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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?

#281

Post by unoti »

scribu wrote: post #260
JoeAltmaier wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm like Ed! Except I do engines, libraries, network and backend code, including embedded stuff. But I don't have a resume; don't apply for jobs; don't need to look for work because it looks for me. I've owned a company but its lonely, so now I earn less but work as a peer in somebody else's company.

Upvoted because I never heard anyone until now say that owning a company is lonely. Food for thought...

I own my own company too, and the loneliness is a very serious issue. I miss having someone else to bounce ideas off of. And often it feels like I'm the only one that cares whether I'm working during a given 1-day period or not, which is very difficult for me sometimes, particularly when the work isn't very challenging.

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

#282

Post by cpeterso »

jeffreyrogers wrote: post #74
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.

> Would you say the same thing for lawyers or doctors with 30 years experience? I don't have a reference for this, but I remember reading that other than surgeons, doctors' skills decline the further out they get from medical school... of course that's doesn't take into account a lot of the other important parts of being a doctor like how you interact with patients, etc.

Doctors and nurses are required to take continuing education to stay licensed.

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

#283

Post by brational »

logfromblammo wrote: post #268
brational wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If your vacation and sick pay recently went to PTO instead, you should be looking. Can you explain this one? I don't even come close to using my sick time up. I'd much rather have them give it as one giant PTO bucket (unless you're implying PTO is less in total than vacation + sick).

Depending in the laws of your locale, an employer may be required to pay for an employee's vacation balance. PTO was formulated primarily to evade this restriction and to provide the means to reduce the company's accounting liabilities. While it was sold to you on the basis of flexibility, it really is a significant reduction in your benefits. Think about how salary works. If you work as an exempt salaried employee e…

I see. I was previously at a company with PTO and when I left I was paid the balance. At my new company I have both, but unless I use sick time basically as '2nd vacation pool' (potential ethical issues etc) I actually end up with less time off.

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

#284

Post by cpeterso »

sergiosgc wrote: post #117
ThomaszKrueger wrote: post #92

I'm 53 with an EE degree, went to programming because it so happened that there was a telecommunications research center close by the school. And programming looked cooler and easier than EE. I compare programming to writing, more than engineering. There is no engineering in programming. No matter how many "methodologies" are created, writing good programs and good systems is akin to writing a good story or a good bo…

I'm a software engineer. My degree was half pure engineering subjects (math, physics, signal theory, the works) and half computer science. While not all programming is engineering, whenever you are modeling complex systems, it is engineering as pure as it comes (in the sense of applied physics and applied math). It is also (always?) storytelling, I agree.

A quite literal analogy is Scrum's "user stories". :)

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

#285

Post by unoti »

mattmanser wrote: post #146
edw519 wrote: post #23

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 see…

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…

> Let's remember that in those 42 years the number of BASIC, FORTRAN, or COBOL jobs has diminished through to almost nothing.

That's true, but it's a hockey stick / logarithmic thing. When I started coding, the BASIC and COBOL technologies were waning-- still bringing in paychecks, but it was clear that their peak was a few years in the past.

There are lots of people right here on these forums using technologies today that are in the exact same situation. Citing these examples by name usually erupts into a flame war, but for sake of illustration, a good example might be PHP.

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

#286

Post by JoeAltmaier »

unoti wrote: post #281
scribu wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Upvoted because I never heard anyone until now say that owning a company is lonely. Food for thought...

I own my own company too, and the loneliness is a very serious issue. I miss having someone else to bounce ideas off of. And often it feels like I'm the only one that cares whether I'm working during a given 1-day period or not, which is very difficult for me sometimes, particularly when the work isn't very challenging.

Takes iron discipline to keep going, 4 weeks into an 8-week project with nothing to do but turning the crank.

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

#287

Post by chton »

Iftheshoefits wrote: post #218
chton wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"one year's experience 30 times, not 30 years experience." is a fantastic sentence and I'm stealing it. I've seen too many developers to whom it applies, and it's a great way to express that.

Are you one of the people who use it to describe serial contractors or "job hoppers", or are you one of the people who use it to describe people who've been iterating on the same project/technology system for X years in a single place? That's the problem with the generalization: it's too general, can be applied to almost any normal career, and isn't really a good heuristic to use when analyzing somebody's work experi…

I'd use for people who claim X years of experience, but haven't made any progress in ability in those X years. You can spend 30 years evolving, or you can spend it standing still and only moving when you have no other option. This kind of phrase is for the latter kind, doesn't matter if they're serial contractors or have been working on the same project for 30 years.

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

#288

Post by [deleted] »

FD3SA wrote: post #253
simplemath wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How did you get "other programmers" as the villain in Aleynikov's disgusting tale? Just wondering.

Actually in his case, his worst enemy was himself. He did not accurately value himself within the organization either politically or economically [1]. He thus paid the price. The programmer types were different from the trader types. The trader types were far more alive to the bigger picture, to their context. They knew their worth in the marketplace down to the last penny. They understood the connection between what…

[deleted]

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

#289

Post by abc_lisper »

InclinedPlane wrote: post #205
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…

There is a common trope floating around which says that some developers are 10x more productive than others. This has led to a lot of questioning of whether or not that is actually true in practice, what it means, whether it's possible to become a "10x" developer, and so on. The truth is that it's looking at the problem in the wrong way because it relies on the underlying assumption that development is like factory w…

:) I almost thought you were saying there were no 10x developers. I agree with you 100%

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

#290

Post by mattmanser »

unoti wrote: post #285
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…

> Let's remember that in those 42 years the number of BASIC, FORTRAN, or COBOL jobs has diminished through to almost nothing. That's true, but it's a hockey stick / logarithmic thing. When I started coding, the BASIC and COBOL technologies were waning-- still bringing in paychecks, but it was clear that their peak was a few years in the past. There are lots of people right here on these forums using technologies toda…

PHP's not there, no-one's been able to replace its ease of use and it will remain until someone does. Also it's had some good face lifts recently. There's plenty of new code being written today in PHP.

Perl, on the other hand, is.

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