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MIT alumni in their 50s

blogs.law.harvard.edu

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Re: MIT alumni in their 50s

#71

Post by Chinjut »

sanoli wrote: post #45
sokoloff wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you love programming and are good at it, it is the best field there is, bar none. You'd be a fool to turn away from it for a lifetime grind with epsilon better prospects. I'd do my job for half what I get paid; I just don't have to. As for nearing the peak of your ability (assuming typical undergraduate age and experience): BWAHAHAHA! You'll be even better than you are now in 5 years, and again 5 years after that.…

> If you love programming and are good at it, it is the best field there is. I read this and thought, he's right. Then I thought, this is actually true of pretty much any activity. Hadn't thought of it this way.

Yup. Hacker News is full of silly "programming exceptionalism", but programming is not all that fundamentally different from any other vocation. Go to a site for, say, doctors, and find people singing many of the same paeans to medicine that are here presented as specific to software engineering. People in many lines of work think that their field is the one thing truly worth doing.

Re: MIT alumni in their 50s

#72

Post by eropple »

ExpiredLink wrote: post #68
gcb0 wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

good programmers can always consult. old managers can't do nothing unless he is hired at a big company, which is exactly what won't happen according to this

> good programmers can always consult. as if ageism didn't exist in the consulting business ...

There is, but maybe not in the direction you think. Almost every independent consultant I've ever hired or had hired into a company I was working at was, at the earliest, late thirties, most late forties/early fifties. On the other hand, as I'm starting an independent consulting business at 27, I'm finding it a little hard to be taken seriously (comments about age, "possible" experience, etc.). I'm getting there, but it's a process.

Re: MIT alumni in their 50s

#73

Post by Spooky23 »

moron4hire wrote: post #33
pixelscript wrote: post #4

This post reeks of confirmation bias or at least the sample size is too low to draw any conclusions. What if that software engineer didn't want to progress his career and was happy at the level he was? What about those engineers that did go into management? I could be wrong but if you choose to stay in a roll a 30yo can fill why would it be strange that you would be expected to compete with those younger to get a job…

Why wouldn't that also apply to doctors? Maybe a surgeon enjoys the surgery, doesn't want to manage a surgery department of a hospital. I think the relative comparison is still relevant.

Most doctors build/join a practice, take on partners and hire PAs and Nurse Practitioners. They build a book of business and referral network and when it's time to retire have a bag of money and business equity.

That's changing now, and my guess would be that twenty years from now, we'll hear the laments of employee doctors in a similar situation.

Re: MIT alumni in their 50s

#74

Post by chillingeffect »

thewarrior wrote: post #9

This post really scares me and part of me wants to quit this industry even though I enjoy coding. Ageism is a brutal reality.

It's not age, it's what you know (what value you deliver!). Some older people around me are pushing themselves as hard as when they were undergrads, attending online seminars, trying out new software platforms and tools. They're doing fine and still leading the conversation ahead of other people. The people getting replaced are the ones who aren't developing their skills.

There's also a wage ceiling for software developers, even with the newest skills. This shouldn't be surprising though, all employment has a wage ceiling.

Re: MIT alumni in their 50s

#75

Post by papercruncher »

peter303 wrote: post #46

Note Phil hasn't been in the corporate world himself. He struck it rich with a dot.com in the 1990s boom and worked on several interesting projects since. Among them was photo website, a Thiel-like coders academy, and flying. He has had one of the first and longest running blogs of my fellow MIT students about tech, business, travel, flying and politics.

I took Phil's class (6.171 - Web Development Lab) in college. It was a ridiculous experience, regularly had to put 40hrs/week just on this class and I'm not exaggerating.

Story time: As part of the class we were working with real clients to develop a web project for them. One day during class, he talked to us about the "technical sidekick", typically a friend of the client's that is somewhat technical and is behind-the-scenes advising the client and typically contradicting all your architectular choices as a developer. Well, to noone's surprise, a few weeks later, our client rolled into a meeting all of a sudden knowledgable as to why .NET was inferior, SQL Server bad, etc. We later found out that he took the time outside class, to take the client out for dinner and act like an adversarial technical sidekick just to teach us that lesson. I was pissed off at the time but now deeply appreciate that lesson

Re: MIT alumni in their 50s

#76

Post by kelukelugames »

jmorrison wrote: post #61
justonepost wrote: post #24

Ugh. Confirmation bias and sample size aside, these are MIT alumni. Aren't they already supposed to be above average? That being said, he didn't exactly say what sort of engineers these folks were. Electrical? Software? Big difference.. Also, one thing that didn't jive, if they are in financially uncomfortable retirement, why exactly are they showing up at a donors gathering?

As an MIT alum in my 50s, let me assure you that a specific fundraiser is assigned to target you, personally and individually. "Ugh," indeed.

MIT alum in my 30s. When to babes start throwing themselves ta me because of my degree? My parents promised me this would happen.

Re: MIT alumni in their 50s

#77

Post by gohrt »

gcb0 wrote: post #58
wimagguc wrote: post #6

The other conclusion is, always be hireable. I guess it’s hard to be 50 and pride yourself to work for senior-senior level salary when a 30 year old can easily do your job. Hierarchies worked very well in the uni prof’s favour, but engineering companies tend to apply flatter structures. If there’s nothing that keeps the young folks competing, they will. So for us, engineers it may be a good idea to move to supervisor…

good programmers can always consult. old managers can't do nothing unless he is hired at a big company, which is exactly what won't happen according to this

Do you mean contract? A good manager can hire a pack of young contractors to rent out.

Of course an old manager can consult (== sell expensive sage advice)

Re: MIT alumni in their 50s

#78

Post by gohrt »

Chinjut wrote: post #71
sanoli wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you love programming and are good at it, it is the best field there is. I read this and thought, he's right. Then I thought, this is actually true of pretty much any activity. Hadn't thought of it this way.

Yup. Hacker News is full of silly "programming exceptionalism", but programming is not all that fundamentally different from any other vocation. Go to a site for, say, doctors, and find people singing many of the same paeans to medicine that are here presented as specific to software engineering. People in many lines of work think that their field is the one thing truly worth doing.

I love baseball and I'm good at it, but it will never pay my bills. I am on a minor league team and I program to pay the bills.

Re: MIT alumni in their 50s

#79

Post by Toenex »

arethuza wrote: post #36
vidarh wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or you enjoy what you're doing. I've had "director" or "head of" or similar in my titles for the majority of the last 20 years, but I keep finding excuses to code because it's what I enjoy doing the most. Whenever my job responsibilities doesn't let me code, I spend more time coding at home. I'm 40 now, and I can't see that changing. I first started programming when I was 5 years old, and it's an integral, important…

Same here - I've had CTO, Director of Engineering, Head of Architecture posts for the last 20 years at everything from start-ups to multinationals and I still keep my hand in investigating bugs (i.e. looking at code and databases) and writing code, most of the latter in my own time. I wouldn't want a role that had no "hands on" element - personally if you don't occasionally get your hands dirty and stay current with…

Same here. Mid 40's now with a PhD so I'm 'overqualified' as well as 'getting on a bit' if someone really doesn't want to pay for me!

For the last decade I've been in small start-ups where you wear many hats, Head of this, VP of that. However, even when I'm focusing on business development I'll probably find a way to cut some code. "I could use MS Access for this. Hmmm maybe a better idea would be to write some python and plug the data into an sqlite dB instead" - is usually how my brain works.

Re: MIT alumni in their 50s

#80

Post by wobbleblob »

kristopolous wrote: post #22
wobbleblob wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, that was my thought. If you're still a programmer at age 50, either something has gone very wrong in your career development, or you're such a legend in the field that it would be a loss to the world if you had moved on.

There's nothing wrong with wanting to do it as a lifelong career. There's plenty of well-adjusted responsible adults that do. I just don't think it will be my decision, personally.

It may not be your choice. At some point it becomes more and more difficult to get a job interview if you don't have more impressive sounding job titles on your resume.
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