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Ask HN: What happens to older developers?

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Re: Ask HN: What happens to older developers?

#221

Post by DougWebb »

dusklight wrote: post #164
bane wrote: post #29

It 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…

I have a huge problem with this, because what should be obvious is, the number of people who can be in management/architecture roles is necessarily much smaller than the number of people who are in basic development roles. Assuming the majority of aging programmers don't die of unnatural causes, the only way all of them continue to be employed is if the total size of the software industry is growing at a significant…

Models and athletes can't do their jobs anymore as they age; modelling is all about the beauty of youth and most sports with pro atheletes do a lot of physical damage that adds up over time.

Our jobs aren't like that at all. We may not be able to handle 48-hr caffeine-fueled marathons anymore, but our experience tells us that those are a bad idea anyway, and we wouldn't do them even if we could. That experience is valuable, giving us insight and true productivity, and lets face it the job is sitting at a desk... we can do that well past retirement age, since we'll be doing a lot of sitting around anyway.

Re: Ask HN: What happens to older developers?

#222

Post by Arnor »

SomeCallMeTim wrote: post #214
ChuckMcM wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pretty much covers it. If all you do is 'write code' then you have to be prepared to start 'write the same code in a new "paradigm" several times.' Once that starts you'll do one of two things, either get bitter and grouchy and become unemployable as a coder (trust me when I say that nobody likes working with someone constantly whining about how they already wrote this code 5, 10, 15 years ago), or you will change th…

>As a coder, your pay will definitely plateau. Mine seems to keep climbing. I'm hearing reports of >$300k, and have received an offer in that range myself (counting signing bonuses and stock grants). Granted my pay might plateau there , but honestly that's enough money to keep me happy without having to see it go up every year. I'm a total generalist, but I also have a few areas where I would qualify as a specialist;…

Thank you! Reading some of these posts, I was worried that it was some law of providence that when you've been writing software for some number of years (15-20?) you magically stop wanting to learn about new tools. As a new tools junky, I was worried. I'm glad to see someone who's been doing this since I was 1 year old still loves learning new tools.

Re: Ask HN: What happens to older developers?

#223

Post by rschmitty »

SomeCallMeTim wrote: post #214
ChuckMcM wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pretty much covers it. If all you do is 'write code' then you have to be prepared to start 'write the same code in a new "paradigm" several times.' Once that starts you'll do one of two things, either get bitter and grouchy and become unemployable as a coder (trust me when I say that nobody likes working with someone constantly whining about how they already wrote this code 5, 10, 15 years ago), or you will change th…

>As a coder, your pay will definitely plateau. Mine seems to keep climbing. I'm hearing reports of >$300k, and have received an offer in that range myself (counting signing bonuses and stock grants). Granted my pay might plateau there , but honestly that's enough money to keep me happy without having to see it go up every year. I'm a total generalist, but I also have a few areas where I would qualify as a specialist;…

Congrats on the pay grade! but you need to look at averages not anomalies like yourself

300k is definitely not the tract most programmers are on

Re: Ask HN: What happens to older developers?

#224

Post by SomeCallMeTim »

rschmitty wrote: post #223
SomeCallMeTim wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>As a coder, your pay will definitely plateau. Mine seems to keep climbing. I'm hearing reports of >$300k, and have received an offer in that range myself (counting signing bonuses and stock grants). Granted my pay might plateau there , but honestly that's enough money to keep me happy without having to see it go up every year. I'm a total generalist, but I also have a few areas where I would qualify as a specialist;…

Congrats on the pay grade! but you need to look at averages not anomalies like yourself 300k is definitely not the tract most programmers are on

>not anomalies like yourself

Several people I know are in that range. But they all specialize in one thing or another.

Re: Ask HN: What happens to older developers?

#225

Post by hindsightbias »

bane wrote: post #29

It 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…

> maintaining half a million lines of code

10 young guys? Sheesh, back in my day it was just two of us, and that's how you started. Learned a lot about systems, architecture and most of all, how NOT to code. It really is a crime youts of today don't have to slog through legacy for a year or two before being given the keys to the sexy projects.

I wonder what all that google legacy code looks like, and how often the n00b says "I can't understand all this, I'm going to rewrite it all from scratch."

Re: Ask HN: What happens to older developers?

#226

Post by sizzle »

greatsuccess wrote: post #176

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 e…

I found your post highly insightful, as a 20-something generalist. Thanks for sharing.

Re: Ask HN: What happens to older developers?

#227

Post by pyrrhotech »

Don't listen to what anyone who says that you can make as much as a programmer as a manager. The best programmers in the world with no management experience are going to cap at much less than a million a year in 99.9% of cases. Usually 400k or less. That's still good, and if you are happy with that stay a programmer! Just don't justify it saying that's the most you could make.

People who go into management literally have no cap in earnings. There are people who started as engineers and worked their way into senior management and even C suite positions. These positions can pay 7 or even 8 and in some cases 9 figures a year. The cap is much, much higher than you could ever make as just a programmer.

Re: Ask HN: What happens to older developers?

#228

Post by JayBlanton »

SomeCallMeTim wrote: post #224
rschmitty wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Congrats on the pay grade! but you need to look at averages not anomalies like yourself 300k is definitely not the tract most programmers are on

>not anomalies like yourself Several people I know are in that range. But they all specialize in one thing or another.

Could you share some examples?

Re: Ask HN: What happens to older developers?

#229

Post by dsmaynard »

Recoil42 wrote: post #211
marktangotango wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cool, he cites Kelly Johnson as one of the two 'visionary's' he's worked with other than Englebert. Johnson is known in aerospace as the guy at Lockheed behind the SR-71 Blackbird.

He's somewhat more important than just the SR-71. He's the father of the entire Skunk Works project, and is also responsible for the P-38, U-2, and F-104, and had hands in at least another dozen important aircraft... and bundling them all up.. Area 51. So yeah, he's one of the most important figures in aerospace of the last century. Billing him as 'merely' the guy behind the SR-71 is actually selling him short.

I agree 100% about Kelly Johnson. People who think of Doug Engelbart as only "The Inventor of the Mouse" sell him extremely short also. Google "The Mother of All Demos" and be amazed about how much he demonstrated and how much more he envisioned in 1969.

Re: Ask HN: What happens to older developers?

#230

Post by SomeCallMeTim »

rschmitty wrote: post #223
SomeCallMeTim wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>As a coder, your pay will definitely plateau. Mine seems to keep climbing. I'm hearing reports of >$300k, and have received an offer in that range myself (counting signing bonuses and stock grants). Granted my pay might plateau there , but honestly that's enough money to keep me happy without having to see it go up every year. I'm a total generalist, but I also have a few areas where I would qualify as a specialist;…

Congrats on the pay grade! but you need to look at averages not anomalies like yourself 300k is definitely not the tract most programmers are on

Actually, I hear LOTS of reports of people with $100-$140k salaries who receive signing bonuses close to their salaries. To the point where it seems like the "new standard."

No, you don't see this in start-ups. I think HN may skew toward people who usually work in start-ups, so the perceived average will be lower as a result. Until this recent offer, it was my perception as well.

And no, that's not quite my pay grade, but a lot higher than the plateau that I think people are imagining. I think some developers do get sick of the programming, or they stop learning and go stale, before they get to be an anomaly like me. ;)

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