Yep, better keep those legacy Java, C and C++ skills up to date, regardless of the opinion on them.
They might come handy.
Is 40 the New 60?
161–170 of 381 posts
Re: Is 40 the New 60?
#16240 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 worked with someone my age who only strong skills are a large enterprise storage system. He is a dinosaur and his future is limited. That's not his age, its the way he chose to build is CV."
I suppose everything is a choice. I have worked on tech that doesn't have a future because the company needs someone to fill those shitty positions. I naively believed the company when they talked about them taking care of employees and being able to make a career out of it.
Re: Is 40 the New 60?
#163Earlier quoted context omitted.
It’s baffling to me that managers are given coding screens. As an IC I really don’t want to deal with a manager’s half thought out PR’s slapped together in between meetings. Perhaps some shops give a light meeting load. But “manager code” has a stigma for a reason.
I think there are way more companies than you think that give manager-level devs a light enough management load that they are able to (and are expected to) write extremely high quality code (indeed, some of the highest quality code in the whole company). They are also expected to carefully review code written by their subordinates. When hiring, these people are given coding tests just as a pulse check to make sure th…
A lot of managers go back to being ICs because they don’t get enough time to code. Also, spending too much time in people management can set your career back as switching jobs is much harder (its easier to switch jobs as a senior SWE than a senior manager since people management cultures change a lot between companies). At some point, people managers specialize beyond coding into something else other than a SWE…they are no longer acting also as tech leads.
Re: Is 40 the New 60?
#164Earlier quoted context omitted.
> My clothes are either no name, or old old companies like Carhartt, levis, Wangler, Dickies, etc... You are wearing designer clothes! Just by a designer from 1873 [1]. The equivalent programmer would be John von Neumann, maybe. -------------------- [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Levi_Strauss
Exactly my point. the Comment I responded to was "No one wants old designers they want the Hot New young designers"
Also from the comment:
> ...but a few stalwarts (Yves Saint Laurent, Ralph Lauren, etc.) are evergreen and always in demand. They even end up influencing the larger trends of fashion.
The "old" brands you are wearing are all the result of stalwart designers from the past.
Re: Is 40 the New 60?
#165People who only hire young developers - don't know what they are doing. Experience is very valuable in this field. Choosing the wrong techology in the early stages of a project can be a huge mistake. You may not even notice what a mistake it was until years have gone by, and you'll be completely entrenched in it; with a painful backtracking ahead.
Re: Is 40 the New 60?
#166Earlier quoted context omitted.
I’m 45 and have never gotten more attention from recruiters, despite the fact I entered the job market during the height of the dot com era. My graduation date is clearly marked on all resumes in circulation, as is my experience showing my first internship all the way back in ‘96. It’s not only the number of ops that hit my plate, but the sheer aggressiveness of the recruiters. Very often am I contacted repeatedly, s…
The key here is Principal. 40 plus is considered fine and good for Architects/Managers and people in leadership positions. Try to get a senior engineer or below job where you are expected to be grinding out code instead.
About the same age as the one you are replying to, usually the best way to work around that is consulting, where you are expected to be business analyst, architect, devops and coder in one package.
Granted, not everyone enjoys doing it, and it comes with lots of politics as baggage as well.
Re: Is 40 the New 60?
#167Earlier quoted context omitted.
Charity Majors wrote a couple of blog posts on the subject that I’ve tried to bring in to my workplace with varying levels of success. But still I’ve had colleagues express surprise that as an engineering manager I still wanted to get my hands dirty with the code of the systems I own. https://charity.wtf/2017/05/11/the-engineer-manager-pendulum... https://charity.wtf/2019/01/04/engineering-management-the-pe...
Do EM's own systems? Or do they own the teams that own the systems? It's a pretty vague role. We had an EM for about a year, but when he left we didn't replace him. Nothing much changed.
Depends on the team I guess, but if I’m going to be responsible for the quality of the technical implementation then I’m definitely going to understand the implementation, and have input on the choices behind that (even if I will defer to the engineers for most of them).
Re: Is 40 the New 60?
#168Earlier quoted context omitted.
The key here is Principal. 40 plus is considered fine and good for Architects/Managers and people in leadership positions. Try to get a senior engineer or below job where you are expected to be grinding out code instead.
I think the stack is important. I know a lot of older Java and .Net developers that are hired to grind out code.
So we're just going to move the goal posts then? Yes, having desirable skills is a given.
We have a bunch of .NET devs (our BE is .NET) and the average age of these folks probably right around 40, because in general they're going to be older devs who do that.
Re: Is 40 the New 60?
#169Don't even get me started (just take a shufti through my posting history on this very site. You'll see this is a subject that has my attention) . > while the experience that comes with age is valued in fields like music, it counts against you in tech. Yup. The Jurassic-scale disasters that are becoming increasingly common, these days, are evidence of unsteady hands at the wheel. I'm not saying that older folks are be…
You post this all the time. You did 27 years at one single company, as you point out so proudly and often. After a stint like that, anyone would be unhireable. It isn't your age, as so many others on this chain have pointed out. You didn't build your CV to be attractive to new employers at all , and when eventually that became relevant again, you were out of luck. I read your posts whenever I see them, it's obvious y…
> anyone would be unhireable
So since you are defending the practice, please explain what is it about spending your entire career at a single company that makes you unemployable anywhere else.
And please don't assume that that means never learning anything new during 27 years.
Can you name another career where holding one job too long makes you unemployable, and where people actually defend this?
Re: Is 40 the New 60?
#170Earlier quoted context omitted.
I understand the need to fake overwhelming optimism to get by interviewers with mindsets similar to yours. Too much honesty can be bad in this industry, especially at higher levels, where diplomacy and soft skills are very important.
I have that optimism and it certainly is not fake. I love what I do. Yes, I bring experience to the table but not bad energy. WTF would you want to hire someone who poisons the well? It doesn't matter what the job/industry is, in what situation would that be remotely desirable?
If you say so. But just as you doubt the vigor of the “somewhat pessimistic” candidate (in your words, you didn’t say they were toxic), others will doubt the sincerity of your overwhelming optimism. So is life.