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On Getting Older in Tech

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Re: On Getting Older in Tech

#201

Post by snarf21 »

JTenerife wrote: post #14

Younger people are not smarter. They might learn faster new things. On the other hand, older people understand related new things much better as they already have a large context (experience). The biggest difference of my current self (44) to my younger self is that I did spend much more energy in my projects when I was younger. I created results much faster at the cost of limited consideration. Now, I can still burn…

I agree with all your sentiments. I think the key thing is that younger people tend to equate efficiency with lines of code written. As you get older, you realize that pausing long enough to consider all implications leads to better solutions. Fast and hacky is fine for prototypes but (hopefully) eventually it needs to scale and be stable and supportable.

I also think that the Zuckerberg quote also points to the startup mentality. They want 22 year olds because you can get them to work 100 hour weeks against the promise of an IPO, not because they are "smarter". Hard to convince a 40 year old with two kids to do the same. There has already been a shift to more traditional CS companies (IBM, etc.) as the lack of IPOs has soured some people on the startup dream of being employee #3 at the next Uber of XXX.

Re: On Getting Older in Tech

#202

Post by zeroer »

delegate wrote: post #156

Take acid and go to crazy festivals if you want to stay young. No really, do it once at least. You need to bathe in youth from time to time in order to experience it - it's fantastic. Of course you need to keep up to date, try to use your wisdom to understand which technology/language is going to survive the test of time. For example, C/C++ is going to stick around for a while; make sure you're up to date (C++ 14 and…

> Have lots of sex - your wife will love you again :)

Not in my experience

... oh, you meant with her.

Re: On Getting Older in Tech

#204

Post by mysterypie »

qznc wrote: post #176
delegate wrote: post #156

Take acid and go to crazy festivals if you want to stay young. No really, do it once at least. You need to bathe in youth from time to time in order to experience it - it's fantastic. Of course you need to keep up to date, try to use your wisdom to understand which technology/language is going to survive the test of time. For example, C/C++ is going to stick around for a while; make sure you're up to date (C++ 14 and…

> use your wisdom to understand which technology/language is going to survive the test of time I usually use statistics. If you select a random point on the lifetime of something. There is a 50% chance, that you are closer to the middle then either start or end. Thus: Always assume you are roughly in the middle of the lifetime. In other words, if some technology is only one year old, assume it is dead in another year…

That's a great rule of thumb. You should give it a catchy name so people remember it.

When I don't have good insight into whether it's worth my time to learn some new tech, I'm going to try to apply this rule.

Re: On Getting Older in Tech

#205

Post by davenbuster »

delegate wrote: post #156

Take acid and go to crazy festivals if you want to stay young. No really, do it once at least. You need to bathe in youth from time to time in order to experience it - it's fantastic. Of course you need to keep up to date, try to use your wisdom to understand which technology/language is going to survive the test of time. For example, C/C++ is going to stick around for a while; make sure you're up to date (C++ 14 and…

100% agreed, thanks for this!

Re: On Getting Older in Tech

#206

Post by metaobject »

Thaxll wrote: post #195
snarfy wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

While this is for the most part true, questions regarding sorting algorithms and data structures (debug this left-rotate function that operates on binary trees) still come up during interviews.

Re: On Getting Older in Tech

#207

Post by Eridrus »

rifung wrote: post #44

> let’s look at the average age of IT workers at well-established companies. Facebook: 28. LinkedIn: 29. Google: 30 I had an interview at Google a couple months ago and noticed that most people were pretty young. When I asked the person who was in charge of taking me to lunch about this, he said that it's probably because there are just much more graduates of CS now than there were before, and that Google would very…

I don't know your definitions of older/younger, but I interviewed at Google NYC recently, and my perception was that most people were in their 30s, with a few older and much older folks. Maybe a factor of the teams I was talking to, but it was clearly an older bunch compared to FB.

Re: On Getting Older in Tech

#208

Post by gaius »

jpatokal wrote: post #106
reikonomusha wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A few notes: * Google actively develops one of the Lisp compilers. Google Flights powers Orbitz, Kayak, etc. That's Lisp. * There are several Lisp compilers in active open source development. * There's a graph database written in Lisp called AllegroCache. It's good enough to support a business (Franz) for more than a decade. * Another company (LispWorks) also exists and has a large portfolio of clients. * Lisp has be…

I don't even code in Lisp, but I knew the Google Flights engine would come up, because it seems to be just about the only "serious" application ever written in Lisp. And it wasn't built by Google, but their acquisition ITA, which hails from Boston and MIT's Scheme reality distortion field. (And even MIT has stopped teaching SICP in Scheme...)

Are AutoDesk still using it?

Re: On Getting Older in Tech

#210

Post by nsxwolf »

Thaxll wrote: post #195
snarfy wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You need them for those whiteboarding tech interviews.
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