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Ask HN: Developers aged 50, how have you gotten around age discrimination?

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Re: Ask HN: Developers aged 50, how have you gotten around age discrimination?

#151

Post by buserror »

stcredzero wrote: post #144
buserror wrote: post #20

I'm 49! I've been working since I'm 17 as a developer -- I think the KEY thing is to be valuable, and be able to change quickly BUT not as quickly as the snowflakes. Ignore the fad tech, get a good, serious, bulletproof base in actual computer science -- I mean, LOW LEVEL stuff--, that will help you learn ANYTHING computer related quickly, and continue surfing that wave with whatever tech you fancy might actually be…

Ignore the fad tech, get a good, serious, bulletproof base in actual computer science -- I mean, LOW LEVEL stuff--, that will help you learn ANYTHING computer related quickly, and continue surfing that wave with whatever tech you fancy might actually be useful to make you sellable in the future... Instead of listening to you and I (age 50) there are some young people who would rather claim that basic/low-level/first…

I don't think you were "age" discriminated here my friend, it's likely you were just skill discriminated -- sometime it happens -- something you think is terribly easy and boring might come out as completely "wow" to some -- some people take it well, some, don't. Don't let that drag you down, remember the other thing I've posted in that thread: THESE people failings are what will keep you employed to fix them in the foreseable future :-)

I remember a while back on a guy who was raving about my code setting a (as boolean) flag with "done++;" -- he thought it was such an awesome idea. OH YEAH.

Re: Ask HN: Developers aged 50, how have you gotten around age discrimination?

#152

Post by gchamonlive »

stcredzero wrote: post #144
buserror wrote: post #20

I'm 49! I've been working since I'm 17 as a developer -- I think the KEY thing is to be valuable, and be able to change quickly BUT not as quickly as the snowflakes. Ignore the fad tech, get a good, serious, bulletproof base in actual computer science -- I mean, LOW LEVEL stuff--, that will help you learn ANYTHING computer related quickly, and continue surfing that wave with whatever tech you fancy might actually be…

Ignore the fad tech, get a good, serious, bulletproof base in actual computer science -- I mean, LOW LEVEL stuff--, that will help you learn ANYTHING computer related quickly, and continue surfing that wave with whatever tech you fancy might actually be useful to make you sellable in the future... Instead of listening to you and I (age 50) there are some young people who would rather claim that basic/low-level/first…

These coder-bros I was interviewing with accused me of Googling the answers and started in on the complete condescension

I'm really sorry about that man... I guess young people tend to feel like they own the world. I'm 27 and I believe I have been raised outside this toxic bubble (I got a lot of shit from my parents, I never thought I was somewhat special just for the sake of it, I only felt special after achieving goals, I always felt necessary to them though, regardless of achievements). I believe younger people are raised like they are too special, the promise of a better world, the ultimate legacy of their parents and that tend to go over their heads, specially after a historical period of unprecedented growth in which my parents and I believe their parents lived (60s through 80s) in which they prospered.

Young people tend therefore to believe they inherited their parents achievement and they can only go forward. I feel lucky I don't share that and I would love to be your coworker and learn from you.

Re: Ask HN: Developers aged 50, how have you gotten around age discrimination?

#153

Post by jimbokun »

fredbo22 wrote: post #86
Chopsah2 wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've got an "OpenDoc Kamp Kodabunch" sweatshirt.

The Steve Jobs response is klassic. https://www.reddit.com/r/apple/comments/3faz2u/steve_jobs_in...

Just watched the video.

This is the Steve Jobs more young entrepreneurs need to know about and emulate. Not the "Jobs was an asshole and successful, therefor if I am an asshole I will also be successful" vision of Jobs. Or the "Jobs made pretty things and suckered people into paying too much for them" vision of Jobs.

Re: Ask HN: Developers aged 50, how have you gotten around age discrimination?

#154

Post by ivalm »

zepolen wrote: post #9
president wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're probably a young'n. This is what everybody thinks until they hit the point in their life where they realize there is more to life than just work (family, friends, hobbies, etc). You'll be complaining soon enough.

And you have demonstrated your attention to detail by not bothering to check that my hn account is older than yours.

Are you implying that the age of your HN account relates in any way to your age? Someone who is sub-30 could have a 2008 account.

Re: Ask HN: Developers aged 50, how have you gotten around age discrimination?

#155

Post by Diederich »

jimbokun wrote: post #149
Diederich wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If stated briefly, it tends to come across as self serving and disingenuous, and I don't have time to add the necessary political and technical backstory to avoid that. But fuck it, here's the brief, high-level. Starting in the 1990s, I was in the 'devops' team inside of Network Engineering in an enormous and enormously successful (to this day) retail chain. At the time, we were told by AT&T, our biggest WAN provider…

That's some really cool stuff! Can't you pretty much directly apply those lessons learned to Highly Scalable system design and implementation? Seems like your skill set would be in very high demand, after a couple of Udemy Docker and Kubernetes courses.

Thank you!

I've helped a couple of companies implement Kubernetes already (:

Re: Ask HN: Developers aged 50, how have you gotten around age discrimination?

#156

Post by jimbokun »

fredbo22 wrote: post #90
billwear wrote: post #42

I'm 60, and going strong. Most important is bring not only depth and breadth of knowledge but also wisdom to the work. As a graybeard, you're expected to add value because of your years. For example, when my office was going nuts about Kubernetes, devops, etc., it got me a raise to compare this new tech to the original Unix philosophy and point out some lessons learned in Unix design that would help with our containe…

Care to share this wisdom? I'm wrassling with these kontainers now and I'm wondering why people think they're so wonderful.

Took me a while to see the value of Docker.

Ever deploy the same software to multiple servers, and it maddeningly behaves slightly differently on different servers, and you're not quite sure why?

This is the problem docker solves. Install exactly once, when you build the image. Then deploy the exact same code, down to the bit, as many times as you want, to as many servers as you want. Or quickly roll back to the Docker image for the previous version.

So this is how Docker helps you scale quickly and deploy as often as you want, with confidence.

Kubernetes, meh. Just some code for spinning up more or fewer Docker containers in an automated fashion. At least that's my impression, I haven't had to get my hands dirty with it yet.

Re: Ask HN: Developers aged 50, how have you gotten around age discrimination?

#157

Post by jimbokun »

james_s_tayler wrote: post #116
diminoten wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Comments like these are so infuriating! You get to shit on a huge community with zero reasoning, and zero consequences for being wrong. Your negativity is only rewarded if somehow you're right (which is more a result of broken clock syndrome than anything else), so you and people like you are incentivized to keep sniping from afar.

Is there not some part of you deep down that looks back at the last decade of technology and feels "well I'm glad we're not doing things that way anymore, it was totally wrong for our situation"? It just seems that that is constantly the case. We might well be another 3 or 4 decades away from software development technology hitting real maturity in terms of really streamlined tooling, frameworks, languages that help…

I feel the same way about your comment as diminoten felt about your grand parent comment.

You didn't say anything particularly actionable or insightful. Just projecting vaguely pessimistic and defeatist attitude.

Re: Ask HN: Developers aged 50, how have you gotten around age discrimination?

#158

Post by alchemism »

technofiend wrote: post #99
moosey wrote: post #60

Everyone here is talking about their skillset, and I'm going to take another direction: appearance and interpersonal skills. There is ageism, yes, but I think a deeper problem is reaction to peoples appearance. If you are late twenties concerned about age, then hide it, starting now. * Always wear sunscreen when you are outside, regardless of race. It prevents skin aging, and you'll still tan and get Vitamin D regard…

Professionalism both in terms of appearance and interaction are definitely helpful. And despite my ripping on SV stereotypes in other posts I actually adore IT. I'm delighted to come to the office every day because it's an opportunity to apply something I know, solve a problem or learn something new. I recently changed roles after going back to my UNIX SA roots and working for the last few years in a front-line custo…

I note that a number of the positive retorts to the stated fear of tedium come from systems folk.

Re: Ask HN: Developers aged 50, how have you gotten around age discrimination?

#159

Post by agumonkey »

dbg31415 wrote: post #136
agumonkey wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, any suggestion for a COBOL book ? jk what would you consider a solid, time-proof set of fundamentals ?

Don't joke, COBOL is insanely profitable and a stable career path. Every large institution has an old COBOL mainframe running some mission-critical software that they can't upgrade away from.

I have the COBOL spec on my shelf.. but I refused that path. IBM hybrid codebase is seriously traumatizing. I don't know how it is in other companies though.

Re: Ask HN: Developers aged 50, how have you gotten around age discrimination?

#160

Post by jimbokun »

ams6110 wrote: post #49
simonsarris wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agree 100%, it has blown me away my whole life how engineers downplay marketing and [product|personal] presentation in spite of the reams of data suggesting it has some of the best ROI possible of anything you can spend your time improving. Do you want to make more money, get more connections, have everyone like you more and treat you better? It's as simple as buying some nicer shirts, getting regular haircuts, and e…

> They also have stains on their t-shirts, are overweight, and act morose all the time. Describes more than one 20-something developer I know. Being a sloven does not correlate with age.

Yes, but the 20-somethings don't need to over-compensate for age discrimination.
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