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Show HN: Hire an Oldster

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Re: Show HN: Hire an Oldster

#211

Post by matwood »

aresant wrote: post #42

If you take a survey of hiring managers they will point to three primary reasons that candidates 40 - 60 have a harder time finding jobs: 1) They are typically more expensive than "market" for the same role a younger person can fulfill at acceptable tradeoff of competency - higher salaries, higher related costs like healthcare for a family, expectations around retirement programs, etc. 2) They are less flexible - the…

#1 should not matter. Market rate is the rate I should expect. Just because I have 20 years of experience does not mean I'm going to get my rate for a Jr PHP job. The complaint is more likely that most companies do not need many people with that level of experience. The old phrase too many generals and not enough soldiers comes to mind.

#2 is changing because we are entering the baby-boomer phase of IT. It was recent that that there were not many people programming, and then the field blew up with tons of young people coming out of college. Those young people are now turning into older people. Where I work now we have a median age for the IT staff in the high 30s. I don't think anyone is under 30 anymore.

#3 can be true of anyone, depending on how well they have managed their career. Sadly, I have interviewed people with '5 years experience' who learned their job in 3-6 mos. and have just continued to do the same job for 5 years. Their actual experience ends up not being much more than a recent college graduate.

Re: Show HN: Hire an Oldster

#212

Post by skwirl »

digler999 wrote: post #189
skwirl wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I look at the skillset between when I was 25 and now (30) and it's astounding. I can't imagine what the difference between 50 and 25 will be. I completely agree (I'm 32), but what is worrying is the possibility of a fundamental shift that doesn't occur within individual companies but rather manifests itself as a new industry of sorts, and then a slow decline of the industry we're in right now - a paradigm shift, for…

> He saw object oriented programming as snake oil and a passing fad for how long ? I dont blame him for reading about C++ in 1989 and saying "hrmmmf! hogwash!". But in 1995 ? in 2000 ? It sounds like he got set in his ways, and how is that NOT an "age problem" ? I'm also 32, and I'm getting slightly more set in my ways as I get older. > he begrudgingly learned Java/C#/JavaScript/SQL and took a major pay/prestige cut…

>for how long ? I dont blame him for reading about C++ in 1989 and saying "hrmmmf! hogwash!". But in 1995 ? in 2000 ? It sounds like he got set in his ways, and how is that NOT an "age problem" ? I'm also 32, and I'm getting slightly more set in my ways as I get older.

Christmas of 2002.

>well, had he had an open mind and not shunned new things, he might be a Herb Sutter today. Or even in IBM, had he bet on a different "horse", and moved into As/400 or whatever other IBM technologies there are, he could be earning more than a C++ programmer, knowing some obscure proprietary IBM language and having 20+ years experience backing it up. I've heard of guys like that making $100+/hr because only a few people in the world can do it.

That's actually the big trap. He WAS making good money because of legacy systems and because not many people were familiar with the technology... right up until there were no jobs left. It makes changing fields earlier difficult even though it would have probably been the best long term strategy.

>I think his story is one of mismanagement of intellectual capital. Maybe it's naive of me, but I dont see how you could be in software engineering for 30 years and not be worth at least a million, especially from his era. Did he invest in IBM or any tech companies at all ? How could you not see everyone making money in the dot-com era and not be a part of it ?

I assume he's worth well over a million. It isn't enough to be worth a million when you are 50. When you and your wife will be living for (hopefully) another 30-40 years and social security doesn't kick in until 62-65, you gotta keep working unless you explicitly planned for an early retirement.

As for how to avoid the .com era - well, you miss it by seeing it as a bubble (and feel vindicated when it "pops" in 2001). You also miss it because you are committed to living in a certain geographic area without a significant presence of e-commerce companies.

Re: Show HN: Hire an Oldster

#213

Post by tigershark »

flukus wrote: post #198
digler999 wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> He saw object oriented programming as snake oil and a passing fad for how long ? I dont blame him for reading about C++ in 1989 and saying "hrmmmf! hogwash!". But in 1995 ? in 2000 ? It sounds like he got set in his ways, and how is that NOT an "age problem" ? I'm also 32, and I'm getting slightly more set in my ways as I get older. > he begrudgingly learned Java/C#/JavaScript/SQL and took a major pay/prestige cut…

I've got a year on you and I think I'd agree that OO is snake oil. The worst code bases I've ever seen (and I've seen some horrors) have been from over used inheritance and mixing logic and data. Provided you avoid global state (also a problem with OO) I think a c program would be more understandable than a lot of java/c# ones. Not to say there aren't useful features, that would go well with a language like c, like i…

From what you are saying I guess you have never been in an OO project but you just worked in the "cold hell" of procedOOral code, the worst mix of copy and paste, overblown inheritance and singletons. I experienced a lot of it in my career, nowadays I am more oriented towards the functional world, but saying that OO is completely useless and even dangerous is an outright lie. The most awful codebases on which I worked on would have been quite nice applying the OO best practices. Sadly they where far too big to be changed by the concerted effort of a couple of people. And they were full of anti-patterns. Even loving the type safety of F# and Haskell I can't honestly say that OO is an anti-pattern per se. What it matters is not the size of the hammer but how you use it. But I can rightfully proclaim that the wrong tools used for something that they were never meant for are the worst possible solution. EVER.

Re: Show HN: Hire an Oldster

#214

Post by flukus »

tigershark wrote: post #213
flukus wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've got a year on you and I think I'd agree that OO is snake oil. The worst code bases I've ever seen (and I've seen some horrors) have been from over used inheritance and mixing logic and data. Provided you avoid global state (also a problem with OO) I think a c program would be more understandable than a lot of java/c# ones. Not to say there aren't useful features, that would go well with a language like c, like i…

From what you are saying I guess you have never been in an OO project but you just worked in the "cold hell" of procedOOral code, the worst mix of copy and paste, overblown inheritance and singletons. I experienced a lot of it in my career, nowadays I am more oriented towards the functional world, but saying that OO is completely useless and even dangerous is an outright lie. The most awful codebases on which I worke…

I've spent 10+ years of my career working in OO languages, I'm no stranger to it and I've seen it used well. But we'll tends to be a subset of OO, with minimal inheritance and encapsulation with data and logic in seperate places.

Re: Show HN: Hire an Oldster

#215

Post by davidgerard »

Try going sideways to the "ops" side of devops. Lots of work for older sysadmins (I'm 50 in a coupla months), and you can often gently hint to your hotshot young devs the pitfalls of doing it not so well.

Also, as you get older: LEARN TO WEAR A SUIT. Not all the time - suits are going-out clothes, not things you waste on an office - but every now and then show that you can present well and be convincing. Your stock with the non-techies in the office will go through the roof.

Re: Show HN: Hire an Oldster

#216

Post by danieltillett »

DougWebb wrote: post #209
danieltillett wrote: post #204

As a slightly older person (I am 46) and employer the issue I have found with older employees is they don’t cope well with frequent change. I have always hired the person I thought was most qualified for the position and so have hired quite a few older people over the years. What I have observed first hand is that if the job requirements are relatively stable then older people are fantastic, but if the requirements c…

Are you detecting an inability to shift gears quickly, or is it a reluctance to shift gears quickly based on hard-won experience where management-driven frequently-changing requirements led to project failures that were then blamed on the development team? As much as we'd like our job to be engineering, it's usually more like craftsmanship. Craftsmanship goes back a LONG ways, and the traditional approach for learnin…

Are you detecting an inability to shift gears quickly, or is it a reluctance to shift gears quickly based on hard-won experience where management-driven frequently-changing requirements led to project failures that were then blamed on the development team?

That is rather an impossible question to answer as the two causes ultimately have the same end outcome. I certainly never introduce change for changes sake - 95% of management change I have been responsible for have been due to outside factors out of my control. When the market tells you that you need to change you must change.

I can say on average I get more direct pushback on change from younger employees than older purely because many younger employees have not learned that arguing with your boss about something when you don’t have a full understanding of the situation is not that wise. I have found that my older employees have understood the need for change, they just find it hard.

I am certainly not immune to this effect myself - the thought of learning React or Angular (or the next JS framework de jour) does not fill me with joy.

Re: Show HN: Hire an Oldster

#217

Post by tshadley »

danieltillett wrote: post #204

As a slightly older person (I am 46) and employer the issue I have found with older employees is they don’t cope well with frequent change. I have always hired the person I thought was most qualified for the position and so have hired quite a few older people over the years. What I have observed first hand is that if the job requirements are relatively stable then older people are fantastic, but if the requirements c…

A fluid intelligence decline is not necessarily age-related, see for example "The effect of age on fluid intelligence is fully mediated by physical health." 2013, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23540273 : "Our findings imply that improving health by acting against the common age-related circulatory- and nervous system diseases and risk factors will oppose the decline in fluid intelligence with age."

Re: Show HN: Hire an Oldster

#218

Post by digler999 »

flukus wrote: post #198
digler999 wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> He saw object oriented programming as snake oil and a passing fad for how long ? I dont blame him for reading about C++ in 1989 and saying "hrmmmf! hogwash!". But in 1995 ? in 2000 ? It sounds like he got set in his ways, and how is that NOT an "age problem" ? I'm also 32, and I'm getting slightly more set in my ways as I get older. > he begrudgingly learned Java/C#/JavaScript/SQL and took a major pay/prestige cut…

I've got a year on you and I think I'd agree that OO is snake oil. The worst code bases I've ever seen (and I've seen some horrors) have been from over used inheritance and mixing logic and data. Provided you avoid global state (also a problem with OO) I think a c program would be more understandable than a lot of java/c# ones. Not to say there aren't useful features, that would go well with a language like c, like i…

it could very well be snake oil, but I make a living doing it (or at least knowing how to answer C++ questions during interviews. many of my jobs were advertised as SE but really dont require much actual coding (to my frustration)) and I actually enjoy C++.

Personally, I think both java and javascript (yes I know they are entirely separate languages ) are snake oil. But you know, I learned to program in them anyway.

I tried to find a happy medium where I learn about a new technology and see if it sticks. If after 3-5 years its still around, I give it a try. This worked for me for javascript and python. When python first came out (or when I first heard of it ) I said "no way, not learning a new language right now. perl works fine as a scripting language". Then year after year I kept hearing about it, and heard about perl less and less. Then I finally tried it.

But a couple years ago, I kept hearing about "coffee script" and "clojure". I said the same thing, "not touching it". And now, I hardly ever hear about them, and I barely even know what they are.

Re: Show HN: Hire an Oldster

#219

Post by azeirah »

azeirah wrote: post #181
jhayward wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd like to hear more. What are the benefits of this arrangement? Is it merely an organizational statement that over-30's are worth less and need remedial training? What was the rationale? What was the group discussion like? What do you think about it?

There's not much more, it was a very general lecture touching on many topics, it was merely an anecdote.

Is it merely an organizational statement that over-30's are worth less and need remedial training?

No that was not the point.

The point is that new employees, students, practically live in a different world that older employees. The point of the system was that students would teach older employees how to operate within this "new world". It's an approach to make sure that older employees don't get stuck in their ways of thinking.

Re: Show HN: Hire an Oldster

#220

Post by mypalmike »

mempko wrote: post #171

I'm not old, 32, but this problem worries me. My plan for addressing the "Must keep up with latest tech" problem is to CREATE the latest technology. My hope if I create enough of it that in 15 years I'll be that old guy who created tech X or Y and nobody is going to bother wondering if I can keep up. Will this plan work? Who knows. Best way to predict the future is create it right?

I think for every story you hear about a guy in his 50s who only knows how to program COBOL on mainframes, there are 10 of us ("us" - well, I'm 45) who are learning new, valuable technologies all the time.
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