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Sucks to be an old engineer

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Re: Sucks to be an old engineer

#231

Post by kamaal »

WalterBright wrote: post #223
kamaal wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am willing to bet none of that will help. Not for a common guy. The fact that you are the inventor of the D programming language puts you in a very different league of people.

When I first decided to write a C compiler, a friend of mine thought it would be nice to introduce me to the community C guru for some advice. The C guru looked at me and said "Who the fuck do you think you are thinking you can write a C compiler?", and not in a nice way, either. So what's stopping you?

Nothing.

And frankly your post had me thinking this whole afternoon.

What is really stopping me. And I have to frankly say, Nothing. Thanks for this valuable advice.

Re: Sucks to be an old engineer

#232

Post by cafard »

fauigerzigerk wrote: post #109
cletus wrote: post #62

This post is touching on two issues that are somewhat related but different: 1. Finding ANY job when you're 60 is hard; 2. Engineers (who are still engineers) at 40+ will often be passed over in favour of twentysomethings. Engineering is such a young industry that I'm not sure we've really faced (1) yet (since the number of people who started engineering in the 70s is but a drop in the ocean compared to the number in…

"Also, the older you get in general the more non-work priorities you have." Why would you think so? I left home at age 18. My parents were 37 and 40 years old at the time. At that time and for many years after that, I had tons of non-work priorities, certainly more than my parents. And I don't think that's an exception. Most people never really make work their priority. Don't mistake that for an age related phenomeno…

When your kids move out--which is likely to be when you are in your mid-40s to mid-50s--then your non-work priorities are going diminish some. For that matter, when the youngest kid gets a drivers license this starts to happen.

Re: Sucks to be an old engineer

#233

Post by taude »

No one's really mentioned that keep up to date or learn a new skill is great advice...but it sucks when someone's tells you that you only have six months with MongoDB and Node.Js, so we only want to pay you for a Junior position. This is where the ageism comes into play, where a young 22 year old who doesn't have the experience because of a new technology buzzword looks attractive to the hiring manager. Seen this move a lot.

"But what about all my experience with I/O Completion Ports and multi-threaded server development mastering mutexes and slinging semaphores!?

Re: Sucks to be an old engineer

#234

Post by taude »

danbmil99 wrote: post #186
taude wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The people capable of "Or, you can be a driver of this change yourself by developing a modern, advanced programming language." is probably farer and fewer between. How many are capable and how many advanced programming languages are needed?

> how many advanced programming languages are needed? Judging by HN, about 60 per year

Awesome, so I guess there's only room for 60 SDEs over the age of 35 in this world.

Re: Sucks to be an old engineer

#235

Post by deanwampler »

MaggieL wrote: post #4

It doesn't suck to be an old engineer. It sucks to be an engineer with outdated skills. I learned FORTRAN in 1968. I learned Scala in 2012. I'll be 61 this week...and I just started a new job developing in Scala.

Congrats! I'm 8 years behind you and following the same trajectory, at least concerning these two languages. ;)

Re: Sucks to be an old engineer

#236

Post by mgkimsal »

ams6110 wrote: post #200
fauigerzigerk wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Also, the older you get in general the more non-work priorities you have." Why would you think so? I left home at age 18. My parents were 37 and 40 years old at the time. At that time and for many years after that, I had tons of non-work priorities, certainly more than my parents. And I don't think that's an exception. Most people never really make work their priority. Don't mistake that for an age related phenomeno…

Your last sentence is spot on. There is not that much challenge in picking up Python or Ruby if you are an accomplished C or Perl programmer.

While I agree, I'd go further and say the issue is not language as much as it is ecosystem. The ecosystems are changing more rapidly than they were 20 years ago. Or, at least, we learn about more of these changes faster than we did.

Ruby is Ruby, but do you use webrick? mongrel? thin? unicorn? passenger? Whoops! You chose what?! everyone knows that hasn't been supported for 6 months when the guy writing it quit supporting it because someone insulted him on a mailing list!

The stuff around a language is generally what changes more often than the language, and keeping up can be a challenge, regardless of age.

Re: Sucks to be an old engineer

#237

Post by rehack »

kamaal wrote: post #214
PostOnce wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you don't hire someone because they know Ada instead of Ruby, the odds that you're profoundly shortsighted are extremely high. I once worked at a startup whose cofounders told me that I was the oldest person in the office (having just turned 26) because "people over 30 don't get technology", meanwhile, they couldn't understand HTML, much less programming, and therefore had to hire me. The very best programmer I kn…

>>The older you are, the more time you've had not only to gain concrete skills, but to learn to abstract your existing skills and knowledge to apply to other things. Unfortunately the older your are, you are less flexible, less adjusting, running short of energy, you can't take risks as you have a family, you can't work too hard or push yourself too much because there are health risks associated with that. The list g…

> As some one who is in 20's and watching people in their 40's(My uncles) and my father(in his 60's) I can tell you the only chance we engineers have is to make loads of money, real estate and savings before we are 40-45. Else we are screwed

Bull Shit. Stereotypes are just stereotypes. If you follow one you will be one. I am 41 year old engineer(programmer) & Entrepreneur. One project I am coding now has Java, C++, Go all together. The younger programmers in my team were sort of scared to touch C++ part. I am encouraging one of them to learn Go.

I do two projects at a time, one of my own and another for a client. Support the former a bit with the consulting money I get from the latter.

I wrote the above to counter your ageist myths. You are younger and I presume flexible enough to correct them :-)

PS: I didn't down vote you BTW.

Re: Sucks to be an old engineer

#238

Post by rbanffy »

MetaCosm wrote: post #226
rbanffy wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the joy of contractors, I don't have to care. Not really. If the contractor gets sick, it's still your problem. I care for my contractors and always make sure they are paid enough to afford good medical care and a stable financial situation. It makes sense, even from a deeply selfish point of view - the less time they spend worrying about such things, the more they spend working.

First of all, I don't think it is my responsibility to ensure contractors are paid X, that is their responsibility, they set the rate. I decide if I think their skills match their rate. I can't decide what is "good" medical care for them, nor can I decide how much it costs (maybe he has a medical condition and needs 20k a month just for insurance). I can't decide what a stable financial situation is for someone eithe…

Even if it's not your responsibility, it's your problem. Replacing a contractor is not like replacing a cog in a machine.

As for deciding what's enough for a stable financial condition, I can't. What you I do, as a manager is to pay attention for warning signs.

Years ago, I had a programmer, young and very bright, who kept entering lousy freelance projects on the side. He was under great pressure because he had financial problems. I didn't want to lose him, but burnout was already on the horizon. When performance review time came, I enrolled him on a personal finance course. Within six months, the freelance jobs went away, he started coming in earlier and the already good quality of his work improved further. He had more time to study, more time for his family and more attention for his work.

Re: Sucks to be an old engineer

#239

Post by [deleted] »

ilaksh wrote: post #219
timr wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"So I'm sorry, but if you're not adopting new programming languages, tools and frameworks, then I don't think you are a good software engineer. Because good software engineers only solve the problems that they have to, and don't continue to solve the same problems over and over." Yes, and? You're arguing a straw man. I'm not claiming that things haven't changed for the better in 30+ years of coding, or that people sh…

Yes, evented programming isn't new. Yes, and? So in your opinion Node.js and MongoDB are piles of crap? Then, just curious, what system would you use to build the back end for a realtime collaborative web application, or an API that needs to hit several web APIs and do other IO to service each request? And how do you recommend that we handle data storage for small business web applications? Really would like to know…

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