Poll: How old are you? • Hacker News Board

Re: Poll: How old are you?

#31

Post by emp_ » Wed, Jul 17, 2013, 5:57 PM UTC

beat wrote: post #27

pvnick wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you encountered any agism in your line of work? Do you work with "trendy" languages and technologies or do you stick with tried-and-true, enterprisey type of stuff? Have you considered moving into management or have you always just preferred getting down on your hands and knees so to speak and hacking things together?

I'm 48, and I haven't encountered ageism yet. I haven't seen it, among good technical people. The hard part is that by the time you're in your late 40s, you've probably peaked out on advancement. Even if you go into management (which isn't really "advancement"), you're just going to ceiling out there instead.

Hell, I feel like peaking with 31. Constantly leaning towards an own business from where I stand.

Re: Poll: How old are you?

#32

Post by ianstallings » Wed, Jul 17, 2013, 5:57 PM UTC

I'm about 220 lbs old. I started at 180 lbs!

Re: Poll: How old are you?

#33

Post by gwright » Wed, Jul 17, 2013, 5:58 PM UTC

DanielBMarkham wrote: post #19

So, at the time I looked, roughly 500 20-something punks, and roughly 50 of us 40-something geezers. Dang, odds are that nobody I meet in the old folk's home is going to know anything at all about functional programming or Lean Startups.

Hmm. New startup idea: Hacker Retirement Community

Re: Poll: How old are you?

#34

Post by krapp » Wed, Jul 17, 2013, 5:59 PM UTC

smokinjoe wrote: post #13

Just turned 30 today and I don't even get to move up to a new selection.

I just turned 36 and I get shoved into a new demographic box for almost everything age-related on the net, now.

It's very depressing, only a couple of boxes left until the pine one...

Re: Poll: How old are you?

#35

Post by bougiefever » Wed, Jul 17, 2013, 5:59 PM UTC

I'm so old I use a combination of lit and unlit candles to represent my age in binary on my birthday cake so I don't set off the smoke alarm.

Re: Poll: How old are you?

#36

Post by 91bananas » Wed, Jul 17, 2013, 6:02 PM UTC

DanielBMarkham wrote: post #19

So, at the time I looked, roughly 500 20-something punks, and roughly 50 of us 40-something geezers. Dang, odds are that nobody I meet in the old folk's home is going to know anything at all about functional programming or Lean Startups.

Good, you'll be better for it!

Re: Poll: How old are you?

#37

Post by elboru » Wed, Jul 17, 2013, 6:05 PM UTC

jpdoctor wrote: post #11

God these types of polls make me feel like a geezer. Just in case any of you whippersnappers are wondering what it feels like to start hacking in your teens and continue (in one form or another) to be hacking into your late 40s: It is pretty much the same after the first cup of coffee in the morning. Where it differs is the lull in the afternoon makes me want to nap. (So I do.) The drag is that until I look in the mi…

Have you noticed any speed decrement in your learning curves (learning new languages or frameworks)?

Re: Poll: How old are you?

#38

Post by dlhavema » Wed, Jul 17, 2013, 6:06 PM UTC

dllthomas wrote: post #26

pvnick wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For the following reasons: 1) assume that the HN readership satisfactorily correlates to the startup demographic at large 2) the majority of the respondants answered 26-30, as was also the case in the poll that tptacek referenced elsewhere in this thread 3) the longtail is heavily skewed towards the older folks, rather than towards the younger side

See, I worry that with 1 you are conflating two "startup demographics" - people who interact on HN are probably interested in startups, but many (most?) of them aren't working for startups.

i definitely fit in that category

Re: Poll: How old are you?

#39

Post by narrator » Wed, Jul 17, 2013, 6:09 PM UTC

emp_ wrote: post #31

beat wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm 48, and I haven't encountered ageism yet. I haven't seen it, among good technical people. The hard part is that by the time you're in your late 40s, you've probably peaked out on advancement. Even if you go into management (which isn't really "advancement"), you're just going to ceiling out there instead.

Hell, I feel like peaking with 31. Constantly leaning towards an own business from where I stand.

Once you reach a certain salary as an engineer the only way to make more money is to go in as an owner either as an early hire in a startup or as a founder. You can also get stock options and wait for your company to get bought. Other than that it's pretty much all down hill.

Re: Poll: How old are you?

#40

Post by tritchey » Wed, Jul 17, 2013, 6:13 PM UTC

jpdoctor wrote: post #11

God these types of polls make me feel like a geezer. Just in case any of you whippersnappers are wondering what it feels like to start hacking in your teens and continue (in one form or another) to be hacking into your late 40s: It is pretty much the same after the first cup of coffee in the morning. Where it differs is the lull in the afternoon makes me want to nap. (So I do.) The drag is that until I look in the mi…

I'm sliding down the other side of that distribution myself.

One evening I was having dinner with my wife and her nearly 70 year old parents. Her mom made a comment that has stuck with me:

"You know, we still think and feel the same way we did when we were your age."