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Programmers: Before you turn 40, get a plan B (2009)

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Re: Programmers: Before you turn 40, get a plan B (2009)

#201

Post by rolltiide »

commandlinefan wrote: post #17
PedroBatista wrote: post #9

This is generally true. It's a combination of many things, from brain "degradation", ageism, simple economic math ( fresh meat is cheaper and more malleable ), other more important interests like having a real life and when you really mute all the marketing BS, your delusions and wishful thinking, the actual work of being a developer/programmer in a professional setting is a really shitty job and sad life for the maj…

> 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.

As long as we exempt engineering teams from OKRs I can tolerate it

Re: Programmers: Before you turn 40, get a plan B (2009)

#202

Post by WorldMaker »

mr_overalls wrote: post #176
asdfman123 wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, you hear all these horror stories about how developers have a "shelf life." In the meantime, though, every single older developer I've met has been extremely knowledgeable and frankly much better at the craft than myself. Look at any hobby -- say, guitar playing. The difference between someone who's been doing it for 4 years and someone who's been doing it 20 years is ridiculous. They're so much better. I feel…

> every single older developer I've met has been extremely knowledgeable To be fair, this observation could be massively influenced by survivorship bias - more talented devs tend to be the ones still programming in older age.

That argument applies in the other direction as well: it's a very relatively young industry full of big industry-wide disruptions at least once a decade since it has been its own industry. Companies with young median and mean ages may have been more likely to survive (or evolve out of) some of those big early disruptions, but that may not be a long term equilibrium for the industry.

Keep in mind, too, how much the 80s, 90s, and 00s median/mean ages were impacted by "flash flood" millionaires that could retire early simply by how much money was thrown around in the various "software revolution" and "Dot Com" booms.

Re: Programmers: Before you turn 40, get a plan B (2009)

#203

Post by blub »

scarface74 wrote: post #178
wrs wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amen to all that. OA> Herein is the source of the problem. The more irrelevant experience a candidate has, the more lopsided the utility/value equation becomes… No, the source of the problem is the idea that 10 years of “C++ experience” is “irrelevant” to a project using Rails, as if development experience is somehow locked to the language you happened to do the development in. Being a valuable senior developer is ab…

Being a valuable senior developer is about 10% what technology you know and about 90% how good you are at working in a team to solve a business problem with a machine, and those fundamental skills haven’t changed much since 1960. That’s true. But if you haven’t learned that in 10-15 years - there is something wrong. That means the difference between someone with 15 years and 30 years would be marginal.

Unless working in some subfields of SE which have such depth.

The most popular nowadays don't though... mobile & web have a short half life.

Re: Programmers: Before you turn 40, get a plan B (2009)

#204

Post by ken »

asdfman123 wrote: post #135
C4stor wrote: post #46

I'm not sure I'm buying that. The JVM ? Still rocking it 20 years after. Memory allocations pattern ? Still there. The network stack ? Well, doesn't seem to have changed a lot. 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 t…

Yeah, you hear all these horror stories about how developers have a "shelf life." In the meantime, though, every single older developer I've met has been extremely knowledgeable and frankly much better at the craft than myself. Look at any hobby -- say, guitar playing. The difference between someone who's been doing it for 4 years and someone who's been doing it 20 years is ridiculous. They're so much better. I feel…

> In the meantime, though, every single older developer I've met has been extremely knowledgeable and frankly much better at the craft than myself.

That just means the field isn't totally corrupt with fashion or nepotism or whatever. Survivor Bias is a perfectly plausible explanation, too.

Every single older guitarist I've met has been a fantastically successful rock musician.

Re: Programmers: Before you turn 40, get a plan B (2009)

#205

Post by twblalock »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #191
pmiller2 wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That only works if you start at 25 when you graduate. Not a viable plan for someone approaching 40 who wants to make sure they can continue to support themselves into their 60's and beyond.

Why? Someone who starts at 40 is probably earning more than someone at 25. And someone at 40 has fewer years left to support themselves after their 15-20 years of saving are up.

Because 15 years of compound interest in the stock market more than covers the difference in income between a 25 year old and a 40 year old. The 25 year old has enough time to take risks with money, while the 40 year old needs to be thinking more about preservation of capital.

Re: Programmers: Before you turn 40, get a plan B (2009)

#206

Post by asdfman123 »

convolvatron wrote: post #165
asdfman123 wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think a lot of problems some older developers have is that the culture has shifted. Maybe I'm off the mark, but I feel like older devs come from a world where programming was all about programming and it was less a formal career than it is now. To succeed in programming, you have to work well in a business. You can't be Linus Torvalds, walking around with a big ego, unless you're so important it's hard to get rid o…

I agree with your premise but not your reasons. personally I'm a programmer - I know enough about business to know I don't have good insight. everyone I talk to doesn't want* a programmer in the older sense. they want people to integrate external large packages. they don't want to to test, they want to prop something up and see if it makes money. they don't want to talk about architecture and features and make plans…

Well, that's the thing. Most jobs are 80% stuff you don't want to do and 20% stuff you do. You're not being paid to do your hobby, you're paid to make money for the business and do what your bosses say.

There are many places though that understand writing good code, even if it's boring, is important, and any decent programmer can go fish until they find a workplace like that.

Having a solid older developer around is important even if most of the work is boring. You're there to help the younger folk from making costly mistakes.

Re: Programmers: Before you turn 40, get a plan B (2009)

#209

Post by asdfman123 »

WorldMaker wrote: post #202
mr_overalls wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> every single older developer I've met has been extremely knowledgeable To be fair, this observation could be massively influenced by survivorship bias - more talented devs tend to be the ones still programming in older age.

That argument applies in the other direction as well: it's a very relatively young industry full of big industry-wide disruptions at least once a decade since it has been its own industry. Companies with young median and mean ages may have been more likely to survive (or evolve out of) some of those big early disruptions, but that may not be a long term equilibrium for the industry. Keep in mind, too, how much the 80…

I seriously doubt the number of instant millionaires is significant enough to impact the total numbers. 25% of programmers did not become rich enough to retire, and if so, I'm doing everything wrong.

Re: Programmers: Before you turn 40, get a plan B (2009)

#210

Post by yowlingcat »

zzzcpan wrote: post #179
asdfman123 wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, you hear all these horror stories about how developers have a "shelf life." In the meantime, though, every single older developer I've met has been extremely knowledgeable and frankly much better at the craft than myself. Look at any hobby -- say, guitar playing. The difference between someone who's been doing it for 4 years and someone who's been doing it 20 years is ridiculous. They're so much better. I feel…

> As long as you get off the sinking ship of technologies that are obviously waning But then you would have to compete with young people starting out in the same technologies. And they are more naive, more easily manipulated and exploited, corporations love that and prefer that to 20 year experience in the field they can't even understand could be important to all the new technologies.

That's sometimes the plan. But as always, you get what you pay for. Some management teams are savvier than others.
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