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On Getting Older in Tech

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Re: On Getting Older in Tech

#251

Post by sulam »

Thaxll wrote: post #195
snarfy wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been following the technology my whole career. I am still employable, but it gets old. My advice to younger devs is to focus on general computer science fundamentals and application development skills. Those are the only skills that stay with you and grow as your career advances. The technologies always change so don't memorize them. Keep a reference around instead. Memorize things like design patterns and sorti…

Sorting algorithm you serious? No one uses that in his carreer.

I mostly agree, however there are exceptions that prove the rule. Some engineers are working on standard libraries. (someone has to write that code!) Some people are taking advantage of their data set to write special-purpose sorting algorithms that blow generic algorithms out of the water. (guilty!) Some people are putting stuff together in interesting ways that requires them to understand and sometimes even re-implement the standard algorithms to take advantage of internal data structures or other interesting effects. (It's bad practice, but knowing the order a map will iterate things in can be helpful if you don't expect it to change -- and make sure to have a unit test that proves it!)

Re: On Getting Older in Tech

#253

Post by ldev »

Umh... http://www.kettlerusa.com/?fullSite=&cartId=&division=kettle...

The design. The url. Clicked "add to card" - default JS alert popup. Then some HTML pop up showed up saying something about my IP being banned because of BOTNET? What? Now refreshing the page I get a timeout.

This is literally the worst eshop I've seen in the past few years. I wouldn't hire a man who made this atrocity and sure as hell wouldn't like working with him.

Re: On Getting Older in Tech

#254

Post by riprowan »

smokestack wrote: post #135
metafunctor wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nah. The fact that this post exists is evidence that ageism is a thing. What makes you think older people are passionate about the latest and greatest JavaScript frameworks? That is not my experience at all. New frameworks are just the same old stuff in a new wrapper. We've seen it all several times over. Like, backprop was a cool thing in the late 80s. I, too, find this post sad, but probably not for the same reason…

> think you are a useless dinosaur if you don't know what the new hot thing is about. Welcome to the technology industry.

I realized this way back in the mid 1990s when suddenly everyone wanted a "webmaster" with 10 years of experience, when suddenly HTML - a document markup language - became the most important "programming language" one could know.

Since then I have studiously avoided specializing in any technology. As soon as I feel like I've spent enough time in a particular stack to start to "know" it, I move on. I have refused to be pigeonholed into any particular tech.

The coding / language skills are the very least important skills I have, I intend to keep it that way. However I can present an extremely long laundry list of technologies that I have built solutions with - the length of the list, not the presence of any particular TLA on it, is the key to demonstrating my learning ability.

Re: On Getting Older in Tech

#255

Post by kbenson »

whostolemyhat wrote: post #218
entropy_ wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At least as far as I'm concerned, the biggest wart of all is variables that are global by default. That just makes no sense at all...

But this was fixed with strict mode; this is like criticising Java for not having generics, even though generics were added ages ago. You can still assign/use global variables in the browser, but like the parent says, this is the browser's fault - having to accept old and badly-written code for compatibility reasons.

My biggest problem with JavaScript is that I never can seem to wrap my head around the multiple null/undefined type of values and how to correctly test for them, as well as type introspection. Or, more appropriately, my problem with JavaScript is that it makes that confusing, and I use it just infrequently enough that I forget what I learned last time regarding that. Of course, that's not entirely JavaScript's fault, it just doesn't make it very easy.

Re: On Getting Older in Tech

#256

Post by epalmer »

branchless wrote: post #242
epalmer wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was both. With bonuses and options + salary I took about a 50% pay cut. My hours went from an average of maybe 70 / week to 40/week. My kids, now grown, thought I was a grump. Now they enjoy me being around. Same for my wife. Mostly importantly I was having health issues that less hours and less stress allowed me to get under control. As I said, I have never looked back. I don't miss the money because I don't miss…

It's called compensation for a reason. Sounds like you were compensated for missing out on your family and for trading years of healthy life. Not so tempting when phrased like this, but we often only realise after it becomes "normal". Also for many there is not much choice. Sounds like you had a top 5% job. Could you exist well without the situation your former life gave you, such as owning your own home and not payi…

I would have been fine. I've owned two small businesses that paid well at the time. I worked a lot of hours but I had fun with those companies.

Re: On Getting Older in Tech

#257

Post by sulam »

blub wrote: post #224
DanBC wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And why is it that most older people answering on these threads are so passionate about learning ...because older people are told all the time , even on HN, that they're too old to learn and that they don't keep up with technology. It's not surprising that they pre-empt these doubts by saying what they do to keep learning. > Why not have an honest conversation What's the honest conversation?

Well, an honest conversation would involve acting like a regular human, and not a lean mean learning machine ready to go head to head with any younger developer. Because most people want to live their lives, not jump on a learning threadmill.

Life IS a learning treadmill. Have you looked at the state of employment today? Unless you don't care about income at all, you have to be constantly learning, because things are constantly changing. Even outside the employment space, I'm amazed at how fast the world is changing. My little girls get music playing by talking to a tiny box in our kitchen. Do you realize how crazy/cool that is?

Re: On Getting Older in Tech

#258

Post by saiya-jin »

djedipus wrote: post #220

I think it’s more about not appreciating experience enough as opposed to discriminating against age. I’m 31 with 13 years professional experience. I’ve worked as an employee, contractor and as a single person start-up. Last year I interviewed for ~10 jobs in SV and I was rejected for all of them. None of the jobs valued my experience enough to consider my asking salary to be worth it. I make ~$300K USD contracting an…

this is not specific to SV, or US for that matter. 10x developers don't get 10x salaries of they work for bigger companies that have sort of rigid pay structures for given positions. If you would be having same salary (apart from bonuses) as say some senior executive/CEO, well that won't fly, no matter of your added value or semi-magical skills.

Re: On Getting Older in Tech

#259

Post by butterfi »

epalmer wrote: post #161

I'm going to apologize ahead of time. this might be a ramble. 63 year old white guy with little hair and a lifelong beard that is now white. A tad overweight as well. I feel for so many people expressing angst about ageism. I've seen it elsewhere but not where I work now. I suspect that at the faster growing companies and companies in tech centers, mostly on the coasts, see more pronounced ageism. My last job was at…

Thanks buddy! 50+ here and optimistic I can remained gainfully employed, but nervous about it. It's been my experience as well that the kind of companies you might see parodied on "Silicon Valley" have a more pronounced age bias, but there are lots of other places that need IT/web and have no such issues.

I was in a room full of developers when I read aloud the story about the guy who started oldgeekjobs.com, who defined old geeks as over 35. The room erupted with the loudest "F U" I've ever heard.

Re: On Getting Older in Tech

#260

Post by XiaomiFan »

timemachiner wrote: post #238
AlexCoventry wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My experience has been that if you've got the chops, you've got no worries at all. Also, fashion is fickle, but right now you'll have people beating down your door to hire you if you're skilled with ML and algorithms. I am in my 40s.

Thanks for your very encouraging words. You really brighten my day. I've always had an interest in theoretics/foundations and believe a strong mathematical backbone leads to better understanding of these fields. I simply couldn't get that working a normal job, so I know I made the right choice to pursue a PhD. Many, many people recommended against it (especially my friends who are pulling big salaries in industry), b…

If you don't mind sharing, what school are you going to, and what is the area (the more details the better is good)of your research?
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