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Is 40 the New 60?

neverworkintheory.org

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Re: Is 40 the New 60?

#61

Post by hellbannedguy »

SkipperCat wrote: post #33

40 is not the new 60. Not even close. At 40, I've done some of the best work I've ever done and my pay has been better than ever. I'm 52 now and the trend has only gotten better. Why? Its because at 40, I had a much deeper understanding of the tech, I understood of the whole business process and I had the maturity to deal with people in a productive way. You won't find all of those in a 25 year old developer. The onl…

I've seen a lot of good Programmers shown the door at 50-55.

Sure, some left expecting to find another job, but remained continuously unemployed.

I've personally known four homeless individuals in my life. Two were Programmers.

I have never seen an industry that just thinks employees are not worth paying when they hit 50.

And yes--I'm aware of the older high paid employee that's the first to go in a corporation. These guys I knew were not those guys. They were just enthusiastic employees, whom thought they were doing a good job.

Re: Is 40 the New 60?

#62

Post by hoolahoopty »

When you see a 50 year old developer, it's possible that he's amazing, and it's possible that he's an old putz, banking on his authoritativeness instead of actual work. You need to tell the difference.

One way to tell the difference, is that a great developer who spent 20 years in the industry will have lots of contacts. There are probably a line of people who'd like to hire him the moment he'll quit his current job. This also correlates with how pleasant he is to work with.

If you're getting a resume of a 50 year old that you don't know, it's already substantial evidence that he's not that great.

Re: Is 40 the New 60?

#63

Post by joelbluminator »

I think the concept of "too senior" exists. E.g I would imagine Linus wouldn't thrive on some boring driver maintenance job or full stack developer somewhere if he ever applied. Of course it doesn't say there is no ageism, but it could be that this specific case was indeed too senior for certain roles.

Re: Is 40 the New 60?

#64

Post by thechao »

bacro wrote: post #54
lifeisstillgood wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>> I've learned to be less of a jerk to people and how to communicate. Ahhhhhhhhhhhh.............. But that bit is so hard ! :-)

Indeed, I keep being a jerk to junior developers that constantly comes to me with the same questions after I explained to them 10000 times and they say "Yeaah, I got it now". It is so hard to avoid being a jerk. What should I do?

I was the only English-speaking TA (&, thus backup lecturer) to "Intro to C 101" at a major mass-population state university. Class sizes were ~800 students. I had an open-doors/open-lab/open-office policy. By the 4th semester, I remember laying on the floor in front of the class, and yet another bro (blond hair; blue eyes; chiseled jawline; backwards cap) came up to ask me a, frankly, very well thought out question — and I just said "I know I've taught this to you, already". I had; I'd taught it to him & all his bros for years.

What's the quote? "Every year I get older, but the junior devs stay the same age."

That's when I knew I couldn't teach undergrads.

Re: Is 40 the New 60?

#66

Post by cbm-vic-20 »

AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #15
jmfldn wrote: post #5

I feel like this comes up a lot and it's something I think / worry about as a developer at the 'old' age of 40. I posted this comment below on a similar thread https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28294734 Essentially I think this is hopefully a temporary effect of the doubling of programmers every five years for the past twenty plus years. I expect this to level out and thus shift the ratio in favour of older develo…

I'm not so confident that's true. There's seemingly this prevailing attitude in IT that new is always better. The latest gadgets, the latest complicated tech stacks, and the latest languages. Rewrite everything again so it's all fresh and free of 'legacy cruft'. Don't fix bugs, prioritize slapping a new "modern" GUI on it so people don't think it's old . Why wouldn't that same mentality apply to people?

Even here on HN we see plenty of articles that are "Like X, but written in Go!", which seems to have been replaced with "Like X, but written in Rust!".

Re: Is 40 the New 60?

#67

Post by dgb23 »

SkipperCat wrote: post #33

40 is not the new 60. Not even close. At 40, I've done some of the best work I've ever done and my pay has been better than ever. I'm 52 now and the trend has only gotten better. Why? Its because at 40, I had a much deeper understanding of the tech, I understood of the whole business process and I had the maturity to deal with people in a productive way. You won't find all of those in a 25 year old developer. The onl…

> The only way that age becomes a detriment is if you do not grow.

There has been research about this as well under the term https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuroplasticity. Might be interesting to look at.

My understanding is that you are exactly right. It seems to be common that we tend to stop learning and pushing ourselves, get comfortable or maybe even afraid. To each his own, but I think it is more fun and fruitful to keep at it.

Thank you for sharing your experience.

Re: Is 40 the New 60?

#69

Post by cbm-vic-20 »

biddit wrote: post #32

My anecdotal experience: I'm ~40 with ~15 years of dev experience and 4 of management experience. I last year I decided to return to IC dev work and started applying for full-stack dev roles. After two months and not getting few responses to applications, I put my resume in front of my tech recruiter friend: "You sound ancient. Delete the first 10 years of your work history and take the date off your CS degree." Whaa…

Of course, taking the date of the CS degree is now a signal you're "old".

Re: Is 40 the New 60?

#70

Post by willvarfar »

SkipperCat wrote: post #33

40 is not the new 60. Not even close. At 40, I've done some of the best work I've ever done and my pay has been better than ever. I'm 52 now and the trend has only gotten better. Why? Its because at 40, I had a much deeper understanding of the tech, I understood of the whole business process and I had the maturity to deal with people in a productive way. You won't find all of those in a 25 year old developer. The onl…

The point isn’t that techies over 40 can’t do good work or keep current or invent the future, it’s that they can’t get a job.

As someone a few years north of 40 and recently went looking for a new job, I can identify with much of the article. Although for me, in the market I’m in, I kinda felt the pay for a ‘senior dev’ didn’t really cut it either. The whole pay structure is for younger folks and veterans have a hard job finding work.

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