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Software Developers after 40, 50 and 60 Who're Still Coding

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131–140 of 270 posts

Re: Software Developers after 40, 50 and 60 Who're Still Coding

#131
post #127
post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hope that day never comes.

I hope it does. If doctors are replaced it's because medical care has improved beyond their capabilities. How could you not want better medical care?

> If doctors are replaced it's because medical care has improved beyond their capabilities.

Don't bet on it. Software is much cheaper, so when cost of resulting mistakes + cost of software < cost of doctors and their mistakes, some hospitals will do the switch.

Re: Software Developers after 40, 50 and 60 Who're Still Coding

#132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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) ar…

At Microsoft, annual compensation for entry level hire is around 130k (W2 box #2) where as for the principal engineer that figure is atleast 350k

So less than 3x compared to entry level, probably less than 2x compared to someone with 5-7 years.

Re: Software Developers after 40, 50 and 60 Who're Still Coding

#133
Lot's of scientists and engineers and physicians are still doing what they know best. These kinds of knowledge and skills do not go away with age, and since practitioners of these arts are constantly learning new things, and looking for better solutions to problems, people in these fields often work until the very day that death catches up to them.

Programmers tend to be just like these other STEM like professions. Although with age we tend also to broaden our horizons a bit, perhaps into genomics or massively scalable systems or new approaches to cyber security.

Re: Software Developers after 40, 50 and 60 Who're Still Coding

#134
post #82

45. 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…

> Saying "I don't know" when asked "How long will it take" or "When will it be done" ~5 years experience speaking: How do you do this? I have a very good boss and he knows things, objectively, like "estimates are very squishy," and "developers suck at estimating time" etc. But he still demands time estimates to give clients. Our clients are often agencies, and they get it as well. I do estimates like "10-40 hours, de…

One way to do this is to point out how the requirements are vague, lack context and fail to state how the requirement will benefit the business. Point out how it is sloppiness in documenting requirements that leads to scope creep, cost overruns and ultimately, failure of the business. Tell management that if they really want to give developers responsibility for finding out what is needed then they should fire all the business analysts, project managers and product managers that are not doing their jobs properly.

Alternatively, they could accept new processes that make sure requirements are clearly written and include acceptance criteria.

Re: Software Developers after 40, 50 and 60 Who're Still Coding

#135
post #82

45. 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…

> Saying "I don't know" when asked "How long will it take" or "When will it be done" ~5 years experience speaking: How do you do this? I have a very good boss and he knows things, objectively, like "estimates are very squishy," and "developers suck at estimating time" etc. But he still demands time estimates to give clients. Our clients are often agencies, and they get it as well. I do estimates like "10-40 hours, de…

One way to do this is to point out how the requirements are vague, lack context and fail to state how the requirement will benefit the business. Point out how it is sloppiness in documenting requirements that leads to scope creep, cost overruns and ultimately, failure of the business. Tell management that if they really want to give developers responsibility for finding out what is needed then they should fire all the business analysts, project managers and product managers that are not doing their jobs properly.

Alternatively, they could accept new processes that make sure requirements are clearly written and include acceptance criteria.

Re: Software Developers after 40, 50 and 60 Who're Still Coding

#136
post #71

What's up with the phrase, "Still programming?" Would anyone think it odd for a 60-year-old physician to still be doctoring, or a 60-year-old lawyer to still practice law. Or for that matter for a 60-year-old artist or craftsperson to "still" pursue their craft. Corporate culture embraces the notion of management as a profession. I think programming would benefit greatly from more of a tradecraft model, where leaders…

Fred Brooks wrote about that idea in 1975. It seems that the management side still has not learned the lesson.

no, it only seems that way because the powerful silicon valley and finance giants are the only ones with access to the top-tier young talent. the rest of the young people out there are inexperienced and not that smart, and definitely aren't worth a six figure salary.

so everyone else just hires older people, but it isn't sexy and marketable to the impressionable technology crowd.

Re: Software Developers after 40, 50 and 60 Who're Still Coding

#138

What's up with the phrase, "Still programming?" Would anyone think it odd for a 60-year-old physician to still be doctoring, or a 60-year-old lawyer to still practice law. Or for that matter for a 60-year-old artist or craftsperson to "still" pursue their craft. Corporate culture embraces the notion of management as a profession. I think programming would benefit greatly from more of a tradecraft model, where leaders…

There is a reason graybeards are valuable. It's not that they're over 50 or 60. It's experience. A full-stack developer with 20 years' worth of experience will not make certain kinds of mistakes.

I'm in the awkward position of having only gotten a CS degree and taken programming seriously after 30, so I suppose I'm the worst of both worlds. Of course, I also started going gray at 30, so...

Re: Software Developers after 40, 50 and 60 Who're Still Coding

#139
post #71

What's up with the phrase, "Still programming?" Would anyone think it odd for a 60-year-old physician to still be doctoring, or a 60-year-old lawyer to still practice law. Or for that matter for a 60-year-old artist or craftsperson to "still" pursue their craft. Corporate culture embraces the notion of management as a profession. I think programming would benefit greatly from more of a tradecraft model, where leaders…

Fred Brooks wrote about that idea in 1975. It seems that the management side still has not learned the lesson.

Management seems peculiarly impervious to almost all of Fred Brooks' ideas: mythical man month, second system effect and the toolsmith especially.

Re: Software Developers after 40, 50 and 60 Who're Still Coding

#140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Late 20s? I've seen title structures where the first promotion is to "senior" and that is often granted ~18 months into working. It's early enough that it can be ambiguous as to whether it means your working title or your year in college.

I saw someone get promoted to a "senior" for rolling his own logging framework. And then starts arguing with me about how long functionality will take when he clearly hasn't got a scooby of what's involved (me 2 months, him 2 days, 2 weeks later and he's still trying to pick apart how the code even works). One of many reasons I bailed from that gig asap.

At a previous gig, I had to explain to my CTO what JSON was and why it was better than the ad-hoc serialization format he made up where every field was delimited by multiple dollar signs. I interned there, and I was probably twice as old as everyone else.

Oh, and that JSON was supported natively in PHP. The language they were using.

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