Ask HN: Programmers Above 50, Is It Possible to Have a Career Past Your 50s? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: Programmers Above 50, Is It Possible to Have a Career Past Your 50s?

#121

Post by MCRed » Wed, May 06, 2015, 9:33 PM UTC

angersock wrote: post #101

sgustard wrote: post #96

I'm 46 and on my 4th founding engineering team. Coding every day, learning new frameworks with each new role. Home for dinner every night with my kids. My coworkers and I are all in the same age range, we've circulated from one startup to the next, some quite lucrative, others flame out, but no one ever questions our abilities. Don't work for the man, especially when the man is just a boy.

Don't work for the man, especially when the man is just a boy. Hah, I love it. Then again, working for older people that think they know something just because old is equally tiresome.

Boys can be found at any age. The difference between a man and a boy is whether you have a beard. Ok, I'm kidding.

Seriously, though, my boss, the CEO of the company I'm a co-founder on, is 25 years younger than me. He's not a boy, though he has boyish good looks. (Can't get him to keep the beard.)

There are a lot of boys running startups in the Bay Area, and it's true most of them are younger, because if you don't have wisdom or common sense, time tends to give it to you. So those who will learn do, when they've had enough experience.

Re: Ask HN: Programmers Above 50, Is It Possible to Have a Career Past Your 50s?

#122

Post by MCRed » Wed, May 06, 2015, 9:39 PM UTC

bischofs wrote: post #10

I'm 25 and find this kind of depressing, any good society takes care of its elders (read: not old, just older) These are the folks that toiled away on the compilers, libraries, and patterns that we have been standing on to build the current generation of tech, and this is how some of them have fared? I suppose the ruthless competition of this industry is a double edged sword.

They're also the ones who understand how things work!

As we've gotten more open source software out there and faster computers, programmers are naturally moving up the stack using higher and higher level languages. Where before you needed hand customized C++ (with some assembly!) to do something you often will now use a scripting language.

But in doing so a lot of hard core engineering and architecture understanding is dissipating.

People pick node because it's hot without knowing enough to know that it's going to be a problem for a large project, etc.

I've seen engineers toiling away with the wrong technology experiencing great deals of frustration but not even realizing that its' because they have the wrong tool.

I think a big part of the problem is that companies are too often run by business people who don't understand software. So the managers of programmers are often not programmers. (It should be engineers all the way up to the CEO, and including the CEO if you're a technology company.)

So we have business guys picking technology stacks and stuff like that.

Engineers have been commoditized, and they feel like we're interchangeable cogs, the certainly don't know enough tho tell the difference between a mediocre and good backend or fronted engineer.

And so, of course they don't value experience.

Over time people retire, some retire young, and so teams shouldn't have an even distribution of ages, but they do need wisdom. So, somebody should be wise on each team.

Re: Ask HN: Programmers Above 50, Is It Possible to Have a Career Past Your 50s?

#123

Post by zengr » Wed, May 06, 2015, 10:05 PM UTC

arsalanb wrote: post #97

kpgraham wrote: post #63

I am 64. I wrote my first program in 1970 and have worked as a programmer since 1976. Programming was a good career choice. For many years I was a manager and pretty much hated it and returned to programming. I quit my job and went to work at IBM as a software engineer the year I turned 50. I was the oldest person in my department, and was a bit of a father figure to some of the kids there. Otherwise I did not fit in…

This is something I just had to to — http://teespring.com/programming-is-who-i-am

Good one, would have backed it if it had a round neck tshirt.

Re: Ask HN: Programmers Above 50, Is It Possible to Have a Career Past Your 50s?

#124

Post by uptownJimmy » Thu, May 07, 2015, 12:40 AM UTC

danesparza wrote: post #21

uptownJimmy wrote: post #15

My impression is that age-ism is definitely a thing, but that it's a lot more complicated than just how old you are. The ugly truth is that a lot of people just don't present a very attractive package to the world as they get older. There's a whole 'nother set of life challenges that we face in our middle years. Most folks do almost nothing to prepare themselves for these challenges, and that becomes increasingly obv…

It would be helpful if you could give an example of those life-challenges. If nothing else, it could be a sanity check to other middle aged developers (like myself). :-)

I am afraid of saying almost anything about this, for fear that it will be taken wrong.

We all have a LOT of "life decisions" to make between the ages of 18 and 35 (or so), and I think most people make many bad ones. In a country where 2/3 of the population is overweight-to-obese, you can't very well look around yourself and say: "These folks are making a lot of really good decisions!" or "I'd like to hire all of you! You look like awesome, dynamic people with lots of gumption and sass!"

Eating really crappy food, and in great quantities for many years, makes you look and feel sluggish. Drinking booze every night after work, often in great quantities for many years, makes you look and feel crappy after a while. Letting yourself get gradually more complacent about your marriage, work, sex life, body fitness, personal habits and all the rest of it makes you look boring and feel bored.

I'm not saying that age-ism isn't a thing. People love to throw -ism's at each other, it's one of the eternal human flaws. But I think that some (perhaps many) people who cry "age-ism!" are not being completely honest with themselves. Most folks seem to let a lot of the air out of their tires as they get older, tend to get stuck in a lot of bad habits, and it shows on their faces, in their bodies, in their attitudes, in their energy levels, and in their eyes. You can't blame an employer for noticing.

Re: Ask HN: Programmers Above 50, Is It Possible to Have a Career Past Your 50s?

#125

Post by andyl » Thu, May 07, 2015, 4:54 AM UTC

moosey wrote: post #117

andyl wrote: post #23

I'm 51 - no way I'm getting hired as a programmer. But I am coding for my own business, doing better work than ever. I used to be in general management, but retrained as a programmer because I love the tech, and to be location-independent. With today's development tools I am as productive as a team of ten back in the day. It is strange to me that old people are pushed out of the industry.

I'm just surmising here, but at 35 it's something I need to start thinking about. If I can't find a job when I'm 50, this is what I'd assume I'd start doing: just start hacking. I mean, with modern computing, the cost for creation is very low, so it seems like with some effort and a lot of knowledge (gained over a 30 year career), it shouldn't be too difficult to create a living wage outside of standard employment. I…

I started training on the dev tools at age 46. Big learning curve: linux, ruby, erlang, devops, sql, css, javascript, growth hacking, etc. etc. Now have my first customer, coding hard every day. Not aiming for billions but millions - yes. I started on this path because I felt the dev tools and hacker community were developed enough to support this independent style of work. So far everything feels very good. It is very sweet to forego the hassle of investors and employees. Since you're only 35 you've got time to prepare if you decide to go this route.

Re: Ask HN: Programmers Above 50, Is It Possible to Have a Career Past Your 50s?

#126

Post by arsalanb » Thu, May 07, 2015, 5:39 AM UTC

zengr wrote: post #123

arsalanb wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is something I just had to to — http://teespring.com/programming-is-who-i-am

Good one, would have backed it if it had a round neck tshirt.

Edit — Yes, I made a slight mistake in the URL.

Here you go — http://teespring.com/programming-is-what-i-do

Re: Ask HN: Programmers Above 50, Is It Possible to Have a Career Past Your 50s?

#127

Post by vellum » Thu, May 07, 2015, 6:37 AM UTC

mikecaron wrote: post #24

coldcode wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm 57 and doing iOS but yeah, I think some people want to ignore you if your resume is too long thinking you are making it all up. But I am in the DFW area which is basically a Silicon Black Hole for programmers anyway.

This said, I'm thinking that it's probably better to just list the last 5-10 years of experience and drop the older stuff. Though, when listing education, it's probably difficult to list your education without saying when you graduated (there by indicating your age). I'm 38 and I'm reading these things, getting a little worried, though I'm a very quick learner and trying my best to stay on top of what's going on (it'…

A lot of people leave the graduation year off.

Re: Ask HN: Programmers Above 50, Is It Possible to Have a Career Past Your 50s?

#128

Post by jpindar » Thu, May 07, 2015, 4:10 PM UTC

smt88 wrote: post #4

There tends to be a lot more money in management, consulting, and other areas that don't require daily coding. I've heard many non-technical people say that if you're still coding after ~35, you must be lacking important people skills. I don't agree with that kind of generalization, but it seems to be a common viewpoint. The major problem for older programmers is that people believe that the ability to learn decrease…

don't have the ability to learn. are unwilling to learn. won't let go of long-held ideas. insist on being given money they didn't earn.

Sounds like bigotry to me.

Re: Ask HN: Programmers Above 50, Is It Possible to Have a Career Past Your 50s?

#129

Post by GFK_of_xmaspast » Thu, May 07, 2015, 4:53 PM UTC

hga wrote: post #111

Yes, as someone who went to MIT I can attest that it is very bad, at least as of the mid-90s-early-00s when I was 35-45. I believe the primary reason I was able to get jobs in that period was that I erased all evidence of my specific age in my resume (in the middle of a job search so I had a nice before and after to compare) and could pass as a college student. Still had to be careful about what I said, e.g. no menti…

The difference w/r//t the people in the article is they graduated from MIT.

(Also I sort of recall jobs being thick on the ground in the late 90s)

Re: Ask HN: Programmers Above 50, Is It Possible to Have a Career Past Your 50s?

#130

Post by hga » Thu, May 07, 2015, 5:32 PM UTC

GFK_of_xmaspast wrote: post #129

hga wrote: post #111

Yes, as someone who went to MIT I can attest that it is very bad, at least as of the mid-90s-early-00s when I was 35-45. I believe the primary reason I was able to get jobs in that period was that I erased all evidence of my specific age in my resume (in the middle of a job search so I had a nice before and after to compare) and could pass as a college student. Still had to be careful about what I said, e.g. no menti…

The difference w/r//t the people in the article is they graduated from MIT. (Also I sort of recall jobs being thick on the ground in the late 90s)

I'm not at all sure about that. I was in the D.C. metro area back then, and very few of the people and places I worked for and with, let alone applied to, grocked MIT back then; that might be different now. It was very different in the Boston area in the '80s (well, until the end of the Cold War and the local recession simply ended the original area high tech scene, the web one that followed in the '90s did not grow from the old one), and I assume the Bay area.

I'm also not sure it would have made a difference, seeing as I was working towards becoming a scientist when finances forced me into a sordid life of professional programming. As in, a degree in chemistry wouldn't have necessarily helped all that much in getting programming jobs, whereas my history of serious success in such jobs did make it easy, until as I judge my age started to become a factor. There really was a significant difference in the middle of that job hunt when I erased all evidence of my age from my resume.