301–310 of 361 posts
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> Hire older people! This is a great anecdote, though I don't fully understand why it surprises people. Most people in their early 20s are still "kids", both socially and work-experience-wise. Give me a hungry 30+ any day.
> why it surprises people It surprises young people. 30+ isn't all that old.
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That's reassuring, but... What's the average retirement age in the US? 60? And here we are consoling ourselves about still being in-demand at the ripe old age of 40.
Keep in mind that most of us aren't earning pensions and our 401Ks are earning peanuts so retirement at 60 effectively means "living on social security and whatever you managed to scrape together". Retirement will mean poverty for a great many people, I fear.
Maybe I'm an outlier; I'm a 55+ engineer working at a mobile startup. Maybe not; 20% of Google's employees are >55, according to a Kissmetrics chart. But, who knows maybe the 55+ crowd at Google consist of only geniuses and janitors. I see an old/young tradeoff between pattern recognition and fluid intelligence. Maybe why some older developers show less enthusiasm for the next really "awesome" idea is that is really…
> maybe older developers have a blind spot towards opportunities that have failed in the past Yes. A lot of things have to come together for something to work. Something can fail many times before succeeding. A little irrational optimism can be a good thing. Hitting the ground running at the exact moment is very challenging.
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>No way a 40 year old guy have more experience than me in general programming I started programming toys in 1979. [1] I started programming "modern" computers in 1981. I was selling games when I was 15 in 1983. My "real" professional experience started in 1987 with a contract to write a video game from a major publisher. So yes, it's not hard for someone to have "more experience" than you in general programming. [1]…
OMG THANK YOU! I had one of these as a kid, but couldn't remember the name! We used to have competitions to have it go from the living room, out to the kitchen, through the table legs, and back again. I was 5 years old, and wouldn't have another programming opportunity until 3 years later when we got a C64.
The story about Ionic seems a little ridiculous. And while I sympathize for Stamos, surely there must be more than age being the difference for raising funding. Even if it is a big factor - I can't imagine all VCs being idiots, seeing a better product in an obviously valuable market and then passing.
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> why it surprises people It surprises young people. 30+ isn't all that old.
31 year old here. I already have ~13 years of experience, and I feel like I still have my best work ahead of me.
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I'm not saying the assumption is fair, and there are certainly exemptions. I'm saying that startups tend to assume that if you've been at the same place for 25 years, there is a reason for that, and the reason is usually negative. When you say 'people like me', keep in mind that just because you have had three different roles at one company in itself doesn't mean you didn't stagnate, just as the person with ten jobs…
Yes, and I think that bias is (quasi-)ageism. I'm certainly not saying that someone who has held multiple positions has not stagnated, either, simply that fundamentally the only difference between me and someone who worked for three different companies but had the same roles as I did is merely the company nameplate. To make different assumptions based solely on that is illogical.
I dunno. I can think of three ways in which an older developer might have a hard time finding a job: (1) If someone doesn't keep up with currently relevant technology, they will find themselves without the job skills that employers are looking for, regardless of whatever other qualities they may have. This isn't ageism. (2) If someone works at the same place for 10+ years, getting raises every year and becoming more…
#3 is against the law in the US.
The odd thing is hiring older workers is generally a great idea. From an organisational perspective programming teams don't scale vary well so hiring less skilled people is generally a terrible long term strategy. Personally, I have worked with a few hundred programmers and I can only name 3 that where competent before 30. Outside the valley you find a plenty of really competent programmers mostly in there late 40's…
One of the issues that is unpopular to discuss in inertia in constraints. Experienced people have learned a set of platonic causations that they apply to pattern matched situations. When they come into a new situation, if they match patterns that don't quite fit, they'll apply old solutions to situations that are not appropriate. Enders Game is a good allegory for this. It's good to have diversity and meritocratic pr…
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Not so much. I'm 35, started programming at about 10 in my TI99-4A, typing games from magazines, etc. the usual stuff. No way a 40 year old guy have more experience than me in general programming, unless he was working at Microsoft or IBM at that date, and surely they are about less than 10000 of those guys in the world. Of course there are 40 year olds that may have way more experience than me in a specific language…
>No way a 40 year old guy have more experience than me in general programming I started programming toys in 1979. [1] I started programming "modern" computers in 1981. I was selling games when I was 15 in 1983. My "real" professional experience started in 1987 with a contract to write a video game from a major publisher. So yes, it's not hard for someone to have "more experience" than you in general programming. [1]…