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

You’re How Old? We’ll Be in Touch

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

161–170 of 265 posts

Re: You’re How Old? We’ll Be in Touch

#161

Post by dasil003 »

Myrmornis wrote: post #101

Isn't one way to ensure your continuing relevance to avoid managerial positions? In my experience a lot of older people are less attractive employees because after 10 years of management their skills are very generic and hard to specify.

YMMV but after almost 20 years I try to keep a foot firmly in both camps and position myself as an early-stage generalist who can also lead and magnify the productivity of the whole team.

Managers who aren't technically illiterate suck, programmers who can't see beyond the scope of their own little fiefdom also suck. If you can marry disparate skills from a few different areas you can really work magic in the right position.

Re: You’re How Old? We’ll Be in Touch

#162

Post by gaius »

teuobk wrote: post #35
hirundo wrote: post #8

I'm a grey beard who applied to a company specifically advertising for young developers. Got the job without mentioning my vintage. That was six years ago and they still haven't seen my face. I waited a while to gently break the news to them. If you're a technological senior citizen remote work is your friend.

How did they "specifically advertise for young developers" without running afoul of age discrimination laws?

Easy. Ask questions that only someone who has recently revised for exams would know. No-one enforcing this has any idea that coding a red-black tree from scratch on a whiteboard isn't something that any working programmer actually does...

Re: You’re How Old? We’ll Be in Touch

#163

Post by loeg »

hoodunit wrote: post #122
coldcode wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have to understand that people like me (35 years experience) are rare not just because people don't hire us, but there were 100 times fewer programmers back then and many have switched to management or moved on since then too. What happens 35 years from now of course I have no idea, I doubt 100% of all people will be programmers. The key is staying at the leading edge of whatever you are doing which of course kee…

This is what makes me wonder, is there actually a steep age bias and drop-off of older developers or are we just living a demographics change? I'm guessing there are far more developers today than ten or twenty years ago. When those developers age, will we see a more natural age distribution?

> When those developers age, will we see a more natural age distribution?

Yes. You also have to keep in mind that developers get paid a lot of money compared to most workers. Many can afford to retire early, and do.

Re: You’re How Old? We’ll Be in Touch

#164

Post by insulanian »

themartorana wrote: post #123
douche wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

WebForms can die in a fire, and thankfully has, for the most part, but WinForms is still plenty good enough for cranking out quick and dirty tools. Maybe I'm old, or it's just because I started out in high school doing VB6 forms applications, but I still prefer it unless I have a good reason, over WPF. WinForms is also a pretty thin layer over Win32 controls, as well, so if you have to switch between .Net and native…

WebForms changed the game. ASP was a sub-subset of VB, but WebForms with C# made websites full-scale eventful and stateful programs for the first time. I had never felt such power and freedom programming for the web. Yes, some people would put humongous data structures in view state, and yes, more-better solutions have arisen, but WebForms deserves your respect!

If you worked long enough with WebForms, then you'd know what an inefficient, slow and complicated event-hairball it is.

I curse every time I have to go back to any old WebForms-based project to do some changes.

Re: You’re How Old? We’ll Be in Touch

#165

Post by amelius »

fuzzy2 wrote: post #155
newjersey wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I still can't wrap my head around the fact that we have developers who work on .NET and have never touched either WinForms or WebForms. And I am relatively young.

Not all development involves GUIs. Well, let’s go even further and say most development is not GUI-related. Business logic and algorithms is what it’s all about.

Most algorithms are reusable, while most GUI code is not.

Hence, most actual programming is happening on GUIs.

Re: You’re How Old? We’ll Be in Touch

#166

Post by vazamb »

Animats wrote: post #137

Jobs for "Digital Natives" from Indeed.com [1] "You’re a digital native with a demonstrated interest in startups, technology, social media, and shaking up industries...." -- Laundry Locker customer support lead. Not exactly a job that requires extensive qualifications. "Digital Native - You can find anyone's email address anytime, search the depths of the web with ease, and possibly format basic HTML without skipping…

I feel like "Digital Natives" is a term non-technical, business people (most in entry level positions) use to make themselves feel better about the fact that their jobs don't require any kind of special skill or knowledge.

Re: You’re How Old? We’ll Be in Touch

#167

Post by Zelmor »

jlarocco wrote: post #38
RottenHuman wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

how do you work for someone without them knowing your age? Do you keep that out of your CV? How about credentials and signing your contact? Seems very strange to me.

Your age or birth date probably shouldn't be on your CV. Unless you think it's relevant to the job somehow, but it probably isn't. Not only should it not matter, but it's illegal for employers to ask about it or consider it in their hiring decision, so having it right there on your CV puts them in a bit of a tight spot. I think some recruiters will actually remove that type of thing before forwarding it on to the int…

In Hungary, it is standard to include a photo on the CV, so I do that. Recruiter friends told me how they consider non-photo applications secondary to ones with photos, and how a human face helps building a connection right from the start.

So my only reason for including my age on the CV is because I look like I'm 24, whereas I'm pushing 31.

Re: You’re How Old? We’ll Be in Touch

#168

Post by MrLeftHand »

The common job spec:

Have a degree in CS + everything else that is vaguely related to IT.

Have at least 3+ years commercial experience in: C/C++,Java,Perl,Python,Javascript,Node,AngularJS,React,Linux,Windows,Mac,Maven,Agile,LAMP,Ruby,Bash,RegExp,SQL,NoSQL,C#,Android,Photoshop,AWS,Swift,iOS,Docker,rkt,UX,UI,Backend, Frontend, Salesforce, CRM, CSM, MVC, Scrum, Waterfall, JUnit, TDD, Cobol, Fortran, BASIC, UML, Git, SVN, CVS, JQuery, Assembly.

Fluent in English and three other languages.

Good communication skills. You have to be able to explain everything to illiterate shareholders and customers over the phone or Skype.

Be proactive and willing to take risks, but only the ones we approve of.

Desired is everything else not on the list.

Oh, you are 45? Sorry but we are a young dynamic team. We only take people under 25 or androids with 2TB+ RAM and an expandable storage unit.

Re: You’re How Old? We’ll Be in Touch

#169

Post by pyre »

sotojuan wrote: post #21
rawnlq wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People working in tech also tend to retire early or start doing their own thing due to their salary.

Do they really retire early though? I always hear people in forums saying how they'll save up and not have kids to retire by 40 but never meet anyone that has done that. I really doubt most programmers that don't go into management and didn't win the startup lottery retire much earlier than other careers.

Several early Microsoft employees retired by 30, IIRC. Not necessarily an industry-wide thing through.

Re: You’re How Old? We’ll Be in Touch

#170

Post by Zelmor »

bbcbasic wrote: post #116
hiram112 wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Spot on. A majority of the HN crowd is in their 20's. They're making around 6 figures (albeit in a very high COL area) while their peers are still in grad school, slinging it out in the gig economy for peanuts, or even living at home still searching for a decent job. Software seems like it was a good choice. By mid 30's, though, their intelligent friends will be doing well in their fields, too - making partner in the…

With such high salaries what if you sleep on a couch, live off the proverbial ramen for a 5-10 years, pump it all into investments, then go retire somewhere cheaper?

Then you will spend your money on healthcare to get back what you lost on ramen and a couch.
Post reply on HN