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Why Companies Should Hire Older Developers
Nerval's Lobster writes: Despite legislation making it overtly illegal, ageism persists in the IT industry. If you're 40 or older, you've probably seen cases where younger developers were picked over older ones. At times we're told there's a staffing crisis, that companies need to import more developers via H-1B, but the truth is that outsourcing and downsizing eliminated a subset of viable developers from the market. Those developers, in turn, had to figure out if they wanted to land another job, freelance, or leave the technology industry entirely. But older developers still have a lot to offer, developer David Bolton writes in a new column: They have decades of experience (and specialist knowledge), they have a healthy disregard for office politics (but can still manage, when necessary), they're available, and they're (generally) stable.
Here's why I advocate for hiring older developers. I'm in my mid-30s now and I've seen it happen so many times. Some kid comes in fresh out of college thinking he or she knows all the answers. They don't. I don't. They are so trigger happy to re-invent the wheel and over engineer everything.
You know what I've learned after all these years. I may not know "what works", but I sure do know what won't.
The problem with older developers is that they have too much experience. Or at least, that is what I was told by the HR persons who did not want to interview me when they saw my resume.
Capitalism should sort out the underperformers.
Greed and executives' immunity from the consequences of their bad decisions cause a lot of bad.
In the age of "screw everybody to get another quarter point from the stock", the ones in charge will never pay the older developers what they are worth. It doesn't matter that the inexperienced developers will make the huge mistakes the older people could have warned them away from. It doesn't matter that the degradation in product quality will likely have long term negative effects on the company. All that matters is short term financial gain by the executive staff in this country.
Speak for yourself.
Bitten Apples are still better than dirty Windows...
You really think that a college class is the only thing that can make you aware of all the threats out there. I mean, you honestly believe that.
Interesting.
You're going to have to cite a source for that ridiculous claim.
"Tell me doctor, with all of your defenses, are there any provisions for an attack by killer bees?"
What on earth.
I expected some reasonably sensational comments, but this one really stands out. Why would you think this? Are modern CS classes somehow better at security? In my ACTUAL experience, the only people I've ever had thinking that declaring a member variable as private increases the security of the product or enforces an actual restriction in the compiled code are younger. Certainly I haven't seen attention to security as being present primarily in the young or old.
FTFY.
Most security attacks are iterations of the classes of attacks that have been around forever.
By the same logic, young developers are riskier as they are more likely to want to early adopt new frameworks and technologies, that have not even been vetted for security vulnerabilities and attack vectors.
Expecting capitalism to select for high performers is like expecting natural selection to select for really long lived red blood cells. If your selection criteria are on the organizations, you select for organizations, and the individuals are just a function yielding that.
First, the reason to not discriminate is because it damages the labor market which in turn damages the industries that rely on that labor.
Second, the reason older developers are not hired is because they are perceived to not be willing to put in the hours that younger developers will. If you need your employees to knock their brains out for a project, an older set of employees are less likely to do that.
There are other reasons but most of them are rational.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
I have a modern college degree, BS in CS from Purdue. I can't recall a single class that discussed security as a topic, let alone dedicated to it. Fuck. I just realized the classes I took were nearly 20 years ago. I'm an "older developer" aren't I...
I've been in the technology business for almost 20 years now. In my personal experience, older engineers are much more productive than younger engineers. Younger engineers are much more likely to partake of the "free" dinner offered by the company and work 80 hour weeks. They are also significantly cheaper.
To HR we (engineers) are a fungible commodity anyway. Of course they go for the younger people. Given that they command lower wages AND work more hours their effective hourly rate is much lower. So it's a no brainer.
Of course, I would guess from experience (although I have no specific evidence) that older engineers are cheaper in a productivity/dollar sense, but that doesn't even enter the argument in a modern corporation.
Unless we get into management, we older folks (Lord, is pushing 40 really older now?) are better off in .gov/defense jobs or working for small companies where individual people (may) value our contributions.
I have attended CS programs in two universities (started at one, transferred to another). Neither had a single course in secure software development.
Hiring older developers is the fastest way to put hundreds of security holes in your software. That's reality, people. They just simply don't keep up and don't have modern college training in the latest security threats and program hacking methods.
Remember that when you become an older developer.
Snide aside, while your argument has some merit, there is a flaw in your assignment of blame. Development is not a static process, you need to continually update your skills in order top remain relevant. And one of the major impediments to updating skills is companies not providing an environment when such updating is valued.
You could counter with a "well they can do it on their own time", but the rebuttal to that is two fold:
1. Older workers have a life outside of work and have other things to do.
2. Anyone who is forced to update skills outside of work hours because their company won't support them in work hours is eventually going to say "Fuck it, why should this company benefit from my self improvement - I'm going elsewhere."
And there you are .. back to square one. But of course an older worker would have seen this from the outset, due to all the workplace experience that they have gathered.
I am Slashdot. Are you Slashdot as well?
In a lot of sports there are salary caps. Players develop, get more experience, and the good ones get a really big raise when their entry level contract ends. Eventually teams have to trade off players to stay under the cap and they rely on the draft to supply them with serviceable players on entry level contracts to fill the holes. The cycle repeats.
I see companies do the same thing. They aren't just going to continue to give out raises until every person in a department earns a much higher than average salary. Companies have a few people with experience and skill that they keep and compensate well, and they let a lot of people walk and then hire younger cheaper people to back fill. Eventually those people develop and deserve a higher salary and they are either retained or enter free agency and go somewhere else.
There is a reason most young people can get huge raises by job hopping every few years where if you stay at a company you most likely wont see as much of a salary increase. Companies don't want to pay people what they are worth, they want to pay people what is required for the company to continue to make profit. Most companies don't need a team of super experienced and skilled devs. They get by with a core team of talent and a bunch of cheap supporting players. Just like a lot of sports teams.
Just my observations. YMMV
I'm enrolled in two computer classes (DC PIT and DC PIT II) at UT and learning nothing about computer security. Literally, nothing.
I technically qualify as an 'older developer,' though not old enough to embrace the title personally. On several occasions, I've worked with teams (as a contractor) made entirely of 'age-challenged' developers, and I'm always amazed to get kudos for saying things I consider obvious. Obvious, I suppose, because I have the experience the young'un do not, and experience does help.
While I'm sure that I have all sorts of limitations I'm not aware of, like I probably smell funny or maybe don't know why Euphoria is the most awesome programming language _ever_, or simply can't hold my own on the foosball table, I think that toddler teams should have at least one elder mentor onboard--someone whose been through the ringer a few times--because we do know stuff that you'll only realize you didn't know after we say it, and we tend to be pretty grounded, which helps if you're trying to do things like, I don't know, make money.
Just don't let us pick the music for the office hi-fi.
Do you want your corporate culture to be like that? Then by all means only hire kids. Any healthy human society needs an age/gender/personality diversity of contributors to thrive. There are certainly brilliant 20 year old programmers, but they don't have practical experience keeping a project or a team alive and working well for a decade. And once they acquire such experience, they will leave your company because it'a not friendly to their needs.
But not as fast as younger ones, and also if they got the habit of pissing on your favorite couch it will take ages to teach them not to
I know older developers and they are always eager to learn a new language, but they usually carry on with their old habits and programs in the same way, with the same workflow he's used to. They just won't adapt to new methodologies (TDD, BDD or even some newer Design Patterns). So you've got a guy that programs in Haskell the same way he programmed in C++, PHP or Perl.
I've got told by an older developer that I shouldn't bother testing my code because "you can also program it right"
Sorry for my poor english.
Because CS skills are based upon physical skills of children. I guess you yearn for the days where 35 meant about to die.
Older people have families, experience and have been around the circus before.
Young programmers are much better. Firstly they often have nothing better to do. Their living expense tend to be lower and they often cannot tell when they are being screwed over for pay until they are are feeling the shaft for a couple of years.
They have no family commitments and when the big boss man smiles and asks if you can do this one extra thing for the team you say "sure boss!" and not "My boy has this thing at school..."
Why hire old programmers? they question the logic, they see through the corporate bullshit, they won't work for peanuts and often cannot do overtime. Forget that they actually know what their contract means and exactly what you can and cannot get them to do. They are not cool. They don't any Justin Bieber songs and they don't play COD.
Why bother with those old people when you can have fizzy drinking kids willing to bend over backwards? -code quality? -efficiency? -less re-work? most managers have very little grasp of how those looks like & those people make "suggestions for the business".
Old developers...as old as 40...they are practically dying already, why hire their kind? -makes no sense I tell you.
A 'singular oddity' is an event that cannot be explained and only happens when you are alone.
A friend of mine was managing a programming team. They interviewed a really good developer in his early 40s, and one of her team members said he was too old. He thought the guy couldn't possibly be up to date on recent technology. She hired him anyway, and he did really good work.
That was well over ten years ago. The guy who raised the objection is now older than the candidate he wanted to reject. I wonder if he's gone on any interviews lately (or found newfangled technology impossible to keep up with).
Building Better Software
I'm a pretty young (31 years old) Java EE developer doing mainly Groovy and Grails. I've worked with plenty of older developers in this space and found that they're either up to date with Java or think experience is "I've done the same JavaEE since 2002 and by God it still works so it must be good."
Okay, I'll cite most software in the entire world as an example. Also I worked with a team of programmers that were quite old and not one of them knew what I was talking about when I said we needed to filter certain characters to prevent SQL injections.
Because you don't do that. You use prepared statements. Or at very least use quoting functions from the actual database.
Filtering stuff yourself is really dumb thing to do. That's how you create security holes.
I worked as a contractor at IBM a few years back. They had just changed their hiring policies to basically three types for engineering positions:
1. Foreign workers in areas with low cost of living that are paid location-adjusted wages
2. New hires fresh out of college (preferred if they interned with IBM previously) for about 30% below market cost
3. Individuals who were known in their field of study - acknowledged experts, basically, obviously a rarity.
Everyone else was being pushed out or required to do the work of the experienced engineers who were pushed out on top of their own work, while training their own replacements. As in, "You can still work for us, but you have to move to brazil and accept a location-adjusted $27k/yr equivalent".
This resulted in the majority of incoming employees being extremely young, low 20's, zero experience, with the older individuals being skipped not because of age, but because they were not willing to pay real market value for them, when they can get cheap labor that can be trained up to the same point for 1/3'd of the cost. Especially when the young kids are willing to put in 60 hour weeks because they don't have competing obligations.
This wasn't a case of IBM being evil; they were just following the industry trends. I've seen other companies do the same thing.
It's not that they aren't hiring people because of their age. If anything, they'd love to hire those experienced professionals. They just want them to work for below average starting pay for a zero-experience, fresh college grad. Someone with 20 years of experience is expensive, after all, and budgets are quarter to quarter - not 5 years down the road. Hard to justify long term ROI in just a single level of management. Got 20 years of experience and you're willing to work for 40k in San Jose? You'll have no problems finding a job. Want a more reasonable 150-200k? Well, there's 5 guys in vietnam that will do your job for 20k a pop, and that makes up for the loss in efficiency - on paper, at least.
That's a pretty ridiculous statement. My actual experience intuitively says just the opposite. I work at a security company that is largely made of guys who just got out of Israeli SIGINT (their mandatory service). The older guys write kernel code know what C compiles to, and see the vulnerabilities intuitively. The new ones have quite a bit more experience in high level languages, while being almost oblivious to abstraction breakage that leads to security holes. At best, I'd say that the older developers get stuck dealing with older code bases (that are making the money) and tools (because the newer ones can't deal with it anyway). But on security.... Prior to the mid 1990s, everybody in the world seemed to be working on a compiler of some kind. This deep compiler knowledge is the most important part of designing and implementing security against hostile input; ie: LANGSEC.
When I hired people I would try to balance the team.
1) Younger people for fresh ideas and perspectives as well as energy.
2) Older people for experience and stability. Mentoring was expected.
3) Men as they tend to rate higher in analytical skills than women (though this may be wrong as tech women can be very analytical)
4) Women because they understand that much of software is social and involves modeling human relationships.
Of course the usual stereotyping disclaimers apply.
I often used women in roles which involved more requirements gathering due to verbal and social skills. Higher level functions. Men more churn out code 'grunt work'.
How not to be hired by me?
1) Think you are some sort of 'Master of the Universe'.
2) Not be a team player, e.g. 'do it my way'.
3) Be deficient in an important area, years of experience.
4) Show a callous disregard for other team members or customers.
FYI, HTH your job search.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
Older workers actually use the vacation time, we also are not happy to be treated as a slave. Managers dont like employees that fight back when abused.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
This. Exactly this. You use prepared statements and binding variables. Each time some moron writes their own SQL escaping code, they manage to do it wrong, very, very wrong.
The grandparent poster sounds like a mysql dev.
I think you're confusing two very different things.
Asking to be judged based upon your actual skills, and asking to have your experience valued, is not the same thing as being entitled.
I had an ex-coworker who was interviewing, and when the interviewer looked over his publication and patents, all they could say was "Gee, some of these were a long time ago."
IMHO (seeing a number of laid off friends job hunt), two things work against you as an older developer. One, if you haven't kept your skills up - that's on you. We call it "Resume-Driven Design." You need to learn and use new languages and libraries (i.e. javascript libraries). Most of us (I'm mid-50's) started in an age when companies hired talent and developed skills. Now it's about hiring skills (a more ADHD hiring process given the accelerating pace of change). Two, companies want to be fast and agile. Experience and perspective ("I've got a life" or "I've got a family") work against you in that environment. They perceive (rightly or wrongly) that older employees won't have the "run through walls" mentality that they're looking for. ... and don't discount the cultural differences. The Wall Street Journal had an article yesterday about a company that segregates its Millennials in a "Kids Table" area, because of tensions over work styles and maturity/immaturity.
I'm 40 this year, and therefore washed up, useless and unemployable. :-) Not really -- but I do have to choose my opportunities carefully.
I've posted about this before, but software development and IT have the same skillset regardless of age:
- Attention to detail
- Intelligent troubleshooting skills
- Creative problem solving skills
The things that differentiate the older people are:
- Experience with technology cycles, and the ability to see what is a fad, what's a rehash and what will stick around
- Experience with doing things -- leading to less rework because we've already tried a lot of the ways that don't work
- Most of us know how to play the working game now and aren't willing to kill ourselves for deadlines/projects that don't go anywhere
- Most of us have responsibilities outside of work (kids, family, etc.) that a younger worker doesn't
In my personal case, my employers get a solid, committed employee who does great work and is able to go home on time. Younger employees tend to like startup culture or employers like Google because they continue the dorm atmosphere from college. Google provides free meals and other services to employees for the sole reason that many don't have a family or other out-of-work commitments yet. My employer doesn't provide free meals - I work for a professional services company. They pay me pretty well, keep feeding me interesting work, and I generally have a healthy balance of work and life. I haven't had to work any outside-of-hours time that hasn't been comped in some form -- after-hours conference call == late arrival/early leaving next day, for example. They do reserve the right to send me to a customer location on short notice in case of a real disaster -- but that's happened once in the 10 years I've worked here.
I guess my question is this -- would older workers even be happy working at EA or Google or similar? Not to say they should be denied the opportunity, but most 40-somethings and above have families or at least something going on outside of work to occupy their time. I think the best strategy for "old" people is to try getting hired onto a consulting firm (where your experience is an asset they can bill out) or something like local/state government work with a guaranteed retirement and benefits.
It's not ageism per se. Devs over 40, like myself, haven't embraced the latest greatest technology. We haven't drunk the kool aide because it's probably another passing fad.
This appears to be missing skills or an enthusiasm gap during the interview.
Take puppet for example. It's the current craze in devops -- automated software deployment. It's also a piece of trash. It implements a lot of novel concepts that will probably evolve into something good over the next decade, but along the way puppet's young developers threw out nearly all the hard lessons learned by the folks who built package managers such as dpkg and rpm. Lessons like "uninstall." Puppet has no concept of "undo" or "revert." It's all the badness that was "make install" back before package managers existed.
But God forbid you should want a job in devops without puppet experience.
Moderating "-1, Disagree" is simple censorship. Have the guts to post your opinion.
You're an idiot. I'd guess you are not more than 30 if not 25.
I'm showing my age here, 38, but no talk is complete without mentioning the Dunning-Kruger Effect. I have witnessed this first hand, even with myself. When you are young and full of vigor, you charge forth into the great unknown t eagerly writing lots of code. As you gain experience the code decreases but is of higher quality. I've now taken to assign a valuation to each line of code as liability vs added value. because in a few years some kid will come behind me other the other side of Dunning-Kruger and change this without really knowing what it is doing. I also spend more time doing research on what I am doing so my execution is flawless. Experimentation is rare. In the Art of war, the battle is only the last step and the preparation is really what determines the outcome. Similarly, code is only written when the planning is complete. This is the difference between code monkeys and engineers.
But older engineers often get complacent. I too went through this phase. Many get comfortable with one technology, (Java, .Net) and no longer keep up with new efforts. But in the past 2 years alone, I've taken to learning Machine Learning, Node.JS, mobile platforms, Big Data.
My advice is if you're old, don't get complacent, keep learning. If you're interviewing one of us veterans, keep an open mind. We might not be as cheap on paper, or outwardly enthusiastic. But if we're still in it after 20 years, we love what we do just as much as a new guy, and we will pay dividends in the long run.
Slashdot's rate-of-post filter: Preventing you from posting too many great ideas at once.
Yeah to governments telling everyone what to do and putting you in jail (or killing you) if you disagree.
I think you may fundamentally misunderstand what socialism is ;)
I'm currently hiring new developers at my company and I don't give a hoot what age they are. I'm going to hire the best person for the job that I can find. "Best" means they have sufficient skill, an approachable personality and a reasonable wage. If you're older, refuse to learn new technologies and expect to be paid big bucks, you can go elsewhere. Same applies to any youngsters.
+1 IDisagreeSoHeMustBeATrollOrAnAstroturferOrAShill
You assume the "selection" is a one way street. Good companies and good employees will find another in a free system, and as a result, they will prosper in the long run. Like evolution, it doesn't happen quickly though. Most good employees in any discipline have a set of criteria they demand from an employer. Developers are no different. If you don't believe a free system doesn't benefit those that hire and pay intelligently, then you are simply ignoring reality.
Exactly this. When I started coding, I made a ton of mistakes and had false assumptions. Luckily, my code didn't have a huge reach and so those security holes weren't exploited. As I taught myself more, I became aware of issues like SQL Injection Attacks and how to prevent them. Do I write 100% secure code now? Of course not. It would be incredibly arrogant of me to assume I have every hole covered. However, I know a lot of pitfalls and how to avoid them. As an older coder, my code is much better than it was when I was a younger coder.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
If I have the choice between three developers, and can only take one:
a) a 50 year old C/C++ programmer with scripting experience on Unix and some main frame back ground with Cobol and Fortran
b) a 30 year old with 5 year experience in Java or C#
c) a university freshling, with no real work experience and very likely mediocre programming abilities, regardless what language
Guess whom I take if I need someone who does real work?
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Any developer who doesn't keep up isn't a good developer. A fresh-out-of-college developer might be up to date on the newest coding theory but theory isn't the same as practice. An experienced developer will know how to write secure code that is stable and won't chase every flash-in-the-pan-fad that fizzles out in 6 months (and which renders the code base a mash-up of fads past).
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
Seniors can always learn new toolchains and ideas.
But expert knowledge of fundamentals and experience cannot be magically implanted into novices--it has to be earned.
So any time you see a company firing off lot's of old people and hiring young people (it's cheaper!), you can be rest assured they're taking tons of knowledge with them out the door.
I had a college professor that loved telling us that everything he taught us would be obsolete by the time we graduated but that the concepts would stick with us throughout our careers. This was 20 years ago. Sure enough, the concepts he taught me are the same as the ones I use today even though I couldn't name a single line of code he taught us that year.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
Here's the fact of the matter: There are MANY, MANY older folks now, and they're already hurting for work. Guess what? There's going to be MANY, MANY MORE, sooner than anyone wants to believe. Turning us into Soylent Green isn't an option, kids, and despite what some of the edgier of you post online, we're not just going to 'kill ourselves' to make way for YOU. I don't know about the rest of you guys, but I'm actually getting stronger, quicker, and overall healthier as I get older, not fat, decrepit, and addled-brained. There won't BE any 'retirement' for someone like me, I'm going to WORK until I drop dead., most likely. You think there's a homelessness problem now? How about it being multiples of ten times worse, except it's all people who had professional careers at one point, and have been kicked to the curb for the 'new hotness' that will accept a fraction of the salary and twice the abuse with a smile? Meanwhile even Social Security means nothing, it's all going to collapse into dust long before someone like me and my contemporaries will ever be eligible to collect on it, despite paying a nice sized chunk of our earnings into it our entire lives. To make matters worse I see people getting stupider and lazier instead of smarter, more skilled, and more active; I see a recipe for disaster in the making, all so some dickhead CEOs can improve this quarter's bottom line, and get a bigger bonus. You want to see the U.S. get back on top with regards to innovation and tech in general? Stop pushing out the experienced people so you can hire know-nothing twenty-somethings for less pay.
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
There are two kinds of approaches to profit. Short term profit, risking long term viability, and long term approach to profit, that risks short term viability. A third kind, using a balanced approach, risks some of both; short term profit, long term profit in exchange for viability.
Realizing that profit, viability and so on is neither good nor bad, but how we measure things is key to understand economics. Arguing "morality" in economics is simply a fools errand and distracts from free flow of commerce. PEOPLE on the other hand are supposed to act morally.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
...that I'm aware of that corporate likes younger developers is because they're green and can be pushed around. On the face of it you would think this strategy somewhat limiting (i.e. what about talent, ability, etc.?), but that seems to be what feeds the captain's cat! :)
Bukowski said it. I believe it. That settles it.
I believe he understands it perfectly. He's just using the same "take it to the extreme" that the OP is using when doing a full and total damnation of capitalism.
And if capitalism decrees that workers older than 40 should not be allowed to work any longer, we should salute capitalism because it has achieved optimum performance? Capitalism does a lot of things well, but it does a lot of things poorly as well. It underlies uninsurance companies cherry picking only healthy people, leaving government to pick up the tab on the uninsured and sick leftovers. Them includes many of those over 40 which no longer have jobs.
Capitalism doesn't do well with pollution, it rewards passing that pollution onto someone else to clean up, probably government. It doesn't do well with global warming where it cannot point the finger quickly enough at those causing the problem since it may not be a problem until 40-50 year after the pollution that causes it, leaving government to figure out what to do.
Capitalism doesn't do well in funding poor people to go uni so they'll get better jobs since they have precious little capital to secure the loans necessary to go, leaving government to provide those loans in its stead. Capitalism gives us payday loan sharks so the gullible get gulled more often, many of these tend to hold low paying jobs with little education leaving government to pick up the tab.
See a trend here?
I was hired last year right after I turned 50. I am on contract with AT&T and am probably the oldest person on my team. I work 100% remote, all interaction is via phone, text, and email. I do Javascript UI stuff. I rate myself is an average programmer with lots of experience and a varied background. I am not superstar or a slacker. None of the people that I work with sound/act/perform like fossilized old farts or inexperienced young hotshots. We all just do our jobs and get the work done. I don't socialize with these people beyond witty IM banter and sarcasm over the phone - sometimes I get laughs. There is no office politics or managerial BS. Ideal world for me.
If it is in production it is obsolete.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
If it were all about money, they'd hire all women and only have to pay them 78c on the dollar. Amiright?
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
I love how any mention of qualified programmers means you automatically generalize them to white and entitled. Who's the real bigot here?
Note - these are all illegal reasons to discriminate but if employers are going to use illegal reasons to favor hiring under-40s they should realize there are many "illegal to ask" reasons why over-40s should be favored:
* Workers over 40 are very less likely to file insurance claims for child-birth and neonatal intensive care than younger workers. This is even more true for workers over 50.
* Workers over 50 are less likely to have minor children as dependents and therefore they are less likely to have them on the company's medical insurance. They are also less likely to say "no, I need to spend that time with my kids" if asked to work evenings or weekends. If they do have minor dependents those dependents will likely leave the nest and their parent's insurance a lot sooner than the children of a 20- or 30-something.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
You are correct, economics does not take morality into consideration.
However this has given rise the 5 year CEO.
Basically they get hired, and they have 5 years to MAXIMIZE their short term profit. So they do everything in their power to maximize short term profits for the corporation, so that they in turn maximize their pay/bonus/stock options etc.......After 5 years, they cash out rich, never having to work again and watch the company implode from afar on some paradise island.
Is the CEO evil? No...he is just doing what he was hired to do. Which is make as much $$$ as possible for the corporation (and by extension it's shareholders). In fact most CEO's would get fired immediately if they proposed a long term plan (20+ years).
This goes back to the discussion somewhere up the thread... older coders generally admit to not knowing things they don't know, know a *way* to do things, and know what doesn't work.
So when they have a "best practices" way of handling something, and someone comes out with some method outside of that that they haven't used before, they're more than happy to say "Hmm... I've never done it that way before; I'm not sure what you mean..." which often means "Is he really suggesting we do it THAT way? Surely he's aware of the pitfalls; maybe he's got some new angle on it, let's hear him out."
In your case, filtering is the reactive way to do it. The code should be set up such that characters outside the accepted set aren't allowed in the first place, say by using prepared statements. If you're at the point where a string needs to be filtered to protect your DB, you've already done something wrong.
Norway is socialist. UK is socialist. France is socialist. etc. You hve no clue what you just said. If you had said 'Stalinist' or Maoist' I would have agreed with you. In addition Chile and Argentina are very capitalist and yet did everything you said. Therefore all Capitalism is bad.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
I'm 36, so I worry about this. But I think younger developers really are better because technology changes so quickly and they've had more free time recently. When I was in college, I'd stay up until 3 AM "hacking". I got really good at all the latest stuff. Now I work 40+ a week on what is now older technology (because if it's working, don't "fix" it). I have a family and house and all sorts of other time sucks that mean I simply can't "hack" until 3 AM on a regular basis. Some of my experience means I'll make better decisions than the wet-behind-the-ears crowd. And it also means I can probably learn new technology faster, despite my less-squishy grey matter. But even at a faster clip, the huge advantage in time a college kid smart enough to not need to study much has means he or she will simply be better at the latest technology than I can possibly hope to be. And the quick turnover in technology means the value of my knowledge is falling quickly while the value of the young guys knowledge is on the rise. He or she will get a job and a family and be in the same boat soon enough. But the claim that my "experience" is somehow universal and timeless is simply a load of crap. In technology, experience is an ever-fleeting thing.
That's why the guys who jump ship every few years do so well. They jump not just for higher salaries, but for the opportunity to learn the latest technology on the job before their existing knowledge becomes so completely useless that they can't get a new job.
To an employer, they have their best employees jumping ship frequently and see the just-out-of-school kids with a working knowledge of the technology they're moving towards. You can almost not blame them for crying about a broken labor market. Almost.
But employers know all this. Since technology changes quickly, they HAVE to train someone -- either their existing (read "expensive") employees have to learn new technology or some new hire (read "cheap") who knows the new technology has to learn the deeper engineering things that one gains only through experience. Since they're going to have to pay someone to learn something either way, who can blame them for choosing the cheaper option. Sometimes us old dogs would have done it better and cheaper, but its a risk and we all usually take the less risky option.
I'm not sure I have a solution to all this, but we need some system that encourages those of us with experience to help the young guys learn the timeless things and also gives us free time to learn the ever-changing things. Maybe an apprentice system like they have in Germany or something.
What's NOT the solution is importing cheap, disposable labor from overseas and then shipping them back home when their expertise is no longer the latest and greatest. That does nothing but help the rich get richer at the expense of both US and foreign workers.
People have different morals. Groups of people have yet different morals. Societies have yet further different morals.
There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
Company I'm at now consistently promotes young 20-somethings right out of college over more experienced colleagues. Almost without exception the reason is because they don't know any better than to say yes to whatever upper-management wants.
David Bolton is an older developer. 'nough said.
the ones in charge will never pay the older developers what they are worth.
"What I'm worth" to an employer is pretty much defined by "what is the lowest that a person they really want to hire [NOT "the person they think they want to hire"] will accept."
If there is a person out there who will give the employer everything I will give them that in retrospect years from now my employer will realize was worth paying for for less than I am willing to accept and more than minimum wage, then I'm setting my expectations too high.
The wisdom and experience I bring to the table that is not directly relate to the job at hand may really have a near-zero value to a responsible, fair employer. I have to accept that. The higher "mold-ability" of someone who has never worked in industry that a "younger" person (and some people my age) brings to the table which I know that I don't have may have a high value to a responsible, fair employer and if I don't have something of equal value to bring to the table I should expect to not get the job unless the "younger" candidate isn't qualified or turns down the job offer.
One problem with the hiring process is that employers/managers/HR-policy-makers may think they know what they want and need but they don't always know what is best for the project, the work-group, and the company in the long run, so they hire for what they think they want/need not what they actually need.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
I (and most experienced software PM's) would rather have a 40-year-old with 15 years experience in 'dead' languages than some FOB 'Graduate' who's spent the last year writing code in an environment that's not going to be fit for production for another 18 mos. Give me someone who accepts that you have to get from point A to point B first, instead of just assuming that you can start from point C, with a clean environment, and no legacy.
Physics is nothing like religion. If it was, we'd have an easier time trying to raise money!
Hiring older developers is the fastest way to put hundreds of security holes in your software. That's reality, people. They just simply don't keep up and don't have modern college training in the latest security threats and program hacking methods.
Modern college training? You mean the canned courses sold by course farms that are a decade old and full of errors?
It is the other way around. If you believe a free system has such benefits, you are playing with a toy system that exists in a vacuum free of other influences. In other words, ignoring reality.
Another datum proving that what Americans know of socialism is exactly what a Good German (tm) knew of Jews in the late 1930's.
Yes, evil socialism. We know how nasty the socialist dictatorships are in, um, Norway and Sweden, and under the British Labour Party, and the French socialists (the ruling party).
mark "there are two kinds of Republicans (and libertarians): millionaires, and suckers"*
* And since you're posting here, we know you're not rich....
Arguing morality in economics is critical for understanding real world systems though. It is only the simplified toy systems where morality is dropped in order to make the models easier to work with.
Norway, the UK and France are social democracies. It's capitalism mitigated with elements of socialism, it's not really socialism.
Java was touted as the solution to all our ills
Java is the cure for a bad cup of plain black coffee.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
In addition to your good point about experience, stability is also a key factor. I have been with my company nearly 25 years. In the past five years, I've seen some amazing kids come along who could do 2-4 times the work I do (and probably at half the price)... but as soon as they've buffed up their experience points and leveled up, they're gone.
My skillset may be largely obsolete, but I know the product inside and out from a user/business perspective, and although it takes me a bit longer to learn all this newfangled dot-net-this and agile-that, I'm willing to do whatever it takes to stay relevant and stay for the long haul.
Now if you'll excuse me I need to get back to studying up on this new language called HTML. <flash>Hello, world!</flash>
We should all know by now that any -ism taken to its most extreme form is destructive.
And socialism causes SOO much good. Yeah to governments telling everyone what to do and putting you in jail (or killing you) if you disagree.
Socialist governments do not have a monopoly on jailing or murdering their population.
Socialism is where the means of production are entirely (or in practice close to entirely) run by, or controlled by, the government.
If you're scared of your govt then you need to further restrict its powers
Vote 3rd Party in 2016 and beyond
I think your sarcasm detector is broken.
Let's make like a bird... and get the flock outta here.
So, if I grow, make, create X and you're willing to pay for X what is the harm in that? Must everything (like kids selling lemonade) be documented, regulated and approved by a bureaucrat? You sure you want to live like that.
If you're scared of your govt then you need to further restrict its powers
Vote 3rd Party in 2016 and beyond
and re France? If socialism is so good how come so many French people are emigrating to England and the US? Because they want to speak English?
If you're scared of your govt then you need to further restrict its powers
Vote 3rd Party in 2016 and beyond
Capitalism is not what you think it is.
For starters: it is 'abusing your capital' in any way as close as possible to breaking/not breaking the law to gain more: capital.
The underperformers are likely much better at capitalism than you are ;D
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
You have completely mis-analyzed the cause here. Socialism isn't what killed those people. Psychotic lust for power, pathological levels of racism, and a massive dose of sociopathy is what killed them (and injured many others.) Same thing for atheism. Stalin was pro-atheist; but atheism was in no way the cause for any of his evil deeds. All atheism is, is a lack of belief in a god or gods. There is no collection of tenets, no canon, no holy book of advice. Those people who like to say "oh, but atheism caused all these deaths" are making the same mistake you are.
Too convoluted to understand? Try this:
When the ice cream vendor strangles the children who show up at his stand, you don't point the finger at Ben and Jerry's.
When people do crazy and evil things, you need to look at factors that actually dictate the behaviors you are seeing. Socialism doesn't dictate killing anyone. That's your first clue -- and it's a big one. It should be sufficient.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
With "entirely", you're actually describing Communism - where centralized planning is king. Socialism is more about social programs run by the government (and tax revenue) over the top of some other economic system (capitalism, etc.) for the betterment of the people.
Re-inventing the wheel tends to come with two big issues
a) You didn't need to do it, somebody already did but you lacked the knowledge of existing methods/utilities. Time wasted
b) You decided to invent your own wheel anyways, because in your opinion it's "better". You then miss a bunch of bugs that have been fixed since the invention of the original wheel. Your wheel turns faster, but falls off the wagon on the first pothole.
causes a lot of bad
And socialism creates a whole lot more, according to the history we are doomed to repeat because most don't know it.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
If you consider CO2 to be pollution, capitalism has reduced US pollution by 50% over the last decade. Meanwhile your totalitarian China has increased their CO2 output by as much as the US has reduced it.
May be just an antidote, but its 2 of the largest countries by GPD and CO2 emission levels that proves your statements inaccurate.
Younger with little experience and eager to please will always say "Yes!" Managers like this, particularly bad ones, they like to think they know more than anyone else and that their vision and ideas are better than anyone else.
I would consider it my job to point out a bad idea, the flaws, and suggest better ones based on experience. I might flower it up a bit and not say that is the most horrid stupid idea I have seen in 10 years, I'm surprised you have the automotive skill necessary to continue drawing breath... I might rather say something like that is a great idea, however it might work even better structured this way, because of these reasons etc...
However for some, the only acceptable answer is Yes we'll do whatever you want however you want it. I won't argue mind you, I'll state my opinion, and if they choose to go another way, I'll do my best to make that happen, even if cumbersome or ill advised. A good manager while maybe providing some direction or vision to work, should really just "manage" staff to do their jobs properly, which is knowing that they probably know more than you on a given topic and listening to them is usually in your best interest.
Anyway I never worry about these sorts of things, because from my experience without fail the absolute result is something that fails, is never completed, is "completed" but either doesn't function as it should, or doesn't meet the requirements (if they bothered to even collect them properly). In addition, whatever money they thought they were saving by doing it on the cheap is spent anyway, and more, due to delays, fixes, patches, scope creep, etc... and then that whole pile of steaming non-functional buggy application garbage is given to someone with experience, who is then paid well to fix the mess (or to start over), and make sure that it is properly supported, usually over a period of years... so whatever. They generate job security.
All I can tell you is stay away from ice cream stands, and prep for the apocalypse.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
At least older workers know about the basics ... like how to use a unix prompt. Seriously, I just had a student worker dispatched to our lab to install some scientific software (because the IT administrator doesn't want to let us have the root password). This student did not know how to install a relatively simple scientific software package properly and to be able to get it working in our PATH variables. They also left a lot of executable files out of the install so that the software didn't work right, and didn't understand how to set the permissions of the files until I told them about the chmod command. When looking at the files, they preferred to use the GUI and graphical-based methods to change permissions instead of the unix prompt. Their preferred text editor was gedit instead of vi. We eventually had to send them back and study up on how to install software in a unix environment before attempting to install it. How someone entrusts them with a root password is a complete mystery,. . .
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Do these younger folks know how to find the unix prompt on an OS X system? Or do they even realize that OS X is unix?
I don't think that word means what you think it means.
It was and communism and totalitarianism, not socialism, that lead to Stalin's purges.
Any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.
Hasn't it ever struck you as funny that every single one of the politico's who've been telling people to forgo higher education and who continually warn us against the dangers of "liberal" colleges all have their own advanced degrees?
Marco Rubio graduated from the University of Florida and University of Miami Law School. Jeb Bush? University of Texas. Rand Paul? Baylor and Duke. Tom Cotton attended Harvard and Harvard Law, and Ted Cruz hails from Princeton and Harvard.
But you and me? Nah. Can't have us common folk gettin' edumacated. Might start getting funny ideas. Nah, best leave the thinkin' to our betters...
Any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.
Of course not.
Everyone knows it's XSS nowadays. SQL injection is sooo 2010s.
Pretty much the same from my experience, though mine was only 15 years ago. CS back then was an elegant weapon for a more civilized age...
About the only security I ever did was for my first job where they gave me a lot of latitude... Made an application and installer (in C) that installed off of CD-ROM (or boy...). I didn't really have to, but I had the time, so I also wrote a username/password script to install the thing... However all the passwords were stored in a text file (which you could hide, or obscure), but again I had some time, so within it I set up an encryption routine that would decrypt and encrypt the text file as required for verification. I borrowed the actual encryption algorithm, I didn't have that much time! Anyway, all of it totally unnecessary, but it was interesting so I did it.
Perhaps the pollution in the US has been reduced by 50% as a result of government action, using their democratic mandate, while the increase in CO2 in China has come about as a result of their "free market" (i.e. capitalist) reforms.
Capitalism also requires the approval of government. It's largely through the government that ownership is defined in the first place. Without this, you have nothing to trade.
What is wrong with it? Well, the problem seems to be that those with large amounts of capital can use this to buy time from other people. And, over time, the rate at which the large capital blocks gain wealth is greater than the rate at which the overall economy grows. Eventually, we move into a situation were most of the wealth is in the hands of very few individuals, at which point, they control society and any notion of democracy disappears.
Don't worry about it, though, I am sure it will be a long time before we have such enormous disparities of wealth that we have to worry about this.
Are you suggesting that the USA is a socialist country? Because we throw a larger percentage of our population in cages for no good reason than any other country but China.
Are you referring to the hundreds of millions of people killed by 'free market forces' such as starvation, preventable disease, and war-profiteering?
Canada is also a social democracy - and more so since yesterday's Alberta elections.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
And if capitalism decrees that workers older than 40 should not be allowed to work any longer, we should salute capitalism because it has achieved optimum performance? Capitalism does a lot of things well, but it does a lot of things poorly as well. It underlies uninsurance companies cherry picking only healthy people, leaving government to pick up the tab on the uninsured and sick leftovers. Them includes many of those over 40 which no longer have jobs.
Actually, capitalism is blind to age, it is about supply and demand. On the other hand the actual managers involved in the decisions have their own bias and prejudice. Capitalism may cause many problems, but ageism isn't one of them.
Oh so your problem with capitalism is that some people do better than you ?
You of course neglect to mention that "Those large blocks of capital" are being put to work in industries creating goods and services and generally improving people's lot.
One cannot quantify nor even qualify morality in any sort of models. Which is why I propose that we stop insisting that we can quantify and qualify economic morality.
Does morality affect economics? Sure. To what degree? That is unknowable.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
Most often those are all one in the same.
Do you feel the same about Nazism?
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
Hehe, this reminds me of when I was a young buck, fresh out of school, and working for a small credit union. Since I was the only "expert" there, it was up to me to integrate / test a very expensive software system to handle our mortgage loans. I remember putting up quite a stink when I discovered special chars could be saved in the form fields. How could they be so incompetent! Clearly they should strip these chars out, and on the client-side no less! I even provided the JavaScript to do it. This resulted in several meetings between the big bosses and the vendors (which I was not invited to, of course). In the end no changes were made.
Boy what a fool I was at that age hahaha. (: don't sweat it kid, we all go through that stage in our life. Just make sure to learn from your mistakes, and you will be a pro in no time.
Cheers!
Fanboy Status: Apache Flex, C#, Eclipse, KDE, Pirate Party, Ron Paul, Slackware, Windows 7
Hire older developers, or even competent developers? That's a problem for the help. They're told to buy the cheapest labor by clueless MBAs and do their best.
Why? MBAs are idiots with degrees and high salaries. The worst kind. If it doesn't exist on a spreadsheet, and doesn't look like it'll get them next quarter's bonus, they simply don't care. Actual product development and sales mean nothing to these guys. They're looking to do something that *looks* impressive, wait for the inevitable every 18 month re-org, collect their money and leave the mess for the next guy to clean up. The next MBA fool makes it look like he's cleaning up and becomes a hero, and then gets his bonus. Win-win, from a management standpoint.
Welcome to America!
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
I code in longhand! and where's the punch for the paper tape?
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
As a 40+ developer getting job offers has (as of yet) not been a problem for me. Getting offers that equal my current salary (much less result in even a minor raise) is much, much harder.
Waltz, nymph, for quick jigs vex Bud.
Capitalism does a lot of things well... leaving government to pick up the tab
That might not be an example of capitalism.
They ... don't have modern college training in the latest security threats and program hacking methods.
Out of curiosity, where did your college professors fall on the age scale?
And they know exactly where the switches and routers are behind the drywall and above the false ceiling since the nineties.
Most network closets have a door. No need to rip open the walls and/or go through the crawlspace to get inside. If you ask the network admin nicely, you could get badge access to the door.
Maybe 1 year experience in 20 different things... which is not a bad thing. Show you can LEARN over and over and over again and don't only know one thing like C++, Java, etc.
For all the worry about age discrimination, H1B abuses, labor violations I've seen here and in other places. There is only one known solution to these issues. Unionization. Until software engineers gain collective bargaining rights, this is all just theory.
It's funny that a group of people that are more than comfortable with changing how people do their work and creating new products. don't think they can make a union work. Sure, they have flaws, but they have advantages as well.
The reason we talk about the 40 hour work week being ignored is because of unions demanding a reasonable amount of time off. Not because some companies that realized it was a good idea. The list goes on. Sure, there's been some really good attempts at rewrite history, but the truth is still there. Unions are an important counterbalance to corporate overreach and abuse.
"They have decades of experience (and specialist knowledge), they have a healthy disregard for office politics (but can still manage, when necessary), they're available, and they're (generally) stable."
but they have lives outside of work, are too highly paid, and refuse to work 80 hours per week any more. New grads, on the other hand, have no life outside work, can be easily manipulated into 80 hour weeks, and will work for 1/2 the pay and bennies that the 40 YO wants. The HR and accounting people do the math: two new grads will work 80 hours for the same pay one 40 YO will accept for working a 40 hour week. That 40 YO guy may be more productive than either of those grads but he can't keep up with two of them working twice as long as he does. See ya! I wouldn't want to be ya!
I've seen recently on LinkedIn that two of my ex-colleagues got promoted to "senior" positions in their new companies. The trouble is that neither of them has three years of experience. I've looked at the open positions at those companies, and indeed, they both advertize "senior" software developer positions and require only two years of experience. So I certainly could not get a job there - with my 15 years of experience, what would I be in their company? A jedi master?
What is worrying me is that in "regulated" industries, like electrical engineering, after two years of experience you would be happy if they would allow you to take the "state exam" to get the license. And what is especially worrying is that you need to pass a serious exam just to be licensed to design house electrical installations, which is actually not too complicate. But that also explains why house installations don't kill people every minute and why is typical software so buggy.
No sig today.
Ahm, quantifying morality is a pretty active area of research.
Here is how the H1B program works:
- Company desires to hire a cheaper employee
- Company finds an H1B candidate that fits their needs.
- Company crafts a job ad for the position that matches the candidate's qualifications precisely.
- Company posts ad for required time period.
- Company doesn't find any Americans who matches their qualifications precisely (regardless of them fitting their actual *need*)
- Company then legally hires H1B
Now I've known some great H1B employees and consider some of them good friends. Most of them are on the path to US citizenship, and I'm all for that--well-educated, hard-working, and great all-around human beings.
That said, the very idea that there are "no qualified workers" is total bullshit. H1B employees are cheaper, and once hired are effectively indentured servants. They are highly restricted in terms of being able to travel, move to another job, etc, so they are basically locked in with that employer, who can then screw them over all they want. If there are any issues they simply toss them overboard, leaving the employee stranded in the US without work and without any ability to get new work without going back home first (most of the time, there are some small exceptions).
Everyone is assuming that all "older" workers are experienced, have more family obligations, and are unwilling to learn new things.
What about all the people who are getting into development as a second or third career? I STARTED my CS degree at 45. Before that I had 12 years of experience as a network manager supporting hundreds of users. I was top in almost all of my classes and was often asked to tutor other students. Yes, the 22 year-olds asked me to tutor them, both because I knew it better AND because I could explain it better.
I have mature attitudes about writing clean code while still being creative in what I think can be done. One can be creative without being chaotic. I also have twelve years of experience helping users figure out how to use crappy user interfaces, so I also know what not do do UI-wise. My son is 34 years old and I am not in a relationship. I would love to just be able to hang out at the office all day working on code, eating catered meals, and talking with other developers. I am even willing to work cheap because it beats doing any other job for even less pay. So, I don't fit hardly any of the stereotypes.
There are going to be a lot more people like me coming into the development workforce. Hopefully, companies will be able to figure out what to do with us.
I'm 27 and I got promoted from head programmer to CIO since I also know networking and hardware support. So I would fire someone with your arrogant attitude in a heartbeat.
Unless of course the numbers work in such a way where those hiring feel they can a get better value out of younger people who are more predisposed to working long unpaid hours and have lower base salaries. The problem with blind capitalism and democracy is that it requires constant regulation and refactoring in order to facilitate a stable humane society; It's a delicate balance.
I laugh at inappropriate times.
even though I couldn't name a single line of code he taught us that year.
Well, I remember some code from my first programming class (in FORTRAN!):
I = I + 1
Man, I remember it like it was yesterday!
That is all.
It's not that simple. If too much wealth concentrates, it will lead to the usurping of democracy and anti-competitive behaviors. Government has to have the power and resources to keep other powers in check. It's like the old power struggles between kings and the dukes; If one side gets too powerful, there will be fracturing and bloodshed.
I laugh at inappropriate times.
No. Communism is the economic system in which individuals do not own any property - not simply the means of production.
If you're scared of your govt then you need to further restrict its powers
Vote 3rd Party in 2016 and beyond
Ouch, never mind then. I guess some people never grow out of their arrogant incompetence. BTW your approach to input protection is niave, and is a common rookie mistake. You are either full of shit, or a terrible CIO.
Fanboy Status: Apache Flex, C#, Eclipse, KDE, Pirate Party, Ron Paul, Slackware, Windows 7
That's why you have limited government so that powerful forces cannot use the government to enforce their wishes.
If you're scared of your govt then you need to further restrict its powers
Vote 3rd Party in 2016 and beyond
this is one of those articles where what the article says, and what people think, have a discrepancy. It reminds me of articles with titles like:
"Java developers claim uses no more memory than C++"
"C++ developers claim no more bugs than python"
"Python developers claim runs as fast as C"
I bring this up because people fear corporations. But silly them they don't fear governments. Governments can imprison you; can kill you. Corporations simply try to sell you stuff and try to avoid paying salaries by bringing in cheaper workers - and sometimes try to skirt safety laws. ALL free-market capitalists from Menger, to von Mises, to Hayek to Ayn Rand to Milton Friedman all had strong roles for government (though limited). Not one of them was an anarcho-capitalist.
If you're scared of your govt then you need to further restrict its powers
Vote 3rd Party in 2016 and beyond
I don't code that much these days, but the question is familiar. Why do you still code? Yet no one asks an architect, surgeon or lawyer that question.
Only some people go into software development because they have an inherent interest. Others go into it as a career path.
The former are usually the better developers. The former usually don't ask that question because they already know the answer, the work interests you. Admittedly some of the former have also moved on to management out of necessity.
I get this and would like to hire an older developer. The problem is that they are hard to find. Once upon a time one might have had success on alt.sysadmin.recovery. Today? How does one find older developers with web and *nix skills?
"Maybe 1 year experience in 20 different things... which is not a bad thing. Show you can LEARN over and over and over again "
But then, you can't offer 5 years of experience in any of those buzzwords, so you can only opt to entry positions... just to be discarded as soon as they realize your age.
It seems that nowadays basically nobody values the jack-of-all-trades approach.
Wouldn't it have to be so limited that it might as well not exist? Things like FDA, DoD, EPA simply will not work without significant power to back them up.
I laugh at inappropriate times.
Conflating communist dictators with socialists is like conflating the "Democratic Republic of Congo" with democracy. The Scandinavian countries are socialist and have been at the top of every standard of living survey for decades.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
One has already landed - she's in her forties. Strong, diverse skillset, Already proving herself to be the right choice after only a couple of weeks. I'm also offering to a specific contractor a conversion to employee. He's also in his forties, and has proven himself over and over in a very long project with us. These people aren't cheap, by any means. My budget is straining, but was able to make the case to my leadership.
I just interviewed three people for my last posting, A junior developer. Looking at three years in the industry with some operational support background. I had a huge number of resumes from people far further along in their careers, but I'm not considering them. Mine is a small team - just six people, soon to be 7. I need a less... developed... developer.
I like to think we're on the right track.
I could turn around and create a post with identical vitriol describing every last developer as cowboys trying in vain to defend their commoditized skillsets and high salaries, and who know nothing of how to run a business.
It would be as dismissive as yours and equally wrong. I've been a developer 17 years, and I do not have an MBA. But I know plenty of talented business types who move the wheels of organizations to make it possible for development to happen.
In order for there to be a union, you need specific job descriptions that are uniform across an industry. You need to define performance in a way that makes it very clear if somebody is fulfilling their job .Remember, performance analysis must be agreed on by all parties. The business, the employees, the unions... and there's no way in hell they would ever all get on board. As long as there's some "art" involved in judging that, it will never fly - and there's loads of art.
For instance, you have one guy who wrote a highly elegant, important application component in 5000 lines of code while somebody else created 50 thousand lines, most of it fragile auto-generated xml he neither understands, nor can troubleshoot. Assuming their profiles are essentially identical, who is performing, and who is not? If you just state that both are performing, and they are compensated in a close known band, it will eventually drive the talented one out the door. The exodus of the gifted will leave an ocean of mediocrity.
Software development as a profession just isn't in a state of maturation where unions could operate. Everything is just too damn fuzzy.
If you are considering athleticism as a metric for programming ability, the entire industry is fucked.
And by the way - I am 47 and was a jock in high school and college, military (USMC), and still workout quite a bit. I recently beat a couple of varsity swimmers in both the 500 and 1000 (back to back - they go to University of Maryland), swim 9 mile ocean swims every year with the Ocean City Maryland Beach patrol (might only do the 3 mile this year) swim across the Cheasapeake Bay every year, and regularly kike the AT - I did 20 miles of the Maryland section last weekend. Now, it is true that I can;t compete with my younger self, but.... I say bring it the fuck on.
BTW, biking is for pansies.
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
Enforce yes. Having an ever increasing mission creep no.
If you're scared of your govt then you need to further restrict its powers
Vote 3rd Party in 2016 and beyond
In the last decade of the century that just ended, a large company in the United States was considering adding domestic partners to their insurance policies as a way of attracting and retaining talent.
One of the arguments against adding them was the cost of HIV treatment and for those who could not be treated, end-of-life care (this was back in the day when treatment was frequently unsuccessful and end-of-life care was comparable to that of cancer hospice).
Someone made the counter-argument that maternity costs are generally lower among homosexual couples.
The company ran the numbers and the counter-argument trumped the original argument.
In any case, they were back to the original reason for doing it, which was to attract and retain employees.
Decades later, the company still exists and it's still in the Fortune 500.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Really? Are you that simpleminded?
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
More likely: capitalism has moved pollution to a place where it's cheaper.
No, you're wrong. Capitalism is the system where the means of production are in the hands of individuals. That's it. Free market (or better, competitive markets) are wholly independent of this notion. You can have a capitalist society that has no free trade. In effect, capitalist societies inherently converge to monopolies if there are no disruptive events (technology breakthroughs) or government regulation (promoting competitiveness, combatting price-fixing and other monopolistic practices).
Capitalism is non-coercive economic activity not directed by government. So, an anti-capitalist food co-op is a capitalist enterprise. People joined forces to create an enterprise (the very definition of in-corp-oration); they were not directed by the government; and they existed in freely -involved trade.
If you're scared of your govt then you need to further restrict its powers
Vote 3rd Party in 2016 and beyond
Your comment makes no sense. I've given a generally accepted definition of capitalism. Look it up. You apparently tack on other stuff such as competitive markets. Competitive markets are not at the core of capitalism (private ownership is), and I would argue that they're in principle independent. You can have capitalist anti-competitive enterprises (monopolies) and anti-capitalist competitive enterprises (your co-op example).
Personally I believe that competitive markets trump capitalism, and the reason that (American) people like to use the word capitalism is probably to stick it to Marx (who made the word popular).
I ask you to consider the statement "generally accepted definition." Generally accepted by whom? Defenders and promoters or capitalism or detractors? If capitalism that uses the sanction of government to prevent competition is not capitalism. The term for that is mercantilism.
If you're scared of your govt then you need to further restrict its powers
Vote 3rd Party in 2016 and beyond
Just look it up. Wikipedia is a start.
Again - that's not the definition given by Karl Menger, von Mises, Hayek, Ayn Rand, Friedman, Rothbard and others.
But you say I should go by wikipedia,
If you're scared of your govt then you need to further restrict its powers
Vote 3rd Party in 2016 and beyond