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The Brutal Ageism of Tech

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Re: The Brutal Ageism of Tech

#341

Post by aortega »

kybernetikos wrote: post #203
aortega wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

30 years ago, computers were actually pretty common. The school I went to had two rooms full of computers and were teaching programming to every child as part of the maths lessons. Software was being talked about everywhere. I've heard a number of these comments recently drastically underestimating how long computers have been around.

Yeah, maybe I should have said 50 instead of 30. I forget we are in 2014, my mind still is in the 90's. Miscalculation.

Re: The Brutal Ageism of Tech

#342

Post by aortega »

SomeCallMeTim wrote: post #155
aortega wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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]…

>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.

Do you know how many people were doing that? you are way over estimating the amount of people in the world with your experience.

Re: The Brutal Ageism of Tech

#343

Post by Gormo »

aortega wrote: post #338
csixty4 wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The work in the late 40s was interesting, too. First, you had specialized systems, then Eckert, Mauchly, and von Neumann started working on stored program computers. They had to figure out what opcodes were needed and how they were going to be implemented. Jean Jennings Bartik's book ( http://www.amazon.com/Pioneer-Programmer-Jennings-Computer-C... ) is a great first-hand account of all the work (and drama) from back…

The fact that you can name by memory the people that worked in the 40's means that the size of the computer science community back then was tiny.

He didn't say that those were all of the people working on computers in the 40s.

Re: The Brutal Ageism of Tech

#344

Post by csixty4 »

Gormo wrote: post #343
aortega wrote: post #338

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fact that you can name by memory the people that worked in the 40's means that the size of the computer science community back then was tiny.

He didn't say that those were all of the people working on computers in the 40s.

Exactly. Just like how history doesn't celebrate the names of everybody who worked for Thomas Edison, there were hundreds if not thousands of people toiling away in anonymity underneath these giants.

Edit: And many more "giants", of course…

Re: The Brutal Ageism of Tech

#345

Post by bitkrieg »

Taek wrote: post #324
bitkrieg wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We built hash tables by converting strings to integers and then using modulus What's wrong with that?

https://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/49550/which-... We were essentially doing the lose-lose algorithm. It's a functioning hash table but there's a lot of room for improvement.

Ah, ok. Using something like loose-loose as hash function is indeed a terrible idea.

Re: The Brutal Ageism of Tech

#346

Post by richardjordan »

aortega wrote: post #139
Retric wrote: post #8

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…

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…

Started programming on an Apple II which I still own, in 1983 aged 11. I'm 42 now so that's 31 years. You'd need to have started at 4. Plus by the mid eighties it's not like this was that rare. My school had rooms of computers (BBC Micros, later PCs) and the kids all had ZX Spectrums, Vic20s and Commodore 64s. There are tons of people on their 40s like that. Most CompSci and Physics undergrads who were my contemporaries at college - so also now in their 40s - followed similar paths.

So it makes little sense to suggest that it's somehow a crazy idea that someone 5-15 years older than you (in their 40s) might have a longer track record working with computers.

Re: The Brutal Ageism of Tech

#348

Post by laurasbadideas »

aortega wrote: post #139
Retric wrote: post #8

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…

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…

> 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.

You're talking about 1989, right? In 1983, there were 443,000 computer programmers and 276,000 "Computer systems analysts, scientists" in the United States alone (source: http://www.census.gov/prod/2/gen/96statab/labor.pdf).

Re: The Brutal Ageism of Tech

#349

Post by semerda »

skrebbel wrote: post #219

Anecdotal: I'm a part-time CTO (long story) of a startup. I'm 30 myself. We hired 6 engineers in total up until now: three interns in their twenties, who're very smart and motivated but also inexperienced; two programmers with a few years of professional experience who can get to real decent (well written, unit tested, etc) code on the first go; and 1 guy of over 40. When hiring, I was very skeptical of the guy over…

Ditto. Had the exact same experience. Half my team were a lot older (50s and 2 x 40s) than me and the other half younger. We ran leaner and meaner then the other engineering teams in the company. Also learnt a lot from them myself and age never even creeped up as a barrier. Matter of fact I can't even recall thinking differently of them apart from how awesome & reliable they were.

Re: The Brutal Ageism of Tech

#350

Post by chrisbennet »

erichmond wrote: post #318
Shivetya wrote: post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

48 here, I hope I never reach the point where I do not think the same.

35 years old and 18 years experience. Same boat. :)

You kids, get off my lawn! I think the youngest coder at my tiny company is almost 50.
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