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Being a Developer After 40

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Re: Being a Developer After 40

#541

Post by flexie »

YeGoblynQueenne wrote: post #514
flexie wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh, please. From my experience living in the US and now living in the capital of Bulgaria I know that the price of food, housing etc. is way lower here than in the valley or NYC. Easily 3 times cheaper. And the tax is lower too. But don't take my word for it: https://www.expatistan.com/cost-of-living/comparison/sofia/s... ? A decent full stack developer in his early 20s with no or little college education and 2-4 yea…

So, do you sell your product(s) in Bulgaria, or in the US?

Denmark, mainly

Re: Being a Developer After 40

#542

Post by magni- »

nucleardonuts wrote: post #464
magni- wrote: post #433

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your whole argument is a strawman. "I didn't grow up a millionaire" doesn't mean that your life would have been the same had you been black, all else equal. Take a step back and don't be so defensive: "white privilege" isn't a personal attack. It's only meant to raise awareness, awareness that you clearly need, based on your post.

I don't need awareness. I'm keenly aware of what's happening here in America and abroad. I got where I am because I worked hard. I've received no handouts. I paid for my education through my military service. I earned my 3.98 GPA in CompSci because I put forth the effort. I currently work with some blacks who have done the same thing, and they were poorer than me growing up. It's about attitude and what you want. Rea…

That's great. Congrats. You worked hard, you lucked out a bit (we all luck out to some degree, once again this isn't a personal attack), and you got ahead in life. You're right to be proud of that.

White privilege isn't saying you didn't deserve any of that. It's just about appreciating that, despite how it may seem to you, you had some luck with the dice, some luck that you wouldn't have had, had you been black (once again, everything else being equal).

I'm not talking about a basic income (I do think it makes sense in today's society, but that's a whole separate issue).

"Sending the elevator back down" doesn't mean giving out handouts. It doesn't mean hiring people because of their gender or race. It doesn't mean discriminating against white men. It means acknowledging your biases and working to counter those. It's about giving others the same opportunities (specifically, the same benefit of the doubt) you had.

Re: Being a Developer After 40

#543

Post by mbrodersen »

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…

If you are just a CRUD developer then yeah you don't need much to do average work.

Re: Being a Developer After 40

#544

Post by a-saleh »

ManlyBread wrote: post #406
a-saleh wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Assuming I got an easy ride simply because I'm white is a pretty racist statement and I find myself surprised that no one is calling out the author on it. I wouldn't say you got an easy ride, just that your ride was easier than some others had it? It might be a cultural thing, but I know that some of my neighbours wouldn't consider me white. Probably because I didn't have the time to shave and I really like my keff…

>I wouldn't say you got an easy ride, just that your ride was easier than some others had it? You're talking to a guy who lives in a country where people who work minimal wage jobs earn about 3900$ per year. As a Junior programmer I earn about 7500$ per year and I'm considered to be "lucky"... except the cost of living is still about 35% of my salary. A programmer with a lot of experience under his belt can expect to…

> But please, do tell me my ride is easier than getting free money and being hired because you're not white.

The point I wanted to make was supposed to be more along the lines "If you, in your current situation make yourself non-white your ride will be harder then if you make yourself white" and wanted to bring it up because I tried that on a few occasions. And the experience was really weird because the change was my scarf and slight adjustment of my facial hair :) Fortunately it doesn't happen too often because I live in fairly cosmopolitan city.

> If I would like to work abroad I have to keep in mind that people think very little of us and that the only thing we've got going for us is that we either take the jobs no one else wants or that we can be paid less than the native citizens.

On one hand I would want to dispute this, because at least where I work (and I hope other large EU offices of multi-national corporations would be similar), we hire non-eu colleagues all the time. I have already worked with people from Russia, Armenia and Ukraine in my office and from what we have talked, they haven't been less compensated than the rest of us.

On the other hand, there was the experience of one of my Russian colleagues that couldn't find a sub-let, because landlords were afraid to have him because of his nationality.

But speaking of the the situation you are describing sounds similar to one I have been 3y ago? Living with my gf and 3 other random people to share the rent, working for ~8000$ a year as a junior QE (actually half of that, part-time-ing, while trying to finish school). Morgage ~20 years sounds about right as well. Now that I am the 'programmer with experience' I earn around 25k$/y.

To return to the point of "sending the elevator down", the assumption was that the assumed defaults of our industry that still more or less are 'caucasian-look', 'male' make your life easier, and if you happen to flip any of them you make it harder. If you want to add 'american' or 'westerner' to the mix to account for your brand of harder difficulty, that is fair.

Re: Being a Developer After 40

#545

Post by aoeuasdf1 »

NormlOverrated wrote: post #502
nucleardonuts wrote: post #464

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't need awareness. I'm keenly aware of what's happening here in America and abroad. I got where I am because I worked hard. I've received no handouts. I paid for my education through my military service. I earned my 3.98 GPA in CompSci because I put forth the effort. I currently work with some blacks who have done the same thing, and they were poorer than me growing up. It's about attitude and what you want. Rea…

>Hell, now there are people talking about a basic income for doing nothing Yes, there are. And you know why? Because jobs are being more automated as we speak. What will people do? Where will they be employed? Instead of being happy for introducing driverless vehicles, automated machinery to maintain and harvest our food, we grow scared for our jobs and turn into Luddites. We should be thinking about improving humani…

Furthermore, basic income would likely get people out of unemployment benefits and food stamps and into jobs because they no longer have a DISINCENTIVE to work! I expect this effect would be about as large as the number of people who quit their jobs to pursue their passions / hedonism.

Re: Being a Developer After 40

#547

Post by YeGoblynQueenne »

flexie wrote: post #541
YeGoblynQueenne wrote: post #514

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, do you sell your product(s) in Bulgaria, or in the US?

Denmark, mainly

I assume that means you get a Denmark sort of price for your software. Yet you pay your developers a Bulgarian sort of wage.

I don't want to moralise, but in this case I don't see how I can avoid the conclusion that you're basically ripping them off. So I'll just stop here 'cause I don't like to moralise- but I'll just say that I'd never work under such conditions.

Re: Being a Developer After 40

#548

Post by belorn »

interpol_p wrote: post #173
belorn wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the cartoons I watched as a child, (far more male villains than female), to the narrowed defined male acceptable professions, to most of role models in other professions (all female), In addition to a million other invisible punishments for not following the cultural rules. I, like most of people with my gender went to a profession that was cultural accepted for that gender, and most people of the other gender w…

More male villains is on point. Heroes and villains are powerful. We typically see more female victims than male. Many of our tropes and stereotypes revolve around women as victims. > to the narrowed defined male acceptable professions, to most of role models in other professions (all female) Are you trying to start a competition of who can exclude each other the most? > In addition to a million other invisible punis…

You are missing the point if you think it about competition. 80% of work professions are considered gendered, cultural exclusive to one gender. There is no privileged gender there, and you are only harming people by continuing that narrative.

> More male villains is on point. Heroes and villains are powerful. We typically see more female victims than male.

A study a few years ago looked at the probability that a character would get killed, and fathers in movies had a much higher chance to be killed that a mothers. It generally followed the lines of older male role model -> fathers -> daughters -> sons -> mothers as highest to lowest risk of being a victim of murder in movies. They did not look at henchmen, especially those located in movies for kids.

But what I really find is sad, is that certain type of villains are so exclusively male that they never gets casted as female. One of those is the character that the audience is supposed to get a visceral hatred for. The character that do evil for evil sake, that torture his victim for no reason, and the audience is made to hate so much that any violence is not enough to satisfy the justified cry for blood. I have never seen a feminist advocate to have a female Vaas Montenegro, nor do I think we will see one any time soon.

Re: Being a Developer After 40

#549

Post by s3nnyy »

mahyarm wrote: post #256
s3nnyy wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you confuse many things here. For canadians US is the better choice but for people from the EU who are not top 5% of the engineers, Switzerland is the best choice. Being in the top 30% of engineers or even mediocre means you will make a decent or very decent living in Switzerland. I am not sure, if this is true for the US.

As one those engineers who has worked in SV for 5 years, you definitely do not have to be in the top %5. You probably spent 4+ years of your life going to some sort of university to get a degree to help get something like 60k euro per year software job. So is spending a couple of months really getting good at cracking the coding interview and doing some practice interviews is definitely worth the $70k+ equivalent aft…

You're assuming that everyone with a bachelor or master in CS can just walk into FaceGooSoft after reading "cracking the coding interview".

That is not true.

The false-negative rate at FaceGooSoft is very high, they have a revolving door of candidates, that is why they can afford it.

I am interviewing people for IT-jobs for over a year now and I met many engineers that are Google-material but did not make it into a tier-1 firm for some reason (they where scared-off by annoying recruiters, where asked unlucky questions at interviews, did not even try or even want to make it in there).

Hence, they have to work at mediocre companies and life at mediocre companies is better in Switzerland than in the US, I believe.

Re: Being a Developer After 40

#550

Post by gremy0 »

interpol_p wrote: post #524
gremy0 wrote: post #347

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those numbers can still mean it's easier for a women to get hired in the industry. They can make the entry level for women lower and get those numbers simply due to the lack of women applying in the first place. That would mean it would be easier for a qualified women in the industry to get a job than a man of equal qualification. Which is ManlyBread was saying. Reality tends to change when you, you know, actually un…

True. It may mean that, but there is zero evidence to back up ManlyBread's claim aside from his anecdotal evidence.

And what. There is zero evidence to back up your interruption of the 'stats'. In fact your stats are completely useless in coming to any conclusion apart from purely saying there are less women in those jobs.
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