
| didn't like. I was fortunate that he liked me, but he stifled
| the early careers of some of my friends who were at least as
| good at the job as I was. So there is something to be said
| for not having developer-to-manager as a default expectation.
| jeffbee wrote:
| Recent research suggests no positive correlation between
| individual performance and manager performance in the same
| line of work. If a company insists on moving ICs to
| managers, even though this is irrational, the best thing
| they can do is retrain their _lowest_ performing ICs into
| people management roles.
| indymike wrote:
| I'm just over 50. Here's ultimately what I think about aging and
| programming:
|
| Programming is fun. I enjoy it now, more than I ever have. Three
| times I've created software that has built a business and
| livelihood for others. That is super satisfying, and at the same
| time, usually the source of things that are not as fun as
| programming (taxes, accounting, lawyers, nasty people).
|
| When I run across other programmers my age, I see a lot of
| unhappy people, and that is kind of sad. A lot of the unhappiness
| comes from one of three places:
|
| * Not leaning new things and discovering that the isn't demand
| for what you did in the 90s and 00s. Career prospects are dim,
| and bitterness sets in. It's easily solved by picking up
| something new - but be careful, new doesn't mean things 15-20
| years old. So many people jump out of one old tech into another
| one that is about to be old.
|
| * A lack of interest in leading, and being hypercritical of
| leaders. Here's the deal: if you leading the team, you pick what
| you want to work on, and you pick how you build. If you are just
| on the team, you'll always be on the wrong side of decisions.
| It's easy to lead a small team, and experience is really the
| backbone of really, really great small "l" leadership.
|
| * Pathological drive to be correct at all times. You know, they
| person that can't let the smallest mistake go un-punished, every
| bad decision second-guessed and being willing to die on the hill
| of correctness over the smallest mistake. This drive makes you
| good a programming, but it makes relationships with others
| terrible, and leads to being isolated, alone, passed over and
| unhappy. It's really hard, but learning to pick your battles and
| understand that battles can be won and jobs lost really goes a
| long way.
|
| That said, there's an awful lot of aging, talented, experienced
| developers out there that are doing great things, and having fun
| doing it. Find a way to keep it fun.
| travisgriggs wrote:
| Wow. Just turned 52. Love coding. Love building
| useful/meaningful things.
|
| Your three paragraphs read like someone climbed inside the
| library of my head and just started reading all the thoughts
| there at once. I struggle or have struggled with all 3 of
| those. Especially the latter 2.
| galaxyLogic wrote:
| Programming fun because you find SOLUTIONS all the time. You
| find better ways of doing things. That is the nature of it
| because there is no need to write the same code twice.
| thepra wrote:
| I started my career as a full stack and I've been doing it so far
| well.
|
| I like to design and think thoroughly about business logic and
| data layout and also how you host and architect the final running
| services/websites.
|
| It seems that I just can't leave the software secret sauce being
| secret.
| dijit wrote:
| Here's something I think a lot of people don't think on: 40 years
| old is mid-career.
|
| If you expect to retire at 60 (likely 65 these days) and you
| start working at 20: 40 is smack dab in the middle of your
| career.
|
| I think that notion gets lost when we talk about ageism in tech
| and then people talk about 40-somethings.
| toastedwedge wrote:
| Is this ageism implied for SV and like companies, or all of
| them in general (implied US-based anyway)?
|
| I can't speak in either instance at this time, but I'd like to
| think ageism isn't nearly as widespread as it seems when
| discussed on here when it comes to technology-based work. E.g.,
| Small town in Nebraska with one or two software houses versus
| SF.
| sys_64738 wrote:
| A lot of programmers who are 35+ can struggle to find further
| opportunities as the more senior you are the less available
| those opportunities are and the more expensive you are. Lots of
| companies only want young people who are naive and have limited
| distractions outside of work. So, really, programming as a
| field is front loaded and the longer you stay in the business
| over 35 then the luckier you have been. But make sure you have
| an effective exit strategy to support yourself and your family
| when the boss doesn't like folk older than him.
| user_named wrote:
| The same goes for EVERY profession.
| therealdokks wrote:
| Hmmm as a 53 year old programmer I've had the exact opposite
| experience. Because of the large diversity of my skills I
| have more offers for work than ever before.
| remote_phone wrote:
| I'm also in my 50s. My last job search got me 6 offers,
| from startups to FAANG. I've only accelerated my career as
| I've grown older.
| mixmastamyk wrote:
| How did you get thru the endemic leetcode stuff?
| scarface74 wrote:
| Not the person you are replying to. But I did it by
| focusing on learning soft skills and project management
| skills - even though I am not a project manager.
|
| I focused on small companies before my current job where
| the director/CTO was looking for people who could
| demonstrate a history of being "smart and get things
| done".
|
| I avoided the leetCode grind by preparing for a couple of
| years to target the cloud consulting department of the
| two of the major cloud providers or if necessary one of
| their partners. I knew that a combination of software
| development, infrastructure, cloud, and soft skills would
| give me a competitive advantage.
| lowercased wrote:
| > Because of the large diversity of my skills I have more
| offers for work than ever before.
|
| "offers for work" or "job offers"? "Traditional" w2 full
| time go-through-an-hr-dept organizations possibly have more
| of an ageist issue than other scenarios.
| Freelance/consulting seems to still offer more flexibility
| on the age front, but it's more of a gut sense from
| speaking with those in my network.
| tartoran wrote:
| You're the odd one out, perhaps due to your own abilities
| and other special qualities. For the average programmer
| ageism applies though. And the largest majority of devs is
| in the average region
| dpweb wrote:
| I know several 50s something programmers who have plenty
| of work. This is in big-corp IT not the younger SV scene.
|
| Only an asshole cares how old somebody is. Reminder also,
| ageism isn't just a bummer, it's illegal.
|
| Most people aren't going to take legal action, but imo if
| you're discriminated against you have somewhat of an
| obligation to do so.
| mech422 wrote:
| I keep hearing about ageism, but never encountered it. At
| 54, I've just landed my last job a year or two ago and
| age wasn't an issue. As in all things tech, I think if
| you have the skills that are in demand, good jobs are not
| too hard to find.
| steveBK123 wrote:
| I think it depends on your adaptability. I know few devs
| over 50, but the ones I do are like the dev you reply to
| - they are some of the most adaptable, T shaped skills.
| Deep domain knowledge & experience in a couple areas and
| broad experience in many techs.
|
| Another factor to consider is post-peak-comp. You may
| find yourself in roles when you are older that pay less
| than they used to. This may very well be fine because you
| no longer have a down payment or kids college to save
| for, and if you didn't keep upgrading homes.. your
| mortgage payments 10-20 years into owning should a
| smaller and smaller percent of your income. If you are no
| longer chasing comp, you have a broader selection of
| roles and can be more selective.
| dc-programmer wrote:
| Are there any studies on the phenomenon? I like reading
| peoples stories but at the same time I'd be interested in
| seeing the data
| scarface74 wrote:
| So the question becomes "why would a 50 year old be an
| average programmer?"
|
| I am very much the "average programmer", but I learned a
| long time ago how to focus on "adding business value",
| talking to customers (internal and external), writing,
| presenting, explaining concepts to non-technical people
| and even once a decade ago talking to investors and
| potential acquirers when a startup I was working for when
| they wanted to talk to the "technical folks"
| treespace8 wrote:
| That just isn't true in my case. I started my career in
| the late 90s and was the young kid at the office. So on
| my network is full of older developers.
|
| Very few of them have been pushed out of the field. Yes
| many moved up, but the majority still code. The ones who
| had not moved into management are either retired (Over
| 65), retired early (Rich, big payday) or dead.
| indymike wrote:
| > For the average programmer ageism applies though
|
| It's easy to blame ageism, and ageism is real. There are
| a lot of people who really resent older people and
| believe flat-out untrue myths about cognition, value of
| experience and work ethic. That said, every time a friend
| shares a beer with me and tells me the woes of trying to
| get a job when older, I hear this:
|
| I can't get a job that pays me like I'm senior, but
| requires the skills of someone half my age.
|
| The solution is to break out of that box, and either be
| ok with lower pay, or go for jobs that leverage the value
| of your experience.
|
| > perhaps due to your own abilities and other special
| qualities
|
| I'm sure if you looked at yourself, or maybe had someone
| look with you, that you'd find you have quite a bit to
| offer when it comes to ability, and especially special
| qualities. As you get older it's hard to understand what
| is special because you've seen a lot, and it all seems
| average.
| sokoloff wrote:
| I find the "I won't take less than $X or else I'll stay
| unemployed" to be kind of weird as a career planning
| strategy. If there is an under-supply of senior talent,
| everyone accepts and expects that the clearing salary for
| those roles will go up. Yet, if there's an over-supply, many
| people seem unable to extrapolate from the previous.
| orev wrote:
| Many hiring teams will look at an experienced person as
| "too experienced" and won't even offer the job to an
| otherwise good candidate. They justify it by saying things
| like "this position is too junior for them and they'll just
| leave when they get bored/find a better position", etc.
| sokoloff wrote:
| That's another apparent sub-optimization. "We've been
| looking for a while and we'd rather keep looking than
| make a level-Y offer to this good candidate."
|
| If the candidate says "I'm only taking this to avoid
| starving but will quit as soon as I find any other job",
| then sure, don't make the offer. If they don't give any
| signs either way, assume they'll stay for 18-48 months as
| is common and decide accordingly.
| wonderwonder wrote:
| I very much think this is limited to the startup / work fast
| and break things style of companies. Always work available
| for sr. people at large established companies, especially
| fortune 500. Specifically companies where tech is not the
| core business product, many of them are attempting to
| modernize their systems. They pay pretty well too; not Google
| / Amazon level but on a pure salary basis many probably pay
| comparable to Microsoft without the shares of course. They do
| have a good 401k match though. A good salary for 95% of tech
| people.
|
| I am early 40's and have had no issue finding work and am
| currently interviewing others to come work with my group in a
| solution architect / tech lead style role and they are all my
| age. I have never interviewed for a job and not gotten an
| offer, regardless of age; with that said I'm not interviewing
| at startups or places I feel really wouldn't allow me a
| family life. I get the offers not because I'm incredible, I'm
| not, but because I know my lane and skill set and stick to
| it.
| scarface74 wrote:
| It was even easier for me to find work at smaller companies
| the older I got. There were always companies that really
| needed someone who could help them mature their processes,
| who they could put out in front of customers, who knew how
| to work with sales, who they could send off-site and talk
| to their customers tech departments (B2B) etc.
|
| It got to the point where my "interviews" were more just
| sitting down with directors/CTOs and talking like adults
| about how I would help them solve their real world business
| problems. I haven't done a coding interview in over a
| decade even though I have been hands on all that time -
| across five jobs
| silvestrov wrote:
| > Lots of companies only want young people
|
| The older I get, the more I think it is not the company
| itself but middle-managers.
|
| Managers with an authoritarian streak will have trouble
| handling experienced developers that objects to non-optimal
| designs and processes.
|
| It is much easier for such a manager to handle young naive
| developers that gladly accept to work 5 times as many hours
| as a good design needs.
|
| Software don't work well with an "do as I say, no matter how
| stupid it is" approach. I think that is why Silicon Valley
| (and Europe) has much greater success writing software than
| asia/India.
| scarface74 wrote:
| I keep hearing this. I'm 48 and between the time I was 34 and
| 46, bumping around in your standard enterprise corp dev jobs,
| I found jobs relatively quickly - the shortest time was 4
| days from starting to look to having a job (corp dev at the
| time a F10 non tech company), the longest being two weeks.
| Every time besides the first, I was juggling multiple
| opportunities and had three offers. I change jobs 5 times
| during that time period.
|
| In hindsight, until the last two in 2016 and 2018 they were
| just journeyman CRUD jobs with the last two being hands on
| dev lead and de facto "cloud architect" respectively.
|
| I just got my first job in $BigTech at 46 two years ago. It's
| not officially a "software engineering job". But for all
| intents and purposes I'm doing the same type of work I did at
| the last couple of jobs - gathering requirements,
| presentations, development, and a shit ton of yaml, HCL,
| PowerPoint slides, and diagrams.
|
| I'm sure at 48, I could contact my network of former
| coworkers, managers, recruiters and _someone_ would give me a
| job even if it were just a standard .Net journeyman developer
| again.
|
| If you're still randomly submitting your resume to an ATS
| trying to prove yourself to companies by reversing binary
| trees on whiteboards while juggling bowling balls and riding
| a unicycle on a tightrope, you're doing it wrong at 40+ years
| old.
| yodsanklai wrote:
| > If you're still randomly submitting your resume to an ATS
| trying to prove yourself to companies by reversing binary
| trees on whiteboards while juggling bowling balls and
| riding a unicycle on a tightrope, you're doing it wrong at
| 40+ years old.
|
| I did that at 45 and landed an interesting job at FAANG
| (and I'm not the only one). I think it's a bit
| contradictory to think old programmers are still as capable
| and sharp as 25 years old, and at the same time insisting
| to be judged on different standards.
| scarface74 wrote:
| I didn't randomly submit my resume to get into a FAANG at
| 45. When the recruiter reached out to me about an SWE
| position (that I wasn't interested in). I kept talking to
| her and she directed me to a related remote job that I
| was interested in (cloud consulting - enterprise app
| dev/cloud architect).
| yodsanklai wrote:
| > the recruiter reached out to me about an SWE position
| (that I wasn't interested in)
|
| Then it's your preference not to be a programmer. My
| point was that it's also possible to be a SWE for those
| who still dig programming at our age. But you have to
| play by the rules. That being said, I don't think I'll
| last in such a position until retirement.
| scarface74 wrote:
| I spend everyday "programming" doing the same type of
| work I did before joining - mostly back end APIs, ETL,
| occasional front end work if I have to etc.
|
| I just knew I wouldn't enjoy being a small part of a
| large team coming from small companies where I could work
| up and down the life cycle from pre-sales, to requirement
| gathering, to implementation, to DevOps [sic], UAT and
| training.
|
| I'm still part of a huge organization in the grand scheme
| of things. But my projects range from me the sole tech
| person doing everything to my working with a team where I
| lead or implement one "work stream" depending on the size
| of the project.
| spfzero wrote:
| I think the point may be that, yes still as capable etc.,
| but also with a ton more life-cycle experience in real-
| world development. So for someone hiring that values that
| experience, maybe they ask a bit more about that, and do
| less whiteboard work to validate that you really did go
| to CS school.
|
| With a string resume, a hiring manager might think "They
| probably know what a binary tree is because it they
| didn't, they would not have made it this far."
| scarface74 wrote:
| Actually, three jobs ago back in 2015, I had two
| interviews. The first hiring manager asked me to do a
| merge sort on the whiteboard. The second company's new
| director told me what problems he was having and that
| they were on an acquisition spree and what their plans
| were. He asked me how I would go about helping them.
|
| Both interviews were about half a day, I got offers from
| both the company that asked me to do a merge sort paid
| slightly more. I accepted the second job.
|
| Real business folks have real world problems to solve.
| They don't care whether you can reverse a binary tree.
|
| As an aside, one of the more junior people that I would
| be leading asked me how I would parse addresses while the
| director was in the room. I said I wouldn't. I would
| license third party CASS software and explained all of
| the corner cases and then went into my speech about a
| company shouldn't concentrate "on anything that doesn't
| make the beer taste better"
| Swizec wrote:
| Big part of _why_ programming is front loaded is that it 's
| an incredibly new field. The entire field hasn't existed for
| more than 70 years. And that was if you count "Niche academic
| field that a few dozen mathematicians knew about" as the
| start.
|
| It didn't become like a job job until what, the mid 1960's?
| That's 60 years ago.
|
| And the number of programmers is doubling every ~5 years. _Of
| course_ it 's front-loaded with young people! The people who
| have been doing this for the field's entire time of mass
| popularity (1980's onwards imo) haven't even had time to get
| proper old yet.
|
| But also: The more experienced you are, the more your biggest
| value isn't in banging keys on the keyboard. A company would
| much rather leverage your thoughts and opinions and that may
| look a lot more like technical leadership than programming.
| Even though it's still engineering.
| therealdokks wrote:
| This is exactly what I've found. My employer relies on my
| experience and values my opinions as much as they value my
| actual code out put.
| tootie wrote:
| "likely 65 these days"
|
| I think with software jobs paying what they do, retiring at 50
| would be pretty easy.
| synergy20 wrote:
| 40s or 50s are still prime time for programmers, assuming
| he/she keeps learning and coding and designing.
|
| but those are still of small group, it's like a normal
| distribution, I read somewhere age wise there are only about
| 1.5% that are above 50s.
| w4ffl35 wrote:
| I'm better now than I ever have been. I was trash in my Jr
| years. Being discriminated against due to age would be a
| grievous error on the part of any potential employer.
| jmfldn wrote:
| Programmers doubled every 5 years for 20 years. That's at
| least part of the reason.
| layer8 wrote:
| A significant reason for that is that the field has kept
| growing for decades. Of course a lot less people started
| 20/30/40 years ago than do now.
| wpietri wrote:
| Two things can be true. 40 _is_ mid-career, and tech 's ageism
| includes it: https://www.businessinsider.com/we-hire-old-
| people-ageism-te...
| w4ffl35 wrote:
| Limiting a software engineers career to less than 20 years is
| a pretty fucking idiotic thing to do.
| wpietri wrote:
| Sure. Ageism, sexism, racism, etc, etc, etc, are all
| fucking idiotic. And yet surprisingly popular. So we have
| to deal with them.
| ThePadawan wrote:
| I agree with you, but imagine being a discriminatory, but
| rational asshole.
|
| Of course you're not going to hire a woman if you could
| hire a man - they might get pregnant and be away from
| work for a long time.
|
| Of course you're not going hire an older employee that
| knows their worth over a recent graduate that isn't
| familiar with the salary they should earn. You can rip
| them off much more easily.
|
| People can be cunts but still act with some rational
| motivation. That's why we have protected categories, to
| make sure that that isn't a strategy worth pursuing.
| whiddershins wrote:
| Except if the more experienced engineer is actually worth
| more, the rational actor will pay them more.
| w4ffl35 wrote:
| > the rational actor
|
| i like the points in this thread. perhaps aging is just a
| natural bad actor filter. options narrow as we wise up.
| w4ffl35 wrote:
| > not going hire an older employee that knows their worth
| over a recent graduate that isn't familiar with the
| salary they should earn
|
| that's the real problem, self and situational-awareness.
| w4ffl35 wrote:
| > So we have to deal with them
|
| this is the one thing you said I disagree with, unless
| you mean dealing with it by eliminating it.
| wpietri wrote:
| Yes. Although in practice a lot of what we have do to is
| mitigating it, as eliminating the roots of it is a
| decades-to-centuries problem.
| gedy wrote:
| A lot of software companies don't care about having good
| programmers, they want people to do their bidding and be as
| cheap as possible. Younger people are nicer to look at too.
| wpietri wrote:
| Such an important point. At so many places, effectively
| producing good software is low down on the priority list.
| In which case, a lot of the "rational actor" analysis
| around hiring totally misses the point.
| howmayiannoyyou wrote:
| > ageism in tech
|
| Several reasons for ageism sometimes missed. This from someone
| whose been discriminated against, who has hired, who now owns a
| company & who was also a recruiter.
|
| __I don't agree with this__ just laying the reasons out for
| clarity sake:
|
| - Hiring managers don't consider themselves ageist, but opt for
| younger employees whom they think make a better cultural fit.
| You can blame the 'work is my social life' culture that emerged
| in the 2000's and that persists today.
|
| - Hiring managers don't want to be ageist, but they've had or
| heard of bad experiences where disgruntled or non-performing
| employees abuse the EEOC process for financial gain and
| retribution. Very well intentioned rules, designed to protect
| certain cohorts of employees, doing the exact opposite as is
| often the case with Gov regs.
|
| - Hiring managers (usually fixated on 'new tech') who fear
| diminished learning, adoption or performance capacity in older
| employees.
|
| - Money. The perception that older employees cost more in wages
| and benefits, without much thought to efficiency gains that
| accompanies gray hair.
|
| I was age discriminated against by a well known SAAS provider,
| who used a 2014 interview process to extract a detailed roadmap
| and ideas for product growth from me, and then ghosted me. I've
| watched as they've (badly) implemented the specific of my
| roadmap the past few years, and I chuckle. 100% my fault for
| giving up too much value in the interview process, but it was
| tough time and I thought I really needed that job.
| WesolyKubeczek wrote:
| > Hiring managers don't consider themselves ageist, but
|
| > Hiring managers don't want to be ageist, but
|
| I classify this into the "I'm not a racist, but..." bucket.
|
| > Hiring managers (usually fixated on 'new tech') who fear
| diminished learning, adoption or performance capacity in
| older employees
|
| This is the textbook definition of what ageism is.
|
| Conclusion? They are ageists, plain as that. They may not
| consider themselves to be, or want to be, but they still are,
| because ageist is as ageist does, and it matters jack what
| appearances they want to keep or what they think or who they
| perceive in a mirror.
| orzig wrote:
| I think there's value in trying to understand the thought
| process, instead of just throwing a label on it and walking
| away
| draw_down wrote:
| djha-skin wrote:
| > I used to be very sensitive to tone and manners in the working
| place. I still am.
|
| Yup.
| kabdib wrote:
| I'm 62, and having a blast. Helped do some system bringup a few
| days ago that brought back memories of "lab time" in the 1980s,
| though we get firmware onto boards with tens-of-megabit downloads
| now, instead of burning (literally) half a dozen EPROMs for every
| attempt. Things have improved a little!
|
| Firmware worked on the new board, the very first time. I consider
| that a career capper. :-)
|
| I figure I'll go until I'm 70 or so. We'll see.
| retrocryptid wrote:
| Um... 40 year old calls himself "an aging programmer"?? Okay. I
| wasn't ready for that this morning. My first professional gig was
| in 1981, which means I've been programming professionally longer
| than he's been alive. And I wrote my first Lisp program in 1974.
| And yet I don't really feel that old.
| rickreynoldssf wrote:
| 51 grey beard here. Let me complain about the younguns. So much
| of what's out there today is, or is based on "solutions" created
| to solve problems that don't really exist. Rather than try to
| understand something so many engineers created "frameworks" to
| implement what was already there. Like 90% of current web stacks
| are just that. But new engineers are trained on that stuff and
| think it's the only way. That frustrates the hell out of me.
| liuliu wrote:
| I sort of know what you are saying. Being dealing with so-
| called "server-side rendering" v.s. "static generated"
| recently, and these feel old / boring. It has been 15 years and
| mostly the same thing reinvented.
|
| However, it is not a negatively thing. We may be able to setup
| IIS / Apache with Squid two decades ago to do similar things.
| The bar to do it now is much lower, and the tooling to help
| achieve that is much better overall (there are some not-so-
| great: Figma is a great design tool, but it doesn't translate
| to code directly unlike Dreamweaver / Borland VCL / Visual
| Basic, but I heard Framer is doing good on that front). That is
| part of the reason why there are so much more participation of
| labor in this industry: it is more graphical and easier to do
| (even terminal tools, largely do the similar things, are much
| more graphical nowadays!).
| flyinglizard wrote:
| My company has a tech stack consisting of all the latest and
| greatest devops/tooling/cloud services, and an old timer like
| me wonders if that could have been just implemented as one
| C++ binary running somewhere.
| Cyberdog wrote:
| Seeing all the JavaScript kiddies rediscover the speed and UX
| benefits of _not_ using massive front-end JavaScript
| libraries to display simple web pages in the last few months
| has been alternatively hilarious and frustrating to me.
| brunoc wrote:
| My 2c as a JavaScript senior citizen --
|
| I feel it never really was about denying how effective
| plain web pages are but rather that faced with the choice
| of a wonderful DX with just JS, and a more difficult day to
| day with a mix of both, we picked the first. Sometimes at
| the expense of the end user, yaddi yaddi yadda, etc.
|
| Good solutions for the "have your cake and eat it" scenario
| with exceptionally good DX are just now reaching some
| maturity.
| adrianmsmith wrote:
| I share this frustration, but I think the root cause of the
| frustration is the difference between what I feel should be
| important, and what actually is important to people.
|
| Getting great reliable software delivered quickly, which is
| easy to maintain and change, should be the goal, I feel. But if
| that's the case, why do people invent problems to find
| solutions to, why do people spend multiple days a week in Scrum
| meetings, etc.?
|
| But looking at everyone involved and their actual incentives:
|
| - For a consultant, the objective is to maximize the billable
| hours.
|
| - For the employee, to get modern skills on their CV.
|
| - For the junior programmer, there is a more level playing
| field with the seniors when tech is used that's new and nobody
| knows, vs. tech the seniors know well and they don't.
|
| - For the manager or owner of a product company, they want less
| stress having to make decisions and as long as the product
| makes money who cares if the software could be delivered 50% or
| 70% faster?
| GartzenDeHaes wrote:
| In medium and large organizations, manager pay and influence
| is mostly related to the number of employees managed and the
| size of their budget. Managers maximizing these two variables
| explains a lot of behavior that seems unreasonable to
| employees.
| BlargMcLarg wrote:
| The psychological aspect of consultants and even employees
| trying to play a game with billable hours aside, a _lot_ of
| developers of all ages genuinely feel using frameworks to do
| the exact same thing one can achieve with far less hubbub is
| a good thing, and they have trouble defending it. It 's a
| cargo cult by all standards.
|
| Many of us are living this now. If it's not the chasing of
| new frameworks, it is old frameworks no longer being actively
| supported, or key features never being developed. Then it
| turns out something like vanilla HTML + JS can do the job
| just fine, but you need to update everything to vanilla to
| make it uniform.
| P5fRxh5kUvp2th wrote:
| I think the issue is the batteries included approach taken
| nowadays.
|
| Many developers nowadays seem to expect to be able to just
| wire things together without actual writing much
| algorithmic code. And the solutions have catered to that.
|
| Those of us that are older lament the idea of using
| frameworks to increase our productivity, but still being
| more than glorified middle-men.
| scarface74 wrote:
| Why reinvent the wheel? I've seen "architects" who didn't
| think they needed Entity Framework and went about solving
| the same problems (mostly around change tracking) very
| badly. Give me a widely supported framework any day over
| a badly written unsupported in house solution.
| Instantix wrote:
| Sometime frameworks are a real help, sometime using it is
| just making thing bloated and it's hard-linking the
| future to someone who have the knowledge of the
| framework.
| scarface74 wrote:
| I would much rather "hard link" the future to a publicly
| available documented framework than one that a single
| person who thought their problem was a special snowflake
| wrote.
| P5fRxh5kUvp2th wrote:
| Which is why I've been paid good money to both maintain
| and bring up to speed old RoR applications that were so
| out of date you had to manually patch the C libraries
| just to get it working.
|
| This attitude is common, that these frameworks are not,
| themselves, dependencies to be managed and protected
| from.
| soulofmischief wrote:
| As a consultant, I try to reduce my billable hours as much as
| possible, then charge an appropriate amount for the value I
| have created, not the time spent, and this leaves me more
| time for more clients or leisure.
|
| Is this not the typical mentality?
| jetako wrote:
| I can't speak to the prevalence of this mentality, but it
| rings true for my consultancy. The idea of maximizing hours
| is absurd. We do everything we can to minimize hours, thus
| maximizing value to the client. That's how we keep our
| clients happy, and make room for more business.
| dahart wrote:
| There's a legit issue in there, but us old'ns might have to own
| up to some of the problems we've caused (or even just failed to
| solve) and the legacy we're leaving. ;) I'm _mostly_ joking,
| but I honestly don't think this is a young vs old issue, I
| think it's a byproduct of happening to live through the time
| when the internet took over the earth right while programming
| exploded as a career. The amount of choice, complexity, scale,
| and expectation in software today is so much higher than it was
| 20 years ago.
|
| Putting together a decent web app today that is competitive
| with what's out there and doing it in a reasonable amount of
| time is something that just requires frameworks and library
| mashing. Even though I can fully empathize with your comment,
| from experience, and even though my beard is almost as grey,
| piling stuff I don't understand together from yarn or npm is
| exactly how I start a new web app. My job recently switched
| from web to hardware, and the workflow changed dramatically
| into writing and scrutinizing every line of code, and complied
| instruction even. But even still in the hardware company there
| is an overwhelming sea of choice and complexity and an army of
| young and old programmers all borrowing and reusing code at all
| times, with everyone just treading water and understanding only
| the tiniest sliver of it all.
|
| I think we have no choice but to embrace the fact that it's no
| longer possible to avoid swimming in 90% code you can't control
| or understand, and figure out how to better manage it and
| encourage people to snorkel under the surface whenever they
| can. I don't think we should blame it on the kids though,
| they're just trying to get by the same way we did, but in a
| different world than we had. The good ones will still shine
| through and be amazing, and the rest can learn their mistakes
| the long way just like we did when we were young and obstinate.
| weatherlite wrote:
| How was the switch from web to hardware/low level? Did u do
| some self studying to get a job?
| dahart wrote:
| I definitely had some fears about it, and there are things
| I miss about web, but it was easier than I expected. I was
| reasonably prepared though, and it wasn't as big a jump as
| my comment above might have made it sound, since I was
| doing C++ and video game programming before doing web dev,
| and my hardware job is centered around graphics and is
| still mostly software work.
| P5fRxh5kUvp2th wrote:
| So true.
|
| I once had an experience where I asked a younger developer why
| they didn't use cookies for a solution they were using JWT's
| for. Their answer? They didn't know how to use cookies.
|
| I was bemused, their solution worked just fine, it's just all
| the extra infra needed when compared to cookies, which would
| have solved the problem just fine.
|
| I'm in my mid-40's and I would apply that observation to scrum
| (and software dev in general). What I tend to see are a lot of
| very earnest people who are legitimately trying and the
| behaviors often associated with scrum are what they've been
| taught works.
|
| Truly understanding what goes into successful software dev
| takes years of work and is more craft than algorithm, so I can
| understand the challenges.
| scarface74 wrote:
| The only thing I hate more than the ckusterfuck of the modern
| front end ecosystem is coming behind an "Architect" who doesn't
| think they need them and reinventing the wheel badly.
| dacracot wrote:
| As a 61 year old programmer, that knew this is what I would be
| doing since my first exposure as a junior in high school, I can
| say his insights aren't too bad. But 20 more years on, things
| start to hit harder. My best advice is to learn to coach, even if
| you aren't in a coaching role. Find that young 10x team member
| and teach them the subtleties of the abstractions that make a
| difference. Don't be offended when they rewrite your code to
| their way of thinking so long as it did not obfuscate the lesson,
| that's how they will learn.
| rafaelbeirigo wrote:
| "I have no idea about how effective pair programming is. My
| desire to discover it is zero."
|
| Sculptors, painters, writers are with you in this one...
|
| It's very challenging to share creative space/material
| formvoltron wrote:
| Aging. At 40. lol!
|
| My the youngins have some pride. Not sure how to break it to you
| but, the web, phones, etc was created mostly by people 10 years
| older than you.
| betaby wrote:
| Sad reading. Meanwhile anyone with a title above of the middle
| manager is collecting big moneys and asking for an 'update'. I
| would take a management role any second, no need to explain how
| bad it could be.
| lifeisstillgood wrote:
| So this is the (current) opening paragraph for my book:
|
| ############
|
| There is a common refrain in large companies, almost a badge of
| honour.:: "I used to write software, but then I
| became a manager and stopped. But I am still technical."
|
| How many of these managers used to read and write English (or
| Spanish or Japanese) , and how many, once they became managers,
| stopped? But are still literate?
|
| It is no longer possible to manage a company without reading and
| writing English (or Spanish or Japanese) But it _is_ possible to
| do so without reading or writing _code_.
|
| This book believes that it will soon be just as impossible to run
| a company without reading (and writing) _code_ as it currently is
| to do so without _English_ (or Spanish or Japanese).
|
| All companies will be use software to gain what advantages in
| what military term "tempo of decision making contests"
|
| This I call _software literacy_.
|
| #############
|
| The reason we old farts are upset is that there is an artificial
| divide between coding and the resource allocation and co-
| ordination of "management".
|
| We need to focus on closing that gap - then coding is how we
| express most functions of "management".
| thread_id wrote:
| At 64 years I am still going strong. I consider myself blessed
| that I have landed a position that allows the to be the leader (I
| manage a small team) and still be hands on with everything:
| Architecture, desgin, coding, infrastructure, cloud engineering,
| DevOps engineer, DBA, the list goes on. It is a Goldilocks job.
| The technologies that we manage and master are miriad. We are a
| small company and my team owns the entire space. All my years of
| knowledge and experience enable me to be coach, mentor, and
| teacher. Over the course of my 44 year career I have played every
| instrument in the band. I manage with a socratic method which my
| team enjoys. Because I have been a life long learner, I have
| sought out and explored new technologies with eagerness and
| hunger. This enables me to lead the team to adopt some of these
| technologies in usefull and vaulable (to the enterprise) ways.
| The team absolutly enjoys learning and applying new and emerging
| technologies. I could not have asked for more from what will
| probably be the last gig of my career. I don't intend to retire
| until 70 (assuming I am that lucky - you'll know what I mean when
| you get here). I am having so much fun I wish had 30 more years
| ahead to enjoy what comes next. I always like to say: It's good
| work if you can get it - not everybody can.
| pythonbase wrote:
| You sound fun to work with. More power to you.
| cholmon wrote:
| I'm interested in hearing more about your Socratic approach to
| management. Could you elaborate on that a bit?
| RockingGoodNite wrote:
| People who can manage and code (architect, etc.) are truly
| rare. I'm not quite at the same age and only play the guitar.
| Like the article author and where we differ, I am very
| skeptical of new technologies, if I can't find a use for it in
| my personal software projects without having to hold my nose,
| there's no way I will recommend it for work.
| spaetzleesser wrote:
| "People who can manage and code (architect, etc.) are truly
| rare."
|
| It's not that difficult if you actually can make decisions
| quickly. It only gets difficult once you are in a bigger
| company where you have multiple more or less competent
| stakeholders and every decision get accompanied by multiple
| meetings.
| indymike wrote:
| > People who can manage and code (architect, etc.) are truly
| rare.
|
| I disagree with this. I think there are a lot of people who
| don't like being a leader for lots of reasons... but every
| time I've promoted a reluctant leader it's been magical for
| that person and for their team. A lot of times the people
| that self-promote and like to be in charge should never, ever
| be given athority.
|
| > I am very skeptical of new technologies
|
| I used to think that way until I realized that in a lot of
| cases, we've been re-inventing the same concepts in computing
| since the 1960s. I think a lot of the re-invention is really
| being driven by hardware capabilities, languages and fashion.
| We're seeing it with Rust right now - let's rewrite all the
| things in Rust! Underneath it all, though, the payoff for
| using new, less capable tech, is that eventually it will pass
| up the old in a very meaningful way - and when it does,
| systems build on the old are washed away.
| hota_mazi wrote:
| > > People who can manage and code (architect, etc.) are
| truly rare.
|
| > I disagree with this. I think there are a lot of people
| who don't like being a leader for lots of reasons...
|
| Note that you are talking about different things from OP.
|
| OP was talking about managing, you are talking about
| leading. These are two very distinct skills. Sometimes you
| can find both in the same person, but these people are few
| and far between, since each of these roles is already a
| full time job.
| indymike wrote:
| > OP was talking about managing, you are talking about
| leading. These are two very distinct skills.
|
| Everything I've experienced in my professional life has
| taught me this: managers who can't lead can't manage, and
| leaders who can't manage cannot lead. Never once have I
| worked for a manager who didn't see themselves as a
| leader, and never once have I met someone who called
| themselves a leader who wasn't management.
| hota_mazi wrote:
| I've met all kinds.
|
| People who are stellar managers, have extremely high
| empathy and EQ, understand their engineers, prop them up,
| help their career, guide them toward both professional
| and personal growth. They also did not have a single
| ounce of leadership or charisma in them, very low
| technical chops, no vision, and not interested in
| providing team leadership.
|
| I've also met stellar leaders, visionaries, who inspired,
| entranced teams with every single word that came out of
| their mouth. They provided short and long term
| directions, technical and product guidance, motivation.
| And they were absolutely terrible human managers. Could
| not place themselves in other people's shoes. Didn't
| really care about managing the career or growth of people
| on their teams. Were only focused on matters that did not
| involve any human feelings.
|
| These kinds of people both have their places and they
| complement each other wonderfully.
|
| And sometimes, you find these two very distinct, polar
| opposite qualities, in one single person. But like I
| said, this is much more the exception than the rule.
|
| And of course, the reality is that most people lie on a
| spectrum between these two extremes.
| scarface74 wrote:
| > but every time I've promoted a reluctant leader it's been
| magical for that person and for their team.
|
| I was hired at my last job by the then new CTO to lead the
| "cloud application modernization" effort as they were
| pivoting to providing access to micro services to large
| health care companies.
|
| After being somewhat successful at it, he offered to make
| me a team lead (been there done that). I told him in no
| uncertain terms that I would quit first. We had a great
| working relationship.
|
| I now do basically the same thing in the consulting
| department at BigTech as a middle level hands on
| consultant.
|
| I asked a year end could my position be considered a
| "terminal position" or would I need to work toward a
| promotion. My manager asked me why. Again I was very
| honest. I needed to know because I would be looking for
| another job before seeking a promotion. He said it could be
| a terminal position,
|
| I prefer leading projects over leading people.
| elevaet wrote:
| I feel like this guy could be me. As someone at about the same
| stage, almost every there here completely resonates. Except the
| "Aging" part, I expected he would be a 60+ year old programmer.
| pyb wrote:
| It's interesting that one can take away radically different
| things from a technical career.
|
| For instance, at around the same age, I much prefer pair
| programming ; try to avoid remote work ; have little time for
| drawn-out technical discussions ; etc.
|
| I wonder how much of these takeaways are career-path-dependent
| and how much are due to innate personality traits.
| oaiey wrote:
| That is definitely personality based. Pair programming has an
| aspect of wasted time but it depends on the local culture.
| s1k3 wrote:
| The beauty of individuality. I'm of similar age and have
| learned a lot about myself as well. I would say quite
| orthogonal to both OP and you.
| weatherlite wrote:
| It's sad that 40 is "aging". Programming isn't football for
| chrissake.
| WealthVsSurvive wrote:
| Everything you're describing would be ideal for management, but
| creating ideal outcomes and utility isn't the point of why we
| work in the US.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| I'm 60. I've been writing software since 1983.
|
| For 25 years, in between, I was a manager. At one point, I
| progressed in my career, until I only managed, and did no coding
| (for money).
|
| So I coded on the side. That's a big reason for all the open-
| source stuff that I have in my portfolio[0].
|
| When I was told that the software industry has no use for old
| coders, I took my toys and went home. I was kind of butthurt.
|
| But then, I've come to really, really like not having people
| interfering with my work, treating me with disrespect, and, worst
| of all, trashing my work.
|
| So it's all good.
|
| [0] https://github.com/ChrisMarshallNY#browse-away
| galoisscobi wrote:
| I hope that ageism dies out. I'm in my mid twenties and I would
| like to start a business down the line and if I'm able to make
| it happen, I would like to help with this issue.
|
| I previously worked at a startup where the head of the SWE
| department was in his 60s, and it was one of the best places I
| had ever worked at. The startup regularly employed older
| programmers and I learned so much from them and hearing the
| lore of when they were young was also fun.
| arketyp wrote:
| I learned how to code when I was twelve. I wouldn't have if I
| didn't in some degree enjoy the actual act of coding, the moment
| to moment typing on the keyboard, composing algorithms, designing
| data structures and logical flows. But in the back of my mind I
| also always regarded coding as a means to an end. Sure I became
| engaged in language design battles, API design philosophy, but
| the magic with computers was always, for me, that you could
| create something from nothing, this totally metaphysical
| creativity, really. To some extent I see this passion
| transgressing to other spheres, such as management,
| communication, planning across departments, office politics. As
| an adult, I don't play video games, and artistic pursuits and
| ideals have also become more abstract, the particularities more
| sedimented, incorporated in the grand scheme of Life. On top of
| that, the fact is that most programming jobs are glorified
| plumbing. I'm reconciling with the fact that the romantic days of
| hacking are perhaps a thing of my passed. I don't really listen
| to music the way I did as a teenager, so I can't expect
| programming to remain the same either.
| marginalia_nu wrote:
| I have a similar background, but still find programming very
| rewarding.
|
| Not at my day job, that is and has always been a series of
| mundane chores. I sadly think expecting to get paid for
| stimulating programming is fairly unrealistic. There is just
| not a lot of market for solving interesting problems or
| designing well-optimized code.
|
| I find other avenues to build interesting things instead. At
| 35, I'm able to build things that I could never have when I was
| 15 or 20 or 25. I have so much more experience with what works,
| I'm much better at identifying which decisions matter, and
| which corners can be cut.
| visarga wrote:
| > expecting to get paid for stimulating programming is fairly
| unrealistic
|
| Works for me in ML.
| erwincoumans wrote:
| Doing interesting programming work is not unrealistic, but
| you need to make it a priority if you care for your day job.
| 3D graphics, robotics, physics simulation and AI/deep
| learning are still exciting to me after decades.
| pluijzer wrote:
| The magic, curiosity and joy I had also faded for me once. Like
| you say, much of my jobs included lots of plumbing. For work
| the elegant solutions that gave me joy would be seen as anti-
| patterns. The languages I enjoy would scuffed at as being
| relics. The problems I enjoy seen as useless because there are
| already solved in bloated over complex enterprise libraries.
|
| When I would program for myself in the weekend I wanted to work
| on problems that would look good on my CV. Focus on techniques
| and languages that will be beneficial for my carrier. Soon also
| my hobby coding became a lot less enjoyable.
|
| I then decided to seperate my hobby and carrier. In my spare
| time I started working on the things that fascinated me.
| Implementing operating systems, creating software rendered 3d
| engines, compilers etc. All from scratch. All in my favorite
| language (which is Common Lisp for me). Not caring if it would
| bring me money once, not worrying if anybody would use it or
| wanting to put it on my CV once. The only reason that is to
| enjoy it.
|
| Straight away the magic I felt as a kid about computers came
| back in full strength. It hasn't faded since. And the funny
| thing... I started enjoying my enterprisy work also again.
| Already getting my coding passion fix in another way I could
| appreciate my work and the way of working for what it is.
| spfzero wrote:
| Same here (separate hobby from career). I needed to let
| myself re-discover the things that made it magical, switch
| from resume-building as my goal, to "what would be fun for me
| to do now?".
| visarga wrote:
| The cure to burnout - give yourself ample time to play and be
| inspired.
| voidfunc wrote:
| This is why I'm starring to get interested in games
| programming. It is so far removed from the kind of code I do
| for a living that it is a lot of fun and recaptured the magic
| of learning to code when I was 11ish.
| scarface74 wrote:
| I learned to code at 12 in 1986 in 65C02 assembly language. By
| the time I graduated from college in 1996, I had done hobby
| programming in assembly in four processors. I didn't do a
| single side project from 1996 to present unless it was just to
| learn a new to me technology for my next job.
|
| During that time, I was a part time fitness instructor as a
| hobby, I trained for half marathons with friends, dabbled in
| real estate until around 2009 (guess how that worked out), got
| remarried, raised two (step) sons and now my wife and I are
| making plans to live a digital nomad life flying across the US.
| Our free time will be spent sightseeing and learning Spanish
| well enough to have a different experience when we stay in
| Mexico for a few weeks later this year.
| khaledh wrote:
| I'm 47 years old, I'm a staff data engineer, and the fire in me
| to solve problems through programming is as strong as ever, and I
| expect it to last until I retire. I have zero interest in
| managing people, but I enjoy working with colleagues and teams to
| solve complex problems (through as simple solutions as possible).
| I learn something new everyday, and my hunger for learning is
| insatiable.
|
| Note: I get contacted by recruiters constantly, at least a few
| times a week. Yes ageism is a thing, but you if you're really
| good at what you do you're much more valuable than young
| engineers.
| tartoran wrote:
| But you're also more expensive and picky about where you work
| and what tools you'd use. That natural ignorance and
| inexpensiveness lends younger devs a competitive advantage
| RockingGoodNite wrote:
| Fine craftsmen are very picky about their tools. Companies
| that rely mostly on hiring "natural ignorance" will have
| representative software stacks.
| jwr wrote:
| As a mid-40s programmer, I can agree with most of these
| observations.
|
| Looking at myself, I think my biggest strength is in knowing what
| _not_ to do.
| shrimpx wrote:
| I keep seeing people lamenting something to the tune of "Hey I'm
| in my 40s, aren't I supposed to be expired? But I'm more relevant
| than ever."
|
| The idea that you're expired at 40 gained hold in the 90s and 00s
| when programmers entrenched in 80's style apps had a hard time
| keeping up with the explosive internet takeover of software.
| Waterfall development of monolithic apps with synchronous I/O and
| multithreading didn't carry over well to SaaS. It's also kinda
| like how mainframe people had a hard time with the PC revolution
| before that.
|
| But if you were building LAMP websites in 2000, that experience
| still carries over to today.
|
| If some idea takes over again that requires a total rethinking,
| like maybe differentiable programming with AI-generated
| infrastructure, then there'll be a bunch of 40-50 year olds
| who'll find it too difficult to rebuild themselves around a
| radically different paradigm.
| tayistay wrote:
| > Back in college, they told me that I would start my career
| writing code, but eventually, I would move to a position where I
| would ask others to code my designs.
|
| Without continued exponential expansion of the industry, seems
| numerically impossible that everyone would eventually become a
| manager or architect.
| FunnyBadger wrote:
| jordanmorgan10 wrote:
| This post and its comments warm my soul. At 33 and a decade in,
| I've only recently started to worry about what the tech world in
| general is telling me:
|
| That I have to become a manager. That I won't always code until I
| retire. That I won't be welcome in the workforce in my later
| years.
|
| All of those things frighten me! I love programming, and I want
| to be doing it in my 60s, happily. Glad to see that people are.
| oaiey wrote:
| Do not worry. Your every day startup may not (because their
| teenager culture), but the enterprises of the world love you. I
| am now crossing in my mid forties, being a paper dragon
| (architect) I still outperform the waste majority of developers
| in our groups. I have their respect and they have mine.
|
| However, idle you never can be. Because being of age and not
| being able to run with the pack is bad. Luckily, it is not the
| framework of the day but more the soft skills which make the
| difference.
| beej71 wrote:
| I found I lost interest in vapid work. Programming is still fun,
| but it's a big challenge to find a job that is fulfilling.
|
| When I was younger, I'd work on whatever. Then everything started
| sounding like yet another get rich quick company, and is that
| what I was giving up my life for? Just to move little green
| pieces of paper around?
|
| The most appealing thing I'd seen recently was a company that
| wrote software to help maximize farm yields. At least there was
| some real, effective benefit for a great many people.
|
| It's like the goal of the company gradually became more important
| than the tech or money. And altruistic companies are very rare.
|
| But I always really wanted to teach, so that's what I do now.
| Pays about 40% of what I'd make in industry, but I get to geek
| out all day and do work that benefits the world.
| einpoklum wrote:
| Another option - if you can manage arranging it - is working
| part-time (whether half-time or four-days-a-week rather than
| five), and spending the rest of the time working on the
| software which you think _really_ needs to get written. With
| some luck and effort, these two branches of your work can even
| relate (but then you need to be careful about the IP clauses in
| your contract).
| grahamm wrote:
| I agree, programming is still fun. Problem is my job has
| changed due to my age and experience and has migrated into
| something I don't want to do or can't do that well, managing
| others and the project as a whole. I get to do less of what I
| do and what I do well.
| Seattle3503 wrote:
| > The most appealing thing I'd seen recently was a company that
| wrote software to help maximize farm yields. At least there was
| some real, effective benefit for a great many people.
|
| After my graduate work I am the opppsite. I realized that
| meaningfulness is not a sufficient condotion for enjoying my
| work. The tasks I work on and my coworkers make a much larger
| impact on my happiness. Whether I work on something "stupid" or
| "vapid" matters much less.
| irrational wrote:
| 40 years old is aging/old?! That was more than a decade ago for
| me and I definitely didn't feel aged at the time. I still spend
| all my time as an individual contributor. Their have been efforts
| to move me into more senior/management roles and I have refused
| them all. I know my strengths and working with people isn't one
| of them.
| DMell wrote:
| I graduated six months ago at 31 and am not starting my career
| as a junior at 32.
| beebeepka wrote:
| I started at 31. The beginning was somewhat rough as I had to
| endure a ton of pricks in their early 20s conducting
| interviews on their own.
|
| Even to this day, I have never been hired after being
| interviewed by a youngster. I suspect karma might be a thing,
| so I just endure them all knowing little shits for 30-60
| minutes and move on.
| mastersummoner wrote:
| Was made a team lead recent and it's... interesting.
|
| I always saw myself as an individual contributor, and rebel
| against the path that leads to what's effectively project
| management with zero daily coding. But being the lead of a
| smallish team, making sure everyone's working towards goals and
| helping more junior devs when they get stuck, is a surprisingly
| interesting challenge.
| walnutclosefarm wrote:
| From where I sit, thinking about a 40 year old programmer in
| terms of "aging" is a good laugh. I started my career in the
| technology industry as a programmer at age 40 (not that I hadn't
| written code before that - I'd written quite a lot, but my
| primary gigs during that time had been in academic science, as a
| college administrator, and as a horticulturist).
|
| I don't think there is any intrinsic reason one should age out of
| software development, if writing code is what you want to do. But
| many people do, particularly those for whom writing code is not
| an end, but a means to some bigger end. Although I wrote code,
| and was paid for it for many years, what interested me was not
| the code, but the problem we were solving with it. And
| eventually, if that's the case, you conclude that you can
| accomplish more - solve bigger problems, or make a bigger
| personal contribution to the ones your team or organization is
| working on, by coding less, or not at all, and architecting,
| designing, and directing more. And that's the path I took. Others
| may wish to, and certainly should be free to, keep right on
| coding.
|
| But, and it's important - software development looks different
| from one decade to the next. Different languages, different
| architectures, different tools and evolving engineering
| paradigms. Whether you choose to remain a developer, or move into
| an adjacent management or design area, you will have to re-invent
| yourself to a significant degree, decade by decade, to remain
| relevant. Those that don't - well, they end up doing maintenance
| on aging systems with their aging skills, and not infrequently,
| wondering how and why their careers feel like a dead end.
| dahart wrote:
| > I have no idea about how effective pair programming is. My
| desire to discover it is zero. [...] Related: working with people
| you can learn from is a wonderful source of motivation. [...] My
| desire to discuss technical stuff with people, both to help and
| be helped, is at all-time highs.
|
| FWIW pair programming is very hard to do well and usually pretty
| uncomfortable. It needs to be structured well and done in smaller
| doses with lots of breaks. But when it has worked right (which
| was a small minority of the time for me), it has been
| exhilarating for me, unquestionably much faster and more
| productive than coding by myself, and much more fun.
|
| I do think pair programming is also a fabulous way to share
| workflow tips and tricks. Watching someone drive you will see
| things you didn't know, and when people watch you they'll
| discover your secrets. Even if pair programming is hard, I think
| it's pretty good for the organization to have team members doing
| it on occasion to help propagate this kind of knowledge more
| quickly. But yeah YMMV and it does also require self control and
| letting people do things their way sometimes even if it seems
| slow.
| alexk307 wrote:
| This was the only line I really disagreed with. Pair
| programming, when done right and with two engaged participants,
| can be extremely rewarding and speeds up time to
| develop/review/test/etc.
|
| Either you're both at the same level, and you can feed off each
| other, thinking through edge cases and bugs as you go. Or you
| could be at different levels, where one engineer is teaching,
| and the other is learning. It's really a win-win in my opinion.
| kanbara wrote:
| 100% this. in my last job i transitioned into a role i didn't
| have much experience in, and i paired for a few months and
| learned more than i ever could have on my own.
|
| the miserly "leave me alone and let me code by myself" people
| are siloing knowledge and probably not writing the best code
| or products than if their code could be critiqued in real
| time or on pull requests and so on.
|
| a lot of adult software engineering is not in a vacuum but in
| a collaborative and fast-feedback based environment
| erwincoumans wrote:
| Agreed on small doses, not full-time: I've done some pair
| programming with people I enjoyed working with, but only a few
| hours a week. It felt motivating and rewarding.
| neogodless wrote:
| Having done it very little, I'm no expert, but the situation I
| was in was that I was motivated but not knowledgeable, and I
| was paired with someone knowledgeable but wholly unmotivated.
| It let me be much more productive than otherwise, and put to
| use the other's experience without requiring them to find
| motivation.
|
| Of course, if you're managing, and you _know_ someone is not
| motivated, you probably don 't turn to this as your solution,
| but I'm not management, so I could be wrong!
| willsmith72 wrote:
| Absolutely, have even done it full-time. Most are justly
| scarred from bad experiences, but in the right environment with
| the right people, tech and culture, it's a total game-changer.
| StevePerkins wrote:
| I'm approaching 50. Just a scant decade away from being old
| enough to tap my retirement accounts and have the OPTION to
| retire. These next couple of years look like they might not be
| fun, but overall it looks like I'm actually going to make it.
|
| For most of my career, I've been told (and I believed) that I
| would probably get forced out of a hands-on individual
| contributor role as I aged. During the late-2000's, I even had an
| early midlife crisis and earned a law degree, expecting that I
| would need to make a career change into IP or something. That
| hasn't been the case.
|
| What I think people missed is the compounding effect. The supply
| and demand for computer programmers seems to double every decade
| (maybe the interval is even shorter). With each doubling, the
| older cohorts become a smaller and smaller share of the whole.
| People look around and think, _" There aren't many older
| programmers here"_, and base predictions off that observation.
| However, the more accurate observation would be, _" There have
| been A LOT of younger programmers added here!"_. I don't believe
| that it's actually a zero-sum game, though.
|
| I don't know if this human resources cousin to Moore's Law will
| continue indefinitely, but it's certainly held up through my
| career. Even when it inevitably slows down, I think that just
| means you'll see the age cohorts balance out more over time.
| ransom1538 wrote:
| "For most of my career, I've been told (and I believed) that I
| would probably get forced out of a hands-on individual
| contributor role as I aged."
|
| Programmers are in a bubble. Head over to the local grocery
| store. The person _bagging your groceries_ is 63. There is no
| retirement plan for him - as well as most Americans. These
| "old" people will end up working until 70, _on their feet_. If
| I can find someone to pay me to write CRUD apps all day in
| whatever hipster framework, I am fine with that, no complaints
| here. Beats working at HomeDepot.
| hindsightbias wrote:
| I had an office mate whose dream was to retire to the tools
| desk at HD.
|
| While brutal, there is something to working later from a
| health perspectice. When I was young, retirees played tennis
| and golf but I dont see as much of that in my cohort.
| granshaw wrote:
| Snide all you want about it, but the country club trend
| provided community and physical activity
| soulofmischief wrote:
| A bubble as in we are not cognizant enough to recognize the
| benefits of investing in our skills and education so that we
| aren't bagging groceries at 63, or a bubble as in we should
| not expect our current ratio of compensation vs skill to hold
| out forever?
| twblalock wrote:
| Also, programmers are paid better than most people and early
| retirement is often possible. A lot of programmers don't need
| to work into their 60s.
|
| In my own case, when I have enough money to retire it's going
| to be hard to convince me to keep working.
| JackMorgan wrote:
| I know quite a few engineers who simply no longer need to
| work ever again, and are working just for "funemployment".
| ecpottinger wrote:
| The difference, an engineer is told what to build and tries
| to do that.
|
| A programmer is told what to do, and half way thru
| development they have the boss show up and say 'I just read
| of this brilliant idea in BusinessWeek, lets add/change the
| code to do .....".
| twblalock wrote:
| I would probably try to do that too, but one bad week or
| month, and I'd be done.
| chucksmash wrote:
| Funemployment is when you are not working though
| [deleted]
| w4ffl35 wrote:
| the thing that gets frustrating as i age are interviews and
| code challenges. i'd really prefer a certification that proves
| i can do xyz which i take once (per year? in my life?). then
| just decide if you like me based on personality and
| communication.
|
| i have over 200 repositories etc. its redundant, and random
| code challenges that differ from employer to employer prove
| next to nothing.
|
| 20 years ago it was the norm for interviewers to ask brain
| teasers / riddles in interviews ffs.
|
| edit: perhaps this is my own personal struggle as I did not
| attend University.
| dominotw wrote:
| I think Leetcoding is a worthy investment for career. Why not
| .
|
| I understand that it feels like its waste of time with no
| practical use but the upsides are that they make job hopping
| trival because you know what to expect and feel confident.
|
| I think its a tiny investment for big returns. unparalleled
| to any other activity you could invest your time in.
| scarface74 wrote:
| Even though I had other means to get into BigTech and still
| stay hands on technical, if I didn't, I definitely would
| have spent 3 months "grinding leetCode" to get a six figure
| increase.
|
| I'm lying, I would have hated working for any large tech
| company _as a software developer_ after spending decades at
| small companies.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| _> unparalleled to any other activity you could invest your
| time in._
|
| Huh. Never heard that before.
|
| I invest my time in writing " _shippable_ " code. Even my
| "farting around" projects are done in a manner as if they
| were to be released by a Fortune 50 company.
|
| That means that _Every. Single. Line. Of. Code._ that I
| write is "ship" code. There are a number of projects that
| I've stopped working on (I archive them, but leave them out
| there), and a few that were never really meant to be sent
| out to fend for themselves, but I still make the effort to
| write tests and documentation for them.
|
| I'm so used to _delivering_ software, that I 've almost
| forgotten what it was like to play around; which is
| actually a bit of a shame. It could easily be said that I
| "take things too seriously." I can tell you that my
| employers liked it, though.
|
| My GH Activity Graph is solid green, and I wouldn't dream
| of "gaming" it. I don't especially care whether or not
| anyone thinks I'm "l33t." I'm an old fart that has no
| intention of working for anyone, ever again. I write code
| for myself, and that I want to see. Most of the folks that
| I care what they think of me, have no understanding of my
| tech work, and that's fine.
|
| It makes me feel good to make good, well-tested, well-
| documented, well-architected code that solves problems.
|
| I guess you could call me a "completionist." I like to
| _finish_ stuff.
| shakezula wrote:
| I have to agree with parent comment. Leet code
| interviews, while sometimes obnoxious, are still good
| exercises. I have learned a lot of nuanced takes from a
| leet code interview with an interesting question.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| OK, fair 'nuff.
|
| Right now, I'm working on a data parser for a backend API
| that fetches a JSON response, using the built-in
| NSURLSession stuff, turns it into a Swift Dictionary,
| then I sort through that Dictionary, and emit a bunch of
| Swift struct instances for use by the API consumer.
|
| The reason for this, is because the API that I wrote
| about seven years ago, is giving us performance problems.
| I wrote about that in this comment[0].
|
| The NSURL stuff has all the sockets and whatnot, as well
| as all the transport stuff. I've written that stuff
| before, but I guarantee that the deep geeks that wrote
| the system have done a far better job of optimizing that
| stuff, than I ever will.
|
| The JSON parser (built into the OS, but I may think about
| maybe licensing another one, if this doesn't do what I
| want) has all the recursive-descent, tree-crawling stuff
| in it, so I don't need to worry about that. Since this is
| a multi-threaded system, almost every school algorithm is
| worthless, but I guarantee that the deep geeks that wrote
| the system have done a far better job of optimizing that
| stuff, than I ever will.
|
| I want to get the hell out of this API, as soon as
| possible, and return to writing the UI stuff that will
| make my app sing.
|
| The API is being developed as a standalone SPM package
| that will work on all the Apple systems (iOS, iPadOS,
| MacOS, WatchOS, and TVOS). The one that it's replacing
| only worked on iOS. No excuse. I know better, now. I'll
| also be structuring this to be a lot "swiftier," and more
| "reactive" than the original API.
|
| The app is a native Swift UIKit app. It's a big mofo. At
| its peak, it was over 40 screens, but I'm trying to get
| it down to half that. I've been working on it for a
| couple of years. It's had a couple of pretty massive
| pivots, in that time.
|
| UIKit is a big framework. It takes years to learn. I'm
| looking forward to SwiftUI, but SwiftUI is not at the
| point, where I'm comfortable committing to a project of
| this scope.
|
| I've been working with UIKit since 2012. I barely
| understand it, and they keep adding new stuff, as fast as
| I can learn it.
|
| Swift is an excellent language. Like every language, you
| can get the basics down in a few weeks, but it takes
| years to get the advanced stuff down.
|
| I've been working with Swift since 2014 (the day it was
| announced). I speak it without an accent.
|
| The project I'm working on has been a _wonderful_
| masterclass in Apple iOS development. I also wrote a
| fairly massive PHP backend, but that was years ago, and
| it is, I guarantee, not as cool as a really good PHPista
| could do. That said, it works great, is maintainable,
| secure as hell, and fairly well-structured for scaling
| and extension.
|
| The app is gonna be great. Its approaching ship (still a
| ways off, but we can see the harbor lights, from here).
| I've been releasing it on TestFlight since it was a month
| old. By now, I've probably made over 800 TestFlight
| releases to the team. That's how come we can be so
| confident in the UI and the Quality. It gets banged on _a
| lot_.
|
| But maybe I'm doing it all wrong, and I should stop
| working on this to practice leetcode.
|
| [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32921823
| throwyuno wrote:
| If you're looking to get hired as an individual
| contributor somewhere else, maybe you should. But judging
| from this and other posts of yours, you're not, so you're
| probably not doing it wrong.
|
| It's just that when interviewing, it can few easier to
| evaluate some algorithm puzzle than to figure out what it
| means and whether it's true that "the app is gonna be
| great."
| derangedHorse wrote:
| No the general sentiment is that the interview process for
| software engineers suck but almost no one wants to take a
| chance trying to develop a new way to interview. It's
| somewhat understandable though since devising a new process
| can't be to people focused less you inherit too much bias
| from the interviewer, nor can they be boiled down to a
| objective metric or else people may fall into inflexible
| dogmatic practices that use metrics that don't directly or
| accurately measure a candidates ability to perform the job
| applied for
| w4ffl35 wrote:
| i think it should be like this: can code / do whatever is
| being hired for + understads what we're building? hire.
| doesn't do a good job? fire.
|
| its actually based on personality + a convoluted code
| challenge that has no bearing on the actual job.
| Arubis wrote:
| That's truer and truer the more generalized the
| position/hiring pool. "Developer at GiantCo" will end up
| doing leetcode interviews by default. Cofounding as a
| technical founder will be pretty much all about personal
| fit. Between these two extremes is a wide continuum
| (smaller companies, tech positions at non-tech firms,
| freelancing, consulting...) that'll have different
| processes for finding a fit between someone with a problem
| and someone proposing a solution.
|
| If you truly hate the way interview processes have run for
| you, it's worth considering if you feel strongly enough
| about it to seek a different fit in the market. You might
| not, and that's fine! But alternatives do exist.
| PheonixPharts wrote:
| > almost no one wants to take a chance trying to develop a
| new way to interview.
|
| I'm guessing your in the under 40 camp, but _interviews did
| used to be better_.
|
| In the early days of the startup explosion interviews where
| much better. The biggest signal at the time was having an
| active github profile or otherwise existing portfolio of
| code. The strongest signal back then was serious
| contribution to any open source projects (strangely today
| that almost seems to count against you). It also wasn't
| _required_ that you had these, but they were a very strong
| signal.
|
| Interviews were largely technical conversations, to see if
| you understood the concepts, and even more importantly, _it
| was okay if you didn 't know_. I remember being asked a
| question about TCP vs UDP. I didn't know much networking at
| the time, and explained what I knew about TCP but admitted
| my understanding of UDP was basically non-existent
| (admitting ignorance used to be a huge plus back then). The
| interviewers then explained how it worked and asked if I
| could explain when and why this would make for a better
| solution than TCP. I answered about the obvious application
| to media streaming and passed. Interviewers didn't care
| that you knew everything, they wanted to see how you think.
|
| Even the original predecessor to our current leetcode
| nightmare, fizzbuzz, was never supposed to _hard_ it was
| meant as a basic sanity check. There were some devs who had
| just followed the flow at some big bank and literally
| couldn 't code on their own. Fizzbuzz was just to make sure
| that given a blank page you could implement basic code.
|
| Of course as tech started to boom, so did the
| bootcamp/interview industry. People were trained to do
| fizzbuzz, instructed how to create a github repo filled
| with meaningless, half started project (or forks of other
| projects), and people where told how to flood OSS projects
| with minor pull requests so they could claim to be
| contributors. Then companies wanted to be like Google and
| have hard white board challenges.
|
| Then you had a generation of engineers that never knew any
| different and largely had forgotten (or never known) how to
| assess technical competency anyway than through a series of
| hazing rituals.
| yu3zhou4 wrote:
| > The strongest signal back then was serious contribution
| to any open source projects (strangely today that almost
| seems to count against you)
|
| Would you mind sharing why contribution to open source
| might have a negative impact for an interview?
| scarface74 wrote:
| As someone who is very "certified" when it comes to cloud, I
| can tell you that certifications mean absolutely nothing and
| can easily be gamed. I went through the certifications route
| only as a guided learning path so I would know what I didn't
| know. Anyone can pass a multiple choice certification. I got
| my first AWS certification without ever logging in to AWS.
|
| But it was never to get a job or a promotion. I was already
| the Dev lead at the company working on an on prem system and
| they wanted to "move to the cloud". I just wanted to get an
| overview of the landscape.
|
| As far back as 2000, "brain dumps" of MS certifications were
| a thing.
| moondev wrote:
| You can't game the cncf k8s certs. It's also an interesting
| indicator to see what date it was awarded. As in yesterday
| or 3 years ago.
| scarface74 wrote:
| So I've heard. If someone passed the K8s cert, you expect
| them to be somewhat competent. If someone honestly
| studied for AWS certifications without experience, you
| expect them to be conversant. I have nine of them now
| (out of 10). But just so I can be conversant. It's
| definitely not prove competence in areas where I don't
| have real world experience.
| iepathos wrote:
| I've interviewed people with computer science phd's from
| schools with good reputations that couldn't program worth a
| damn when it came to some simple algorithm and practical
| coding questions in person so, I don't have a lot of faith in
| certs/degrees for this.
| chadcmulligan wrote:
| I'm currently working on an old cad sort of program, its a
| mess, 20 years of kludges. Working on it is hard - you have
| to keep all this stuff in your head and I keep saying why
| the f did he do that, as expected really. Recently I had to
| add a new bit and use some computational geometry
| algorithms, it was like a step into a clear dark pool,
| everything was ordered and nice, which is probably the
| world of the phd.
|
| I don't know how you test for the ability to do real world
| stuff - I always think of doctors, they have a system of
| proctoring they've developed over the years, where you're
| judged by your peers and rated accordingly and even then
| its not 100%. I think this is the only way to do it in real
| life, but I don't know if programming will ever get to that
| point, it probably will be necessary sometime - when
| everything is driven by computers.
| mike_ivanov wrote:
| These types can't usually think clearly under pressure.
| Besides, answering coding questions is very, _very_
| different from inventing those algorithms. It 's a
| completely different way of thinking. That's why.
| AmpsterMan wrote:
| https://www.bls.gov/ooh/computer-and-information-technology/...
|
| The number of "jobs" added doesn't quite double, but if we
| think of it as "for every 4 that retire, five take their place"
| it would definitely feel like what you're saying.
| milesvp wrote:
| The number I saw was something like every 5 years the number of
| programmers doubles. So half if all devs have less than 5 years
| experience. And since most new devs are more likely to be
| closer to college age than retirement age devs tend to skew
| younger than 40 (probably by a lot).
|
| https://blog.cleancoder.com/uncle-bob/2014/06/20/MyLawn.html
| topkai22 wrote:
| I ran numbers from the BLS on occupation data a few years
| back. If you look at the number of programmers 25-35 in 2000
| and the number of programmers in 2020 aged 45-55 you see a
| real and substantial decrease in absolute terms. The decrease
| is much larger then other professions, so its not
| attributable to a cohort just exiting the workforce in
| general.
|
| There is also a massive increase in the number of 25-35
| programmers in the same time period.
|
| My interpretation is there are definitely forces that push
| against older programmers staying in or re-entering the
| profession, but they aren't as severe as they appear to be
| just looking at the raw numbers. Generally, programmers who
| want to remain the profession are going to be about to, but
| it is harder to be a programmer over 40.
| Retric wrote:
| Some of this is how easy it is to transition from
| programming to something else compared to other
| professions. Jumping from building some piece of software
| to being the expert on it or managing programmers to
| managing projects etc.
|
| This is especially tempting if someone's skills start to
| diverge from what's in demand.
| mockingbirdy wrote:
| Here's [1] a data analysis looking into the phenomenon:
| "Professionals with higher cognitive ability drop out of
| STEM careers earlier and faster", "High-ability workers are
| faster learners, in all jobs. However, the relative return
| to ability is higher in careers that change less, because
| learning gains accumulate"
|
| [1]: https://whoisnnamdi.com/never-enough-developers/
| pyuser583 wrote:
| I've seen a lot of older programmers. They can wind up working
| as a team of one because they're productive enough to do the
| work of an entire team.
|
| I've seen this a lot. Hire older dev. Older dev has decades of
| experience. Older dev creates new product from scratch in a
| couple weeks.
|
| Another issue is that mentoring is focused on junior devs by
| senior (6-8 years of experience) devs. So you're less likely to
| have a senior dev (6-8 years experience) mentored by a dev with
| 20 years experience.
| justrudd wrote:
| I'm kind of in this boat. I've been doing this for 25 years
| now (jeez). Mentoring a dev with 6 to 8 years experience is a
| pain in the butt (yes. I know. Not all of you).
|
| While I've got a pretty good memory, a lot of the times I
| don't have a direct or complete answer for their question.
| I'll have a tingle of a memory that is similar to their
| question. So I'll give them that as a starting point and tell
| them how I'd approach the solving the problem. But they get
| frustrated that I didn't solve their problem immediately.
| That I can't point them at a blog post of Stack Overflow
| answer.
|
| But a dev with 1 to 3 years experience? They'll take that
| non-answer and run with it.
|
| And I get it. The 1 to 3 probably has 1 maybe 2 tasks they're
| working on. The 6 to 10 (to 15) has probably a half dozen
| things they've got to keep track of. Researching is probably
| pretty low on their list.
| mike_ivanov wrote:
| _While I've got a pretty good memory, a lot of the times I
| don't have a direct or complete answer for their question.
| I'll have a tingle of a memory that is similar to their
| question._
|
| The same. Especially under pressure. Which makes it
| virtually impossible for me to pass an oral technical
| interview.
| CodeWriter23 wrote:
| 40. lol
| bregma wrote:
| I look back on 40 with fondness: I would have been 40 some time
| around the Y2K bubble. It sure as heck isn't old and I can;t see
| how a kid of 40 can write about ageing in the industry.
| pelasaco wrote:
| I couldn't agree more with this post.
|
| - Nope, I don't want spend my week doing 1:1 with a team.
|
| - 40 years old and I was never so sharp as developer as now.
| Focused. Precise. Fearless.
|
| - Being the most senior developer in my team, doesn't put me in
| any special position other than I deliver a lot of good code, I
| do a lot of devops tasks, i review a lot of PR and people hear
| me.
|
| - I can scale my work through my peers.
|
| - I trust and respect the managers and architects, because I
| understand how hard their job is.
|
| - They trust and respect me because they know that I could do
| their work (and they mine) and the roles are not ranks, but
| choices.
|
| I don't fear for my job. I know that in the worst case scenario,
| even earning 50% of my salary would be more than the average of
| the population and I would still have fun with that. I can work
| in a niche market like Java.. or hell even Cobol :)
| RockingGoodNite wrote:
| I could earn probably double, maybe even triple my salary and
| then I read your comment and realized it's true. If my salary
| now were halved, it'd still be more than the average US income
| earner. I Googled "US population average salary" and they have
| a nice graph.
|
| As a side note, get ready for the pitch forks, it started going
| up as we approached the then potential Trump era in 2016.
| pyuser583 wrote:
| I'd be really interested to see what the experiences are of
| developers who started at 40+.
|
| If you start at 40+, you are used to the most recent tech: you
| are more likely to use Python or Go than Java or C++. You're
| going to be "cloud native".
|
| Does that help or hurt?
| gardenhedge wrote:
| I've moved out of coding every day at work because I've gotten
| 'too senior' but my goal is to move jobs to get back into it and
| probably spend at least the next 5 years coding. What I do now is
| so high level that I can't see myself doing it for the next 25
| years.
|
| That will bring me close enough to 40. I don't really see me
| stopping coding then.
| distances wrote:
| I don't get why you'd be too senior to code if you like it. And
| I was very surprised to see the article author calling himself
| an aging programmer already at 40. I'm fast approaching that
| age and I feel I'm more productive than ever.
|
| At some point reading articles like this I was mildly worried
| about being employable as a programmer later in life. But not
| any longer. The amount of work seems to be ever increasing, and
| open positions get filled with middling talent at the face of
| persistent lack of skilled programmers. Seems like anyone with
| even a sprinkling of motivation and passion will not go without
| work for long.
| mberning wrote:
| I don't see how the world will get by without experienced
| programmers staying in IC roles well into their retirement years.
| This is for two reasons.
|
| First, the demand for software is going up significantly, and new
| programmers do not come with the advantage of experience, aka
| knowing what not to do. These newly minted programmers need
| mentors. They need examples. Businesses need adult supervision
| for these tasks which many managers do not understand.
|
| Second, the demand for senior technical leadership is going to
| make it more financially rewarding to stay in a truly senior IC
| role. Going into management, product, etc. will not be as
| appealing an avenue to take your career to the next level.
| CrLf wrote:
| "I have no idea about how effective pair programming is. My
| desire to discover it is zero."
|
| I stand with the OP. Maybe this is a young folks thing, but I
| don't understand how anyone can pair program. It's like going to
| the toilet with someone staring at you.
| oaiey wrote:
| The idealized greybeard would consider effective pair
| programming as wasted time (there is no contribution by the
| pair).
|
| And all other purposes (like training juniors) is not for
| immediate benefit.
| CrLf wrote:
| I get collaborative work. But pair programming for me is a
| net negative: two people working together outputting less
| than one person working alone. I don't even consider it
| beneficial in the longer term (training, as you put it) given
| the degraded performance.
|
| The very act of programming is buiding a house of cards in
| your mind and turning it into code before (or while) it
| collapses due to our limited brain capacity. Keeping two
| brains synchronized in the process just seems... too much
| overhead.
|
| Like the OP, I'm just not interested in finding out if I'm
| wrong or not. I don't even want to give it the benefit of the
| doubt lest it takes hold despite being a bad idea, like many
| other bad ideas that we now have to live with.
| 988747 wrote:
| Pair programming works for me in short bursts: when I'm
| stuck at some problem I would call a colleague, share my
| screen, and then live-code with me as the driver and him
| watching me and producing ideas. I find it very effective.
| amykhar wrote:
| Add 13 years, and I could have written this. I must admit I
| cringed a bit when the author said 40 was old. I still love what
| I do, and I have no desire to live the manager life of all day
| meetings.
| mrits wrote:
| If you can be the best NFL Quarterback at 45 I think you still
| have a shot at writing code at 40.
| Archelaos wrote:
| Which NFL Quarterback at 45 was coding at 40?
| lawgimenez wrote:
| I'm approaching my 40s and I am not really worried. On the
| contrary I feel confident on my tasks. Author is cringe just
| like his masters at Basecamp.
| loquisgon wrote:
| Fourty year old programmer aging! Give me a break!
| dclowd9901 wrote:
| Didn't know I needed a write up like this, but I did. I'm hitting
| 40 in February and naturally it's causing me to... feel things.
| Lingering in the back of my mind since I started my career was a
| worry that someday I'd become too old for it.
|
| It still hasn't felt like that as I've aged but nevertheless the
| worry still lingers. It's nice to see I'm not alone in these
| worries and maybe I'm worried for nothing.
| weatherlite wrote:
| My 2 cents for people worried about growing old in tech - invest
| heavily in your network. Be nice to your colleagues, help out
| whenever you can. Yes, you "lose" 20-30 minutes a week but you
| possibly gain employment later on. All those colleagues will
| eventually leave to other companies and become a crucial part of
| your future employment. This pays dividends. Also being nice and
| helpful whenever you can is just a nicer life in general imo.
| _dhruva wrote:
| Nearing 50 and am still coding. Been doing it for last 25 years
| and will hopefully continue till retirement.
|
| I had a brief stint as a manager, ended up doing more coding than
| my team. That was the moment I decided to step back into coding
| again.
|
| For me, coding is puzzle solving or playing with Lego. It is
| therapeutic. If someone can continue to pay me to play, why not!
| samatman wrote:
| Donald Knuth was 40 years old when he published the first version
| of TeX.
|
| We could make a long list like this. Enormous amounts of high-
| quality, game-changing software is written by coders in their 40s
| and 50s, often with a couple more decades of stewardship and
| expansion of their works.
| BlargMcLarg wrote:
| Isn't unique to programming either. Loads of famous people
| produced something well known today in their later years. Many
| of which didn't start picking up the required skills before
| their late 20s, 30s, etc. Many works which in many ways, were
| far more difficult than programming is today.
|
| It's primarily navigating social environments which makes
| software production so obscenely difficult. There's nothing
| inherently complex about most popular web apps once you have
| access to the frameworks used to make the tough parts easier.
| No amount of frameworks or technical knowledge is going to
| solve stakeholders with conflicting interests, or coworkers
| heavily in favor of slowing things down through unnecessary red
| tape.
| jv22222 wrote:
| > coworkers heavily in favor of slowing things down through
| unnecessary red tape
|
| This happens a lot. I wonder what the root cause of this is.
| almost_usual wrote:
| > I don't enjoy switching contexts. My perfect agenda is composed
| of a single meaty task I can focus on for days.
|
| So large companies only?
| LostInTheWoods wrote:
| I work for a large company, and I can say that context
| switching is also a problem here. I guess it comes down to the
| organization, or maybe the individual team. But yeah, there
| isn't a week that goes by where a development task isn't
| interrupted by something.
| willsmith72 wrote:
| From my experience it's the opposite, the BS and distractions
| to work ratio in small companies has been far better and the
| small company also has huge chunks of work to do.
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