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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)

#151

Post by wyclif »

wyclif wrote: post #141
aikah wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

there was a news once about a 40/50 y.o. guy ( I think he was from UK ) who couldn't get a job as a manager in US because he was semi-bald. So he shaved his head entirely and found a good position in a flash. I need to find the link , this was an interesting story. Look is important,unfortunately, but it isn't always about age, sometimes you're too fat, or not white enough ...

I remember that story, it was on the front page of HN back in 2012. The guy shaved his head, did a fashion makeover, bought the latest iPhone or whatever, and then on top of that had eyelid surgery with the goal of making his appearance more youthful: http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/11/27/us-valley-ageism-i...

Original discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4838215

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

#152

Post by henrik_w »

"While a technology shift doesn’t completely negate the skills of veterans, it certainly levels the playing field for recent grads."

In my opinion, a technology shift (new language, platforms, methodology, paradigm or whatever), doesn't come close to negate the skills you have aquired. In general, I think people underestimate how much of programming that is still the same. I wrote more about it in "Programmer Knowledge" http://henrikwarne.com/2014/12/15/programmer-knowledge/

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

#153

Post by sdgsfsfgfg »

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 was this 25 year old and I am ashamed.

But to be fair on myself and others, I was expecting something more intellectually challenging than what basically amounts to a job in 'abstract plumbing'.

Now I have come to terms with this reality life is much simpler.

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

#154

Post by tluyben2 »

I'm always surprised how timid programmers are; I have a very big mouth and I am very confident about my abilities. That alone seems to get me into anything I want even if I was bullshitting (which i'm not). So people who are far better than me at what they do as software engineer should have no problems at all. However most of who I meet and interview are timid and not very confident. Programmers in general really undersell themselves; even if they did great stuff, they will wind it down to things like 'I built some software which gets input from workout machines' vs 'I wrote an embedded OS and optimized (32kb it has to process the data!) analytics software which runs on most of the machines in YOUR favorite gym'. Or 'I did a C++ fast cgi e-commerce backend for an auction site' vs 'I wrote the backend for an auction site doing 400 million euros of transactions a year with millions of pageviews per month'. When you get above the 'junior programmer' people want to hear what you can 'get done' not some tech details of something which sounds like you just came from uni. I think a lot of people underestimate how much people will rely on them once they are seniors and if they don't have that air, why would anyone hire?

All programmers above 40 (and 50) who are not afraid to sell themselves are employed (and/or wealthy); the timid ones sometimes are but mostly are not; they complain that no-one wants to hire them. I don't think that's different in any other profession to be honest at that age.

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

#155

Post by danieltillett »

nemo wrote: post #38
danieltillett wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Age makes employees less flexible in some senses like not being willing to put up with some of the crap that younger people will (60 hour weeks, endless crunches, etc.) I once did, but will no longer tolerate that crap from an employer. But being older doesn't mean you stop learning, adapting to change, or lose the ability to deal with moving targets. I'm hopping rapidly between roles and widely varied tasks at my cu…

I am not a young developer, yet I recognise what it is about youth that is attractive to employers. This is reality and I don't think there is anything to gained by pretending otherwise.

I am not suggesting that you don't have a problem if your plans change weekly, but unfortunately this is the way many businesses are run. When you have a very fluid workflow youth is very attractive.

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

#156

Post by danieltillett »

tonyarkles wrote: post #64
danieltillett wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I'd say more generally, as someone in their early 30s, that my experience says that if you're changing the plan weekly, the problem isn't with the employee, flexible or not. In general, if the plan is changing every week, that probably means that the work I did last week was mostly pointless. That's a great way to burn someone out. Good news though! I do contract work, and if you insist on changing the plan every wee…

This is all true. It seems to have been missed in my comment this is not my view, but those of many employers.

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

#157

Post by drawkbox »

Learn, or continue to learn, to make great products through quality work, consistent delivery and worry about nothing.

By 40, there should be some success or direction into side projects that might become the main thing.

Quality product designers, architects and engineers that can deliver great products will be in demand until the end of time.

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

#158

Post by matthewmacleod »

Cupof37 wrote: post #109
LoSboccacc wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

pay squash is why you should get out of field. engineering is the new proletariat, working at companies that rake in millions for pennies, while all managers above you get twice your pay just by organizing your time.

Let's not confuse engineering with programming. Most programmers aren't engineers (don't have engineering degrees, aren't comfortable with physics / calculus, etc.) Real engineers generally don't have these employment issues as they age. Programmers are 'engineers' in the same way that those with an MCSE are 'engineers' -- they operate a computer and employ a unique and useful skill-set.

No true Scotsman. What's an engineer? I'd argue that people who studied software engineering for four or five years, then became software engineers, count as engineers. The fact that they don't have much insight into physics is wildly irrelevant.

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

#159

Post by Rainymood »

fsloth wrote: post #103
elwell wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> At 40 you should be experienced enough to handle up to mid-sized projects, alone and on a reasonable time-frame At 25...

I presume a troll? At 25 I graduated as MSc (physics), had not worked a day in the industry, and began my PhD studies. At 26 I figured computer graphics where much more fun than running quantum physical simulations in a lonely cellar and began my software engineering career. At which point I was still pretty clueless of the complexities of software engineering in the industry. The time limit is not age but how much e…

>I presume a troll? At 25 I graduated as MSc (physics), had not worked a day in the industry, and began my PhD studies. At 26 I figured computer graphics where much more fun than running quantum physical simulations in a lonely cellar and began my software engineering career. At which point I was still pretty clueless of the complexities of software engineering in the industry.

How did it work out for you? I am curious as I am thinking of shifting from fin. applied math (econometrics) to SE ...

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

#160

Post by bad_user »

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?

Having worked with Ruby on Rails in the past and with Play2 and Scala currently, I think I can answer that.

For your regular web app, both frameworks are mostly the same, both are boring - Rails is more productive for very common tasks, but Play2 is safer because of the underlying language (well, if you pick Scala, otherwise Java just stays in your way). Things get more interesting in Play2 when scalability or latency starts to matter.

That's when you discover that Play2's architecture is entirely asynchronous and that Play2 supports asynchronous responses and web sockets natively. It does so by means of futures [1], actors [2] and iteratees [3] (also being migrated to reactive streams [4]).

Of course, the easy route with Play2 would be with Java, however I recommend that you pick up Scala. By doing so you're going to get exposed to concepts from functional programming in a language sitting on a platform that's very much practical for real world use. There's also this book on functional programming in Scala that's amongst the best books written on the subject [5]. Functional programming changes the way you think and it's all about sanity, functional code being easier to test, being easier to parallelize and being much less prone to accidental bugs.

But while you're at it also consider learning Haskell, probably the best functional programming language available, because even if you're not using it, it's currently the lingua franca for FP concepts, so when reading papers and blog articles on interesting design patterns related to FP, most of them are described in Haskell. It also spoils you with its incredible type system, so a language like Scala will become the minimum that you'll tolerate, working in Java, C#, Python or Go becoming unbearable ;-) A really good beginners course is this one from edX [6]. And then go learn Clojure, because it's a really practical LISP that is also oriented towards FP, except that FP in a LISP is really different from FP in static languages like Haskell or Scala.

And you know, the best thing about this path is that you're not going to learn just a framework, or yet another language, but you're going to learn about functional programming, which is a concept that transcends programming languages with its related mentality and design patterns and is useful no matter what you're doing and in what language.

But then going back to Scala and Play2, well that's useful right now too. And did you know that Scala compiles to Javascript too and it's awesome?

[1] http://docs.scala-lang.org/overviews/core/futures.html

[2] http://akka.io/

[3] https://www.playframework.com/documentation/2.3.x/Iteratees

[4] http://www.reactive-streams.org/

[5] http://www.manning.com/bjarnason/

[6] https://www.edx.org/course/introduction-functional-programmi...

[7] http://www.scala-js.org/

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