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Ask HN: What happens to older developers?

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Re: Ask HN: What happens to older developers?

#171

Post by mmcconnell1618 »

fsk wrote: post #150
moron4hire wrote: post #77

I'm 31 and I worry a lot about this issue. I live in the Washington DC area, which is extremely expensive. I am a freelance consultant, but my hourly rates are not very high. I have one client, and if someone in official IRS capacity were to look at us, they'd make my client make me a wage employee, the relationship we have is clearly not a subcontracting position. But this arrangement makes it possible for me to ear…

>$50k employee == $100k subcontractor That's false. You can figure out out directly. Paying your own social security tax: +7.5% (say $7500 out of $100k salary) Health Insurance: $700-$1000 per month (say $12k annually) 2 weeks paid vacation + paid holidays: +7% (another $7000 out of $100k salary) So, $100k contractor is equivalent to ~$80k as a full-time employee with benefits.

With the exception that contractors typically have to spend some amount of time lining up work and interviewing. This eats into your 50 weeks of actual work outside vacations.

Re: Ask HN: What happens to older developers?

#173

Post by greatsuccess »

"The problem for some people is that these kinds of more generalized roles put you in charge of systems that do not have the sort of clear-cut deterministic behavior you remember from your programming days", what could you be possibly talking about? So generalists work on non-deterministic systems? Clear-cut? Gimme a break man that statement and perhaps your whole remark is a load of bull. You are making a statement that generalists arent programmers. Generalists make more money than anyone else except for security specialists.

Re: Ask HN: What happens to older developers?

#174

Post by bmj »

ap22213 wrote: post #140
chengiz wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where are you based if I may ask? Just to put your salary in context, because 160K is not the same everywhere!

Also, I'm not trying to brag by posting my salary. I just think it's really important for devs (young devs, especially) to know these data points. I took the first interesting offer that I got, when I graduated from college. It was $43k. (You have to start somewhere!) But, as you get more experienced you must also learn to understand the value that you provide to the companies that you work for. Too many developers g…

$43k? My first offer was $28k, though, to be fair, I didn't have a programming-related degree.

I'd also like to underscore the comment in your parent post--"good enough for me." It's not always about pay. I'm seeking a sort of "medium chill" [0] existence. I currently make more money that I ever thought I would, but I also have a position with a relatively stable company where I can continue to do interesting work without unnecessarily ramping up my responsibilities with each pay increase. If you offered me a job with a 25-50% pay increase with a similar increase in work time and/or stress, I'd politely decline.

[0] http://grist.org/living/2011-06-28-the-medium-chill/

Re: Ask HN: What happens to older developers?

#175

Post by mabhatter »

The big thing is that developers move to "adult" companies. The pay is less, but they get to act like grown ups, take vacations, have families... Sure the work is more boring. Who doesn't love EDI or Factory planning!!! But getting those business skills down and implementing what the accountants want is like 50% of "computer" jobs that mostly are never, ever advertized.

I'm 40 and still looking at more school and something to keep busy another 20 years after the kids move out.

Re: Ask HN: What happens to older developers?

#176

Post by greatsuccess »

In in my mid 40s, went through some life burnout due to trying to start my own business, and had to come back to just being the most solid engineer I can be.

I do contracts almost exclusively because I have no faith in the employment market as an employee given the current trends in hiring.

Also I dont feel that being an employee makes me more of a team player, In most places contractors are doing the real work and employees are sitting around chatting over the water cooler. Id rather get work done.

Im a generalist and in spite of the rather idiotic statements about that in the first comment, its really the only way to go, if you are not a generalist you are likely not employable regardless of your age. Any shop that has hordes of 20 year olds spitting out HTML/CSS is wasting their time.

The beauty of being a generalist is that once you have enough experience and a core set of tools, you can add new ones or not at your leisure. The pace of things is really not that fast, about 80% of all tools that get released are just junk that noone will remember in a couple years.

One benefit of being an older developer, is that in a decent shop people tend to notch down the bullshit factor, because they know you have heard it before.

Conning people into doing things that are stupid is reserved for the 20 somethings.

Re: Ask HN: What happens to older developers?

#177

Post by ap22213 »

bmj wrote: post #174
ap22213 wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, I'm not trying to brag by posting my salary. I just think it's really important for devs (young devs, especially) to know these data points. I took the first interesting offer that I got, when I graduated from college. It was $43k. (You have to start somewhere!) But, as you get more experienced you must also learn to understand the value that you provide to the companies that you work for. Too many developers g…

$43k? My first offer was $28k, though, to be fair, I didn't have a programming-related degree. I'd also like to underscore the comment in your parent post--"good enough for me." It's not always about pay. I'm seeking a sort of "medium chill" [0] existence. I currently make more money that I ever thought I would, but I also have a position with a relatively stable company where I can continue to do interesting work wi…

Exactly. I like 'medium chill'! I generally try to work a 40 hour week. Sometimes I have to put in some extra hours, but I like to be observant about why I'm putting in those extra hours, try to fix the root problem, and get it back to 40.

A college professor that I had (a mentor), once told me that the best programmers should be somewhat lazy. I'm definitely not a 'best programmer', but I do try to automate as much as possible and be on the look out for 'gordian knots' to cut.

Re: Ask HN: What happens to older developers?

#178

Post by eshvk »

chrismaeda wrote: post #68
eshvk wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First off, brilliantly cogent post. I am getting to the stage where the latest fancy framework doesn't really seem as much of a win but more meta-bullshit to deal with. > The problem for some people is that these kinds of more generalized roles put you in charge of systems that do not have the sort of clear-cut deterministic behavior you remember from your programming days. Can you expand a bit on this? What do you m…

In the more generalized roles, you deal with parallel systems made up of unreliable carbon-based computing elements. You can't just feed them electricity and order them to execute programs. You have to charm, cajole, and/or threaten them at the right time in order to get them to produce the desired outputs. This requires some amount of patience and wisdom to do well.

Hahaha. I guess I assumed this to be the norm in any system that contains more than one person building a product. :) I was more asking where on earth these deterministic systems existed and where I can get some. :)

Re: Ask HN: What happens to older developers?

#179

Post by mtourne »

I'm not that old (28), but I already see myself doing "the same stuff over and over" in my programming jobs. It's not that bad yet, but I think this would be a problem in my mid-thirties.

I've been seriously thinking about going back to school, and specializing in something entirely new (computer vision), as I'm already learning about it on my own.

Learning something new would be exciting, but the idea of starting over, being an "intern" again, then _maybe_ qualified if everything pans out is frightening.

As anyone here changed their technical career for another different technical career, instead of going the management route ?

Re: Ask HN: What happens to older developers?

#180

Post by mathattack »

My 2 cents... The great programmers can stay technical as long as they want. If they find their way to great companies, they will do well on equity. I have several data points of folks in their early to late 40s like this.

People who aren't excellent, or not truly passionate about the coding itself go into management, sales, or consulting. (I'm in this group) There is age discrimination by people in the open market who don't know your work. There is much less age discrimination amongst people who personally know you.

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