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Is 40 the New 60?

neverworkintheory.org

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Re: Is 40 the New 60?

#361

Post by jandrewrogers »

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #326
jandrewrogers wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The kind of experience that ages well is operations and organizations i.e. knowing how to run the business, not technology. An advantage of having worked at many companies that can't be overstated is the exposure to many different ways of addressing myriad organizational and operational challenges in different business contexts in practice. My experience with technology 20 years ago is worthless. But my experience wo…

What does "getting up there in age" mean? It has been my experience that the mid-thirties are kind of a "golden window" for senior-level talent. Some people think of it as "older," but not that many. We're old enough to have had the sharp edges worn away, but not yet old enough to make the management uncomfortable. Once we start getting into the 40s (or, heaven forbid, the 50s), attitudes start changing -drastically.…

Chris, I am approximately a decade younger than you, so in my 40s staring at 50. I started off my career at a pretty severe disadvantage, so it took off late. My golden age is now.

You are correct that my unique expertise affords me some significant advantages. For certain fascinating classes of computer science problem, I’m the person everyone calls. My true CV is far weirder than the public ones. But ironically, that isn’t what companies typically pay me for except tangentially. I mostly get paid to fix broken engineering organizations because apparently I am good at it and there is no version of “broken” I haven’t seen before. I still think of myself as an engineer, and remain extremely technical, but most days I am solving people and organization problems. I am valued more as an executive fixer than for my technical ability despite having some extremely unique technical capability. The market has made it abundantly clear which is more valuable.

I will always love writing code but it is more enjoyable as a (very serious) hobby and craft, albeit with an end product that has often been licensable. I’m not even sure this is a bad thing, since it allows a level of code quality that would never happen in a commercial environment.

FWIW, I’ve always been able to get on with young people and old people, whatever that meant for whatever age I was. I genuinely don’t classify people that way, I am more interested in their experience and knowledge. Especially for engineers, if you are doing cool shit age doesn’t matter.

Re: Is 40 the New 60?

#362

Post by joelbluminator »

brandall10 wrote: post #136
jasode wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>At 40, I've done some of the best work I've ever done [...] Its because at 40, I had a much deeper understanding of the tech, The blog post isn't about self-reported cognitive ability getting stronger (or not declining). It's about the job marketplace . Maybe it's instructive to compare/contrast different professional careers that depend on mental abilities and how age affects marketability: - computer programming :…

As mentioned elsewhere in the this chat, I'm a 45 yo principal engineer at my current company who has seen nothing but an increase in attention from recruiters since turning 40. I'm also directly involved in hiring for my team, having helped add 15 members over the last year, working directly w/ the director to review all resumes, handling maybe 30% of the screens, and usually the veto vote. We've interviewed a numbe…

I've met plenty of toxic/ego maniacs/pessimistic people who were in there 20s or 30s. Sure age might correlate a bit with the pessimistic side of things but not terribly so imo.

Re: Is 40 the New 60?

#363

Post by joelbluminator »

chasd00 wrote: post #227
brandall10 wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As mentioned elsewhere in the this chat, I'm a 45 yo principal engineer at my current company who has seen nothing but an increase in attention from recruiters since turning 40. I'm also directly involved in hiring for my team, having helped add 15 members over the last year, working directly w/ the director to review all resumes, handling maybe 30% of the screens, and usually the veto vote. We've interviewed a numbe…

I can't stand the jaded senior engineer archetype. They're absolutely toxic to the junior and mid-level engineers who look up to them. Years ago i was at a coffee shop and overheard a conversation between a college student and what had to have been an assigned mentor. This guy was going on and on about the very worst of his experiences in his career yet, in a weird way, bragging about them at the same. This poor kid…

As long as you're not gonna be ageist that's fine to hate a certain type of engineer. Remember you will get old one day too and you'll be surprised how fast time flies.

Re: Is 40 the New 60?

#364

Post by FrankyHollywood »

emerged wrote: post #352
datavirtue wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I work in a senior-only consulting S-Corp (most devs hold equity). I'm 43 and everyone is nearly 10 years older than me. No one has ever been laid off, companies fired FTEs and kept all our guys during covid panic, and every one of our clients will take everyone from our group that they can afford or we will let them have (the consultants get to choose clients). The amount of money they happily pay for us is crazy. W…

How would a high performing 40 year old software developer find a company like this?

Search for a specialized software company helps. Don't go for the standard web bureau building webshops. I used to work in finance, with complicated calculation software, and at the moment I work at a bio-informatics scale-up. Very interesting field, and no average developers here.

Re: Is 40 the New 60?

#365

Post by circlefavshape »

Icathian wrote: post #216
circlefavshape wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> After a stint like that, anyone would be unhireable I've been with my current employer for 4 years, and all going well I'll stay with them until retirement (I'm almost 50 now, so another 15-odd years). The pay is good (for where I live), the work is varied and mostly interesting. It'd seem a bit crazy to jump ship just in case they take against me at some point in the future, no?

I think it would be in your case, but it is something of a gamble, isn't it. At some point I'll hit the job I want to (and think I have a good shot at) retiring from and probably try for it myself. I'm not really sure how that'll look for me. Making that call at 50 is a lot different than making it in your early 30s, I would think?

I guess everything is a gamble :/

Re: Is 40 the New 60?

#366

Post by joelbluminator »

marcus_holmes wrote: post #83
dgb23 wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The only way that age becomes a detriment is if you do not grow. There has been research about this as well under the term https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuroplasticity . Might be interesting to look at. My understanding is that you are exactly right. It seems to be common that we tend to stop learning and pushing ourselves, get comfortable or maybe even afraid. To each his own, but I think it is more fun and fruit…

I call it the "grumpy old fart" syndrome. I've (M50+) felt it - the urge to stop learning and complain at everything that changes. It is a struggle to continue learning at this age. But it is worth it. Being a grumpy old fart sucks all the joy out of life.

How much do you need to learn though? Why not settle for .Net or Java or Node or Django or Rails (if doing web)? They didn't change that brutally in the past 10 years. Sure, there are changes, but nothing that 2-4 hours of catching up monthly won't fix. I think the issue becomes worse when you change stacks a lot, that isn't very sustainable to me.

Re: Is 40 the New 60?

#367

Post by joelbluminator »

Aeolun wrote: post #113
marcus_holmes wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I call it the "grumpy old fart" syndrome. I've (M50+) felt it - the urge to stop learning and complain at everything that changes. It is a struggle to continue learning at this age. But it is worth it. Being a grumpy old fart sucks all the joy out of life.

So does keeping up with all the latest hotness when you already know it won’t fix your organizational problems. Hell, I’m only 33 and when asked today what I currently want to learn, had to seriously consider that I didn’t want to learn anything new in particular.

I tell them the truth: I wanna go deep in my stack (Ruby) to the point of learning C and VMs to understand how the Ruby interpreter works. This is what interests me; I really can't see how learning Node or Elixir is gonna make a better programmer than what I want to do.

Re: Is 40 the New 60?

#368

Post by bacro »

lovecg wrote: post #330
cameronh90 wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who reads though? We had a build prerequisite check that output "error: package xxx is out of date, run sudo apt upgrade - see wiki.local/XXX for more details" They still copied the error to me and asked what to do. I said follow the instructions in the message. They said cool thanks and did so.

It seems trivial to you, but only because _you know to trust the message and what’s written in the wiki already_. The hardest thing about documentation is establishing this chain of trust. By coming to you and getting a verbal confirmation they establish one tiny link in that chain. Edit: just thinking out loud here. These error messages are equivalent to a random passerby without any skin in the game saying “oh just…

Just now, one of the junior develops contacted me about a problem trying to start an application we are developing. I asked: "Did you follow the instructions in README.md file?". He said: "Yes". Then when I asked for him to show me the error, I could see he clearly had not made one of the steps in README to start the app. Just to confirm I asked if he had done it and he said: "No, maybe this is why I am getting this error then".

I need a punch bag urgently...

Re: Is 40 the New 60?

#369

Post by nickd2001 »

Seems to me, one advantage of getting older, is that then, mean people are easier to spot because they'll be ageist to you. When you're young, unless you're a member of some other group they're prejudiced against, it might take longer to find out they're mean. When you're over 40, if your c.v / resume doesn't make it through to interview, you don't have the misfortune to meet these mean people in the first place. So, result! ;) In my 20s, I preferred working with older, wiser , mellower colleagues, than some of my sometimes aggressive or arrogant peers especially new grads. The ones that were cocky, would of course be horrible to a 40-something-yr-old, but they were also horrible to fellow 20-somethings. Thankfully some people like that do learn to be nicer as they get older, also there are a lot of very cool nice people in their 20s who are great to work with whether you're 20-something too or 40 or 60-something.. In summary I'd say that if you do indeed get less job interviews or offers in your 40s and above (which isn't true for everyone), the offers you do get might be of better quality, with nicer more open-minded colleagues hopefully....

Re: Is 40 the New 60?

#370

Post by sireat »

SkipperCat wrote: post #33

40 is not the new 60. Not even close. At 40, I've done some of the best work I've ever done and my pay has been better than ever. I'm 52 now and the trend has only gotten better. Why? Its because at 40, I had a much deeper understanding of the tech, I understood of the whole business process and I had the maturity to deal with people in a productive way. You won't find all of those in a 25 year old developer. The onl…

OP should have had offers pouring in: "using and teaching Python for over 20 years, and designed its built-in set module, but nobody would hire me as a Python programmer when I was laid off by RStudio in February."

If OP can't get an offer(for Python!) then something is really wrong. Where? Possibly they could not get past some silly HR filter.

If you were a Python shop wouldn't you want to have an interview with OP would you?

There is an advice floating around HN that one should contribute meaningfully to some popular open source project and/or write a book about something -> leading to better career prospects.

The above might be helpful but clearly not sufficient. (I've seen good book authors still looking for job prospects)

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