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Being a Developer After 40

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Re: Being a Developer After 40

#111

Post by rjzzleep »

vanderZwan wrote: post #106
ManlyBread wrote: post #105

The article was pretty good until this part. >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. I'm from an Eastern Europe and my family never was rich, I had to put in a tremendous effort to even get into the industry. Assuming I got an easy ride simply because I'm…

> I'm from an Eastern Europe and my family never was rich Then the comment does not apply to you. I don't think you quite understand how deep the rabbit hole of this form of "whiteness" goes; as a social construct it implies people from Western Europe or North America . Surely you have experienced how there are people from there who treat Eastern Europe people as less "civilized? Similarly for, say, Mediterranean eth…

This sort of response is typical for someone from NY(yes, this is also racist).

I'm white in the US. There is so much ignorance and illiteracy in the way white male racism is portrayed in the USA. It's a beautiful display of how you preach openness and then completely disregard all nuanced world views. You may not have known them then, but you sure as hell don't listen when someone is trying to explain it aaron.

A huge portion of people that are on the receiving end of racist systems are white male by your definition.

The thing that's so offensive about your kind and the authors kind of attitude is very similar to when some spoiled american female brat who's parents can just easily lash out tens of thousands a year for an ivy league school tells me how would i know anything about discrimination because i'm too white.

Theres even a funny 1974s movie about the miserable life of an italian immigrant in switzerland? Pane e cioccolata. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bread_and_Chocolate

But if you really care how about you take a look at interview invites in Germany/Central Europe.

Re: Being a Developer After 40

#112

Post by flexie »

YeGoblynQueenne wrote: post #80
toddkazakov wrote: post #21

I 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…

Yeah, that's supposed to be good business sense: you pay less money for the same amount of work. In truth though, you get what you pay for, always. Software works the same regardless of who writes it, where they live, or how much you pay them, so if you pay less for a piece of software you'll just get a piece of software that's worth less money. It's exactly for this reason that big corporate software is generally sh…

The device you used to type in your opinion was likely produced in Asia. This enabled you to pay less without getting less.

You can in fact get a Bulgarian developer which is just as good or even better than many Western European or American developers (I have hired a few) and for a fraction of the price.

Meanwhile they may still be paid very decent amount of money that allows for them to have a standard of living exceeding the one they would have had if they had been employed in Switzerland with Swiss salary, and Swiss living cost.

You don't always get what you pay for with developers or any other services or products. Sometimes, but not always.

Re: Being a Developer After 40

#113

Post by danbruc »

ManlyBread wrote: post #107
vanderZwan wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm from an Eastern Europe and my family never was rich Then the comment does not apply to you. I don't think you quite understand how deep the rabbit hole of this form of "whiteness" goes; as a social construct it implies people from Western Europe or North America . Surely you have experienced how there are people from there who treat Eastern Europe people as less "civilized? Similarly for, say, Mediterranean eth…

>> I'm from an Eastern Europe and my family never was rich >Then the comment does not apply to you. It does, I'm white. The author specifically mentions "white male".

In the context it was not meant literally as people who are white and male in the same way that blue collar worker does not refer to all workers wearing blue shirts.

Re: Being a Developer After 40

#114

Post by shrewduser »

MrBuddyCasino wrote: post #108
YeGoblynQueenne wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, that's supposed to be good business sense: you pay less money for the same amount of work. In truth though, you get what you pay for, always. Software works the same regardless of who writes it, where they live, or how much you pay them, so if you pay less for a piece of software you'll just get a piece of software that's worth less money. It's exactly for this reason that big corporate software is generally sh…

If what you were saying was true, you'd be getting better quality developers if you only hired guys that were born in your high-wage country. Thats not how it works. I've met a lot of very bad german developers that command a decent wage, simply because there is a scarcity of talent, and I've seen lots of eastern european guys do a fantastic job earning much less, because thats how their local market is like. I agree…

except for the most part the market for talent is an international one and the good engineers wil move to the high paying jobs.

you find exceptions and cost of living in different places creates some disparity but as a rule "you get what you pay for" still holds water

Re: Being a Developer After 40

#115

Post by kls »

iorrus wrote: post #74
tluyben2 wrote: post #14

I'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,…

Age is an issue with software devlopment. Early forties is not old at all, realistically you will likely be working for another 20 years unless you've already made significant money. In many professions such as law you're only getting started at 40. If in software it's an achievement to reach that milestone than something is wrong.

As one of the few left of my peers that still develops I would say that it is a milestone. There is a lot of burn out and churn along the way. I knew guys that left software dev to become a worm farmer. Most take the elevator up to management which is what I did becoming a CTO but I always position myself at small but growing companies so I could keep myself hands on with technology. I have two friends left that started dev around the same time as me (92). For most it's just not a long term industry and burnout usually takes it's toll.

That being said the web revolution happened in the early 90's and was a huge shift in development. There where a lot of older devs around at that time who where doing desktop and had no desire to make the jump so 40'ish is also kind of a demarcation line of where an epoch changed in development, so the fact that you see few over 40 devs could be a) that the web was small back then and there where only a handful of us doing it and b) The developers that where doing web in the early 90's where all young, therefore it is kind of origin of a new type of developer.

Re: Being a Developer After 40

#116

Post by koder2016 »

ry_ry wrote: post #6

Warm 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.

He is talking about daring bets on technologies with a potential. Then insists you learn Node.js. If anything my bet is that JS is not worth learning at all because future is all about WebAssembly (and LLVM effectively - he is right about that).

Re: Being a Developer After 40

#117

Post by shrewduser »

danbruc wrote: post #113
ManlyBread wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> I'm from an Eastern Europe and my family never was rich >Then the comment does not apply to you. It does, I'm white. The author specifically mentions "white male".

In the context it was not meant literally as people who are white and male in the same way that blue collar worker does not refer to all workers wearing blue shirts.

then "white male" has no meaning, unless you mean "white male and privileged" in which case it's redundant and racist to have the "white male" part

Re: Being a Developer After 40

#118

Post by dracht »

ManlyBread wrote: post #105

The article was pretty good until this part. >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. I'm from an Eastern Europe and my family never was rich, I had to put in a tremendous effort to even get into the industry. Assuming I got an easy ride simply because I'm…

Indeed. Getting rather tired of these American-centric, white guilt/saviour bloggers that feel the need to inject their social agenda into everything. I don't browse HN to read about how it's my "duty" to repent myself of the eternal sin that is my race. Asians are over-represented in academia and the tech industry, yet this is never brought up as a problem that needs solving (as it shouldn't). This social justice movement is toxic, contradictory and insidious.

Re: Being a Developer After 40

#119

Post by megablast »

YeGoblynQueenne wrote: post #80
toddkazakov wrote: post #21

I 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…

Yeah, that's supposed to be good business sense: you pay less money for the same amount of work. In truth though, you get what you pay for, always. Software works the same regardless of who writes it, where they live, or how much you pay them, so if you pay less for a piece of software you'll just get a piece of software that's worth less money. It's exactly for this reason that big corporate software is generally sh…

> In truth though, you get what you pay for, always

This is completely wrong, but it sounds nice.

Re: Being a Developer After 40

#120

Post by megablast »

blub wrote: post #67
greenspot wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Saying 'you will live like a king' is not the smartest thing. He should have said: 'Please consider that your local living costs are much lower than in Switzerland. We incorporate those differences in our offered rate like every other company does. Thanks for your understanding.' So the tone was—yes—unprofessional, the attitude not. And even if this attitude is debatable, you have to allow the other party to express…

I find it quite bizarre that remote workers living in a country with lower cost of living are expected to take lower pay than locals while doing the same work and offering the same value. Otherwise yes, people are allowed to express silly things and one shouldn't prevent them from doing so, especially when they show their true colors. Looks to me like they dodged a bullet.

> with lower cost of living are expected to take lower pay than locals while doing the same work and offering the same value

DO you also think it is weird that people who live in incredibly expensive cities like NY or SF should get paid more money then?

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