Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Career planning: Where do old devs go to?

ayende.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

301–310 of 326 posts

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

#301

Post by erikb »

m0nty wrote: post #132
erikb wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not necessarily a bad thing to hear something that sounds bad. Even after years on this planet people can rediscover themselves and start a kind of life they didn't even know it exists. Not telling people who are bad that they are bad is a concept I have a hard time to understand. Instead of worrying about feelings why not worry about really being this better person people can't complain (as much) about?

> Not telling people who are bad that they are bad is a concept I have a hard time to understand. You might be wrong, and you should factor that in. Perhaps you're not helping people towards a bright new future of self-realization, just condemning them out-of-hand based on your own limited experience or misconceptions? (Not using "you" to imply you do this, btw.)

I myself have the experience of overestimating myself drastically many times. Also there are a few things I got good enough in. Therefore I think, when you get feedback and the person giving the feedback is wrong due to their lack of skill, not yours, then you are not really hurt. The only thing that is harmed is your impression and respect for that person. When you are sincerely hurt, it's often you who's lacking.

Never the less it's important to think carefully before criticising others. You are absolutely right and I'll try to keep that in mind next time I want to tell someone how bad they are.

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

#302

Post by frozenport »

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'm confused by your reluctance to move up the corporate ladder. Why do you want to do the grunt work?

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

#303

Post by chii »

jeffreyrogers wrote: post #79
chii wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "Thanks, but I prefer coding, I'd rather stay where I am". "...but i want more pay - how about CEO level pay?" "nope."

CEO's and managers get a lot of shit on HN, but there is a reason they make more money (in general, obviously there are exceptions, especially at tech companies). The main reason is that what they do is more valuable. At most companies the coding required is easy and doesn't require much thought, low-skill = low-pay. The job of allocating capital and people to the highest ROI areas is much more significant to most co…

but that's not the whole story - a CEO is highly paid, but that's more likely that they've "proven" track-record of doing well in another company, and in order to poach them, a high salary is needed. But, _is_ the CEO responsible for their so-called record? or do they just have really talented employees and the credit for doing well is being rubbed off into the CEO?

Think steven jobs - he is credited with apple's success. May be that's true - he could have ruthless quality requirements. But it couldn't have happened without the engineers that _actually_ created the product. Why is it that the CEO gets exponentially more returns than the soldiers that fight in the trenches, doing the _actual_ work?

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

#304

Post by teh_klev »

jimbokun wrote: post #261
teh_klev wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm 47* and I've been around a bit (dotcom era startups to banking and telecoms) and I'm familiar with the 75% mentioned. There is a type of programmer that works away in blue chips turning up to work on time, doing what's asked of them and then knocking off at half five. Sure they maybe repeat the same one year's experience year after year perhaps with some technology transitioning years from COBOL to VB to VB.NET o…

"It might not be as exciting as the seat of your pants local startup but it pays the mortgage and provides reasonable financial security." I'm skeptical of the "financial security" claim. Obviously this is not true in the U.S., where there is zero hesitancy to lay people off and very rare to have legal recourse as an employee when laid off. But even working in the U.K. or other nations with stronger worker protection…

>"Companies can very quickly go from profitable to out of business or close to it"

Sure, but types of companies I'm talking about where these folks work are big blue chip FTSE 100 companies. It's a very rare event where a company the size of Lloyds or Barclays or BAE snuffs itself out of existence.

Ok sometimes you get a perfect storm such as the 2008 banking crisis but even then the UK government and others stepped in to prop up the likes of RBS, Bank of Scotland and Northern Rock. No-one turned up to discover the doors locked in the IT department and life very quickly went back to business as usual.

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

#305

Post by teh_klev »

enraged_camel wrote: post #141
teh_klev wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm 47* and I've been around a bit (dotcom era startups to banking and telecoms) and I'm familiar with the 75% mentioned. There is a type of programmer that works away in blue chips turning up to work on time, doing what's asked of them and then knocking off at half five. Sure they maybe repeat the same one year's experience year after year perhaps with some technology transitioning years from COBOL to VB to VB.NET o…

>> It's just a job I can understand this mentality, but cannot sympathize with it. Personally, I refuse to treat my job as "just a job." I want it to mean something. I want to look forward to coming to work everyday. I want to feel like the work I do makes a difference, as opposed to fizzle out and die in the massive corporate bureaucracy. I hate the idea that I'm just spinning my wheels, looking busy, collecting a p…

I was once like you, and I still am a wee bit. There's a era on my CV where I jumped ship every ~18 months until I landed in my current role. I did this because I wanted to experience working in different market sectors and then when I got bored I moved on.

The present role, where I've been for the past 11 years, is very enjoyable and gets me out of bed in the morning...but paradoxically I do treat it somewhat as "just a job". I have to do that because otherwise I'd just burn out, and that happened once before and it nearly killed my development career.

But anyway, I wish you all the best and hope the future's bright for you.

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

#306

Post by collyw »

MrDom wrote: post #169
collyw wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Young people usually write crap code in my 11 years experience. (Not all of them but probably the majority of them).

I knew one young guy in particular who prized indirection over all things. Debugging his code for something relatively simple involved jumping up and down at least 10 rungs of indirection or "abstraction" and was by and large a nightmare to extend or maintain. But, he always , without exception exuded confidence and delivered new features quickly. He was hired as a senior architect at several startups before he turne…

I seem to have had the jobs cleaning up after these peoples mess.

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

#307

Post by ilaksh »

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?

There are plenty of older developers who are interested in the latest thing. Because us older developers get bored with the old stuff, and we are definitely aware of the issue of falling behind. I am 36 and have been doing Node.js for 3 years.

I was just reading a response to this article with someone who was much older, like 50 or 60 or something, also said he was a Node.js programmer.

I've actually been really paying close attention to trends, new programming languages, etc.

Node.js is kind of old news. The coolest new programming language I know of is Nim.

Stuff that I think that matters for the future is higher-level semantic metalanguages for information exchange and information systems factorization, fully distributed computing, connected devices, and custom circuits/electronics.

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

#308

Post by porker »

exelius wrote: post #143
artmageddon wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I saw the game for what it was early and got out of engineering before I hit 30. What did you jump into afterward?

I went and got an MBA and jumped into consulting. Because I worked for a number of startups before that, my niche started out being helping big companies foster innovation internally. At this point, I'm more on the marketing/product side of the equation, which is extremely interesting in my mind. You really need a tech background to do product for anything but retail goods these days anyway; and in the media products…

> I'm more on the marketing/product side of the equation, which is extremely interesting in my mind. You really need a tech background to do product for

In this context, what would you define as 'product'? I'm curious as I hear it mentioned and it sounds fun, but conjours up mental images of inventing the next Gilette razor.

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

#309

Post by mathattack »

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…

An observation and a questions...

I've observed that Group 2 (your 75%) frequently winds up in "Director of IT" positions where they can productively re-use that year over and over again keeping the ship running. Some of it is a lack of imagination, some just a simple desire for stability. Either way, they get very stuck. Their firms can't afford for them to do anything else, and they have to take a pay cut if anything bad happens.

Now my question.... By keeping a low profile, do you feel you are artificially lower your wages or opportunities? You're in the same boat as the top 3 or 4 developers I know - very talented, well paid, jobs find them, and employable in any market. But sometimes I wonder if they could get paid more if they were more visible, simply from supply/demand. (They have a scarce skill, increasing the demand for it should increase the wages) Or is it that anyone who would properly employ them is by definition outside mainstream hiring and would know them already?

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

#310

Post by sanderjd »

ilaksh wrote: post #307
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?

There are plenty of older developers who are interested in the latest thing. Because us older developers get bored with the old stuff, and we are definitely aware of the issue of falling behind. I am 36 and have been doing Node.js for 3 years. I was just reading a response to this article with someone who was much older, like 50 or 60 or something, also said he was a Node.js programmer. I've actually been really payi…

It's so absurd that 36 is "older".

I didn't mean to imply that no "older" developers are interested in newer things, just that it really doesn't matter if they aren't.

Post reply on HN