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

Why You Should Hire an Old Programmer

joshondesign.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

131–140 of 192 posts

Re: Why You Should Hire an Old Programmer

#131

Post by Clubber »

pc86 wrote: post #77
bsvalley wrote: post #70

2 reasons why you will OR won't be hired as an old programmer: 1- "programmer" is the entry level in a software/hardware company. Rising stars move up in the ranks over the years and take more responsibilities. Manager, sr. manager, director, VP, etc. still a programmer at 40? 2- If you're still programmer at 40, you might really like it! We're looking for programmers and need age/exp diversity in our group. You are…

A programmer with 20 years of experience is definitely worth more than a programmer with 2 years of experience. But not that much more. A skilled architect with 8-10 years of experience will beat a programmer with 25 or 30 years experience every day in terms of ongoing business value, and will command a much higher salary (15-20% or more). So yes, you can absolutely have a professionally rewarding, lucrative career a…

Job titles are meaningless. When I say 20 year programmer, it's what you would call an architect, senior engineer, whatever. The programmer being someone who doesn't do any design is a foreign concept to me and should find another career. Any architect that doesn't write at least the skeleton code is the same. All levels of that career needs to involve design and implementation of that design.

Re: Why You Should Hire an Old Programmer

#132

Post by theycallhimtom »

I've worked with old programmers who are great and old programmers who suck. Most of the points in the article are obviously wrong.

"Anyone who is still a programmer in their 40s has to have developed some good communication skills." "Old programmers are dabblers." "Old programmers have judgement." "We can pick up any new language because we’ve used so many over the years."

I've met old programmers who are counter examples to all these points.

A steelmanned version of the article would argue why older coders are more likely to have these skills than young coders. It also needs to talk about the average difference in ability relative to the variance in each group. If old coders are on average 0.1 standard deviations better than young coders you should focus on hiring the good old or young coders. If old coders are on average 1.5 standard deviations better than young coders you should just focus on hiring the good old coders and exceptional young coders.

Re: Why You Should Hire an Old Programmer

#133

Post by Clubber »

vpeters25 wrote: post #129
Clubber wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>All of the business logic was in stored procedures. I've seen a stored procedure with triple nested cursors spanning 2000 lines. Our 'senior' developer would take weeks to make changes to this thing. I'm and old programmer and I've been arguing against business logic in SPs since SQL Server 6.5 and have been losing ever since. That's not an old/young argument. It's because vendors (in this case MS) recommend putting…

> I'm and old programmer and I've been arguing against business logic in SPs since SQL Server 6.5 and have been losing ever since. That's not an old/young argument. > It's because vendors (in this case MS) recommend putting code in SPs. I suspect it has to do with lock-in. If i recall correctly, back in the dark ages of Classic ASP and SQL Server 6.5, database stored procedures was the only feasible way of implementi…

No, we had middleware back then. It was ugly text over sockets, or worse, DCOM, but it worked. That was more ISAPI than classic ASP. If nothing else, we could create a queue table in a database and have a Windows Service pick it up.

Re: Why You Should Hire an Old Programmer

#134

Post by joshmarinacci »

evolvedlight wrote: post #21

I would _never_ hire this candidate, based on seeing this. So - the author says that he has "developed some good communication skills". Great! Moving on, let's look at his linkedin page. Quotes from past jobs: "even after our idiot (now ex) CEO canceled the platform.", "wonky JavaEE stuff.". So, as a hiring manager, from this post + linkedin, I now know that this guy: 1) can reach large audiences, 2) trashes past job…

OP here. I specifically left that part of my CV in because it represents a war story about webOS. Anyone who was a webOS fan knew what I was talking about and agreed with me. It has been a conversation starter with recruiters several times.

Re: Why You Should Hire an Old Programmer

#135

Post by pathsjs »

timwaagh wrote: post #113
js8 wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> mathematicians are also best when they are young This guy springs to mind: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laszlo_Babai Because, yeah, programmers and mathematicians don't actually need any experience, they can just think everything up on the spot! I also wonder how you imagine that other professions gain their experience, if they don't need to think.

it is a historical fact that most of the best mathematicians make their famous discoveries when they are younger than 30. if you have studied the subject, you'd know this, so i assume you just dislike these facts and argue for the sake of it.

I would question whether this is actually true. Stats on Field medalists have to be taken with a grain of salt, given that it is awarded at 40 years top in the first place

Re: Why You Should Hire an Old Programmer

#136

Post by fnord123 »

snarfy wrote: post #118
kageneko wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my experience, growing older, I've found both of these generalizations to be true in myself. There are plenty of times that I've watched junior developers make literally the exact same mistakes I made 10 years ago. At the same time, I've learned that technology has continued to move on and things that were wrong 10 years ago may not be wrong today. I remember when I started out that I'd scour every line of code fo…

This reminds me of an intern that recently went through our company. A part of his summer project was to make some api calls to a soap endpoint. We were all very busy so he tried to be as self sufficient as possible and not ask questions. After about a week, he comes to me with questions about soap xml schema and implementation details. He did not understand it's already built into the tooling. You literally drag-n-d…

Hopefully you lot took it as your own failure and not the poor intern dropped into the field with one of the most over complicated technologies and 'magical thinking' tooling.

Re: Why You Should Hire an Old Programmer

#137

Post by ryandrake »

dagw wrote: post #20
autokad wrote: post #8

How do older programmers deal with coding interviews from companies like facebook / google? i feel like those advantage people who just finished their algorithms class, or have time to practice specifically for it.

How do older programmers deal with coding interviews from companies like facebook / google? Badly. The unfortunate truth is that if you've hit 40+ without having built up enough expertise and contacts to bypass those types of interviews then finding a programming job is going to be really hard.

> bypass those types of interviews

Can you elaborate a bit? I hear this all the time (get the job through contacts and networking not by applying and interviewing) but nobody will go into step-by-step detail about how one actually can manage to "bypass" a company's interview process.

Company: "Thanks for your interest in working here. Your resume and application are impressive, and you have great references! Obviously you are skilled, so forget about having to interview. How's $180K plus benefits sound, and can you start in a week?"

I've been in tech for close to 20 years and that scenario just sounds absurd to me.

Re: Why You Should Hire an Old Programmer

#138

Post by RUG3Y »

sotojuan wrote: post #112
js8 wrote: post #50

I think programmers should reframe the problem. If cognitive decline is real, why would anyone hire anybody over 40? Yet there are plenty managers, politicians, doctors, lawyers, salespeople, engineers, etc. who are over 40. If you want a culture where people retire at 40, go for it. But please don't pretend that programmers are "special" in that the decline in their skills is worse than decline in skills of anybody…

> Yet there are plenty managers, politicians, doctors, lawyers, salespeople, engineers, etc. who are over 40. If anything, these careers (aside from doctor maybe) hit their peak in their 40s or early 50s. I would say our culture thinks programmers peak in their late 20s/early 30s. For HN users in their 30s - what are you doing to not get ageism'd?

I'm in my 30's and I'm just barely getting started. I'm actually pretty concerned about my future.

Re: Why You Should Hire an Old Programmer

#139

Post by joshmarinacci »

rdtsc wrote: post #102
satysin wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am 33 and have a 4 year old son who will be starting school this September. The biggest benefit for me that any company could offer would be true flexibility with regards to my working hours and location. I have been self-employed for the past ~7 years and it has been great as I have been able to balance work with the first few years of my sons life. Time I will never get back so being able to be there every day ha…

I work from home for example and nobody watches over my shoulder how much I type, just that work gets done and releases ship out and such. I can go to my kids school to see a performance and then make up the work if need be later. If it is a nice day I might start work earlier then to have time to go to the pool in the evening with them. So there are companies that will let you do that just have to find them.

We need more companies like this.

Re: Why You Should Hire an Old Programmer

#140

Post by timwaagh »

mmmpop wrote: post #124
timwaagh wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

they do but it is not the same thing at all. we need to think for hours, finding the right algorithm to compute something. doctors need to make the right decision in very little time based on their experience and knowledge.

> finding the right algorithm to compute something Perhaps English is not your first language because you sound like me at 19 explaining to my dad why I haven't finished his website lol

What does that have to do with anything?
Post reply on HN