My new todo list:
1) Invent time machine
2) Go back in time and make my 24-year-old self read this article.
Being a Developer After 40
41–50 of 583 posts
Re: Being a Developer After 40
#42I am based in Bulgaria and I recently had my first experience with a potential Swiss employer. It was rather unpleasant. After I went through 5 interviews we discussed my rates (as a remote consultant). I received a low ball counter offer which was about the half of what I usually charge. This quickly became a racist rant and a senior manager at the company tried to persuade me by saying that with the money they offe…
Do not be surprised, I've interacted with hundreds of companies, many are run incompetently by people unqualified for the position and who have no integrity or morals. Maintain your composure and move on, if you're not being turned down now and again for being too expensive, you're too cheap...
Re: Being a Developer After 40
#43"Say 'I won’t do what you tell me' and change jobs. There are fantastic workplaces out there; not a lot, but they exist. [...] Do not let a bad job kill your enthusiasm. It is not worth it. Disobey and move on."
Especially Europeans have problems thinking like this. I always advise engineers to keep on looking for better offers / jobs the moment they take a new job. Instead many hibernate in a job for 3-5 years without thinking of their careers and hence miss opportunities.
Disclaimer: To help engineers finding jobs / working on their careers and support IT-firms to find people, I recently started a small headhunting agency.
So mail me, if you look for a tech-job in Zurich. Salaries here after [!] taxes start at 7000 CHF / month. Find my e-mail address in my hn-handle or check out my story "8 reasons why I moved to Switzerland to work in IT" https://medium.com/@iwaninzurich/eight-reasons-why-i-moved-t...
Re: Being a Developer After 40
#44>If you are a white male remember all the privilege you have enjoyed since birth just because you were born that way. It is your responsibility to change the industry and its bias towards more inclusion.
FUCK YOU AND YOUR WHITE GUILT BULLSHIT!
Re: Being a Developer After 40
#45Earlier quoted context omitted.
I guess my current strategy for handling social dynamics (as an introvert) is not doing me any favours. I usually get quite close (in a professional context) to 1-3 co-workers and have most of my interaction at work with them. All others I keep at a distance. Then again, social interactions with people I don't know very well is really draining for me, and I can't spend that kind of energy at work. I've always done th…
All I can say is, I used to be like that. Your approach to professional relationships is healthy as far as I can make out ("1-3 co-workers ... All others I keep at a distance"). The only thing I'd suggest you develop upon is the relationships outside of work, keeping things lightweight (superficial, even) if you find people draining. What's important is to just be there. Socialising is like a muscle the more you use…
Well put. It gets better when you do it more often, really! And it gets (in my experience ofcourse) very enjoyable.
Re: Being a Developer After 40
#46I'm 41 and a dev (and manager and bunch of other roles when needed, but most my days are spent with software/hardware dev) and sure, it's all true what this article says, but there is no real personal advice there besides, as others said, just 'don't do everything, but do everything'. So some unasked advice from a 40+ then which I wish I was told when I was 17 or something: a) believe in yourself; learn from others,…
Funny, but those of us not living in the Bay Area do mingle with non coders a lot. It's actually hard to find coders to mingle with. When I visited Palo Alto for example it felt weird. On one hand it seemed great at first, hearing discussion on databases or JavaScript on the street from total strangers. On the other hand it felt like a bubble, like an echo chamber. I actually heard this guy saying he liked some girl…
It's one of the reason why I left Silicon Valley. I love what I do, and I love to meet with other developers, but I was tired of only meeting people similar to me.
Now it feels good to be in a real city with many different people, doing different stuff. It's much more fulfilling than living in a bubble with clones of myself.
Re: Being a Developer After 40
#47Warm fuzzy nostalgia aside, this article seems to amount to "Learn everything, read everything, do everything, don't bandwagon, Apple is pretty cool. The other stuff is OK too, if you like that sort of thing. Learn Node. PS. Don't harrass people". It's an amalgamation of every Medium tech-post ever.
Yet, your sarcastic summary is a breath of fresh air in the HN comments...
I wouldn't call it sarcasm. I had the same feeling while reading.
The OP contains a lot of opinions about a lot of different subjects. An amalgamation.
Re: Being a Developer After 40
#48Warm fuzzy nostalgia aside, this article seems to amount to "Learn everything, read everything, do everything, don't bandwagon, Apple is pretty cool. The other stuff is OK too, if you like that sort of thing. Learn Node. PS. Don't harrass people". It's an amalgamation of every Medium tech-post ever.
> It's an amalgamation of every Medium tech-post ever.
Very well summarized.
While I enjoyed this post somehow, maybe because I was thinking of the good old times, I didn't feel comfortable reading: I found his views having a touch of an ubiquitous negativity and slight frustration. I disagree with many of his points. And I miss one clear message.
Re: Being a Developer After 40
#49I liked the post, and empathized with some truths in it. I saved up and bought a used Commodore PET in 1977 at age 13. I taught myself assembler, c, basic, and went on to buy a Vic-20, C-64, Amiga 1000, Amiga 500, Mac PowerPC, NCR 3125 (386 pen-based tablet in 1995 or 1996!), and then read up on AI in the 1980s - Neural Networks, GAs, GP, Expert systems, Fuzzy Systems, Chaos, Complexity, etc... I was using Minix on m…
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^ Free, get as many as you need.
Re: Being a Developer After 40
#50"forget the hype, make sure to learn node and start building bots"
That aside, a lot of the more generic points make sense.