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Surviving as an ‘Old’ in the Tech World

wired.com

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Re: Surviving as an ‘Old’ in the Tech World

#91

Post by kokey »

pm90 wrote: post #18
ggg9990 wrote: post #12

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…

So this is a nuanced question and requires a detailed response. But the gist is that older folks don't necessarily cost more. I've seen many older folks continue to work as developers for most of their lives (albeit this is outside Silicon Valley). But for many older developers who continue on the technical track, they have accumulated a lot of experience building software and they do bring a lot to the table, in ter…

More experienced developers are also more willing and able to take on a pre-existing production code base and clean it up and plan how to divide and conquer to improve, migrate and replace it, while younger developers often prefer to work on greenfield projects or want to throw out and replace existing work. Younger management doesn't always understand this difference, and more experienced developers might be contributing in avoiding a lot of costly mistakes but this benefit is mostly invisible.

This is really down to what side of the tech industry it's happening on and what that side needs. Working with new web and mobile technologies delivering novel applications for consumers are more suited to younger people as opposed to say developing, maintaining and evolving systems for aviation, transport and military automation and safety or certain parts of finance.

Re: Surviving as an ‘Old’ in the Tech World

#93

Post by kulu2002 »

Good article. I fail to visualise this; tech-people between age group 25-40, who are already at the peak of their career, like some are already CxOs, others are VPs and higher positions in large orgs. What are these people gonna do after say 25-30 years from now? I am sure there would be a high tech professional life cycle something similar to tech product life-cycle. Though this is very subjective phenomenon.

Re: Surviving as an ‘Old’ in the Tech World

#94

Post by Angostura »

markbnj wrote: post #29

> 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.

As a 53 year old, I'd quite enjoy paintballing please.

Re: Surviving as an ‘Old’ in the Tech World

#96

Post by varjag »

yekepa wrote: post #90
itronitron wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

promoting people out of engineering and into management is among the worst things that an organization can do

It depends, sometimes it’s a good move to give an unofficial leader an official position.

What often happens is a mediocre but ambitious engineer with only a few years experience tries hard to get into management track and succeeds. Sometimes they end up being good managers; sometimes they don't.

Re: Surviving as an ‘Old’ in the Tech World

#97

Post by CalRobert »

afpx wrote: post #62
Aloha wrote: post #33

I'm in the opposite of this situation, I'm among the 10% of the youngest employees in the company, when around 60% of the company will be retiring within a decade. We're also in one of those high cost housing markets, and while I'm very well paid comparatively to others in my particular part of the technology sector - its still not enough to buy a house, or settle down - but they're somewhat unsympathetic when I talk…

If it makes you feel any better, it wasn’t until I was 30 that my wife and I had enough for a downpayment for a house. When I graduated, my salary was $40k. And, 3-bedroom houses, in my economically-attractive, but not extravagent, area were around $300k. Rent for a 2br was about $1000 / month, so saving $60k took quite a few years. Of course, several co-workers had well-off parents who bought them their first house…

This comment kind of illustrates the knowledge assymetry.

We're talking about people in their thirties. People who graduated in 2008 and were amazing candidates but couldn't get a job because there _were none_. People who were then passed up for internships in 2013 as things got better because every hiring manager who graduated in 2006 (with maybe 20 grand in debt easily paid off) or boomer (who had no student debt but even if they did could gasp discharge it in bankruptcy) reviewing CV's thinks "wtf has this idiot been doing the last 4 years; hire that fresh grad".

Maybe they'll be able to afford a house when they're 50. Because paying off a mountain of student loans AND paying insane rent AND saving for a deposit (and god help you if you want children) has gotten to be basically impossible for a huge chunk of the population.

And yeah, there are lower cost of living places. Hope your partner and yourself can find work in the same one. And that somehow they magically make your student loans cheaper.

Re: Surviving as an ‘Old’ in the Tech World

#98

Post by icebraining »

teddyh wrote: post #77
markbnj wrote: post #29

> 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.

None for me, please: https://web.archive.org/web/20130808111450/http://ryanfunduk...

That culture definitely has a problem, but it's unrelated to having some social events, among many others and separate from the workplace or conference area, where drinking is involved. Even if they're bar crawls.

Re: Surviving as an ‘Old’ in the Tech World

#99

Post by icebraining »

incompatible wrote: post #27
qubax wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not just wired. Almost every news site. Ad block, update your host file, etc. Ever since forbes had viruses/malware for ads a few years ago, I don't visit a news site without protection.

I'm using an adblocker, all I get is a brief flash of something and then a blank page. Maybe I'm too old for Wired now.

Loads fine for me with uBlock Origin enabled (and blocking 28 URLs).
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