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You’re How Old? We’ll Be in Touch

nytimes.com

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Re: You’re How Old? We’ll Be in Touch

#41

Post by FLUX-YOU »

cpprototypes wrote: post #25
aswanson wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tech fields have an inherent disuse for seniority. Beyond five years, no one gives an f how long you have worked with a given toolchain/language. It's the hunger games. Medicine, finance, law, accounting...rightly or wrongly respect decades of experience. Tech is Logan's Run. Plan accordingly.

And this is why software today is in such a sad state. Managers think it would be great to have an army of young engineers who don't question and just do what they're told. But any leader surrounded by sycophants will eventually fail. Management often doesn't realize that they really need the senior engineer who has the experience and confidence to say "NO". Because that engineer is the one who will prevent the proje…

> Because that engineer is the one who will prevent the project from collapsing under the weight of scope creep and tech debt.

That's the shitty thing: there's enough work that doesn't cross the threshold that requires you to pay for technical debt. Otherwise, a lot more managers would be getting burned by it. There's no electric shock when they hit the wrong button. Even if it isn't a "big boom" moment where you can't deliver some huge new feature because of bad architecture and lose a lot of potential money, the little payments are written off to the younger generation to actually rebuild the thing because they have energy/time to burn.

Re: You’re How Old? We’ll Be in Touch

#42

Post by reddytowns »

jlarocco wrote: post #31
ben_jones wrote: post #23

Disclaimer: The following are existential questions that do not reflect my own beliefs in any way, shape, or form. Why do older people deserve jobs? Why does anyone deserve a job? Are there instances where we as a society accept people NOT deserving a job? How different is age as an attribute compared to: Felons, the mentally impaired, the under-qualified, those lacking physical attributes?

> How different is age as an attribute compared to: Felons, the mentally impaired, the under-qualified, those lacking physical attributes? For that question to work you need to explain why age would disqualify somebody. A felon has committed a serious crime in the past, demonstrating they may be unsafe or untrustworthy. A mentally impaired person may not be able to think things through and solve problems that come up…

You are more likely to die soon, and if you have some unique understanding of how the company works, that would be lost.

Re: You’re How Old? We’ll Be in Touch

#43

Post by ryanSrich »

reddytowns wrote: post #39
ryanSrich wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not the video games themselves. It's the culture. It's a way to keep young employees in the office longer. It's not uncommon for these places to have people roll in around 10am and stay until 10pm. That's not a place I want to work at, and I'm not even 30 yet. But you can bet your life savings on a company firing anyone for not playing this game. That's why I won't work for a place with videogames.

Wait, they fire people for not playing videogames?

Should have been more clear. They fire people for not playing the "12 hour work day" for no reason game.

"Sorry it's not working out. We're looking for dedicated team players". Proceeds to hire 22 year olds with no at home responsibilities.

Re: You’re How Old? We’ll Be in Touch

#45

Post by jlarocco »

reddytowns wrote: post #42
jlarocco wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How different is age as an attribute compared to: Felons, the mentally impaired, the under-qualified, those lacking physical attributes? For that question to work you need to explain why age would disqualify somebody. A felon has committed a serious crime in the past, demonstrating they may be unsafe or untrustworthy. A mentally impaired person may not be able to think things through and solve problems that come up…

You are more likely to die soon, and if you have some unique understanding of how the company works, that would be lost.

By that logic people under 30 shouldn't be hired either, because they're more likely to jump ship to another company.

TBH, if a single person leaving (for any reason) can tank the company, it's probably doing a person a favor not to hire them. Sounds like a mess.

Re: You’re How Old? We’ll Be in Touch

#46

Post by douche »

newjersey wrote: post #40
ourmandave wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah, "Grey beard". The term Microsoft used to separate the old from the young at a conference when they first introduced the .NET framework. Classic "old bad, good new" sales. As in, "you Grey Breads remember using C++ and MFC, etc." Yes I remember. Because it was yesterday just before I came to your conference! I still went home and started learning what the hell XML was though. =(

I still can't wrap my head around the fact that we have developers who work on .NET and have never touched either WinForms or WebForms. And I am relatively young.

WebForms can die in a fire, and thankfully has, for the most part, but WinForms is still plenty good enough for cranking out quick and dirty tools. Maybe I'm old, or it's just because I started out in high school doing VB6 forms applications, but I still prefer it unless I have a good reason, over WPF.

WinForms is also a pretty thin layer over Win32 controls, as well, so if you have to switch between .Net and native C/C++ Windows dev, it's less of a context switch.

Re: You’re How Old? We’ll Be in Touch

#47

Post by GFK_of_xmaspast »

dijit wrote: post #2

I don't see many old sysadmins in companies I've worked in. Even fewer older developers, I have a slight worry that this career path has an affinity for youth- which I won't have for much longer. So this is disheartening to read.

> I don't see many old sysadmins

I've known plenty.

Re: You’re How Old? We’ll Be in Touch

#48

Post by ourmandave »

newjersey wrote: post #40
ourmandave wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah, "Grey beard". The term Microsoft used to separate the old from the young at a conference when they first introduced the .NET framework. Classic "old bad, good new" sales. As in, "you Grey Breads remember using C++ and MFC, etc." Yes I remember. Because it was yesterday just before I came to your conference! I still went home and started learning what the hell XML was though. =(

I still can't wrap my head around the fact that we have developers who work on .NET and have never touched either WinForms or WebForms. And I am relatively young.

We do a lot of new development in Winforms. Ironically, it's our migration path away from green screen programs.

Re: You’re How Old? We’ll Be in Touch

#49

Post by greenyoda »

aswanson wrote: post #15
greenyoda wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Knowing a language or toolchain isn't all you need to be a good developer. Knowledge of how to build maintainable, secure, reliable, scalable and usable systems is something that you get with years of experience (and frequently comes from making mistakes).

And most employers don't care about those stated value adds. It is what it is.

A company that's a startup building an MVP for a consumer app might not care if its software ever works reliably, or will be maintainable in five years. But if you're a bank, or a big on-line retailer, or a company that sells enterprise software - a business where you or your customers push billions of dollars of business through a software system - you definitely do care.

Re: You’re How Old? We’ll Be in Touch

#50

Post by LargeCompanies »

I'm thankful to work in for the federal govt. where mid 30s to 60s is the age range. Also, the pay for fed govt work is comparably to what engineers in Silicon Valley make, but the cost of living is way lower in this Mid-Atlantic city/area.

Though if your single and like to mingle with co-workers and make friends your not going to find that working for the fed; most are married and or recently arrived in the US.

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