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

Do you really want to be making this much money when you're 50?

yosefk.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

241–250 of 289 posts

Re: Do you really want to be making this much money when you're 50?

#241

Post by ra »

jaxn wrote: post #226
nathan_long wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't argue for ageism, but I would say programming is different from law because technology changes much faster than law. There aren't giant paradigm shifts in law every 10 years. A new technology may in fact be much more productive to work with than an old one. Does someone with COBOL experience have an advantage or a disadvantage in learning Python vs someone who is just starting? Which is larger, the amount…

We also have the issue of "digital natives." In programming, there is a difference in someone who learned computers in college, someone who learned computers in high school, and someone who learned computers in grade school. Then the next wave was kids who grew up with the internet. I suspect it will continue with kids who grew up with touch devices. I don't think there is a similar parallel in other industries.

I'm 37 years of age I've been programming since the age of 7 (1982), and programming for the Internet since 17 (1992); that's 30 years of software development and 20 years of Internet/network programming; mostly web and mostly for government or in commercial environments and in more languages and frameworks that I care to remember.

Today I consider my judgement, that is to say, my ability to forsee the path of a project, or anticipate and avoid complexity to be better than it ever has been in the past, and think this is one of my strongest and most marketable skills.

Yes I still learn new things (faster than ever), and yes I am still very productive.

Am I a "digital native"?

Re: Do you really want to be making this much money when you're 50?

#242

Post by rayiner »

jaxn wrote: post #226
nathan_long wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't argue for ageism, but I would say programming is different from law because technology changes much faster than law. There aren't giant paradigm shifts in law every 10 years. A new technology may in fact be much more productive to work with than an old one. Does someone with COBOL experience have an advantage or a disadvantage in learning Python vs someone who is just starting? Which is larger, the amount…

We also have the issue of "digital natives." In programming, there is a difference in someone who learned computers in college, someone who learned computers in high school, and someone who learned computers in grade school. Then the next wave was kids who grew up with the internet. I suspect it will continue with kids who grew up with touch devices. I don't think there is a similar parallel in other industries.

I don't really buy who "kids who grew up with touch devices" might make better programmers than the generation of people who built Windows, NeXTStep, etc, who are in their 50's and 60's right now. Hell, Knuth is 74.

The fundamentals of programming, as an engineering field, haven't really changed since the 1980's.

Re: Do you really want to be making this much money when you're 50?

#243

Post by prodigal_erik »

tmp458 wrote: post #230
fatbird wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's all about the money. New graduates are cheaper. It's that simple. Technology and business are both over-populated with Randian/Libertarian douchebags for whom the quarterly bottom line is more important than good engineering or business as a sustainable entity in the larger social setting. Everything else is handwaving to hide this fact.

Besides advocating murder in some other comment, a quick scan of your post history reveals you mostly leave incendiary political remarks and don't really add anything useful, in my opinion, to a hacker discussion. In other words, fatbird is a troll account. __Could someone with administrative access take a look and ban fatbird's account?__ Regarding this post specifically: I'm not sure what kind of sensible forum let…

The kind created by an author so devoted to not being mistaken that he's been legitimately worried about being taken in by arbitrary moral fashions and putting entire ideas off limits.

http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html

tl,dr: You have to consider heresy seriously if you want to think clearly. Restrictions on expressing heretical ideas are harmful, though it's unsafe to disregard them where they exist.

Re: Do you really want to be making this much money when you're 50?

#244

Post by cpeterso »

niels wrote: post #131

I'm a software developer (MS Comp. Sci.) in my late thirties. I've always had the impression that software development was really well paid. But lately many of my friends (doctors, lawyers, MBAs) has started to make way more than I can get as a regular employee. And for the doctors it's all part of their standard salaries. They don't need to demonstrate any particular high level of competence. And from here on their…

How much do typical doctors and lawyers make mid-career?

Re: Do you really want to be making this much money when you're 50?

#245

Post by mitjak »

rayiner wrote: post #213
nathan_long wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't argue for ageism, but I would say programming is different from law because technology changes much faster than law. There aren't giant paradigm shifts in law every 10 years. A new technology may in fact be much more productive to work with than an old one. Does someone with COBOL experience have an advantage or a disadvantage in learning Python vs someone who is just starting? Which is larger, the amount…

The volume of small, incremental, changes in law is higher. Let me put it this way. The Dodd-Frank regulations that have come out so far in the last two years is probably the same number of pages, printed 50 lines per page, as the C++ source for Oracle's Hotspot JVM. And it's only 30% done. And there is no ChangeLog. The pace of paradigm shifts is indeed much faster in technology, but I disagree there are major parad…

I feel like a lot of what you're talking about is applicable to languages and technologies in general. Advantageous technological knowledge seems to be more about frameworks and domain-specific experience more than anything else; something that a Lisp-er from the 1980's will have quite a steep learning curve ahead for.

Not disagreeing with your point. Just pointing out something that has been bothering me a bit about the fragmented platform market.

Re: Do you really want to be making this much money when you're 50?

#246

Post by ghostoffuture »

gruseom wrote: post #236
ghostoffuture wrote: post #225

Perhaps I can add my experience in this. I was very good at programming in college. I was one of those guys that left the labs under the hatefull gaze of the entire lab section having finished his assignment early. And boy I loved it too. I was so happy having finished a large programming project or a large engineering design assignment. After getting an interesting assignment I would literally skip on the way back h…

This sort of intelligent reflection on personal experience makes for valuable comments. Particularly good: "You see this question of 'can you see yourself as a programmer when you are 50' does not have much to do with ageism or the labor market but about people's inner feelings and desires. Some people are horrified to see themselves as programmers when they are 50, not because of the market but because they secretly…

Thanks for the encouragement.

Re: Do you really want to be making this much money when you're 50?

#247

Post by [deleted] »

jaxn wrote: post #228
nostrademons wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I haven't ever heard of any developers making ten times the average salary or even double the average." Programmers who are making that kind of money know enough to keep it quiet.

I have never met a programmer making 10x the average salary ($500k - $1mm depending) excluding liquidity events.

[deleted]

Re: Do you really want to be making this much money when you're 50?

#248

Post by stevewilhelm »

donpark wrote: post #36
dmethvin wrote: post #29

I'm one of those guys programming in my 50s. Technically my jobs involve project management and consulting as well but I still love programming the most. Saying that programming "requires little or no education" is from the perspective of either a naturally smart person or the Dunning–Kruger effect. Like any profession, there are some self-motivated people who can do the job effectively without formal education. Yet…

Yup. While formal education is not necessary, one has to keep learning to stay in the forefront of this profession. If you stop, your 'shelf-life' is 10 yrs at most.

I disagree, if you did any application programming in the mid to late eighties in C/C++, TCP/Sockets, CORBA, Sybase, and X11, about 90% of your experience directly translates to today's Web based application development.

Hell, if you use a Linux development environment you will feel right at home.

Re: Do you really want to be making this much money when you're 50?

#249

Post by fjordan »

jaxn wrote: post #228
nostrademons wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I haven't ever heard of any developers making ten times the average salary or even double the average." Programmers who are making that kind of money know enough to keep it quiet.

I have never met a programmer making 10x the average salary ($500k - $1mm depending) excluding liquidity events.

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2828538

Re: Do you really want to be making this much money when you're 50?

#250

Post by brendonjohn »

plinkplonk wrote: post #23
_yosefk wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why isn't the field extremely competitive now? The demand has been strong for a decade and a half; it seems like a lot of time. (I'm not sure I have an explanation myself, really; perhaps it's something innate in people and perhaps it's something about education, but the fact remains that the world still hasn't churned out enough programmers even though the incentives have been there for a long time. One possible exp…

"Why isn't the field extremely competitive now? " Visas. Most programming work (of the type talked about in the OP) originates in the USA, and most companies, even startups, need employees to come in the door everyday. (not taking on the question of whether this is ideal or not, that is the just the way it is, right now) . Imagine (as a thought experiment) a scenario where a smart kid who lives in India or Ukraine or…

"Visas."

I live on a small island in a small city and I wont be short of work for the next 20 years.

Developers/programmers are hard to find. Finding good ones that pass the interview process are even harder.

Post reply on HN