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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)

#381

Post by irq11 »

pthomas551 wrote: post #348
irq11 wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The thing is as startups mature and become enterprise level shops, they need people who know how to work with enterprise software. Guess who has all the experience with that? Yep, the people with 10+ years experience. My company is hiring very senior devs like crazy right now for exactly this reason.

I think there are some orgs that definitely benefit, but it’s an 80/20 thing: 80% of software shops are more than content to hire junior devs and live with the costs of their mistakes. (Especially because most of those costs never really get experienced by the people who make the decisions.)

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

#382

Post by arwhatever »

Totally anecdotal, but I have long thought distribution of programmer skill becomes increasingly bimodal as they/we age, with them/us either becoming particularly skilled or particularly unskilled.

Either the one language/framework/paradigm that the aging developer is locked into becomes ever more aged and irrelevant, or else if the programmer has made good use of their time and experience, becomes particularly skillful and insightful and valuable with time.

I've known some amazingly sharp older developers, and I've also known some particularly poor ones.

Just a theory.

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

#383

Post by jm__87 »

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 for the majority of people on those jobs.

Oh man, I cannot relate to this at all. I feel very lucky to be a software developer - there are far more boring jobs out there, that pay far less, with less flexible hours.

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

#384

Post by spraak »

pmiller2 wrote: post #326
c0vfefe wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How much profit does Amazon show?

Amazon has demonstrated its ability to show a profit. Uber and Lyft have not.

If the acronym is only about profit then it is both misused and excludes other obvious companies like Microsoft.

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

#385

Post by madengr »

tempsy wrote: post #60

The strangeness of Silicon Valley right now is that if you're lucky you can "retire" long before 40. I'm 31 and have through a bit of luck accrued a small 7-figure net worth. I don't plan on being a "rank and file" employee by 33, let alone 40.

You need 8 figures to retire. $30k/year (poverty level) over 30 years is only $1M.

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

#386

Post by scarface74 »

wrs wrote: post #377
scarface74 wrote: post #319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

20 years ago,much of what I used today didn't existed there was no AWS, no C# (but C++ was close enough I guess), mobile where you had to worry about semi-connected networks and syncing, etc. There is no part of the human body that exists today that didn't exist 20 years ago.

All of which is just details, which are much less important than the fundamental skills of building systems with whatever people and tools are available. (And I'm sorry, are you implying no significant changes have occurred in the tools and practice of medicine in 20 years?)

Thinking that moving from on prem to AWS for instance is now you end up with “AWS Architect” who were old school net ops guys who only know how to do a “lift and shift” and end up costing clients more. Because they pattern matched thought AWS was just an implementation detail and they could just set up everything like they would on prem.

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

#387

Post by purerandomness »

scarface74 wrote: post #319
wrs wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the one hand, sure, percentage-wise you learn less in year 20 than in year 10, because you already know a lot more in year 19. But that is no more true of this field than any other field. Is a doctor, architect, civil engineer, or auto mechanic with 20 years experience more valuable than one with 10 years experience? Heck yes.

20 years ago,much of what I used today didn't existed there was no AWS, no C# (but C++ was close enough I guess), mobile where you had to worry about semi-connected networks and syncing, etc. There is no part of the human body that exists today that didn't exist 20 years ago.

You could argue the opposite is true: 20 years ago, there were dangerous misconceptions about how some body parts work. Many chemical pathways were completely unknown. Medicine and biology both evolved a lot in the 20 years.

The big picture however is still valid. Concepts and paradigms hold for decades. We still use TCP/IP. Computers still use the Von Neumann Architecture.

Looking at the details however, AWS is just a fancy GUI over time sharing on a mainframe. C# is just new syntax for concepts that are older than I am. While mobile brings new challenges, you now don't have to deal with the challenge of customers connected through a 330 baud modem.

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

#388

Post by scarface74 »

purerandomness wrote: post #387
scarface74 wrote: post #319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

20 years ago,much of what I used today didn't existed there was no AWS, no C# (but C++ was close enough I guess), mobile where you had to worry about semi-connected networks and syncing, etc. There is no part of the human body that exists today that didn't exist 20 years ago.

You could argue the opposite is true: 20 years ago, there were dangerous misconceptions about how some body parts work. Many chemical pathways were completely unknown. Medicine and biology both evolved a lot in the 20 years. The big picture however is still valid. Concepts and paradigms hold for decades. We still use TCP/IP. Computers still use the Von Neumann Architecture. Looking at the details however, AWS is just…

In 1986 I had to not only know 65C02 assembly language to get any performance out of my 1Mhz Apple //e, I had to know that I could get 50% more performance for every access I did to memory on the first page as opposed to any other page. If I spent time doing that type of micro optimization today, I would be fired. I couldn’t imagine doing the types of things I could do today with modern technology.

In 1995, when I wrote my first paid for application in college, Internet was a thing for most colleges where I did some work on a HyperCard based Gopher server (long story), that wouldn’t have been possible in 10 years earlier.

In 2006, I was writing field service software for ruggedized Windows Mobile devices, architecting for semi connected smart devices is a completely different mindset than terminal programming or desktop programming. That wasn’t feasible before hardware became cheap and at least 2G was ubiquitous.

Even then what we could do, pales in comparison to the type of field service implementation I did in 2016 when mobile computing was much more capable, much cheaper and you could get a cheap Android devices and 3G/4G was common place.

But people thinking cloud computing is just “sharing mainframes” and don’t rearchirect either their systems or their processes is how we end up with “lift and shifters” and organizations spending way too much money on infrastructure and staff.

Also anyone who equates managing AWS to a “GUI” kind of makes my point, if you’re managing your AWS infrastructure from a GUI - you’re doing it wrong. 10-15 years ago you didn’t set up your entire data center by running a CloudFormation template or any other type of infrastructure as code.

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

#389

Post by bpicolo »

tcbawo wrote: post #369
asdfman123 wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, I feel like more programmers were working closer to the metal back in the day. In the 80s you needed to understand computer hardware much better and there was a bigger fraction of C++ developers. Now all those people have migrated to hardware (or have kept doing it) because that's where their skills are needed.

My experience has been that many younger engineers don't want to work closer to the metal as much. They want to work on the bleeding edge, sexier technologies.

I would enjoy working close to the metal in some capacity, it's just not really what the majority of modern tech businesses require, and moving in that direction is likely not worth the sort of career reset it would require.

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

#390

Post by dougdonohoe »

50 yrs old, just started a new job as a Sr. Software Engineer, and now learning go, kubernetes and google cloud platform. Been in management in the past, but grew tired of that route. I do find that my experience (C++ -> Java -> Scala) with healthy doses of (Ruby, Groovy, Python, Perl) is a good foundation to work from.

This job is my plan B, and it's OK.

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