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Programmers: Before you turn 40, get a plan B (2009)

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Re: Programmers: Before you turn 40, get a plan B (2009)

#221

Post by scrabble »

cubano wrote: post #123
jakobegger wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that there's a huge variation among developers regardless of age or experience. There are people who are 25 and believe they've seen it all, and there are 45 year olds who tell you they've seen it all. What they have in common is that they don't listen to your advise and refuse to learn new things.

What they have in common is that they don't listen to your advise and refuse to learn new things. I was on a job interview a few days ago and was asked "What do you dislike the most about working with others on a team" and gave them your exact answer, thinking it sensible giving the state of software dev nowadays. I could tell immediately that they didn't care for it one bit, and the interview ended a few minutes lat…

Usually some crap like, "I feel like I end up putting team success over personal success and sometimes that feels like it hurts me professionally."

Personally, I'd prefer your answer.

Re: Programmers: Before you turn 40, get a plan B (2009)

#222

Post by shanusmagnus »

cookiecaper wrote: post #203
shanusmagnus wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe you should consider that, as a grey hair, one of the skills you should have picked up along the way is how to behave when talking to a VP.

The interesting thing about engineers is that they have very little tolerance for these destructive social shenanigans. Courtesy and politeness are one thing, but ignoring such a flagrantly flawed plan goes beyond courtesy and into professional negligence. When empirical thought is your bread and butter, as it is in the case of software developers, it's hard to see why you should have to acquiesce to the VP's ego. If…

YMMV, but what one perceives as 'unreasonable political games' is highly personality-dependent. Most people have some set of behaviors that they find appropriate in some situations but not in others. For instance, wearing sweatpants to a wedding is generally frowned upon, for reasons that have little to do with their ability to maintain the body at a reasonable operating temperature. You can wear them anyway, but then you get to face the social consequences of doing so.

It's true that workplaces would be a lot more efficient under the regime you describe. It's also true that if my aunt had a dick she'd be my uncle. I'm suggesting that it might be a good idea for engineers to do the same thing as everybody else in the world and try to figure out when to wear sweatpants.

Re: Programmers: Before you turn 40, get a plan B (2009)

#223

Post by [deleted] »

cookiecaper wrote: post #203
shanusmagnus wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe you should consider that, as a grey hair, one of the skills you should have picked up along the way is how to behave when talking to a VP.

The interesting thing about engineers is that they have very little tolerance for these destructive social shenanigans. Courtesy and politeness are one thing, but ignoring such a flagrantly flawed plan goes beyond courtesy and into professional negligence. When empirical thought is your bread and butter, as it is in the case of software developers, it's hard to see why you should have to acquiesce to the VP's ego. If…

[deleted]

Re: Programmers: Before you turn 40, get a plan B (2009)

#224

Post by federico3 »

shanusmagnus wrote: post #188
SiVal wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's funny you should say that. A few years ago, at a company whose name everyone here knows I, an old gray-hair, almost lost my full-time job for warning a VP that she was about to make a mistake I'd seen before. I honestly thought she was joking when she told me about the approach she was going to use to deal with a "hard deadline" of four months. I laughed along with her joke until, with a shock, we both realized…

Maybe you should consider that, as a grey hair, one of the skills you should have picked up along the way is how to behave when talking to a VP.

Blaming the victim.

Re: Programmers: Before you turn 40, get a plan B (2009)

#225

Post by Retric »

switch_bro wrote: post #207
dan00 wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The big picture is that computer programming is a field with low barriers to entry and where young people have a significant advantage. Computer programming isn't just one field, there're several completely different fields. All what you said might be true for the web development field, where the technology at hand isn't really that hard and you apply more or less the same technology and knowledge for each web proj…

A few points come to mind. Are the 50 yo people really computer programmers, or are they managers / architects / scientists / etc? The point is not that there is nothing to learn, but that after 8 - 10 years, additional learning/experience does not give you a competitive advantage compared to younger programmers. Finally, you can always have exceptions, niches, etc. That does not change the dynamic for the field as a…

I know several older programmers 55+ who run rings around younger programms. They don't just write better code they also pick up new systems, languages, and techniques faster.

I suspect part of this simple selection bias where the best stick with programming for longer periods, but there is huge bennifits to really wide ranging backgrounds. Sure, many things become outdated, but the 4th time you see the same idea presented in a new way your just picking up syntax not a new way to think.

Re: Programmers: Before you turn 40, get a plan B (2009)

#226

Post by wstrange »

Two9A wrote: post #183
scalesolved wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That sounds fantastic, I'd love to read a more in depth blog post about this!

The reference blog post from Mr Money Mustache is: http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2012/01/13/the-shockingly-sim... Essentially, your income in retirement should not be dictated by your current income, but by your current level of expenses. If you can save a multiple of your current annual expenses, and that multiple is high enough to account for real-terms investment gains, you're financially independent: you don't n…

It's a great read. The one thing that concerns me is the assumption that your investments will earn 5% after inflation.

That has been very difficult (at least for me) since 2008.

Re: Programmers: Before you turn 40, get a plan B (2009)

#227

Post by drstrangevibes »

wow, way to put more pressure on an incredibly pressurised industry. my thoughts are if you are a programmer you'll excel in most office roles, you can probably automate a lot of your workload so, why doesnt everyone relax, stop worrying about the field and enjoy what they do once again. As for learning new technologies - I havent seen a new technology in ages , many are just rehashes or earlier frameworks, MVC with a twist , or clever ways around messenging any programmer who has continually adapted for 20+ years will be able to continue to do so. however if the goal is to take in a couple of young programmers indoctrinate them with the company's thinking and style of programming, then burn them out in 5 years squeezing every last hour of productivity out of them, then I agree young is the way to go

Re: Programmers: Before you turn 40, get a plan B (2009)

#228

Post by mistermann »

maerF0x0 wrote: post #3

i'd suggest that intelligent employers realize that the language and stack are only a very small part of building a product. The more interesting problems are hard not due to language, but due to algorithms, data structuring, design patters and general architecting et al. The 10yr C++ programmer ought to have those things nailed, the junior may not know they even exist.

> problems are hard not due to language, but due to algorithms, data structuring, design patters and general architecting et al.

This is where I think we do get some legitimacy to this discrimination though. Most places you go, people are implementing functionality that is not terribly unlike that which has been done for the last 20 years (I'm talking the generic business "enterprise" shop). However, there seems to be about a ~~20% turnover in tools, styles, patterns, etc every year, and in my opinion at least on some platforms, the implementation style is tending towards the most complicated possible over-architected solutions possible.

When you're young and single, you have all the time in the world to keep up to date on all this, but once you're married, not so much. So, while I could easily out-implement the more "current" people, I'm not up tp speed on everything in their toolbox, so I lose.

As you say, "intelligent employers" should realize this, but how are they to know the technology flavor or style du jour is a waste of time, when the industry itself can't figure it out? ("everything XML" as just one example)

Re: Programmers: Before you turn 40, get a plan B (2009)

#229

Post by Consultant32452 »

analog31 wrote: post #199
zo1 wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>" It's a myth that most managers make much more than programmers and that they "just" organize your time. " Well, instead of just saying it's a myth and relying on averaged stats in the industry to satiate peoples' curiosity/jealousy, perhaps we should just all be more open about how much we all make. I.e. let's not make it taboo and "contractually-breaking" to discuss salaries openly. I know, yes, our current emplo…

I suspect that sharing salary info will result in a gradual downward grind in salaries, as people are offended by seeing someone make what seems like big money for easy work. This has been the case with public school teacher salaries. I also think that salary data, with no corresponding ability data, will be meaningless.

Salary data is already available at places like salary.com. You can see what people with your job title in your area are making for free.

Re: Programmers: Before you turn 40, get a plan B (2009)

#230

Post by pjungwir »

ownagefool wrote: post #201
isomorphic wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm over 40 and I've always worked as a consultant. Until recently I was the sole developer on a site doing eight figures in revenue (now I'm team lead). Without being arrogant here, if my skills match but someone doesn't want my level of experience, it's not a good sign for the someone. On the flip side, I would love to throw out all of the languages and frameworks I've been using for the past few years and learn en…

The main problem with hiring grey beards, as you put it, is that a lot of them aren't amazing, but due to years, they have an authorative attitude and expect to be paid more than your 20 something devs. If it's my money, I'd hire the 20 year old with gaping holes in their knowledge who are willing and eager to learn over the 40s something dev who thinks their way is better because they're 10 years my senior. I have a…

Something that really frustrates me is people who are more expert than me but can't justify their pronouncements. I had a high school friend who I'm sure was smarter than me claim, "No one does object oriented programming the right way [except him]," but when pressed would just deliberately play games and mystify. Most DBAs I've worked with had their preferred way of doing things, but were incapable of answering Why? It's not easy working with these people. I've come to really value a colleague who can teach---that is, who can explain why they choose what they do.

I'd say anecdotally 2 out of 5 times I've encountered this it's been someone covering up for their own lack of understanding. These are the worst and the most inflexible. All but one DBA I've worked with was this way. It's the natural result of cargo-culting.

2 out of 5 times it's because the person doesn't have patience to explain all the background you'd need to understand, or they don't trust that you have sufficient background. Sysadmins do this all the time. If you're smart and already pretty familiar with their field, it's very frustrating. This isn't as bad as the former case, but it indicates personnel conflict and lack of trust. It's understandable though, e.g. answering technical questions for business people. I've gotten pretty skilled at giving non-jargony, intelligible, short, "popularizing" answers, that also invite further questions if desired. But it's not easy.

And 1 out of 5 it's because people with experience have forgotten the reasons. I've been there too. Just the other week on a Rails project someone wanted to use an ActiveRecord default_scope of "where deleted_at is null", and I had felt the pain of that on past projects, but it took a while to dredge up the details from my memory.

Most of the above reasons don't correlate with age/experience, but the last one does. Experienced people have so internalized certain lessons that they've forgotten the reasons behind them. You could say this is a bit like Michael Polanyi's "tacit knowledge". In this case, hopefully they still have mental flexibility to recognize that nothing is 100%, and if you give them time to remember and communicate their reasons, you can have a reasoned discussion and make a good decision. But recognize that making people think in this way often "feels like work." You are asking them to exert themselves, so it's important to communicate in a way that isn't challenging their knowledge but asking them to share it more deeply.

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