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What they say about age is true

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Re: What they say about age is true

#71

Post by j_baker »

maukdaddy wrote: post #43
j_baker wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I have yet to hear a cogent argument on why folks in their late 40s or early 50s are not adequately represented in programming positions start ups or otherwise. What is unique about programming as a practice that make it unsuitable for professional beyond a certain age?" Bear in mind that programming is still a relatively new field. There are simply more young programmers out there. We see ageism more because it's a…

Bear in mind that programming is still a relatively new field. HAHA what?! People have been programming for almost 60 years now. Hell, your bank is probably running code that is 40+ years old.

Just so you know, civil engineers have known how to build bridges for over two millennia. Does 60 years still feel like a long time?

Re: What they say about age is true

#72

Post by hastydork »

You guys talk about ageism in a (mostly) ageist way and missed the point of the piece. It's about your attitudes, your negativeness. You're proving the authors point, but are too shallow and naive and inexperienced to see it.

Re: What they say about age is true

#74

Post by lsc »

maddalab wrote: post #12
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…

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…

>What is unique about programming as a practice that make it unsuitable for professional beyond a certain age?

I'm not sure. I've worked with several /really good/ old guys. Even with this virtualization and 'cloud' stuff, a lot of *NIX knowledge that was relevant in the 70s is still relevant now. It's just the hairball of bash scripts you used to need to manage many servers at once has become more standardized. You still need guys who actually understand what is going on.

For all positions, and /especially/ technical positions, I think government workers tend do be older than private sector workers... it makes sense, as the way pension pays out means that you get better pension contributions from your later years of work, and the same goes for healthcare.

Really, for old folks, the private sector can't (or won't) touch those kinds of benefits. I think the thing of it is, the private sector will pay more for youngsters (that is, if you don't care about risk) while the public sector will pay more for old folks, so it doesn't surprise me that you don't see many old programmers in the private sector.

All of my parents work for the government; my stepfather as a .net programmer(retired.) There were years where I was making more than them, but their ending salaries were pretty comfortable, and upon retirement, they get free health insurance /and/ a very significant percentage of that salary for the rest of their lives.

I don't have the temperament for government work, but really, as you get older, if your choice is individual contributor work in the private sector vs. individual contributor work in the public sector, staying in the private sector past the age of 45 or so is just plain irrational.

I've thought long and hard about this, and the idea is vaguely terrifying. I told myself that if my business wasn't supporting me by the time I was 30, I'd start preparing for public sector employment. I'll be 30 this October, and so far, it looks like I've made it, but only just.

Because the public sector has such silly low starting wages for technical people, they don't have that much home-grown programming experience. An experienced private sector programmer is going to have a relatively easy time scoring a public sector job when it's time to settle down for his last 15-20 years before retirement; so I think what we see here is the natural inclination people have to seek out the highest paying jobs they can get.

Re: What they say about age is true

#75

Post by brilliant »

ojbyrne wrote: post #67
pg wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Hey it's not the companies that push this supposed innovation, it's the new crop of engineers wanting to create a hurdle for others to jump over. Some knowledge that they have exclusivity on. Engineers have been doing this since the dawn of time, but since you guys are so green you don't know that.

Most engineers (like every other profession and occupation) are mediocre. They look for job security in incompatibily. I once had a programming partner who refused to document his work. I asked why after pleading with him repeatedly to leave a trail behind him. "Job security." At another place, the programmers had a slogan "comments are for sissies." Same idea.

So if you take something like C and permute it slightly so that a C programmer doesn't have the skill, you now have something that makes you marketable over that person. You can snow the non-technical manager into believing that your older colleague can't cut it because he knows C and you know Javascript.

In this world of mediocrity there are a very small number of gems, people who work for the user, who strive to make their tech work better for people. That's a skill that develops over the years, you get better at it every decade, because you know more about people. When you're in your 20s you don't even have a clue about yourself.

And most of you commenting here are the mediocre kind of programmer (if you're programmers at all). The ones who are questioning the broad conclusions are the ones I'd want to work with, and I don't care how young or old they are. What I care about is if their minds are at work and if they can relate to other people as equals despite superficial differences like gender, race, age.

Re: What they say about age is true

#76

Post by wccrawford »

mechanical_fish wrote: post #66

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…

Or to put it in a car analogy:

If we hadn't reinvented the wheel, we'd be using stone tires.

Reinventing is not always a mistake... And sometimes you have to make a lot of mistakes to make progress.

Re: What they say about age is true

#77

Post by wccrawford »

Tichy wrote: post #49

What about startups founded by "old" people? Wouldn't they like to work with people of their own age group? I think if I were 25 and launching a startup, hiring somebody twice my age really might feel a little bit weird. Maybe this alone could explain it - if people only like to hire people who are younger than themselves, there would be fewer places willing to hire the older you got.

The owner of my company is a only few years younger than me and that feels -weird-.

I suppose that when I'm 50, it won't feel quite as weird to work for people younger than me, but the bigger the gap, the weirder it's going to feel.

Re: What they say about age is true

#78

Post by dagw »

mechanical_fish wrote: post #63
dieterrams wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

That would be the Abel prize. Although I wouldn't call it a better or worse prize. The two awards simply have different goals they want to recognize. Abel is more of lifetime achievement award and Fields is more of a recognition of brilliant younger mathematicians and an encouragement to go on to greater things.

Re: What they say about age is true

#79

Post by ScottBurson »

helmut_hed wrote: post #69
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, fundamentall…

JSON and XML (especially XML) are not better approaches than what preceded them. S-expressions have been around since 1958.
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