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On Getting Older in Tech

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Re: On Getting Older in Tech

#281

Post by xeromal »

Lambdanaut wrote: post #269
riprowan wrote: post #264

48 yo here, started coding when I was 14, so that's 34 years of building things. Here's where I'm at. I look back at my career and I can tell you about great projects that I got to be part of, awards and plaudits that I won, big paybacks from projects that went well and literally saved the company. That's all nice to have war stories. But I can't point to any of it and say, "I made that" because - and here's the kick…

Dude. Open source software.

That can indeed be part of a legacy, but many companies are not comfortable with open sourcing their proprietary software. A lot of exciting work happens in that space as well.

Re: On Getting Older in Tech

#282

Post by dgacmu »

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.

Just to prevent rampant over-generalization in an article whose subject is the topic of bias: We've implemented various special-purpose sorts at least three times in the last five years. Here's one example: https://github.com/efficient/cuckoofilter/blob/master/src/pa...

Yes, this is all in a very high-performance (sometimes insanely so) context, but it does happen. Most of them were like this - unrolled special-purpose versions derived from a sorting network. Some were for GPU.

Re: On Getting Older in Tech

#283

Post by ThomaszKrueger »

54 yo here. Although I have a bachelor's in EE, I have been developing software since the beginning of my career. I am not necessarily nostalgic but I sometimes ponder about the real time assembly I wrote for a Telex switch, or the CHILL code I wrote for a telephony switch. All of it pretty much gone, not being produced anymore. Or the Windows 2 GUI written in C, the multi tier apps in VB6 and Powerbuilder. They are gone too.

However having participated in these projects give me a lot of perspective, and I notice that nowadays I tend to write less and be more thoughtful. I see others here with similar experiences.

Now as for getting old, there is one thing I recommend: get old but never allow yourself to look decrepit. Be always clean, well dressed. Don't complain about your back hurting, or show off the medicines you take. No one likes to be around sickness or weakness, so pretend to be healthy and strong (or try to be, even better). I aim for this reaction - "that guy looks good for his age". This usually helps with ageism, at least in my experience.

Re: On Getting Older in Tech

#284

Post by inimino »

IshKebab wrote: post #213
inimino wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

...and that's exactly the attitude the author is pointing out.

No, the author is actually saying that that attitude is fine. His point is that you need to keep learning and doing things that are relevant today, not learn today's technology and then stick with it for the rest of your career. > I could tell you about all my accomplishments over three decades, such as replacing the use of a System/3 punch card system with the AS/400, writing a Cobol debugger, or…. Ah, I’m boring yo…

The feeling your comment conveys is not "keep learning". The feeling is that by talking about "archaic" stuff, the author isn't "doing himself any favours", i.e. he makes himself sound old.

That's actually his point.

Someone who has seen a technology mature and develop over decades, seen the hype trains come and go, projects succeed and fail, might be a bit wiser than someone fresh out of Stanford. He might have some ideas about how to build maintainable systems after working on some that are older than most developers.

If you don't see it, that's on you, not on the author for mentioning his particular "archaic" specialization.

Re: On Getting Older in Tech

#285

Post by losteverything »

"Uncle, What do you think."

It's tech.this age thing.

Forced out of tech by invention/adoption of cell phone age is worshiped in my jobs today. Like Indians calling seniors "uncle" to show respect.

Age is my shield, my platform, my integrity and my perceived knowledge.

It's tech

Re: On Getting Older in Tech

#286

Post by gaius »

jonahrd wrote: post #246
hocuspocus wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would even say they favor people who have been cramming algo-on-the-whiteboard type of questions. I mean, there are several businesses built around this (CtCI, leetcode, ...) I know some North American universities have adapted to the practice and are now preparing students, but I assume this is relatively new. My algo and DS classes weren't about cramming at all. Now to be fair, reasonable companies will focus on…

Since everyone knows what they're getting into with a tech interview, I don't see why it's such a bad metric. Many companies purposefully give you a rubric/criteria to study. It's a good way of measuring whether a candidate can take the time to learn/prepare a specific set of knowledge, and then work through problems in a way that includes the interviewer (ie. other devs if hired) in the steps to solve the problem.

Why interview in a way that's unrepresentative of the actual work?

The only reason is that you want to build an environment where the work is secondary, such as wanting to hire a bunch of bros to go drinking with and help you spend all that sweet VC cash...

Re: On Getting Older in Tech

#287

Post by DanBC »

blub wrote: post #224
DanBC wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And why is it that most older people answering on these threads are so passionate about learning ...because older people are told all the time , even on HN, that they're too old to learn and that they don't keep up with technology. It's not surprising that they pre-empt these doubts by saying what they do to keep learning. > Why not have an honest conversation What's the honest conversation?

Well, an honest conversation would involve acting like a regular human, and not a lean mean learning machine ready to go head to head with any younger developer. Because most people want to live their lives, not jump on a learning threadmill.

> acting like a regular human,

In this thread we see people saying that older people are unsuitable employees because they have families, and would prioritise those families over work.

We have people saying that older people are unable to learn new tech.

When those people stop being discriminatory the older people can stop being super human.

Re: On Getting Older in Tech

#288

Post by [deleted] »

riprowan wrote: post #264

48 yo here, started coding when I was 14, so that's 34 years of building things. Here's where I'm at. I look back at my career and I can tell you about great projects that I got to be part of, awards and plaudits that I won, big paybacks from projects that went well and literally saved the company. That's all nice to have war stories. But I can't point to any of it and say, "I made that" because - and here's the kick…

[deleted]

Re: On Getting Older in Tech

#289

Post by bubbleRefuge »

clifanatic wrote: post #273
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 Unless she finds out.

Trust me. If she finds out, she will love you more.

Re: On Getting Older in Tech

#290

Post by erikpukinskis »

Zelphyr wrote: post #267
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…

I find these days I spend less time coding and I end up with better applications because I think through the design before coding. At the risk of going off-topic; every new/kinda-new/wish they were new engineer can learn volumes from that single statement.

How do you learn a volume from a single statement? It's a good thing to think about: design up front is a tool for increasing quality. But the whole field of agile design is questioning the universality of that. The "volumes" are filled with all of the little things that tell you what is worth thinking about and what isn't. They contain many more statements on the subject.
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