Being a Developer After 40 • Hacker News Board

Re: Being a Developer After 40

#421

Post by CamperZero » Tue, Apr 26, 2016, 5:19 PM UTC

african_cheetah wrote: post #396

nucleardonuts wrote: post #224

I grow weary of hearing about "white privilege". I likewise grow weary of any of today's politically correct messages: women in combat, bathroom bills, work quotas, transvestite rights. It's all BS. I grew up a military brat. We didn't have a lot of money. I wore hand-me-downs, had iron-on patches on my knees. My family could not afford to send me to college, so I served in the military to get the GI Bill and worked…

> everyone has the same opportunities. Not really. That's what it means. Being white makes it slightly easier to get some opportunities.

Two people of the same socioeconomic standing but of different races. One has a lower bar to entry into college because of affirmative action and a easier time getting a high paying job because of diversity needs. Who has the privilege here?

Re: Being a Developer After 40

#422

Post by Domenic_S » Tue, Apr 26, 2016, 5:20 PM UTC

JohnBooty wrote: post #373

Domenic_S wrote: post #350

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only facet that matters, then? Or, combined with gender the only facets that matter or let you be a part of the discussion? I've been told off + blocked on twitter for chiming in about something I have intimate personal experience with, because white male. Or the semi-famous video "you're a WHITE MALE!" (language warning) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0diJNybk0Mw

While white privilege and male privilege are important realities, I don't think they are the only things that matter. If it helps to hear this from a white male who is a believer in recognizing white privilege and male privilege: being white and/or being male are sometimes disadvantages too! In most of America, you can't be male and teach young kids these days. People (parents) will wonder if you're a child molester,…

I don't disagree with any of that; every gender/race/etc has SOME kind of privilege attached to it.

The point that you're [ missing | skirting ] though is many folks use the existence of privilege to ignore/bully/hate (eg, my YT link above, the white professor who got berated on campus, etc etc).

Re: Being a Developer After 40

#423

Post by supster » Tue, Apr 26, 2016, 5:24 PM UTC

jazzyk wrote: post #409

GrumpyYoungMan wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd agree with that. My impression is that the profession is bifurcating into two categories: 1) Programmers, who have solid coding skills that primarily work on building systems using existing modules and libraries. 2) Software engineers, who have algorithmic and systems level expertise along with advanced coding skills, and are capable of working on complex software such as operating systems, compilers, and other l…

>and all are highly skilled professionals Apparently (and unfairly), our society thinks otherwise - family doctors make $150K/year and neurosurgeons make $750K/year :-)

True but neurosurgeons go through almost 10 years of additional training at a fellow's salary (~$50k/year), in addition to a much worse work-life balance.

Re: Being a Developer After 40

#424

Post by JohnBooty » Tue, Apr 26, 2016, 5:25 PM UTC

AudaIbuTayi wrote: post #251

JohnBooty wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 white is a pretty racist statement I was about to patiently type out another "hey, you did work hard and you did earn your success - 'white privilege' doesn't mean things were handed to you easily; it means that even though your life has been hard y…

> misunderstand the term in such spectacular ways Who could have guessed that identifying and singling out a particular race for correction and self-abasement would entail some push-back? [1] > This just isn't working. Actually, I think it is working as intended. A thriving industry has arisen around the elimination of "white privilege". The term has served that industry well as marketing. > I'm a firm believer in th…

    We have hundreds of years of high-quality race-neutral rights language to pick from. Why was that language eschewed?

Do we have equality today in America? The answer to that might assist you in your search for understanding.

    Who could have guessed that identifying and singling out a particular race for correction and self-abasement would entail some push-back?

As a white male in America, I just don't feel that recognizing my privileges makes me feel abased or persecuted or anything like that. I don't feel the need to push back.

Why does it make you feel that way?

    Are you a firm believer of "Han privilege" in China? Are you a firm believer of "Japanese privilege" in Japan? Are you a firm believer in "Jewish privilege" in Israel?

Yeah absolutely! There are privileged groups everywhere. It's not always white people.

If your understanding of "white privilege" is that it's a belief that white people magically have it easy all of the time, everywhere on planet Earth, I'm happy to let you know that literally nobody is saying that.

If your point is that we should be simply talking about "privilege" and not "white privilege" or other privilege, I understand the sentiment. I think that would be a naive and ineffective approach because on any practical level we can't discuss privilege without also discussing the source of that privilege.

Re: Being a Developer After 40

#425

Post by snowwrestler » Tue, Apr 26, 2016, 5:25 PM UTC

reefoctopus wrote: post #353

snowwrestler wrote: post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It feels awful to think that you might not get a job you wanted because of your gender or the color of your skin doesn't it? This can be a moment of introspection if you let it. Imagine feeling that way almost every day of your life. There's a positive way and a negative to resolve the situation. The negative way is to impose hiring quotas, so that everyone--even white guys--feel the same fear of unfair denial. That'…

Thanks for the snarky link to your sources. That was uncalled for and entirely unhelpful. Most of the links I encountered cited that women left because it's a demanding work environment without a clear career path. I have been in a position where I was overtly discriminated against because of my race and gender. It was in the early 90s and I was denied admission to a magnet elementary school that my older sister atte…

I'm asking you to care. Part of caring is doing the least bit of homework on this stuff, on your own. Here are some excerpts from within the first 5 links in that SERP:

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> One-hundred-ninety-two women cited discomfort working in environments that felt overtly or implicitly discriminatory as a primary factor in their decision to leave tech. That’s just over a quarter of the women surveyed. Several of them mention discrimination related to their age, race, or sexuality in addition to gender and motherhood.

http://fortune.com/2014/10/02/women-leave-tech-culture/

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> A Harvard Business Review study from 2008 found that as many as 50% of women working in science, engineering and technology will, over time, leave because of hostile work environments.

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-women-tech-20150222-st...

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> I first learned to code at age 16, and am now in my 30s. I have a math PhD from Duke. I still remember my pride in a “knight’s tour” algorithm that I wrote in C++ in high school; the awesome mind warp of an interpreter that can interpret itself (a Scheme course my first semester of college); my fascination with numerous types of matrix factorizations in C in grad school; and my excitement about relational databases and web scrapers in my first real job.

> Over a decade after I first learned to program, I still loved algorithms, but felt alienated and depressed by tech culture. While at a company that was a particularly poor culture fit, I was so unhappy that I hired a career counselor to discuss alternative career paths. Leaving tech would have been devastating, but staying was tough.

> ....

> Here is a sampling of just a few of the studies on unconscious gender bias:

> Investors preferred entrepreneurial ventures pitched by a man than an identical pitch from a woman by a rate of 68% to 32% in a study conducted jointly by HBS, Wharton, and MIT Sloan. “Male-narrated pitches were rated as more persuasive, logical and fact-based than were the same pitches narrated by a female voice.”

> In a randomized, double-blind study by Yale researchers, science faculty at 6 major institutions evaluated applications for a lab manager position. Applications randomly assigned a male name were rated as significantly more competent and hirable and offered a higher starting salary and more career mentoring, compared to identical applications assigned female names.

> When men and women negotiated a job offer by reading identical scripts for a Harvard and CMU study, women who asked for a higher salary were rated as being more difficult to work with and less nice, but men were not perceived negatively for negotiating.

> Psychology faculty were sent CVs for an applicant (randomly assigned male or female name), and both men and women were significantly more likely to hire a male applicant than a female applicant with an identical record.

> In 248 performance reviews of high-performers in tech, negative personality criticism (such as abrasive, strident, or irrational) showed up in 85% of reviews for women and just 2% of reviews for men. It is ridiculous to assume that 85% of women have personality problems and that only 2% of men do.

https://medium.com/tech-diversity-files/if-you-think-women-i...

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> I have been in a position where I was overtly discriminated against because of my race and gender.

Then you should be more empathetic to what women experience in the tech industry, but apparently it has made you less empathetic. Which is a shame because success is not zero-sum. In fact, the easier it is for smart women and minorities to succeed, the more great companies and coworkers we will all have.

Re: Being a Developer After 40

#426

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Apr 26, 2016, 5:28 PM UTC

pc86 wrote: post #186

manishsharan wrote: post #177

As a developer over 40, my biggest challenge is actually that the management has come to expect weekend work and late nights as the norm. As someone with a family , I can't put in those hours every day and every weekend. Single programmers who can put in those kind of hours are rewarded and those who cant are singled out for ridicule or "performance concern chats with manager". Projects have gone agile and they have…

This is probably an unpopular opinion here, but only a very small subset of developers need to design algorithms or even know any of them by heart. Disregarding a few years that was mostly WordPress consulting, my experience is largely enterprise C#. Lots of line of business applications, glorified CRUD apps, and some client work. Zero need for any ability to write a BST or radix sort. If you're working for SpaceX, o…

[deleted]

Re: Being a Developer After 40

#427

Post by softawre » Tue, Apr 26, 2016, 5:32 PM UTC

blisspigeon wrote: post #340

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…

Listen, when I went to high school, there were only a couple of "computer classes" available and I took all of them. When I graduated and went to college, my parents were lower-middle-class and I was a white male, so I didn't get any kind of scholarships or grants or whatever. But my parents had put aside some money and I worked really hard to get through as fast as I could, so I graduated without any debt. Then I go…

I agree with you for the most part. I'd just like to point out, since I also consider my family lower-middle class, that most lower-middle class families have no money whatsoever for college.

Most of us in that situation took loans. And if we did OK, we paid them off. No big deal, just another minor obstacle.

Re: Being a Developer After 40

#428

Post by hnthrow165038 » Tue, Apr 26, 2016, 5:34 PM UTC

Chris2048 wrote: post #401

hnthrow165038 wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that lots of people don't get that nuance, and then carry the thought along thinking it really does literally mean people who are white and male. Memes morph as they're passed along, and a complex sociological understanding of abstract "whiteness" has no chance of surviving into the popular understanding. So for each person like you who means "white male in the abstract sense", there are ten people in…

lots of people don't get that nuance, because that nuance doesn't generally exist and was just made up now to win the argument. "white male in the abstract sense" ffs!

Oh, definitely. I don't believe in the religion myself. I have heard that cop-out before though: "but we're only talking about the successful white males". I think the term for the argument technique / fallacy is motte-and-bailey (you might be aware but for the benefit of anyone reading):

http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/11/03/all-in-all-another-bric...

Re: Being a Developer After 40

#429

Post by ElComradio » Tue, Apr 26, 2016, 5:34 PM UTC

african_cheetah wrote: post #396

nucleardonuts wrote: post #224

I grow weary of hearing about "white privilege". I likewise grow weary of any of today's politically correct messages: women in combat, bathroom bills, work quotas, transvestite rights. It's all BS. I grew up a military brat. We didn't have a lot of money. I wore hand-me-downs, had iron-on patches on my knees. My family could not afford to send me to college, so I served in the military to get the GI Bill and worked…

> everyone has the same opportunities. Not really. That's what it means. Being white makes it slightly easier to get some opportunities.

Being smart makes it much easier to get some opportunities.

Re: Being a Developer After 40

#430

Post by kjksf » Tue, Apr 26, 2016, 5:34 PM UTC

jazzyk wrote: post #409

GrumpyYoungMan wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd agree with that. My impression is that the profession is bifurcating into two categories: 1) Programmers, who have solid coding skills that primarily work on building systems using existing modules and libraries. 2) Software engineers, who have algorithmic and systems level expertise along with advanced coding skills, and are capable of working on complex software such as operating systems, compilers, and other l…

>and all are highly skilled professionals Apparently (and unfairly), our society thinks otherwise - family doctors make $150K/year and neurosurgeons make $750K/year :-)

I'm pretty sure there are more distinguished engineers and other senior engineering roles paying $750/year in total comp at Google/Microsoft/Apple etc. than there are neurosurgeons.

Not to mention tens of thousands of average developers that got lucky with stock options and became millionaires where a doctor of same age is still slaving away as a resident with 24-hour shifts and abysmal pay ($50-$60k year for surgical residents, according to google).

The market (not society) is treating us developers pretty well.