Not Just Any Old Geek • Hacker News Board

Re: Not Just Any Old Geek

#211

Post by cunac » Wed, Sep 28, 2016, 3:59 PM UTC

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…

you would actually be surprised how things are the same. You just can't see it because you didn't experience it and than you are confusing transferable knowledge with tools knowledge. Latter is easy , anybody can learn new language/tool , using a tool properly and efficiently is a problem.

Re: Not Just Any Old Geek

#212

Post by surge » Wed, Sep 28, 2016, 4:00 PM UTC

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…

Weirdly, the mortality rates from surgeries can go up with much older doctors, for a variety of reasons, but mostly because they have lower volume of work so aren't as in practice and may not be current on latest techniques that may be less invasive or higher success rate. It could also be older people like having older doctors and the mortality rate is higher with older people getting surgery.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1856535/

There is probably a statistical sweet spot, where someone has years of experience, is active enough to be up on the latest techniques, or at least learns the new techniques and adopts them. Parallels can be drawn between this and tech workers I'm sure.

Re: Not Just Any Old Geek

#213

Post by nlh » Wed, Sep 28, 2016, 4:01 PM UTC

Every time I read a post on here about ageism and that sort of crap in SV, I feel obligated to gloat ever-so-slightly that not all VC-backed, small, fast-growing, interesting startups out here fall into that mold.

I've been extremely lucky to have joined what I see as the least ageist group of people I've ever worked with. Our CEO is in his late 40s. One of our engineers is in her 20s. One is in her 50s. I'm 38 and on the younger end of the curve, and that's totally, totally cool.

We have lives outside the office and go home at night. If we feel like working on the weekends, we do, and if we don't, we don't. We have the occasional happy hour after work (like, every few months), and nobody is ostracized if they have other plans.

Sorry for the shameless self-promotion, but I think it's important to remind everyone that the culture of 20s-or-bust has exceptions, the culture of work-or-die has exceptions, and the culture of your-life-is-your-startup most definitely has exceptions.

I wish more startups followed suit.

(ps - https://www.scalyr.com/company in case you don't believe me!)

Re: Not Just Any Old Geek

#214

Post by matthewowen » Wed, Sep 28, 2016, 4:02 PM UTC

I don't know if this has already been observed... but that fateful hiring decision (the lack of cultural fit with the 20-something brogrammers) sounds like a great one: there evidently was poor cultural fit.

I know that you believe your experience is valuable and your perspectives correct. If you didn't, you wouldn't hold those perspectives. But likewise, the exact reason these people are starting their own company versus going and working under you at Xerox is probably because they disagree with your approach.

I don't profess to know what the right answer is here. But I am very skeptical of claims of age discrimination when the author also says that these young 20 somethings don't know what they're doing and don't appreciate the hard won lore an older developer can bring. This clearly undermines the age discrimination notion, because it indicates that there is an attitudinal difference, and that difference could well be a net negative and a thoroughly reasonable thing to hire based on.

Again, this isn't intended as a judgement on who has the right perspective. I think many (not all) younger engineers would have fuller perspectives if they had more hard won experience, but I also think many (not all) older engineers may have a bias toward BigCo approaches that are at a different place with regard to the trade of between quality and speed to first version. But a lot of people start companies because they want to do things their way. Complaining about the way they choose (outside of things that are actually illegal) seems futile.

Re: Not Just Any Old Geek

#215

Post by pmoriarty » Wed, Sep 28, 2016, 4:04 PM UTC

rubber_duck wrote: post #136

optionalparens wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the parent is sarcasm, please disregard my reply. > The stuff you did in software 20 years ago has absolutely nothing to do with the stuff that's being done today. Not even remotely true. Most of computer science is built on the past and either composed into something new upon a previous foundation, or a poor re-implementation of an already existing idea. A trendy favorite of many at the moment, Go lang is a good…

Like I've said the stuff that hasn't changed much is the CS, the actual engineering part has nothing to do with what we do today. 20 years ago the net was nowhere nearly as ubiquitous, hardware was incomparably slow, the bottlenecks were different - the focus shifted from single computer/mainframes/shared memory models -> distributed computing. When I say copy paste in visual basic I'm talking about professional prog…

"When I say copy paste in visual basic I'm talking about professional programmers that couldn't even abstract stuff in to functions but would copy paste shit all over the code - not copy-pasting from other sources."

The inability to use abstractions properly has long been a sign of inexperience or incompetence. I'd really like to see some evidence that this was any more prevalent in 1996 than it is in 2016.

There's definitely more of a concern these days in the general programming world about "best practices". But those best practices weren't invented yesterday. They're usually incremental changes of older practices, and the results of bitter, painful experience of doing things the "wrong" way. Exactly the kind of experience that senior engineers have that junior engineers lack. It's senior engineers who create those best practices in the first place.

Re: Not Just Any Old Geek

#216

Post by AnimalMuppet » Wed, Sep 28, 2016, 4:06 PM UTC

coldtea wrote: post #160

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…

> 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 hiring, you would want the starry eyed, finger in the pulse of latest fads, young programmer you can pay less, overwork, boss around, and screw over, or the senior engineer, who values sane hours and time…

If that's what the hiring person is like, though, I'm fine with not getting that job...

Re: Not Just Any Old Geek

#217

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Sep 28, 2016, 4:06 PM UTC

js8 wrote: post #158

tobltobs wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Of course you will regret it! Because, as I said, your time becomes more valuable as you get older. You're confusing good advice and empirical observation of reality. Anyway, let me add to my previous comment. It cuts both ways. If someone hires somebody who doesn't think their time is valuable, they are fooling themselves too. Perhaps this person will spend 2 hours on ping-pong and 2 hours on Facebook out of their 1…

[deleted]

Re: Not Just Any Old Geek

#218

Post by mmgutz » Wed, Sep 28, 2016, 4:06 PM UTC

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…

Most startups do not work 12 hour days anymore. The days of startups offering less pay, some equity and overworking you are over. There are too many startups that need engineers. They would just move on to the next one. Retaining good engineers is harder than hiring them. I've worked 12 hours when I was a founder but it's unrealistic to expect that from your employees regardless their age.

Re: Not Just Any Old Geek

#219

Post by nathan_long » Wed, Sep 28, 2016, 4:06 PM UTC

> It’s not easy getting a job at a Silicon Valley startup of twenty-somethings when you’re a 37 year old programmer like me.

    [CTO drives up in an Uber, lowers the window]
    CTO: "Old woman!"
    You: "Man!"
    CTO: "Man, sorry. Who here knows React?"
    You: "I'm 37, I'm not old!"

Re: Not Just Any Old Geek

#220

Post by pmoriarty » Wed, Sep 28, 2016, 4:08 PM UTC

witty_username wrote: post #88

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…

> 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? Rationally one would care about the outcomes, and the number of times would merely make us more certain about the outcome. Relative to the two scenarios you showed, programming is usually more like tomato picking—nob…

"nobody is going to die or be injured because of a bug or failure to deliver something"

You should read through RISKS Digest.[1]

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Risks_digest