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Software Engineers Will Work One Day For English Majors

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Re: Software Engineers Will Work One Day For English Majors

#181

Post by rayiner »

hkarthik wrote: post #16

The title initially made me angry, but there's a lot of truth in this post. The sad fact is that once you cross 35, the salary growth slows considerably for most engineers and you have to jump to management roles to make more, even if your output translates to more dollars. Contrary to the article, I think people in Law and Finance go through the same thing, but they get about 10 years more than us. My friends in Fin…

What you do see in law that you don't in engineering is the up-or-out pressure in big firms. You either make partner in years 7-10 or you go find another job. But if you do make partner (possibly at a much smaller firm than where you started), you basically get to do technical work for as long as you want. Partners do some business development and management work, sure, but they're still the ones that go into court and argue the motions. And in that role you only get more valuable with age. People go to lawyers when something has gone sideways, and all else being equal they want the cool-headed guy with 20 years of experience over the young hot-shot.

Re: Software Engineers Will Work One Day For English Majors

#182

Post by sedachv »

fl3tch wrote: post #96
GFischer wrote: post #51

The article states: "A large technology company might typically pay new law-school graduates and MBAs salaries and compensation approaching double what they give new master’s degree grads in computer science. " But, from what I've read, those high-paying law school jobs are very few, only for the elite of the elite, and requires the new employee to work insane hours. Same for those MBAs. I'm pretty sure that, on aver…

> But, from what I've read, those high-paying law school jobs are very few, only for the elite of the elite, and requires the new employee to work insane hours. Same for those MBAs. My sister got a law degree and then did an internship specializing in tax law (I know). She got a job last year straight out of college (at age 25) making $130,000 at a firm that handles the tax issues when one company wants to acquire an…

> My point is, good money is rarely easy.

You should ask her if she seriously talked to the partners managing her about scaling back her hours. I'm not a psychic, but I'm very certain that she hasn't actually done that. A friend of mine has a very similar story ($160k straight out of law school in NYC and hating it) and is dealing with it in a similar way (passive-aggressive complaining to friends and relatives, escapist fantasies, but hers center around travel instead of restaurateurism).

A lot of people seem to be closet masochists when it comes to work. If you tackle the issues bothering you directly you'll be surprised how easy they are to resolve, and your managers will respect you more for standing up for yourself.

Re: Software Engineers Will Work One Day For English Majors

#183

Post by ntkachov »

MattRogish wrote: post #162
nirvana wrote: post #8

He seems to have missed making the point in the title. Why would software engineers work for english majors? He thinks that a 20 something english major is a better manager for a software engineer than a 40 something software engineer? Plus he seems to completely miss a separate alternative for software engineers over 35-- start their own businesses. I think the perception that 40 year olds are not up to date on tech…

My suspicion is that the "young" developers they speak of (not all of them, obviously) are faster in the same way not writing tests is "faster". You're taking on a lot of debt that you'll have to pay off sooner or later. For most startups, the bad technical decisions younger developers will make won't bite them in the ass until much later - maybe never if they go out of business for not finding product/market fit - a…

Not worrying about algorithm performance and memory management means one of two things 1) you are making a prototype and couldnt care less, 2) you are a shit developer.

I'm still in college and the only time I don't give a hoot about either of those things is for class work when I am not peanlized for it. But anything that goes to production has as small of a footprint as possible. But that may be because I know all of my stuff runs out of an ec2-micro and not on a $100/hr sever cluster.

Re: Software Engineers Will Work One Day For English Majors

#184

Post by gte910h »

fl3tch wrote: post #96
GFischer wrote: post #51

The article states: "A large technology company might typically pay new law-school graduates and MBAs salaries and compensation approaching double what they give new master’s degree grads in computer science. " But, from what I've read, those high-paying law school jobs are very few, only for the elite of the elite, and requires the new employee to work insane hours. Same for those MBAs. I'm pretty sure that, on aver…

> But, from what I've read, those high-paying law school jobs are very few, only for the elite of the elite, and requires the new employee to work insane hours. Same for those MBAs. My sister got a law degree and then did an internship specializing in tax law (I know). She got a job last year straight out of college (at age 25) making $130,000 at a firm that handles the tax issues when one company wants to acquire an…

Few lawyers make good money when you look at hours worked. You'd make far more in software working those hours than you will for many decades (if ever) as a lawyer.

Re: Software Engineers Will Work One Day For English Majors

#185

Post by gte910h »

emmapersky wrote: post #170
jiggy2011 wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Objectively that may well be true, however if you hire someone more experienced than you then perhaps they should be supervising you and not the other way around. Also I think most geeks like to think of themselves as Jedi Masters. There is also the fear of someone tearing you a new one for the quality of your codebase.

I'd like to think in an ideal world we only ever hire colleagues, and our teams are, for the most part, meritocracies without hierarchy. Technical Leads guide development and mentor those less experienced, instead of directing it and passing down tasks. Management should be isolated from the team you work with daily, and should be there only to help long term progress (and other hands off management things). Working…

>Working with closely on a day to day basis with someone up the technical competence / experience scale from you is fantastic

Oh dear god yes. Masterful experience for engineers.

Re: Software Engineers Will Work One Day For English Majors

#186

Post by dabent »

over40guy4 wrote: post #145
patio11 wrote: post #33

How many English majors are still in "English" at age 40? Many of them will have exited the workforce , started their own business, changed careers, or leveled up high enough that their occupational classification the government uses changes. Programmers do all these things, too. I love programming. I didn't even make it to thirty as a "programmer"! (P.S. There exist lots of benefits to not calling yourself a program…

I doubt many 40+ programmers are going to come out in support of this article. In cases of discrimination, you are labeled a crybaby so it's better to just stay quite. HN is mostly young and the only 40+ ones here are the type who like puzzles or in top 1 percentile of programming (e.g. patio11). For a vast majority of 40+ programmers, the reality is as grim as painted in this article. If you are not in top 1 percent…

"The only 40+ ones here are ... in top 1 percentile of programming"

Thanks. (Although I do like puzzles as much as the next HN member)

Re: Software Engineers Will Work One Day For English Majors

#187

Post by jlarocco »

chaostheory wrote: post #173
jlarocco wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I strongly feel that this depends on whether the 40 year old likes programming for its own sake, or they feel that it's just part of a 'clock in' and 'clock out' job. It's also very difficult for many programmers that I've known over the years to step outside of the language that they started with, and start learning and heavily using something new." I'm not so sure. At one of my previous jobs I worked with a lot of…

"They couldn't wait to transition to newer stuff because the old languages were so difficult." I think this is just yet another really poor excuse for not learning something new, which further reinforces my point. There's no reason that any of them couldn't learn something new right now and years before. It's not like the middle class can't afford a really powerful computer. They've been affordable ever since the lat…

Okay, maybe I didn't make it clear.

The problem isn't that people weren't learning new stuff. Everybody knew the newer languages - how else would they know they wanted to use them?

Unfortunately, not everybody can drop everything and re-implement a large system in a trendy new language.

Re: Software Engineers Will Work One Day For English Majors

#188

Post by dabent »

To extend the author's logic a bit, I will change one word in a quote from the article: "Even if the 45-year-old manager making $120,000 has the right skills, 'companies would rather hire the younger workers.'"

I've worked long enough to see many middle-aged middle managers who end up unemployed for extended periods, one I know now sells real estate after being VP at a large software company. Meanwhile, I'm in my mid-forties and had a company pay to move me cross-country for my technical skills. The fact is, there are only so many management jobs and a company can just as easily put a 35-year-old in the job as a 45 or 55-year old. Also, companies are continually trying to flatten the traditional org-chart, eliminating management positions permanently and using technical talent as the first layer of management. It's getting hard out there for an English major.

I'm not trying to diminish the real bias there is against older workers. I really believe this comes from how the US health care system works. Older workers - even those who ask a lower salary - are seen as bringing up the cost of insurance for the company's group and are seen as a higher risk for long term disability. That's a reality that's skill-set agnostic and something all of us who reach 50 years of age will have to face.

Re: Software Engineers Will Work One Day For English Majors

#189

Post by adrianhoward »

chaostheory wrote: post #148
adrianhoward wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I strongly feel that this depends on whether the 40 year old likes programming for its own sake, or they feel that it's just part of a 'clock in' and 'clock out' job Your right. It is. Then again it's equally true of the 20 year old in my experience. Most people in their forties who are still cutting code have been through three or four "fashionable" languages and have done serious work in all of them. You'll be amaz…

"Most people in their forties who are still cutting code have been through three or four 'fashionable' languages" I'm not sure where you're located, but in my experience even in Silicon Valley this is very rare. Most of the older engineers are either all about C++ or Java. A few may tinker a little with a new language, but they rarely take a risk to do more serious work with them. Moreover, many of them just transiti…

I'm not sure where you're located, but in my experience even in Silicon Valley this is very rare. Most of the older engineers are either all about C++ or Java.

My context: I'm UK based, but I know a fair number of US folk. I'm in my forties and most, but obviously not all, of my friends are 30-60.

The point I was, somewhat poorly, trying to make is that in my experience it's equally common to find a single language focus with folk in their twenties. Most young developers I encounter only know one language to any level of competence. Lots of people seem to come out of university having used nothing else but Java. Lots of folk who've self-educated seem to only know one of PHP/Ruby/Python/Perl/whatever. People in their twenties seem just as resistant to learning stuff outside of their particular domain as folk in their forties and fifties.

The mild advantage that older devs have is that they've seen languages come and go a few times. If you've got a Java developer in their forties or fifties now, then they were definitely using something else before 1996, and probably something else again ten years before that :-)

Re: Software Engineers Will Work One Day For English Majors

#190

Post by thyrsus »

xenithorb wrote: post #92

I'm a 25 year-old former Marine who thought he could take a shot at being a programmer when he exited the military. I never had any background in programming other than being interested in UNIX and Linux at a young age, so CS seemed like the logical choice for someone who had a GI bill to burn. 2 years and a lot of classes later, I'm realizing I'm too old to compete at this gig, and I should have started when I was 1…

Just another story: I got my CS degree in '81 and I've been doing Unix sysadmin for almost thirty years. I always emphasize automation; right now we're moving our configuration to puppet. A couple years after I took my current gig, I was recognized as an irreplaceable single point of failure, and we looked for someone to share the knowledge. We hired an ex-Navy guy 10 years older than me. Why? He was the the only interview who claimed to know how to program. Picking him was the best decision I've made in this job, because he's self motivated and keeps learning, right along with me.
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