341–350 of 446 posts
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 Powerb…
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 a 56 year old programmer from New Zealand. I moved to the US to join a hot Silicon Valley RISC-V startup earlier this year. I think the average age of our software team is probably over 50. Certainly the median is. My previous job (and my first ever outside NZ) was working for a multinational electronics company in their Moscow Russia R&D lab, a job I got when I was 52.
Compare to Fortran or supercomputers. Was important, isn't much so these days, although is still used.
What I'm saying is that you got on a train that has been running longer than some other trains, hence you meet older people on the train. As someone who has little interest in management I hope to be as successful as you, in this sense of picking long distance trains.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think you're making the author's point. Java at this point is the new COBOL. C++ has gone from important mainstream language to narrow niche. Ruby on Rails is on the same declining curve, just not as far along; much of the excitement has shifted to Node, React etc. Demand for old languages isn't consistent. It declines over time as code bases get replaced. A programmer betting that they will die before their chosen…
I would say both Java and C++ still are important mainstream languages.
And C++ has been declining for years. I'm not even sure you can write C++ for the common mobile platforms. I very rarely see it used in new server-side code bases. Or even old ones these days. It was a popular language for Windows apps, but that's a declining market these days. 5 years ago, C++ was already not getting taught much in schools [1], and surely that hasn't changed.
[1] https://cacm.acm.org/blogs/blog-cacm/176450-python-is-now-th...
There’s a trap in software dev careers. If you fall into it, you can really get stuck post 40. If you work at a small-ish dev organization - especially in-house dev in a non-tech company - you can rise pretty far and become pretty senior, and your indispensability can net you a decent income. But on the open job market those skills don’t transfer as well. The senior roles in small dev shops are filled by promoting fr…
https://daedtech.com/how-developers-stop-learning-rise-of-th...
And the Dead Sea Affect:
http://brucefwebster.com/2008/04/11/the-wetware-crisis-the-d...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> grinding away at a FANG I've started to propose we s/FANG/Big N/g "FANG" leaves off other obvious big companies, e.g. Uber, and it wouldn't scale to keep trying to add them to the acronym. Here N is used like when one talks about a list "N items long"
Does it seem odd to exclude Microsoft from FAANG when it's the largest?
Edit:
I just realized what else that stood for...
This is a replay of a comment I wrote several years ago to the same topic: I'm 60+. I've been coding my whole career and I'm still coding. Never hit a plateau in pay, but nonetheless, I've found the best way to ratchet up is to change jobs which has been sad, but true - I've left some pretty decent jobs because somebody else was willing to pay more. This has been true in every decade of my career. There's been a cons…
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."
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…
It’s practically a trope that every time this subject comes up, the top-rated comment is a skeptical response...from a junior developer. As someone who actually has worked as a programmer on the far side of 40, let me assure you that yes, older programmers have value. Your perceptions are not wrong. But that said, the article is right . The people who do the hiring and firing do not care about what you care about. As…
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 a 56 year old programmer from New Zealand. I moved to the US to join a hot Silicon Valley RISC-V startup earlier this year. I think the average age of our software team is probably over 50. Certainly the median is. My previous job (and my first ever outside NZ) was working for a multinational electronics company in their Moscow Russia R&D lab, a job I got when I was 52.