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Not Just Any Old Geek

blog.oldgeekjobs.com

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101–110 of 305 posts

Re: Not Just Any Old Geek

#101

Post by tobltobs »

js8 wrote: post #48
drvdevd wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been into programming most of my life, but actually didn't get started professionally until my mid-to-late 20s. This gave me a unique view of said propaganda. It certainly lives everywhere including outside SV. I've been able to quickly recognize it being applied and thus desire other, better forms of compensation. I think this is a skill we should strive to teach younger programmers, because if properly applied…

> Your time is valuable no matter how old you are I disagree, but maybe that would explain it, your time is actually more valuable (for you) as you grow older.

The time between 20-35 is the most valuable time in your life imho. You will regret wasting this time for some death marches for a startup which promise you a lot of bullshit.

Re: Not Just Any Old Geek

#103

Post by tome »

mark_l_watson wrote: post #87

As a programmer in my 60s, my (rather obvious) advice is to save and invest throughout your career so you have financial flexibility as you get older. I still very much enjoy working but when I have unbooked time I really enjoy that also. It also helps to have great hobbies. I enjoy writing (I am finishing up a Haskell book, and I have a partially written book on cognitive science that will get finished some day), I…

> I am finishing up a Haskell book

I'm really interested to hear that! Have you announced this at all or written anything about it?

Re: Not Just Any Old Geek

#104

Post by Jean-Philipe »

alpeb wrote: post #72
Jean-Philipe wrote: post #16

I didn't feel this kind of bias here in Berlin. When founding FitAnalytics.com, we were three young students fresh from university, but all of us highly appreciated more senior programmers (40+) joining the team. Even if their language didn't fit our stack (C++ for a JS position), my experience was extremely positive, feeling that some programmers just get better with age, no matter the language du jour. Regarding pa…

It seems to me Berlin's startup ecosystem is heavily optimized for very young people. It's awesome the immigration process is so easy, but the minimum wage requirement for IT jobs is just 38,688 EUR. Lots of companies sponsoring visas, but with wages rarely above 50k EUR, even with a relatively low cost of living, they're only attracting young singles willing to sacrifice in order to get a blue card. And from the job…

Zalando is a bad example. First of all, it's not a startup, and certainly not part of any startup scene. Secondly, it's not exactly the best place to work at, same goes with any Rocket Internet company for that matter.

I do agree that a lot of young startups are more friendly to young people. But the tech scene in general is okay. I don't think it's difficult to find work as a senior here. I get 90k+ offers on a regular basis for attractive positions and interesting technologies to work on.

Re: Not Just Any Old Geek

#105

Post by pc86 »

czep wrote: post #85
uola wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly, even as I'm getting older, this isn't at all obvious to me. Someone with five years solid experience with web development might very well be far more effective than someone with twenty years experience of working in corners of large companies with various technologies, especially when you consider the expected salary. I think it good that people are talking about these things, but sometime it seem like peop…

If you were having cardiac surgery, would you prefer your surgeon to be a year out of med school having done the operation oh 3 or 4 times, or the proverbial graybeard who has done it a thousand times? If you were wrongly convicted and awaiting a death sentence, would you pick a 22 year old attorney fresh from law school to defend you? If you have a field full of tomatoes that needs picking, do you save a few dollars…

> If you were having cardiac surgery, would you prefer your surgeon to be a year out of med school having done the operation oh 3 or 4 times, or the proverbial graybeard who has done it a thousand times?

I can make ridiculous scenarios too. If the cardiac surgery is using the latest technology, which the younger surgeon had used all 4 times successfully, and the older surgeon had used once and killed the patient?

This idea that being around since COBOL = smarter/better/"we GTD while they sit around doing nothing for 16 hours" is idiotic and not at all based in reality.

Re: Not Just Any Old Geek

#106

Post by grobbles »

skrebbel wrote: post #53
cholantesh wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>(still must admit that 37 doesn't feel old to me) Same; I find it a bit terrifying that 35+ is considered 'old' in our industry...

It's not, but he has to call himself old to give his business idea credibility. (which I think is fair, by the way)

The average tech company age is 29, and that includes management, middle management, the executive, and so on. 35 is absolutely "old" in the valley, without question. Many expect to have "retired" by then, or to have elevated to some senior level of decrepitude by then.

Outside of the valley it's much more common, but even outside in many shops you're viewed as a failure if you're still doing anything hands on or technical at that age.

Re: Not Just Any Old Geek

#108

Post by mark_l_watson »

tome wrote: post #103
mark_l_watson wrote: post #87

As a programmer in my 60s, my (rather obvious) advice is to save and invest throughout your career so you have financial flexibility as you get older. I still very much enjoy working but when I have unbooked time I really enjoy that also. It also helps to have great hobbies. I enjoy writing (I am finishing up a Haskell book, and I have a partially written book on cognitive science that will get finished some day), I…

> I am finishing up a Haskell book I'm really interested to hear that! Have you announced this at all or written anything about it?

https://leanpub.com/haskell-cookbook

Re: Not Just Any Old Geek

#109

Post by clockwerx »

rubber_duck wrote: post #92
czep wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you were having cardiac surgery, would you prefer your surgeon to be a year out of med school having done the operation oh 3 or 4 times, or the proverbial graybeard who has done it a thousand times? If you were wrongly convicted and awaiting a death sentence, would you pick a 22 year old attorney fresh from law school to defend you? If you have a field full of tomatoes that needs picking, do you save a few dollars…

Umm the more comparable parable would be "or the proverbial graybeard who has done ~~it~~ kidney surgery a thousand times" The stuff you did in software 20 years ago has absolutely nothing to do with the stuff that's being done today. Like holly shit most people weren't even using source control back, unit testing and automated testing in general was SciFi, it was done by QA departments if you were big enough to do i…

Stuff that hasnt changed markedly: geometry math, statistics. SQL - 1970s. SOLID - parts of that are late 1980. C still looks like C. Unix like environments. Awk/sed/etc.

Go read about the history of the web or XML; you get a very strong sense that these things have been thought about for a long time - data interchange has varied formats, but there is still a lot of tedious ETL type work. The importance of naming things well hasnt changed. Identifiers for data being a hard thing hasnt changed. Schema/vocabularies and more are still important problems.

If you cant see some of these things underpinning much of the work we do, you might be missing the forest for the trees

Re: Not Just Any Old Geek

#110

Post by bballer »

Jean-Philipe wrote: post #18
daemonk wrote: post #15

I am getting to old geek status myself. From a more cynical perspective, I am not sure if we can compete with early twenty-somethings who are unjaded and buy into the silicon valley mystique. They are willing to work 12 hour days and still do the faux-japanese salarymen afterwork socializing that supposedly builds "culture". Older geeks don't buy into this ping-pong table propaganda. Tech companies probably won't be…

> ping-pong table propaganda Thank you for enriching my vocabulary with this wonderful word!

Uh, that's a phrase, not a word...
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