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Do You Really Want to be Doing this When You're 50?

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Re: Do You Really Want to be Doing this When You're 50?

#201

Post by rfrey »

mengine wrote: post #116
edw519 wrote: post #60

57, programming for 33 years with hardly a day off, and having more fun than ever. My motivation? It's not about the technology, the tools, the apps, the business, the customers, or even the money, although any of those can provide plenty of motivation. And believe it or not, it's not even about the happy dance feeling I get when something I built works for the first time. It's about the achievements of those who use…

This sounds pretty depressing to me. You're building the software that allows others to retire while you're a cog in someone else's wheel for another 33 years. Why not build your own achievements?

Your reply gives an impression of both a shallow and narrow definition of success and achievement.

Re: Do You Really Want to be Doing this When You're 50?

#202

Post by tptacek »

IanDrake wrote: post #191
edw519 wrote: post #60

57, programming for 33 years with hardly a day off, and having more fun than ever. My motivation? It's not about the technology, the tools, the apps, the business, the customers, or even the money, although any of those can provide plenty of motivation. And believe it or not, it's not even about the happy dance feeling I get when something I built works for the first time. It's about the achievements of those who use…

Frankly, there aren't enough of you out there. As a consultant, I've rarely met a developer over 50 who's still interested in their job (however I wonder if they ever were). In the few cases I have, it's been amazing. The stories someone with 33 years of quality experience can tell you about are eye opening. They can remind you of how far we've come, how what's old is new again, and how to adapt in an ever changing t…

I've met developers over 50 who were passionate not only about their job but about their prospects for learning new things. I think that's a character attribute that you either have or don't have, and I don't see a lot of evidence that it fades with age.

I have also met a lot of developers who are passionate about the lifestyle features of being a startup software developer but who are also willfully stuck in ruts like spending months cultivating positions about which testing framework best expresses the right testing methodology, or whether HTML is best generated serverside or clientside. They don't read papers, they plan on maybe one day learning C, but they wear the right t-shirt and are on the right IRC channels. These are things that might matter a lot when you're just starting out in your career but don't so much matter at all when you've got your sea legs.

There are a lot of those people and I think that may color our impression of which age bracket is most engaged.

Re: Do You Really Want to be Doing this When You're 50?

#204

Post by tptacek »

Please note extremely effective demonstration of "privilege".

Two employee candidates interview successively. One is 25, the other 53. Both are comparably conversant in technology, evince comparable cognitive capability, are equivalently literate in the problem domain being tackled by the role they're interviewing for.

Privilege: the 25 year old is not asked (overtly or subtextually) whether they "want to be doing this". It is simply assumed that the 25 year old's head is in the game. No demonstration of lifestyle commitment to the craft is required.

Take the idea and turn it around in your hands for a little while. Try this: imagine that instead of software developers, these were master woodcrafters; luthiers, say. Notice how the subtext changes: age is an asset. A lifetime spent designing guitars is a signifier of passion and competence. Flip the switch back to development and notice how age suddenly connotes something else, like "career failure forcing person to retain technical role".

You will get old someday, if you're lucky. But controlling for spectacularly unlikely values of "lucky", you are aren't going to strike gold in this field, such that you'll have no career concerns when you're 45-50. It is unfortunate that our field manages to devalue competence and experience that way it does; here's a second-time Rails gem author instead of a virtual memory system designer, see you at SXSW!

Re: Do You Really Want to be Doing this When You're 50?

#206

Post by jerf »

slurgfest wrote: post #179
jerf wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am a natural cynic, yes, but people tend not to pay you unless you are doing something that makes you a cog for some period of time. It's not a criticism you can just fling at someone when you don't know their context. An experienced software contractor who is picking and choosing their own jobs is still pretty autonomous. It's more about whether you can pick where you are a cog and for whom you are a cog, than whe…

Although I don't really use the word 'cog,' you are being uncharitable here; the word isn't completely meaningless and using it isn't "screeching". The poster seemed to be distinguishing not on the basis of interdependence but on the basis of who has control over your life and the context of your work, and where the resulting profit would go. (This is, of course, my reading). One part is your freedom. If you want to…

In context: Do you have any reason to impute any of these issues to edw519?

The accusation of him being a cog without any apparent basis for flinging that accusation is what set me off, and made me use the word "screeching". You appear to have simply expanded on my point that there are ways of being more and less coggy, which is nice, but you seem to think you were arguing against something I said, though I can't find what. Yes, I already said there's a general point that could be made there, but the point wasn't made without a heaping helping of presumptions.

Re: Do You Really Want to be Doing this When You're 50?

#207

Post by marquis »

IanDrake wrote: post #191
edw519 wrote: post #60

57, programming for 33 years with hardly a day off, and having more fun than ever. My motivation? It's not about the technology, the tools, the apps, the business, the customers, or even the money, although any of those can provide plenty of motivation. And believe it or not, it's not even about the happy dance feeling I get when something I built works for the first time. It's about the achievements of those who use…

Frankly, there aren't enough of you out there. As a consultant, I've rarely met a developer over 50 who's still interested in their job (however I wonder if they ever were). In the few cases I have, it's been amazing. The stories someone with 33 years of quality experience can tell you about are eye opening. They can remind you of how far we've come, how what's old is new again, and how to adapt in an ever changing t…

The older programmers I know are in niche fields, like audio effects processing or hardware hacking. It's not a job, it's what you get up and do with your brain every day.

Re: Do You Really Want to be Doing this When You're 50?

#208

Post by ken »

127001brewer wrote: post #98
daliusd wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So it is about achievements of your paying customers using your technology business's apps you wrote using tools at your hand. Simply put you are happy that you have created something useful to others or there is something more?

My father worked with his hands for his entire working life; at the time, he tells me, he worked on the U.S. Coast Guard Eagle more than anyone else (such as replacing the entire decking, etc). It's something that he's extremely proud of and something he can actually show his grandchildren. On the other hand, I build things that are, for the most part, abstract and virtual . I enjoy what I do because it allows me to…

I think that the example of a military sailing vessel (!) shows that almost everything people build with their hands has a limited life-span, too.

In many cases the lifespan is longer, but in other cases it's shorter. My malloc() is older than my car, even though they both still get regularly used.

Re: Do You Really Want to be Doing this When You're 50?

#209

Post by dexterchief »

robomartin wrote: post #189

Programming, by itself, the mechanics of it, isn't something that I find stimulative enough to derive long-term enjoyment. I think the author is right in pointing out that there's an ugly side to programming that includes bugs, bad API's, bad tools, bad documentation, etc. This is what I have come to term "programmer on programmer violence". We certainly can't blame anyone else for these issues. This I don't enjoy. N…

Sorry to hear you had to fold up shop like that. It sounds like you have plenty of talents to fall back on but that probably doesn't remove any of the sting of having all your hard work swept away. That said, US Politicians have plenty of misdeeds to answer for, but over-regulating the financial sector is really not among them. The requirement to prove that you have some sort of income before getting a house loan was one of the things deregulation "fixed". It was bank policy not government policy that "allowed millions of people making $50K a year to buy $500,000 homes they could not afford". Check out Alan Greenspan's testimony before congress. Its easy to find on youtube.

Re: Do You Really Want to be Doing this When You're 50?

#210

Post by giftedbygod »

dexterchief wrote: post #209
robomartin wrote: post #189

Programming, by itself, the mechanics of it, isn't something that I find stimulative enough to derive long-term enjoyment. I think the author is right in pointing out that there's an ugly side to programming that includes bugs, bad API's, bad tools, bad documentation, etc. This is what I have come to term "programmer on programmer violence". We certainly can't blame anyone else for these issues. This I don't enjoy. N…

Sorry to hear you had to fold up shop like that. It sounds like you have plenty of talents to fall back on but that probably doesn't remove any of the sting of having all your hard work swept away. That said, US Politicians have plenty of misdeeds to answer for, but over-regulating the financial sector is really not among them. The requirement to prove that you have some sort of income before getting a house loan was…

LOL: and who guaranteed all these bad loans? Who guaranteed all the mortgages by the Law? The US Government and the FED. Are you really surprised that banks were approving nearly all mortgages when Government GUARANTEED they if house owner stops paying, the Government will buy the mortgage?! That's the very purpose for which Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were created. To guarantee risky mortgages so even people who shouldn't get a house (lazy) would still get one. With the Government guarantee. The unintended consequence was (of course!) that banks started giving out loans to everyone.

Look for Peter Schiff videos on youtube from 2005/06/07 when he talks about it and everybody laughs at him.

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