251–260 of 341 posts
I'm 24. Guess I should buy a shitty condo in Hayward with a 15 year mortgage so I'm paid off when the age discrimination kicks in. 40+ year old engineers with prop 13 equity or rent control - I'm jealous.
I'm 24. Guess I should buy a shitty condo in Hayward with a 15 year mortgage so I'm paid off when the age discrimination kicks in. 40+ year old engineers with prop 13 equity or rent control - I'm jealous.
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Yes, this. And even worse, "I recognize that 'bleeding edge tech' as yet another rehash of something innovated in the 60s or 70s and therefore I'm not nearly as impressed as you by it."
This sort of remark reminds me of https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XFWeoxrhbE8 (or perhaps https://youtu.be/ZjibEkDoXQc?t=19 ) It doesn't add much value to the conversation and whether some tech is really a rehash or not rarely matters. It also makes you sound cynical.
Good, because my cynicism was hard-won, pity should it go to waste.
Whether or not a piece of tech is a rehash does matter, because last time we decided RDBMSs are old, in with the new open schema whatever, I learned where the sharp edges were at. There has been no magic tech in the mean time that makes MongoDB less likely to cut you up in horrible ways. As just one example.
Being a young software developer it feel a bit out of place to be getting a salary less than someone who has been in the field for say 15 years. My only reason for this is that technology does change really fast, and things should be looked at if the job can be complete. Yes there are a bunch of 'Younglings' that just use the newest freshest flavor framework or scripting language (that can be a nightmare to work with…
How do you know it's extensible and maintainable without having seen it last? How quickly do you recognize pitfalls of decision-making? How many applications have you built that you've seen fail? People vastly underestimate the importance of burning your hand on the stove.
Older people, please: Never "play young" for a paycheck. It's sad as shit. If you're not a professional clown and don't want to be seen as a figurative clown, why would you ever act like someone who is less than yourself? (Along the same line men, don't take Viagra, it's pathetic. Just enjoy and cherish the fact that for once you're not obsessed with mating, and can finally get some damn work done instead of chasing…
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Hayward's not so bad at all :) Get the quake insurance though. I still wince when I see what the cost of a Hayward condo would buy back in Georgia.
If you live in Hayward, do you happen to know how much the insurance costs? Hard to get a quote without providing an address. And I don't want to someone to get spammed by an insurance seller because they listed their home for sale and I used it to get an insurance quote.
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So much of it is contacts. I'm in that place now. In my 20's and early 30's every job I got was through contacts. Since then I've been working solo projects at small companies for a number of years. Fun work, but suddenly it's dried up. I don't have any good recent contacts in the tech sector. So I'm competing with 22 year olds, with little to back me up. So don't do that. Try to keep in touch with former colleagues,…
The line that stood out most in that article was the woman saying "Every job I've had I got through my contacts, but they're all gone now". It had never occurred to me, but it's obviously a huge problem for older job seekers. If you're 33, you might get a job using a recommendation from someone who managed you a decade ago. If you're 53, that same person retired years ago and doesn't have any pull to offer. And someo…
Stick with big companies. Yes by working at a small co you gain experience picking tech stacks, working on all areas of software, etc. But the ceiling is lower at small companies (only the very hottest couple startups each year notwithstanding). And the experience you gain there (mostly writing simple CRUD apps in various languages) isn't so applicable to larger companies where performance and scalability are the main things they want. So when you hit the glass ceiling of the "small co" sector, you're essentially starting all over when you move to the "big co" sector. That's where I am and it's almost like a career change.
Compare this to a career path at a large co, where you move into senior engineering and the skills you gain are immediately useful when you apply to other large companies. You get free networking and visibility at big companies too, an underestimated fringe benefit.
Also, pick your battles wisely when doing the "keep current on technology" thing. Avoid cute stuff that doesn't have a ton of use outside a very narrow segment (e.g. Haskell, logic programming, blockchain, marginally CUDA), unless you really want to devote your career to it. Also avoid overly-trendy stuff that will be obsolete in five years (JS frameworks, MongoDB). Stick with things that solve real problems that real companies have. To that end, search job boards and see what other large companies are hiring for.
I come from a family with a few generations of engineers of all types. Mechanical/chemical/electrical engineers have a similar problem that 30 years experience isn't much more useful than 10, wages tend to top out early and you're vulnerable to being laid off and never hired again in your 40s/50s. One advantage over software is that the skills change perhaps less frequently but that is offset by lower overall demand.…
> Or saved enough money to retire or semi-retire? This. Do this and one of the other strategies. Just save some freaking money. I know far to many people who are up-to-their-eyes in debt and have almost no savings.
Especially these days with people waiting longer to have kids, the 40-year-old employability cutoff is a problem.
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And of course the funny thing is, I'm an "old fart", I have been levelling up for the past 20 years. I put the first Elixir app into production before Elixir hit 1.0- I'm staying current. I work long hours, for startups, I can handle that intensity. The assumption that we're slower, out dated and unwilling to put the hours in is kinda prejudicial. Some of us may be, but TBH I see a lot of foolishness, wasted time and…
It's not just software companies practicing age discrimination. I heard from a friend of a friend who worked at a very well known, trendy space rocket company. He recounted youngish engineers in a meeting would comment how they don't want to see too many with gray beard in the company...
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Is the potshot on jQuery and PHP really necessary? I know enough people where I live making six figures (low COL city) with PHP, SQL and jQuery that I don't think they're ready to sunset.
This unfortunate obsession with new and shiny in the Valley is why we have to learn lessons like the benefits of relational databases over and over. Most of the new stuff isn't improved, it is simply different.