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Is 40 the New 60?

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Re: Is 40 the New 60?

#331

Post by brandall10 »

gilbetron wrote: post #262
brandall10 wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As mentioned elsewhere in the this chat, I'm a 45 yo principal engineer at my current company who has seen nothing but an increase in attention from recruiters since turning 40. I'm also directly involved in hiring for my team, having helped add 15 members over the last year, working directly w/ the director to review all resumes, handling maybe 30% of the screens, and usually the veto vote. We've interviewed a numbe…

I'm a 50+ staff eng, and I agree that I'm getting as much interest as ever from recruiters. Just gotta stay current and never take on the attitude I see from older engineers of "this new crap is just what we used to do back in the day". New stuff is different and has value, just accept it and stop whining. As for resumes, I personally don't get the page limit, since I love long resumes with detail when I'm evaluating…

For me it’s all about communication style. I see those wall of text resumes and I see a person that is going to be a poor communicator and possibly a sloppy coder - not knowing when to self-edit and separate the wheat from the chaff on what actually brought value to the roles they took.

Detail is great but concision is greater. The resume is a marketing vehicle and it should be well honed. We can dig into what someone knows during the half dozen hours we spend interviewing them.

Re: Is 40 the New 60?

#332

Post by bsenftner »

sul_tasto wrote: post #314
bsenftner wrote: post #50

The tech industry wants young developers because they don't know all the employment exploitation tricks the older developers are too wise to fall for. Plus, the management class has no idea what we really do; we're just warm bodies to be worked hard and put down when no longer profitable. It is literally as simple as that.

Does that mean the best move is to eventually become a manager?

Of course, to each with their talents, but entrepreneurialism looks to be the better strategy. Short of that, many technologists, including myself, could use enhanced communications at both personal and public speaking levels. Many a successful manager appears to have communication skills as their keystones.

Re: Is 40 the New 60?

#333

Post by lightbendover »

Aeolun wrote: post #113
marcus_holmes wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I call it the "grumpy old fart" syndrome. I've (M50+) felt it - the urge to stop learning and complain at everything that changes. It is a struggle to continue learning at this age. But it is worth it. Being a grumpy old fart sucks all the joy out of life.

So does keeping up with all the latest hotness when you already know it won’t fix your organizational problems. Hell, I’m only 33 and when asked today what I currently want to learn, had to seriously consider that I didn’t want to learn anything new in particular.

I would feel more inclined to continue to "learn" (read: pick up shiny new frameworks, not actually learn new fundamentals) if the new stuff wasn't just rehashed old stuff. If I need to pick something up, fine, that's trivial, but "learning" for the sake of "learning" is best left to the juniors.

Re: Is 40 the New 60?

#334

Post by nickd2001 »

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…

"I also have gotten advice to dye my hair." - sorry if this is a little off-topic, but, it strikes me how lucky us blokes are. That's about the most "appearance advice" we'll get in the workplace, while women feel pressurised to wear make-up at work, select their clothes super carefully etc. Maybe experiencing ageism might have a silver lining if it helps men empathise more with the kind of nonsense women go through daily in the workplace...

Re: Is 40 the New 60?

#335

Post by Meph504 »

For fuck sake can we please stop with this childish generational blame?

So many articles speak as if any generation had the ability to set the standards of employment in the industry.

Management, and what our government allowed them to get away with plays a far larger role than individuals do in a decentralized economy that is tech.

It isn't like there is a plant we could picket, or even an assurance that our jobs would stay within our own country.

Many people who have entered tech today, never saw the massive waves of outsourcing, this seemingly has normalized now, they weren't around for the dot com bubble that burst.

Arguable the worlds strongest unions (automotive) got their asses handed to them, because it became much easier to move manufacture than ever before.

It wasn't developers that had any control or recourse when we got placed in the exempt bracket, and workloads sky rocketed.

I remember lots of people quitting because of it, but I also remember a flood of people on work visas coming into replace them (to be clear I don't fault those that came in on visas, but did prevent labor from having any sort of strength in numbers or ability to force policy change.)

We had a toxic environment forced on us, through the same vehicle that almost every shitty thing has, greed, our government had no idea how to handle when labor stopped having physical bounds, and they opened up the flood gates to let companies do what they want as long as they didn't leave.

Re: Is 40 the New 60?

#336

Post by ChrisMarshallNY »

nickd2001 wrote: post #334
ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

"I also have gotten advice to dye my hair." - sorry if this is a little off-topic, but, it strikes me how lucky us blokes are. That's about the most "appearance advice" we'll get in the workplace, while women feel pressurised to wear make-up at work, select their clothes super carefully etc. Maybe experiencing ageism might have a silver lining if it helps men empathise more with the kind of nonsense women go through…

Absolutely. I also have some "scrappy" educational creds. That gets me a lot of condescension, as well.

I'm still a bloke, though, so I can't say I know how they feel.

Re: Is 40 the New 60?

#337

Post by ChrisMarshallNY »

gwbas1c wrote: post #293
ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Perhaps you're misinterpreting me? > If no one values me for the skills and experience I have, then I have no interest in working with them I generally take the same attitude. You don't have to list everything on your resume. It's not dishonest to leave out experience that's no longer relevant. You also don't have to dye your hair, wear platform shoes, or get plastic surgery. (Although Converse was trying to push pla…

> A lot of development shops don't know how to work with mature developers, nor are they budgeting to hire someone with 30+ years experience. The "people" challenge of onboarding into a team where I have more experience than my manager is often harder than the actual work.

Well, none of my attempts made it past the second screener, so I wouldn't know.

As far as "budgeting" goes...I was once told (by a recruiter), that I'd need to "ask for less," because I'm older.

I was already asking for peanuts, because I am not really interested in money, and was actually looking for the kind of place I could make a difference; where they often can't afford a lot of "top-shelf" talent. That's a trick I've always used in my career. I have worked for less, at places that interest me. It's still allowed me to get to a point where I don't need to work (I live frugally, avoid personal debt, and save like crazy).

I'm used to "making a difference." That may seem arrogant; but you haven't worked with me. I'm making quite a difference, right now. In fact, in the window behind this browser, I see that my latest TestFlight upload is done, and I'm about to make the team quite happy.

Re: Is 40 the New 60?

#338

Post by ThrowawayR2 »

chrisseaton wrote: post #105
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…

> You won't find all of those in a 25 year old developer. What makes you think that? It's absolutely possible for a 25-year-old to be a more experienced, more technically competent, and more mature than a 40-year-old. Some 40-year-olds have 20x 1 year of experience, compared to some 25-year-old's 5 years of experience. If you think you're inherently better as a 40-year-old developer than all 25-year-old developers th…

Yes, a 25 year old genius developer can be as good as a 40 year old average developer and better than a 40 year old subpar developer. However, geniuses are, by definition, extremely rare, so it should be self-evident that the heuristic is generally valid.

Re: Is 40 the New 60?

#339

Post by AdrianB1 »

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…

There are many companies that don't want to hire people over 40. I applied to the same company with 2 identical profiles, in one I gave my real age and in one 10 years less, I got invited to an interview on one profile and rejected immediately on the other.

Even my company rejects experienced hires if the job description is not specifically mandating senior-level experience. I just hired one such person that is a bit over 50 years old, I had to fight HR on this.

Re: Is 40 the New 60?

#340

Post by chrisseaton »

ThrowawayR2 wrote: post #338
chrisseaton wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You won't find all of those in a 25 year old developer. What makes you think that? It's absolutely possible for a 25-year-old to be a more experienced, more technically competent, and more mature than a 40-year-old. Some 40-year-olds have 20x 1 year of experience, compared to some 25-year-old's 5 years of experience. If you think you're inherently better as a 40-year-old developer than all 25-year-old developers th…

Yes, a 25 year old genius developer can be as good as a 40 year old average developer and better than a 40 year old subpar developer. However, geniuses are, by definition, extremely rare, so it should be self-evident that the heuristic is generally valid.

'Won't find' vs 'may rarely find'.

How about we just assess each individual without going in with any prejudice based on their age?

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