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Being a Developer After 40

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Re: Being a Developer After 40

#181

Post by mhurron »

JohnBooty wrote: post #149
ManlyBread wrote: post #105

The article was pretty good until this part. >If you are a white male remember all the privilege you have enjoyed since birth just because you were born that way. It is your responsibility to change the industry and its bias towards more inclusion. I'm from an Eastern Europe and my family never was rich, I had to put in a tremendous effort to even get into the industry. Assuming I got an easy ride simply because I'm…

I'm from an Eastern Europe and my family never was rich, I had to put in a tremendous effort to even get into the industry. Assuming I got an easy ride simply because I'm white is a pretty racist statement I was about to patiently type out another "hey, you did work hard and you did earn your success - 'white privilege' doesn't mean things were handed to you easily; it means that even though your life has been hard y…

> basic rights we take for granted (for example, walking into a store and not being treated as a potential thief, or having prospective interviewers assume we're professional/literate/presentable) are actually privileges that many people or color don't have.

You are aware that Irish and Eastern Europeans, and on and off through history Greek and Italian, have had all those same problems right? You know that 'White Privilege' you talk about is really just for those of Germanic origin, right?

Because I'd hate for you to look like an idiot telling someone who could have faced all those issues when they moved to Western Europe, the US or Canada that it's all wine and roses for them.

White Privilege should just be called White Devil. It jsut paints such a simplistic view of the world, not a real one, but one that is useful for rhetoric.

Re: Being a Developer After 40

#182

Post by benten10 »

Hahahahaha, loooving the comments. ABSOLUTELY loving them. Wherein white men complain calling them white man is racist and in fact THEY are the real victims here who had to work HARD despite all the NEGATIVE STEREOTYPES against men in tech. Keep chugging mah chums, keep chugging!

Re: Being a Developer After 40

#183

Post by osweiller »

ManlyBread wrote: post #105

The article was pretty good until this part. >If you are a white male remember all the privilege you have enjoyed since birth just because you were born that way. It is your responsibility to change the industry and its bias towards more inclusion. I'm from an Eastern Europe and my family never was rich, I had to put in a tremendous effort to even get into the industry. Assuming I got an easy ride simply because I'm…

I'm from an Eastern Europe and my family never was rich, I had to put in a tremendous effort to even get into the industry.

I grew up in a small, very blue collar town (the sort that most people never escape). We lived on social assistance, at least until my mother killed herself and I went to live in foster homes. Eventually my father -- who later died from asbestos related cancer from his job -- let me move into a spare bedroom at his girlfriend's house.

"White male privilege".

I "made it", so to speak, purely on the backs of a couple of teachers who tried really hard, and the luck of having interests and aptitudes perfect for the time in a burgeoning, lucrative industry. But I certainly did not have a privileged upbringing.

Re: Being a Developer After 40

#185

Post by avoutthere »

patwolf wrote: post #133

>Learn all you can about LLVM While I'm sure LLVM is an important technology, I don't feel it's everyone's job to learn and know everything there is to know about it. There will perhaps be a niche group of developers making cool things with LLVM, most developers can get along just fine without knowing anything about it.

"Forget the Hype" followed by LLVM hype.

Re: Being a Developer After 40

#186

Post by pc86 »

manishsharan wrote: post #177

As a developer over 40, my biggest challenge is actually that the management has come to expect weekend work and late nights as the norm. As someone with a family , I can't put in those hours every day and every weekend. Single programmers who can put in those kind of hours are rewarded and those who cant are singled out for ridicule or "performance concern chats with manager". Projects have gone agile and they have…

This is probably an unpopular opinion here, but only a very small subset of developers need to design algorithms or even know any of them by heart.

Disregarding a few years that was mostly WordPress consulting, my experience is largely enterprise C#. Lots of line of business applications, glorified CRUD apps, and some client work. Zero need for any ability to write a BST or radix sort.

If you're working for SpaceX, or Twitter, or a Big 4, of course you should know those things. But most developers don't work for one of those companies. The vast majority of programming is done to further a business other than programming.

Re: Being a Developer After 40

#187

Post by shrewduser »

saulr wrote: post #150
jedrek wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It just means, for example, that it probably would have been even harder if you were an Eastern European woman who grew up in a poor family. Spot on. If the previous poster went to a technical institute in Eastern Europe, I am willing to bet that his classes were at least 90% male.

Likewise for Computer Science classes in Western Europe (and I imagine North America). This is the issue with arbitrary quotas/targets for hiring female engineers - there is a lack of those qualified. I acknowledge that there is a huge disparity between male/female workers in the field, but the issue is far earlier in an aspiring engineer's life than getting a job. STEM subjects have far fewer female students than ma…

I don't understand this logic, from an age before i even could fathom what 'racism' or 'sexism' was i was fascinated by computers and technology

during early high school the dot com bubble happened and most of my teachers advised me against going into IT, they talked about low wages, unemployment, constantly re learning as tech progresses, outsourcing job et al

girls didn't much care for computer guys and they were near the bottom of the social pecking order. in my experience i was an outcast.

i was being highly discouraged everywhere i looked, but i didn't care one bit, i was doing it because i was interested in it. of course now all of those factors have reversed themselves not that i could have forseen that.

my point is that maybe today women and certain races face some of these issues, maybe you could make the argument that they're discouraged (seems to me that they're encouraged a lot more than i was) but even if we accept that as a truism, which i clearly don't, who cares, if these people are no less able let them prove it and this culture of barriers (which i don't believe in anyway) will subside.

Re: Being a Developer After 40

#188

Post by j4kp07 »

interpol_p wrote: post #136
ManlyBread wrote: post #105

The article was pretty good until this part. >If you are a white male remember all the privilege you have enjoyed since birth just because you were born that way. It is your responsibility to change the industry and its bias towards more inclusion. I'm from an Eastern Europe and my family never was rich, I had to put in a tremendous effort to even get into the industry. Assuming I got an easy ride simply because I'm…

The author is not assuming you, personally, got an easy ride. Nor is the author dismissing any and all hardships faced by white males during their lifetimes. It is disappointing that you took his comment that way. Acknowledging that it is easier to make it in the tech industry if you are a white male does not mean that it wasn't hard for you. It just means, for example, that it probably would have been even harder if…

> It just means, for example, that it probably would have been even harder if you were an Eastern European woman who grew up in a poor family.

That is an absurd, subjective, abstract theory with no research to back it. The same thing can be said of any sex, race or creed in virtually any instance of life. Get over yourself and quit acting like this is exclusive to white people.

White people did not invent sexism. Neither is it exclusive to them.

White people did not invent racism. Neither is it exclusive to them.

White people did not invent religion. Neither is it exclusive to them.

Re: Being a Developer After 40

#189

Post by j4kp07 »

jedrek wrote: post #146
interpol_p wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The author is not assuming you, personally, got an easy ride. Nor is the author dismissing any and all hardships faced by white males during their lifetimes. It is disappointing that you took his comment that way. Acknowledging that it is easier to make it in the tech industry if you are a white male does not mean that it wasn't hard for you. It just means, for example, that it probably would have been even harder if…

> It just means, for example, that it probably would have been even harder if you were an Eastern European woman who grew up in a poor family. Spot on. If the previous poster went to a technical institute in Eastern Europe, I am willing to bet that his classes were at least 90% male.

Correlation =/= Causation

Re: Being a Developer After 40

#190

Post by mkozlows »

manishsharan wrote: post #177

As a developer over 40, my biggest challenge is actually that the management has come to expect weekend work and late nights as the norm. As someone with a family , I can't put in those hours every day and every weekend. Single programmers who can put in those kind of hours are rewarded and those who cant are singled out for ridicule or "performance concern chats with manager". Projects have gone agile and they have…

If you're working for employers who think it's easy to find good developers, you're working for employers who hire lots of terrible developers.
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