When I get older, losing my hair, many years from now.
Will you still be using the command line?
Wasteful meetings, bogus deadlines?
...
Will you still need me,
will you still feed me,
When I'm 64?
Ask HN: What happens to older developers?
181–190 of 372 posts
Re: Ask HN: What happens to older developers?
#182I'm 41, but I don't consider myself old. Either way, I'm semi-retired. I do client work (iOS and experiential retailing installs) for about half the year, then I do my own projects for the other half. I live in Vietnam but commute to NYC for certain client projects, so maybe 25% of the year there, the rest in Vietnam. Prior to the move, I did 20 years focused mostly on new media/creative tech so my skill range crosse…
You sound like your killing it, just wanted to say that. Romantically though, how is that?
Re: Ask HN: What happens to older developers?
#183What happens to older developers?
Re: Ask HN: What happens to older developers?
#184Largely it depends on the company culture. As you approach your mid thirties these are the questions you should be finding answers to:
Does the company have a technical development path ? Do developers get promoted to senior developers to technical leads or is the organization flat (bunch of developers reporting to a non technical manager) ?
Does the company value employees with experience or does it assume that everybody is an idiot and only a select few can make decisions ? A good way to asses this is to look at how responsibility is spread around the org chart.
Can you see yourself working for the company in 5 years time, what about 10 years, what about 20 years ?.
The sad fact is that after 40 even if you are the best developer in the world changing jobs is going to be more difficult so if you can find a company culture that works for you this is vastly more important than more pay.
Re: Ask HN: What happens to older developers?
#185Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't think this life is for everyone though. One thing people often don't consider when going freelance is that your job shifts. Instead of just being a developer, you are now a developer, marketer, business owner, accountant, project manager, office manager and more. Some people don't mind that, or even enjoy it. For others, having to deal with all the tasks that go along with running a business, in addition to b…
that also really depends on what kind of gigs you get. for example here in the DC area there are lots of independent contractors that have steady multi-year contracts. as long as you're not total dead weight you do the hourly thing for a long time. many years. It's more rare to find those folks that go from solo gigs to having other subcontractors going through them too. That's when all your points become really impo…
Folks keeping score at home should note the successful DC area contractors in this thread. DC is full to the gills with easy, good-paying software work from budgets that need spending. But I don't think that it is a good place to be for your career if you are interested in the technology, unless you are able and willing to get a TSC, and to perform the sort of work that requires one. I recently relocated from the DC area to California for this reason.
Re: Ask HN: What happens to older developers?
#186Clean Room Technician: You know what they do with engineers when they turn forty? [to Aaron, who shakes his head] Clean Room Technician: They take them out and shoot them. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0390384/quotes
beat me to it :)
Re: Ask HN: What happens to older developers?
#187It seems that they go a few directions: The most common seems to be to try and generalize, because relearning most of your job skills every few years starts to get annoying the 20th time you've had to do it. It's different when you are younger and everything is new, you just chalk up a major tooling change as just something else to learn. But when the next hot platform or architecture or whatever comes out you get ti…
Great post -- I want to throw out another option though, which I am exploring myself. Your post seems to, like most posts on HN, be a very "web application" centric view of things. There are obviously vast worlds of software engineering outside of web applications. Embedded/real-time systems, programming languages & tools, robotics, graphics, bioinformatics/computational biology, machine learning, machine vision, the…
Sounds like what I want to be doing. I'm curious if you have additional insight on taking on this path, I want to keep all of my options open and instead of say just pursue embedded/real-time systems and find out that the field is too narrow. What do you recommend to study as opposed to CRUD web-apps,
C/C++, ML, data analysis with Python/R or learn more domain specific knowledge such as Bioinformatics or graphics or quant finance? Much appreciated, thanks.
Re: Ask HN: What happens to older developers?
#188I'm 38, and Software Dev. is as lucrative as ever. I've never done any 'IT work', and I've focused almost entirely on product development, over my 16 year career. As a salary, I think I have plateaued at 160K, which is good enough for me. With 'adjustments for inflation', that's usually an extra $5K increase per year. There are people who make more than me, I know. For example, a guy I work with probably makes $200K…
Where are you based if I may ask? Just to put your salary in context, because 160K is not the same everywhere!
Nationwide data if you are interested.
http://money.usnews.com/careers/best-jobs/software-developer...
Re: Ask HN: What happens to older developers?
#189I'm in my mid 40s. I have been coding my entire career and I am still coding everyday.
The startup I have worked for 3 year was not quite taking off. So a few months ago I decided to quit to look for something new. This is the first time I have quit a job out right without having a new job waiting. It turned out to be the best thing I have done. Once I broadcast the message that I am in the job market, my email box quickly fill up with requests (I'm in the San Francisco job market). I've spent the next week pretty much interviewing full time. Very soon I've received multiple job offers. The company I like the most did not make the highest offer. But I successfully negotiate up to a satisfactory level.
In terms of work and technical skill, I feel I am in the top of the game. I'm not sure where people get the idea that young person is better than more experienced. New knowledge often build on top of old knowledge. Fundamental skill like logic, math, data structure are just equally relevant. Plus experience is useful when you need to make judgment on where and how things are likely to change, and where things is more risky that deserve more attention for design and testing. That say the landscape of technical knowledge is huge and quickly expanding. There a new thing to learn everyday. I am aware that many people around me, both young and old, are really talented. There are always things I can learn from them.
In terms of pay, it is rising in absolute term. But I'm not in management and I'm moving mostly laterally. I don't believe I am making more than someone who are in their 30s. In this sense both my career and my pay is plateaued. But still I satisfied with the work and pay level. I think this is an excellent career choice for myself.
Re: Ask HN: What happens to older developers?
#190I'm about to turn 53. I spend most of my day coaching younger programmers at Facebook (because they're almost all younger). We pair program and talk. I work on speculative projects, some consumer-oriented, some programming tools and some infrastructure. I also research software design and the diffusion of innovation. I took a 10 year excursion into being a guru, but I'm technical now and intend to stay that way. I lo…
I'm 38 -- your notes on memory are interesting. I use Anki spaced-repetition software to retain less-often-used technical minutiae.
I'm also transitioning to using it to integrate new knowledge. Clip to Evernote. Create flash-cards in Anki, and practice on my commute.