Career planning: Where do old devs go to? • Hacker News Board

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

#101

Post by walshemj » Mon, Oct 20, 2014, 2:04 PM UTC

freshflowers wrote: post #89

As an old dev (47) who's main focus is now management (the only thing I still program is devops stuff), there are some reasons why I stopped being a developer a few years back: 1) Developers are treated without much respect. Seriously, even with the scarcity, and even when we do get paid well (which is relatively rare) and have nice perks, developers still don't get the kind of respect other similarly highly skilled…

Amen brother the average GP in the UK is paid £120k average C.Eng. Is probably paid 50% less than that if they are lucky.

The base salary for a LU tube driver is more than the average it salary in London.

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

#102

Post by etrevino » Mon, Oct 20, 2014, 2:05 PM UTC

goatforce5 wrote: post #93

exelius wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Haha, I see this a lot. Banks who pay mediocre developers $150k a year plus crazy benefits to write entry-level reports because fuck it; the salary for the entire IT department is a rounding error on the bonus pool for the traders so who gives a shit? Good luck getting those guys out of a job like that. Not saying you're mediocre; but a job like that leads to mediocrity and complacency because the work is often uncha…

FWIW I know someone who used to work in IT for a bank whose yearly bonus was bigger than my (decent) wage as a programmer at a startup during the Dotcom 1.0 boom. I guess they had to trickle-down some bonuses to the IT guys so they didn't get jealous when the traders were getting their 6 or 7 figure bonuses at the end of the year. He worked in networking. I guess it was one of the largest private networks in the worl…

There are two sides of the development coin for companies like banks, though. On one side is your friend who is asked to do the Serious Business. Without a doubt those are the interesting jobs. On the other side is the stupid report development. I've only seen the stupid report development. I've never heard of folks moving from one to the other, though.

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

#103

Post by Beltiras » Mon, Oct 20, 2014, 2:07 PM UTC

sixQuarks wrote: post #48

31reasons wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>75% - one year's experience 30 times, not 30 years experience. You don't want these people. You are basically saying 75% of the developers after certain age are useless. I don't agree or disagree with your statement . Just startled. What does it say about software development as a career ? Would you say the same thing for lawyers or doctors with 30 years experience? This is depressing.

why are you startled? Have you never heard of the 20/80 rule? It appears in almost every dataset. The top 20% of any set do 80% of the work. Example: The top 20% of a population owns 80% of the wealth. And yes, this applies to other occupations as well.

It's called the Pareto Principle(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_principle) and it does not need to be a symmetric 80/20 split. 1% of the people own 50% of the wealth is one other application of the same math.

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

#104

Post by walshemj » Mon, Oct 20, 2014, 2:07 PM UTC

goatforce5 wrote: post #93

exelius wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Haha, I see this a lot. Banks who pay mediocre developers $150k a year plus crazy benefits to write entry-level reports because fuck it; the salary for the entire IT department is a rounding error on the bonus pool for the traders so who gives a shit? Good luck getting those guys out of a job like that. Not saying you're mediocre; but a job like that leads to mediocrity and complacency because the work is often uncha…

FWIW I know someone who used to work in IT for a bank whose yearly bonus was bigger than my (decent) wage as a programmer at a startup during the Dotcom 1.0 boom. I guess they had to trickle-down some bonuses to the IT guys so they didn't get jealous when the traders were getting their 6 or 7 figure bonuses at the end of the year. He worked in networking. I guess it was one of the largest private networks in the worl…

I know part of me whished I has switched into TCP/IP from OSI (I was 3rd line support for the uk for X.400) and gone down the multiple CCIE route at BT

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

#105

Post by derivagral » Mon, Oct 20, 2014, 2:07 PM UTC

shams93 wrote: post #76

You wind up taking "haircuts" and doing without equity here in Los Angeles till you are like me, 43 and forced to live in a squat with no running water because the startup you were working for decided to kick up your hours to 21 days, 7 days a week with no overtime, and then cuts your base pay by 2/3 so the founders don't take a haircut, this has been happening over and over for 14 years for me to the point where thi…

This sounds like a place you should leave.

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

#106

Post by seanmcdirmid » Mon, Oct 20, 2014, 2:08 PM UTC

michaelochurch wrote: post #17

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You should work for a tech company (i.e. those companies that solely focus on tech). Most usually have clear career paths for those who want to become senior individual contributors vs. managers, because that is actually very useful.

I'm skeptical about dual-track organizations (read my other post in this thread, here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8481680 ). I agree that it's a good idea, but they tend to make it astronomically harder to be a Director-equivalent engineer than a Director. Ultimately, the management ladder is easier to scale and therefore "better", insofar as you can be a Director and still code (if you want). I look at it…

The tech world is going flat, which has a lot to do with the experiences of your former employer. In this new (but not really that new) model, the hierarchy is flatter, people managers are fewer and have lots of reports, while experienced/skilled individual contributors (ICs) are expected to provide more of the leadership missing from the fewer managers (who are better at providing that anyways). When each manager has 20 reports, you don't need many of them. Even Microsoft is moving this way, and has always focused on a lot of strong ICs; distinguished engineer is a partner level position (I think).

I would be quite surprised if the real product direction power wasn't held by the principal engineers at Google. I mean, ya, the managers get to manage, and they provide some leadership, but they have those pesky management tasks and politics (all necessary) getting in the way of that. In that situation, there are also probably plenty of managers who have to manage peers (i.e. people who have equal or even more influence in the company), and the concept of "underling who reports back" is a bit of a stretch!

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

#107

Post by Silhouette » Mon, Oct 20, 2014, 2:09 PM UTC

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,…

This post reminds me of the Oscar Wilde quote, "I am not young enough to know everything."

In reality, there are plenty of excellent older developers around who are still building stuff. They just aren't building it at the kind of company where you reach the most senior recognised development position after as little as five years, you've run out of interesting problems to solve in half that time anyway, the management think productive developers are the ones who work so many hours that they can't have a family and/or social life at the same time, and the junior developers think grandpa can't program with anything invented since COBOL.

Meanwhile, look at the guru everyone turns to in a small-to-medium sized shop, the top-billing freelance/contractor/consultant crowd, the disproportionately successful founder demographics, and the guys who are lecturing everyone else with "Fellow" in their title at the bigger technical firms, and you'll find plenty of places where the very experienced and capable hackers are still plying their trade quite happily.

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

#108

Post by Anderkent » Mon, Oct 20, 2014, 2:11 PM UTC

ep103 wrote: post #70

exelius wrote: post #42

That's because programming is an entry level job. No, I'm not trolling: I'm quite serious about that. Engineering has almost always been an entry level job; computers or not. You start as an engineer; and as you get better, the number of engineering management jobs is pretty limited, so there's nowhere to go for the vast majority of people. But you get pulled into enough internal projects you start to develop a bit o…

Couldn't you say this about every industry though? I feel like I could have read the exact same post, with the word engineer literally substituted for any other job name, and it'd still read the same. Is that a fair assessment, or is my experience just limited?

Hm, I don't think it's strictly every job, but it's a common syndrome. Say for example a surgeon - in my mental model he moves from being an assistant during ops to leading op teams or research. I might have a completely wrong model how surgeon careers progress, though :P

But in general it makes sense for experienced people to move into managerial roles where they can leverage their knowledge on a meta level, rather than purely object level work.

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

#109

Post by wastedhours » Mon, Oct 20, 2014, 2:12 PM UTC

alistairSH wrote: post #33

37 years old, studied computer science at university, and have worked in the software industry since graduation. Currently at a mid-size/large, multinational software company. We have a large number of developers with 20+ years experience. You aren't seeing their resumes because they're here and don't have a reason to leave. I've been here 12 years now, and if you can't match the 25 days vacation, 10 sick, 12 holiday…

They put a limit on the number of sick days per year?

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

#110

Post by exelius » Mon, Oct 20, 2014, 2:14 PM UTC

goatforce5 wrote: post #93

exelius wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Haha, I see this a lot. Banks who pay mediocre developers $150k a year plus crazy benefits to write entry-level reports because fuck it; the salary for the entire IT department is a rounding error on the bonus pool for the traders so who gives a shit? Good luck getting those guys out of a job like that. Not saying you're mediocre; but a job like that leads to mediocrity and complacency because the work is often uncha…

FWIW I know someone who used to work in IT for a bank whose yearly bonus was bigger than my (decent) wage as a programmer at a startup during the Dotcom 1.0 boom. I guess they had to trickle-down some bonuses to the IT guys so they didn't get jealous when the traders were getting their 6 or 7 figure bonuses at the end of the year. He worked in networking. I guess it was one of the largest private networks in the worl…

Yeah, banks are the epitome of just throwing money all over the place. You're right though; core systems work at banks is often super-interesting because the total amount they spend on IT systems in a year is so small compared to the amount of business that they do, they go all-out.

I'm speaking more of the peripheral IT functions - the one-off business apps and reporting solutions that departments within banks will often use because no commercial product exists to serve a specialized need. I can think of one example at a major international bank that was executing over a trillion dollars in currency trades a day. They had a pretty basic tool that basically amounted to a spreadsheet with some custom logic that pulled data from a bunch of systems and aggregated it so the traders could book a bunch of smaller trades together and get better rates. This tool was super-niche and quite simple from a programming standpoint, but it made the company probably a million dollars a day. So they paid a guy a full salary to maintain it. He had been in the job for 15 years and was pretty well settled in. They probably didn't need someone full time dedicated to this, but it's not hard to justify $100-150k in salary for someone to maintain a system that generates $200 million a year in pure profit.