Do Old Programmers Need To Keep Leaping Through New Hoops? 242
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.
Stupid question. (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:Stupid question. (Score:5, Informative)
The problem is that the HR departments want X years in specific technology. I still remember years ago an ad wanting a programmer with 10 years of Java programming experience...and Java was just turning five.
The last time I was looking for work, I found ads that were so specific that I surmise the hiring person had a specific person in mind, but was required to put job openings out to the world. I do know one instance where the job was intended for a H1-B visa applicant; no way they were going to hire a citizen for the position.
Yes, I agree that people should continue to learn new stuff. I'm picking up Python as part of my current job.
You still go through HR for jobs? (Score:5, Insightful)
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!
Re:You still go through HR for jobs? (Score:5, Insightful)
This is marked troll but it is right on the money.
I have been on the job market for the last 6 months due to an imminent redundancy coming my way (I was lucky to have a lot of notice). After 6 months my resume and experience didn't even land me an interview, yet a phone call or two with a few acquaintances and even to a vendor netted me 2 actual offers.
Re:You still go through HR for jobs? (Score:5, Insightful)
Exactly.
When people talk about the "hidden job market" - be aware it's real. No, you do not go to a website and there's no "magic" way to look at the "hidden job listings". Those don't exist. There is a market, and if you've got the experience and the knowledge, it can land you a job quite easily.
Thing is, to access it requires soft skills. I know there's a strong temptation to "bottle up" and be one with the machine, but you have to realize that your next job will come from your coworkers. So do socialize with them, do spend time going out on lunches together, make friends and be civil.
Because when it comes time to jump ship, being able to call a friend or an acquaintance is what will get you the job. Sometimes it may be more runabout - you got a job from a friend-of-a-friend-of-a-friend who heard you're looking around and knows someone is needing someone.
And yes, this job market is hidden. Because if you're good, companies will make a job for you. Their public postings may be slim, but going in the back door, especially at smaller companies, may create a job just for you.
The HR and job posting thing will never find the best candidates (only the good ones amongst those looking). It's why companies have referral bonuses because they know great employees don't answer job ads. All it takes is someone putting your resume on a manager's desk, say "we need this guy" and you're in.
Re:You still go through HR for jobs? (Score:5, Insightful)
It's a bit OT but this effectively dispels the myth that hiring is a meritocracy. It's often more about who you know, and who you are known to. That's why companies are making so much effort to improve their hiring practices and diversity levels - otherwise they end up just hiring more people like the ones they already have, rather than the best ones from a wide pool.
As you say, many HR departments are clueless which really doesn't help.
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I suppose you could view it slightly differently as "What is merit". If you define someone's worth solely by the quality and quantity of work they turn out, maybe. The thing is the "who you know" bit often times is a helpful proxy for "soft skills".
As a manager, if one of my team comes up to me and say "Hey, I worked with Joe at Acme, and he worked well with us, turned out high quality code, participated in the scrum, and wrote tight test cases." I'm going to take that interview. Now if Joe was a right a
It is absolutely a meritocracy (Score:2)
It's often more about who you know, and who you are known to.
But that is only if THEY KNOW YOU ARE GOOD to start with.
I've had lots of people I knew from working with them, ask me for references or if there were openings where I was. Some of them simply were not good programmers so I just ignored the request or politely declined...
It's not like just knowing someone is enough, in the programming world people remember who was good to work with, and that is the reason why going through people you know can wo
Re: You still go through HR for jobs? (Score:2)
I know it's fashionable to hate recruiters. But I've worked with a lot of them that specialize in recruiting local developers. I either email them or call them, they send me relevant job leads, I tell them which ones I want to apply for, and 100% of the ones apply for I get at least to the in person interview phase. I've only had one job denial using this method. A few others wouldn't match my salary requirements.
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HR departments are what companies use to ensure that no one with any serious technical competence even gets interviewed.
They're designed to screen for a standardized product, but the best technical people are anything but standard.
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Let me disabuse you of your incorrect notion. My last four jobs did not involve an HR department. (1) One was a "promotion" from freelance to full-time. (2) One was a contract gig "promotion" to full time. (3) One was from a newspaper ad sent to me by a friend, who knew the owner of the business. (4) One was an equipment co-location customer who got so dependent on me that he hired me to continue what I had been doing as "customer service".
Indeed, looking back on my career I have very little contact with
Interpreting requirements (Score:2)
I go through recruiters. With X years of programming experience, they come to me. But HR are the ones who gave them the job requirements, usually.
I've been around long enough, though, that I can interpret what HR says into what's actually needed. 5 years of jQuery experience? How about 15 years of object-oriented javascript programming, that oughta be good. I can familiarize myself with a specific library as needed.
Reading through the job requirements from a recruiter is like being at the end of a game of t
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Another thing is HR departments use social media to put together a file on applicants so that they can justify the enormous amount of time they spend on social media during work hours playing Farmville or whatever the latest timesink is.
No FaceSpace profile and the time required to look you up exceeds their attention span.
However, if you are have been in the workplace for several years sometimes there are ways around the gatekeepers
s\workplace\workforce\ (Score:2)
I'm sure you all know what I meant but some people like to complain.
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I still remember years ago an ad wanting a programmer with 10 years of Java programming experience...and Java was just turning five.
If you run into that problem again, change your resume and put "10 years of Java on it." If anyone asks you about it, smile and explain the situation. Match BS with BS.
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The problem is that the HR departments want X years in specific technology. I still remember years ago an ad wanting a programmer with 10 years of Java programming experience...and Java was just turning five.
Yeah, some of them are just idiots, but some of them are evil. They do that on purpose. Then they can fire you later for misrepresenting yourself. Are you really going to go to court and show that nobody could have met their requirements? Odds are against it.
Remember, HR is not your friend. In fact, they are probably fucking scum. You have to be scum in order to do what they do — that is, treat humans like objects.
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larger companies just don't bother with that anymore even.
what they do? they arrange a subcontractor to hire you. the subcon is owned by the middle-level bosses friend. the friend gets 20-40% of what the company pays and you get the rest and you don't get the redundancy protection and employee from the big company would get.
or if you're unlucky a subcon-subcon! has happened. the first level subcon the big company had a contract had their own layoffs going. a fucking stupid arrangement but that's what happen
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Pfft. I got that beat with my current gig. It's pretty amusing how many levels of indirection there are between me and the ones financing the project. Essentially, I'm a subcontractor of a subcontractor of a subcontractor of a company that's being financed by a large conglomerate.
It's fine as long as you take it for what it is. It's also nice that the hours are flexible and capped at 40 hours a week. I don't begrudge the company I'm subcontracting with for taking a small cut, because I never would have
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This is the 21st Century. If you only worked 80 hours a week, you're a slacker and they don't want you.
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Re:Stupid question. (Score:5, Interesting)
Social media and such would be useful to programmers JUST STARTING THEIR CAREERS.
The only "social media" you need to be active on as a senior dev is LinkedIn. Github seems irrelevant unless your career is built on open source development.
BUT! If you are an older programmer you DO need to keep expanding your knowledge. Learn newer languages / systems.
Yep: it is important, to keep your skills and problem domain modern, unless you want to be constrained to an ever-shrinking niche. I started as a mainframe dev, and while a lot of the concepts are still useful (since the Cloud is just the new mainframe), none of the specific skills are. Even C++ is starting to become a bit niche, with new projects that fit in the gap between C and managed languages becoming rare (but as long as Google does a lot of C++, it's not really a worry, as enough people copy Google). Thank goodness jobs requiring COM or CORBA experience are mostly gone.
Bit by bit, specific technical pieces become irrelevant, so it's important to keep up. Can you write a horizontally scalable application in the cloud? Bit by bit, the new stuff becomes more important (once time enough has passed to weed out the fads). There's lots of money to be made as a senior dev with a deep understanding of all the new stuff, as that's a high-demand, low-supply job.
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Yes, but LinkedIn profiles are often a mix of lies, damned lies and blatant advertising.
For a bit of giggle look up the linkedin profile of the person that "lost" all the white house emails a few years back. Data recovery expert!
Re:Stupid question. (Score:4, Interesting)
The only "social media" you need to be active on as a senior dev is LinkedIn.
I was on LinkedIn for a while, and it was worthless, IMO. I only got two kinds of contacts: From people who wanted me to follow their vanity blog, and from employment agents who seemed unable to read the parts of my CV that said "no Windows, no contracts", because all they had to offer was 6 month contracts and mostly for crappy Windows positions.That, and 'DevOps', which seems to stand for "a person who has vast knowledge about everything, but is willing to work in an assembly line style setup for a pittance". Social media is for navel-grazers.
Yep: it is important, to keep your skills and problem domain modern, unless you want to be constrained to an ever-shrinking niche.
However, the constant focus on programming languages is probably misplaced. We should concentrate on programming skill instead, and as senior developers, we should know a lot about design patterns. That is why technologies like C++ templates and Boost, or Java EE, are still very important: they provide a standardised platform for using design patterns and frameworks. They are also very difficult to fully master, but that gives an advantage to anyone who does.
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You don't have to accept every contact request. If you restrict to people you really know Linked In is invaluable for keeping track of coworkers haven't seen in years, or for an old fart like me, decades.
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Those who don't put that on their resume, the first question I ask is "what was the last program you wrote for yourself, why did you write it, etc"
If you
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It's not only a stupid question, it's mostly a stupid assumption. The 90's are over, most IT workers worth a damn are pushing 40 and the best lead/devs/archs are well past that.
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Well Admiral Grace Hopper was more or less just getting started at 50 (by inventing COBAL)
One would think that Elders are best keeping the "new puppies" from running about chasing their tails.
Re:Stupid question. (Score:4, Funny)
Well Admiral Grace Hopper was more or less just getting started at 50
I loved an interview of her a few years ago:
Q: "What led you to join the Navy at a mature age?"
A: "World War Two."
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Yes means no (Score:3, Interesting)
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....
Old programmers for old systems (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
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ur old lol
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Niches indeed.
I've been programming for over 30 years, 15 of it paid (started when I was 11...). While I may not be able to write in Java for a servlet under tomcat like the guys in our "formerly known as mainframe" area do, I also understand the Web better than they do - mixing SSL and non-SSL stuff on a page, using a simple target=_blank for a link instead of using javascript to open a new window and then load a page, etc.
Would I hire me to work on a payroll system, student registration system, etc? No.
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Please don't mix SSL and non-SSL on a page. It's a potential exploit vector. There's a way to get your non-critical content served over SSL too.
And PLEASE don't go popping open new windows. I freakin' hate that and the only way you'll get me to flee your site even quicker is to put a self-playing Flash object(s) on your page.
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I'm on the wrong side of 60, yet I've not decided when I'm going to retire...if I retire.
There's no wrong side of 60!
One side let's you yell, "Get off my damn lawn!" and the other allows "Get off my damn lawn, you punk kids!"
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Old Programmers Own It (Score:2)
Old programmers own the company. Or you, an old or young programmer, work for them.
Keeping up (Score:5, Informative)
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I've been programming since 1965. I did programming 'cause I liked it. Then I started taking high-paying 3 month contract jobs and it all went to hell. Once I escaped the electronic sweatshop I started to enjoy programming again. These days, on the verge of retirement, I do almost no contract programming (unless the job is very interesting) and today I am involved in a small number of projects that totally interest me.
What is the outcome of marketing your skills on social media, etc.? Mostly un-inspired pos
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Yeah - this. change, adaptation and innovation are part of the game. Getting stuck in the same position, using the same technology on the same project is boring, unfulfilling and ultimately dangerous for developers. You can't know all the technologies, but you should keep an eye on technology and learn to use the ones that can really be beneficial. Not always easy. But if you are a Cobol programmer you might still be able to learn a living, but it will not be developing exciting new applications. If anythin
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I'm 50+, a lead developer in a company where most of the developers are young enough to be my kids. Aside from that (which I'll admit is a very weird feeling at times), there doesn't seem to be any sort of "get the old fart out of here" vibe coming from them. I get pulled aside on occasion by one of them or another and they'll ask something along the lines of "here's what I'm thinking of doing, what's your opinion? I mean, is that a good way to approach the problem?", etc. The ones on my team are there beca
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It's not rocket science. Anyone unable or willing to retrain themselves as tech shifts is useless. The best part is that if you stick around all the old tech comes back which then gives you an 'edge'. MongoDB? That's just hierarchical databases with poor ACID compliance. Graph DBs? Those were once called network DBs. Functional programming is in vogue again. Craplets are back as apps. VMs? See IBM VM OS. Programming languages that compile to byte code? See UCSD Pascal. And 90% of the code I see written by
Re: Keeping up (Score:2)
I was in a position a few years back where I got very comfortable. I was able to do some amazing work, but it was with the same technologies. Even though that tech was aging, we held back replacing it and I kept from learning new stuff.
One day, I realized how far behind the curve I was and that - were I to find myself needing a new job - how unmarketable my skills were. So I put in some time and effort to catch up. I wouldn't say I'm 100% caught up now (partly because
Re:Keeping up (Score:5, Funny)
I was in that situation and the person with young eyes took a photo with their phone and zoomed in.
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Thats basically it. If you're a new dev out of school, you're learning all the new stuff.
If you're an older dev, you can either learn new stuff, or stick with the old. If you don't know the new stuff, you're obsolete. If you learn the new stuff, AND know the old, you're among the most valuable person in the industry and will be getting harassed by people trying to hire you continually.
Software Engineers can make enough money to stick in the top 3-5% of earners. You don't get that much by doing a 9-5 job whe
From the 2nd article (Score:5, Insightful)
"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.
Re:From the 2nd article (Score:5, Insightful)
Companies that have not learned this
Companies fully understand what they are doing.
It's called 'lying'.
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>Law of supply and demand affects salaries. Companies that have not learned this, can't find qualified candidates, because they're not paying enough.
Companies are completely aware of supply and demand. Not being able to find good candidates is the excuse they give. The real reason why companies want H1-B's is because it increases the supply of high tech labor. Increasing the supply of any good or service, keeping the demand constant will reduce the price of the good or service. This is basic ECON-101. In this case, the service being sold is high tech labor. Increasing the supply of people seeking high tech employment reduces the average wage for h
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otoh if the supply is too expensive to keep the product viable, then in effect there is no market due to there not being cheap enough supply.
rarely is this the case with software though of course.
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Actually, companies don't want to spend or wait for training in their specific tool stacks. They want instant plug-in programmers.
If they can select from the entire world, they are more likely to find such. Whether that's realistic or fair or not is another thing: they want what they want and lobby for it because they can.
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Actually, companies don't want to spend or wait for training in their specific tool stacks. They want instant plug-in programmers.
If they can select from the entire world, they are more likely to find such. Whether that's realistic or fair or not is another thing: they want what they want and lobby for it because they can.
Actually, considering the laundry-list requirements, even the entire planet isn't big enough. They're demanding statistical impossibilities.
What they get are people who are willing to lie to get the job.
Outside of a few things like politics, advertising and the executive suite, strong lying skills aren't generally considered as vital assets.
Do old Nerval's Lobsters need to keep submitting? (Score:5, Funny)
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 (Score:5, Funny)
The last time I jumped through a new hoop, I broke my hip.
Constant learning (Score:2)
That's what it's about. Enjoying the learning experience keeps it flowing.
Either that or learn COBOL. That shit ain't going away any time soon and it pays well.
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"This guy's shouting at me like a rich COBOL dev on anti-inflammatries"
Keep up your verbal and written skills too.... (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
Confusing the problem: (Score:2)
The problem isn't just that the tech industry lionizes youth, it's also that they're awfully eager to feed age and experience to the lions.
as a 107 year old programmer... (Score:3)
Old programmers don't have to work. We're "consultants", sitting on the beach, collecting big fat fees for making the occasional modification to legacy code written in some obscure language. The best is, har har, when they hire us to document the code....we throw in so much bullshit into the docs that only a brother in our secret order can decode it. Do you remember Y2K? Yeah, that was us! The year 2038 problem is also going to be a big money-maker, even moreso than the pile of IPv4 space we're sitting on. Of course, it doesn't work out as well for all who enter the field. I see some old VMS programmers begging for beer money and looking for scraps of VT102's in Maynard...tough for them. Others have moved on to new careers, such as real estate agents, journalists, or porn stars, I know one feller that leveraged his way into being a big-city bus-driver, and pulls in just as much doing that as he did slinging bits at Wang, but for a lot less effort.
What pisses me off as an older programmer (Score:2)
is the trash younger programmers put out and think they have created a user interface. Problem is, the younger programmers don't understand how users think and produce something the YP likes but can't be figured out by anyone else. I have to work with new software every day produced by YP's and it usually makes me want to vomit.
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Yep, that was UX "experts" feeling their oats. It's a self-correcting problem when a company actually tries to *sell* that nonsense, fortunately enough. We're still in the correcting phase with Windows 10, and will only be purged once the last vestiges of flat, ugly styling gives way to a saner aesthetic. Maybe something with borders and gradients.
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The real issue is that "done!" is what Management wants.
As far as they're concerned, if you can slap together a pretty UI in 2-3 days, they're impatient to have it in production by the end of the week so you can move on and get the next thing "done!".
Forget the horrible UI, the backend is usually an unstable insecure mess. But since nobody sees that until your database shows up on Wikileaks, who cares?
Today's platforms are sufficiently abstract and helpful that detailed documentation to the level that old-t
Age Discrimination is Real (Score:3)
For almost 14 years, there has been a justice on the U.S. Supreme Court who used to chair the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC). While heading the EEOC he held up some 20,000 age-discrimination complaints until the statute of limitations for filing lawsuits expired.
Yet there are ways to hide your age until you actually sign-on as an employee. Never discuss any part of your career that ended more than 10 years ago. Touch up your gray hair; Clairol (or some other brand) is your friend. Men should touch up their mustaches and beards, too. (But DO NOT resort to comb-overs, toupees, or other ways to hide your baldness.) You can readily claim your college degrees, but do not mention when you earned them.
Another area for caution is your salary history. Avoid discussing this. Take the position that you prefer to consider total compensation, including fringe benefits. Also indicate that past compensation might have been earned for an effort different from the one you are being considered. If you need the job and are willing to work for less than you used to make, do not allow your prospective employer use your past salary to disqualify you.
Also, remember that old dogs do indeed learn new tricks. If you are experienced in three computer languages and three operating systems, the next one will be very easy to learn. In any case, the old tricks are sometimes very valuable.
See my http://www.rossde.com/unemploy... [rossde.com]. This might be somewhat dated, but the overall content could prove useful.
67 (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
If you're and older developer (Score:2)
avoid all web work. Thats where all the young guns go because its what they all think is cool, even though its actually as boring as F.
More like crawling through a ventilation system (Score:2)
I came to software industry quite late at the age of 27. I worked for number of web development project in Java. And I was fired a month ago saying I am "not a good fit for the team".
The team in question is full of fresh grads (and I was the only non-chinese person), who are willing to work 18 hours a day, 6 days a week; tech leads and managers are around my age, and still they can't do a simple project without a major re-write 2 weeks before going live. Since I don't speak fluent Java, I was often look dow
The breakup speech (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Quit whining and grow up. (Score:2)
"Spending a lot of time on Github" ... WTF is that supposed to be?
As far as I can tell, Github is way better than the classic mailinglist, because it has a web-ui you can use everywhere and the code is right next to the discussion you're having. If anything, I spend less time on github than on mailinglists. I can post a bug in an instant, if I run into one and it get's resolved faster than ever because Github is a godsend of a ubiquitous FOSS pipeline.
If you think Github is a "new hoop" you have a problem.
No, but ... (Score:3, Funny)
"new hoops" (Score:2)
Oh this is about social media. I thought they meant hoops like wading through a bunch of ObjC and Java bullshit in order to have your main() entry point and go into a loop that runs your program.
What you know, who you know? Both. (Score:3)
It's not who you know that will necessarily get you a new job.
It's both plus having the ability to communicate in a reasonable manner.
When you are "experienced" and have quite a few years of development behind you, a decent developer will have built up a list of friends from previous or current jobs. Hopefully, these friends respect your ability to develop. When it comes time to obtain a new job, hitting up those friends is an invaluable resource. I have hired several colleagues from previous encounters in this manner. I have even hired the same guy twice. Each time I moved jobs, I pulled him in behind me. I have also been hired twice thru personal references myself.
Just think about it. Do you think an interview is much more than a crapshoot? You are trying to judge the suitability of a candidate based upon a few hours of interaction. Wouldn't you rather judge someone based upon their past performance of which you (or a friend you trust) are familiar, having previously worked with them?
I'm not saying that an old dog shouldn't learn new tricks. Far from it. It's every developer's responsibility to maintain their skill set. I am extolling the virtues of building a network of past/current colleagues who might be of help to you in the future, just as you might be of help to them.
Stop listening to all the shit, Whip out your dick (Score:2)
That's motherfucking right. Don't listen to shit like "you must know all the new languages". Really ? What the fuck does any language have that C++ does not. I know Assembler, C, C++ and perl. I dare someone here to tell me that I need a new language. I double dare you! When I go to some interview I make them cry like babies. I was there when there was no Solaris, just SunOS. I started with Solaris 2.3. I wrote my own device drives for Linux Kernel 0.9xxx. Who the fuck will try and make me feel bad about h
Yep, you do (Score:3)
Take it from a 50YO programmer, you have to keep learning, or else you end up out on the street looking for jobs. Joke? Even if you do, you are competeing against 20 YOs who have the same amount of experience as you do in the "New" stuff, and companies don't want old folks
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Re:Uh, what's the problem? (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
SJW, Randi Harper in particular. My opinions on my social media accounts are my own and have nothing to do with my code or how I code. I don't need doxxed and fake rape reports being called in (as happened to a FreeBSD Developer [freebsd.org]) for making an off handed comment on Twitter or have something buried in my comment history.
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There's nothing you posted in that link about fake rape reports or doxxing.
Also, what kind of barbarian has a 13 line signature in addition to the PGP signature?
Re:Uh, what's the problem? (Score:5, Interesting)
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:
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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.
That's not the half of it.
If you think GitHub is bad, you should try getting on social media. Those things are even worse there. The only saving grace to social media is that most of those people aren't recruiters looking for "full stack engineers" on the next "facebook++".
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GitHub doesn't have anyone posting their dinner.
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And if you're a developer that does anything in a non-windows environment, you should have some sort of git account, because you should be using git.
Even if you're a Windows developer, you should have a git account and you should be using git. Even Microsoft [github.com] are doing development work in the open using GitHub.
Re:Dice's Thibault needs clicks (Score:2)
Dice's Thibault needs clicks. That's what's hard.
That's why Dice may soon sell Slashdot, failure to monetize, and this story is an attempt to capitalize on as much market share before the sale goes through.
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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 fi
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It's not unique to programming. It's everywhere. Good looking young fresh faces sell newspapers and magazines, the older face of experience does not. For instance, take music - predominantly young acts are promoted, and older acts that are making new music that's arguably better are ignored. See the headline "21 year old entrepreneur starts X business" - but never see the headline "50 year old entrepreneur starts X business" etc. The obsession with youth is human nature, not something unique to the computer
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Are you me? Your first line is part of my biography. TI's Extended Basic was where it was at, and I did quite a bit of coding on Commodore's as well.
I don't believe you are in a position to claim that ageism in IT has been a problem for 30 years though, you would have been around 10 years old then. Unless you are claiming that 10 year old's were getting jobs rather than proper adults.
Old Programmers Vs Young Programmers (Score:5, Informative)
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.
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If you want an employee that sees stuff as fun toys and re-invents the wheel at every chance, hire a young programmer.
This isn't true anymore. Young programmers are obsessed with showing what they know, which means doing things the accepted way, which means using a framework. It's safe. It shows that you've learned something that someone can quiz you on. It also means you've saddled your employer with another technology to support and that you've spent more time learning a framework than the problem was worth, but your resume is buzzword compliant.
An old programmer would have gotten the thing done in a fraction of the time
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If you want an employee that sees stuff as fun toys and re-invents the wheel at every chance, hire a young programmer.
This isn't true anymore. Young programmers are obsessed with showing what they know, which means doing things the accepted way, which means using a framework. It's safe. It shows that you've learned something that someone can quiz you on. It also means you've saddled your employer with another technology to support and that you've spent more time learning a framework than the problem was worth, but your resume is buzzword compliant.
An old programmer would have gotten the thing done in a fraction of the time, created far less code and used technology that is easy to hire, but he'd also be ridiculed by the young programmer for not keeping up.
"Not invented here" isn't a problem with the young programmer anymore. "Afraid to invent it here" or "doesn't know how to invent it here" is more like it.
Haha you're hilarious. The young programmer will go out there and reinvent the wheel by using some framework or class he finds on stack overflow and then using that overly complex mess to do something simple. Why just the other day I completely removed a class that a programmer added to make modifications to simple strings. He grabbed the class from SO, which was overly complex in every way imaginable but just plain stupid for what we needed. I rewrote the functionality of an entire class with 4 lines o
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You forgot one, the one that's really at play with a lot of the lionization of not just young programmers, but a culture of childish hipster naivety that is actively celebrated by many large modern corporations:
If you want an unethical product that exploits users more than helping them, without the programmers really knowing what they're doing, hire a (naive) young programmer.
If you want an ethical product that helps users, created by a wiser person that see how it fits into society, hire an old programmer
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If you want a stable business, that has a future hire both make sure they get along and teach each other things.
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