51–60 of 158 posts
It's not complicated: the costs of software development are almost entirely in labor. As long as that remains true, older people will be at a severe disadvantage simply because they cost 2-5 times as much as a new hire. Once Moore's Law slows down (or whatever we want to call the current golden age we're seemingly still in), this will change, but until then you're just fighting against exponential growth.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why does an older person cost more? Either they produce more, or they’re overpaid. The first type is definitely worth finding and paying... I’ve seen companies built solely by 22-year old script kiddies and usually the stack can’t scale. At that point, you’re in a trickier spot because a 40-year-old who can inject some good sense at the beginning of a project is a lot more abundant than a 40-year-old who can lead a t…
> Why does an older person cost more? Let's take an example case where two engineers are working in a second tier city earning $85,000 per year in salary. One is 25 years old, one is 53 years old. The company covers the entire cost of the employee health insurance. The health insurance for the 53 year old will cost a minimum of 2x what it does for the 25 year old. The cost of health insurance begins to aggressively i…
wow, I'm not sure how good the article is, but my browser threw a hairball trying to load that page. Rarely do I see a page fail as hard as this one did. Has Wired just collapsed under the weight of ad trafic nonsense?
> Team social events shouldn’t require physical prowess or alcoholic excess—so forget paintball and bar crawls. As a 57 year-old backend engineer I would like to keep the bar crawls, thanks.
If anything, I have 24 years of experience to pass on to the younger generation.
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You need to know the domain in complex fields. In my area, the non engineers have no clue what is going on and are almost dead weight. The high output engineers now in management aren't always the best at managing people, but at least they make good decisions and don't slow the rest of us down.
You probably don't need to force the _best_ engineers go into management to achieve this - you just need someone with the necessary background and experience - and from that larger pool you can choose the ones that want to do management, and are more likely going to be good at it. The managers I deal with day-to-day were all once ICs in the same role, but I wouldn't put almost any of them in the same category as the…
> Team social events shouldn’t require physical prowess or alcoholic excess—so forget paintball and bar crawls. As a 57 year-old backend engineer I would like to keep the bar crawls, thanks.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You need to know the domain in complex fields. In my area, the non engineers have no clue what is going on and are almost dead weight. The high output engineers now in management aren't always the best at managing people, but at least they make good decisions and don't slow the rest of us down.
I think this is a good general point. Looking at management as "just hire a good people manager" is too myopic. It takes many things to just be a good "people" manager - empathy, high bar setting, ability to negotiate compromises. And that doesn't include the _other_ skillsets a good engineering manager has: understanding the time tradeoffs of the team, delivery management, ability to resolve technical stalemates, ab…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You need to know the domain in complex fields. In my area, the non engineers have no clue what is going on and are almost dead weight. The high output engineers now in management aren't always the best at managing people, but at least they make good decisions and don't slow the rest of us down.
You probably don't need to force the _best_ engineers go into management to achieve this - you just need someone with the necessary background and experience - and from that larger pool you can choose the ones that want to do management, and are more likely going to be good at it. The managers I deal with day-to-day were all once ICs in the same role, but I wouldn't put almost any of them in the same category as the…
It shouldn't be that way, but it commonly is.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You probably don't need to force the _best_ engineers go into management to achieve this - you just need someone with the necessary background and experience - and from that larger pool you can choose the ones that want to do management, and are more likely going to be good at it. The managers I deal with day-to-day were all once ICs in the same role, but I wouldn't put almost any of them in the same category as the…
For my own knowledge and perhaps others can understand your comment better, what's an IC?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You probably don't need to force the _best_ engineers go into management to achieve this - you just need someone with the necessary background and experience - and from that larger pool you can choose the ones that want to do management, and are more likely going to be good at it. The managers I deal with day-to-day were all once ICs in the same role, but I wouldn't put almost any of them in the same category as the…
For my own knowledge and perhaps others can understand your comment better, what's an IC?