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Is 40 the New 60?

neverworkintheory.org

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Re: Is 40 the New 60?

#251

Post by [deleted] »

jjk166 wrote: post #240
syshum wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

hmm there are a lot of old brands and designs out there in clothing, and I dont think I have ever owned anything from a "hot new" fashion brand My clothes are either no name, or old old companies like Carhartt, levis, Wrangler, Dickies, etc...

Something tells me you're not in the fashion industry. The average customer doesn't give a shit about the hot new thing, be it fashion or web framework, but the customers aren't the ones hiring talent and shaping the industry.

[deleted]

Re: Is 40 the New 60?

#252

Post by datavirtue »

FrankyHollywood wrote: post #29

I'm in my 40s, and I build software at a scale-up. They explicitly searched more mature developers, because of several failed projects with large over spending the past years. Management had enough of it, and now wants a more experienced dev team. And it works quit well I must say, code quality is very high and we make our deadlines. Our product is stable and atmosphere in the office is great actually. Not much stres…

I work in a senior-only consulting S-Corp (most devs hold equity). I'm 43 and everyone is nearly 10 years older than me. No one has ever been laid off, companies fired FTEs and kept all our guys during covid panic, and every one of our clients will take everyone from our group that they can afford or we will let them have (the consultants get to choose clients).

The amount of money they happily pay for us is crazy. We work along FTEs in all these companies for years who make a fraction of what we do. Companies take a diverse approach, stringing along FTEs under the auspices of being a special FTE with a career ahead of them at the company, and they hire a drove of contractors (permenantly) that cost twice as much and who are already wise to the FTE/career half-truth.

We get paid for every hour worked and are restricted to 40hours...at twice the rate of an FTE.

Re: Is 40 the New 60?

#253

Post by yodsanklai »

Ageism is very depressing. My company seems to be obsessed with discrimination against minorities (which is great) but nobody seems concerned that average age is less than 30. On the company recruiting ads, you can see people from every possible background, but certainly no grey hair.

I'm 45 and I'm getting more and more concerned about my age. I love my job but I'll try to move to a manager position in a couple of years.

Re: Is 40 the New 60?

#254

Post by kiklion »

agentultra wrote: post #218
alexwebb2 wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The implicit assumption powering this is that programming experience from 35 years ago is not only irrelevant to today’s challenges, but undesirable due to having the wrong habits and patterns of thinking; this stands in contrast to surgery or management skills which are widely perceived to be more timeless with candidate value compounding with experience. It’s plainly false for all sorts of reasons, but that’s the s…

> The implicit assumption powering this is that programming experience from 35 years ago is not only irrelevant to today’s challenges, but undesirable I think the implicit assumption has it the wrong way around. It seems like the industry takes about 30 years to catch up with the mathematicians who had discovered the solution to our problems. We create this problem for ourselves. Some hot new web framework rediscover…

> Computing hasn't changed radically in a long time and certainly not programming.

This might depend on what you consider radical.

Web forms vs MVC vs react + restful API are fairly different coding paradigms.

Trying to create a windows service in net framework 2.0 is totally different than net core 5.

Or using SQLDataReader to read executed sql strings vs entity framework?

Even just dependency injection and scope definitions (transient, singleton, scoped) is very basic yet is something I’ve seen older developers tripping over. At least it’s an easy to identify run time error as it validates the container when running in development.

I’m not saying older developers are bad, but developers with the mindset that coding now is the same as coding 20 years ago are either using a language that never developed itself or are going to stumble over the changes that did occur.

Re: Is 40 the New 60?

#255

Post by honkdaddy »

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #198
gwbas1c wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In my case, I was finally laid off, after a 27-year run at one of the world's marquee imaging companies (which I think was overbalanced by experience). I started looking around for more work, as I wasn't really up for retirement (which I was quite capable of doing). Are you "out of practice" in the job search? This comment ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28758320 ) states: > Delete the first 10 years of your…

I understand that. I also have gotten advice to dye my hair. I will do neither. That's dishonest. If no one values me for the skills and experience I have, then I have no interest in working with them (not "for," "with." -A big problem, in today's working world, is the attitude that companies are doing people a favor by hiring them. If someone hires me, they don't get me as a servant. I've worked way too long and har…

Do you think dying your hair is dishonest? I wear shoes with a bit of a lift because generally, at least in the west, taller men are treated a bit better in the workplace. Sure it's unfair, but it's certainly not going to change in my lifetime, so I happily play the game.

I don't see dying your hair as any different from wearing makeup or attractive clothes. Humans are social and visual creatures, we find it easier to trust other humans we like the appearance of.

Re: Is 40 the New 60?

#256

Post by lanstin »

thechao wrote: post #222
newsclues wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The trick to teaching the same thing over and over, is to use each time as a way to master and refine your understanding of the topic.

I had 6 identical lab (secondary teaching) sessions per week, each 1 hour long. I handled lecture once a week, for two blocks of 400 students. It’s the equivalent of a decade teaching per school year.

This note makes me again feel industry was the right choice for me. In industry, the value of people asking questions is you get a very accurate way to identify talented people - by which I don’t mean gifted people but people with the understanding, curiosity and confidence to drill thru a brick wall in the way of their goal with the subtle arts reasoning.

Re: Is 40 the New 60?

#257

Post by aweiland »

willvarfar wrote: post #70
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…

I'm in the same boat. Also "senior dev" doesn't mean what it meant 10 years ago. I just had a really quick chat last night with a engineering lead. The position was a "senior dev" with 5-8 years experience in multiple things. Usually those are taken is minimums. They were actually maximums. He was surprised I made it past the initial recruiter screen having 20+ years experience. We thanked each other for our time and said so long after just a couple of minutes.

SV has sort of broken the job search, especially for more senior people. It's not just JR/SR anymore, it's some weird mashup of: Staff, Sr Staff, Principal, Level 3-5, Distinguished... Every company out there is pretending they are a FAANG when hiring, asking for 4-6 hours of your time. I'm working full time with 2 young kids. It's a nightmare.

Re: Is 40 the New 60?

#258

Post by [deleted] »

Dumblydorr wrote: post #132
Icathian wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Why does doing 27 years at one company make someone unhireable? It's one thing if he used the same old tech for 27 years, but without that assumption, seems like ageism to say 27 years at one company is an obvious ground for disqualification.

[deleted]

Re: Is 40 the New 60?

#259

Post by mgkimsal »

quadrifoliate wrote: post #98
jasode wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>At 40, I've done some of the best work I've ever done [...] Its because at 40, I had a much deeper understanding of the tech, The blog post isn't about self-reported cognitive ability getting stronger (or not declining). It's about the job marketplace . Maybe it's instructive to compare/contrast different professional careers that depend on mental abilities and how age affects marketability: - computer programming :…

> Why is experience valued for outside hires of CEOs but not as much for programmers? In other words, a 55-year old programmer would have 35 more years of experience than a 20-year old but that "extra 35 years of programming" doesn't seem to be valued as much as the "extra 35 years of managing" that a 55-year CEO candidate has. Why? I'll bite – I think it is because instead of licensing and regulating our profession…

Indeed, one of the things you'll hear from "older" developers is "you gotta keep learning new stuff" and "learn how to learn". You might find yourself with some extended contract for maintaining a legacy codebase that is too big or important or risky to migrate... then you may be "set" for some years, but that's certainly not a majority of cases I see. And... if you're early 50s and have some in-demand niche skills that might be out of fashion in say, 5-10 years, but you have work lined up right now, that may be enough to just double down and stay put, vs trying to learn a bunch of new tools. You'll still be 'behind' on the new tools, and you'll still be competing against some degree of implicit ageism.
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