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Aging programmer

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Re: Aging programmer

#141

Post by Seattle3503 »

beej71 wrote: post #94

I found I lost interest in vapid work. Programming is still fun, but it's a big challenge to find a job that is fulfilling. When I was younger, I'd work on whatever. Then everything started sounding like yet another get rich quick company, and is that what I was giving up my life for? Just to move little green pieces of paper around? The most appealing thing I'd seen recently was a company that wrote software to help…

> The most appealing thing I'd seen recently was a company that wrote software to help maximize farm yields. At least there was some real, effective benefit for a great many people.

After my graduate work I am the opppsite. I realized that meaningfulness is not a sufficient condotion for enjoying my work. The tasks I work on and my coworkers make a much larger impact on my happiness. Whether I work on something "stupid" or "vapid" matters much less.

Re: Aging programmer

#142

Post by angarg12 »

> I have no idea about how effective pair programming is. My desire to discover it is zero.

> Similarly, I don't discuss the benefits of getting people in the same room to solve a problem, but I am not super interested either.

Admitting ignorance is a hallmark of maturity. Boast about it and the desire to not learn isn't.

Re: Aging programmer

#143

Post by lowercased »

therealdokks wrote: post #33
sys_64738 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of programmers who are 35+ can struggle to find further opportunities as the more senior you are the less available those opportunities are and the more expensive you are. Lots of companies only want young people who are naive and have limited distractions outside of work. So, really, programming as a field is front loaded and the longer you stay in the business over 35 then the luckier you have been. But make…

Hmmm as a 53 year old programmer I've had the exact opposite experience. Because of the large diversity of my skills I have more offers for work than ever before.

> Because of the large diversity of my skills I have more offers for work than ever before.

"offers for work" or "job offers"? "Traditional" w2 full time go-through-an-hr-dept organizations possibly have more of an ageist issue than other scenarios. Freelance/consulting seems to still offer more flexibility on the age front, but it's more of a gut sense from speaking with those in my network.

Re: Aging programmer

#144

Post by FunnyBadger »

Just turned 60.

One thing I've found (I started programming when I was 11) is that you can get better at judging situations/application/specifications and choosing NOT to write code in certain obvious ways or at all. Sometimes the right solution isn't the same old skill.

I've also come to realize that MOST hiring managers barely don't what they are doing as programmers or as managers. They have the authority of position but zero common sense or learned social skills to know what they are doing in their position - they are BEST IGNORED. Which can mean you won't get hired by them but often that is actually for the best - if you care about an idea, you should be the boss or be working with like-minded people who know what they are doing instead. That corporate job might just be 100% pure trash and a waste of time.

This last reality is why I do NOT value the idea of working for FAANG companies - there's nothing good about what they do or how they do it. They are generally evil in that sense. So why would anyone work for them? Mostly to make some money and because you don't know any better.

Re: Aging programmer

#145

Post by unity1001 »

somenameforme wrote: post #98
krmboya wrote: post #10

I wonder where the genesis is of this idea that programming is young person's game akin to physical sports where speed, explosiveness and endurance matter. It seems to me that it's an intellectual activity where one should go on for very long honing their skills and becoming better and better at it with age. Maybe the industry sidelines the older more experienced technical folks at a cost, and that's why there seems…

Chess is a primarily mental competition, but players at the top of the world tend to hit their peak at around 35 years old. Players can continue playing at an exceptionally high level until the end of their life, but on average there is a gradual downward slide from that peak. Magnus Carlsen, the current world champ and arguably strongest player of all time, has decided to simply stop defending his title (held since…

> Chess

Chess is not a good analogy. It is a singular context. The real advantages that being over 35 and programming brings are:

- You are able to juggle much larger and different contexts at the same time - You have immense foresight that enables you to architect larger things

Re: Aging programmer

#146

Post by brunoc »

Cyberdog wrote: post #124
liuliu wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I sort of know what you are saying. Being dealing with so-called "server-side rendering" v.s. "static generated" recently, and these feel old / boring. It has been 15 years and mostly the same thing reinvented. However, it is not a negatively thing. We may be able to setup IIS / Apache with Squid two decades ago to do similar things. The bar to do it now is much lower, and the tooling to help achieve that is much bet…

Seeing all the JavaScript kiddies rediscover the speed and UX benefits of not using massive front-end JavaScript libraries to display simple web pages in the last few months has been alternatively hilarious and frustrating to me.

My 2c as a JavaScript senior citizen --

I feel it never really was about denying how effective plain web pages are but rather that faced with the choice of a wonderful DX with just JS, and a more difficult day to day with a mix of both, we picked the first. Sometimes at the expense of the end user, yaddi yaddi yadda, etc.

Good solutions for the "have your cake and eat it" scenario with exceptionally good DX are just now reaching some maturity.

Re: Aging programmer

#147

Post by twblalock »

StevePerkins wrote: post #97

I'm approaching 50. Just a scant decade away from being old enough to tap my retirement accounts and have the OPTION to retire. These next couple of years look like they might not be fun, but overall it looks like I'm actually going to make it. For most of my career, I've been told (and I believed) that I would probably get forced out of a hands-on individual contributor role as I aged. During the late-2000's, I even…

Also, programmers are paid better than most people and early retirement is often possible. A lot of programmers don’t need to work into their 60s.

In my own case, when I have enough money to retire it’s going to be hard to convince me to keep working.

Re: Aging programmer

#148

Post by cholmon »

thread_id wrote: post #69

At 64 years I am still going strong. I consider myself blessed that I have landed a position that allows the to be the leader (I manage a small team) and still be hands on with everything: Architecture, desgin, coding, infrastructure, cloud engineering, DevOps engineer, DBA, the list goes on. It is a Goldilocks job. The technologies that we manage and master are miriad. We are a small company and my team owns the ent…

I’m interested in hearing more about your Socratic approach to management. Could you elaborate on that a bit?

Re: Aging programmer

#149

Post by topkai22 »

milesvp wrote: post #138
StevePerkins wrote: post #97

I'm approaching 50. Just a scant decade away from being old enough to tap my retirement accounts and have the OPTION to retire. These next couple of years look like they might not be fun, but overall it looks like I'm actually going to make it. For most of my career, I've been told (and I believed) that I would probably get forced out of a hands-on individual contributor role as I aged. During the late-2000's, I even…

The number I saw was something like every 5 years the number of programmers doubles. So half if all devs have less than 5 years experience. And since most new devs are more likely to be closer to college age than retirement age devs tend to skew younger than 40 (probably by a lot). https://blog.cleancoder.com/uncle-bob/2014/06/20/MyLawn.html

I ran numbers from the BLS on occupation data a few years back. If you look at the number of programmers 25-35 in 2000 and the number of programmers in 2020 aged 45-55 you see a real and substantial decrease in absolute terms. The decrease is much larger then other professions, so its not attributable to a cohort just exiting the workforce in general.

There is also a massive increase in the number of 25-35 programmers in the same time period.

My interpretation is there are definitely forces that push against older programmers staying in or re-entering the profession, but they aren’t as severe as they appear to be just looking at the raw numbers. Generally, programmers who want to remain the profession are going to be about to, but it is harder to be a programmer over 40.

Re: Aging programmer

#150

Post by weatherlite »

dahart wrote: post #99
rickreynoldssf wrote: post #65

51 grey beard here. Let me complain about the younguns. So much of what's out there today is, or is based on "solutions" created to solve problems that don't really exist. Rather than try to understand something so many engineers created "frameworks" to implement what was already there. Like 90% of current web stacks are just that. But new engineers are trained on that stuff and think it's the only way. That frustrat…

There’s a legit issue in there, but us old’ns might have to own up to some of the problems we’ve caused (or even just failed to solve) and the legacy we’re leaving. ;) I’m mostly joking, but I honestly don’t think this is a young vs old issue, I think it’s a byproduct of happening to live through the time when the internet took over the earth right while programming exploded as a career. The amount of choice, complex…

How was the switch from web to hardware/low level? Did u do some self studying to get a job?
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