Programmers: Before you turn 40, get a plan B (2009) • Hacker News Board

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

#251

Post by szatkus » Fri, Aug 02, 2019, 7:01 PM UTC

celticmusic wrote: post #199

pmiller2 wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't have a problem with standups. I actually like having ticket tracking systems (how else are you supposed to know what is high priority to work on?). But, open offices are objectively terrible. Research shows it, people here complain about it all the time, and yet companies keep building them. Where I'm at, the floor is divided in such a way that teams sitting together can sometimes have their own little "bull…

I hate standups with a fucking passion. All a standup to me is an interruption 30-45 minutes into the day which causes me to lose an hour or more of time every single day. I basically just fart around with things that don't need much focus until the standup happens. The worst part is that I suggested instead of standups we just send what we we would have said in the standup via slack. That lasted 3 days. The reason n…

If it takes 30-45 minutes something is wrong.

I hated standups as well until I worked with right people.

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

#252

Post by peterbell_nyc » Fri, Aug 02, 2019, 7:02 PM UTC

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.

I'm going to disagree. For every year I've spend doing something, I've got better at it. While there are definitely people with "1 year of experience repeated 30 times", I can't believe that you hit a point in software engineering where there is nothing material left to learn and/or where everything left to learn has marginal benefit.

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

#253

Post by markbnj » Fri, Aug 02, 2019, 7:05 PM UTC

Software engineers don't depreciate as they get older. Software engineers who stop learning depreciate whenever, at any age. I'm 58 and I've seen it over and over again: the people who find it hardest to stay employed are the ones who are least eager to grapple with new ideas and approaches. It's so easy to grow comfortable with that thing you're already good at (I'm a Powerbuilder developer and everyone needs Powerbuilder developers!). I don't know, do people think engineers in other disciplines just get to stop learning and cruise through the last twenty years of their careers? I'm not one, so I can't say, but I would guess civil engineers and mechanical engineers and aeronautical engineers and chemical engineers all have, like, disciplines they have to keep up with :). I know our family doctor isn't working with 20 year-old ideas and tools either.

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

#254

Post by AnimalMuppet » Fri, Aug 02, 2019, 7:06 PM UTC

twblalock wrote: post #205

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I don't think so. The 25-year-old needs the money starting in 20 years; so does the 40-year-old. The 25-year-old needs the money to last 45 years after retirement; the 40-year-old needs it to last 30 years. Those aren't significantly different time horizons. The 40-year-old can therefore invest with a very similar risk profile, and get very similar returns.

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

#255

Post by jeffrallen » Fri, Aug 02, 2019, 7:06 PM UTC

rat9988 wrote: post #248

AtlasBarfed wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Try to update a one year old npm project and you will find that literally 75% of the code in node_modules changes, and also that the app no longer works.

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

#256

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Aug 02, 2019, 7:06 PM UTC

PorterDuff wrote: post #229

zackmorris wrote: post #196

Ok I'll bite. I had the realization yesterday that I peaked at 25 (I'm 42). I got my computer engineering degree in 1999 and used to do things like really complicated integrations in calculus, and solve weird 3D intersection formulas for different variables to do change of coordinates on various surfaces for rasterizing before wolframalpha.com was a thing. I look at my invention lists from 20 years ago and they were…

That's a good post, but I think that I went down a different set of windy little paths. My worlds (graphics and video products) had tons of companies disappear, and the ones still standing matured to the point of offshore manufacture, maintenance, decreasing margins. It hasn't all disappeared but I think that a lot of the fun is gone. I'm older than you, never bothered with internet technologies and languages, and fe…

[deleted]

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

#257

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Aug 02, 2019, 7:07 PM UTC

PedroBatista wrote: post #149

burlesona wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m sorry but if you think programming is not a “shitty job and a sad life.” While individuals certainly experience really bad situations in every walk of life, programming is an exceptionally valuable and versatile way to make a living, and offers a level of freedom and economic mobility that most people in most fields could only dream of.

While I'm aware and fully agree with your University of Phoenix pitch, please try to listen and understand that's only true given the right context ( both economic, social, time, etc. ) Most people sit at an office in front of a computer for at least 8 hours a day, some of them are developers. Most "problems" they "solve" are very distant from the "Changing the World and give meaning to your life, one PHP line at a t…

[deleted]

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

#258

Post by teddyh » Fri, Aug 02, 2019, 7:07 PM UTC

zackmorris wrote: post #196

Ok I'll bite. I had the realization yesterday that I peaked at 25 (I'm 42). I got my computer engineering degree in 1999 and used to do things like really complicated integrations in calculus, and solve weird 3D intersection formulas for different variables to do change of coordinates on various surfaces for rasterizing before wolframalpha.com was a thing. I look at my invention lists from 20 years ago and they were…

> But now, I can barely install a new software stack without this primal sense of exhaustion. I can't explain it, but it feels like everything is just.. wrong somehow. Or a little off. Like maybe the profit motive and disruption became the primary motivators instead of progress and scientific discovery.

The world hasn’t changed, only your knowledge of it. You started fresh at a given level, call it “software”, and you implicitly assumed that the hardware was a given, existing property of the world. Now you know that most software is flaky and bad, and you feel disillusioned about the software you were imagining to have by now, and you feel that the world is worse with all this bad software in it. But the world was always bad, you just couldn’t see it before, because all the badness was in hardware, and that wasn’t your “level”, so to speak. The hardware you were imagining to write all this beautiful software on, that very hardware was, and still is, ugly and full of cruft, just as the software you now decry. This fundamental property will always be true.

To not be exhausted by the world, you must learn to accept it the way it is, the way it was and the way it will always be. You must accept the existence of badness, and build your creations with badness in mind.

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

#259

Post by awakeasleep » Fri, Aug 02, 2019, 7:08 PM UTC

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…

I think you miss the point about 'shelf life'

The shelf life is due to a business decision, where the knowledge the older person has is deemed insufficient to justify the compensation they've grown used to.

Sure, you love working with them and it's better for engineering, but the business wants college grads they can pay less, even if they don't do the same quality work.

Importantly, this doesn't have to be logical or good for the business. It just has to make sense in the context of quarterly targets.

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

#260

Post by pm90 » Fri, Aug 02, 2019, 7:10 PM UTC

adventured wrote: post #69

pm90 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Literally everywhere outside of Silicon Valley you can get great jobs in Software that move at a reasonable pace. SV is very different from the rest of US

Not to mention the great overall quality of life that a regular 9 to 5 job as a software developer provides in the rest of the country outside of SF/NY/SEA/LA/BO. Be a median software developer, pair up with a spouse making the national full-time median, now you've got a $160,000 household income (which doesn't sound special in SV). Married that's $115k-$125k in take-home pay in most of the country. $160,000 family i…

Absolutely. I admire the idealism in Silicon Valley 100%, and personally enjoy working here. But it’s important to point out that a) Most people who come here don’t become millionaires and b) You don’t need to be a millionaire to have an amazing quality of life in other parts of the US.