41–50 of 446 posts
What are some common Plan Bs?
Save and invest 40% of your income. After 15 to 20 years you should be able to declare financial independence, if you want to...
This is definitely a problem, particularly for those that aren't in tech cities with endless jobs, but the alternatives discussed in this article are all....not great. * Work as a consultant - I'm biased here from my own bad experiences, but consultants are often treated as a source of future problems, not solutions. (largely because of communication and incentives, not because of programming skill) * Work in managem…
I'm 50 and still programming. Programming is all I know how to do. If that was taken away from me, I would just rot to death. I don't want to be anything else, and I refuse to be forced to do something I don't want to do. I'll learn to farm and support myself that way. So, is it still preferable for the manager to not hire anyone and let the work sit undone rather than to be forced to work with a detestable "older" w…
Anyone have more data on this? What happens to programmers as they age, are they in fact unemployable?
I'm over 40 - I found myself suddenly back on the job market a couple of years ago when the company I worked for abruptly went out of business. I was only out of work for three weeks before I found something else. I keep current, though - one of the realities of this profession is that you have to keep learning, and you have to do it "on your own time", if you want to stay in it. Personally, I find that to be a reaso…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> the actual work of being a developer/programmer in a professional setting is a really shitty job and sad life The thing is, it doesn't have to be and, until relatively recently, honestly wasn't. It's a shitty job and a sad life because we have open offices, ticket-tracking systems and daily standups. There was a time when programming was exciting and rewarding.
I would add code reviews to that. The advent of those was when it really stopped being fun for me, because it's really hard to keep that from turning into "your boss nitpicking every line you write."
The older guys, they seem like they had the time to correctly learn the unix network tools, the jvm debugging ones, the memory inspection ones. I've known older devs for which I have the utmost respect because I felt like they can just debug the shit out of anything happening on a computer, with tools I don't even know of but have been there for decades.
And here I am, needing to google how use tcpdump or jstack, and scrambling to correctly understand the result.
I agree that new tech is always stacking, but I feel like it's pretty damn hard to catch up on the in fact still very relevant and important old one, because it's no longer taught, no longer a meetup topic, no longer hype. And the new one is really easy to learn when you realize that it's 90% rehashing of old concepts (Observables are all the hype in javascript ? Well, great, I've learnt that pattern 15 years ago...)
Admittedly, I have no clue if the management realizes that !
But the impact of this knowledge, from what I observed, is really huge on productivity, and is especially a boon when the production is on fire or generally when tricky stuff happens.
So, respect for the elders, and please come and teach in conferences and meetups, we need more wisdom and less hype !
Conversely the skill-ceiling on managing technical projects is incredibly high. So although one certainly can efficiently stay on as an engineer, there is a much larger pool of opportunities in technical management, and they are much easier to find if you're grinding away at a FANG / enterprise company / growing startup / whatever.
If you want to do work that rewards many years of experience, it's there. Management work is just much more likely to fall into your lap (which, let's face it, is how the median employee finds anything).
For additional context, I also don't really think "programmer" is a profession in a vacuum. You need to level up inside a business vertical to really start adding specialized value, otherwise yes, you're a fungible cog. There's no shame in that, it just is what it is.
Anyone have more data on this? What happens to programmers as they age, are they in fact unemployable?
Here's the thing about being an "old" programmer. If you can't keep up with the newfangled shit, then you probably shouldn't be competing against younger programmers, because at skill-level-parity they will beat you on speed and total hours spent, eh?
For example, the fact that FP is finally making it into mainstream development shouldn't throw you if you have had twenty years to experiment with e.g. Haskell, eh? The only thing close to surprising in decades is how well backpropagation works when you have hella data and CPU power.
By the time you have been programming computers for twenty years, you should be really good, or you're just a "jobber". There's no shame in that, the world needs jobbers, but yeah, just like in wrestling, there are very few old jobbers.
If you're not a jobber, then at some point you see through the fashion-driven parts of the IT ecosystem and figure out what you really want to do with yourself. At this point a lot of people switch to management, or start their own company. But that leaves the field (of programming) to the die-hards that really give a fig about it. So if you're still in the game, late in life, and you're capable, then yes, there is high demand and you can e.g. command hefty salaries.
(Disclosure: I'm 45 and employable.)
Apart from that statement not really ageing well, it doesn't really make sense as there will always be a consistent demand for C++ for embedded etc., likewise Java for enterprise, as they are mature and proven technologies in instutitions.
Just as there is an established market for RoR with companies that adopted it early on.