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Is software development really a dead-end job after age 35-40?

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Re: Is software development really a dead-end job after age 35-40?

#291

Post by brooklyn_ashey »

amyjess wrote: post #248
cgh wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, you make good points. A distinction should be made between junior 35+ people and 35+ people with at least a decade of experience. But I don't think that's exclusively a software engineering issue. If I tried to become an electrician at 40, my guess is I'd encounter some bias, though probably less than in software. One other thing: by "BigCorps", I'm referring to things like banks, Wal-Mart and so forth, not tech…

> One other thing: by "BigCorps", I'm referring to things like banks, Wal-Mart and so forth, not technology companies like eg Google. Yeah, I'd much rather work at a traditional conservative BigCorp than a Silicon Valley company that never grew up from startup mentality. If you do want to stay I tech, I'd recommend looking at the B2B telecom sector. It's far, far more conservative then any other part of the tech indu…

I'd say this is a great tip for a candidate who isn't underrepresented in tech. I just came from an interview at a conservative midwest company that isn't technically a "tech" company but has a huge tech dept. Got to the end of 5 interviews at breakneck speed and with lots of acclaim from the team about my speed and competence...that is until they saw me. Everyone, and I mean everyone in the engineering dept., save one woman (she must be a 20Xer) was firmly within the typical tech demographic. I felt I did quite well despite suddenly being asked CTO-type questions. I was told there would be whiteboard algorithms and questions about the company itself. They knew I'd never worked at a big company with a giant code base before, and yet they were enthusiastic about my ability to contribute-- it had come up and was not an issue. They wanted to fly me out and put me up in a hotel. It turned out I didn't need it because I happened to be there, but they offered. They even talked to me about salary numbers. When I got to the on-site, I got questions more fitting for a candidate with many years' experience with a giant code base at a big company. Still, I felt I answered well. In the end, they told me I didn't answer those questions quickly enough (not correctly enough-- just quickly enough). I'm fairly certain that If I were given the chance to actually work at a large company, I'd know the answers to these system design issues without having to think to arrive at the correct answer. I'd know from experience. If I'd looked like more of a "culture fit" let's say, but still over 40, I think it might have been fine. By the way, the city that this company is in is 82% African American. Its tech department was 0% African American.

Re: Is software development really a dead-end job after age 35-40?

#292

Post by sjg007 »

dsacco wrote: post #281
sjg007 wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think wall street is still the best option to make a lot of money.

In which case, there is a credible argument that a PhD is integral to income maximization.

I think so if you want to quant..

Re: Is software development really a dead-end job after age 35-40?

#293

Post by pbnjay »

ChicagoDave wrote: post #135

There a couple of aspects to this issue. I'm 53. Management: I would argue that it's critical to garner management skills well before you turn 40. If you wait until 50, you're going to find it very difficult to move from talent-oriented jobs to management ones. Coding: I hate to generalize, but it's very likely you'll learn so much over your career that you will become an ineffective developer. You will know how to d…

This is simultaneously what I needed to hear and what I didn't want to hear. You pretty much nailed it all for me.

Re: Is software development really a dead-end job after age 35-40?

#294

Post by dwaltrip »

matwood wrote: post #127
dandr01d wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I second this. I'm currently on a team that has a couple senior engineers, but neither of them are true experts of what our team does (iOS). One has decades of web dev experience while the other has decades of Java service experience. Our team badly needs an iOS expert to make the tough decisions and lead architecture.

You did miss the point of the parent. To be more clear, programming for the most part is easy . Knowing what to program is hard. I don't know what your iOS app does, but lets pretend it's something to do with healthcare. Someone who is an expert in the healthcare domain and can program (or learn whatever stack you are using) is going to be much more valuable than an expert iOS person who has no clue about healthcare.…

> To be more clear, programming for the most part is easy.

I vehemently disagree with this. Kludging together an unmaintainable codebase that barely meets the spec might be easy. Aiming for a notably higher level quality beyond that is NOT an easy thing at all.

Obviously, the nature of this discussion depends on the complexity of the task at hand. There are many profitable ventures with low levels of complexity in the software implementation, and your comment may hold true for such scenarios.

However, there also many ventures that require significantly complex software to meet their goals, and will require skilled developers to have any hope of not collapsing under the weight of shoddy implementations and impenetrable abstractions.

Re: Is software development really a dead-end job after age 35-40?

#295

Post by stochastic_monk »

mattmurdog wrote: post #265
stochastic_monk wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The world isn't web development. Some of us do other things, you know.

I can only speak about building web apps with Google. Replace ES6 with anything else.

What you're trying to say, then, is that you need to stay up to speed with your discipline. That's fair.

I think that the main solution to all of this is that you need to have skills with a long shelf life in addition to being up to speed on what's hot right now.

Bringing up a new release of a language as being essential for any programmer is missing the point here.

Re: Is software development really a dead-end job after age 35-40?

#296

Post by maxwin »

jordanb wrote: post #98
tptacek wrote: post #71

I was going to add this as a reply to a comment downthread but I think it's too important to bury. The fundamental rule of career progression in the technology industry is to position yourself as a domain expert in something more specific than "programming" . It's very difficult to "own" "programming" in a way where you can use scarcity to drive integer multiple increases of the median salary. It is not as difficult…

The big danger is "owning" some domain that falls out of fashion. You might "own" distributed systems and do great for a time, but then companies start transitioning from that architecture and nobody returns your calls anymore. Also I've noticed a lot of sub-fields like computer vision or self driving cars where there's a great deal of nerd interest but very little actual employment. In fact, I have a feeling that co…

Agree. I think it is financially irresponsible for yourself and your family if you don't have a plan to transition yourself out of programmer job. It is okay if you are financially secure or independent, you can do whatever you want. But seriously, have a plan.

Re: Is software development really a dead-end job after age 35-40?

#297

Post by agumonkey »

Silhouette wrote: post #288
agumonkey wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In theory. I'm sure everybody knows, but at times you might 1) lose willpower 2) find yourself in an unknown climate all of a sudden (say going from old codebase to nodejs..) that makes the learning curve very steep

This is why you market yourself/your business as specialising in a particular domain, but you study good fundamentals and general principles, which you then apply to your current domain(s) of interest using whatever development tools are of use in that domain.

It's a bit more involved than this. Current market doesn't really follows fundamentals. I dug into advanced theory quite a bit and that won't help me peanuts when trying to unfold what people mean with their patterns and ways. Quite the opposite some times, angular 1 for instance, it was a bit insane what they assembled.. unlike anything fundamental if you ask me.

Re: Is software development really a dead-end job after age 35-40?

#298

Post by zem »

tptacek wrote: post #71

I was going to add this as a reply to a comment downthread but I think it's too important to bury. The fundamental rule of career progression in the technology industry is to position yourself as a domain expert in something more specific than "programming" . It's very difficult to "own" "programming" in a way where you can use scarcity to drive integer multiple increases of the median salary. It is not as difficult…

this worries me sometimes; i have finally (in my early 40s) moved from "specialising in the craft of programming" to getting a job in a domain that excites me (language tooling), but i am now a relative amateur in a field that is full of phds and the like, and i am not sure how large the field itself is going to be in say another 10 years.

i've been wondering if i should pick up something entirely different on the side (e.g. machine learning for broad applicability, though that does not excite me at all), or to instead diversify from my current niche but learn to write tools across a broader variety of languages and ecosystems. it's scary sometimes how the entire programming ecosystem can change overnight and leave once-valuable skills in the dust.

Re: Is software development really a dead-end job after age 35-40?

#299

Post by tptacek »

zem wrote: post #298
tptacek wrote: post #71

I was going to add this as a reply to a comment downthread but I think it's too important to bury. The fundamental rule of career progression in the technology industry is to position yourself as a domain expert in something more specific than "programming" . It's very difficult to "own" "programming" in a way where you can use scarcity to drive integer multiple increases of the median salary. It is not as difficult…

this worries me sometimes; i have finally (in my early 40s) moved from "specialising in the craft of programming" to getting a job in a domain that excites me (language tooling), but i am now a relative amateur in a field that is full of phds and the like, and i am not sure how large the field itself is going to be in say another 10 years. i've been wondering if i should pick up something entirely different on the si…

If you asked a random sampling of 1000+ karma HN users what my specialty was, a bunch of them would say "crypto", but I have 1 semester of college and didn't know CBC mode from CFB mode 8 years ago.

Some fields might be locked up by postgrads (crypto engineering is not one of them, and I doubt language tooling is either). You should check before you invest too much in it. But I would advise against being spooked by academic credentials. Good places to work care more about conversance than credentials, and you get to draft off of all the research work the academics publish before moving into industry to compete with you.

Re: Is software development really a dead-end job after age 35-40?

#300

Post by lkerlk »

darethas wrote: post #53
myth_drannon wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These are genius level people, not someone we can actually ever become one.

Most of the recent psychologists who study expert performers all tend to agree that "genius level" just like "innate talent" is a cognitive distortion and discredits the amount of actual effort, practice, and honing of their craft these individuals put into it. We are all born with the same brain* (edit: see the ted talk on the "After 83,000 brain scans"). Some of us just aren't born in the right environment to curat…

I'm in my early 40s. One of the most difficult things I'm wrestling with is being typecast, people forming a rigid perception of what my interests and skillsets are. What I'm actually working on, interested in, and doing are often not inline with the schema people have in their head about "who I am." I feel this force of expectations pressing in, good and bad. To some extent, you can only make the best of the opportunities you have, and the opportunities that are thrown my way are all what people expect me to be doing, regardless of what I think of it. I have a job, but the politics and management are horrible, and I feel myself being boxed in by social dynamics and cultural factors. And then the effects of these politics are identified as being about me, rather than my situation, and it becomes kind of a vicious negative circle.

My broader point in response to what you're saying is that I've grown deeply suspicious of claims to genius. Sure, there are brilliant people out there, and hardworking people, but there's also a huge element of luck or circumstance. I've seen this firsthand with people at the top of my field I am close to, very famous people, who had huge changes of fortune due to circumstances changing. They sometimes could reverse course, but only because they had enjoyed good circumstances earlier, and people could say "oh, X was brilliant--they just went through a rough patch." The people who got those rough patches early in their careers aren't afforded the same second chances, and are written off.

There are far more brilliant, hardworking people than we give credit to. Most of the advances in our society are not due to single brilliant individuals, but due to incremental improvements day after day, by people who we never learn about. The politics of credit are soul-crushing when you see it up close.

To me the single most pernicious problem with ageism is the stereotype that you are incapable of changing or learning something else. We want to put people into boxes, boxes based on vocation, and ability, and personality, and the older someone gets the more of a box we want to put them in. For people who have happened to land in the right places at the right time, aging can be a wonderful accumulation of security. But for the rest of us, it feels like being punished for your environment, or punished for the stereotype others have of you--it's as if you're being held to account for others' perceptions of you. To some extent, that is a valid stereotype, but to some extent it is not.

I feel more vulnerable now than any point in my life, because I want more than anything to leave, to change, to improve my life and that of my family, but so far it seems impossible without making things worse. When I was 20, people seemed willing to believe I could do anything; now it seems people are skeptical of me doing anything different from what I've done.

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