Now Hiring If You're Young (1998) • Hacker News Board

Re: Now Hiring If You're Young (1998)

#31

Post by myth_drannon » Fri, May 01, 2009, 1:43 PM UTC

brc wrote: post #26

Personally, when I started as a fresh young grad happy to put in 2x hours for 0.5x pay I would look at some of the older guys and say 'I never want to end up like that'. I still feel that way. 'like that' refers to a bitter, cynical attitude born of two decades in the cube farm, navigating endless rounds of layoffs, restructuring, business-management fads and other nasties. The key is to keep your skills up to date a…

But the point is that you never sure what is the next thing the management will decide to use . Sure if you young you can spend your lonely nights and weekend hacking Clojure or Scala but in the end of day your boss will decide on retarded Java framework bla bla technology and all you hours were just for nothing. And anyways when you have friends,girlfriend/wife and kids it becomes very difficult to spend enough time jumping from one cool tech to another.

Some of my non-comp-sci friends and some programmer friends say that software development is like prostitution the older you get the less money you make until you are discarded , unlike for example accountant who starts low but steadily reaches some status . All of these "rockstars" and start-up founders can be imagined as elite prostitutes who just look better and do it better for more money of course, can retire early and may be score a picture on tabloid with some politician and then make a million bucks (EXPOSURE). In the end we are just slaves of capitalist system whatever we admit it or not ( most of the time our brainwashing won't allow us to do it)

Re: Now Hiring If You're Young (1998)

#32

Post by myth_drannon » Fri, May 01, 2009, 2:11 PM UTC

paulbaumgart wrote: post #21

adamc wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Practically, it means there is a lot wrong with programming as a career choice -- for a large number of students, it will have been a poor investment. I don't see much reason to sympathize with the employers, either.

It appears to me that it's more a problem of unrealistic expectations. If somebody else is willing to do a better job for less money, a person's got to either improve/update their skills or start asking for a smaller salary. I'm not sure I'd go so far as to say I sympathize with the employers, but I can certainly understand the rationale.

The problem is the more experienced you become at some point the "worse" professionally you will be perceived, unlike 90% of all the professions out there that the older guys will ALWAYS be better.

Re: Now Hiring If You're Young (1998)

#33

Post by tsbardella » Fri, May 01, 2009, 2:48 PM UTC

myth_drannon wrote: post #31

brc wrote: post #26

Personally, when I started as a fresh young grad happy to put in 2x hours for 0.5x pay I would look at some of the older guys and say 'I never want to end up like that'. I still feel that way. 'like that' refers to a bitter, cynical attitude born of two decades in the cube farm, navigating endless rounds of layoffs, restructuring, business-management fads and other nasties. The key is to keep your skills up to date a…

But the point is that you never sure what is the next thing the management will decide to use . Sure if you young you can spend your lonely nights and weekend hacking Clojure or Scala but in the end of day your boss will decide on retarded Java framework bla bla technology and all you hours were just for nothing. And anyways when you have friends,girlfriend/wife and kids it becomes very difficult to spend enough time…

awesome post! for use of "prostitution" and "capitalism"

Re: Now Hiring If You're Young (1998)

#34

Post by nir » Fri, May 01, 2009, 3:38 PM UTC

Elcho wrote: post #20

Can we cool it with the New York Times articles? I've noticed more and more of these puff pieces and its lowering the tone.

It's from 1998, back before they started writing articles on how Obama should start Twittering.

Re: Now Hiring If You're Young (1998)

#35

Post by brc » Fri, May 01, 2009, 10:47 PM UTC

myth_drannon wrote: post #31

brc wrote: post #26

Personally, when I started as a fresh young grad happy to put in 2x hours for 0.5x pay I would look at some of the older guys and say 'I never want to end up like that'. I still feel that way. 'like that' refers to a bitter, cynical attitude born of two decades in the cube farm, navigating endless rounds of layoffs, restructuring, business-management fads and other nasties. The key is to keep your skills up to date a…

But the point is that you never sure what is the next thing the management will decide to use . Sure if you young you can spend your lonely nights and weekend hacking Clojure or Scala but in the end of day your boss will decide on retarded Java framework bla bla technology and all you hours were just for nothing. And anyways when you have friends,girlfriend/wife and kids it becomes very difficult to spend enough time…

The silent point I was getting at was not to stay in dead end jobs. Keeping your skills up to date doesn't mean learning new tech in your spare time while pounding out COBOL at your workplace : it means making sure the projects and technologies you're working on are current and on trend with the future. If this means moving jobs every couple of years, then do it. If it means leaving the cube farm and starting out on your own, even better.