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Silicon Valley's Dark Secret: It's all about Age

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Re: Silicon Valley's Dark Secret: It's all about Age

#81

Post by neeson »

lzw wrote: post #39

Zuckerberg advocated age discrimination outright from the stage of startup camp 2007. Of course at his age, he doesn't know any better. Here's a big secret, it isn't a struggle for older people to keep up with younger people. It is actually easier for me to pick new technology, or languages now than when I was a 20 year old programmer.... And I'm able to take responsibility for projects and order of magnitude more co…

Thank you. This is exactly the kind of thoughtful, quality post that contributes positively to the discussion.

Re: Silicon Valley's Dark Secret: It's all about Age

#82

Post by j_baker »

Silhouette wrote: post #18

Management error #1: "Move up the ladder into management, architecture, or design" As long as management insist on perceiving themselves as superior to other people, and assuming that technical competence somehow implies management competence, there will always be a drain on the good technical guys. The reward and recognition structure strongly encourages them to change discipline. However, can anyone cite me a singl…

"I'm not sure that any company I've worked for, of any size, really got more value from its middle managers than from the senior technical people it keeps trying to turn into middle managers."

I think tech companies see this as the lesser of two evils. Would you rather lose a good programmer and gain a decent manager, or would you rather keep the good programmer and gain a PHB who will drag down the performance of that good programmer and their entire team?

Re: Silicon Valley's Dark Secret: It's all about Age

#83

Post by cageface »

tptacek wrote: post #79
cageface wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know several 20-somethings making well over 100k/year coding and managing teams of much older engineers. For the most part they got the domain expertise that implies doing real research in top undergraduate CS departments, but they do exist. Of course, the smartest thing you can do as a senior programmer is build domain expertise and get out of the more commodified areas, like web app dev. If that's what you & Patr…

You're doing a really good job of evading the point here. If your friends are making $100k/yr, they are squarely in the same hiring demo that 40 year old senior devs are. The whole thesis behind the article you are commenting on is that companies are hiring young because young devs are cheap . You made a comment to the effect of, "watch out, young cheap people can be domain experts too". I think you're mostly wrong,…

A lot of senior devs are making that kind of money not because they are domain experts but because they have been in the same spot collecting raises for a long time. Those are the kinds of people my warning was intended for and I think a lot of these people wildly underestimate how hard it would be for a bright young somebody to walk in and do their job.

I'm not denying that older, experienced programmers with strong domain skills are in demand, of course. I'm just saying that beneath that level the competition is heating up.

Re: Silicon Valley's Dark Secret: It's all about Age

#84

Post by mgkimsal »

dspeyer wrote: post #62

Is anyone willing to think about the opposite hypothesis? Maybe programming really is a young person's game. You don't see a lot of startups full of old programmers dominating their fields. You don't see a lot of old programmers creating awesome open source projects. Not even from those who retired and have plenty of time on their hands. Many of the programmers who created great things 30 years ago are in positions t…

I'm not sure we're at a point in the evolution of programming having been a viable career path for enough people yet to judge one way or another. There's not many people in their 60s who have been professional software developers most of their career, so you wouldn't (yet) see a large number of retired people "creating awesome open source projects".

IMV, the it was the tail of of the baby boomers who could have started doing programming in anything resembling what we might have today, and they wouldn't/couldn't have started until at least the late 70s/early 80s. When 'home computers' started becoming commonplace, 'programming' started to become an accepted vocation. Those people are now approaching or in their 50s, and still have another 10+ years to go before 'retirement'.

Frankly, I don't see that many 'awesome open source projects' compared to the total number of projects launched/opened. What I value more are 'awesome open source projects maintained and kept current'. I don't see many of those around at all, by young or old people.

Re: Silicon Valley's Dark Secret: It's all about Age

#85

Post by tptacek »

cageface wrote: post #83
tptacek wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're doing a really good job of evading the point here. If your friends are making $100k/yr, they are squarely in the same hiring demo that 40 year old senior devs are. The whole thesis behind the article you are commenting on is that companies are hiring young because young devs are cheap . You made a comment to the effect of, "watch out, young cheap people can be domain experts too". I think you're mostly wrong,…

A lot of senior devs are making that kind of money not because they are domain experts but because they have been in the same spot collecting raises for a long time. Those are the kinds of people my warning was intended for and I think a lot of these people wildly underestimate how hard it would be for a bright young somebody to walk in and do their job. I'm not denying that older, experienced programmers with strong…

It should cheer you substantially to realize that you have come around to what I believe Patrick's way of thinking has been all along.

Re: Silicon Valley's Dark Secret: It's all about Age

#86

Post by hga »

hga wrote: post #42
HilbertSpace wrote: post #29

Also over the past 10 years, venture capital in Silicon Valley lost money. Generally the venture partners do not know how to build significant businesses. Look at their backgrounds and see why. Compare with people doing significant work in technology for, say, the US DoD.

While I don't agree with your general point those are things with have always been true. For the last 10 year period I can't exactly blame the venture partners for SarBox ending the IPO exit (as another article has noted, in the last ten years there have been fewer > $100 million exits than there are VC firms). Add in the dot.com crash which started a bit before SarBox and the Great Recession and it's no surprise the…

Sorry, that should be "While I don't disagree with your general point...."

Re: Silicon Valley's Dark Secret: It's all about Age

#87

Post by pointillistic »

Silhouette wrote: post #18

Management error #1: "Move up the ladder into management, architecture, or design" As long as management insist on perceiving themselves as superior to other people, and assuming that technical competence somehow implies management competence, there will always be a drain on the good technical guys. The reward and recognition structure strongly encourages them to change discipline. However, can anyone cite me a singl…

I have pointed this out in a comment on this thread but would like to repeat it in support of your list.

Myth #1: People hire younger workers over older workers because of the money. This is not true. Think politics and psychology first. People who move up the management ranks often have political or social skill superior to technical skill. They slimly don't what engineers who are more technically savvy or not subservient enough around. Not so the young greenhorns or even immigrants. Competent, seasoned engineers can't be as easily manipulated.

There is no substitute to experience, no matter the spin.

And often the obsessive coders pay little attention to the office politics. This leaves them exposed to the career obsessed suits. Politics and human dynamics first, money distant second, as always.

Re: Silicon Valley's Dark Secret: It's all about Age

#88

Post by cageface »

tptacek wrote: post #85
cageface wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of senior devs are making that kind of money not because they are domain experts but because they have been in the same spot collecting raises for a long time. Those are the kinds of people my warning was intended for and I think a lot of these people wildly underestimate how hard it would be for a bright young somebody to walk in and do their job. I'm not denying that older, experienced programmers with strong…

It should cheer you substantially to realize that you have come around to what I believe Patrick's way of thinking has been all along.

I don't think we were in substantial disagreement to begin with. I just don't find language like Do it ridiculously better than they do. to be very useful. Certainly English superlatives have lost most of their punch at this point but for most people their best isn't going to be ridiculously better than everyone else's.

Re: Silicon Valley's Dark Secret: It's all about Age

#89

Post by tptacek »

cageface wrote: post #88
tptacek wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It should cheer you substantially to realize that you have come around to what I believe Patrick's way of thinking has been all along.

I don't think we were in substantial disagreement to begin with. I just don't find language like Do it ridiculously better than they do. to be very useful. Certainly English superlatives have lost most of their punch at this point but for most people their best isn't going to be ridiculously better than everyone else's.

Next time, read the comment carefully before fixating on a single word and starting an unproductive argument. I know it's hard; I do it all the time too.

Re-read Patrick's comment, but this time, take the Cliff's Notes with you:

* It's not enough to be better; you have to find ways to be measurably better; implied: better along axes that people who write checks care about.

* Learn to market yourself; implied; the business world is not like Github, and nobody is going to invest any effort into learning how awesome you are, because your awesomeness is not inherently interesting to most people who write checks. You have to make it interesting.

* Develop non-commodity domain expertise; implied: not only is "learning Merb" not a credible differentiator, but, all respect to Yehuda Katz who is smarter than me, it's likely that writing Merb isn't either.

* Own your company.

The fact that Patrick managed to pack this into 91 words and all you appear to have taken from it was "Do it ridiculously better" may account for some of the downvotes.

Re: Silicon Valley's Dark Secret: It's all about Age

#90

Post by hga »

pointillistic wrote: post #87
Silhouette wrote: post #18

Management error #1: "Move up the ladder into management, architecture, or design" As long as management insist on perceiving themselves as superior to other people, and assuming that technical competence somehow implies management competence, there will always be a drain on the good technical guys. The reward and recognition structure strongly encourages them to change discipline. However, can anyone cite me a singl…

I have pointed this out in a comment on this thread but would like to repeat it in support of your list. Myth #1: People hire younger workers over older workers because of the money. This is not true. Think politics and psychology first. People who move up the management ranks often have political or social skill superior to technical skill. They slimly don't what engineers who are more technically savvy or not subse…

While I suspect you're correct in your first point, why can't both be true (control and money)?

As for your last point, http://www.jerrypournelle.com/archives2/archives2mail/mail40...; it's self evidently true.

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