
A comment left on Slashdot - panic
http://chaosinmotion.com/blog/?p=1184
======
pleasecalllater
The funny problem is that when I was 32 I heard from one recruiter "Oh, so you
are still a programmer? I'm sorry, we cannot offer you sending your cv to our
client. You see, we have hundreds of cvs from people of your age, and all are
managers, so if you are not, then there is something wrong with you".

Yea, 32 years old programmer is just too old, 32 years old surgeon is usually
too young to work alone.

I keep on learning, I have accumulated lots of knowledge working in different
areas of programming like system administration, database administration,
programming etc. I have been payed to program using over a dozen of
programming languages... At interviews I still hear "oh, you know, I'd love to
have experience like yours"...

And I still hear "you are too old". What's more funny - people are not
embarrassed saying that. Even though that's illegal where I live. Writing "we
want to hire a woman/man only" is also illegal, but people still write that,
and no one reacts.

I'm afraid I will be totally unemployable in a couple of years, just after my
40, which will come too soon. And I don't want to get into management only
position (which is also hard, as I cannot get a management job "because you
haven't worked on such a position, and you are too old to start that".

That's hilarious, but on the other hand that explains a couple of things like
a-brand-new-hyped-technology, which is just a rewrite of what we had 20 years
ago.

~~~
greenhouse_gas
A slightly cynical explanation:

Startups need cheap workers who will work long hours. And honestly, for every
one Google (who legitimately needed genius level scientists), you have 10
WhatsApps (which are glorified simple CRUD apps).

Now how are you going to get a guy (who sort of knows what he's doing) to work
15 hours a day for pizza?

You've got to trick him "Change the world", " we're the next Google ", " you
get to use _any stack you want_ "

When your a 20 year old kid, with no responsibilities and a future ahead of
you, this sounds perfect. When you're 30 (and all the more so 40), you go to
work to 1. Feed your family 2. If you want to "change the world", you work for
a non-profit.

And all the skills don't matter. Your knowledge how to save RAM? Useless. Just
spin up another VM.

So for the CEO of a startup, a 30 year old is simply too expensive for what he
needs - a cheep code monkey. All the excuses are just that.

~~~
ff10
I'm 34 and I do work as a developer for a startup. But then again, I'm working
in Germany where I saw 45+ lead developers in startups, and age is something
that is mostly considered to be an asset, not a burden - as long as you're
willing to learn every day. The good thing here is that you recognize hype
better than when you're young.

~~~
Insanity
I'm from a similar country (Belgium) but have seen both sides of it, both
where age is an advantage as well as a negative factor.

At a startup I worked at, we were considering hiring a developer who was older
than us (+20 years older), but in the end did not do it as we felt he might
have trouble being managed by people significantly older than him. This was
not my decision and I would have been in favor of hiring him - for the
experience he could bring to the company.

Anyway, I now work in a team where most people (apart from 2) are older than
me, and I consider that a priviledge. I get to learn from them in a great way,
and I feel that I can teach them things as well. It goes both ways really.

And I do feel that in general here age is not such an important factor. Though
that is just from looking at my colleagues, I am not in a comparable situation
yet.

Just out of curiousity btw, does 'ff10' hold any relation to 'fast fingers'?

~~~
spoiler
> we were considering hiring a developer who was older than us (+20 years
> older), but in the end did not do it as we felt he might have trouble being
> managed by people significantly older than him.

I am curious: Did something give you the impression he'd be bothered by a
younger management, or was it just a general concern?

I am only 23, _but_ I imagine I wouldn't have issues being managed by someone
my age if I were 33. However, I know that I'd be pretty shit at management
right now, and would definitely _not_ want to manage someone older than me.
Personally, I'd prefer to be managed by someone older than myself due to them
having more experience. Then again, wisdom doesn't come solely from age; one
can have more experience and wisdom at 15 than someone at 50.

My conclusion is that there is no conclusion, I guess.

~~~
mgkimsal
> I am only 23, but I imagine I wouldn't have issues being managed by someone
> my age if I were 33. However, I know that I'd be pretty shit at management
> right now...

When you get to 33, look at the 23 year olds around you, and imagine taking
direction from them.

Imagine them making blatantly/obviously poor decisions, and understanding that
because of these decisions you may very well be out of a job in 6 months.

Imagine there are half a dozen or more folks in your org that have been in
similar situations, and they all have experience in "domain X", and are
available to be probed for info/insight on domain X to help avoid poor
decisions. Now imagine them all being completely overlooked because they're
"old" (40) or aren't in the "circle" of the 23 year old manager/ceo.

There of course are exceptions to these scenarios, but they tend to be just
that - exceptions. Most 23 year olds simply do not have the depth of
experience needed to understand how and when to best use the folks around
them. Think about this when you're 30, 33 or 40, and revisit the idea of being
"managed" by a 23 year old.

This doesn't mean no one younger can ever manage anyone older - not by a
longshot. But it's not trivial, and getting it 'right' takes a lot of work.

------
noonespecial
The problem is that the management can't _tell_ who's any good. They see "the
guru" struggle for several months on a "very difficult project" and then
finally come through (with an added bonus that only the guru can understand
the system afterwards so it MUST be very complicated) and just assume that
he's been walking on water. He's young and went to a very good school... But
then you find out it's a simple inventory control merging with the UPS API to
ship widgets.

They took that old saw about only the grandkids being able to make the VCR
stop blinking 12 and applied it to _the entire frikkin world_ and they are
unable to tell that it isn't even remotely true.

~~~
scandox
> They took that old saw about only the grandkids being able to make the VCR
> stop blinking 12 and applied it to the entire frikkin world

I see this a lot. Companies where top management are not sure of the
difference in skills between a guy they pay 80k and their cousin's nephew who
is really smart.

~~~
bilbo0s
To be fair...

if the guy they pay 80K is young and inexperienced like their nephew...

maybe there isn't as much difference as we'd like to think?

------
kemiller2002
I'm almost 40, and I don't let articles like this scare me. Everyone has this
fear they are going to be rejected for some reason or another. It's just
another idea that you can obsess over at night wondering if you are going to
be able to continue living the life you want.

Is this article true? Yes, partially. There will be companies and people out
there who won't hire older programmers, and this is true for almost every
other profession as well. 15 years ago there was the scare about offshoring
all our jobs too. We were constantly told that the people in India were
smarter, worked harder, and had cheaper salaries. They said we were lucky to
keep our jobs. Is this true, yeah partially, but anyone who as any good found
another job at a better company. Are the people in India hard workers and
smart? Yeah there are a lot of them that are. I've worked with a lot of people
from India, and many of them are great people. They are smart, passionate
about what they do, and nice. Heck there is a woman from India sitting 10 feet
from me who is brilliant, and a hard worker. Am I afraid of this? No. Sure
there are companies that will pick her over me strictly because she is
younger, but I don't want to work there anyway. A lot of times companies
making decisions like that are the ones that are in real trouble and do it,
because they know that older and more experience people won't stay long. You
can keep those companies. I've already lived through that. Getting rejected by
a company doesn't bother me, especially for a silly reason like that. I'll see
where they are in a year, and I'll most likely get the last laugh.

~~~
marktangotango
> because they know that older and more experience people won't stay long. You
> can keep those companies. I've already lived through that. Getting rejected
> by a company doesn't bother me, especially for a silly reason like that.
> I'll see where they are in a year, and I'll most likely get the last laugh.

Indeed. You see things over the course of 5, 10, and 15 years. You start to
see the same patterns over and over. Oh that high flying company with the big
merger? Turned out they attempted a system integration, offshored most of it,
laid off senior talent 10 years ago. Then 5 years ago started hiring like
crazy. Turned out the integration was a disaster, all the organziation
knowledge left. The only people who stayed were the 'don't move my cheese'
types who didn't have any other options. Now, they're still hiring, and if
they can't get their apps off of IE6 (or IE11 in IE7 compat mode) they're
screwed.

That's when they start paying through the nose for senior on shore talent.

------
hackuser
The marketplace always seems to fail in situations like this one. There are
always groups that are discriminated against, based on race, gender, age, etc.
Therefore a business seeking talent should view those excluded groups as a
goldmine of available talent.

For example, imagine if most baseball teams started excluding non-white
athletes again. If I owned a team, I'd immediately start hiring those
athletes; I'd have by far the best team in baseball in short order (EDIT: To
be clear, I'd have the best team because I'd have the market cornered on a
large portion of the talent; it wouldn't be because of some imagined (and
false) racial differences in performance.)

But in business (and in sports) it never works out that way. Certainly some
executives have discriminatory attitudes, but that doesn't account for all.
Certainly some will give into and/or are more exposed to social pressures, but
not all. With the very high demand for talent, why aren't there businesses
snapping up the older developers?

(There also is another problem: Excluded groups tend to avoid that
marketplace. They are discouraged by their parents, teachers and peers, and
they may not want to have to deal with discrimination every day for their
whole careers. But that shouldn't apply as much to middle-aged developers;
that labor supply is already in the pipeline.)

~~~
watwut
If there would be such a lack of talent, salaries would be going up and
working conditions would be getting better and better. So I bit doubt the lack
of talent narrarive.

~~~
flomo
The problem is being addressed both supply-side (H1B body shops) and demand-
side (salaries and working conditions are broadly better than they used to be
IMO). So it is hard to say.

I do think there is some truth in "ten years of experience" versus "one year
of experience times ten". There are a lot of jobs in this industry where you
only have to know so much, and that's all you have to know. CRUD forms are
CRUD forms, at least until they change the technology stack.

Software is a fad-driven industry, but I think the underlying reason for
continual new-stack fetishism is to shake-out the 1x10 people, rather than say
the 5x2 people.

~~~
watwut
I am more cynical. I think that reason for new-stack fetishism is incompetence
combined with what I call "signaling game". Many people are unable to talk
rationally about benefits and costs or solutions, so they jump anywhere where
crowd goes to signal "I am passionate hacker".

If people would think for themselves, you would see much less of herd behavior
and less insecurity induced posturing.

------
arca_vorago
Honestly I think its just economic decisions by short sighted management
disguised to others as a social issue.

Not to discredit the real ageism that exists, but far more often I think its
the fact that older, saltier people are going to demand a higher wage, more
work life balance, and see through bullshit easier. All of those things are
negatives for a middle manager trying to fill a role. That's right, they
become more focused on the task of filling a role than about solving the
companies issues.

I'd wager that if you got old farts to agree to the same bullshit terms pushed
on younger people because they missed _Legal Contracts 101_ , the gap would
shrink.

What's funny to me is that a contractor I was the dude picking up the pieces
after the technical debt inevitably bit them in the ass, so in the long run
companies that make decisions like that end up paying more for them.

I actually gave up my share of my first startup because it was built on
exploiting this fact, and I felt a proper counciling of the customer would
include something along the lines of "we are more expensive than a full time
person, but do less than a tenth of the work of one since we split our time
between many clients, therefore we should be a temporary stopgap and a
continuing advisory position", which obviously didn't go well for an msp style
it support company.

I'm increasingly convinced the business world is full of short sighted
incompetence.

~~~
vidarh
> I actually gave up my share of my first startup because it was built on
> exploiting this fact, and I felt a proper counciling of the customer would
> include something along the lines of "we are more expensive than a full time
> person, but do less than a tenth of the work of one since we split our time
> between many clients, therefore we should be a temporary stopgap and a
> continuing advisory position", which obviously didn't go well for an msp
> style it support company.

My _selling point_ as a consultant is "I am more expensive and should be a
stopgap and ongoing advisory position".

I can push my rate up more by basically marketing myself as an expert / luxury
/ problem solver.

It means I get rejected more, but it's worth it over time, because I know when
people call me later, it's because they have problem where they won't quibble
over my day rates, because they're calling me about things they _know_ their
regular staff can't handle and that it'd be very expensive to hire to solve.

It also avoids the issue of having to justify my price with bullshit and
arguing over timesheets.

But I can certainly see someone trying to scale up a business around it
finding it easier to try to pretend they're a good way of replacing hiring.

------
notacoward
Point 1: I see a lot of highly-upvoted comments blaming management for why
engineers are messed up. Hardly surprising for such a venue, I guess. If we're
going to blame management, though, perhaps we should look at why the managers
themselves are messed up. Personally I think it might have something to do
with the conceit that management is the uber-skill, so important in itself
that a couple of years (at most) of generic training in management qualifies a
person to manage _any_ activity effectively even without a shred of domain
knowledge. Pfeh.

Point 2: maybe not _all_ of the blame lies with management, and the most
important exercise for a crowd of technical people involves introspection
instead of blaming others. We get enough of that in politics; we don't need a
bunch of little techie-Trumps playing the same tune. Some of the blame belongs
with the engineers themselves, who hoodwink naive managers or exert peer
pressure to create a culture of deliberate ignorance. When "disruption" is one
of the most popular words within an industry, it's easy to lose sight of the
fact that even one's thoroughly disrupted predecessors knew a thing or two
worth learning. Good software engineering is a lot like recycling - instead of
incinerating all "legacy" code just because it's legacy, find the parts
(ideas) that can be used as part of something new. New solutions to old
problems can be found without having to reintroduce the old problems in new
code.

~~~
titzer
> a couple of years (at most) of generic training in management qualifies a
> person to manage any activity effectively even without a shred of domain
> knowledge. Pfeh.

+1 to that.

However, it cuts both ways. Being an engineer with a recently bolted-on
manager responsibility, I am struck by the many ways that nothing in
Engineering or Science prepared me for dealing with the people side of
management.

~~~
groby_b
I've said it before (in fact, I've given entire presentations on it :) -
technical managers are the "Bard" class, if you play D&D.

It's at its core a multi-skill/prestige class, it's really hard to learn to do
right, everybody makes fun of them ("hey guys, I found the bard!"), a
successful party really needs them - and the way they make things happen is by
augmenting the rest of the party subtly.

Which means you need to dump a whole lot of skill into Charisma, and up your
game of fascinate.

(If you don't play D&D, apologies for totally nerding out. If you do, leveling
up a Bard and becoming a manager is really surprisingly similar. Just don't
bring a lute ;)

~~~
notacoward
Good analogy. I think more generally managers could be considered a "buff"
class. Since I've played LOTRO I can say the Captain sort of plays this role.
There are probably WoW and ESO equivalents, but I haven't played those. But
this leads to an interesting exercise. What are the corporate equivalents of
other RPG roles? I have my own ideas, but let's see what others come up with.

~~~
groby_b
Engineer -> Wizard (high INT) Tech lead-> Shaman (WIS/INT) PM -> Warlock (high
CON) UI -> Monk or Rogue (DEX) (OK, that's stretching a bit) Customer support
-> Paladin (STR) Testing -> Ranger (STR)

------
pnathan
A solid solution is to have a professional union/association with a meaningful
exam for entrance, meaningful certifications for specialties, and the mandate
to avoid committing professional malpractice (strike/walkout enforced). The
ACM _could_ do that, but has chosen not to: the IEEE's attempt is sort of a
joke.

Having spent the last 3 months totally involved in the US medical field
regarding a family member's life-critical condition, I can say with
confidence: the professional credential/certification process works really
well when built well, and software engineers with an interest in seeing our
field should _strongly_ consider the medical community as a working example -
remember - "rough consensus and running code".

~~~
jacquesm
And aviation. Not pretty but it definitely works.

~~~
semi-extrinsic
I definitely agree that good professional organizations _and_ well-functioning
unions _and_ good worker protection laws gives a good total system.

However, one thing that must be kept in mind when comparing to e.g. healthcare
or aviation is that progress in those fields happens at a pace that's
positively glacial as compared to software development. The development time
for new airplane tech or healthcare tech can easily be a decade or more. At
that pace, employers don't perceive "you're old and don't understand the new
stuff anymore" to nearly the same degree.

Some of the stuff that happens regularly here in software land is like if
suddenly accupuncture became the best cure for most diseases, or if pilots
were given new planes with flight controls manipulated by moving your eyelids
in a special way.

~~~
pnathan
Can you cite specific improvements in the past 5 years that aren't more
reinventions of previous wheels?

~~~
bad_login
Convolutionnal neural network (called IA in the news, will automate previously
safe jobs)

Upgrade in hardware

Bitcoin technology (made it's way into traditionnal banking)

And if you want more thing into programming:

In the last 15 years the Racket team has came with contracts (something with
high order function that didn't existed before), gradual typing which generate
contracts, macro composition. None of them existed before.

~~~
pnathan
I'll take bitcoin and NN advances as highly valid and true responses to my
query (although tbh I think btc is a bit older than 5 years). To answer my own
question, I think Rust is a substantive improvement.

But, that really doesn't affect the vast bulk of programming: what we _do_
isn't changing that fast.

------
afpx
I certainly can relate to everything that the author expresses. However, I'm
also quite certain that this is not exclusive to the software engineering
disciplines. Somewhere around 2004 or so, I began seeing many US companies
(including many large ones) abandoning analysis and planning and lots of other
proven PMBOK type activities in favor of more reactionary methods.

When I talk to many people under 35, across fields, they often complain about
workplace disorder, mismanagement, and lack of planning. They also complain of
an overload of work and of working too many hours. I don't think this is a
coincidence.

~~~
kogepathic
_> Somewhere around 2004 or so, I began seeing many US companies (including
many large ones) abandoning analysis and planning and lots of other proven
PMBOK type activities in favor of more reactionary methods._

This was corporates adopting their own version of the agile development
methodology.

Unfortunately I can tell you large corporations with a lot of inertia and
managerial politics don't mesh well with agile, so you end up with poor
planning, pants on fire fixing, overworked employees*

* anecdotal evidence

------
jessaustin
In other industries, the the wisdom of experienced workers is the only thing
that keeps capital from completely fucking over labor. Why don't experienced
workers play the same role here? When I read stuff like this by experienced
workers, I sometimes hope to see that question answered...

~~~
pnathan
A big part of it is that what we do is literal magic to the uninitiated. We
wave incantations with our hands upon the keyboards, and the uninitiated do
not understand how this turns into the world we have. It's invisible,
untouchable, and and the expert wizards have collectively refused to provide a
meaningful system for determining what is good vs what is bad. In other
industries there are things like certifications that _mean_ something or
guilds/unions/associations where membership means something, in the software
world, the gurus have refused to build an association/certification system of
meaning, citing libertarian ideas against it. Since this helps the forces
against labor, our management likes that idea too.

~~~
Sunset
I would eat my own hat before I let a "guild council" dictate anything that
could impact my code style or the way I do things.

The lack of centralized control is a good thing. In other industries you can
be barred from even working in the field if the "council" doesn't like you.

Things like the lawyers' bar are complete bullshit as a concept in themselves.

~~~
eecc
Well, I've been touting a guild to break out of the horse trader circle where
you're evaluated from the keyword search on your cv, the alternative being
worse: codility. What's wrong in having a professional guild that makes you
more than an FTE?

------
thriftwy
Being a Software Developer, a "socially invulnerable" person, I won't be
bothered by people saying something as misguided as "all your experience is
obsolete". I'll have a good laugh.

I think some of us take themselves a bit too much seriously. As a programmer,
you have not just First World, but actually Zeroth World problems. In the
world of struggle we are having a guilt-free easy ride.

~~~
sillysaurus3
Implying no software developer has financial problems.

~~~
thriftwy
But you know who has worse financial, employment, work-life balance,
motivation problems? Almost everybody else.

These posts read as "please somebody solve it for us." But we are the solvers.
Think we have problems with older developers employment? Influence a hire of a
team of them. Who will do that for you?

~~~
sillysaurus3
_These posts read as "please somebody solve it for us."_

Not really. They were pointing out a problem. Highlighting a problem isn't the
same as pleading for help.

This reminds me of [https://xkcd.com/1232/](https://xkcd.com/1232/)

At what point is it ok to talk about your own problems? Only when no one else
has worse problems?

 _Think we have problems with older developers employment? Influence a hire of
a team of them. Who will do that for you?_

I can't figure out what you mean. Could you clarify?

~~~
thriftwy
I'm all for pointing out problems.

I do it all the time and probably bothered a good amount of my friends.

I just find this problem reported massively more than it is worth. Everybody
who cares even a bit is long aware. Today, I will appreciate posts on "what we
did about this problem already". And I have already seen one just recently:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13194074](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13194074)

------
jurassic
I believe the trends the author has pointed out are not just the failings of
the tech industry but are part of a larger cultural backlash against
expertise.

[https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/united-
states/2017-0...](https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/united-
states/2017-02-13/how-america-lost-faith-expertise)

~~~
zigzigzag
There is no cultural backlash against expertise. That's a comfortable fantasy
that a handful of self-proclaimed "experts" who have been consistently wrong
are telling themselves, mostly people who attempt to predict the future but
are not self-aware enough to understand their own biases.

I have yet to encounter any obvious or recent drop in regard for doctors,
geologists, chemical engineers or indeed software developers, probably because
none of those job categories make money by attempting to influence government
policy via dubious predictions about the future.

------
seiferteric
[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:WNVCznx...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:WNVCznxKeDMJ:chaosinmotion.com/blog/%3Fp%3D1184+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us)

~~~
muglug
Slashdotted...

~~~
RandomInteger4
Is this a monthly bandwidth limit issue or an Apache on slow servers issue?

How much traffic is required to be considered slashdotted these days when
running a simple blog?

Tangenting away from the OP, but curious because I'm getting into setting up
and running my own web server for the first time, and while I don't expect to
be slashdotted, it's something I'd like to prepare for.

~~~
byuu
Unfortunately, it's just bad design that's very typical of the 'modern web'
these days.

My site didn't even top 5% of its resources when it was on the front page of
HN, Reddit, Kotaku, Destructoid, Eurogamer, The Informer, Slashdot, etc all at
the same time. (Well okay, Slashdot four days later.)

You don't need Node, Ruby on Rails, PHP, Apache, PostgreSQL, Wordpress, etc to
serve up a simple text blog that you post on once a week. If you put all of
that on a $5/mo VPS, it's not going to handle any kind of serious load.

We're mostly all developers here. It's not even a weekend project to set up a
simple blog from scratch.

Host your site on nginx, don't include a bunch of massive Javascript
libraries, serve your content statically or without using a dynamic scripting
language, and you'll be fine.

~~~
e12e
And, if you want to have a "dynamic" site, you're likely to be ok by just
shoving varnish[1] in front of it. I guess if your comment system is based
around a php-script that does 10 separate round-trips to your database per
comment shown/posted along with cache-busting, comments might break, though.

One thing I'm not certain of - I recall there was a _significant_ overhead to
running a site on SSL vs plain HTTP (mostly due to key negotiation - the
initial session setup). That overhead is still there (even if running
something with http2 support, like caddy[2] should help a bit). What I'm not
sure about, is how much CPU time a typical $5/mo VPS has compared to the
dedicated webserver I managed to run into the ground due to a miscommunication
that led to a https-link being sent to media outlets rather than the http-link
(the server wasn't really specced to do https). This was around 2005 though,
and the server was already a bit long in the tooth.

[1] [https://www.varnish-cache.org/](https://www.varnish-cache.org/)

[2] [https://caddyserver.com/](https://caddyserver.com/)

~~~
byuu
Something that caches dynamic responses will certainly work as well. Usually
those are situations where you _want_ content changed on every reload, though.
My site is actually dynamic as well, but it's just C code that concatenates
three files together, and does just a tiny amount of metrics at the end.

I'm not going to say my design is maximally efficient, because it definitely
isn't. It's just that 'modern' dev creates sites that are orders of magnitude
more expensive to construct pages with. That stuff works for major
corporations with data centers. It doesn't work so much when you're one of 256
instances on a single blade server inside a single data center hosting 20,000+
servers.

Also, when it comes to HTTPS, my site also uses that. HTTP redirects to HTTPS,
and the TLS used is very strong 256-bit ECC.

The biggest cost to crypto is definitely for people living overseas from the
server location. The added round-trip inherent in TLS v1.2 and below slows
things down for international visitors. But ... I kind of lost it when my own
ISP started injecting falsified HTTP responses to redirect me to their
"maintenance notifications." I don't have the luxury of switching ISPs, so
instead I'm moving everything possible to HTTPS.

------
gumby
(side point: in my new company we did a SWOT analysis and one strength was
"old farts" \-- we've already made tons of mistakes and have learned a lot.)

I didn't see the original slashdot discussion so didn't have context, but IMHO
the phenomenon described is more that programming in the USA and Europe has
become a blue collar job, as it has been in Japan for decades. I think this is
great -- the tools have become strong enough that someone with limited (but
nonzero) training can produce solid apprentice and journeyman work. (masters,
well, I know I will never be even close to some of the master machinists I've
been lucky to work with; they can't craft code like I do).

The fact is you don't need a programmer to throw together a viable web site.
Isn't that great!?

Innovation is still coming out of computer science and trickling down into the
real world. And highly experienced programmers are also contributing cool
stuff. But as programming has opened up as a discipline to a significantly
larger pool of people, is it any wonder the density of new ideas per capita
would go down?

(oh, and CS has always scorned reading the literature, to its detriment).

~~~
dcw303
> more that programming in the USA and Europe has become a blue collar job, as
> it has been in Japan for decades

I wouldn't use Japan as your data point to champion programming as accessible
to the common man. One only needs to suffer through a few domestic websites to
know that talent is sorely missing.

Pay peanuts, get monkeys, etc.

~~~
mikekchar
I live in Japan and have friends and family members who work in large
companies as programmers. None of them started out to be programmers. None of
them particularly wanted to be programmers. One of them was the secretary. One
day her boss dropped a whole bunch of books on her desk, "You're the new
programmer". Rationale? She could type.

Which is not to say that there aren't great programmers here. There are. But
the average view of a programmer at large companies (not high tech), is that
it is a pretty junior position.

------
lkrubner
About this:

"I’m not bitter; I just believe we’ve fallen into a bunch of bad habits in our
industry which need a good recession and some creative destruction to weed out
what is limping along."

A recession might actually make things even worse. At least part of the
problem in the industry is the growing power of monopoly. Firms are
increasingly protected from competition, and therefore bad habits can thrive
because the bad habits are not enough to bring down the firm. That is, there
isn't enough competition for the firm to be hurt by its own bad habits. And
this lack of competition goes back to the declining rate of new company
formation:

[http://www.governing.com/topics/mgmt/gov-businesses-
economic...](http://www.governing.com/topics/mgmt/gov-businesses-economic-
innovation-group-study.html)

Also, see this chart:

[http://www.smashcompany.com/business/the-decline-of-usa-
inve...](http://www.smashcompany.com/business/the-decline-of-usa-investment-
since-1964)

~~~
polotics
Well the Google Apple non-poaching secret agreement demonstrated who's a
filthy communist. Right?

------
hergin
I believe much of the problem mentioned in the article is about us not being
software engineers but only programmers/coders. If we, as an industry, would
have adopted engineering discipline instead of producing systems in light
speed by just coding, what we are talking now would be different things.

~~~
sidlls
This is my view as well. But I'll go further: I believe there is an almost​
active hostility toward engineering, as if it's viewed simply as something
anyone can pick up, like the much derided "liberal arts."

------
ot
In case anyone else is wondering, this is the original Slashdot discussion:
[https://ask.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=10352645&cid=540224...](https://ask.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=10352645&cid=54022425)

I don't think it was linked in the post.

------
yAnonymous
The author is quite arrogant himself. What's wrong with looking up solutions
for complex problems on StackOverflow? It saves a lot of time and in most
cases will end up better than what you come up with on your own, because it
has been tested and improved by hundreds of users. And if you manage to find
an improvement, share it to make the code better.

Reinventing the wheel every time is stupid and it really seems more like he's
the one not able to adapt. When I can do the same things faster and better
than you, because I make use of available resources, then I'll be the better
choice for most employers, regardless of the age.

Experience is good, but constantly learning and adapting is even more
important in this industry and he seems to think he doesn't need to do that.

~~~
shiro
I took that the author didn't assume that experience (which seemed to be
assumed in the article to be positively correlated to the length of career)
was the only factor---lack of proper training, including knowing "classics",
was also the issue. I tend to agree the latter premise, although I'm not sure
the situation is as bad as the author describes. (The author says "I can’t
think of a single developer I’ve met professionally who belong to the ACM or
to IEEE". Is that really the case?)

IMHO, it's ok to lift answers from SO as long as 1) you know it's a shortcut
and 2) when necessary you can trace back the history to the origin so that you
can know the original frame the technique was invented and how it was modified
along the line. A good solution in a certain context might not be optimal for
_your_ context, even though it has been improved by many.

The second point requires a certain level of skill---able to search and read
CS papers and implement by yourself or incorporate the ideas into your domain.
Without having proper training, it's difficult to acquire that kind of skill
solely from skimming SO and alike. But I'd like to assume that graduate-level
CS course do give such skill, and by experience you can hone it.

I do note that some answers in SO are pretty decent, with references to the
original papers. When I answer online questions I try to do the same as much
as possible within my ability and knowledge.

------
ahallock
> (I’ve met programmers with years of experience who couldn’t write code to
> maintain a linked list.

FFS, our industry is huge and there are many problem domains and many
specialized areas of expertise, most of which don't require you to write
linked lists. It's like expecting someone who's building windshield wipers for
a car to also know how build an alternator (this analogy may not be great, but
you get the idea).

I'm sure if someone spent half an hour brushing up on linked lists, they could
easily create one. If you don't do something a lot, you forget. You get rusty.
Why is this so hard to understand? This is true in any discipline.

~~~
hughw
C'mon man. A linked list.

edit: To use one, you need a mental model of how they work, so you should be
able to write one. Not a great one... just one that works.

~~~
ahallock
I suppose you're right, but really, in what context do you need to do this?
I've never had to do this in over 15 years of software development. I remember
learning LLs in college, and it's good foundational knowledge -- it teaches
you how to solve problems. I'm not saying we shouldn't learn these core
concepts and algorithms, just that some people want to feel better about
themselves and make others feel inferior when they can't remember something at
a moment's notice, especially something they haven't used in over a decade.

~~~
hughw
I had to do something like this a year or so ago -- built a malloc in js for
managing WebGL memory blocks.

------
11thEarlOfMar
One factor that I think plays into this dialog is that we learn quite a bit
over time without realizing it. As I grow older, I sometimes find myself
thinking, _" I know this, but I know I didn't intentionally learn it."_

What I realize is that I know it because of life experience and there is no
way I could have learned it (or maybe it's a realization, not a learning)
without having lived through all those winters.

The impact of this is that as we gain experience, we can be more deliberate
and selective about where we focus our talents and energy, entering into fewer
endeavors, but have a higher success rate per endeavor.

~~~
abraae
I agree. As a 50+ programmer/CTO I freely admit I'm nothing like as quick as I
used to be at pure coding. I marvel at what some of the youngsters at work can
do. I took a good long time out in management but even so, age catches up.
YMMV.

But I'm way better at knowing what to do, and recognising how not to approach
things.

My belief is that as you age, more and more of your brain is turned over from
processing to pattern recognition.

If only my communication skills had advanced apace, so that I could convince
others with less effort )

------
OliverJones
Some say this youth-culture obsession is a US workplace problem. That may be
true.

To my way of thinking it's a Sili Valley workplace culture problem. Sili
Valley is a high-rent district, and doesn't favor people who need more than
minimal housing, unless they've already made it big.

Also, Sili Valley is all about the new new things. It will be interesting to
see what happens to the present crop of Sili Valley giants in 20 years. What
happens when Page, Brin, and Zuckerberg turn 55? What happens when the rapid
growth of their companies slows?

Maybe they retire and start concerning themselves with scenic easements and
other perqs of the hyper-rich. Or maybe they try to keep reinventing
themselves and the companies.

They may make the same mistake Digital Equipment made: responding to a
slowdown with a hiring freeze. Once a hiring freeze is imposed, a company
loses access to new people and the ideas they bring. The median age increases
by one year for every calendar year that goes by. There's nothing wrong with
older folks, but not all of us can be managers.

They may make the mistake MSFT made in the first few post-Gates years, and
that AAPL is in danger of making now: laurel-resting and inward-turning.

One of the problems of measuring age distribution is this: Averages don't mean
anything. Many effective orgs have lots and lots of fresh young faces and a
dramatically tapering age pyramid. Military services are a case in point:
Sure, the median age is 22. That's because they have vast numbers of 19 year
olds. But they also have lots of 30 year old captains, 35 year old majors, and
even older colonels and generals.

I'm a developer who started on Hollerith 80-column punch cards. I'm still
doing good work. Others can too. But not in Sili Valley: we have too much
sense to jump on the latest js framework.

------
cjCamel
I've always wondered whether the descriptor young startup /young company etc.
in a job post is put in to warn off older (>30) people from applying.

Which can be depressing when you search
[http://stackoverflow.com/jobs/](http://stackoverflow.com/jobs/) for the word
"young".

Interestingly, companies don't tend to describe themselves as "male startup",
or "white startup"...

tl;dr Language matters.

------
ternaryoperator
One of his points is key and seemingly goes unmentioned in these comments. The
total disregard for software engineering (the field of study, that is) by
developers. Even the very basics of software engineering are unknown, and if
mentioned, frequently discarded if they don't fit with the zeigeist.

------
busterarm
I seriously considered getting an IEEE membership for a long time, but decided
after several long conversations with people in the field who had one that it
was not worth it.

~~~
uiri
Like with Linux User Groups, I think a lot of it depends upon your local
section.

I was an IEEE student member all through University so that I could
participate in IEEEXtreme[0]. I did eventually become involved in the student
branch and attend some local section meetings. I think that IEEE loses a lot
of their student members after graduation. As a "young" professional, I'm not
sure if there is much value. Most of the young professionals I met were past
chairs of the student branch (within the past 5 years or so). The rest of the
section seemed to be much older folk (like 40-50+) - both in industry and in
academia.

[0] [http://www.ieee.org/xtreme](http://www.ieee.org/xtreme)

------
austinz
For someone who laments the failure of modern programmers to learn from the
work of the past, the author seems to completely ignore the contributions of
ML, ML-style type systems, and related languages to the profession of software
engineering. Perhaps this explains the snide (and, frankly, uninformed)
dismissal of Swift as a hype-ridden "subset of Lisp".

Aside from that, I agree with the author's points.

------
fujipadam
This perception causes discrimination which is illegal (if you can prove it)

This is why there are a host of lawsuits for ageism and a bunch of job portal
like [https://www.giantsforhire.com/](https://www.giantsforhire.com/) or
[https://oldgeekjobs.com/](https://oldgeekjobs.com/) poping up

------
blauditore
I keep on reading about ageism in this industry, but haven't observed it
myself. Yes, devs are over-proportionally young in the companies I've seen,
but from my (limited) insight into recruiting, this roughly reflects
applications. Also, it's not that most of the devs in the companies I've been
are just fresh out of university; about half of them are 30+ years old. My
impression has always been that this just reflects the growth of the industry
and related increase in graduates.

Quite possibly, this "young, dynamic, better" culture is more prevalent in
startup-heavy areas like the US or eastern Europe, as opposed to western
Europe where I live.

------
peterwwillis
We don't really have a great required body of knowledge or mandatory licensing
for people to work in the field. The whole industry is still in the Middle
Ages in terms of how we choose people to build things.

~~~
nradov
We're actually still in a pre-Middle Ages state! In the Middle Ages craft
guilds generally did have required bodies of knowledge which apprentices were
expected to master.

------
mgrennan
How we got here: Tech bobble gold rush, big tech (google/s) takes best talent,
investors only want good enough (build to a price), young bro-grammers fill
need, flood of millennials (like the Chinese army) take over IT. Now we are
moving as fast as we can, in the cheapest vehicle we can build, caring other
people's property. Some of this is good. (SpaceX?) Some is pandering gossip
(Facebook?) Some are rubber dog turds. (Ha.. sh-- sells) The pendulum swings:
Mainframes connected to dumb terminals sending CICS to real time computing
(PCs) to AWS connect to browsers sending HTML/CSS. So the bro-grammers think
they are inventing something new. Wisdom is learning from other's mistakes.
Developers today think of anything older then 5 years as obsolete. They are
excited by what they think is NEW but really they are just naive. Time is the
flame in which or lives burn. If only more would take a moment and seek wisdom
their products and lives would be enriched.

I've been IT for 40+ years. Still working. Still seeing the same mistakes made
over and over again. I have a few young people I mentor and I've seen them
move way above their co-workers.

So here is some words of wisdom if your new in IT. Find a co-worker over 50
and ask for advise.

------
falsedan
> _when they run into an interesting problem tend to search Github or Stack
> Overflow, even when it is a basic algorithm problem (I’ve met programmers
> with years of experience who couldn’t write code to maintain a linked list)_

This comment feels incongruous with the rest of the article: why wouldn't I
refer to a standard implementation rather than trying to solve it on my own?
Isn't that a commendable case of not ignoring the 'old junk'?

------
smsm42
Is it really true anymore that '30 is considered “old”'? I've worked with many
people that are 30+ in the industry, and working with many right now, and I
don't see any tendency to regard them as "old". Maybe it's my own bubble or
more localized phenomenon, but I don't think it's true anymore.

~~~
foo101
It looks like I am one of the few like you who think it is not true that '30
is considered "old"'. All my life, I have worked with experienced developers
(called principal engineers, consultant engineers, distinguished engineers,
etc.) who were between 28 years and 55 years old. Not even once they were
regarded as "old". On the other hand, the more experienced the developer was,
the more valued he or she was because of a strong correlation of higher
productivity and wisdom.

Can somene name companies where 30 or older is considered old?

------
josephagoss
Also remember that of all of the professional industries, ours is young and
still maturing.

I believe that being an old programmer will become accepted in time. I believe
that posts like these help to bring this issue to the forefront and it's good
that it's being discussed.

------
ViViDboarder
I'm sure there's some kind of problem here... But from a person trying to hire
a more experienced engineer, I can tell you getting someone in the door is
hard.

I've had an open spot for someone with 5+ years of experience for nearly 6
months. I've done maybe a dozen interviews and made two offers. Still
unfilled. At this point I really need more people and may have to start
looking for new grads instead.

I don't doubt that there are experienced engineers unable to find jobs, but I
wonder if there are other regional factors at play. I'm in San Francisco, so
it's possible (probable even) that more established companies like Google,
Apple, Microsoft, Intel, etc. are recruiting for the same people.

~~~
lj3
> so it's possible (probable even) that more established companies like
> Google, Apple, Microsoft, Intel, etc. are recruiting for the same people.

You're hiring for the same skills as the big companies are in the same field
in the same geographical region. I bet you're even using a similar interview
process. I also bet you don't pay as much as they do. You either need to pay
more or play programmer moneyball[0].

[0]: [https://danluu.com/programmer-moneyball/](https://danluu.com/programmer-
moneyball/)

------
Shivetya
Well there are many programming opportunities out there for people of all age.
You just need to broaden your horizons if not your choices of languages,
tools, and even platforms.

at fifty plus the only thing I note with difficulty in moving to a new job is
that it is harder to change. learning something new, language, etc, isn't that
difficult but I do have to fit in. It is the idea of changing environments
that I do not care for.

Many people I know in the placement of developers look not only as skills but
how long you have been where you are, because apparently I am not alone in
being reluctant to leave even if I say I am willing

------
monkmonk
Except most of the design patterns you're caught on are wrong too. Programming
just keeps getting more nuanced, making it harder for new people to learn
about what is considered "the right way!"

------
mr_overalls
Are sysadmins, network/data engineers, or other back-end techs subject to the
same age discrimination as programmers?

As an aging jack-of-all-trades, I've been wondering if I should refocus more
on back-end skills (and skills lower down the software stack) and start
transitioning away from app development - especially web development.

I'm also wondering if Woody's observations of ageism mostly apply to 1)
Silicon valley, 2) startup companies, and 3) web development.

------
js8
If you enjoyed the OP, especially the comments about how unscientific SWE is,
I think you will enjoy anything from Greg Wilson, such as:

[https://vimeo.com/9270320](https://vimeo.com/9270320)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FtKO619O5g0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FtKO619O5g0)

~~~
wallacoloo
> especially the comments about how unscientific SWE is

After trying for months to get into a CSE course at my university (they had a
disagreeable policy wherein CSE courses were almost entirely open only to CSE
majors), I was surprised by this aspect. We were taught methods for proving
correctness for recursion-based code, re-expressing recursion as iteration,
and things like loop invariants - the latter in particular presented a more
methodical way to approach programming than I had seen before. But the general
reaction was almost uniformly "yeah, sure, like I'm ever going to use _this_
".

And sure, I don't think about loop invariants when I write most loops. And
KISS tends to make most of my loops pretty trivial to understand. But for more
algorithm-intensive work, the _ideas_ behind these approaches have proven to
be really useful tools! It's disappointing for me to see scientific approaches
to SWE so quickly shrugged off. I seem to see the "cobble something together,
and then patch it until nobody complains about bugs" approach to coding more
often than "assemble this code in a way where it's demonstrably correct and
easy to comprehend", and I'm often in the minority by strongly preferring the
latter.

~~~
logicchains
That sounds more like computer science than software engineering. At my
university, they were different majors, with the focus of the latter being UML
and building large inheritance hierarchies, so I imagine SWE means different
things to different people.

------
sikhnerd
cache: [https://archive.fo/aZDJF](https://archive.fo/aZDJF)

------
gwbas1c
Our industry needs to require certification.

Doctors have to go through a pretty rigorous certification process that is
independent from medical school and career work.

We need a similar certification process that requires that we know a lot of
the things we need to know; and breaks the misconception that the industry is
always changing.

------
mathattack
For better or worse I only had a couple years to be a heads down programmer.
After management hit, programming became more of a hobby. Some of the gray
beards really just repeat 1 year of experience over and over, but many are
worth their weight in gold.

------
wsy
Anybody who read "Disrupted" by Dan Lyons knows that not only software
engineers suffer from this ignorance. It is amazing that nowadays startup
companies can become successful even if the ignorance level of their employees
is quite high.

------
squozzer
Not to pick on the author too hard, as I like the cut of his giblets, but his
hair seems awfully brown for a 50-something. My temples and beard are quite
gray / grey.

------
woodandsteel
Seems to me the solution for this is for the older-than-young programmers to
get together and start companies that produce better software.

------
danso
Programming, and computer science, is inherently about _information_. And
because information as it relates to the young is so valuable (think about how
TV shows value the 18 to 35 demographic is), it's not surprising that leaders
in the _work_ of programming can skew young.

The example of Facebook immediately comes to mind. I'm sure everyone has read
articles about "TheFacebook" on the Harvard Crimson's website for a good
chuckle. But reading those 2004 articles give insight to how Mark Zuckerberg
succeeded despite not being a better programmer or computer science thinker
than others (including faculty) at Harvard. He was not only competing with an
already dominant MySpace, but Harvard computing services:

[http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2004/2/9/hundreds-
register...](http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2004/2/9/hundreds-register-for-
new-facebook-website/?page=single)

> _“I’m pretty happy with the amount of people that have been to it so far,”
> [Zuckerberg] said. “The nature of the site is that each user’s experience
> improves if they can get their friends to join it.”_

> _But Director of Residential Computing Kevin S. Davis ’98 said that the
> creation of a Harvard facebook was not as far off as Zuckerberg predicted._

> _“There is a project internally with computer services to create a
> facebook,” Davis said. “We’ve been in touch with the Undergraduate Council,
> and this is a very high priority for the College. We have every intention of
> completing the facebook by the end of the spring semester.”_

Doesn't seem like that Harvard-built-and-funded Facebook got very far. I'm
also struck by how mundane the work of Facebook sounded (including the low
salary), as described in this old article, when you compare it to, say,
Clinkle:

[http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2004/3/1/facebook-
expands-...](http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2004/3/1/facebook-expands-
beyond-harvard-harvard-students/)

> _In order to expand, Moskovitz and Zuckerberg had to write computer programs
> that would “parse the course catalogs and student newspapers” of the
> additional schools. Following Columbia, Stanford and Yale, which Zuckerberg
> said took about three hours each to set up, he hopes to open the site up to
> Boston-area schools like Boston University and MIT._

As I get older, yes, I start to appreciate the foundational concepts as the OP
does. But I think that programming's seemingly youth-centered churn of
knowledge is not unrelated to how _personal_ and malleable -- i.e. how varied
the goal of programming is, because of how programming is so directly related
to the work of how humans consume and disseminate knowledge.

~~~
josephagoss
> Programming, and computer science, is inherently about information. And
> because information as it relates to the young is so valuable (think about
> how TV shows value the 18 to 35 demographic is), it's not surprising that
> leaders in the work of programming can skew young.

Is it possible this is more apparent because the industry is so young compared
to the other professions?

Historically most programmers have gone into other industries or management,
however with more programmers today in their 30's than ever before isn't it
possible that the average age of our profession increases?

Perhaps it's just because I know lots of entrepreneurs that are much older, in
their 40's - 60's that consume massive amounts of new information and enjoy
doing so that I don't fully agree with your statement.

And about Facebook, I am sure there were lots of other social networks being
formed around the world by young people that feel over too.

I am not sure that is such a old vs new thing.

~~~
danso
I don't doubt that there are more older people who consume information; in
fact I would expect that given the overall aging of our population combined
with the increasing ubiquity of computing devices.

But I do think that younger folk have more impetus, or at least more idle
time, and more naivety, and ignorance combined with optimism can spark
invention. I don't think I'm super old, but I did not expect Airbnb to be so
successful, given how much Craigslist changed my life (and for free). And I
understand why Twitter and Facebook are successful even though I grew up with
blogs and Myspace...but it took me a long time to understand the appeal of
Snapchat.

The abstractnrss of computer science is also a factor. You can practice and
pivot with little direct cost or consequence. Whereas with civil engineering,
there's only so much leeway for fun experimentation with structural principles
before you end up killing someone.

------
vacri
> _The problem is that our industry, unlike every other single industry except
> acting and modeling (and note neither are known for “intelligence”) worship
> at the altar of youth_

Popular music, athletics, professional team sports, combat sports,
hospitality, beauticians, the military (a _big_ one, that one), until recently
airline hostesses... there's tons of them.

------
pweissbrod
So the author left a comment on slashdot and received an ignorant knee-jerk
response from someone with an inflated sense of superiority.

That's not reflective of the industry! Thats the slashdot community and you
should expect such treatment. There are several sites like this and unless you
have a pension for online flame wars its pretty much a waste of time to read
:(

------
partycoder
Until the early 90s you couldn't push updates for released software as easily
as today, so software had to be launched with a high standard of quality.

Then, after the Internet became more ubiquitous the industry started pushing
towards "minimum viable products" that get fixed over time, but can still make
revenue. Usually keeping the product low profile with low to no marketing.

But after a couple of years, the agile enthusiasts took over and decided that
everything should add "customer value", and everything else should be
neglected. The Scrum proponents were also very inclusive, inviting non-
technical people to become certified... and that's when things went south and
the beginning of the low quality doctrine started.

As digital distribution starts becoming more popular, business people no
longer wanted to keep a low profile launching a minimum viable product. Now
they want to launch their prototype with full marketing and user acquisition.

Post-launch, software gets bloated with additional features nobody requires,
rather than finally fixing long-standing bugs. In addition, developers get the
blame for defects and if they want a solution they have to fix them on their
own time.

Any non-engineer can become certified in Scrum, and that has had an impact in
the way Scrum has been implemented. Suddenly, a certification involving 16
hours of training to pass a 35 question exam with 68% passing score is more
important than an engineering degree. Then, the vast majority of people who
criticize non-Scrum methodologies has not actually been curious enough to try
them and form their own opinion. It is the herbalife of software.

A Scrum certification without a software engineering degree should not lead to
a managerial position in software. You can hire the best engineers, but with
mediocre leadership results will be mediocre.

It is time to acknowledge Scrum has been hijacked by greed and has produced a
huge software quality crisis.

~~~
nradov
Scrum isn't the problem, there's no causative relationship. And I don't
remember that older software being any higher quality than what we have today
on a defects per function point basis.

~~~
partycoder
What are the requirements for becoming a Certified Scrum Master? Do you think
someone can professionally employ Scrum without having a background in
software engineering without contributing to the problems I mentioned before?

If Scrum isn't the problem, it's clearly not the solution either.

~~~
nradov
Are you asking a rhetorical question? There are a variety of different
organizations which certify Scrum Masters and they each have their own
certification standards. But there are also many people working as Scrum
Masters today who have no certification.

No one ever claimed that Scrum is _the solution_ but it does bring together a
number of practices that have been found to usually work well for team
software development. Some additional structure is usually needed for larger
programs which go beyond what a single agile team can deliver.

Scrum by itself has no real impact on release cycle times or quality. Find
another whipping boy.

~~~
partycoder
Certifying is a form of endorsement.

Then, let me paste a claim from "Scrum Alliance", one of the top institutions
granting these McCertifications:

"A Certified ScrumMaster® helps project teams properly use Scrum, _increasing
the likelihood of the project 's overall success_. CSMs understand Scrum
values, practices, and applications and provide a level of knowledge and
expertise _above and beyond that of typical project managers._ "

How are you supposed to be "above and beyond" a project manager if the
certification itself:

\- Has no training requirement

\- Has no experience requirement

\- Requires 16 hours, a ~30 question test over the Internet with a 66% passing
score.

As a result, you have someone who is supposedly capable of balancing a
software engineering team requirements with stakeholders... after _sixteen
hours_...

Scrum has nice values but in practice, it is a get rich quick ponzi scheme. It
is a telephone game that after person #100 is completely distorted from its
original meaning.

~~~
nradov
Scrum Alliance is a private organization and no one is required to give any
particular weight to their endorsements. I haven't attended their CSM training
myself but those who have say that it's useful for working on real development
teams. All else being equal, a Scrum Master who has been through that training
will usually do a better job than one who hasn't.

As for balancing software engineering team requirements with stakeholders, you
appear to have a complete misunderstanding of the Scrum methodology and the
role of a Scrum Master. If you're going to argue against a straw man and get
angry about a nonexistent problem then we can't help you.

~~~
partycoder
I've worked multiple times with certified scrum professionals who had no
background in computer science or software, and no relevant experience either,
and it was awful. Really hard to talk about tasks and requirements with
someone who doesn't understand.

------
unsayable
Throwaway account here... but I think the real reason for this is because I've
noticed two distinct types of developers:

1) Hackers that grew up with technology that are typically very proficient and
employable before entering university or having much work experience.

2) People who went to CS school in order to get a job as a developer because
the pay is pretty decent and they were always kind of good with computers.

I'd _much_ prefer to work with people that grew up as hackers than people who
learned later in life. It's a cultural thing more than an age thing, but I
feel like it's very hard to see the big picture if you weren't indoctrinated
into it on IRC or forums when you were a teen. I'd imagine it's sort of like
growing up on a farm vs going to agriculture school.

Because of this, it's very hard to tell as people get older which camp they
came from. If someone is young and knows a ton, it's clear that they grew up
in hacker culture and likely have a breadth of knowledge. If someone studied
hard for years and never was part of the culture, IMO they will be harder to
work with and not have as much general knowledge.

As a bonus, if you grew up in the culture and you're applying for an entry
level job, you probably already have a decade of hacking under your belt, and
that's work experience that's totally unaccounted for on a resume.

The result of this is that if you see someone young and surprisingly
knowledgeable in many computer related areas, they probably grew up steeped in
hacker culture and have tons more useful general knowledge than someone
without that extra decade of experience.

BTW, I'm not advocating for age discrimination, but it may actually be more of
undocumented experience discrimination than age discrimination.

~~~
clay_to_n
I disagree with this sentiment, I think it's the same in-group elitist
mentality that drives so many people away from the industry. Luckily focused
study in college can level these two groups you describe, and non-"hackers"
can get very good.

(I also think there's a huge spectrum of people between these two "types" of
developers)

"Because of this, it's very hard to tell as people get older which camp they
came from."

I agree, and I think that's a great thing. Being a hacker at a young age is
awesome, and should be encouraged, but there are a lot of people who don't
know what they're good at (or love) until later in life. In my experience
people newer to the industry (at least on the level of "hacker at 13" vs
college or later) often have less ego on them, and are more down to Earth
about what they do.

~~~
forgottenpass
_I think it 's the same in-group elitist mentality that drives so many people
away from the industry. Luckily focused study in college can level these two
groups you describe, and non-"hackers" can get very good._

If we slightly re-write parent's argument to remove the elitism and focus on
the people it's possible to see the same message without the baggage.

Focused study _can_ level the groups, but regardless of how people get there,
the quality of any graduating class has a roughly bi-modal distribution. One
group is the students who kept up in class, knew what they were doing, and
learned a lot. It doesn't matter if they had experience going in, or worked
hard to make up for lost time. And the other group half-assed it just well
enough to make it over the finish line. Or to rephrase again - you had people
who wanted (for whatever reason) a skillset that is marketable, and a group
that thought they could buy a ticket to a good jobs.

------
bluejekyll
"... back then we saw support staff (such as QA and QAE and tech writers) who
worked alongside software developers;"

I've personally been working in the industry for 20 years, full time for 17. I
Can't believe I just read someone asking for QA/QAE/QE. Modern dev shops
should be relying on automation for test coverage, and the developers of the
code should be the ones writing the tests for their code. There is a place for
QE, those are Software Engineers focused on tooling around the automation for
tests and such.

Relying on QE is an antiquated relic of the bad, very bad, Waterfall days. In
those days release cycles were long because shipping software meant that there
were releases timed to marketing and cyclical sales. Now software is shipped
online. the role of QE has changed to not take crappy code a Dev wrote and
validate it, but to be the one responsible for making sure Dev's are actually
testing their code and that the code is being measured for quality.

The easiest way to make this obvious, go write some code, say a few files
worth, and then try to add tests to it later. You need to go back and
refactor, in some cases significantly, to make the code testable. Code needs
to be written from the beginning as testable. I always felt bad for QA/QE
folk, because they would just get handed crap and be expected to do something
with it. This is no longer cool.

(btw Documentation is also a requirement for all code and should be done
earlier, not later. Use your own software and try and figure out how others
will use it, and document that. Tech Writers should be dealing with well
understood systems...)

~~~
lobotryas
Problem is that many devs don't take the time to develop a testing mindset (or
think it's not their job).

QA is a lot more than writing automation or validating code correctness. QA
are the first people to lobby on behalf of a customer when it comes to
actually using the feature (ideally this is a PM's job, but I've seen few good
PMs in the Bay so far).

QA also has to think holistically about security, performance, UX, on-screen
text like error messages and so on. Hopefully the team has free access to
other teams who specialize in this kind of work, but more often than not such
resources do not exist or are unavailable. Thus it falls onto QA to fill all
these small (or big) gaps.

~~~
ubersoldat2k7
You're right, not everything can be tested, specially on frontend jobs. Like,
"if you scroll too fast the elements are displaced". How the hell you write a
unit test for that?

