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Career planning: Where do old devs go to?

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Re: Career planning: Where do old devs go to?

#131

Post by chton »

nsxwolf wrote: post #121
chton wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"one year's experience 30 times, not 30 years experience." is a fantastic sentence and I'm stealing it. I've seen too many developers to whom it applies, and it's a great way to express that.

An HR manager said this to my mother's face once. Please consider people's feelings before using it. It's likely to be interpreted as "you've wasted your career and/or life".

Oh I would never use that kind of language to somebody's face. It's blunt, and usable when describing (for example) why you wouldn't hire a candidate after a job interview, but not as a form of criticism. There are better ways to bring up the intention to the people themselves.

Re: Career planning: Where do old devs go to?

#132

Post by m0nty »

erikb wrote: post #126
nsxwolf wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An HR manager said this to my mother's face once. Please consider people's feelings before using it. It's likely to be interpreted as "you've wasted your career and/or life".

It's not necessarily a bad thing to hear something that sounds bad. Even after years on this planet people can rediscover themselves and start a kind of life they didn't even know it exists. Not telling people who are bad that they are bad is a concept I have a hard time to understand. Instead of worrying about feelings why not worry about really being this better person people can't complain (as much) about?

> Not telling people who are bad that they are bad is a concept I have a hard time to understand.

You might be wrong, and you should factor that in. Perhaps you're not helping people towards a bright new future of self-realization, just condemning them out-of-hand based on your own limited experience or misconceptions? (Not using "you" to imply you do this, btw.)

Re: Career planning: Where do old devs go to?

#133

Post by vonmoltke »

hjnilsson wrote: post #16
TeeWEE wrote: post #5

I think there are two explanations. 1) One explanation is that, often unexperienced people start doing programming, start looking for a job, but after 1 or 2 years, they just know its not their cup of thee. Lots of people try learning programming themselves. And while it may work out ofr a lot of them. I think there is also a huge dropoff. During my computerscience study at university there was almost 50% dropoff aft…

You forgot: 3) People with 10+ years experience generally don't go out looking for work and applying for interviews. By then you have enough connections that if you want to change job, you'll find it through old colleagues. Not by shopping around like younger devs. This applies to most all professional occupations, not just Software Engineering. If you look at people applying for positions in economics / law you'll s…

This perception has really been hurting me, I think. Nearly all of my professional connections are lifers at my original employer, and a significant number of them are in the 75% group mentioned in Ed's post at the top.

Re: Career planning: Where do old devs go to?

#134

Post by MCRed »

Either you become CTO or you stay a Senior Software Developer forever.

I have noticed a lot of age discrimination the "bay area startup scene". Not so much outside the bay area.

I do wonder how long it is until someone gets sued for age discrimination when the way they knew the person's age was a video call.

I see a lot of startups (including some YC ones) wanting to do a video call with a recruiter before even sending your resume to a hiring manager.

I'm used to recruiters wasting my time, they need to feel important. I'm used to being excluded for stupid reasons, like: [I describe how I wrote code that generated SQL that was used to query an Oracle backend] "which version of oracle" [some minor release] "oh, I'm sorry, they're looking for oracle [next minor release] experience".

My impression is that front line HR people look for an excuse to screen people out... makes them feel important.

And now age is a way they can do that. How are video calls an acceptable requirement?

"He just wasn't a cultural fit. I mean, like I totally saw grey in his hair".

Re: Career planning: Where do old devs go to?

#135

Post by patio11 »

thewarrior wrote: post #62
patio11 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

which route involve working in "the trenches", whilst still getting paid management level salaries? The engineering track at AmaGooBookSoft. You'll earn +/- $200k a year mid-career and have roughly zero market or execution risk. There exist many options if you're willing to take more than a W-2 employee level of risk. (e.g. Found a boutique consultancy. Redirect the conversation when your W-2 friends ask what your we…

I'm working at a services firm in India and am not good enough to get into AmaGooBookSoft. What do I do ?

Broadly speaking: 1) Try getting a job at AmaGooBookSoft a few times, because many devs I know who believe or believed that they were not good enough are/were wrong (self likely included), 2) Skill up. If you're not finding opportunity for advancement in skill levels at the present job -- which is something I felt when I was doing roughly similar work -- change to a job which does allow you to skill up, or create opportunities for skilling up at your job or outside of it. 3) Consider getting out of the BPO firm and into one of India's emerging software product companies like e.g. VWO or Zoho or what have you. I have no clue what the relative salaries look like but you're virtually guaranteed to learn more.

Finally, the 0th option: if your local economy doesn't have the job you want, make it for yourself.

Re: Career planning: Where do old devs go to?

#136

Post by lubos »

nsxwolf wrote: post #121
chton wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"one year's experience 30 times, not 30 years experience." is a fantastic sentence and I'm stealing it. I've seen too many developers to whom it applies, and it's a great way to express that.

An HR manager said this to my mother's face once. Please consider people's feelings before using it. It's likely to be interpreted as "you've wasted your career and/or life".

It is true though. Some of my friends work for huge corporations, their job title sounds very advanced but in reality, they are repeating very narrow task over and over again for years like a trained monkey.

The worst part is that most people don't recognize this, they live in the bubble, being proud of themselves they know it all. Unless they lose this job and suddenly realize they are basically unqualified for anything outside of their narrow field of expertize.

Either get lucky, never lose that job, so you don't get your feelings hurt when looking for new job. Or get out of the bubble before it's too late and start challenging yourself with new opportunities.

Re: Career planning: Where do old devs go to?

#137

Post by ska »

31reasons wrote: post #41
edw519 wrote: post #23

59, programming for 42 years, the last 35 professionally. Here on HN for 7.5 years. I've always been very busy (one of the main reasons I don't post on HN as much any more). I don't have a resume. I'm not on LinkedIn. If I ever ran low on work, it would probably take me a day or two and a few phone calls to find something. I don't work on anything unless I find it incredibly compelling. I write applications. I've see…

>>75% - one year's experience 30 times, not 30 years experience. You don't want these people. You are basically saying 75% of the developers after certain age are useless. I don't agree or disagree with your statement . Just startled. What does it say about software development as a career ? Would you say the same thing for lawyers or doctors with 30 years experience? This is depressing.

I've seen this stated this as another occurrence of the 80/20 rule, which close enough to 75/25.

It doesn't really have anything to do with after a certain age, either. Some percentage %x of your 5 year experience programmers haven't really moved much past their first year at all.

To be fair, I think of it really as a series of plateaus, not a hard and fast rule. People get stuck at a level of professional development for all sorts of reasons, internal and external.

The thing is, it gets more noticeable the longer time period you are talking about. Comparing two people with 3 years experience where one of them hasn't really progressed past the first year or so, and the other has 3 solid years is a lot different than comparing two people with 30 years experience where one of them hasn't really passed the 10 year mark of development and the other has a solid 30.

And "useless" is the wrong way of looking at it. There is a lot of use for a developer with 5-10 years of experience, so long as you don't expect them to perform like a developer with 20-30 years experience. This is true even if they have 30 years on paper, which can be a bit of sticky point w.r.t compensation, but that's a different issue.

This absolutely happens with lawyers and doctors, by the way. A real difference is that a doctor has been forced into a good 10 years of professional development before they take the training wheels off, so the base level of competence is much higher. Some of them don't progress significantly beyond that for the rest of their careers, but that doesn't mean they aren't productive for that whole time.

As an industry, I do believe that software development is pretty weak on developing talent internally, particularly beyond the entry level.

Re: Career planning: Where do old devs go to?

#138

Post by logfromblammo »

segmondy wrote: post #36

They don't GO anywhere, they STAY wherever they are. Older folks tend to have more responsibilities, family, kids, retirement to worry about etc. They are less risk prone, they understand that office politics comes with it and the next job will still have politics and might be worse, so they stay put. At all companies I've worked for, I've noticed that the young folks are quick to go look for a new job after a year o…

Everyone who is employed "at will" should always be looking. If your company has merged, been acquired, or acquired another company within the last 2 years, you should be looking. If you do not get at least a 2% raise every year, without fail, you should be looking. If your vacation and sick pay recently went to PTO instead, you should be looking. If your company is pushing "consumer directed" health insurance at you, you should be looking.

If your company has an actual interest in employee retention, you have found a real gem. But the rest of us are getting screwed over too often to ever sit back and pretend to have job security.

What I am finding now is that every place I might want to work has no software developer employees my age (which I find to be very suspicious) and every place that does have developers my age or older is a career dead end, SNAFU, or both.

And having my ear to the ground for so long, I have noticed a steady progression in HR recruiting practices from barely tolerable to downright rude. And the time between first contact and offer (if any) is stretching out longer and longer. (I don't live anywhere near California, if it wasn't obvious.)

So if you want to be an old developer, it appears as though you'll first have to solve the problem of how to find steady work without using a resume. There seems to be an element of chance involved, such that each skill and contact you acquire at your current job gives you another roll or two of the dice for the next. I really crapped out with my last gig, which yielded zero new skills and zero new contacts, for entirely related reasons, but a contact at the previous job helped me land my current job, where I am working with someone I knew from three jobs ago.

I am not a particularly big fan of the good old boy network method of hiring, but if you are both good and old, you still may find it difficult to get hired via the HR process. That process is fundamentally broken, and it is quite unlikely that any company that interviews you will ever give you more than a single bit of feedback, that being OFFER=false. Many won't even explicitly say it, letting their extended silence do all the talking.

So I would venture a guess that older people STAY because the effort of trying to GO has become so excruciating for many of them that it wouldn't even be worth it if it resulted in a 50% pay raise. And for some of them, they know that will never happen.

Re: Career planning: Where do old devs go to?

#139

Post by vonmoltke »

MCRed wrote: post #129
hga wrote: post #32

Falsification: around and after age 35 I found it increasingly difficult to find work, until I got a clue and scrubbed my resume of all evidence of exactly how old I was (removed education dates; I'd already been trimming older jobs due to length and lack of relevance). Did that in the midst of one job search and the difference was like night and day. BIG caveat: my family and I look a lot younger than we are, with n…

How many years of experience do you keep on your resume? I've been keeping 20, but it seems the bay area startups can smell that I'm old. (I've not met age discrimination outside of the bay area startups run by 22 year old type companies.)

Interesting idea. I had never considered "aging off" experience. It might be doubly useful in my case, because my first and oldest job was almost pure EE.

Re: Career planning: Where do old devs go to?

#140

Post by [deleted] »

artmageddon wrote: post #119
exelius wrote: post #42

That's because programming is an entry level job. No, I'm not trolling: I'm quite serious about that. Engineering has almost always been an entry level job; computers or not. You start as an engineer; and as you get better, the number of engineering management jobs is pretty limited, so there's nowhere to go for the vast majority of people. But you get pulled into enough internal projects you start to develop a bit o…

> I saw the game for what it was early and got out of engineering before I hit 30. What did you jump into afterward?

[deleted]
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