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

improvingsoftware.com

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

#241

Post by bsder »

scarface74 wrote: post #173
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…

Yes. But as the article said, there is a diminishing amount of value after every year of true experience after a number of years. I would say around 10. I definitely don’t believe in the “10x Engineer” (individual contributor) - yes they do exist but are so rare they aren’t worth talking about. I do believe in being a force multiplier as a team lead/mentor.

> But as the article said, there is a diminishing amount of value after every year of true experience after a number of years. I would say around 10.

I don't buy it. 10 years is about when you start moving into the actual expert category. Note I said start.

At 35, I finally had real, full control over multiple languages, could pick up CLR and understand and implement any algorithm in it, finally understood exactly why concurrency was so damn hard and how to mitigate that, and would pass practically every interview with flying colors. I could finally drive my tools with some facility and started to realize gdb was my friend.

At 45, I can predict the errors I and others are likely to make and take steps to mitigate them up front--although I still get irritated that I when I make the mistake anyway. My comments are now psychic--my team often remarks how "I just thought that I could really use a comment explaining this-and, behold, there it was". I can reduce interviewers to tears and can surprise all but the most knowledgeable experts in their own domains. I reach for gdb far more often, but am still frustrated at how much I don't know about it.

I still only consider myself an "expert" in very few subdomains--none of them involving programming languages.

One of my heavy hitter software guys once said: "Your code is the most straightforward code I have ever read." I apologized for being so simple. His laughing response: "Don't apologize. That was a compliment, dumbass."

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

#243

Post by toper-centage »

rcarmo wrote: post #163
projectileboy wrote: post #4

Age discrimination is absolutely a thing, but (and this is only based on anecdata) I would say it is much, much worse in the valley than just about anywhere else. The rest of the world seems to have a less damaged culture.

I’m in Portugal and everyone who’s moved their tech hubs here in the past 2 years is only hiring juniors. And we’re talking about a mix of big companies (who ought to know better) and relatively fresh (<5y) startups.

Because juniors in Lisbon will work for peanuts while anyone with more than a year experience knows they can demand a higher salary for living in Lisbon.

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

#244

Post by pelemele »

The current generation of 50+ years old developers came from a way smaller pool of developers when they all started 30+ years ago and that's the reason that only a minuscule of them still codes. The percentage of current younger developers still coding in their 50% will be more closer to other engineering fields based on amount of developers entering the field every year last 20 years (even considering how many will simply abandon doing development once hitting 30 or 40) - not everybody will become managers or start their own businesses.

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

#245

Post by cleandreams »

At forty I was just getting started. I'm 63 and I have done lots of super hard projects and I keep learning more and I have advanced up the tech ladder. And, the problems are harder than ever. For me the key is going after the hardest problems because that is what I like the most. Think system software, compilers, AI. It just seems to have been a good career move though that was never my intention. I've worked in areas of the software field that are thought of as difficult, and that has helped me.

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

#246

Post by VBprogrammer »

Stratoscope wrote: post #158
randrews wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Both have problems. The best system is one where a passing review means "I feel comfortable maintaining this;" too often a passing review means "this is how I would have written it."

I have suffered under far too many "this is how I would have written it" reviews. It can be really demoralizing to write perfectly good, working, readable, performant, well-tested code only to have it rejected and have to rewrite it because the reviewer wishes you had used a different C++ feature. I tried something like your "I feel comfortable maintaining this" approach recently when I was the reviewer. We have an i…

That sounds very pragmatic. I probably would have suggested sitting down and making the changes together. However anything that avoids a couple of cycles of review is a bonus, it's super corrosive to productivity and often moral.

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

#248

Post by rat9988 »

AtlasBarfed wrote: post #227
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…

The javascript ecosystem however... The entire stack literally (for the actual meaning of literally) change completely every year. Frameworks, language, package manager, libraries, etc.

I'm pretty sure you have misused the word literally.

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

#249

Post by WaitWaitWha »

I want to say thank you for all the "youngsters'" posts. As someone who been in the industry for over four decades, I do get lost in some of the newfangled things. Turns out, most of the time it is a language change, not a dramatic world-view change.

Of the three points of the article, the last two (10 years major shift, ; shift creates leveling playing field) I disagree with.

I have seen some things that felt like major shifts, but once under the hood, they tend to be re-shaping and combining existing technologies. This often put me ahead of new-comers. I had not only the current technology, but I also understood the underlying historical technology.

There is no such thing as "irrelevant experience" in my opinion. For example - it is unlikely that Algol, SNOBOL or Fortan will make a new revival. But, all that experience gave me the edge to be able to recognize short-comings or advantages of newer programming languages.

So thanks for all the nice words here. It's time for me to swap my tapes in my PDP.

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