On Getting Older in Tech • Hacker News Board

Re: On Getting Older in Tech

#191

Post by epalmer » Fri, Dec 09, 2016, 1:36 PM UTC

Waterluvian wrote: post #184

epalmer wrote: post #161

I'm going to apologize ahead of time. this might be a ramble. 63 year old white guy with little hair and a lifelong beard that is now white. A tad overweight as well. I feel for so many people expressing angst about ageism. I've seen it elsewhere but not where I work now. I suspect that at the faster growing companies and companies in tech centers, mostly on the coasts, see more pronounced ageism. My last job was at…

Was it a paycut or really just electing to convert less time into money? So many salaries look and sound impressive until you actually do the math on what it costs you.

It was both. With bonuses and options + salary I took about a 50% pay cut. My hours went from an average of maybe 70 / week to 40/week. My kids, now grown, thought I was a grump. Now they enjoy me being around. Same for my wife. Mostly importantly I was having health issues that less hours and less stress allowed me to get under control.

As I said, I have never looked back. I don't miss the money because I don't miss the stress.

Re: On Getting Older in Tech

#192

Post by prefect42 » Fri, Dec 09, 2016, 1:39 PM UTC

desireco42 wrote: post #62

Related to fitness. I never went to the gym. However I was working on fitness related site for some years and as a lead there, I wanted to be reflection of this site I cared much about. So I did what I like, walk and running up the stairs. Whenever there are stairs, I would run up them. Now, again I am not super fit, but I don't lose breath, everyone else kind of does. This gives me great pleasure. I am older develop…

Perhaps I'm a simple creature, but running up stairs is one of the greatest pleasures in life ;-)

Re: On Getting Older in Tech

#193

Post by jrjarrett » Fri, Dec 09, 2016, 1:42 PM UTC

"I have taken big cuts in salary three or four times in my career. I’m talking 10-20 thousand dollars a year." - HOW can you do that? How does one justify that kind of long-term damage to ever being in a position that you don't have to work?

I understand the idea of it; to move into a technology or business with more room for growth, but if you don't have the time in your career to benefit from that growth, how can you do it?

If you're in your late 40's, early 50's, with a mortgage and/or children, or that point where you can choose not to have to work anymore is dangerously close. One badly-timed layoff, one forced pay cut and you're stuck.

Especially if you're in that age range; the last generation that ever had some hope for long-term employment with an employer, the generation that saw pension plans converted to 401Ks and didn't understand just how much you personally needed to take over funding your retirement yourself. You're dangerously close to having one badly timed layoff or large pay cut snatch the choice of not having to work away from you.

Re: On Getting Older in Tech

#194

Post by bitxbitxbitcoin » Fri, Dec 09, 2016, 1:46 PM UTC

latchkey wrote: post #25

Not a bad post at all and it definitely hit home for me. I'm 43 and have been doing professional development for 20 years (actually 20 years). I moved permanently to Saigon just 1.5 months ago. I'm teaching the Pivotal software engineering process (agile / extreme) to a 100 person consultancy full of really smart ~20 year olds who didn't know or understand process at all. I keep up on all the latest tech and I have a…

Thanks for your inspirational story. It seems there is hope if you are willing to step out of your comfort zone.

Re: On Getting Older in Tech

#195

Post by Thaxll » Fri, Dec 09, 2016, 1:47 PM UTC

snarfy wrote: post #158

blub wrote: post #104

I don't find this post inspiring, I find it sad. It's partly self-encouragment, part PR. The fact that it even exists is proof that the author is facing some issues, no matter how confident they would like to appear. That recipe to stay current looks tiresome. Listen to two podcasts, two webcasts, subscribe to four magazines, teach courses, go to one conference per year, blog regularly, read blogs, follow the latest…

I've been following the technology my whole career. I am still employable, but it gets old. My advice to younger devs is to focus on general computer science fundamentals and application development skills. Those are the only skills that stay with you and grow as your career advances. The technologies always change so don't memorize them. Keep a reference around instead. Memorize things like design patterns and sorti…

Sorting algorithm you serious? No one uses that in his carreer.

Re: On Getting Older in Tech

#196

Post by coldcode » Fri, Dec 09, 2016, 1:57 PM UTC

solatic wrote: post #177

There's a reason why ageism exists in the industry and it isn't because of some undeserved stereotype about old dogs not being able to learn new tricks. 1) Most business-critical projects have long lifetimes. There's a reason why banks are still running COBOL and mainframes, and why Java's continued promise of backward compatibility with every new release is so valuable to companies. 2) Maintaining legacy systems is…

"Learning to write code in a modern fashion requires continued education" - what does that even mean? It's like telling someone they need to learn to drive in a modern car. The car is modern, the driving isn't.

Re: On Getting Older in Tech

#197

Post by gaius » Fri, Dec 09, 2016, 1:59 PM UTC

blub wrote: post #104

I don't find this post inspiring, I find it sad. It's partly self-encouragment, part PR. The fact that it even exists is proof that the author is facing some issues, no matter how confident they would like to appear. That recipe to stay current looks tiresome. Listen to two podcasts, two webcasts, subscribe to four magazines, teach courses, go to one conference per year, blog regularly, read blogs, follow the latest…

and the latest and greatest javascript frameworks

There are two kinds of learning in play here: learning how to do new things, and learning how to do the same things a slightly different way. Learning a new JS framework is definitely the latter, when 99% of the time the end goal is a CRUD application that could have been done with anything from the last 20-odd years. Because that is all the vast majority of apps are at the end of the day...

The former is what older people should be doing, leveraging the experience gained as a springboard.

Re: On Getting Older in Tech

#198

Post by flavor8 » Fri, Dec 09, 2016, 2:00 PM UTC

The problem is not age, it's being rusty. Far too many of the over 40 crowd I've interviewed appear to have stagnated.

EDIT - to whoever downvoted me, grow a pair and reply instead of downvoting because you don't want to hear reality. I'm a gray beard myself. I've done hundreds of interviews in the past 5 years and know what I'm talking about in this respect...there are far too many programmers who get comfortable in a position and stagnate to the point of not being able to produce.

Re: On Getting Older in Tech

#199

Post by gaius » Fri, Dec 09, 2016, 2:04 PM UTC

smokestack wrote: post #127

blub wrote: post #104

I don't find this post inspiring, I find it sad. It's partly self-encouragment, part PR. The fact that it even exists is proof that the author is facing some issues, no matter how confident they would like to appear. That recipe to stay current looks tiresome. Listen to two podcasts, two webcasts, subscribe to four magazines, teach courses, go to one conference per year, blog regularly, read blogs, follow the latest…

Almost every ageism post I've read on HN ignores the hundreds of thousands of others jobs that exist outside of [hot SV tech companies] (avg age at FB is 28? no way!), and also don't mention those people who are right of the bell curve and working at companies like that (because their experience actually is valuable). Some of these posts are real ageism claims, but most are "I'm old, I'm scared, how am I going to sur…

I'm old, I'm scared ... some monolithic non-tech company

Wait, your solution to the problem of ageism in tech is "get out of tech, old fogey"??

Re: On Getting Older in Tech

#200

Post by to3m » Fri, Dec 09, 2016, 2:05 PM UTC

jgdx wrote: post #150

ash wrote: post #114

Article mentions "RPG" many times: "RPG back-end", "RPG developer". For those who wonder what it it (like me), it is not a "Role Playing Game", it is IBM RPG language: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_RPG

How the author failed to explain this abbreviation is beyond me. Who in their 50s doesn't know that you spell out important concepts and key terms, then shorten them in parentheses?

Maybe it didn't occur to him that people wouldn't know what it is. If you were writing an article about programming, would you explain what BASIC stands for?