Why Ageism Never Gets Old • Hacker News Board

Re: Why Ageism Never Gets Old

#21

Post by BatFastard » Thu, Nov 16, 2017, 12:47 PM UTC

jeremyjh wrote: post #3

> In the nineteen-twenties, an engineer’s “half life of knowledge”—the time it took for half of his expertise to become obsolete—was thirty-five years. In the nineteen-sixties, it was a decade. Now it’s five years at most, and, for a software engineer, less than three. This sort of mythology is NOT helping. An experienced Software Engineer has valuable skills that do not age at all. Yes there are new languages and fr…

60 year old dev here. I have been living on the cutting edge of tech for 30 years, and I have many scars to prove it.

New is usually not better if you actually want scalable, maintainable, and monetizable results.

I disagree that many area's of my knowledge has a half life. My deep understanding of network protocols hasn't aged. My deep understanding of SQL and NoSQL databases hasn't aged. The principles of distributed systems haven't changed, but they have been given more tools. When, where, and how to optimize hasn't changed. Debugging, naming, and design whether it be functional or OO hasn't changed.

Sure there are new tools and methods, but I say the fundamentals are the same.

Re: Why Ageism Never Gets Old

#22

Post by BatFastard » Thu, Nov 16, 2017, 12:48 PM UTC

Nursie wrote: post #8

jeremyjh wrote: post #3

> In the nineteen-twenties, an engineer’s “half life of knowledge”—the time it took for half of his expertise to become obsolete—was thirty-five years. In the nineteen-sixties, it was a decade. Now it’s five years at most, and, for a software engineer, less than three. This sort of mythology is NOT helping. An experienced Software Engineer has valuable skills that do not age at all. Yes there are new languages and fr…

I've worked in C, embedded and server-side, for about 15 years of my 17 year career. Companies I've worked with recently are having trouble finding C-capable developers, particularly C developers who have the first clue about 'modern' developments like CI and CD, or git. C is a language invented in the 70s. If you kept up with thread APIS when they became usable in the late 90s you could quite easily have had a 40 ye…

Such as?

Re: Why Ageism Never Gets Old

#23

Post by eeZah7Ux » Thu, Nov 16, 2017, 12:49 PM UTC

icebraining wrote: post #9

jeremyjh wrote: post #3

> In the nineteen-twenties, an engineer’s “half life of knowledge”—the time it took for half of his expertise to become obsolete—was thirty-five years. In the nineteen-sixties, it was a decade. Now it’s five years at most, and, for a software engineer, less than three. This sort of mythology is NOT helping. An experienced Software Engineer has valuable skills that do not age at all. Yes there are new languages and fr…

Even languages and frameworks don't change that much outside of certain niches. Django and Rails have been around for over a decade. Go, a "new" language, is eight years old. I've been working for 5.5 years with a Python-based platform called Odoo (purely by chance of employment) and I don't see it going away any time soon. A colleague of mine also recently got a very good offer for helping maintain a codebase in Inf…

This is besides the point. Smart companies hire engineers that understands principles and concepts.

Hipster companies hire by buzzword of the year. Stay away from those.

Re: Why Ageism Never Gets Old

#24

Post by tyingq » Thu, Nov 16, 2017, 12:49 PM UTC

A good way to counter this is to become an expert in some combination of "something old + something (somewhat) new". Like knowing bog standard java well, but also knowing how to deploy/use it in AWS well. Or being a C expert that also understands git in a deep way.

Re: Why Ageism Never Gets Old

#25

Post by eeZah7Ux » Thu, Nov 16, 2017, 12:53 PM UTC

amelius wrote: post #4

I always love to hear about cultures where old people are the most respected of a society. I think such cultures are happier, because they ensure that the future looks bright, no matter how old someone is. But ... such cultures might be in conflict with the information society we have built.

There can be plenty of ageism in those cultures as well. It just works the other way around.

After all, ageism is discrimination and discrimination can work in every direction.

Re: Why Ageism Never Gets Old

#26

Post by ryandrake » Thu, Nov 16, 2017, 12:58 PM UTC

Nursie wrote: post #8

jeremyjh wrote: post #3

> In the nineteen-twenties, an engineer’s “half life of knowledge”—the time it took for half of his expertise to become obsolete—was thirty-five years. In the nineteen-sixties, it was a decade. Now it’s five years at most, and, for a software engineer, less than three. This sort of mythology is NOT helping. An experienced Software Engineer has valuable skills that do not age at all. Yes there are new languages and fr…

I've worked in C, embedded and server-side, for about 15 years of my 17 year career. Companies I've worked with recently are having trouble finding C-capable developers, particularly C developers who have the first clue about 'modern' developments like CI and CD, or git. C is a language invented in the 70s. If you kept up with thread APIS when they became usable in the late 90s you could quite easily have had a 40 ye…

> Companies I've worked with recently are having trouble finding C-capable developers, particularly C developers who have the first clue about 'modern' developments like CI and CD, or git.

As is always the case when a claim is made about "companies having trouble finding developers" of some sort: Are they actually having trouble finding developers despite offering top-of-market salary, remote work and gold plated benefits? Or are they the usual "we think we offer above average salary with great benefits!" companies who get no interest from developers and conclude there's a shortage?

Re: Why Ageism Never Gets Old

#27

Post by hawkice » Thu, Nov 16, 2017, 1:00 PM UTC

jeremyjh wrote: post #3

> In the nineteen-twenties, an engineer’s “half life of knowledge”—the time it took for half of his expertise to become obsolete—was thirty-five years. In the nineteen-sixties, it was a decade. Now it’s five years at most, and, for a software engineer, less than three. This sort of mythology is NOT helping. An experienced Software Engineer has valuable skills that do not age at all. Yes there are new languages and fr…

Also draws a poor comparison between e.g. a 20-years-experience coder who was writing C++ until a year ago and someone fresh out of college whose been writing node.js nonstop in the three years since getting their degree. There may be one you have more fun playing ping pong with, but (and I say this as a youngster myself) the professional choice is the one where the value for dollar is best and the code is something you won't dread maintaining.

Re: Why Ageism Never Gets Old

#28

Post by geomark » Thu, Nov 16, 2017, 1:02 PM UTC

zaarn wrote: post #19

geomark wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Ageism seems largely concentrated on the Silicon-Valley style society." I saw ageism many years ago at a big aerospace firm in the L.A. area. It was understood and even outspoken that young engineers would get the call to work extra hours and weekends if needed, as well as the occasional graveyard shift when a unit was in thermovac testing. Older engineers were not usually called upon become they had "paid their due…

And I'm sure the older engineers will be more likely to be called upon when the situation demands experience, no? I fail to see the harm in "discriminating" a bit against the younger engineers by having them collect more experience.

Having done my share of babysitting units through thermovac I can say with some authority that the main experience is in personally observing the effects of sleep deprivation and mind-numbing boredom.

Re: Why Ageism Never Gets Old

#29

Post by jasode » Thu, Nov 16, 2017, 1:03 PM UTC

First, ageism is not just a SV phenomenon. For example, see the very young White House aides in Clinton, Bush, & Obama administrations.[1]

Second, the tech companies that have a reputation for favoring 20-somethings will still hire older workers for certain positions.

- Even though Mark Zuckerberg said, "younger people are just smarter", he hired an "old" person like Sheryl Sandberg to be COO at age ~38.

- Bill Gates was ~32 when he hired Dave Cutler age ~46 to architect and develop Windows NT.

- Google hired Eric Schmidt ~46, Guido van Rossum (Python) ~age 49, and Peter Norvig in his 40s

- Netflix hired Adrian Cockcroft in his mid-40s

The SV companies will exhibit "reverse-age-discrimination" for executive management and architect positions. Why? (And the obvious answer is "experience".) But then, why is "experience" not valued for the non-architect programming positions? We actually do discriminate against young people for many roles. I leave readers to sort out why we value experience selectively for different situations.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15350873

Re: Why Ageism Never Gets Old

#30

Post by nonamechicken » Thu, Nov 16, 2017, 1:05 PM UTC

amelius wrote: post #4

I always love to hear about cultures where old people are the most respected of a society. I think such cultures are happier, because they ensure that the future looks bright, no matter how old someone is. But ... such cultures might be in conflict with the information society we have built.

I wish this was true in India. In India, we love to parade around saying respect our elders. But when it comes to Indian IT companies, it literally is a pyramid. I used to and still wonder where does all the 10+ year experienced guys go. In almost every team I have been, its predominantly freshers. In India, once you have 8+ years, I have heard the number of calls one get from recruiters is far less. And if you are not a team lead or something by then, they may look at you as through something is wrong with you, even when you are there to solve problems they cannot.