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

Ask HN: Programmers Above 50, Is It Possible to Have a Career Past Your 50s?

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 137 posts

Re: Ask HN: Programmers Above 50, Is It Possible to Have a Career Past Your 50s?

#81

Post by fecak »

unoti wrote: post #52
fecak wrote: post #16

I'm in my early 40's, but I've recruited software engineers for almost 20 years and I until recently I ran a large Java Users Group over 15 years, which gave me quite a bit of exposure to an older range of engineers. I know many 50+ programmers who are doing quite well (monetarily, respect, responsibility, balance). Some independent consultants, some at startups, some with big firms, etc. A fairly wide variety. Not a…

The problem with ten years in one company is that you're likely to stay in your comfort zone and not learn enough new things. In an industry that reinvents itself every 5-8 years, the comfort zone is very dangerous indeed.

I'd suggest that moving around (internally or changing employers) usually requires someone to learn new things. People with long tenures in a single company can also learn new things, but it may not be a job requirement - they have to learn off the job.

Re: Ask HN: Programmers Above 50, Is It Possible to Have a Career Past Your 50s?

#83

Post by weavie »

JPKab wrote: post #61
fecak wrote: post #16

I'm in my early 40's, but I've recruited software engineers for almost 20 years and I until recently I ran a large Java Users Group over 15 years, which gave me quite a bit of exposure to an older range of engineers. I know many 50+ programmers who are doing quite well (monetarily, respect, responsibility, balance). Some independent consultants, some at startups, some with big firms, etc. A fairly wide variety. Not a…

Just want to put a link on here to a guy I've seen on HN a bunch of times whose name I recognized: http://markwatson.com/ Point being that it's obvious he's over 50 and also obvious he's a coding badass.

Inspirational, but he is also obviously exceptional. Not everyone has 16 books under their belt.

Re: Ask HN: Programmers Above 50, Is It Possible to Have a Career Past Your 50s?

#85

Post by swang »

Everyone in their 20s/30s worried about their jobs in their 50s... well maybe shouldn't worry about it too much. Definitely think and plan for it, but life's too short to worry about how you will work in 20 years because of current trends.

And I mean it in two ways. One, some of us won't make it to 50+, so why worry about it now? Two, in ~20-30 years there will be a lot of programmers in that age bracket. And maybe by then PHP or Perl or C# will be legacy and will require oldbeards to maintain them. And maybe the stigma of being an old programmer won't be there any longer. Or maybe by then all the robots will do the programming and a "programmer" essentially becomes a robot repair and maintenance job.

So I think it is way too early to worry if you're in your 20s, because by the time you're 50, everyone's stories about being 50 now may be irrelevant. Or you'll be dead. Or it won't matter.

Re: Ask HN: Programmers Above 50, Is It Possible to Have a Career Past Your 50s?

#86

Post by vonmoltke »

fecak wrote: post #74
vonmoltke wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is tenure at one company automatically assumed to be tenure at one job ? I used to work for a major defense contractor. For every engineer there who spent nearly their entire careers in a particular role on a particular program there was another who spent 20+ years moving from program to program, often as a sort of internal consultant. I would honestly put that latter person ahead of both the former and the perso…

I don't think it's always assumed, and I would absolutely agree that someone who has moved around as an internal consultant who may be building things for different parts of the business (some firms might call them SWAT teams or fire jumpers) would be coveted by other firms. It depends on the company. You reference a 1:1 ratio between engineers in one role and engineers moving around. Based only on my experience I wo…

I'm sure it depends on the company and how it is organized. We had design groups that handled most hardware and software design. Those engineers only worked on a program until the production design was finalized, at which point they usually went to a different program, sometimes in a completely different city.

We also had a third category, who were the engineers that worked in support activities like manufacturing and failure analysis. They might have the same "job" for years on end, but the job itself changed constantly.

Re: Ask HN: Programmers Above 50, Is It Possible to Have a Career Past Your 50s?

#87

Post by vetinari »

vonmoltke wrote: post #73
vetinari wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That doesn't mean they will get it. We are also looking for pretty specialized people, but there are none. So we will take also those, who are willing to learn. The downside is, that the money that goes to their training would be theirs, if they already knew what is needed (i.e. they cannot ask for the same money/benefits as those who are "ready made").

What area of software development are you hiring in? My experience with low-level development (hardware, signal processing, and such) is that companies won't even interview people who don't tick nearly all of their specific boxes.

Geospatial - asset management, smart metering, integration, analyses.

We are also based in small country, where everyone known everyone :).

Re: Ask HN: Programmers Above 50, Is It Possible to Have a Career Past Your 50s?

#88

Post by ChuckMcM »

fecak wrote: post #16

I'm in my early 40's, but I've recruited software engineers for almost 20 years and I until recently I ran a large Java Users Group over 15 years, which gave me quite a bit of exposure to an older range of engineers. I know many 50+ programmers who are doing quite well (monetarily, respect, responsibility, balance). Some independent consultants, some at startups, some with big firms, etc. A fairly wide variety. Not a…

Spending 10+ years at a company gives you habits, habits that help you get things done at that company but which may not be translatable to other companies. You have to relearn how to get things done in each new company you join, and if you don't exercise that skill, or you don't think about it explicitly, you find a transplanted engineer becomes ineffective.

The trick of course is to manage them through that. And that requires both trust and good communication. Trust to know that you will get there, communication to see how things work (from both sides) and be able to match up skills with trends.

Re: Ask HN: Programmers Above 50, Is It Possible to Have a Career Past Your 50s?

#89

Post by creeble »

I'm 55, and having a hard time figuring out what I should do for the next 10-20 years. Programming seems unlikely, though it's what I enjoy the most as a vocation. I am not as current as I should be, and that's probably a death knell for programming.

A comment on Dave Winer's blog post about "hiring Doug Engelbart" (http://scripting.com/2015/04/24/iWouldHaveHiredDougEngelbart...) in the 80's. I interviewed Doug Engelbart in the late 80's when I worked at Autodesk. The problem with Doug then (and, perhaps, with others in his situation) is that he wasn't someone that would work for you. He was only interested in "finishing Augment", the project he started over 20 years earlier. The likelihood of him being a mentor or otherwise being a contributor to an existing team was very close to zero. Dave Winer wouldn't have hired him in 1987 because he wouldn't have taken the job.

I'm not saying this is true about all graybeard legends, but Winer sure picked an improbable example.

Re: Ask HN: Programmers Above 50, Is It Possible to Have a Career Past Your 50s?

#90

Post by TYPE_FASTER »

kpgraham wrote: post #63

I am 64. I wrote my first program in 1970 and have worked as a programmer since 1976. Programming was a good career choice. For many years I was a manager and pretty much hated it and returned to programming. I quit my job and went to work at IBM as a software engineer the year I turned 50. I was the oldest person in my department, and was a bit of a father figure to some of the kids there. Otherwise I did not fit in…

Thanks for writing, I like this:

"Programming is not what I do, but who I am."

Post reply on HN