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Ask HN: How old were the most talented software engineers you've met?

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Re: Ask HN: How old were the most talented software engineers you've met?

#11

Post by FundThrowaway »

diab0lic wrote: post #7

40+ I always wonder about ageism in tech referenced regularly here. Without a doubt the rockstars I know are more experienced and consequently older. If you exclude older software engineers you're probably excluding the best talent and thus can't claim to hire only the top x% of talent. Note: I don't belong to this group in age or talent.

I work out in Asia and over here a big reason for ageism in tech is a misunderstanding of development talent, there is a belief that coders are coders and that's all there is to it, young coders tend to be willing to work longer hours and basically work until they burn out so management sees them as the superior option since salaries and benefits are lower.

edit: Since I'm getting down voted for whatever reason here's an article that is along similar lines https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-05-02/china-s-t...

Re: Ask HN: How old were the most talented software engineers you've met?

#12

Post by sonnyblarney »

During the .com I was quite young, my friends were all doing nascent e-commerce in SF, I was doing Telecom stuff in the Valley.

My friends were all 'architects', while I was maybe one of only a couple of people out of 100 Engs. who were under 30!

I could walk to any cubicle and 'learn for days' from whoever was there about so many subjects. Such specialization that nobody knew precisely what their cubicle neighbours were doing!

You want to know what 'full stack' really means? We did proprietary ASICS, hardware, firmware, control plane software, networking control UI and servers! From the silicon all the way up!

The team was mostly 35-45 and they were amazing, I'll never work with people like that again.

I've run into a fair number of 'young geniuses' and astonishingly talented young folk ... but not the kind I would trust a major project to.

That said, they were a little bit more 'set in their ways'. It was a time when people 'went deep' as opposed to 'wide' generally. Very high degrees of specialization, typically only one professional grade language.

Re: Ask HN: How old were the most talented software engineers you've met?

#13

Post by nothanksmydude »

Wisest dude I've ever worked with was >50. Sharpest was probably a friend I grew up with, he was writing C before he was 12! Some mad productive cats from 30-45 too.

E: had to come back and say that the best PM's I've worked with have all been >40 year old women who have bigcorp experience. They don't take shit from anyone and protect their people.

Re: Ask HN: How old were the most talented software engineers you've met?

#15

Post by pxx »

fooddood wrote: post #8

One of the most talented engineers I ever met was 24. He built a 3D engine in JavaScript for fun as well as a raycaster for fun. He also enjoyed challenging himself in all sorts of interesting ways like doing Advent of Code in C++.

What's weird about doing Advent of Code in C++? You'll find a sizable number of the people on the leaderboard do it that way. I think it's partially due to competition programming habits dying extremely hard.

Of course, Python is by far the most popular, but C++ isn't that much more verbose.

Re: Ask HN: How old were the most talented software engineers you've met?

#16

Post by saulrh »

Universally 35+. Several in their late 40s, a couple 60+ (tenured professors and the like). You know how books or movies that talk about martial arts masters use phrases like "no wasted motion" and "elegant grace"? Yeah. Like that. But with architectural design docs springing fully-formed from their foreheads and data manipulations that reveal their meaning in a single line when I'd have needed a page.

Edit: Oops, forgot one. Senior PhD student in my lab while I was in college. Might've been 28 or 30 at that point?

Re: Ask HN: How old were the most talented software engineers you've met?

#17

Post by closeparen »

FundThrowaway wrote: post #11
diab0lic wrote: post #7

40+ I always wonder about ageism in tech referenced regularly here. Without a doubt the rockstars I know are more experienced and consequently older. If you exclude older software engineers you're probably excluding the best talent and thus can't claim to hire only the top x% of talent. Note: I don't belong to this group in age or talent.

I work out in Asia and over here a big reason for ageism in tech is a misunderstanding of development talent, there is a belief that coders are coders and that's all there is to it, young coders tend to be willing to work longer hours and basically work until they burn out so management sees them as the superior option since salaries and benefits are lower. edit: Since I'm getting down voted for whatever reason here'…

How does that work exactly? If no one is willing to pay higher salaries then the salaries aren’t higher. Senior people would presumably take junior pay over unemployment.

Re: Ask HN: How old were the most talented software engineers you've met?

#19

Post by femto113 »

“Talent” I would say has been invariant with age. I’ve met very young (teens) and people in their seventies who show obvious talent. It also seems to hold, those young talents are still exceptional 20 years later. For knowledge and skills (perhaps we could call that “wisdom”?) that seems roughly linear with age, perhaps plateauing somewhat as skills learned earlier become obsolete. Productivity is kind of another axis, I’ve known prolific and successful developers who I think are of only middling talent, these almost always did better while young. (For context I’m 49 now have been working in software since my late teens.)

Re: Ask HN: How old were the most talented software engineers you've met?

#20

Post by FundThrowaway »

closeparen wrote: post #17
FundThrowaway wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I work out in Asia and over here a big reason for ageism in tech is a misunderstanding of development talent, there is a belief that coders are coders and that's all there is to it, young coders tend to be willing to work longer hours and basically work until they burn out so management sees them as the superior option since salaries and benefits are lower. edit: Since I'm getting down voted for whatever reason here'…

How does that work exactly? If no one is willing to pay higher salaries then the salaries aren’t higher. Senior people would presumably take junior pay over unemployment.

Junior developer salaries here are low enough that people just change industry. It's also not just about the salary but the way that they work. That all being said there are start ups out here that do look for experienced devs and pay accordingly, my previous comments mostly relate to large local businesses.
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