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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

#91

Post by cageface »

tptacek wrote: post #89
cageface wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 bus…

Were we arguing? I thought we were discussing.

Patrick's built a nice business for himself but I spent the last ten years working with some of the people that wrote the foundational research papers on computer graphics, not building bingo card generators, so maybe we're looking at this from different ends of the pipe.

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

#92

Post by latch »

This is seriously noticeable in other places as well. For example Ottawa. The place is over flooding with vast quantities of old engineers from the likes of Nortel. They come into job interviews with most of their experience dedicate to archaic languages and platforms invented for and at Nortel.

They generally believe they are worth a lot and should be entitled to everything they had when Nortel was at its peak. Unfortunately, they don't have relevant skills and are generally outmatched by new grads in programming interviews.

I find it both sad and enlightening. Having been the young guy who interviewed a lot of these, I certainly feel like I have a good clue on how to avoid it (don't become a lifer at an big'ol company).

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

#93

Post by jimbokun »

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…

"(and find it far easier to do so than their younger and less experienced colleagues, since the tech industry doesn't innovate nearly as fast as the PR guys would like to pretend: older guys have seen a lot of it before, and can quickly identify genuinely new things worthy of further exploration and put them in context)"

This is when I like to point out that guys who were coding in Lisp or SmallTalk 20 years ago are looking at the "new" and "cutting edge" programming tools and languages today and wondering why it's taken everyone else so long to get here.

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

#94

Post by jimbokun »

d4nt wrote: post #78
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…

> "Move up the ladder into management, architecture, or design" The ability to convert detailed specs into code is a fungible commodity. Management, architecture and design, on the other hand, are areas of software development where you need multiple complementary skills; technical ability, good communication, understanding of your customers and industry area, an ability to influence others, etc. People like that can…

"The ability to convert detailed specs into code is a fungible commodity."

If you have a good programming language, the code should be the "detailed specs."

"But I would also say that 20 years experience will never make up for a lack of natural ability."

20 years of "experience" won't, but 20 years of dedicated practice will.

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

#95

Post by jimbokun »

latch wrote: post #92

This is seriously noticeable in other places as well. For example Ottawa. The place is over flooding with vast quantities of old engineers from the likes of Nortel. They come into job interviews with most of their experience dedicate to archaic languages and platforms invented for and at Nortel. They generally believe they are worth a lot and should be entitled to everything they had when Nortel was at its peak. Unfo…

What relevant skills did they lack, specifically? Was it just the particular programming language you use, knowledge of how to design and architect systems, development methodology, algorithms...?

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

#96

Post by jimbokun »

HilbertSpace wrote: post #22

Here's the real story: First, the 'suits' want only 'fungible', 'compliant' workers. Second, the 'suits' do NOT want any workers who might have some technical qualifications that might be powerful, compete with the suits, and scare the suits. Third, likely highly experienced, older programmers can get good work via 'body shops' around DC. Fourth, one common tech personnel policy is to hire people as young as possible…

"It can commonly be better for a person 18 just to join McDonald's, work hard, learn the business really well, work up to a manager of one McDonald's, manage also a second McDonald's for the same owner, and then have a heart to heart with a local banker about buying and running their own McDonald's. Build up to 10 McDonald's, run them WELL, and will have a better job than nearly anyone in a company a programmer might work for."

Is this easier or harder than founding a successful software business?

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

#97

Post by HilbertSpace »

jimbokun wrote: post #96
HilbertSpace wrote: post #22

Here's the real story: First, the 'suits' want only 'fungible', 'compliant' workers. Second, the 'suits' do NOT want any workers who might have some technical qualifications that might be powerful, compete with the suits, and scare the suits. Third, likely highly experienced, older programmers can get good work via 'body shops' around DC. Fourth, one common tech personnel policy is to hire people as young as possible…

"It can commonly be better for a person 18 just to join McDonald's, work hard, learn the business really well, work up to a manager of one McDonald's, manage also a second McDonald's for the same owner, and then have a heart to heart with a local banker about buying and running their own McDonald's. Build up to 10 McDonald's, run them WELL, and will have a better job than nearly anyone in a company a programmer might…

Software is a big, HUGE advantage.

But my advice is still own your own business. So, have a Main Street software business or some other software business but OWN it yourself.

If you don't own it yourself, then you may be better off working your way up to owning 1, 2, ..., McD's yourself.

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

#98

Post by HilbertSpace »

nostrademons wrote: post #75
HilbertSpace wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I was an MBA prof, one of my students was running a Wendy's, in Columbus! He explained some of the opportunity: Watch staffing CAREFULLY. To do this, more than once a day, watch the weather, various public events, say, a high school football game, or anything and everything else that can affect traffic, Then staff accordingly. If are one person short on a shift, then lose revenue. One person long, then waste mon…

That's an information problem, though, right? A McD's manager uses information and domain knowledge they have to lever up efficiencies in the business. They're every bit as much of a knowledge worker as a software engineer. Now imagine that you partner one of those with someone who has technical skills in data mining, expert systems, and real-time data feeds. They build a system that watches local events, checks the…

Nice. Then sell to Wendy's, Burger King, Domino's, and Pizza Hut.

Buried in the middle should be a little integer linear programming for the scheduling!

The 'qualitative' stuff about the impact of weather, high school events, etc. would be more difficult, and it may be that something like an expert system would work -- typically there's not enough data for some clean statistical attack so that some expert judgment might be essential.

Uh, the $1 million a year would be for someone owning 10 McD's, not just one!

Cute.

One potentially nice part of this could be the point of sales terminals: They may have been recording data on each Big Mack, fry, etc. along with time and date. Good data to have.

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

#99

Post by sshumaker »

yungchin wrote: post #11
cageface wrote: post #4

If you're young and sharp, programming looks like paradise. It's more or less a meritocracy, there's a ton of personal freedom, and you get to spend your days doing creative, challenging work and getting paid fairly well. You may not have even had to slog through 4-5 years of college. You'll start to see the downsides as you approach 40 though. Many programmers can't play the social games that management requires, th…

> ompeting neck & neck with people twenty years younger willing to work 60+ hours a week for half your salary My probably naive question is, how come you earn twice as much in the first place? Shouldn't salaries reflect the value you provide to your employer, so that either 1) you don't earn as much because you're actually worth less than the 60+ hours working kid, or 2) you earn twice as much because the hours you d…

Unfortunately, you're wrong. Salary really only affects the upper limit of how much you're willing to pay an individual.

In reality, you pay an employee just enough to keep them happy. As long as they're below the threshold where they're worth the cost, that is. Better employees have a higher threshold, but not necessarily a higher salary. It all depends on what they need and demand - which only has a marginal correlation with actual value.

Speaking from experience - there have been a few times we've given raises to great employees who were already happy with the salary they were getting. It didn't have much of an effect, really - we would have been better off investing that money in a better work environment - which would have a much more positive effect on our employee happiness.

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

#100

Post by latch »

jimbokun wrote: post #95
latch wrote: post #92

This is seriously noticeable in other places as well. For example Ottawa. The place is over flooding with vast quantities of old engineers from the likes of Nortel. They come into job interviews with most of their experience dedicate to archaic languages and platforms invented for and at Nortel. They generally believe they are worth a lot and should be entitled to everything they had when Nortel was at its peak. Unfo…

What relevant skills did they lack, specifically? Was it just the particular programming language you use, knowledge of how to design and architect systems, development methodology, algorithms...?

It was a slew of modern stuff..none of which, on its own, is particularly hard to learn, but between someone who had been doing something else for 20 years vs someone who had been doing it for 6 months...the 6 month guy was always more appealing.

I'm not just talking about stuff like NoSQL, but most had limited experience with relational databases. Not just a lack of knowledge around ruby/python but sometimes even java/c#. Web, css, javascript, mvc or any relevant high level pattern - forget about it.

So I guess, specifically, what they lacked with the general knowledge of web or mobile (what we largely hire for) paradigms, and then the entire technology stack (from view to storage) that accompanies it.

And the few who did have relevant experience, tended to be "experts"...certainly not able to go from html/css all the way to database design.

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