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It’s Tough Being Over 40 in Silicon Valley

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Re: It’s Tough Being Over 40 in Silicon Valley

#271

Post by JamesBarney »

grahamburger wrote: post #213
arenaninja wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Here here, that's me. Not going away any time soon. It's not exactly sexy but it pays the bills and there's plenty of demand. I didn't even know PHP before I started on this journey at the beginning of the year. I was trying to peddle my (admittedly meager) Python skills but everyone who had money to pay wanted boring PHP devs to maintain and build on 7-10 year old systems, so I brushed up and landed a few nice stabl…

I've been thinking of specializing in maintenance of super boring old systems. I was wondering Is there much of a higher end market for it(100-200/hr)? And did you find one client for full time or a bunch of smaller gigs at 5-10 hours a week?

Re: It’s Tough Being Over 40 in Silicon Valley

#272

Post by munchbunny »

DonCarlitos wrote: post #57

Try being over 60 & gettind cred. "How could you possibly understand bleeding edge tech and emerging trends?" Well...I've lived there for four decades, you?

If you're over 60 and still writing code, then you've seen pretty much every new flavor of the month twice already. You were around the first and second times everybody thought promises were the future, functional programming already had a resurgence or two, and so on.

It's not that you don't understand the bleeding edge tech, it's that you've seen this pattern play out so many times it's hard to look at it as more than just another programming tool.

Re: It’s Tough Being Over 40 in Silicon Valley

#273

Post by shostack »

api wrote: post #56
oxryly1 wrote: post #46

Is this perhaps because older workers gravitate towards sane hours? Maybe because they develop interests, lives, families, etc outside of work that they commit to (moreso than most 20-somethings)? As a side note: I'm over 40 now, but I do recall being 27 and interviewing someone in their early 40s who was qualified and enthusiastic. I passed on them in part because I felt guilty hiring them; to work on my team the pe…

Older workers are also more savvy. They understand things like the fact that if you're working 80 hours a week for $120k you are actually making $60k.

That is perhaps the hourly wage if you do the math, but it isn't that black and white.

The higher pay let's you save more for retirement, let's you afford a better school for your kids, a home in a nicer neighborhood, etc. There are trade offs.

Re: It’s Tough Being Over 40 in Silicon Valley

#274

Post by munchbunny »

bruxis wrote: post #181

One thing that I'm really surprised about is the lack of empathy that companies and teams feel with this. I've been hiring engineers for a few years now and from _my_ perspective, age has never been a consideration. That does not mean other interviewers did not include age bias which influenced the overall decision. I'm around 30 currently, and I'm terrified as I get older that this will happen to me and my friends.…

They're probably not being intentionally ageist. My guess is that the differences in sense of humor, lack of desire to hang out with coworkers, and other social differences just make them seem like unappealing "culture" fits.

And it's true, if you're just hiring for people you can also hang out with and you're in your 20's, of course you won't like them.

At some point you get the revelation that people have their own lives and there is a social relationship along the lines of "we work together but I'm otherwise not interested in you," and that this is actually a very common and viable type of social relationship.

Re: It’s Tough Being Over 40 in Silicon Valley

#275

Post by friendlygrammar »

emodendroket wrote: post #263
friendlygrammar wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you suggest that we hire old people that haven't kept their skills relevant out of pity?

No, I think the suggestion is that expecting people to spend every waking hour of their lives reading about programming isn't realistic.

It doesn't require you to spend every waking hour reading about programming.

Re: It’s Tough Being Over 40 in Silicon Valley

#276

Post by friendlygrammar »

edgyswingset wrote: post #95
zxcvvcxz wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is your point. The job market is not meant to cater to people's specific changes in work/life preferences. This is almost analogous to complaining about construction being ageist against older people who don't keep in shape. Yeah guess what, you need to in order to do the work.

Or, maybe if we collectively push for a culture where employers who expect you to learn new technology pay you to learn said new technology, staying up to date won't feel so awfully one-sided.

Why would they do that when there are people there is a large enough supply of people with the relevant skills?

Re: It’s Tough Being Over 40 in Silicon Valley

#277

Post by cheez »

cynoclast wrote: post #260
gburt wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I've now used several relational databases, Cassandra, couchbase, and dynamoDB and here's what I've learned: They all suck. Every one of them in their own special snowflake ways, but they all suck.

That's what differentiates good engineers from great engineers: they know what to avoid and when to avoid it.

Re: It’s Tough Being Over 40 in Silicon Valley

#278

Post by nfriedly »

daxfohl wrote: post #258
nfriedly wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

You're young and single I'm guessing. What you say seems logical. However, saving enough money for yourself to retire (I have) is one thing, but then when the kids come and need braces, school stuff, extracurriculars, college, health insurance, etc., they're pretty well screwed if their parents can't find a job. Especially these days with people waiting longer to have kids, the 40-year-old employability cutoff is a p…

I'm in my 30's, married, have a son, and a mortgage. But I also have enough savings to pay off my mortgage in full today if it was an urgent need.

Re: It’s Tough Being Over 40 in Silicon Valley

#279

Post by rdiddly »

coleifer wrote: post #248
rdiddly wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well you had me and then you lost me. But speaking as one of the ones who doesn't give a fuck, I'd say it's because we know we're right. Like if I think "I'm a great candidate" and some company made up of little twerps says "Yeah we don't think so," I know I'm the one who's right. My answer is based on (let's say) 25 years of working that career; theirs is based on a 60-minute interview. (Done by someone who's spent…

I had you and then I lost you? I don't think I ever had you, Mr. Great Candidate. I'm glad you feel so comfortable in your own skin that, despite your obvious superiority, the rejection of the little twerps doesn't keep you down. Clearly I never had you.

Yeah, you had me at "People have different reactions to aging," and you lost me at "If you're mad about unfair treatment, that proves you deserved whatever it was."

Re: It’s Tough Being Over 40 in Silicon Valley

#280

Post by drather19 »

emodendroket wrote: post #261
drather19 wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Several of those field mentioned also have fairly high barriers of entry in terms of certification. They try to ensure that folks pursuing those careers have a core level of understanding necessary to pursue work in those fields. Whether or not they're successful in doing that is, of course, a matter of debate (as everything is). I know understanding CS fundamentals and employer expectations about this are a lightnin…

That doesn't make sense. If the problem is that we don't have some sort of licensing board, experience should be more highly valued, not less.

I guess where I was going was that there was a fairly high standard to "get in the door" first, after which experience seems to be valued more uniformly (at least more than in software).

We don't have the equivalent in software, and we also seem to have a recurring discussion about effective ways to filter people during an interview process. I've certainly had mixed results in my limited sample set when considering past experience to actual performance of hires.

Is there a good way to translate the value of someone's experience?

EDIT: For that matter, I guess I should wonder how folks translate the value of people in those other fields effectively (or if they do at all).

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