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

Silicon Valley's Dark Secret: It's all about Age

techcrunch.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 122 posts

Re: Silicon Valley's Dark Secret: It's all about Age

#21

Post by cageface »

hbt wrote: post #12
cageface wrote: post #4

If you're young and sharp, programming looks like paradise. It's more or less a meritocracy, there's a ton of personal freedom, and you get to spend your days doing creative, challenging work and getting paid fairly well. You may not have even had to slog through 4-5 years of college. You'll start to see the downsides as you approach 40 though. Many programmers can't play the social games that management requires, th…

That's assuming you're doing the same thing you used to do 20 years ago. I mean even with new technologies, if you end up building sophisticated CRUD interfaces with language FooBar 20 years from now, you can't really complain about it. People who managed to differentiate themselves in CS over the years moved to stuff like computer vision, natural language processing, designing programming languages, optimizing virtu…

So, I would only worry if 20 years from now, you're still solving the same problems but with a cuter UI and a faster machine.

Exactly. You have to constantly reinvest in yourself technically. Learn new languages and platforms, study a new business domain, hack on at least one side project and keep it up on github. There is no such thing as tenure in software.

Re: Silicon Valley's Dark Secret: It's all about Age

#22

Post by HilbertSpace »

Here's the real story:

First, the 'suits' want only 'fungible', 'compliant' workers.

Second, the 'suits' do NOT want any workers who might have some technical qualifications that might be powerful, compete with the suits, and scare the suits.

Third, likely highly experienced, older programmers can get good work via 'body shops' around DC.

Fourth, one common tech personnel policy is to hire people as young as possible, promote 1% into management, and fire the rest by 35. In this case, the person 35 would have been better off starting a grass mowing service at age 18 so that by age 35 they have had 17 years in the business, expanded to landscape architecture, have 12 employees, etc. Or generally a Ph.D. in EE will be better off at age 35 having just gotten an electrician's license and built a nice collection of local customers.

Generally, in a technical field, it's important to need a LICENSE.

Generally the big, secret economic opportunity now in the US is to exploit a 'geographical barrier to entry'. So do well in a Main Street business where anyone more than 100 miles away can't be a competitor and do well.

It can commonly be better for a person 18 just to join McDonald's, work hard, learn the business really well, work up to a manager of one McDonald's, manage also a second McDonald's for the same owner, and then have a heart to heart with a local banker about buying and running their own McDonald's. Build up to 10 McDonald's, run them WELL, and will have a better job than nearly anyone in a company a programmer might work for.

Fifth, a good programmer should start and own their own business. E.g., really good at Web site design and construction? Fine: Do such sites for companies in a radius of 50 miles. There, of course, need to meet face to face with the customer and, thus, have a geographical barrier to entry.

Sixth, have some deep technical qualifications, say, from grad school? Fine: There's nearly NO WAY anyone else will construct a good job for you. So, start and run your own business based on the deep knowledge you have.

Re: Silicon Valley's Dark Secret: It's all about Age

#23

Post by didip »

sabat wrote: post #6

I suppose programming as a particular profession may have this dark secret; I'm not a straight-up developer (meaning I'm an IT generalist who does develop but usually has some sort of hybrid job including mgmt). However: I know lots of 50-something developers who have no problem maintaining employment and contracts. They are top-notch; their skills are current and their proven track record and accomplishments are wha…

Observing older programmers within my circle, they tend to master a few specialized skills that's hard to get from the hardcore and enthusiastic 20+.

There are a lot of subdomains within programming. Mastering things like Unix tools, patching certain web servers, knowing the kinks of specific RDBMS and/or filesystem, how to design batch processing, makes you a lot harder to be replaced by those 20+.

Not all 20+ guys are hacking on PyPy or Firefox. Most of them are Rails/PHP warriors. Competing against them is a lot easier if you master skills that can only be obtained by experience.

Re: Silicon Valley's Dark Secret: It's all about Age

#24

Post by pohl »

didip wrote: post #16
yungchin wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ompeting neck & neck with people twenty years younger willing to work 60+ hours a week for half your salary My probably naive question is, how come you earn twice as much in the first place? Shouldn't salaries reflect the value you provide to your employer, so that either 1) you don't earn as much because you're actually worth less than the 60+ hours working kid, or 2) you earn twice as much because the hours you d…

Ideally, things should work that way. But in reality, salary worth is determine by your negotiation skill within that limited time window before you accept the new job. And that's another industry's dirty little secret.

Negotiation skill and how desperate you are. Some will do anything to get a foothold in The Land of Opportunity, while others are already there and can afford to wait for a better offer.

Re: Silicon Valley's Dark Secret: It's all about Age

#25

Post by cageface »

Silhouette wrote: post #18

Management error #1: "Move up the ladder into management, architecture, or design" As long as management insist on perceiving themselves as superior to other people, and assuming that technical competence somehow implies management competence, there will always be a drain on the good technical guys. The reward and recognition structure strongly encourages them to change discipline. However, can anyone cite me a singl…

I think a lot of this makes sense when you realize that the typical tech company isn't really trying to do something that's very difficult. The average internet company is chasing some gimmicky take on social marketing or a trivial mobile fad etc and your ability to succeed in that kind of environment is going to depend more on your ability to work corporate politics than your technical skills, unless you're absolutely incompetent.

This is much less the case at companies that are tackling hard problems though.

Re: Silicon Valley's Dark Secret: It's all about Age

#26

Post by sanj »

yungchin wrote: post #11
cageface wrote: post #4

If you're young and sharp, programming looks like paradise. It's more or less a meritocracy, there's a ton of personal freedom, and you get to spend your days doing creative, challenging work and getting paid fairly well. You may not have even had to slog through 4-5 years of college. You'll start to see the downsides as you approach 40 though. Many programmers can't play the social games that management requires, th…

> ompeting neck & neck with people twenty years younger willing to work 60+ hours a week for half your salary My probably naive question is, how come you earn twice as much in the first place? Shouldn't salaries reflect the value you provide to your employer, so that either 1) you don't earn as much because you're actually worth less than the 60+ hours working kid, or 2) you earn twice as much because the hours you d…

Salaries don't only compensate for performance, they also compensate for responsibility.

Do you want to be the person that loses the company some amount $x, comparable to your yearly salary, when you make a mistake? Or are you willing to lose the company 100($x) for making the wrong decision, be fired for it, and have your entire team looking for jobs?

I tend to think of it as "how much of the buck are you expected to stop?"

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buck_passing for non-US HNers)

Re: Silicon Valley's Dark Secret: It's all about Age

#28

Post by amirmc »

Silhouette wrote: post #18

Management error #1: "Move up the ladder into management, architecture, or design" As long as management insist on perceiving themselves as superior to other people, and assuming that technical competence somehow implies management competence, there will always be a drain on the good technical guys. The reward and recognition structure strongly encourages them to change discipline. However, can anyone cite me a singl…

Your comment on #1 above doesn't make sense to me.

Immediately after the sentence you cite, the OP says "Build skills that are more valuable to your company, and take positions that can’t be filled by entry-level workers"

Management roles may be one option. You are correct that technical competence doesn't imply management competence but that can still be learned (over the course of one's career).

I do understand the rest of your points though.

ETA: You say ... can anyone cite me a single source that justifies this position?

Exactly what kind of citation would you need? You can probably look at successful companies and see how they handle the problem.

Re: Silicon Valley's Dark Secret: It's all about Age

#29

Post by HilbertSpace »

Also over the past 10 years, venture capital in Silicon Valley lost money.

Generally the venture partners do not know how to build significant businesses. Look at their backgrounds and see why. Compare with people doing significant work in technology for, say, the US DoD.

Re: Silicon Valley's Dark Secret: It's all about Age

#30

Post by sanj »

HilbertSpace wrote: post #22

Here's the real story: First, the 'suits' want only 'fungible', 'compliant' workers. Second, the 'suits' do NOT want any workers who might have some technical qualifications that might be powerful, compete with the suits, and scare the suits. Third, likely highly experienced, older programmers can get good work via 'body shops' around DC. Fourth, one common tech personnel policy is to hire people as young as possible…

Go find a better company to work for.

All of those issues are company-specific. Sadly, most companies have at least some of the problems.

And I find your McDonald's story insulting: talk to me after you run one a single McD's by yourself and then you'll be able to convince me that a programmer should get paid more.

Dealing with people is hard. Dealing with short term employees is harder. Dealing with people who don't have skills to work higher up the employment chain is even harder. Doing it through two levels of surly middle management would give me an ulcer.

So are there multi-McD's owning entrepreneurs who make more money than me? Hell yes. And they deserve every penny. It's a harder than sitting down in an Aeron chair, staring at 30" monitor and trying not to drip the condensation from your iced coffee on your MacBook Pro.

Post reply on HN