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Programmers: Before you turn 40, get a plan B (2009)

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Re: Programmers: Before you turn 40, get a plan B (2009)

#111

Post by jakobegger »

jarsin wrote: post #25

Lets see every 20-30 year old we have brought in the past 3 years: A) Is so arrogant they think they know it all. Then when they turn in the code it's barely passable and it become clear they are going to be difficult to work with. B) Are overly emotional and they all take things way too seriously. Now every 35+ person we have brought in for a project is: A) Professional. Gets the job done and very well. B) Sees the…

I think that there's a huge variation among developers regardless of age or experience. There are people who are 25 and believe they've seen it all, and there are 45 year olds who tell you they've seen it all. What they have in common is that they don't listen to your advise and refuse to learn new things.

Re: Programmers: Before you turn 40, get a plan B (2009)

#112

Post by MCRed »

RomanPushkin wrote: post #110

Best advice: build your shit. No matter how much time it takes, 1 year, 2, 3. If it doesn't work and you don't earn enough, build your shit. During your career you'll be able to build 3-5 relatively big projects. And about 10-30 small projects and ideas. And if you're lucky enough, you won't worry about that anymore. I earned x3 salary 5 years ago. I had freedom, and I could work 5-10 hours a week. But finally my pro…

Please describe the "shit" you would like us to build. I'm asking seriously.

Are you saying we should build a big open source project like Angular or Rails? What are the odds that either of us could build the next Rails though? So are you saying that even if it "fails" and it doesn't displace rails that this is good for your career?

Basically could you explain what you're trying got convey in really concrete terms?

I'm not disagreeing with you, I think you might be onto something or have a useful perspective, I'm just not sure what you're really saying.

Re: Programmers: Before you turn 40, get a plan B (2009)

#113

Post by tomerbd »

isomorphic wrote: post #21
bikamonki wrote: post #2

More options: - Go solo. At 40 you should be experienced enough to handle up to mid-sized projects, alone and on a reasonable time-frame. Try to pick projects that your clients will actually use, with new features and support contracts you will have steady income for the long-term. - Go startup. Stop thinking you need to come up with the next über-for-x. There are plenty of opportunities for small sass shops that cat…

I'm over 40 and I've always worked as a consultant. Until recently I was the sole developer on a site doing eight figures in revenue (now I'm team lead). Without being arrogant here, if my skills match but someone doesn't want my level of experience, it's not a good sign for the someone. On the flip side, I would love to throw out all of the languages and frameworks I've been using for the past few years and learn en…

i'm still trying to figure out whether to learn ruby on rails or play2 scala for web development, what do you suggest?

Re: Programmers: Before you turn 40, get a plan B (2009)

#115

Post by zaroth »

gamegoblin wrote: post #27
comp1927 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Latex's author already prove it wrong http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Knuth

Knuth did TeX. LaTeX was Leslie Lamport. LaTex is short for Lamport TeX.

Quite the exclusive clique they've got there.

Re: Programmers: Before you turn 40, get a plan B (2009)

#116

Post by jv22222 »

Somehow I can't equate myself to my age number, 46.

In 25 years there has never been a moment when I wasn't in love with learning the latest cutting edge tech.

Over the years it's been so much fun...

...to progress from the BBC B to pascal on the mac to pc's to unix boxes to c cgi scripts to perl to php to mySQL to flash actionscript to ruby to javascript to noSQL to node to socket.io to html5 css3 to iOS to android to rabbitmq to laravel.

...to move from crappy first gen-linux boxes serving web pages from my front room to using web hosting companies to the elastic cloud to puppet to salt-stack to containers.

And I'm only just getting started.

I can't wait to get in to VR, 3D printing, hard core signal processing and so much more.

When I'm screen sharing and problem solving with a 25 year old dev on a hardcore problem I feel no different in any way to the person on the other end of the line.

Re: Programmers: Before you turn 40, get a plan B (2009)

#117

Post by jacquesm »

tomerbd wrote: post #113
isomorphic wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm over 40 and I've always worked as a consultant. Until recently I was the sole developer on a site doing eight figures in revenue (now I'm team lead). Without being arrogant here, if my skills match but someone doesn't want my level of experience, it's not a good sign for the someone. On the flip side, I would love to throw out all of the languages and frameworks I've been using for the past few years and learn en…

i'm still trying to figure out whether to learn ruby on rails or play2 scala for web development, what do you suggest?

You're not asking me but I'd go for the one that you're likely to be least familiar with, that will teach you the most.

Re: Programmers: Before you turn 40, get a plan B (2009)

#118

Post by RomanPushkin »

MCRed wrote: post #112
RomanPushkin wrote: post #110

Best advice: build your shit. No matter how much time it takes, 1 year, 2, 3. If it doesn't work and you don't earn enough, build your shit. During your career you'll be able to build 3-5 relatively big projects. And about 10-30 small projects and ideas. And if you're lucky enough, you won't worry about that anymore. I earned x3 salary 5 years ago. I had freedom, and I could work 5-10 hours a week. But finally my pro…

Please describe the "shit" you would like us to build. I'm asking seriously. Are you saying we should build a big open source project like Angular or Rails? What are the odds that either of us could build the next Rails though? So are you saying that even if it "fails" and it doesn't displace rails that this is good for your career? Basically could you explain what you're trying got convey in really concrete terms? I…

I'm talking about your own SaaS projects. It's relatively easy to build something on your own, if you're developer. Some kind of tool for business. When you can charge monthly for your product.

Even a very busy person like me can find ~1-2 hours daily for development, and you can think about how to implement what you want in car, bart, on the way home, etc.

Re: Programmers: Before you turn 40, get a plan B (2009)

#119

Post by jacquesm »

danieltillett wrote: post #20
bikamonki wrote: post #2

More options: - Go solo. At 40 you should be experienced enough to handle up to mid-sized projects, alone and on a reasonable time-frame. Try to pick projects that your clients will actually use, with new features and support contracts you will have steady income for the long-term. - Go startup. Stop thinking you need to come up with the next über-for-x. There are plenty of opportunities for small sass shops that cat…

The problem with age is you become less flexible. If your have a business where you know what you will be doing in 6 months time then experience is great - when your plans change weekly then the flexibility of youth is what you want.

Inflexibility is in my experience more often associated with a person than with their age. I've seen 30 year old devs that were absolutely incapable of changing over to new tech as it became available and I've seen 55+ people dig in with gusto. It's a mentality thing. Sure, mentality can change over time, maybe someone that's older is going to give something new a little while longer before hopping on the bandwagon or maybe they've already seen something similar fail in the past which is why they might be reluctant.

But flexibility is a hard-to-measure parameter to begin with and you need to know the people and their reasons before you can make call about it rather than simply their age.

Re: Programmers: Before you turn 40, get a plan B (2009)

#120

Post by MCRed »

tajen wrote: post #105
MCRed wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm approaching 50, am employed, though I've found that the job search is a bit harder now-- particularly with bay area startups I saw a %100 correlation: If the interview as on video (eg: they could see the white in my beard) I didn't get a second interview. If by phone (no video) I'd get offers. Also, last year in Austin I made exactly %20 more than I did in Seattle in 2000. Kinda sad-- up %20 in 15 years-- that do…

> white in my beard What about tinting ("dieing?" sorry for not knowing the word in English) your hair? It's superficial, but if it lands a job, it's fair.

Thought about that, but found a situation before trying it. I think I will do that next time... which is kinda sad, cause really, my experience makes me really valuable.
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