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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

#121

Post by gozur88 »

mdadm wrote: post #117
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. =(

>As in, "you Grey Breads remember using C++ and MFC, etc." As one who is neither "Grey" nor "Bread," you may wish to check your spelling :) But yes, it's kind of sad that this is the way things are now :(

Gray and grey are both acceptable spellings. Or were you just talking about "bread"?

Re: You’re How Old? We’ll Be in Touch

#122

Post by hoodunit »

coldcode wrote: post #63
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.

You have to understand that people like me (35 years experience) are rare not just because people don't hire us, but there were 100 times fewer programmers back then and many have switched to management or moved on since then too. What happens 35 years from now of course I have no idea, I doubt 100% of all people will be programmers. The key is staying at the leading edge of whatever you are doing which of course kee…

This is what makes me wonder, is there actually a steep age bias and drop-off of older developers or are we just living a demographics change? I'm guessing there are far more developers today than ten or twenty years ago. When those developers age, will we see a more natural age distribution?

Re: You’re How Old? We’ll Be in Touch

#123

Post by themartorana »

douche wrote: post #46
newjersey wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

WebForms changed the game. ASP was a sub-subset of VB, but WebForms with C# made websites full-scale eventful and stateful programs for the first time. I had never felt such power and freedom programming for the web.

Yes, some people would put humongous data structures in view state, and yes, more-better solutions have arisen, but WebForms deserves your respect!

Re: You’re How Old? We’ll Be in Touch

#124

Post by flukus »

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.

They care, they just don't know they care, until they do.

Re: You’re How Old? We’ll Be in Touch

#125

Post by hiram112 »

sillysaurus3 wrote: post #29
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?

There's a moral argument to be made that people deserve jobs because society forces you to work. If you don't work, and you're not independently wealthy, you can't support yourself. Therefore to say people don't deserve jobs is to say they deserve to be out on the street.

Great answer. And even if you don't buy into the morality bit, those in charge figured out long ago that giving the little people a job, regardless of how pointless or wasteful, is better and cheaper than having to constantly deal with hungry, angry men on the verge of revolt.

And if the plebs get too demanding, the owners just push up the price of basic goods like housing, taxes, and food via inflation. So now you think you're doing great, making six figures, but in reality you're worse off than the previous generation while producing twice as much profit for your masters. But at least you're not causing trouble.

Re: You’re How Old? We’ll Be in Touch

#127

Post by flukus »

RachelF wrote: post #7
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.

Also younger workers are lot cheaper and don't have families, so you can work them longer hours. Older techies have wised up.

I see the opposite more often. Younger people have stuff to do after work. It's the guy with a wife and 3 screaming kids that wants to work long hours.

Re: You’re How Old? We’ll Be in Touch

#128

Post by bbcbasic »

sien wrote: post #80

This is a market failing that anyone who is hiring can exploit. I've worked for a guy who hired young, smart guys without much experience who he felt had potential and who also had some 55+ year old developers who he thought could do things. He was one of the best managers I've had. So be smart and realise that people who don't fit into what you expect might find it a bit harder at some places to find a job and that…

Or hire remote, smart, Haskell developers from cheap countries.

Re: You’re How Old? We’ll Be in Touch

#129

Post by mahyarm »

aswanson wrote: post #3
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.

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.

There is a younger streak in small VC startups, and an older streak in the larger AppFaceGooSoft streak of companies as people tend to realize that the EV tends to be better for the typical employee at the larger ones.

Re: You’re How Old? We’ll Be in Touch

#130

Post by mahyarm »

ubernostrum wrote: post #106
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.

FWIW one of the factors in choosing my current employer (I'm not "old" by any other industry's standards, but starting to have some visible grey in my hair) was how many of the people I met there who were older/more experienced, married with kids, etc. Which is nice. People care about work/life balance, have been around the block a few times so there's less stereotypical startup attitude. Also some of the best in-off…

I worked at a startup company where they were a bit grayer than the typical, but still didn't have great work life balance.
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