“Over 30 years, I had to relearn almost everything about every 4 years more or less. I work with a team of six developers from ages 48 to 56. All of us have totally retrained our skills from 3 to 8 times.” . I have been doing embedded coding for years, which does not need train myself every four years, but still, keep learning is the key, age plays its role, but not as important as keeping learning.
Software Developers after 40, 50 and 60 Who're Still Coding
101–110 of 270 posts
Re: Software Developers after 40, 50 and 60 Who're Still Coding
#102I'm 38 and have coded ~30 years, professionally for half that. That's 15 years into a career of perhaps 45 years. A third! I can't believe I'm even worrying about being "old" in the business.
It's not a young man's game.
Re: Software Developers after 40, 50 and 60 Who're Still Coding
#10345. Still coding, probably until I die. Light years ahead of younger developers in the following: * Writing less code * Writing maintainable code * Re-using existing code (requires reading existing code) * Know how APIs should be written * Knowing how to properly map associations * Know when or when not to use another library * Knowing when to tell a product manager to go back and do some more product managing * Know…
can you justify the 3-5x difference in annual compensation that younger developer makes can you justify the 2-3x difference between you and a guy who was been coding for 5-7 years ?
3-5X? What country is this? Typically in Silicon Valley there's a rapid rise in the first 5-7 years and then it gets pretty flat (say, 1.1X or 1.2X not 2-3X) unless you're actually taking on a bigger role (and thus getting paid for those responsibilities rather than "experience" per se).
When you look at it from a company cost perspective, the ratios get even smaller. The fixed costs (desk, power, healthcare, etc) are pretty much the same no matter the experience level of the engineer.
Re: Software Developers after 40, 50 and 60 Who're Still Coding
#104Earlier quoted context omitted.
There is still some truth to it. I'm 37 and have had to repeatedly and forcefully turn down managerial roles. The idea of horizontal growth is a hard sell to people who've chosen the vertical path. It would be very easy to drift into a management role, and in fact it happened to me once and I had to take deliberate action to get off the management track. I don't want to manage people. I want to build, and learn about…
I'm 10 years older than you but feel the same way. I would be interested in hearing from people that did make the jump to management. Why did you do it? How did it turn out? Any regrets about making the jump or for not making the jump sooner?
I manage a small team of developers and still do a lot of development myself. My reason for doing it is that because what I want to work on now is bigger than a single person. I have a vision of what I want to accomplish and I can't do it all myself.
So far it's turned out well and I have no regrets. For me it wasn't a jump at all, just a gradual progression of what I've already been doing.
Re: Software Developers after 40, 50 and 60 Who're Still Coding
#105I like the thread here, but I'd like to point out that we shouldn't limit our check on ageism to the people who are "still coding".
If we want people in dead-end jobs and failing industries to have a chance to move forward in new ways, we need to willing to accept qualified "junior" engineers of all ages and backgrounds.
I have seen this sort of ageism in the interview process and it's tricky to constructively correct people in having different standards for 22 year-olds than they have for 32, 42, or 52 year-olds.
Re: Software Developers after 40, 50 and 60 Who're Still Coding
#106I'm 57 and I "Can't Stop Coding" as I'm still having too much fun. Whenever I stop having fun... I change programming jobs. I wrote about this in a blog post (http://corgibytes.com/blog/2016/12/06/getting-old-er-in-tech...) that was widely read.
I will say, however, that I have seen a lot of developers become obsolete mostly because they stayed with the same company (and programming language) for too long or ignored opportunities to stay abreast of technology.
Re: Software Developers after 40, 50 and 60 Who're Still Coding
#107[deleted]
Re: Software Developers after 40, 50 and 60 Who're Still Coding
#108[deleted]
Re: Software Developers after 40, 50 and 60 Who're Still Coding
#109I'm 57 and I "Can't Stop Coding" as I'm still having too much fun. Whenever I stop having fun... I change programming jobs. I wrote about this in a blog post (http://corgibytes.com/blog/2016/12/06/getting-old-er-in-tech...) that was widely read.
I will say, however, that I have seen a lot of developers become obsolete mostly because they stayed with the same company (and programming language) for too long or ignored opportunities to stay abreast of technology.
Re: Software Developers after 40, 50 and 60 Who're Still Coding
#11045. Still coding, probably until I die. Light years ahead of younger developers in the following: * Writing less code * Writing maintainable code * Re-using existing code (requires reading existing code) * Know how APIs should be written * Knowing how to properly map associations * Know when or when not to use another library * Knowing when to tell a product manager to go back and do some more product managing * Know…
Nice. You should definitely write an article.