Ask HN: What happens to older developers? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: What happens to older developers?

#341

Post by gaius » Fri, Mar 14, 2014, 5:20 PM UTC

ctb_mg wrote: post #307

001sky wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

">As a coder, your pay will definitely plateau." There are two problems with hitting a plateau @ 300K: Housing costs and College Tuition. At the traditional 3x debt to gross income metric, your home mortgage would be capped around ~$900k, vs the $1.3-1.5MM range of current trading prices. Which is not terrible if you lock something in. However, once you are at 4x paying for schools becomes a far greater challenge. Yo…

> At the traditional 3x debt to gross income metric Can someone give more information/source on this?

Traditionally, a mortgage would be 10% deposit + 3x your salary. That's what I did. In retrospect I should have done what everyone else did, 0% deposit and 5 or 6x salary, then let the govt bail me out by artificially holding interest rates so low. People who behaved irresponsibly made out like bandits, and honest folk are seeing their savings destroyed.

Re: Ask HN: What happens to older developers?

#342

Post by gaius » Fri, Mar 14, 2014, 5:37 PM UTC

DougWebb wrote: post #221

dusklight wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 va…

That's the theory. In practice, ageism is rife.

Re: Ask HN: What happens to older developers?

#343

Post by gaius » Fri, Mar 14, 2014, 5:53 PM UTC

wildfire wrote: post #322

laurencerowe wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The UK public sector outsourced most technical work years ago to the likes of EDS, IBM and BT, transferring over existing employees. There's very little internal expertise left. Most contracts seem to be negotiated in a way that allows the big firms make huge amounts of money on the inevitable change requests.

Ah, yes, that whole gov.uk thing. I must have dreamed it then. And so must have the 180+ people hired to work on various parts of it who are not part of EDS, IBM and BT.

Add up Accidenture, EDS, CSC et al and the number is probably 180,000.

Re: Ask HN: What happens to older developers?

#344

Post by gaius » Fri, Mar 14, 2014, 5:57 PM UTC

nawitus wrote: post #208

_random_ wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's funny: I was betting on WPF at the time but it seems dead now, with only some XAML knowledge transferable. Still have to do JS, but at least Angular doesn't suck too much.

Here's a tip: never bet on something proprietary.

LOL. I know guys who have worked the last 20 years on Oracle, and they'll have no trouble finding work for 20 more. The same for Visual C++. Or a whole host of other things. The world isn't as simple as GNU ideology would have you believe.

Re: Ask HN: What happens to older developers?

#345

Post by gaius » Fri, Mar 14, 2014, 6:05 PM UTC

mgkimsal wrote: post #78

There's not been a 'traditional' software career yet, so it's hard to tell if what's happening is what 'should' happen. Thinking about this from a numbers standpoint, the market for people with software development skills on a truly national (or global) scale only really developed in the late 70s at earlier - I'd say not until the mid 80s did we see enough of an uptick such that the idea of a long-term career for lar…

There's not been a 'traditional' software career yet

Really? There were full-time professional programmers in the 1960s.

Re: Ask HN: What happens to older developers?

#346

Post by hermitcrab » Fri, Mar 14, 2014, 7:00 PM UTC

I am 48 and have been programming professional since I left University at 21. After ~20 years working for other people, I struck out on my own. I have been running my own 1-man software company for the last 9 years. It isn't an easy option, but it is a great lifestyle and I make a very comfortable living from it. I don't expect to ever go back to employment. You can find out a bit more about this route here: http://successfulsoftware.net/2013/11/06/lifestyle-programmi...

Re: Ask HN: What happens to older developers?

#347

Post by kewpiedoll99 » Fri, Mar 14, 2014, 9:55 PM UTC

I never understood why my dad got sensitive about letting people know he was 50 and over until I got there and found myself working side by side with mostly people under 30. Now I'm careful not to let anybody know when I graduated from college or how old I am. I know I am more expensive than a lot of them. If I were in the shoes of management I would be looking hard at more expensive employees and assessing whether they were worth it. I interviewed at a place I'd have liked to make a move to, recently, but they passed and I have to wonder if their decision was to do with my being older and/or asking for too much money.

Emotionally, it's definitely harder to get excited about the new next hot thing. I'm not sure there's a lot more in coding that I am super excited about. I could see getting out of development. I'd be interested in getting into a related discipline, so if anybody has specific suggestions about that I'd love to hear them.

Re: Ask HN: What happens to older developers?

#348

Post by akmur » Sat, Mar 15, 2014, 12:47 PM UTC

I have a question though, for those who say that management is the way. If you follow this path, what happens is that you are replaced by younger and possibly faster programmers. Naturally, as things change and progress, before long, you are going to be managing stuff you don't comprehend in their entirety. So then, the solution is to keep studying and improving - I agree to that - but without experience on the field and with an ageing brain, I doubt you can keep up with the developments. What is your answer to this? Thanks for the thread

Re: Ask HN: What happens to older developers?

#349

Post by prpatel » Sat, Mar 15, 2014, 2:24 PM UTC

gaius wrote: post #341

ctb_mg wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> At the traditional 3x debt to gross income metric Can someone give more information/source on this?

Traditionally, a mortgage would be 10% deposit + 3x your salary. That's what I did. In retrospect I should have done what everyone else did, 0% deposit and 5 or 6x salary, then let the govt bail me out by artificially holding interest rates so low. People who behaved irresponsibly made out like bandits, and honest folk are seeing their savings destroyed.

+1 What's the point in saving money when it gets eroded by near 0% interest saving returns combined with continuing inflation?

Re: Ask HN: What happens to older developers?

#350

Post by swampwiz » Sat, Mar 15, 2014, 8:06 PM UTC

I am an early middle-aged "obsolete", "unemployable" American programmer. In 2003, I had just come off of yet another in a long 6 years string of great paying gigs using my pre-.NET Visual C++ skill set. I was doing so well that then, in my late 30's, I saw a pathway to early retirement not soon thereafter - making 20-30% on a 6 figure nest egg in the stock market will give you that feeling.

But a few things happened in the meantime. First I had a home that was little too low in elevation a little too close to New Orleans that got wiped out in 2005. Then I found my Visual C++ skill set considered obsolete almost overnight. I learned the similar Visual C# .NET WinForms skill set, and started to work on the ASP.NET skill set. However, it seemed that the necessary complementary skill set to be an employed ASP.NET web developer was growing exponentially. By the time I realized that I had to learn JavaScript, CSS and who knows what cr@p API Micro$oft would push as its flavor of the month, I looked at my financial situation whose descent started in the loss of my home in 2005 and that hit rock bottom when the Great Recession came about, and decided to just throw in the towel, file for Chapter 7 bankruptcy (keeping my retirement accounts intact) to discharge 6 figures of credit card and other unsecured debt, take full advantage of the social welfare system (i.e., SNAP "food stamps", ObamaCare, etc.) and just be an extraordinarily cynical "bum". I now advocate for socialist redistribution.

I have gotten off track in this response, so I will get back on. I would say that the front end is for the birds - the back end database stuff is where is the action is, and where the underlying skill set remains having value. Although there is the possibility that the current k3wl data scientist will be lose its luster, I really don't what a tech oriented person should do these days.