Slashdot Mirror
Job Chances for Older Coders?
emtboy9 asks: "As the semester winds to a close, exams fall upon us students once again. Today, outside of one of my programming classes, I overheard a conversation between a pair of middle aged women about programming degrees (which they are involved in), and this made me wonder. With the job market in IT being as pathetic as it is, what are the real-world chances of someone who is taking a programming course getting a job. In the places I have worked, all the coders were fairly young. So the question is, what are the chances for an older person, who is just now learning programming to get a job in that field?" Ask Slashdot last touched on this topic back in February of 2001. In the intervening two years, have things gotten worse or better for those who have been in the industry for a long time?
"With the increasing popularity in such places, tech and trade schools and even colleges and universities are spitting out MCSEs, CCNAs, A+, Net+, etc certified techs, as well as people of all ages (one person in my VB class is nearly 60) who are trained to write code.
With that in mind, I guess I thought I would throw that out to the Slashdot crowd to see what kind of experiences they have either as a middle aged person entering the IT workforce for the first time, or as a younger tech, or even a manager, faced with either working with, or hiring someone who is from a completely different generation."
It's Logan's Run all over again folks.
Sorry about the writing. Robot fingers, you know? Cliff Steele in DOOM PATROL #23
Curious how the article got the linux icon?
SuDZ
Whooooooo let the H4X0R out?
l33t! 1337,1337,1337, l33t!
Whooooooo let the H4X0R out?
l33t! 1337,1337,1337, l33t!
Whooooooo let the H4X0R out?
l33t! 1337,1337,1337, l33t!
Whooooooo let the H4X0R out?
l33t! 1337,1337,1337, l33t!
Whooooooo let the H4X0R out?
l33t! 1337,1337,1337, l33t!
Yeah, you see a few of them here or there in your cse classes. We always called those guys dad. WE had Dads 1-6.
I saw that Dad 2 got a job with a local software company. It was good to see him go because it was gross to see him always hit on all of those mediocre cs girls.
You are farked just like the rest of us. Go to grad school until the economy improves.
...And when they came for me, there was no one left to speak out for me." - Martin Niemoeller (1892-1984)
"But how are they going to pay their bills?"
Gasoline bill, insurance, and food. Life is so much easier living out of the car. Washing up at gas stations, and eating at fast food places. Do a little coding with a Model 100, and surf at the library. The rest? Well the creditors can fight over whatever, if any is left. Credit rating? Don't need it.
*sighs* old people think so small... the reason I've been spending all this time in front of the computer is that I'm working on an a set of algorithms that talk to the customers for me so I can get more work done!
Doctors and lawyers either do advance or already own their practice... it's hard to promote the owner it just doesn't work out very well, the best you can do is hire a "sub owner" and even he needs a "sub sub owner" and pretty soon you have a 3yr old girl who rides around the clinic on a tricycle with a sign that says "sub sub sub sub sub sub owner, I work for lolliepops".
Life is more important than a computer.
Heresy! Ban thee from slashdot and taketh away thou Geek Card!
Table-ized A.I.
Reminds me of a story...
I had just come back from a week of training, only to have the server hosting the application I'm responsible for have a complete meltdown. I had an all-nighter just getting the thing back up, and was at work until 7 the next evening restoring the data. All this, mind you, with my wife at home alone with our three month old child. I drive home, no one there. I figure they must be at the park, and walk toward it. I see my wife coming the other way, pushing the stroller, and hear her say loudly "Look Charles, It's Uncle Daddy!"
I still feel it when the nights get cold...
Fortune favors those who help themselves.
I agree. invest in a ski mask and start robbing cenvenience stores.
If you mod me down the terrorists will have won
Good Things about young coders
1. Work cheap
2. Work long, work hard
3. Don't die as easily.
Bad Things about young coders
1. Transient, bored easily
2. Fuck everything in site
3. Inexperienced.
4. Priorities b0rked (cock first, code later)
5. Client schmlient
6. Fuck everything in site
7. Normalization is too conformist
8. Want everyone else's job
9. Fuck everything in site
Good Things about older coders
1. Stable
2. Experienced
3. Choosy about who to fuck
Bad Things about older coders
1. I forget
-mike
-- Karma Whore? You betcha!
-- Karma whore? You betcha. --
BS required, indeed.
You quitting proves that the karma kap worked. The most annoying of the whores shut up. --CmdrTaco
I once had to go through some code, about three or four pages worth, that a guy wrote when he worked over night (just had to get it done.) I was like ... what the hell was this guy thinking.
Halfway through the code were some comments. It was my code. D'oh.
Glonoinha the MebiByte Slayer