What they say about age is true • Hacker News Board

Re: What they say about age is true

#61

Post by Dn_Ab » Mon, Aug 30, 2010, 2:48 AM UTC

pg wrote: post #15

maddalab wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The grumpy-ness aside which is difficult to judge in an unbiased manner and every one for himself, the question is still relevant, and something that I can relate to tho not being in the affected age segment. I look around at my last 2 work places and have yet to meet more than the occasional mid-40s professional who is in positions of technical ownership. Most of them have moved into positions of management (paper p…

The answer may be related to the early age at which mathematicians seem to peak. Another factor is the rate of change in technology. Mere experience may be an obstacle there. When you start knowing nothing and pick a technology to learn, you naturally tend to pick the newest one. Whereas for an old person, learning new technologies is something you do out of duty as much as eagerness. An old person learning new techn…

I disagree with everything you say on multiple points.

Firstly, Mathematicians don't peak at an early age this is just one of the many nonsense Hardy spouted. And I say this as a non mathematician There are many examples of people who not only contributed work at a late age > 30 (some near or over 40) but did so while being outside of the academic community - George Green, Faraday (physics) and Grassman. Then there are those such as Weirstrass who started late or those who produced an amazing work later, some in addition to earlier success e.g. Poisson, Bayes, Fourier or Hamilton whose quaternions came quite late. And then there were the Eulers who were just none stop greatness.

Nextly, although maths is a subject where some topics require very little background knowledge the vast majority of these low hanging fruit (knowledge wise) are gone. It was much easier to sketch out the core of an algebra while still in jail and have it be new and profound 200 years ago than it is today. As the amount of knowledge increases I expect the mean age of precocious contributions to increase. Knowledge and even experience will increasingly become a hard minimum.

Finally, you imply that only young people want to build things and have enthusiasm. I think an eagerness to learn and build great works is something you never lose. At least I hope so, otherwise growing old sounds like a very miserable prospect to me. And while the examples of old fellows not keeping up abound, I think this is simply a philosophical state that can be consciously guarded against.

Re: What they say about age is true

#62

Post by nir » Mon, Aug 30, 2010, 2:50 AM UTC

bconway wrote: post #20

If you invest in tech companies, try bringing in some tech experience. It might push your comfort level. It also might make you much more competitive. Let me know when you're willing to take startup pay ( real startup pay, not $100K instead of $130K). Most 50 year-olds that I talk to aren't.

If you're a startup with little cash looking for talent, you can either (a) offer co-founder level equity, (b) employ, perhaps remotely, people living where market rate is cheap or (c) hire someone at market rate for limited scope consulting work, hoping they produce enough value to be worth it.

Unless your name is Steve Jobs, when you choose (d) hire someone for far below market and compensate them with employee level equity, you're basically looking for a sucker. Most engineers realize this way before they turn 50.

Re: What they say about age is true

#63

Post by mechanical_fish » Mon, Aug 30, 2010, 2:53 AM UTC

dieterrams wrote: post #51

pg wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The answer may be related to the early age at which mathematicians seem to peak. Another factor is the rate of change in technology. Mere experience may be an obstacle there. When you start knowing nothing and pick a technology to learn, you naturally tend to pick the newest one. Whereas for an old person, learning new technologies is something you do out of duty as much as eagerness. An old person learning new techn…

> The answer may be related to the early age at which mathematicians seem to peak. I may have been searching badly, but I couldn't really find anything to support this idea, at least in terms of a cognitive deficit. The following was the best discussion about mathematicians and age that I found: http://sps.nus.edu.sg/~limchuwe/articles/youth.html Bullet points: - Mean age of best contribution by mathematicians is 38.…

The Fields Medal cannot be awarded to mathematicians over the age of 40.

Say what?

Geez, you're right. Wikipedia:

The Medal also has an age limit: a recipient's 40th birthday must not occur before 1 January of the year in which the Fields Medal is awarded. As a result some great mathematicians have missed it by having done their best work (or having had their work recognized) too late in life.

Clearly someone needs to endow a better math prize. You know, one that is for the best math, not the best math by a specific sort of person.

Re: What they say about age is true

#64

Post by maxawaytoolong » Mon, Aug 30, 2010, 2:53 AM UTC

bconway wrote: post #20

If you invest in tech companies, try bringing in some tech experience. It might push your comfort level. It also might make you much more competitive. Let me know when you're willing to take startup pay ( real startup pay, not $100K instead of $130K). Most 50 year-olds that I talk to aren't.

Since one can make 6 figs + equity at any of the hip startups in NYC, most 25 year olds won't, either... unless they are stupid.

Re: What they say about age is true

#65

Post by gyepi » Mon, Aug 30, 2010, 2:56 AM UTC

neilk wrote: post #33

nostrademons wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My Intro Philosophy professor phrased it like this: "If you want to sound smart in front of your friends, make a distinction." Our judgments of how intelligent people are usually come from how many relevant details they are able to see that we would otherwise have missed. So someone who asserts that Twitter is exactly the same as 'talk' is dumb. Someone who asserts that Twitter is exactly the same as 'talk', except t…

Yeah, but I think your philosophy prof was suggesting that useless distinctions are the stock in trade of tiny minds. For instance, a web client that allows you to use IRC protocol is generally Just-The-Same-As-IRC. Putting it on the web doesn't do anything really different, except maybe that one doesn't have the inconvenience of installing IRC software. But let's say that you had a really good help channel for your…

"""I don't know how to phrase this right, but there is a knack of noticing material distinctions, rather than useless ones. Maybe it's in noticing when certain limitations have been removed or added.""""

Knowing when a distinction is material frequently depends on context, goals, and experience. As Louis Pasteur said, "Chance favors only the prepared mind." I would be a little more generous, but still he's essentially right.

Re: What they say about age is true

#66

Post by mechanical_fish » Mon, Aug 30, 2010, 3:20 AM UTC

I have a hypothesis: One secret to staying "young" in software is to avoid uttering statements of the form:

we chuck our experience, wholesale, every ten years or so... These are gratuitous reinventions.

Even when these statements seem to be true. Don't train yourself to think like this. It isn't going to help.

Yes, people -- especially the young, but the old as well -- go over the same ground a lot in software. That's called practice.

It's partly a generational thing: New generations need to learn from mistakes by making some of those mistakes; the process of having your elders lecture you about the mistakes is great, and can save you valuable time, but it is imperfect. Some things you just have to experience for yourself.

But it's mostly an evolutionary thing. We reinvent because the environment keeps changing, especially in computing, which has been rocked by epochal changes over the course of the last forty years. (Take out your iPhone and compare it to the machines and networks in use in 1970. Then compare the owners of modern smartphones to the owners of machines and networks in 1970.) The reinvented thing never turns out quite the same as the original, and those differences -- many of which look like accidents, some of which are in fact accidents -- are usually where the progress can be found. The new tool fits the new problem better than the old tool because it evolved in the presence of the new problem.

Re: What they say about age is true

#67

Post by ojbyrne » Mon, Aug 30, 2010, 3:20 AM UTC

pg wrote: post #59

ojbyrne wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not exactly thrilled by the use of the word "grumpy" since its a typical code word used to denigrate people over forty, very much like "pushy" blacks and "bitchy" women. If Dave was 25, I'd almost guarantee you wouldn't use that word. In fact just by using that single word you've strengthened his argument.

It's impossible to imagine that post being written by someone who was 25. Seriously; go back and read it.

Disagree. It's easy to imagine that being written by a 25 year black man in 1955, or a 25 year old woman in 1965. It's angry, not "grumpy."

Concerning technology, Dave has a specific thesis in mind, that I think has at least a little merit. Quite simply, large technology companies push "innovation" that has little actual value to the public at large. They do this to create barriers to entry so that smaller companies who devote less than 100% of their resources to keep up with the technology that the big companies champion (i.e. they devote some resources to sales, marketing, creating a business) get marginalized.

Re: What they say about age is true

#68

Post by nir » Mon, Aug 30, 2010, 3:29 AM UTC

A lot of people here seem to focus on reasons why startups won't hire Dave Winer, but the this isn't a Winer-specific situation. Startups aren't filled with personable JSON-loving 50 year olds, or even 40 year olds.

One reason may be that most current web startups just don't do work that is difficult or innovative enough to warrant that level of experience/cost. You don't need 20 years' experience to create Reddit, for example, and even though a veteran team might have avoided pick the wrong language initially or storing users' passwords in plaintext, these didn't really hurt Reddit that much.

There's also the employee's side. In my late thirties I already find it hard to get excited about self indulgent social-location-based-nano-blogging apps aspiring to get mentioned at Wired. When you look for something that's either really challenging or tries to solve a real problem, your range of choice is greatly limited.

Re: What they say about age is true

#69

Post by helmut_hed » Mon, Aug 30, 2010, 3:47 AM UTC

pg wrote: post #5

Ironically while arguing one side of the case he becomes an example supporting the other. He sounds so grumpy and closed minded. Who'd want to hire him? His thesis that technology hasn't changed is false in any case. E.g. while the fundamentals of algorithms haven't changed, that sort of knowledge is less central than it used to be; for better or worse, software development seems to be evolving into something where y…

I've got to come in on Dave's side on this one. He does not say that "technology hasn't changed." Here is what he says:

"And if you think there's much difference between JavaScript and C, you're dreaming. Or between JSON and XML or plain text files. These are gratuitous reinventions."

Bear in mind that he is taking a very high level view here, and think about what he's saying again. Are not JSON and XML, fundamentally, simply better ways to put structured data into text files with formats everyone can agree on? Sure, they are better approaches than what preceded them (CSV? random ad-hoc formats?), but fundamentally, if I said the previous sentence to a programmer who gone into a coma in 1985 and just now woke up, wouldn't they understand it pretty quickly?

As for JavaScript and C, well, the syntax is C-like, and you add closures, a class system, and some standard scripting language features like built-in containers and a slack typing model, as far as I can tell from coming up to speed on it recently. Wouldn't this stuff be familiar to someone who'd learned and coded in a number of different languages in their career? Surely with a few examples to follow they could be up to speed quickly.

Now, of course he's exaggerating, and venting a bit as well. But for a programmer with a lot of experience, these innovations don't seem that special. Good ideas, sure, but not enough to make everything you've learned obsolete.

Re: What they say about age is true

#70

Post by frognibble » Mon, Aug 30, 2010, 5:29 AM UTC

I am a 50-something engineer who recently worked at a well known startup. I am planning a new startup now. I reviewed my contemporary connections on LinkedIn to see how many I'd consider for my startup. I did not find many.

Many of my contemporaries have climbed the management or technical ladders to the point where they have not practiced the skills needed in a startup for years. They are managing fifty or more people. They are architects at large corporations. They are not designing products and writing code.

A smaller group of my contemporaries are set for life financially. They are no longer working or are only pretending to work.

Of those that are still actively working, I know that some of them have ratcheted up their lifestyle to match their high compensation. It would be a major adjustment for them to live on a startup salary.

There might be ageism in the startup world, but I think it's definitely the case that the pool of eligible and interested 50-somethings is small.

I personally have not experienced ageism. I was 20 years older than everybody else at my last startup.