TBH, I really don't care about career advancement. I don't need "half-mil-a-year offers" to fund my lifestyle, so as long as I can continue to draw a steady paycheck, I'm good. Not everyone's a climber, and being in "a dead-end job" isn't really a bad thing if you're not ambitious. I'd just like to spread the message that it is absolutely OK to plateau. You don't need to be a renowned domain expert, you don't need to…
Honestly that just sounds sad to me. I don't see how finding a plateau in life is ever a good thing.
Substitute the word balance for plateau and you'll begin to understand. Desire is suffering.
>"it-must-be-challenging-or-I-get-bored" syndrome I don't know if I can handle this one getting worse.
I hear ya. I've long had the challenge that a problem is interesting and exciting until I see how I would solve it. Then I can barely force myself to implement the solution. I get it done, but if it gets any worse I'll never be able to finish anything.
Has this condition been named and explored further? Anyway, if you have this tendency become an architect at a large company.
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…
I also suffer from that "it-must-be-challenging-or-I-get-bored" syndrome. Is there any way to fight it?
but how many people who are middle age try to "enter" the industry and succeed? I can answer that for you: those who have close friends in power who wish to hire them. As you age yourself, you may see this if you are sensitive to it. We need to separate the two groups, because thrre are two issues here. 1.aging programmers already working in the industry and 2.those who are accomplished in another dying field who dec…
Skepticism of bootcamps (and other non traditional paths) is not the same thing as agism. This industry is further along in figuring out the former than others, but you're right that it has further to go. It's just not the same as agism, though.
You are correct, of course. But when someone over 40 has a much deeper understanding of programming in several languages, a CS degree, AND experience from 2 bootcamps, AND at teaching (in 2 bootcamps, at a University, and with private clients) AND has coding experience at a school, with private clients, and one's own side projects in several languages- a linguistics blog, journalism and technical writing experience, and they are then turned down for a junior technical writing role at a company where the tech writers can't code at the same level, I don't know... it is hard to say what that is, isn't it? But yes, I completely understand skepticism of the breadth and depth of the skills of those whose ONLY experience of programming was at a bootcamp. And when that same company makes a mistake in their own assessment (which you politely point out after you are told you are incorrect in your technical writing), and when that same company hires someone with virtually no experience in any of these things as its next writer hire and also for its manager of technical writing, and while those two employees are in their 20s...what would you think? Am I excluding a possible interpretation? "Culture fit"? The candidate we speak of doesn't fit the expected cultural profile in several areas for a tech company. Might it be that in some other form? It is just really tough to say. I realize it stinks to see how blatant ageism can be. It makes all of us feel unsettled for our own futures-- it is also just stupid and embarrassing in an industry that prides itself on being so smart. But we have to get real about it. We also have to get real about sexism and racism. It seems to take more than a village (of women at Google, Uber, Tessla, etc.) shouting it out with lawsuits and news articles. We have not even begun to handle race issues in tech, perhaps because so few can break through. We need to face these things and stop trying to explain them away with coded words like "culture fit" or "updated skills" (when the skills are updated, of course). We need to look around our departments and seriously ask if there was ever a new hire over 40. Then, we can dig into these issues. We have to stop knee-jerk dismissing the stories of those who are shafted by these practices. Yes, it is uncomfortable.
I'm frankly flabbergasted why silicon valley (apparently, from reading articles here) has this youth fixation. In my software dev experience the least useful people on the team have invariably been the youngest. My pet theory answer for my own question goes thusly: Young people are more easily indoctrinated / brainwashed and dominated and thats what Google and whoever really want in their employees.
It's not rocket science. Younger devs can be paid less and generally will voluntarily work longer hours for free. Sure, you need some senior developers mixed in as well but young energetic devs are more bang for the buck.
I have yet to see this stereotype play out in practice.
What I have seen is that when the younger ones look like they're working really hard, it's usually because they don't have a full grasp on whatever the task is, and they're putting in more hours because they keep getting their work wrong.
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 o…
I was under the impression that these sorts of BigCorps were actually a better place for the underrepresented and frequently have more diverse technical workforces (along race/age/gender lines). I just got hired by one in Texas that reflects that impression, which I had before I ever interviewed there.
That is good to know. I think Austin shows promise in this way.
Thanks fo sharing. Just wanted to comment that while generalists do not get outlandish compensation offers, they are more likely to qualify for a wider set of jobs. In a way, it is a different strategy in the employment game: you go for a less risky bet than specializing in something, and by that increase the chances of being employed.
Not really... because then you're just competition against a larger pool of people. I.e. a generalist is common, while a domain expert is not, so more generalists means more competition.
Right. That's why the compensation is lower. There are a lot more jobs available for generalist skills though, so it's much easier to find jobs to apply for (which was my original point).
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…
> 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 do things well and will have a difficult time doing things just to get them done. It's fairly common for projects to need completion over correctness and quality. This is where younger developers are great. They don't know they're creating technical debt, so they have no angst over it. But you will and this is bad for the project and for you.
I disagree: it is when you are young that:
* you spend and lose your time reinventing the wheel, either because you don't know the wheel you want already exists, or because you are sure you can do a better wheel (and after an extra 3 months it ends up being square);
* lose time overdesigning things because you want to apply all your lessons and your new readings, despite the fact that they do not map to the problem you need to solve.
Looks like a lot of people, net, agreed with the claim: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/4417...
This comment seems to be more about putting all your eggs into one basket than the idea that every technology is going to die in a few years. Most of the popular production languages today are 10+ years old, for instance.
Not every technology, but rather random technology from the set of things-which-currently-look-good-when-seeking-work.
Important difference.
For example, at one extreme, all tech lasts exactly three years; at one of several other extremes, 50% of tech is eternal and the rest lasts exactly 1.5 years.
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 fundamental rule of career progression in the technology industry is to position yourself as a domain expert in something more specific than "programming". Is it a rule, though? I hope not. I'm a 40-year-old generalist, and so far I haven't had problems finding work. Sure, I'm not going to get a half-mil offer from anyone, but that was never the case at any age.
Well, he was talking about growth, not continuing to find work. I suppose I haven’t had trouble finding work either, yet, but for me to grow in my career I’d need to do something different. I feel pretty close to topped-out, at least income wise I believe I’m on the verge of diminishing returns.
I’m ok with my income and what I do, so I’m ok with not necessarily growing in my career, but a lot of people are uncomfortable with that idea. And there is some risk associated with it. But I am just tired of the tech industry, I just want to put in my work and then focus on the rest of my life. Growing a career further in this industry is not an appealing prospect, I do not really enjoy it and lost my zeal for it quite a while ago.