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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?

#271

Post by CmonDev »

sanderjd wrote: post #235
MCRed wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I build cool stuff, I have kept up to date on new technologies, and languages. But I don't have a big network of people who "need a website" and I don't build websites, so I don't have people constantly calling me offering me work. That doesn't make me someone who has "done the same job for 30 years". My skill is not marketing my skills on a freelance basis. My skill is in engineering.. and a variety of others (like…

> Who wants to hire someone old enough to be their dad? I do. They almost certainly know more than I do about anything of any substance. Maybe they don't know node.js and mongodb as well as some young person, but they can figure that stuff much faster than I can learn any of the stuff they've learned throughout their life. I worry more about the opposite: who wants to work for someone young enough to be their child?

"Maybe they don't know node.js".

Exactly, there is nothing magical about implementing the Reactor pattern in a 25-year old language.

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

#272

Post by CmonDev »

whomer wrote: post #263
unoti wrote: post #236

I'm 46, I programmed a computer for the first time when I was 10, back when Pong was starting to wane and the Atari 2600 was starting to get big. I've been programming continuously since then for 36 years. It's been challenging me to stay with it that long, and most people I've known have dropped out for these reasons: 1.) Developers get comfortable with a given technology, and eventually stop learning. And the longe…

I totally agree. I am 59 years old and have been developing software since 1984. I spent over 17 years with a company writing chemical searching applications in C. It was always stimulating and enjoyable. The company was aquired by a venture capital firm that laid off most of the senior developers to cut costs. I had worked for a while as a manager too. I have had to teach myself new technologies I have moved from C…

C is still relevant as far as I can tell.

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

#273

Post by auntienomen »

FD3SA wrote: post #209
mattmanser wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is this comment getting upvoted? It's pretty insulting and arrogant to paint a massive swathe of our community as stupid, unambitious people who never progressed past hello world. Let's remember that in those 42 years the number of BASIC, FORTRAN, or COBOL jobs has diminished through to almost nothing. The last person I met who described themselves as a COBOL programmer was about 10 years ago, and even they said…

I felt the same, but I've come to realize that the comment you take issue with perfectly encapsulates the tech industry. A no holds barred race to the bottom. That's why work conditions, salary, stability and prestige are nowhere near comparable industries such as finance, heavy engineering, medicine, law, etc. Something about programmers makes them think they are all the destined one true hero, and as a result, prog…

You should take with a grain of salt any assertions you see that Aleynikov was bringing in billions in revenue. The sub-industry he worked in doesn't see those kinds of numbers from any individual's effort.

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

#274

Post by cjslep »

mattfrommars wrote: post #262
cjslep wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I graduated with a BS in nuclear engineering (which at NCSU is very close to a mechanical engineering degree). I now work the computational engineering angle, working both the CS and engineering model side of things. I can show what I did, but I don't have a singular piece of advice that can act as a silver bullet. - I was formally educated in FORTRAN up 'til the 95 spec. Many engineering codes still exist in it, so…

The jobs you got, did they require you to program or did you learn the languages on your own?

They definitely required programming, but were understanding of any spin-up time it took to get on board. I did wind up spending large amounts of time outside reading and tinkering along with blog posts, wikipedia, and even good old-fashioned books.

I took some of my class notes on equations and implemented them in a variety of ways as an exercise to get used to the language while keeping the engineering knowledge relevant. For instance, when I was blazing past a variance calculation, I was surprised to learn that catastrophic cancellation could occur in a naive implementation. Not because I "got the answer wrong" per se, but because a computer has limits (in this case: precision), and there's no way (in my mode of learning) for that kind of information to stick unless I have my hands dirty in the code.

To go back to the languages though, I stuck to major ones and played with Python, C/C++, and Fortran. Python and Fortran I used online references to play with and learn, while with C++ I bit the bullet and read C++ Primer which is really hefty but I found to be very thorough (and a great reference).

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

#275

Post by mwfunk »

It's an interesting question, but the article doesn't try to differentiate between a dearth of older developers vs. a dearth of older developers sending resumes to Hibernating Rhinos in Hadera, Israel. Like, are they affected by local demographics, their own corporate culture, the ways in which they do recruiting, etc.

It seems like the article is written from the perspective of assuming that the age distribution of the job seekers that they interview is equivalent to a random sampling of all software developers worldwide, but it could also just be a function of how resumes make their way their way to this particular company in this particular part of the world via the particular channels through they receive resumes.

I would still expect a random sampling of people looking for programming jobs worldwide to be heavily weighted towards recent grads however, for lots of reasons:

(1) Just in terms of numbers, there are a lot more people with recent CS degrees than degrees from 20+ years ago.

(2) People in the first few years of their career are much, much more likely to send resumes to a gazillion different places. They are also much more likely to start looking for a new job after 1-2 years.

(3) People with less experience are much more likely to apply for an entry-level position.

(4) If you have a company mostly or entirely staffed by people in their 20s, that by itself is going to scare off older developers and encourage younger developers to apply.

(5) If most of the company is composed of people in their 20s, then most of the resumes you receive from acquaintances of your existing employees are going to be from people in the same age group. So, there can also be an element of it being a self-perpetuating thing.

Etc. etc. etc. Basically, why there are fewer older developers is an interesting question with multiple answers, and why this particular company doesn't get resumes from them is also probably an interesting question with multiple answers. The questions raised by the article are so general, however, that there are no simple answers.

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

#276

Post by FD3SA »

auntienomen wrote: post #273
FD3SA wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I felt the same, but I've come to realize that the comment you take issue with perfectly encapsulates the tech industry. A no holds barred race to the bottom. That's why work conditions, salary, stability and prestige are nowhere near comparable industries such as finance, heavy engineering, medicine, law, etc. Something about programmers makes them think they are all the destined one true hero, and as a result, prog…

You should take with a grain of salt any assertions you see that Aleynikov was bringing in billions in revenue. The sub-industry he worked in doesn't see those kinds of numbers from any individual's effort.

Please elucidate exactly to which sub-industry Goldman-Sachs belongs. I'm all ears.

Last time I checked, banks are the most powerful industry, and GS is the most powerful bank[1]. Aleynikov was single handedly building, deploying, maintaining and updating Goldman-Sach's HFT framework.

If you believe that key people like Aleynikov don't make the HFT industry profitable, a certain Medallion Fund and a Dr. James Simons would beg to differ.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FzrBurlJUNk

I don't know of any big software companies getting government bailouts after gambling with money they scammed from average citizen . Once you can get away with that, and not have a single executive do jail time, come back to me. Every industry is subservient to the whims of banks. They'll tell you otherwise, but actions speak louder than words.

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

#277

Post by sanderjd »

CmonDev wrote: post #271
sanderjd wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Who wants to hire someone old enough to be their dad? I do. They almost certainly know more than I do about anything of any substance. Maybe they don't know node.js and mongodb as well as some young person, but they can figure that stuff much faster than I can learn any of the stuff they've learned throughout their life. I worry more about the opposite: who wants to work for someone young enough to be their child?

"Maybe they don't know node.js". Exactly, there is nothing magical about implementing the Reactor pattern in a 25-year old language.

There's nothing magical about any of it. It's all incremental progress. We place way too much value on specific technologies, and not enough on broad experience. If someone has been successfully building software for decades, it is stupid to think they can't figure out rails or play or clojure or {{whatever}}. They may not want to learn, but that's a different issue.

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

#278

Post by pjungwir »

brogrammer90 wrote: post #238
unoti wrote: post #236

I'm 46, I programmed a computer for the first time when I was 10, back when Pong was starting to wane and the Atari 2600 was starting to get big. I've been programming continuously since then for 36 years. It's been challenging me to stay with it that long, and most people I've known have dropped out for these reasons: 1.) Developers get comfortable with a given technology, and eventually stop learning. And the longe…

In regards to your third point, how do you differentiate yourself from a 23 year old kid who has the same amount of experience with the new technologies? Also how do live with yourself having to learn this new platform written by someone half your age?

Speaking as a 37-year-old programmer (writing code since I was 8), just because you share the same 2 years' experience on Node with a junior developer doesn't mean you threw away the 15 years' experience on web applications, databases, performance, scalability, maintainability, system administration, etc. And that's looking at it from a purely technical point of view. As unoti says, there is also much you learn beyond that.

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

#279

Post by auntienomen »

FD3SA wrote: post #276
auntienomen wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You should take with a grain of salt any assertions you see that Aleynikov was bringing in billions in revenue. The sub-industry he worked in doesn't see those kinds of numbers from any individual's effort.

Please elucidate exactly to which sub-industry Goldman-Sachs belongs. I'm all ears. Last time I checked, banks are the most powerful industry, and GS is the most powerful bank[1]. Aleynikov was single handedly building, deploying, maintaining and updating Goldman-Sach's HFT framework. If you believe that key people like Aleynikov don't make the HFT industry profitable, a certain Medallion Fund and a Dr. James Simons…

Aleynikov worked for a specific trading desk at Goldman-Sachs, which carries out high frequency strategies in some equity markets. High frequency equity trading is the sub industry I'm referring to. Since you're apparently confused about this: Goldman is a large bank. It has many lines of business, same as Microsoft produces many software products. Some of Goldman's business endeavors fall within the US high frequency equities space, but you'd be making an enormous error of scope if you confused one of their high frequency equities desks with their entire business.

I call shenanigans on the claim that Aleynikov was single handedly running the trading infrastructure for even a single one of their desks. That's complete nonsense.

As for Jim Simons: It's generally believed that the main cause of Renaissance's success is that they have a couple hundred of the world's smartest people all working together. It's not a 'key man' shop at all. (Also: You seem to be suggesting that Simons himself did all the work. The fact is that he spends most of his time smoking cigarettes and handing out wads of cash.)

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

#280

Post by cpeterso »

khyryk wrote: post #212
evilduck wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not after a certain age. They're equally useless young too. These are the people who fail at FizzBuzz.

I think this failing at FizzBuzz thing is becoming a meme.

Unfortunately, it is real. I've interviewed "senior software engineers" with "12 years of C++ experience" who could not tell me the difference between an int and a char*.
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