Ask Slashdot: Joining a Startup As an Older Programmer?

First time accepted submitter bdrasin (17319) writes "I've had a series of interviews with a late-term startup (approx. 300 employees) and I think there is a good chance they will make me an offer. The technology is great, my skills and interests are a good fit for the position, I think the company has a promising future, and I like they team. Frankly I'm damn excited about it, more so than for any job in my career. However, I'm worried about what could euphemistically be called 'cultural' issues. I'm a few years over 40, with a wife and kids, and all of the engineers at the company seem to be at least 10 years younger than I am. Being at the company's office gives me a distinct old guy at the club feeling. I don't think the overall number of hours the team works is more than I could handle, but the team does a lot of young-single-guy-at-a-startup group activities (rent-a-limo-and-go-clubbing night, weekends in Tahoe, Burning Man, in-office happy hour) that I wouldn't want or be able to participate in; I need to be home with my family for dinner most nights and weekends and so on. I'm wondering if anyone else has had the experience of working at a startup with, or as, an older programmer, and how it worked out?"

Comments

Re:My old dev manager...

[lgw]

Wait, aren't lefties supposed to be open-minded and tolerant and accepting? I guess except towards Republicans, those guys aren't human (sarcasm)...

The left has been about marching in ideological lockstep for at least a decade now. There was about a decade of transition around 2000 between the right being the group where you had to believe a specific, exact list of things or be an unperson, and the left taking that role.

The right gave it up, as the churches began, very gradually, losing power and influence over the right as the Venn diagram between fiscal and social conservatism started showing gradually more distinction between the two, and because many, many churches hit the rocks financially and nearly collapsed. Now churches are all about acceptance of members with any lifestyle as long as you're willing to sit through the sermon, and the right is a mix of fiscal-cons and so-cons who have to tolerate, even accept, one another to have any hope of political success.

Meanwhile, the left has become the "concern Olympics", racing with one another to jump on any statement that diverges even slightly from the One True Way and condemn it as a way of showing you're one of the enlightened. Or was that too cis-normative?