Slashdot Mirror
Do Old Programmers Need To Keep Leaping Through New Hoops?
Nerval's Lobster writes: In recent years, it seems as if tech has evolved into an industry that lionizes the young. Despite all the press about 21-year-old rock-star developers and 30-year-old CEOs, though, is there still a significant market for older programmers and developers, especially those with specialized knowledge? The answer is "yes," of course, and sites like Dice suggest that older tech pros should take steps such as setting up social media accounts and spending a lot of time on Github if they want to attract interest from companies and recruiters. But do they really need to go through all of that? If you have twenty, thirty, or even forty years of solid tech work under your belt, is it worth jumping through all sorts of new hoops? Or is there a better way to keep working — provided you don't already have a job, that is, or move up to management, or get out of the game entirely in order to try something startling and new.
If you have X years of programming experience, then you should be able to sell yourself based upon that.
Social media and such would be useful to programmers JUST STARTING THEIR CAREERS.
BUT! If you are an older programmer you DO need to keep expanding your knowledge. Learn newer languages / systems.
sites like Dice suggest....: "Do the same thing as the young folks"!!!
a. Hit up social media (really, a lot of folks mislead on social media, it's a freaking ad show, we had this discussion on trust awhile back on /.)
b. Speak up w/the megaphone on github (really, a lot of folks "reinvent the string class" on this site, it's hard to find good code except well establish projects that moved to github, it's a freaking ad show). Github is a love and hate relationship.
Dice conclusion: Sell Sell Sell. That's what the youngins' do. What they're selling is not experience, but what you want to hear, "the potential possibilities". Especially if the company (customer) is a startup, since everyone will be looking for a new job in 6-8 months anyway. Doesn't matter if you're selling fact or fiction, just close the freakin deal! That's the attitude nowadays.
There used to be something call a profession, you gained experience in it and then companies would be able to gauge it and even reach out to you via academic societies, professional registries, tech user groups or even unions. Doesn't exists anymore thanks to HR depts....
There has been quite a discussion (including in CIO magazine) about old programmers being exactly the right people to deal with "ancient" legacy systems. There is still a lot of systems in current use written in COBOL out there, even COBOL that predates the ANSI version. FORTRAN is still surprisingly strong in the scientific community.
The article mentions programmers continuing in niches. Me, for example. I've discovered a very nice corner where I work with RS-232 serial ports and the mistakes engineers/programmers 20-30 years my junior inflict on the community. Schools don't teach the National Semiconductor 16550 UART anymore; not to mention all the errors made trying to utilize the FIFO capabilities. (It's not engineers using the chips themselves, it's the ASIC people using the 16550 from the cell libraries!)
I'm on the wrong side of 60, yet I've not decided when I'm going to retire...if I retire. I may just decide that, as long as I can find people who need my skills, I'll keep going until they carry me out feet-first.
I think that it is more about chasing the flavour-of-the-month.
Is it enough to be on AOL?
No? How about MySpace?
Okay, is LiveJournal acceptable then?
And so forth.
If you're looking for YOUNGER programmers then you look for them where YOUNG people hang out.
But don't demand that OLDER programmers try to socialize the way that younger people do.
To be honest, as an "old" programmer, I do not have any trouble keeping up. But I am not special -- anyone who makes the effort can keep up. I think that is the point of the Dice article cited in the post -- you can keep up and it is not that hard to do so. And you can change you job with the times. I have worked in my fundamental area of physics, then process engineering, then metrology, and now programming and communications. For the software portions of my work, since starting in 1969 I have used 8 languages, on 7 operating systems.Toss in a few variations for different frameworks. So long as I can read, I can keep up. As for the "dead at 35" meme expressed in the cited InfoWorld article (which the article author Neil McAllister promptly kicks to the curb), I just say "See here kid, I'll retire when I'm good and ready."
-- Perhaps I see less than some, but more than many.
"Companies say they can't find enough qualified candidates. "
Law of supply and demand affects salaries. Companies that have not learned this, can't find qualified candidates, because they're not paying enough.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
In recent months, it seems as if Nerval's Lobster has evolved into a submitter that lionizes single-source stories based on Dice advertisements. Despite all the press about Nerval's Lobster only posting Dice stories, is there still a significant market for older submitters, especially those who post actual news stories? The answer is "yes," of course, and sites like the comments section of Slashdot suggest that Nerval's Lobster should take steps such as posting something that isn't a single-source story from Dice and spending a lot of time on submitting actual quality stories if they want to not be mocked by commenters. But do they really need to go through all of that? If you have twenty, thirty, or even forty years of Dice link submissions, is it worth jumping through all sorts of new hoops? Or is there a better way to keep working — provided you don't already have a way to bypass the editorial system, that is, or move up to management, or just keep posting Dice links?
The last time I jumped through a new hoop, I broke my hip.
I object to that article, and to the next reply.
Yes, you should stay current. That doesn't necessarily mean GitHub, but you should at least have a pretty good idea of what GitHub is, what it does and how to use it.
Here's the thing. If you want to get a programming job today, chances are you'll need to pass through some kind of "white board" programming test. That is, a 1-3 hour session where the hiring manager and team will sit you down and ask you to come up with code and architecture to solve a real world problem. That means that you'll need to be able to think on your feet. It can be a terrifying, humbling experience if you are not prepared for it or even if you are. So, the best thing you can do is be prepared.
If you're selling yourself as a Java developer, you had damned well know Java inside out. Yeah, that means crack open a recent website and read up not just on all the fundamentals you've forgotten but also read up on some of the newer stuff that Java's added in the last few years. Walk through some sample interview questions on the web.
Secondly, work on your people skills. You'll have to be able to explain yourself clearly and concisely. You can be a brilliant technical person but if you cannot be understood, you won't get the job. During the white board session, people aren't looking for perfect syntax. What they are looking for is how you approach a problem, how you break it down, and how you communicate your path through the problem. Again, this all comes down to good communication skills as much as how well you sling code.
For the record: I'm a 53 year old programmer. I just "retired" from one company and landed in another with a 20% pay raise and better opportunities to move upwards. And yeah, I did have to pass a grueling 3 hour "white board" test. It can be done.
Jesus wept.
It's not what's "hard" about it. The problem is that you have to live with yourself afterwards, with a bunch of strangers sending you highly-refined stupidity and looking for "follow-backs" and "likes" and "favorites". People posting pictures of their goddamn dinner. Then there are the bots dressed up as humans. Saying stupid cut and paste friendliness, but you don't want to block them because it just doesn't feel right and then it'll bring down the number of accounts that follow you to single digits.
For me, social media always brings to mind the quote by the poet Charles Bukowski:
You are welcome on my lawn.
The problem is that the HR departments want X years in specific technology.
You still go through HR for jobs?
That's so darn cute!
Yet -- the programmers I know are all over 40 and can code rings around anyone at any Silicon Valley company. Literally. They don't desire fame, fortune, or limelight. These guys work for the likes of IBM, Cray, old-school companies. You will never hear their names or read about them in print. However, they code for the most stable platforms this earth has ever seen.
One old guy I studied under could pull strings of code from his memory that literally astounded me. He was "retired" at 50 because he didn't fit in. I was about 30 at the time. When he left, the department went to hell inside of six months. I left shortly thereafter. It was begrudgingly admitted by the younger "leadership" that Dan really did know what he was doing and that perhaps the younger programmers could have learned a thing or two. To this day, I still use skills and techniques Dan taught me. He was older, and old school. He was pedantic, well read, knew programming pitfalls, could see mistakes coming, could tell if a compiler would have issues with code, could debug better than anyone I've know before or since. This guy could spot errors in code like they were highlighted. He was uncanny. I'm still somewhat bitter they let him go. I heard rumours, but never confirmed that the younger team leads felt threatened by him. Good for them. He was worth at least 10 of them and had the knowledge of at least that many. Where did this guy go to college? He didn't. I think this pissed off more people than the fact he was a quiet rockstar in his own right.
21-year-old rock-star developers
Burn out by 30 by the grace of corporations that bleed them dry and recreational narcotics that render them fast but futile for learning anything beyond ruby. the rockstars are great, until you put them in front of project managers, change management boards, and sysops with more than a decade of experience. At that point, its shreiking autism barfing buzzwords and pulling six figures.
30-year-old CEOs
do not a company make. a 30something CEO is about as stable as exchange on windows NT. As a corporation at best you have bragging rights to a token with an idea. At worst you have a neurotic powdekeg with no formal indoctrination in business at all. The best they can do is show up missing on a hike through the himalayas or some skydiving team building synergy pumping cockthirsty vacation in the third world. At worst, they leave your business without a continuity plan after insulting an ISIS warlord on the Syrian border when explaining their love of dubstep.
Good people go to bed earlier.
If you want a mobile client to send 180 character messages out to millions of people, hire a young programmer,
If you want your networks to support messages going out to millions of people, all the time, every time, hire an old programmer.
If you want a really cool interactive website where employees can manage the benefits and see how much is in their 401k, hire a young programmer.
If you want your payroll to run and people to be paid accurately, every time, all the time, hire an old programmer.
If you want a fancy game, hire a young programmer.
If you want a system to manage the business that sells the game, hire an old programmer.
If you want an employee that sees stuff as fun toys and re-invents the wheel at every chance, hire a young programmer.
If you want an employee who understands that this is a business and that people's livelihoods depends on it being right, all of the time, hire an old programmer.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
I am 67 years old, I have more than 45 years experince. My first "personal computer" was an IBM 360/20 with four keypunch machines.
I have a web site (www.andycanfield.com). This year I learned Facebook (bad user interface, dumb pictures). Two months ago I had a stroke, so I'm typing this using 'onboard', which I learned YESTERDAY.
My career path for the past 25 years was learned from the best Patpong hookers: "Find somebody who's got money, and keep him happy. The money will take care of itself."
The company is still making money running software I wrote 20 years ago, and they know it. This week they want a new feature - of course I agreed. I support their servers weekly through my home Internet connection. I live in the town where they asked me to live 20 years ago.
My wife I picked out myself.
Leaping through new hoops? No. Looping through new heaps, on the other hand...
This is tough, but you need to hear it... It's not the industry. It's you.
You didn't lose an IT career, because you never had one. By your own description, you don't have control over the technologies that you've tried to use. I also notice that you didn't mention any business domain knowledge.
I could sugar-coat this and tell you that it isn't fair, but this really how economies have always worked. If you want a job, you have to bring something of value to the relationship. It is not up to potential employers to train you so that you can take their money. Face the fact that with less than 3 years of experience, no evident business focus, and weak technical skills, you rate as entry level at best.
Figure out what you want to do, learn how to do it, and find opportunities to use your actual skills. You may need to make tradeoffs and compromises along the way, so think about your choices carefully.Getting started is tough--I've done it more than once--but putting it off just makes it harder.
Last, if I was interviewing you, and you blamed your lack of success on the ethnicity of your co-workers, I would end the interview and not call you back.
I know it is hard to hear criticism, but I hope it helps. All the best in your search.