Old Geek Jobs: fighting against ageism in the industry

If it hurts, you're doing it wrong :)

I haven't had a stressful deadline in a very long time. Indeed, I've been weeks or months ahead in almost all cases. I've used that time to get a jump on integration, or help others get a jump on their schedule. By the time I'm ready to ship, the only thing between me and proper operation is disinformation from others.

Now, granted, that's annoying to some people. But just consider that some of that is just ... show business. The people that that annoys are probably not the people you want to work for anyway. And if you do it "my way", you'll know that, and they'll probably know that.

The "changing technology" part is the least source of stress - after a while, you begin to recognize the patterns that tools are designed to solve. So you're down to the fresh ... heck that is Other People's Code.

( the Other People's Code thing is purely about lost or asymmetric information - but it's a really important skill, if for no other reason than to know what not to do).

You just have to learn to separate the act of getting real work done from the act of performing in the corporate Kabuki theater that surrounds getting real work done. At least then you can let it run its course - because very close to all organizations eventually develop autoimmune disease and die of it.

It's not that I am not sympathetic - I am. It's just that after a couple of decades of doing this, you can understand the patterns and apply your efforts to the parts you know you can fix.

But don't let your mind rest. If you rest, you'll rust. A fellah I worked with since 2011 died in 2015 of stage 4 colon cancer, but other than that, he'd still be going well towards 70.

I want to be like that guy, without the colon cancer. And I always have.

Like there are no bigots in NH. When I lived in Central NH I had a long hair and almost got run out of town for being a "fucking long haired hippie"

Half of a coder's value is understanding "unspoken" requirements. In other words, "having experience in the industry". Or "domain-specific knowledge"

Back in the day, there were different industries to have experience in. Jet engines, medical devices, etc. Beyond that, nothing had/needed/understood software. For better or worse, it was a pinnacle.

These days "the industry" is "teens using snapchat". The further you are removed from that, the less valuable you are as a coder.

There are still of course jet engines and medical devices to be built, but (as a statement to our society?) those products and thus those skills are not as valuable as advertising.

Even more sadly, this trend is just the start. The current 40's-ish coders have their own industry experience to fall back on. The next generation of coders that will have nothing but 15secOfFame-centric jobs will have nothing to fall back on as younger 15msOfFame-centric things come in.

At some point we'll have to recognize coding as an NFL-style career. Get what you can while you can; you'll be a car salesman soon enough. Granted NFL players have 100x the pay plus public visibility that can help them after they retire.

None of this matters because the Earth will be sand in 20 years anyway. (Sorry I'm still digesting http://xkcd.com/1732/)

Absolutely; I made my entry in to Fortune XXX level companies by way of my tech skills doing basic things with Word that SVPs & MDs couldn't be bothered to learn, yet were critical to actually driving business. The hostility was palpable sometimes. There were a slim few senior staff workers who genuinely expressed gratitude for filling in for a very large, important skill-set they simply didn't grasp or feel compelled to learn during their professional careers. Being on the same team, I appreciated that, certainly not put-downs and disrespect during the process because of my seniority.

Absolutely agreed. Having lived all over the US, it seems to me that the places that are the most discriminatory and insular in practice are those that pride themselves on being inclusive in theory. NYC and SF have huge cultures of identity politics, with the end result that it's very clique-dominated and exclusive. NYC also has a very money-oriented social stratification. On the other hand, if you go to rural Montana, this sort of thing doesn't exist. The only "cliques" that exist might be e.g. what church you go to, but I was never judged negatively for not going to church. They just don't have the population density to be that picky about social circles, even if they wanted to be.