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You’re How Old? We’ll Be in Touch

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Re: You’re How Old? We’ll Be in Touch

#131
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.

Are there still sysadmins? Or is everybody loading containers into the cloud using an orchestration system now?

Re: You’re How Old? We’ll Be in Touch

#132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Spot on. A majority of the HN crowd is in their 20's. They're making around 6 figures (albeit in a very high COL area) while their peers are still in grad school, slinging it out in the gig economy for peanuts, or even living at home still searching for a decent job. Software seems like it was a good choice. By mid 30's, though, their intelligent friends will be doing well in their fields, too - making partner in the…

With such high salaries what if you sleep on a couch, live off the proverbial ramen for a 5-10 years, pump it all into investments, then go retire somewhere cheaper?

Then you want kids, and you don't want them to grow up in Colombia or the Phillippines.

Re: You’re How Old? We’ll Be in Touch

#133

Recently I got an email about a job that seemed interesting. It's a well known company that used to be a startup but is now a mature company. I went to the job description page: 8+ years experience, tech stack I'm familiar with, mostly backend work, seems ok so far. Then I get to the last line. Open office, has video games, happy hours, other typical things designed to attract those in their 20s. It's all a hidden me…

When I worked at a place with the average age was mid 30s and being mid 20s made me one of the youngest, we all played a lot of lunch time foosball and ping pong, left the video games untouched and were still an 'old' person friendly place.

Re: You’re How Old? We’ll Be in Touch

#134
post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

don't see many old sysadmins ... well, how many do you actually see anyway? Usually they're invisible. Secondly, the profession of sysadmin is disappearing fast with automation, and older and more experienced people have probably ridden that wave somewhere else already.

"DevOps" is the new sysadmin.

More precisely, "DevOps" is the new way to pretend we don't need a sysadmin. It usually doesn't take long for me to wish for a greybeard with a background in debugging kernel drivers.

Re: You’re How Old? We’ll Be in Touch

#135
post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am sorry, but what is wrong with having video games in the office? At both my previous companies I played games time to time, with co-workers. 15 mins of playing Fifa with a co-worker end s up both relaxing, and productive as you both bond and hash out things, and often much better than boring meeting. I am 35 btw. Also, our CEO regularly played as well. I have been at an office/environment (Amazon), with cubicles,…

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.

I've worked at a bunch of places with video games in SV. Most of the time it's barely touched.

Meals is what really determines how long people stayed. Sometimes 3 people would play video games. Sometimes a team creates a lunch time card game routine. Some teams really love foosball or whatever.

If a place didn't serve 6pm dinner, people tend to leave before dinner time since they got hungry. If they served dinner, then they consistently stayed until dinner time. If dinner was too late like 8pm, then they might as well of had no dinner for most employees.

10am-10pm places develop often because it's a small startup, and because normal commute hours are horrible. I don't know many people although who actually works anything near those 12 hour days.

Re: You’re How Old? We’ll Be in Touch

#136

A lot of older programmers seem to think they have 20 years of experience, when they only have the same year of experience 20 times. If you don't keep up to date and current, it's not ageism.

True, but this applies at every experience level, not just older people.

Re: You’re How Old? We’ll Be in Touch

#137
Jobs for "Digital Natives" from Indeed.com [1]

"You’re a digital native with a demonstrated interest in startups, technology, social media, and shaking up industries...." -- Laundry Locker customer support lead. Not exactly a job that requires extensive qualifications.

"Digital Native - You can find anyone's email address anytime, search the depths of the web with ease, and possibly format basic HTML without skipping a beat...." - Marketing and social media intern

"Are a "digital native" - social platforms, Google, ordering online, etc. are all second nature to you. Upserve is the smart restaurant management assistant..." - Sales position. Must be able to order food online.

"Consider yourself a digital native. As an Account Executive, you will be responsible for fully immersing yourself in the clients’ business, products, consumers..." - Young and Rubicam advertising, multiple positions. Gotta keep out those old print media people.

We're not talking about understanding the technology here.

[1] http://www.indeed.com/jobs?q=%22Digital+Native%22&l=

Re: You’re How Old? We’ll Be in Touch

#138
post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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"?

Just the bread. Grey is a more automatic way to spell it than gray, for me.

Re: You’re How Old? We’ll Be in Touch

#139
post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's complete bullshit, I work for one of those company that happens to have video games around. Not everyone play, but after work, we sometimes get around and play for a couple of hours and we just have so much fun that we end up going home late. What's wrong with that?

Nothing wrong with it at all. But realize that companies do not give you these 'perks' like free food, games, laundry, etc. as a bonus. It is to keep you at work for more and more hours. Honestly, I don't think it is a bad thing if you do enjoy this sort of thing and are young without kids, wife, etc. The problem is that it creates the 'bro' culture that turns off anyone who isn't in the same demographic. When most o…

Free food is the real perk that changes hours. Everything else isn't used that much or is very very company/team dependent and you have to evaluate them on a company basis.

10 companies might give laundry, video games, board/table games, free gyms and all 3 meals. How the company or team uses those things is very company dependent. Laundry service is not used that much most of the time, since you usually have to pay. It's usually just a purple tie pickup/dropoff closet.

I think the "staying late, bonding with COD" company is like the minority 'nightmare' thing that gets all the media attention, while most of them are pretty normal, does something at lunch sometimes and eats all the free meals.

Re: You’re How Old? We’ll Be in Touch

#140

Recently I got an email about a job that seemed interesting. It's a well known company that used to be a startup but is now a mature company. I went to the job description page: 8+ years experience, tech stack I'm familiar with, mostly backend work, seems ok so far. Then I get to the last line. Open office, has video games, happy hours, other typical things designed to attract those in their 20s. It's all a hidden me…

I would have a similarly visceral reaction to that line, but I wouldn't interpret it as a "keep out" sign for older developers. Rather, it's a gigantic red flag for wiser developers of any age. They're looking for people they can trick into working 60-80 hour weeks, every week. Those are probably going to be mostly recent grads in their 20s, but they're actually selecting for naïveté and the lack of a personal life rather than youth.
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