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Ask HN: For older devs, do you feel like you have missed your prime time?

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Re: Ask HN: For older devs, do you feel like you have missed your prime time?

#31

Post by codpiece »

BrianHutch wrote: post #30
codpiece wrote: post #28

At around 50, I felt washed up; in a dying industry and a failing company owned by private equity. Job was bleak and thankless, I was old and unemployable. If I lost my job, I was hopeless. A headhunter called me out of the blue. We talked for 20 minutes, he had one -one- option for me that was a perfect fit, and I started working at a boutique consulting agency. Fast forward 5 years; I'm leading a group of awesome c…

As a dev/architect in my 50s who has been on the sidelines for a few years, thank you for sharing. I'm on a long sabbatical of sorts and I appreciate hearing that getting back into the game is still possible.

Hell yes! You have seen a lot, and that's the most valuable contribution you can provide. Newer career people get caught up in the drama and can't find a good way out. You've seen this play out hundreds of times. You can provide the calming perspective.

Ping me if you want to chat.

Re: Ask HN: For older devs, do you feel like you have missed your prime time?

#32

Post by mikewarot »

unused0 wrote: post #22
mikewarot wrote: post #19

I'm 59... (I got long covid, my brain is fuzzy, and I can't work more than a few minutes at a time, all things considered, I'd going ok, not great), On the other hand, I feel that the world has taken several wrong turns. I'm interested in correcting course, but feel my ability to help that happen is almost nil. Here's the chain of events, as I see them. 1960s - the military realizes that a single computer can not han…

Multics achieved security by building it into the h/w. That caused the h/w to be more expensive and slower. The system market these days is all about price/performance ratio and the collective decision not to include security as a performance metric.

These days all the security is already in the hardware, that's what MMUs are supposed to do, virtualize memory, plus protect the OS from everything else. There's not really any penalty to be had for security... plus, think of all the stuff like Virus scanners you can get rid of along the way.

I'd settle for a hardware enforced write protect on a microSD port that I could boot from... at least then I could get back to 1982 levels of security.

Re: Ask HN: For older devs, do you feel like you have missed your prime time?

#33

Post by abdnafees »

codpiece wrote: post #28

At around 50, I felt washed up; in a dying industry and a failing company owned by private equity. Job was bleak and thankless, I was old and unemployable. If I lost my job, I was hopeless. A headhunter called me out of the blue. We talked for 20 minutes, he had one -one- option for me that was a perfect fit, and I started working at a boutique consulting agency. Fast forward 5 years; I'm leading a group of awesome c…

Thank you so very much for sharing story. This is so heartwarming. I will surely keep all of your advice in mind. Thank you again.

Re: Ask HN: For older devs, do you feel like you have missed your prime time?

#34

Post by abdnafees »

specproc wrote: post #10
ilaksh wrote: post #4

27 is not an "older dev". FFS.

I get the sentiment, but more kindly.. I only really got going in the last few years after a long non-tech career. I wouldn't count myself as an older dev and I'm ~40. I play with all sorts of cool stuff all the time, was into huggingface before everything blew up. You'll be fine. 27 is a great age to enjoy all sorts of things. No one looks back on their life and thinks how they wished they'd worked more. Fuck the gr…

Yeah, it's not about the age but more about the constant nagging feeling that I get. Anyways, I appreciate the good words.

Re: Ask HN: For older devs, do you feel like you have missed your prime time?

#35

Post by abdnafees »

haxiomic wrote: post #2

Absolutely not, in fact now is the era of the enthusiastic newcomers of any age – it's never been easier to learn something quickly; lead with your ambitions and figure out what you need to create them!

I couldn't agree more but there is so much stuff to learn about. Also, learning for the sake of learning is great but I do wish to be paid for my ability to learn at a rapid pace which I am struggling with at the moment.

Re: Ask HN: For older devs, do you feel like you have missed your prime time?

#36

Post by abdnafees »

knightofmars wrote: post #14

Prime has no other meaning than your expectations of success and when you've achieved them. Getting to know yourself and being comfortable with what it is that you want to do is the most important thing you can do in your life. Worrying about your "prime", sounds more like buying into a hype cycle than anything. On a personal note, every step of my career has been forward and also unexpected. What I envisioned myself…

Hmm, yes, this is helpful. Thank you.

Re: Ask HN: For older devs, do you feel like you have missed your prime time?

#37

Post by abdnafees »

Tcepsa wrote: post #12

At 27 I had not accomplished particularly much. I had one solid accomplishment under my belt from my first two years out of college and then bounced around for the next couple of years. I had just accepted a new position at a large, prestigious organization that did a wide range of work... and proceeded to spend the next four years or so muddling along. Doing fine work, but still not really a great fit. Got a Master'…

Damn, that's quite a journey. So happy to read through it. I think I wouldn't say that I haven't accomplished much because if you go through my LinkedIn and know me personally you would say I am in the top 10% in my country but (very sorry but there is but), it's all spread out. It took me years to consolidate part of that knowledge and build a portfolio that includes one of Big 3 consulting firms and I missed out on building cool stuff in my favorite programming languages and tools. Missed out learning from cool courses and much more. I shouldn't do this with myself because of clinical depression but I can't help it.

Re: Ask HN: For older devs, do you feel like you have missed your prime time?

#38

Post by abdnafees »

syntheweave wrote: post #24

Prime time is a relative construct - it's a kind of realization of the rat race that assumes that the world is moving in a directed sense "towards" a goal and you are left behind if you don't stay directly, vigorously competitive and master the very latest thing, as if school never ended and you are just proceeding to grade 13, 14, 15... It can be somewhat true societally speaking, but also insensible as a creature t…

So finding a niche. Got it. This does make a lot of sense. Thank you.

Re: Ask HN: For older devs, do you feel like you have missed your prime time?

#39

Post by abdnafees »

peruvian wrote: post #13

The only regret I have is I spent ages 21-24 thinking I was too cool for "boring" tech like Django, Rails, REST, etc. I was definitely hyped on a lot of the cool tech back in 2013-17. This did not affect my career that much and I am glad I got exposure to obscure concepts but feels like I had to learn the basics a little late.

I have the same feeling. Who knew I would be working on PHP in 2023. And surprisingly it's so much better than JS at the backend at least.
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