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Career planning: Where do old devs go to?

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Re: Career planning: Where do old devs go to?

#21

Post by coldcode »

Wintamute wrote: post #19

I'd say it's an interplay between the following issues, 1 - Writing code is a young man's game. Older devs get one too many platform/language iterations behind the curve so can't apply for as many jobs - obviously not true for everyone, but could account for something 2 - Older devs are tempted into management, and so write emails for a living instead of code 3 - Older devs may have more commitments outside of work,…

A young man's opinion :-) Speaking as someone with 33 years experience writing code at a high level, I have lost nothing over the years except the attitude that only young people can code. What matters is desire to learn and keep ahead of the curve, and continued enjoyment of writing code. I've seen people lose that at every age group.

Re: Career planning: Where do old devs go to?

#22

Post by lifeisstillgood »

There are three issues to take into account:

1. There is just a smaller pool of 20+ year devs because 20 years ago there were less developers, smaller pool of jobs etc. it should be possible to work out the max size of that pool from ONS / job data and get a ratio for today.

2. What is your job criteria? Permanent position? Wage is low compared to say contract or freelance rates? Advertised in the public job forums?

3. Lack of interesting work or autonomy.

I am a Dev with 15+ years - (I dropped out of CTO position to go back to full time Dev work). And I cannot imagine taking a permanent position unless it comes really close to a contractor wage. And I would prefer remote working.

I will be surprised if I ever find a 150k+ remote permanent position. But if I did I would expect to see only 40 year olds on the short list.

And I am pretty unusual in that I still job hunt in the open - actually applying for jobs. This is not an issue for the large majority of people I know who use their "networks" better than I do.

So in short a good Dev (and having lasted 10-20 years they cannot be idiots) is not goin to be looking for a job, if they are, they will not be looking where you advertise, and if they do look there, your rates will be too low, your job conditions off putting and finally you probably tell people what and where and how to work.

If you want old devs, pay more, micro-manage less, and fish in places that are recruiter unfriendly.

Re: Career planning: Where do old devs go to?

#23

Post by edw519 »

59, programming for 42 years, the last 35 professionally. Here on HN for 7.5 years.

I've always been very busy (one of the main reasons I don't post on HN as much any more). I don't have a resume. I'm not on LinkedIn. If I ever ran low on work, it would probably take me a day or two and a few phone calls to find something.

I don't work on anything unless I find it incredibly compelling. I write applications. I've seen tons of different technologies, many old ones I still use. But I also get very jazzed learning new stuff and incorporating it into my toolbox.

I know tons of programmers in my age group. I'd classify them into 2 groups:

25% - just like me. You don't see our resumes because we're very happy building cool stuff and rarely look for work. We've also seen it all and can smell something we're not interested in a mile away. You don't see us at many events because we're so busy with work and life, we only pick the ones with the most promise of bang for the buck. Most of the programmers I know in this group would make phenomenal additions to many startups, but don't recognize this as a compelling alternative to what they're already doing. The best way to engage us is to seek us out, make friends, and share some stories about something cool you're working on.

75% - one year's experience 30 times, not 30 years experience. Unaware of modern technology. Couldn't write Hello World in anything other than BASIC, FORTRAN, or COBOL (and would probably misspell 50% of the words). No imagination. Limited ability to visualize the possibilities. Hiding under the radar in some enterprise. You don't want these people.

Re: Career planning: Where do old devs go to?

#24

Post by dannypgh »

insertnickname wrote: post #10
mcv wrote: post #6

Shuttling experienced devs off into management is of course a sad thing that should be prevented. It's better to have high ranking technical positions available. (Although, Microsoft, isn't "fellow" basically a posh word for "guy"? So the high ranking tech guy gets a position called "posh tech guy"?) Anyway, my dad has always resisted any push towards management. He did occasionally get the lead of a project thrust u…

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fellow

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fellow_(disambiguation)

"Fellow, a commonly used synonym for man"

Proving only that it's not only Microsoft that's using highly gendered language for positions of respect. However, last I checked academia as a whole is doing better in the gender diversity department than tech (low bar).

Re: Career planning: Where do old devs go to?

#25

Post by chii »

vacri wrote: post #18
binarymax wrote: post #7

I just turned 36, and I am in a contemplative self battle with this very question for my own career. As far as internal career development goes for my current employment, I have "succeeded". I have had a slew of successful projects and have been slowly but surely moving up the chain. It's difficult because in a large firm (20k global employees), moving up means coding less and attending more meetings. This is startin…

If you have succeeded, why not stay where you are? Why do you have to move up? "Thanks, but I prefer coding, I'd rather stay where I am".

> "Thanks, but I prefer coding, I'd rather stay where I am".

"...but i want more pay - how about CEO level pay?"

"nope."

Re: Career planning: Where do old devs go to?

#27

Post by chii »

mmcconnell1618 wrote: post #4

In most of the organizations I've worked for you reach a salary cap as an engineer. The only way to make more is to become a manager where you get paid more simply because you're part of the group deciding how much people get paid. The other career path I've seen is the architect route where a skilled developer no longer codes but instead spends their time helping others design good software.

both of those routes is boring - which route involve working in "the trenches", whilst still getting paid management level salaries? Don't say startup because that's just money earned on risk-taking, not guaranteed payment like a salary.

Re: Career planning: Where do old devs go to?

#29

Post by dannypgh »

michaelochurch wrote: post #15

To get a programming job that can actually use 10+ years of experience, you need to develop strong interpersonal skills and (to put a darker shade on it) learn some CS 666: Software Politics. At that point, the main obstacle to moving into management (needing to bring your interpersonal skills up to, at least, the 25th percentile) is gone. In other words, if you're good enough at interpersonal politics to keep improv…

"It's 100 times harder to become a Principal Engineer (Director-equivalent) than to hop on to the management ladder and make Director. It's 10,000 times harder to become a Google Fellow (VP-equivalent) than to make VP."

I think it is obvious given total headcount that there aren't 10,000 times as many VPs as Fellows. And given I know of way more people going from IC to Management positions than the other way around, it seems many ICs effectively compete with folks on the Management ladder for Management jobs. Meaning even if equal effort was required to get to Director as to PE, I'd expect many would-be PEs end up as Directors because they decided to switch to the management track for whatever reason (e.g. because they realized they were already informally managing). Sure, one of those reasons /might/ be they thought career advancement was easier on the management track, but what proof of that do you have?

To assert it's 2 orders of magnitude harder to become a PE than a director, and 5 orders of magnitude harder to become a Fellow than a VP, I think you're gonna need more proof than that.

Re: Career planning: Where do old devs go to?

#30

Post by PeterisP »

dannypgh wrote: post #29
michaelochurch wrote: post #15

To get a programming job that can actually use 10+ years of experience, you need to develop strong interpersonal skills and (to put a darker shade on it) learn some CS 666: Software Politics. At that point, the main obstacle to moving into management (needing to bring your interpersonal skills up to, at least, the 25th percentile) is gone. In other words, if you're good enough at interpersonal politics to keep improv…

"It's 100 times harder to become a Principal Engineer (Director-equivalent) than to hop on to the management ladder and make Director. It's 10,000 times harder to become a Google Fellow (VP-equivalent) than to make VP." I think it is obvious given total headcount that there aren't 10,000 times as many VPs as Fellows. And given I know of way more people going from IC to Management positions than the other way around,…

Actually, if I look at tech field as a whole, it seems quite realistic that there are 10000 more VP-level positions across the many companies than the Fellow-level positions, of which 99% of companies don't have any at all. My home city likely has thousands of software-related VP's, but has 0 Fellow-like positions, they're very uncommon globally.

Quite literally. If I want to be a manager of a sizeable bunch of programmers, then that's a popular job that every company (from small tech companies to multinationals selling soap or loans) will have a bunch of and most of them probably have a vacancy right here and now. If I want a Fellow-type role, then my options can be counted on my fingers.

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