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Ask HN: Developers aged 50, how have you gotten around age discrimination?

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Re: Ask HN: Developers aged 50, how have you gotten around age discrimination?

#181

Post by scarface74 »

effie wrote: post #44
neolefty wrote: post #22

I'm 47, but my kids are reminding me 50 is coming soon! I'm working as a web engineer — not a manager or even team lead — working remotely from the Midwest for a coastal company, and I'm pretty happy with it. All I can say is keep learning, be friendly, and delight in the energy of all you young people. I am not entirely sure why I have been hired, or even whether it was a good idea for my employer. So maybe stay hum…

Could you share some examples of the things you learned but then became irrelevant? I wonder if we could find some pattern to help people avoid learning modern stuff that will have the same fate.

All technology becomes irrelevant after awhile. You’ve got to keep learning the latest frameworks because your younger competition will.

Re: Ask HN: Developers aged 50, how have you gotten around age discrimination?

#182

Post by Arjuna »

Regarding the topic of career longevity as a software engineer:

Focus on combining your software engineering skills with delivering value in a specific, core competency.

That is to say:

Good software engineers tend to focus on being good at programming, and all of the details that venture entails (e.g., mastery of specific languages, knowledge of specific ways of operating in a given framework, IDE, or tool, etc.).

Better software engineers are capable of all of the preceding, plus the ability to apply a deeper level of problem-solving ability that has been laser-focused by their experience in the art.

Superlative software engineers are capable of all of the preceding, plus the ability to leverage those skills to deliver value as a Subject Matter Expert (SME) in a specific domain.

I believe that you have to be more than just a programmer if you want to maximize your career's longevity, and its associated compensation package.

Re: Ask HN: Developers aged 50, how have you gotten around age discrimination?

#183

Post by PopeDotNinja »

buserror wrote: post #20

I'm 49! I've been working since I'm 17 as a developer -- I think the KEY thing is to be valuable, and be able to change quickly BUT not as quickly as the snowflakes. Ignore the fad tech, get a good, serious, bulletproof base in actual computer science -- I mean, LOW LEVEL stuff--, that will help you learn ANYTHING computer related quickly, and continue surfing that wave with whatever tech you fancy might actually be…

> And, if you're that old, you should be GOOD

I have a personal request... Please don't say "And, if you're ${SOME_DEMOGRAPHIC}, you should be ${SOME_LABEL}"

I understand what you are saying, but it doesn't leave room for someone like me. I got mu first dev job at 40, about 5 years ago. No matter how good I am, it's not possible for me to have more than 5 years of experience. And my age has nothing to do with how good I am.

Re: Ask HN: Developers aged 50, how have you gotten around age discrimination?

#184

Post by james_s_tayler »

jimbokun wrote: post #157
james_s_tayler wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there not some part of you deep down that looks back at the last decade of technology and feels "well I'm glad we're not doing things that way anymore, it was totally wrong for our situation"? It just seems that that is constantly the case. We might well be another 3 or 4 decades away from software development technology hitting real maturity in terms of really streamlined tooling, frameworks, languages that help…

I feel the same way about your comment as diminoten felt about your grand parent comment. You didn't say anything particularly actionable or insightful. Just projecting vaguely pessimistic and defeatist attitude.

I'm glad we're on the same page.

Re: Ask HN: Developers aged 50, how have you gotten around age discrimination?

#186

Post by uptownfunk »

uptownfunk wrote: post #4

There is a technology called hair coloring, stack it with a hoodie and some well fitted slacks, roll up one of the ankle cuffs a bit. Talk like you've exited a startup and are just working for fun, or something to keep you interested, but not like you actually have to.

To all the haters, yes it was half tongue in cheek..

Forget about you 50 year olds out there, I was the stupid 22 year old wearing a suit out of university.. didn’t get any offers till I put on a scandinavian accent and dressed like a hipster.

Re: Ask HN: Developers aged 50, how have you gotten around age discrimination?

#187

Post by billwear »

fredbo22 wrote: post #90
billwear wrote: post #42

I'm 60, and going strong. Most important is bring not only depth and breadth of knowledge but also wisdom to the work. As a graybeard, you're expected to add value because of your years. For example, when my office was going nuts about Kubernetes, devops, etc., it got me a raise to compare this new tech to the original Unix philosophy and point out some lessons learned in Unix design that would help with our containe…

Care to share this wisdom? I'm wrassling with these kontainers now and I'm wondering why people think they're so wonderful.

Hard to do in a comment, but the real value of containers, etc., is really microservices and micro-environments. If you dig in, there are dozens of similarities to both the Unix shell kit and the Unix kernel design. The translatable wisdom starts with principles — do one thing well, smaller is better, and hugely, let data be the interface that assembles individual tools into a process / flowchart / blockchain / supply chain / etc ad nauseum. Let those principles guide your design and how your containers envelope the problem. Like I said, hard to explain in a post, but the gist is that “everything old is new again, except I invented it!”

Re: Ask HN: Developers aged 50, how have you gotten around age discrimination?

#189

Post by acutesoftware »

ghaff wrote: post #96
ryandrake wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Late ‘90s, and it was just as hard as today. Applied to dozens of companies as a Senior in undergrad. Similar 1 on 20 response rate as today. I remember the interview—typical “solve this trivial thing in a language of your choice.” Most college kids picked java. I picked x86 assembly and nailed it. In think that impressed someone.

Heh. The main shareware program I sold for a number of years was written in x86 assembler. The horror. The horror. :-) I was just reminded this afternoon when someone sent me a message on company chat asking if I was the person who wrote said program. When I code these days, I'll take Python.

Well, what was the program you wrote? We wont judge you
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