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Ask HN: Where are the old folks in tech?

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Re: Ask HN: Where are the old folks in tech?

#11

Post by gregjor »

I think all of the above. I turn 64 this year, with 40+ years programming and system admin experience.

Companies outside the world of software development and tech startups tend to have more older programmers. I worked a lot in enterprise logistics with mostly older programmers, for example.

I have freelanced for about 15 years and noticed that most of the successful freelancers I meet skew over 40. I will guess that happens because younger programmers don’t have the contact network and domain expertise needed to freelance. I don’t count Upwork/Fiverr piecework as freelancing — I keep clients for years without much churn.

Many programmers I know in my age range moved into management. Others burned out and changed careers. A handful hit the stock option lottery and retired.

Re: Ask HN: Where are the old folks in tech?

#12

Post by aynyc »

Are people really getting independently wealthy at young age that common? I know a few successful folks, but they certainly aren't young when they MADE it. I know a lot of folks who worked in startups but never got anywhere near what I earn consistently in the past 20 years.

Re: Ask HN: Where are the old folks in tech?

#13

Post by al_borland »

All the old people are working with me I guess. I recently had a birthday and some co-workers I was on a call with asked how old I’d be. I said 42 and they all told me I was just a baby. I think they are all in their 60s.

It’s an older Fortune 500 company, 70+ years old.

Re: Ask HN: Where are the old folks in tech?

#14

Post by Jensson »

aynyc wrote: post #12

Are people really getting independently wealthy at young age that common? I know a few successful folks, but they certainly aren't young when they MADE it. I know a lot of folks who worked in startups but never got anywhere near what I earn consistently in the past 20 years.

If you spend like a regular white collar worker you don't need to work that many years before you can retire.

Re: Ask HN: Where are the old folks in tech?

#15

Post by parpfish »

drewg123 wrote: post #10
tacostakohashi wrote: post #4

I think it's basically the bottom two of your options. Extensive experience (beyond say 5-10 years) isn't valued for ICs. There's so much churn in tech stacks, frameworks, etc that anything anyone was doing 15 or 20 years ago is now totally irrelevant. This leads to burnout from lack of progression, and either people go into management or they drop out into something else.

Just don’t follow the fads I’ve been doing kernel code in C for nearly 30 years. Same tech stack.. emacs, c compiler, kgdb. Lots of things have come along to make things better (dtrace, eBPF). The kernels have changed (out with Solaris, DEC OSF/1, AIX, etc, in with FreeBSD and Linux), but it’s all pretty similar in the end. And experience REALLY helps and is rewarded. Especially when you were there 25 years ago and y…

You remember why you did something 25years ago? I have a hard time remembering what I did two weeks ago in a sprint retro

Re: Ask HN: Where are the old folks in tech?

#16

Post by aynyc »

Jensson wrote: post #14
aynyc wrote: post #12

Are people really getting independently wealthy at young age that common? I know a few successful folks, but they certainly aren't young when they MADE it. I know a lot of folks who worked in startups but never got anywhere near what I earn consistently in the past 20 years.

If you spend like a regular white collar worker you don't need to work that many years before you can retire.

You mean FIRE? I can't say I know anyone who FIRED sustainably.

Re: Ask HN: Where are the old folks in tech?

#17

Post by norwayjose »

parpfish wrote: post #15
drewg123 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just don’t follow the fads I’ve been doing kernel code in C for nearly 30 years. Same tech stack.. emacs, c compiler, kgdb. Lots of things have come along to make things better (dtrace, eBPF). The kernels have changed (out with Solaris, DEC OSF/1, AIX, etc, in with FreeBSD and Linux), but it’s all pretty similar in the end. And experience REALLY helps and is rewarded. Especially when you were there 25 years ago and y…

You remember why you did something 25years ago? I have a hard time remembering what I did two weeks ago in a sprint retro

I've been in the industry for 47 years - first 5 in hardware followed by 42 in software/firmware. Most of my past 32 years have been spent doing system level code in C which I still enjoy. I've had a few short stints as an acting manager and have managed to reject management's attempts to make those permanent each time because I enjoy spending my days solving problems.

It has gotten harder to remember what I've worked on lately. For the past 15 years, I've been keeping notes in text files to remind me of what I work on each day. It's far easier to do a recursive grep on my top level notes directory than it is to find something in Outlook. I also make heavy use of Confluence to document everything I work on. I think I've created more Confluence pages than the rest of my group combined.

I've kept in touch with a number of people I've enjoyed working over the years with which has made it much easier to find jobs when I need to make a change. For the past 20 years, I've maintained a mailing list to organize weekly happy hours with some of them. I got hit by a RIF 5 years ago (first time in 47 years, believe it or not) and managed to line up a new job in 2 months thanks to a hardware engineer I had enjoyed working with 32 years ago. I also had a few whiteboard interviews during that time which helped remind me why I hate the traditional way of finding jobs.

Re: Ask HN: Where are the old folks in tech?

#18

Post by GianFabien »

askafriend wrote: post #5
austin-cheney wrote: post #3

I am old. Most of my career was writing JavaScript. I will never go back to that for less than $500,000 salary. The sad reality behind JavaScript is that there are many amazing projects that come from JavaScript developers and almost all of them are either hobby projects or businesses that started as hobby projects. In the corporate world nobody can write JavaScript. JavaScript employment is filled with pretenders th…

If you're good you can definitely get $500k or more.

More info please! Where in the world and which companies?

Re: Ask HN: Where are the old folks in tech?

#20

Post by parpfish »

aynyc wrote: post #16
Jensson wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you spend like a regular white collar worker you don't need to work that many years before you can retire.

You mean FIRE? I can't say I know anyone who FIRED sustainably.

You don’t need to FIRE to still get rich enough to retire before the traditional retirement age when your a tech guy making multiples of the median household income.

Then add in a few people winning the equity lottery

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