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Aging programmer

world.hey.com

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Re: Aging programmer

#31

Post by user_named »

sys_64738 wrote: post #14
dijit wrote: post #2

Here’s something I think a lot of people don’t think on: 40 years old is mid-career. If you expect to retire at 60 (likely 65 these days) and you start working at 20: 40 is smack dab in the middle of your career. I think that notion gets lost when we talk about ageism in tech and then people talk about 40-somethings.

A lot of programmers who are 35+ can struggle to find further opportunities as the more senior you are the less available those opportunities are and the more expensive you are. Lots of companies only want young people who are naive and have limited distractions outside of work. So, really, programming as a field is front loaded and the longer you stay in the business over 35 then the luckier you have been. But make…

The same goes for EVERY profession.

Re: Aging programmer

#32

Post by werber »

I’m a third generation programmer which is a bit of an odd thing, but a bit lovely. My brother is also a programmer. The bits in this About just just being “wired “ ring so true to me. There are things that to me seem biological as to how you view punch cards, fortan, whatever video games are made in, and JavaScript

Re: Aging programmer

#33

Post by therealdokks »

sys_64738 wrote: post #14
dijit wrote: post #2

Here’s something I think a lot of people don’t think on: 40 years old is mid-career. If you expect to retire at 60 (likely 65 these days) and you start working at 20: 40 is smack dab in the middle of your career. I think that notion gets lost when we talk about ageism in tech and then people talk about 40-somethings.

A lot of programmers who are 35+ can struggle to find further opportunities as the more senior you are the less available those opportunities are and the more expensive you are. Lots of companies only want young people who are naive and have limited distractions outside of work. So, really, programming as a field is front loaded and the longer you stay in the business over 35 then the luckier you have been. But make…

Hmmm as a 53 year old programmer I've had the exact opposite experience. Because of the large diversity of my skills I have more offers for work than ever before.

Re: Aging programmer

#34

Post by marginalia_nu »

arketyp wrote: post #18

I learned how to code when I was twelve. I wouldn't have if I didn't in some degree enjoy the actual act of coding, the moment to moment typing on the keyboard, composing algorithms, designing data structures and logical flows. But in the back of my mind I also always regarded coding as a means to an end. Sure I became engaged in language design battles, API design philosophy, but the magic with computers was always,…

I have a similar background, but still find programming very rewarding.

Not at my day job, that is and has always been a series of mundane chores. I sadly think expecting to get paid for stimulating programming is fairly unrealistic. There is just not a lot of market for solving interesting problems or designing well-optimized code.

I find other avenues to build interesting things instead. At 35, I'm able to build things that I could never have when I was 15 or 20 or 25. I have so much more experience with what works, I'm much better at identifying which decisions matter, and which corners can be cut.

Re: Aging programmer

#35

Post by sokoloff »

sys_64738 wrote: post #14
dijit wrote: post #2

Here’s something I think a lot of people don’t think on: 40 years old is mid-career. If you expect to retire at 60 (likely 65 these days) and you start working at 20: 40 is smack dab in the middle of your career. I think that notion gets lost when we talk about ageism in tech and then people talk about 40-somethings.

A lot of programmers who are 35+ can struggle to find further opportunities as the more senior you are the less available those opportunities are and the more expensive you are. Lots of companies only want young people who are naive and have limited distractions outside of work. So, really, programming as a field is front loaded and the longer you stay in the business over 35 then the luckier you have been. But make…

I find the “I won’t take less than $X or else I’ll stay unemployed” to be kind of weird as a career planning strategy. If there is an under-supply of senior talent, everyone accepts and expects that the clearing salary for those roles will go up. Yet, if there’s an over-supply, many people seem unable to extrapolate from the previous.

Re: Aging programmer

#37

Post by dacracot »

As a 61 year old programmer, that knew this is what I would be doing since my first exposure as a junior in high school, I can say his insights aren't too bad. But 20 more years on, things start to hit harder. My best advice is to learn to coach, even if you aren't in a coaching role. Find that young 10x team member and teach them the subtleties of the abstractions that make a difference. Don't be offended when they rewrite your code to their way of thinking so long as it did not obfuscate the lesson, that's how they will learn.

Re: Aging programmer

#38

Post by atemerev »

awesomegoat_com wrote: post #19
krmboya wrote: post #10

I wonder where the genesis is of this idea that programming is young person's game akin to physical sports where speed, explosiveness and endurance matter. It seems to me that it's an intellectual activity where one should go on for very long honing their skills and becoming better and better at it with age. Maybe the industry sidelines the older more experienced technical folks at a cost, and that's why there seems…

In my mind, young male have a lot of hormones that make them compete and it shows. There seems to be clear behavioral change in the average programmer as they age. Later in life (oftentimes with family), they do not have biological set-up to code 14 hours a day whole year as they did before. Obviously, outcoding everybody else is sometimes considered as a value and other times it is not. Shrug.

I never ever coded 14 hours a day except in competitive programming. Doing it at work would be insane.

Re: Aging programmer

#39

Post by therealdokks »

Swizec wrote: post #25
sys_64738 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of programmers who are 35+ can struggle to find further opportunities as the more senior you are the less available those opportunities are and the more expensive you are. Lots of companies only want young people who are naive and have limited distractions outside of work. So, really, programming as a field is front loaded and the longer you stay in the business over 35 then the luckier you have been. But make…

Big part of why programming is front loaded is that it's an incredibly new field. The entire field hasn't existed for more than 70 years. And that was if you count "Niche academic field that a few dozen mathematicians knew about" as the start. It didn't become like a job job until what, the mid 1960's? That's 60 years ago. And the number of programmers is doubling every ~5 years. Of course it's front-loaded with youn…

This is exactly what I've found. My employer relies on my experience and values my opinions as much as they value my actual code out put.

Re: Aging programmer

#40

Post by hoosieree »

temporallobe wrote: post #28
vsareto wrote: post #11

>I never understood why some people despise the term full-stack. More for the role: full-stack has you doing multiple roles, but is not compensated as such. You're even removing the communication overhead if the role had been split in two. It seems to me as a business move to compress roles and pay you less for double the capability in exchange for varied work. I don't think people should just accept lower comp just…

In my 20+ year career, I have met very few programmers who can actually justify the claim of being full-stack. Usually it means strong back-end that happens to have worked with some front-end framework fad, and less often vice versa. Specialists (UI/UX, database admins, CI/CD engineers, automation testers, just to name a few) are still very much needed and the trend to make everybody on the team “full-stack” doesn’t…

I have worked on ASICs, FPGAs, compilers, routers, clusters, servers, websites and mobile apps. But I would not describe myself as a "full-stack developer". To me that implies a very specific thing - a RDBMS backend coupled to heavyweight javascript framework frontend.
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