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

prog21.dadgum.com

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

#251

Post by forensic »

giftedbygod wrote: post #210
dexterchief wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 shou…

The lesson is that you can't just ignore politics. You can't just leave politics to the politicians.

The same people who bitch about the government typically refuse to take control of the government. Democracy is bullshit and it's time for technical and scientific people to create a Platonic state.

The price good men pay for indifference to politics is having their businesses destroyed by evil men.

What mystifies me is how all of these smart technologists and scientists refuse to use their intelligence to take over the state.

People should have to pass science and math exams if they want to vote. It's that simple.

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

#252

Post by prodigal_erik »

slurgfest wrote: post #188
prodigal_erik wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My version of "values software" is that it be mission-critical. If it breaks, we're going to be chatting at 2 AM and testing a patch at 3, because we'd lose vast sums of money or customers by waiting until after breakfast. I met my favorite manager turning around a shop like this. Most software is utter garbage because everyone knows better than to actually rely on it and nothing bad happens to incompetent people mai…

Just making heads roll is not going to magically improve software. You can keep firing your teams but if there are other issues like unrealistic deadlines, bad process you are going to get bad output even from good people; all firing will achieve is churn.

I don't necessarily mean firing people (though there are some who really aren't good fits for this work). I mean I see better work from people who literally lose sleep over bugs, rather than merely shrugging.

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

#253

Post by wglb »

pfedor wrote: post #242
tptacek wrote: post #204

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 th…

I wouldn't say our field devalues competence and experience. It's just that in our field seniority doesn't give you such an enormous advantage as in other fields. In many professions, if you are 40+ you will expect a multiple of the salary that an equally competent 25 years old gets. Software engineering is more of a meritocracy, you may get paid a lot even at a young age if you're good, and it won't get much better…

It's just that in our field seniority doesn't give you such an enormous advantage as in other fields. is the opposite of my experience.

Well perhaps you are drawing the distinction between seniority and experience. There are likely some folk who have programmed in cobol as long as I have been programming. Unlikely they have equivalent experience.

The more things that I learn that don't work, the more value I offer to my clients/employers/colleagues.

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

#254

Post by jstrayer »

raganwald wrote: post #80

If you're young, be sure to read the responses here very carefully. There are lots of people like me who love what they do at fifty or beyond. Yay! But of course, this sample has survivor bias. How many people who left the profession in their forties are going to post on HN? How many people who are fifty and hate their jobs are going to post on HN? I love what I do and try to share that love. But my advice to you is…

I really want to be doing this when I'm 70(14 more years). And then I still want to be doing it, just part-time and probably for free.

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

#255

Post by Wintamute »

mkramlich wrote: post #228
Wintamute wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it makes more sense to start measuring from the time you started professionally programming ... so if the 57 year old parent has been programming for 33 years that suggests that he's measuring from when he left full time education (24). My apologies if you've been coding professionally since you were 9 though :)

disagree. I have it on good authority that education begins from around year 0. And the folks that begin learning how computers work, and programming, at say age 10 are generally going to be much better off, and better hires, than folks that don't begin that step until age 18 or 22 or what have you. Getting a paycheck doesn't inherently teach you anything more about CS or engineering or development practices. It's ju…

My point is that if you go into your first job interview from college and say that you have 15 years experience then that's going to count against you because for right or wrong the question you're being asked is how many years have you been working in a professional work environment. By all means convince them of your passion, and explain that you've been doing awesome things with computers since forever. But "work experience" and "time from first exposure to computing" are two totally different things. Aside from that I agree with every thing you said.

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

#256

Post by eda »

I'm 51 and I've been programming since I was 21. I write code every day. I love what I do and I have never been more productive than I am now nor have I ever written better code than I am writing now. I write highly complex multi-threaded algorithmic code that operates on extremely large graphs (up to 3.5 billion nodes). I have no interest in getting into management.

I did get "lucky" in that I was a member of the founding team of a publicly traded company and am now a technical co-founder and chief software architect of an up-and-coming engineering software startup. I've written 3 blog posts in career and, except for LinkedIn, I participate in no social media/networking. I've never posted on StackOverflow. Outside of my niche industry, I'm sure that no one has ever heard of me. And, that's exactly how I like it.

Just my $0.02

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

#257

Post by eda »

jmadsen wrote: post #240
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…

youngster at 45. can't wait till I retire so I can finally learn some of the fringe stuff I want to play with but have no time. to me, being a programmer is living the life of a perpetual student. how can anyone grow bored with that?

I think that older successful programmers are essentially life-long students of technology.

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

#258

Post by pigboy »

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…

That used to motivate me too. But when I found myself in a job where my work no longer made that happen, I quit and changed careers (mid-40s). I just turned 50 and I am in my third year teaching high-school math, physics and computer science. It's like being born again.

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

#259

Post by TheFuture »

Evbn wrote: post #151
TheFuture wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So true. Just crushed me...

What is wrong with everyone doing well, including your peers and descendants? Why must everyone want to be the top dog forever? You are going to die. No one will buy or code their way out of that, not even Zuck or Gates

My point was more how as programmers, the emotional toll of everything that we're making will be destroyed, usually in only a few years.

Yes, we're paid. But it's hard to have satisfying work when the result you produce becomes worthless. It would be like spending 12 months carving a beautiful piece of furniture out of wood, get paid $100k for your work, and then handing it to the owner who lights it on fire right in front of you.

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

#260

Post by mehulkar »

dumb-dumb wrote: post #212
marquis wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

In other words, the interesting stuff! :)

Something's level of interestingness is more a decision on my part than a property of the something, I've found.
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