
Software Engineers Will Work One Day For English Majors - eugenejen
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-04-22/software-engineers-will-work-one-day-for-english-majors.html
======
DavidAdams
The title of this article is pure flamebait, but I am a 41 year old former
English major, and I've founded several software companies and had several
hundred software engineers work for me since I co-founded my first company in
1995. I'm a little bit of a unique case, since what got me started was being
hired as a research assistant for a forward-thinking biology professor who
wanted me not only collecting information, analyzing it, and writing (my core
specialty) but also administering a Gopher server, which turned into a web
server, which became a proficiency with 1993-era web design. When I co-founded
my company in 1995, I was the only one of the co-founders that really knew
anything about the web. I eventually settled into the head of product role,
and I've been a jack-of-all-trades product executive ever since.

So not every English major is going to have a similar backstory. But I do know
this: research, organization, and strong writing skills got me where I am. It
helps also that I was an engineering school dropout and I share many of the
proclivities of my engineering brethren. I just decided at some point in
college that I liked writing as a way of making things, and switched to
English.

As other commenters have noted, no forty year old is an English major anymore.
The point worth making is that receiving a good education and being ambitious,
hard-working, curious, and embracing new technology is a good recipe for
success. And if you think you're going to get anywhere in this new world
without strong written communication skills, you're fooling yourself.

------
patio11
How many English majors are still in "English" at age 40? Many of them will
have exited the workforce , started their own business, changed careers, or
leveled up high enough that their occupational classification the government
uses changes.

Programmers do all these things, too.

I love programming. I didn't even make it to thirty as a "programmer"! (P.S.
There exist lots of benefits to not calling yourself a programmer.)

~~~
over40guy4
I doubt many 40+ programmers are going to come out in support of this article.
In cases of discrimination, you are labeled a crybaby so it's better to just
stay quite. HN is mostly young and the only 40+ ones here are the type who
like puzzles or in top 1 percentile of programming (e.g. patio11). For a vast
majority of 40+ programmers, the reality is as grim as painted in this
article.

If you are not in top 1 percentile of programming abilities, you better move
to management. This is hard for someone who isn't verbally aggressive.
Positions for management require X years of managing Y employees so if didn't
make the move early on, you are doomed. Given that there isn't a puzzle/test
type of way to rank managers, the management positions get doled out as
opposed to competed for. You have to be in the shoes of a 40+ programmer who
is not in top 1 percentile to know this :-(

~~~
patio11
While I appreciate the praise, I am likely not in the top 1% of programming
ability. (People often say that I am, because I'm pretty good at written and
oral communication. Take note, young impressionable HNers, because this
strongly suggests reprioritizing which trees to put your talent points into.)

As to your own circumstances: there exist many clueful companies which would
hire you. Find my email if you want to talk specifics. This is not a market
where anyone skilled should be hurting for offers.

~~~
Poiesis
To add to patio11's note: I don't have as much social clout here as he, but
believe me when I say that people skills (I'm lumping in various communication
skills here) are way, _way_ more important than technical skills.
Reprioritizing is right. In my opinion, his success is due more to his "soft"
skills; he's closer to a one-percenter [grin/duck/run] in terms of his
communication skills than his technical ones.

Even so, this isn't rocket science. Just like any other skill, effective
communication can be taught. Like many other pursuits, it doesn't take long to
distinguish yourself just because there's so much rubbish out there.

------
tgflynn
Maybe this is why so much software these days looks like it was written by
unsupervised youngsters.

I just wasted a day trying to get ListView's to work in Android only to find
out that, well, they don't work, so you need to use something else. Then it
took me a couple of hours to essentially duplicate the ListView functionality,
except a working version.

The thing is developing a GUI framework isn't rocket science, its been done
before and there are plenty of examples of reasonably well designed frameworks
out there, Swing and Qt to name a couple.

Software is complex so it takes a while (years at least, probably decades) for
a human brain to gain real perspective on what's important and what isn't in
software development. A culture like the one we're living in that throws away
those brains dooms itself to decline.

~~~
Radzell
It's not the youngster who are jobless is the older software engineers who
never learned to learn new concepts. The older programmer to so much time to
learn everything from algorithms , to cryptography, and things that are
analytical they forget about learning new technologies. Yoru comment shows why
older people have difficult getting jobs. It took you a day to understand how
a listview work while a good young programmer who understand technologies
should be able to pick up any technology and understand it in a few weeks.

~~~
sausagefeet
I think newer programmer's just work for less. There really isn't that much
new under the sun in software engineering.

~~~
jwoah12
Really? And here I was thinking that my discipline was one of the most rapidly
evolving on the planet...

~~~
Retric
Not so much, mostly people keep reinventing the wheel over and over again.

Consider, there is vary little that separates handheld Apps from desktop
applications. Sure, if you come from the Web side of things it seems new and
nifty but they are just stand alone applications. Capacitive sensing touch
screens where where new in _1965_ , but wait it's 2012.
<http://www.billbuxton.com/multitouchOverview.html>

People worry about what happens when desktop CPU's have hundreds of cores, but
the super computer world is already dealing with hundreds of thousands of
cores etc.

PS: I think this relates to the hacker mentality. If you find a problem you
look for a solution rater than see how other people solved the same problem 30
years ago.

------
GFischer
The article states: "A large technology company might typically pay new law-
school graduates and MBAs salaries and compensation approaching double what
they give new master’s degree grads in computer science. "

But, from what I've read, those high-paying law school jobs are very few, only
for the elite of the elite, and requires the new employee to work insane
hours. Same for those MBAs.

I'm pretty sure that, on average, a new master's degree grad in Computer
Science outperforms a typical law school graduate, and should be close or
better than an MBA.

Let's Google:

<http://www.nalp.org/classof2010_salpressrel>

Law graduates:

"The national median salary for the Class of 2010, based on those working
full-time and reporting a salary, was $63,000"

and only because of those few outliers making $160,000.

[http://edition.cnn.com/2011/LIVING/06/06/paying.jobs.2011.gr...](http://edition.cnn.com/2011/LIVING/06/06/paying.jobs.2011.grads.cb/index.html)

"Computer science -- Average annual salary offer to 2011 grads: $63,017"

[http://www.businessweek.com/bschools/content/sep2009/bs20090...](http://www.businessweek.com/bschools/content/sep2009/bs20090928_592028.htm)

"PayScale's average (for starting salary MBAs) clicks in at a much more modest
$66,300"

So, basically, he's wrong.

~~~
fl3tch
> But, from what I've read, those high-paying law school jobs are very few,
> only for the elite of the elite, and requires the new employee to work
> insane hours. Same for those MBAs.

My sister got a law degree and then did an internship specializing in tax law
(I know). She got a job last year straight out of college (at age 25) making
$130,000 at a firm that handles the tax issues when one company wants to
acquire another. Among all the jobs you could have as a corporate (and
especially tax) lawyer, it seemed pretty cool. One of her early projects
involved a well-known entertainment company that wanted to buy another
entertainment company (although the deal eventually fell through).

In recent months she's been crying a lot and wanting to quit. She works 6-7
days a week and 12+ hours a day. She's never home and has no life. She'd
rather start her own restaurant, which is something that she's always had a
passion for. Even if her pay were cut to 25% of what it is now for the first
few years, she says she would be happier, but she's contractually stuck in
this job for a minimum of 12 months (until September), so it's kind of a
personal hell. Also, there's the sunk cost issue. She's already devoted 8
years of her life and $100,000 to preparing for this career, so it's hard to
just walk away.

My point is, good money is rarely easy.

~~~
sedachv
> My point is, good money is rarely easy.

You should ask her if she seriously talked to the partners managing her about
scaling back her hours. I'm not a psychic, but I'm very certain that she
hasn't actually done that. A friend of mine has a very similar story ($160k
straight out of law school in NYC and hating it) and is dealing with it in a
similar way (passive-aggressive complaining to friends and relatives, escapist
fantasies, but hers center around travel instead of restaurateurism).

A lot of people seem to be closet masochists when it comes to work. If you
tackle the issues bothering you directly you'll be surprised how easy they are
to resolve, and your managers will respect you more for standing up for
yourself.

------
lambda
> Statistics show that most software developers are out of the field by age
> 40.

Really? What statistics? And where do these statistics show the developers
going? People don't just dry up and blow away at 40. They move to managerial
positions. They start their own companies. They stay in jobs longer, so while
you might see fewer of them being hired, that doesn't mean they're not still
working in the field.

And there are simply not many older developers to begin with. How much of this
effect is the fact that there are simply many more qualified developers under
35 than there are over 40, as the field wasn't as big and not as many people
were getting training 20 years ago?

This article is high on anecdotal doom and gloom and low on actual evidence.
"Statistics show" is not a very convincing argument.

~~~
ttt_
I think you touched on the core of the issue here. How much has the market
grown on the past 20 years? Quite a lot actually. As the market grows, more
people gravitate towards it as a career choice, and they are mostly young
people looking for career choices. 20 years from now, those people will be
seniors in a highly competitive market where solutions grow in technical
complexity day after day.

The only thing certain is that things will have changed by them from what they
are currently.

------
DanielBMarkham
This would be dead-on except for he misses a key point: programming is not
about programming anymore.

"Programming" in the sense he uses it is a corporate cog working in some huge
technology-producing machine. That job? Sure. It leans heavily towards younger
workers. Why not? Have you seen the way they treat programmers?

But the general skill of programming is not practiced in that environment much
anymore. Today programming is everywhere. It's more like the way cursive
writing used to be -- you won't get far without knowing it. Programming is
that skill you mix into some other skill to make the whole thing better.

Programming is quickly becoming more of a necessary add-on than an end-point
in itself.

------
hkarthik
The title initially made me angry, but there's a lot of truth in this post.
The sad fact is that once you cross 35, the salary growth slows considerably
for most engineers and you have to jump to management roles to make more, even
if your output translates to more dollars.

Contrary to the article, I think people in Law and Finance go through the same
thing, but they get about 10 years more than us. My friends in Finance can
stay in technical roles well into their 30s while still making double what
even a typical Software Engineering Manager would make. When they finally have
to go into more managerial roles, their kids might be getting out of the house
and their personal responsibilities are lower, so they can take less stressful
roles, or even go into consulting and start traveling if they want to be more
hands on.

~~~
rayiner
What you do see in law that you don't in engineering is the up-or-out pressure
in big firms. You either make partner in years 7-10 or you go find another
job. But if you do make partner (possibly at a much smaller firm than where
you started), you basically get to do technical work for as long as you want.
Partners do some business development and management work, sure, but they're
still the ones that go into court and argue the motions. And in that role you
only get more valuable with age. People go to lawyers when something has gone
sideways, and all else being equal they want the cool-headed guy with 20 years
of experience over the young hot-shot.

------
cjoh
This is more about risk than it is intelligence. It's the case that as most
people get older, their tolerance for risk gets less and less: they pick up
things like "spouses," "mortgages" and "children" which make it so that they
cannot afford to work for equity/cash combinations.

I suspect this is also why you see a trend of "I don't want to work 80 hour
weeks" posts bubbling up these days as well (though that could be confirmation
bias) -- the initial Web2.0 generation is getting to be that age.

------
jiggy2011
I think some of the reason for this is that younger people are more likely to
start their programming careers with the current "cool" tools/languages
whereas the older programmers will have large amounts of experience and
therefor be most valuable (and able to command better salaries) maintaining
software that is becoming legacy.

Take myself for example, I started doing programming seriously around 2001
when PHP/MySQL was the hot technology. This meant that I got a lot of
experience quickly in a field that was high in demand for new projects. This
means of course that I now have several years of PHP experience and could get
a PHP job relatively easily.

However very few new cool startups etc are being built using PHP but that is
not a problem since there is still plenty of PHP around, however what happens
in 10-20 years when all of the PHP codebases have been retired and everything
is done in NodeJS or whatever.

I will be competing for jobs with recent graduates who "came up" using Node
and who will be willing to work for lower salaries. I may have more experience
than them in programming but probably not in something like Node. Sure I will
be able to learn these skills on my own time to an extent but probably not
with the sheer enthusiasm and vigor that an 18 year old who is dreaming of
making his million dollar idea could muster.

Of course there are areas like algorithms etc that do not change so much over
time, but the odds are that a bright college grad will be able to remember his
CS classes much more clearly than an older developer would (unless the older
dev had reason to exercise those skills often during his career).

The main thing an older developer would be able to offer is Wisdom, but this
is largely something for which there is not a high value placed in modern
software.

~~~
virtualeyes
same deal, started in 2001 on LAMP stack

2 years ago woke up and started exploring, Groovy, Ruby, and then, bing, penny
dropped, Scala.

New life at 40 ;-)

In the end you need passion. I would be shocked if I am not coding full-time
at 60, nothing grabs me more...

~~~
thebluesky
+1 for Scala. It's like Java on Steroids without the verbosity.

------
Cherian_Abraham
Umm.. The author is not objective. He (Norman Matloff) had long since been
spouting off on H1-B and why its bad. He also found a way to work it in to the
article, in the same way that he had used in the past so effectively, to scare
the current programmer segment in to being worried for their jobs.

I am not saying that H1-B isnt abused, but his take on it is largely one
sided, and against.

~~~
epicviking
I googled the good doctor, and wow, you weren't kidding.

<http://heather.cs.ucdavis.edu/h1b.html>

He really does see the H1-B as some sort of Ragnarok for the American
programmer.

------
jhspaybar
This whole idea that the wisdom of an older experienced programmer isn't
somehow hugely useful mystifies me. I'm at the top of my CS class in the UC
system and spending this summer interning at one of the biggest Intenet
companies. I'm also very comfortable in C++, Objective-C, Java, and a host of
"hot" web languages.

With that said, I'm aware I truly "don't know jack" despite being one of the
best in my degree program. If given the choice of hiring a new CS grad at $75k
a year or an experienced developer at $150k for a startup, I'd choose the
experienced developer every time. Maybe it's a product of my self education
supplementary to school, but someone who has done it before(even if using
something as ancient as COBOL) is the person I want to be my superstar.

~~~
getsat
I'd take the graduate at 100k/yr if he had awesome side projects that show
hustle/autodidactism rather than the experienced developer at any pricepoint.

------
jroseattle
Wow, what hogwash. I still don't see where the article connects the dots --
why, exactly, would I end up working for an English major?

As for the balance of the article, most of the finger-pointing to dead-end
oblivion for 40+ programmers is that they're priced out of the market. While
that may be true in some cases, it's certainly not a trend I'm seeing --
rather, the opposite.

Mostly, this article was written by someone who has no idea what
programmers/developers/architects/engineers do with their time, nor why
companies value them in those endeavors.

~~~
cowholio4
Eh... I wouldn't write off the author that easily. I had him as a professor at
UC Davis.

<http://heather.cs.ucdavis.edu/matloff.html>

~~~
whimsy
Perhaps, but he's no English major - didn't support his thesis.

~~~
Magnin
He doesn't work for one either: his boss (Chancellor) is an EE.
<http://chancellor.ucdavis.edu/about/index.html>

------
johngalt
Max career length depends on how the young engineer sets himself up. Early in
your career you want to bootstrap yourself with some hot new technology to get
your foot in the door. Once you are about 3-4 years in, you need to switch
gears and focus on learning the things that change slowly. Such as:

1\. How to work with people (technical/non-technical)

2\. More about math and general concepts of your craft, not just new language
X.

3\. Measuring the business effects of your work.

People are more apt to deal with a 20 something nerd with a bad attitude
because he's cheap and fits the stereotype. An expensive 40 something with the
same attributes will be seen as a weirdo.

~~~
jiggy2011
Yes, I can imagine far more people wanting to hire Mark Zuckerberg than
Richard Stallman.

------
sosuke
I get the odd feeling there is something personal going on for the author.
There isn't anything in there to back up English or humanities majors taking
more managerial positions in tech companies.

"If you choose a software-engineering career, just keep in mind that you could
end up working for one of those lowly humanities majors someday."

------
PaulHoule
Some programmers dodge this bullet, others don't.

I know a guy who worked for UNISYS his whole life writing Macro Assembler for
360 mainframes. A few years back the state of New York found that the official
printer interface for IBM mainframes wasn't fast enough to print all of the
paperwork New York State sends out, so he invented a whole new printer
interface.

He just retired at age 60 and he's got enough $ to have a home in upstate NY
and one in Hawaii.

The trouble you do have is that as you get older you will want to get a more
senior job and those do get harder to find.

------
wickedchicken
The author is a CS professor. Does he not enjoy CS or something? I'm not
certain what his goal is with this article.

"Finally, those high programmer salaries are actually low, because the same
talents (analytical and problem-solving ability, attention to detail) command
much more money in other fields, such as law and finance."

This is a tricky one, because it really boils down to "it depends." I can't
speak about the law sector, but my limited experience in the financial world
speaks to sales guys making oodles more than the analysts or quants. Further,
the high salaries come with many more hours, so the per-hour salary of a
software engineer would actually be higher.

[http://www.indeed.com/salary/q-Financial-Analyst-l-New-
York,...](http://www.indeed.com/salary/q-Financial-Analyst-l-New-
York,-NY.html)

[http://www.indeed.com/salary?q1=software+engineer&l1=sun...](http://www.indeed.com/salary?q1=software+engineer&l1=sunnyvale)

[http://www.indeed.com/salary?q1=quant&l1=new+york+city](http://www.indeed.com/salary?q1=quant&l1=new+york+city)
(note that a quant is typically a phd-only position and comes with _crazy_
hours)

[http://www.indeed.com/salary?q1=fixed+income+sales&l1=ne...](http://www.indeed.com/salary?q1=fixed+income+sales&l1=new+york+city)

According to this data I was mistaken about sales vs quants, but I wonder if
this factors in bonuses (which would be significant for the latter two)?

~~~
pja
Those quoted finance salaries won't include bonuses I suspect, so the
potential upside is much higher than that.

The programmer at GS who was accused of taking their code (and later
acquitted) was on at least $400k, although I can't remember the exact figure.

------
gexla
Regarding the Facebook preference for hiring young people...

The "young" developers today are those who grew up with the sorts of stacks
that start-ups today are being built on. The 1.0 release of ROR was late 2005.
If you were hacking away at 12 years old in 2005 then you would be 19 today!

Learning the web dev stack is a lot of effort, especially if you throw Linux
in with that. Most people generally don't want to put in the time / effort to
do new things. That's even more true of people who have families and busy
lives.

Also, it's the web dev stack that is bringing down the barriers to entry for
starting new businesses. Things like dirt cheap server resources and cloud
services are even more recent than Ruby 1.0.

No wonder it's all young people! It's the young people who grew up with this
stuff and who don't have to be stuffed into the old molds of work and
education. For example, I'm a U.S. citizen working from the Philippines just
for a change of scenery. Perhaps I could have been able to do this 10 years
ago, but probably not much earlier than that.

This train is moving fast. Quit reading these articles because nobody can
predict where we are going. It's getting crazy.

------
ShabbyDoo
So, I'm confused. What percentage of English majors are still in the "English"
field by age 40? What is the English field? Outside of academia, it barely
exists. Publishing? So, it's laudable to receive a general education which
provides one with many opportunities in life? Great, I agree. Now, why
shouldn't the same logic apply to a computer science degree? Aren't the ways
CS majors learn to think easily transferred to other endeavors? Why is it not
celebrated that CS degrees are so flexible that a high percentage of graduates
ostensibly find ways to do what interests them, pays well etc.?

~~~
wmat
I am an English major who's over 40 with a love of programming and writing.
I've only recently realized that these two passions are not mutually
exclusive. Given the latter, I suppose I'm a bit of a slow learner. But on the
upside, since discovering this, I'm applying more and more energy toward
contributing to open source projects as a writer. I contribute as a programmer
when I can, but for many, many projects improving the documentation is where
the greatest benefits can be had.

------
unwind
I completely failed to parse the title of this article. I thought it was about
some union-like action in which some set of software engineers will donate
their salaries to some set of, supposedly, poor English majors.

The more I read, the more confused I got since it never seemed to get to the
point: _who are doing this_? Heh. English is not my native language, which I
guess this served as a good reminder of.

------
joedev
I've found an easy answer to age discrimination. For the past seven+ years I
have worked from home. Many of my clients and coworkers have little idea of my
relatively advanced age.

------
IanMechura
This guy is so off the radar it is a wonder why he is allowed to publish this
stuff.

I will just add two points.

1) Facebook, Google, and other silicon valley companies are far from the norm
of software development jobs. There are far more jobs in finance, retail, and
travel for engineers than the type of position he is describing.

2) Most directors, executive directors and VPs I have worked for started their
careers as software engineers as a matter of fact engineering is how they
developed the business knowledge to become executives.

------
vegas
Many software engineers will one day work for English Majors. Most English
majors without a strong support network will one day work for Burger King. Not
that there's anything wrong with that. Frankly, if you didn't work for Burger
King at all before college, it might be worthwhile for you to work for them
for a little while after, though some other gig in the food service industry
is probably a better call.

------
bobbydavid
This article touched a nerve for me.

I haven't always been in computer science. I actually minored in English in
college, and now I'm finishing up a MS program in CS (though I've always
tinkered and programmed computers).

I have a tendency, for better or worse, to constantly think about the future.
I'm 26 now, and about to graduate and go to work for a well known tech
company. Originally I was much more interested in starting my own company, but
I spent so much time catching up in CS that I never had enough time to network
at school (which I think is crucial for startup success). I could have taken a
job with an existing startup, but I never found one that really clicked for me
(which I also think is crucial for working at a startup). So I went with the
big tech company. It helped that they offered a lot of money. But it also
makes me worry.

I'm not really worried about being unemployable, like the article suggests,
because I doubt I'll ever be substantially worse of a programmer than I am
now. But I do worry that I've hit some sort of ceiling. I'm pretty sharp now
-- will I ever be twice or three times as sharp as I am now? Probably not.
Assuming my pay tracks my ability (is this a valid assumption?), my current
salary at 26 may be 75% or more of my lifetime max salary. In other words,
I've already peaked.

Admittedly, some people may enjoy the comfort in this, but I don't. I feel a
bit like the proverbial "shark" in that if I don't keep moving, I die. I am
happiest with a destination I am moving toward, and if jobs like this one turn
out to feel stagnant, I'll have to quit.

But if/when that time comes, will I still be able to break into the startup
scene? Will I suffer from an age bias? Will I have too many other commitments,
wife/kids, mortgage, etc., so that I won't be able to risk quitting my job?

And what really scares me: is it true that after 35 your programming mettle
starts to leave you?

~~~
tikhonj
This is obviously anecdotal evidence, but I've met a bunch of older
programmers who were _very_ good. And this is across several specializations--
all the way from developing drivers to virtualization software to enterprise
Java development to compilers. I suspect that, right now, by pure competence
the best programmers I've met have actually been older. (And this is ignoring
my professors who tend to be exceptional as well as older.)

So really, do not worry about becoming a worse programmer. Worry perhaps that
younger people will be subconsciously biased against you, sure, but this is
just a bias not based on reality. That said, nobody mandates startups to be
started by younger people. My dad recently worked for a startup doing some
very interesting low-level work (they concentrated on using SSDs to speed up
servers) that got acquired by SanDisk recently. And he doesn't have a CS
degree either--he got the equivalent of a Masters in Physics in Leningrad
where they didn't even have CS in his time. (I gather they barely had
computers at all.) And, most importantly, I've noticed that he has become much
happier after working at the startup than he was while working at a bigger
company (VMWare) before.

So, ultimately, all that matters is that you are a good programmer--and I
imagine you are. Perhaps it will take a bit more work for you to find a job at
a startup, perhaps you will sometimes encounter bias against your age, but
ultimately you should be able to do whatever you like.

------
radikalus
One would think, with the story coming from Bloomberg, that they might mention
that finance almost exclusively hires older programmers. Hedge funds, trading
firms, and even the banks place a significant premium on expertise and are
generally staffed by a much older crowd than what you'd find in Tech. (For
many of the reasons you'd expect...)

------
tybris
Sure, many software engineers are over their creative prime by the time they
hit 40 and move into management, training, recruiting, etc. With 15-20 years
experience in the complexities of software engineering under the belt, they
are probably pretty good at it. What does that have to do with English majors?

------
cageface
_Statistics show that most software developers are out of the field by age
40._

If this is really true then where do they all go? There's only so many seats
for managers and architects.

~~~
Radzell
How many 40 year old software programmers could there be the area of science
has only been around 40 years.

~~~
cageface
A lot of modern jobs have only existed for <= 40 years.

Trust me, there are a lot of us.

~~~
bad_user
That's true, but software development is special because not everybody can do
it.

Don't get me wrong here, I actually think that mostly anyone (lets say over
average) can learn to code, including very young children or over 40 adults
... the difference between normal people and people that make a carrier out of
it is that building actual applications is a lot harder than printing hello-
world or sorting an array or scripting your home appliances.

I think that if you don't start doing software development early in life (at
most in your early twenties), then chances to make it as a software developer
are rather poor.

A couple of reasons come to my mind:

\- like with every hard skill out there, it takes a phenomenal amount of time
until you're able to be effective at it

\- we constantly have to learn, just like doctors and while doable, it gets
tiring. You can learn new stuff based on what you already know, so you never
restart from scratch, but many people simply stop giving a shit

\- getting a hello-world working feels like magic at first, but repeat that
10,000 times and pretty soon it starts feeling like drudgery. That's the story
of most things you end up working on. And it is impossible to work only on new
stuff, in fact most of the work in software development is drudgery

\- related to the above, the motivation of senior software developers has to
pivot from working on cool stuff to seeing happy users, or to money earned, or
to other tangible byproducts or your work, because "cool" is relative and the
initial magic starts fading away (which is why I believe many developers move
into management)

\- the demand for "good" software developers is high. But it's actually pretty
hard to find a job as a software developer if you're not at least decent or
come from a good university. This makes it a hostile environment for rookies,
being a bitch to get your foot in the door

\- software development is not only hard, but must be complemented with people
skills ... being able to communicate effectively with others is of extreme
importance, knowing how to do efficient marketing is also essential if you
want to build your own products or if you want a good carrier path

~~~
cageface
Yeah I agree that programming, for whatever reason, seems to be something that
a lot of people just can't do well.

But we're talking about the people that have been doing real work in the field
for ~20 years getting booted out to god knows where. Is this true? If so,
where do they go? It's not really so easy to start a completely new
professional track at 40. Are they stocking shelves?

~~~
bad_user
I really think those people just gave up for one reason or another.

But do note here that 20 years ago there weren't many jobs related to software
development. This industry started taking off in the early nineties and got
popular in the late nineties. And as I said, it's not an easy job.

So if you want to make statistics based on that, the sample is really small.
We should wait another 20 years for any meaningful conclusions, and my guess
is that in 20 years from now there will be many software developers over 40.

------
peppertree
I guess Crockford better pack his bags and send himself to a retirement home.

There are always going to be under qualified and over qualified candidates.
Some people simply loose interest in their field after 20 years. What a load
of over generalized garbage.

~~~
streptomycin
That's an absurd interpretation of the article. It never said everyone is out
of the field by 40, just "most".

------
cannuk
I hate it when places like Bloomberg purport to tell me what is going to
happen with the rest of my career. I will be 32 at the end of this week, and
you know what? I am not stopping this programming thing anytime soon. This
article is written for the people that would get into our craft based on the
fact that Software Engineer was just named the top job. If you love to build,
if you love to create, if you love to program then you will be fine. You set
the expiration date of that, not your age.

~~~
RedwoodCity
The title "33% of Software Engineers no longer writing code at 40" doesn't
have the same ring.

------
dabent
To extend the author's logic a bit, I will change one word in a quote from the
article: "Even if the 45-year-old manager making $120,000 has the right
skills, 'companies would rather hire the younger workers.'"

I've worked long enough to see many middle-aged middle managers who end up
unemployed for extended periods, one I know now sells real estate after being
VP at a large software company. Meanwhile, I'm in my mid-forties and had a
company pay to move me cross-country for my technical skills. The fact is,
there are only so many management jobs and a company can just as easily put a
35-year-old in the job as a 45 or 55-year old. Also, companies are continually
trying to flatten the traditional org-chart, eliminating management positions
permanently and using technical talent as the first layer of management. It's
getting hard out there for an English major.

I'm not trying to diminish the real bias there is against older workers. I
really believe this comes from how the US health care system works. Older
workers - even those who ask a lower salary - are seen as bringing up the cost
of insurance for the company's group and are seen as a higher risk for long
term disability. That's a reality that's skill-set agnostic and something all
of us who reach 50 years of age will have to face.

------
eliben
\-- "Although the very term “coding” evokes an image of tedium"

This is ridiculous.

~~~
zdw
Replace "coding" with "writing" and you'd describe most of my k-12 and
undergraduate educational career.

Many people can't seem to grasp the differences in ways a computer could be
used, and lump it all in with "data entry".

------
kamaal
Well why is this surprising?

A lot of people working in factories, plants and other shops undergo the same
treatment with time. The issue isn't exactly with software professionals but
with any job. Young blood is preferred, because they push longer for lesser
money. They don't have families, they can take failure gracefully, they have
tons of time to fail and recover.

As we age, we get families, we have kids, we need insurances for ourselves and
family. We need to pay college fees, We need a home to settle in, we have
mortgages, And then of course we always have bills to pay, food and clothes to
buy. All this means everyone tries to settle down at some time. Instead of
running a marathon at the speed of a sprint, we just like to push things as
they are. This means we get held back, we play safe, we like to have permanent
jobs.

This is what millions of people go though. They hit dead ends by 40. Because
the expenses keep rising, and the corporate pay structures seem to reward only
promotions on managerial levels. And if you don't get to be a manager you are
basically done for! That's with every one, not just software professionals.
And what remains after that is struggling to be employed based on skills which
are very commonly available else where especially in a pool of people who are
younger.

Clever people make their financial planning while they in 20-30. Get
themselves enough cash to give themselves enough freedom to not worry about
getting fired, non getting employed, being replaced, old age or never ever
going to work again.

Get yourself enough money to not worry about money. Regardless of what ever
profession you are in.

------
eumenides1
This article is very short sighted and tries to address an issue that cannot
be solved by the tools he has.

Let's start with the title. "Software Engineers Will Work One Day for English
Majors".

How about "Software Engineers Will Work One Day for someone" because those two
options are basically the same except that one is flame bait.

You have two pills you can choose from: Red pill is entrepreneurship; Blue
pill is salary/contract. The red pill is the only way for above title to not
be true. Blue Pill means you'll be working for someone. Either pill is fine it
comes down to personal preference.

Ignoring entrepreneurship (because this article isn't the place for it); the
article states that by age X, we will price ourselves out of a job because the
newer model is the shinier model. So you shouldn't or be aware that there is a
glass ceiling when becoming an engineer.

I'm going out on a limb here but, that is the wrong way to think. You are out
of a job at age X because you've been sitting on your degree for 10+ years! Go
F'n learn something and demonstrate that you are better and deserve that role
+ salary increase. You work for that "English Major/Human/H1-B Visa" person
because they worked harder than you and stole your lunch.

Here is a real solution: Create/Find/Get a master’s degree in leadership &
management for people with a technical background. These technical people need
the soft skills it takes to make it to the next level. Getting rid of a H1-B
visa program doesn’t solve the problem; it is just a stop gap.

In the end, you just need to update and learn new valuable skills.

------
Drbble
More hacker news, less flamebait submissions and flame comments, please.

------
xedarius
There's also another thing to bear in mind. I've spent most of my career in
the games industry. The games industry as a whole is only about 30 years old.
It's only now we're seeing programmers/artists in their 40s+. This is almost
certainly true for most tech companies. Lets see how this holds in 30 years
from now.

------
vorg
There seems to be a ton of washed-up ex-IT sorts from America and Australia in
China teaching English. The bosses are Chinese teachers of English, themselves
English grads, so I guess the post title is quite accurate.

------
mmurph211
In 20 years we'll see how right he is. My guess is he's dead wrong. If you
look at the software development industry it's relatively new (mid 90s really)
and expanding rapidly into every industry. That's producing a lot of heavy
demand for software developers and if you think about it on a meta level it
makes sense with so many things becoming digitized. With all this demand
building up for a job that requires a certain mindset (hindering supply) I
don't see this becoming a problem so long as the workforce keeps up its
marketability.

------
raldi
"This page is not available for mobile viewing at this time."

Are you kidding me?

~~~
wickedchicken
It said 'over capacity' before, so I'm wondering if they're having server
issues on the mobile version.

~~~
raldi
Nope, still moronically broken.

------
tthomas48
As a software engineer who is a theater major, I just have two points.

1) College degrees are not vocational degrees and are not job guarantees. 2)
When you talk about not being hired because you're not on top of "fad
languages", what I hear is you're not being hired because you're not staying
up to date in your field. I'm sure there are blogs by petroleum engineers who
say they're being discriminated against because they're not up on this
"fracking fad".

------
gjm11
Possibly worth noting, in view of the article's use of "English majors" to
mean nontechnical managerial types: Jamie Zawinski was an English major.

------
ths
This doesn't have to be true. Goethe managed to stay fresh his entire life -
even the poetry he wrote in his late years was seen as expanding the art form;
if the mind ossifies over the years it's probably because one has grown
complacent and stopped expanding, rejuvenating, overcoming oneself. A
categorical statement about age is just an excuse, IMHO.

------
joshklein
There's plenty to take offense to in this article, but perhaps it would be
wise to take one implication to heart: as you progress, don't forget to
improve your soft skills just as you improve your technical skills. Whatever
you make of this, it would be folly to argue with the assertion that managing
other people requires strong communication skills.

------
xenithorb
I'm a 25 year-old former Marine who thought he could take a shot at being a
programmer when he exited the military. I never had any background in
programming other than being interested in UNIX and Linux at a young age, so
CS seemed like the logical choice for someone who had a GI bill to burn.

2 years and a lot of classes later, I'm realizing I'm too old to compete at
this gig, and I should have started when I was _12_ , if I wanted to be taken
seriously. The only thing I have any skill in is various computer related
things, but not one thing in particular. I've developed a very basic knowledge
of C++, but that's laughable really. So I'm stuck, unsure of what it is I
should really be doing. I could get a dead-end part time job and continue my
schooling, but it seems almost futile at this point. I was denied to the
University of Florida, yes the school that recently killed-off their CS
department in favor of Football funding. It was the top school in the state,
but they wouldn't accept my transfer because I'm only now up to the Calculus 1
and Physics level (rightfully so I guess, that was my mistake). Being that I
could only take those classes now, it would probably be another year at least,
to get to where I could actually transfer to a real university. The only
reason I've been able to do this is because of the GI bill that's been granted
to me because of my time in the service, but that's running out and I don't
have anything to show for it. Other than a General AA, which probably wasn't
worth my time - despite planning ahead.

I keep reading stories and anecdotes about how this field is going, and I'm
starting to become very unsure if it's something I need to stick with to
prevail, or whether it's already too late. I can't find anyone that will tell
me the truth - just those that placate with notions of "you can do anything
you're just not trying hard enough," despite my 15 hour course-load. From my
perspective it seems like CS is an unattainable feat unless you're fresh out
of high school at the age of 17 with several dual-enrolled college courses
under your belt. The competition is outrageous. Don't you think I want skills
that are worth someone's money?

I read about how people with experience with Java, C++, C, C# and so fourth,
at least having the ability to put multiple languages on their resume, can't
find employment because they haven't done a formal project or haven't been a
part of, and accepted, within the OSS community. This frightens me because my
skill level is nowhere near where it needs to be to do this, and I highly
doubt how much I can persevere with the time that I have left.

I used to open up my IDE with the prospect of learning new things and
freshness being able to develop a more solid understanding of what I thought I
could do for a living. While I finish out the courses I'm still in, it would
appear now, as I reflect, that I'm only doing it to pass the course now, as my
delusions of grandeur have faded.

Edit: Wow. Thanks for all your input. This will give me a better objective
view to reassess my path. Again, thanks.

~~~
jiggy2011
Well, the competition _is_ outrageous at the top end of programming jobs, also
bear in mind that you are reading HN where many of the commentators are above
average programmers who dream in code. However just because you might not land
a job at Google does not mean you will not be able to create a decent career
for yourself.

If you can get any experience working on OSS at all, especially on a
reasonably well known project (not all of these are hugely technical, so you
don't necessarily have to be some ninja guru). This will already put you ahead
of the pack,many programmers use OSS but few actually contribute. You will
also have the advantage that you will be able to work on real code and
possibly get some mentoring which will help build your confidence.

Also bear in mind that as a former Marine you will have experience in areas
that the overwhelming majority of programmers do not. Even if these do not
seem directly relevant it can sometimes be surprising where you may be able to
find a niche.

For example you might want to also consider looking into the IT/Operations
side of computing (running datacenters etc), I would imagine that a military
level of organizational skills as well as being able to deal with pressure
would be very useful there.

I know plenty of competent programmers who did not start when they were 12.

~~~
xenithorb
Thank you for your input. I'm not sure how to get into the Operation side of
things, I might have to inquire with a career counselor about that path, if
it's an avenue that I can take.

I'm aware that my time in is worth something, as I did obtain rank that
probably looks _decent_ , but I'm slightly edgy as to how it will be received.
(I was an infantry Sgt.) Some have some derogatory views of how we are and I'm
reticent to mention too much. (Everyone thinks you have PTSD despite studies)

~~~
jiggy2011
One way to get into operations (albeit not a pleasant one) is through helpdesk
jobs. These are typically repetitive and low paid _but_ if you can get in with
the right company and prove aptitude there is often a concrete career path.

It is important to get in with the right company though as many helpdesks are
basically outsourced to the lowest bidder and end up being dead end script
reading jobs (done those myself, do not recommend).

One company that might be worth looking at would be Rackspace (they host the
website for the British Army so I would assume they are not anti-military)
they are also a pretty large and growing company.

Another option would be to work with a small web dev shop. Usually they are
not looking for uber-coders but for people who can produce consistent work on
time. Also Linux knowledge (if you also know your way around Apache) tends to
be very useful to these guys as they may be so small that they don't have a
full time sysadmin on staff and are constantly being frustrated by the slow
response times of their hosting providers support staff.

------
dak1
Why would I work for one day for somebody with an English degree? Or did he
mean to say "Software Engineers Will One Day Work for English Majors"?

Not that I'm worried either way. I'm a Software Engineer with a degree in
International Relations and Chinese Language, which will probably be more
valuable than an English degree.

------
doki_pen
I don't see the big deal if it's just for one day. (The title was obviously
NOT written by an English Major).

------
virtualeyes
I couldn't agree more: as a self-employed software engineer with degrees in
literature and psychology, I am living proof that now (not one day, right now)
programmers are working for liberal arts "managers" ;-)

------
zitterbewegung
Looking at his personal website it seems like he might have other motivations
<http://heather.cs.ucdavis.edu/matloff.html>

------
chubbard
"Worst article ever!"

At what point, in that repetitive myth that keeps getting recycled, do the
english majors start taking over? They don't. And they won't. And I want my
time back.

------
njharman
> the very term “coding” evokes an image of tedium,

Wow, really? Is that what non-coders think coding is? Do people really think
"coding" is non creative?

------
dorkitude
Besides abstract reasoning, the most important skill for a software engineer
is the ability to learn quickly.

I'm not sure the OP understands that fact.

------
acuity12
In this case you cannot really look at current practices and predict the
future. For many of us in the "new programmer" category now, we will see an
exponentially increasing lifespan as well as several other improved aspects of
health and intelligence. In the limit, this may lead to age having almost no
meaning.

Besides, English Majors?! I dare say that english shouldn't even be a major. A
great academic in any field should be articulate in expressing ideas, in at
least one language.

~~~
cobralibre
"A great academic in any field should be articulate in expressing ideas, in at
least one language."

The idea that English departments exist primarily to produce skilled writers
is a misconception. 'English' as an academic field is the study of English-
language literature, and it's as serious and rigorous as any other field in
the humanities.

------
ta12121
I am a 31 year old programmer. I fear the day I start becoming discriminated
against because of my age.

------
nyrulez
Peace out guys - this is awesome for existing SEs (but maybe not good for the
economy)

------
alexchamberlain
I wonder how the software devs feel about this at Bloomberg?

------
seanp2k2
Linkbait title and vapid article.

------
channi
what an discouraging article...fuck yea!!

------
nirvana
He seems to have missed making the point in the title. Why would software
engineers work for english majors? He thinks that a 20 something english major
is a better manager for a software engineer than a 40 something software
engineer?

Plus he seems to completely miss a separate alternative for software engineers
over 35-- start their own businesses.

I think the perception that 40 year olds are not up to date on technology is
laughable-- just look at how resistant 20-sometings are to erlang. This
resistance or letting skills get old can come from two sources: First, some
people just are kinda blub programmers who never want to learn something new.
The second is that its possible to be pigeonholed. I was that way- forced to
write windows software for years (several companies who had mac apps who hired
me with the promise of working on the mac app then switched me to windows
because I had windows experience) until I seriously de-emphasized that
experience on my resume, and started outright refusing.

The reason companies hire people right out of college is really simple: They
want engineers who are going to accept being over worked due to bad management
practices. They think it is easier and cheaper to just hire out of college
than to fix their broken processes. I've seen this everywhere - from Microsoft
where the managers have some technical back ground but the company culture is
broken- to Amazon where the managers are DMV rejects _and_ the company culture
is broken. (notable exceptions exist in both cases, of course.)

It is cheaper to hire someone right out of college than to hire someone with
10 years experience... the problem is, "professional" management thinks both
are equally productive. In my experience this is not the case.

I had to laugh when, in 2007, Zuckerberg was on the stage at Startup Weekend
claiming that 20 year olds were more productive-- at the time he was too young
to even know the difference! Standard issue youthful hubris, that.

~~~
chaostheory
"He seems to have missed making the point in the title."

I think his title was more of a gimmick to catch people's eyes; I think it
worked.

"I think the perception that 40 year olds are not up to date on technology is
laughable"

I strongly feel that this depends on whether the 40 year old likes programming
for its own sake, or they feel that it's just part of a 'clock in' and 'clock
out' job. It's also very difficult for many programmers that I've known over
the years to step outside of the language that they started with, and start
learning and heavily using something new. (Maybe it has something to do with
aversion to risk and experimentation? For me, the ease in which a programmer
can jump from one language to another, is a key test for their longevity in
the field.) Of course this also holds for younger programmers; it's just that
their skills are fresher and in my limited experience they tend to be more
open minded both technically and to things like longer hours.

That said, I've known two programmers in their 50's who could kick any 20
something's ass in any of the latest tech. Sadly in my experience, they are
very very rare.

~~~
jlarocco
"I strongly feel that this depends on whether the 40 year old likes
programming for its own sake, or they feel that it's just part of a 'clock in'
and 'clock out' job. It's also very difficult for many programmers that I've
known over the years to step outside of the language that they started with,
and start learning and heavily using something new."

I'm not so sure.

At one of my previous jobs I worked with a lot of people in their 50s and 60s
who were used to assembly language, Jovial (it was an Air Force contract), and
Fortran. They couldn't wait to transition to newer stuff because the old
languages were so difficult.

On the other hand they were all really smart, so maybe you're right.

~~~
chaostheory
"They couldn't wait to transition to newer stuff because the old languages
were so difficult."

I think this is just yet another really poor excuse for not learning something
new, which further reinforces my point. There's no reason that any of them
couldn't learn something new right now and years before. It's not like the
middle class can't afford a really powerful computer. They've been affordable
ever since the late 80's. You don't even need a powerful computer to program
and learn something new. Nor do people have to pay to get access to new
languages, and other related dev tools. Plus even the OS is free now. All you
need is motivation to make time for it.

In their defense, this is a really hard habit to break and what makes it worse
is that most people don't realize that they're addicted to one language. As
for myself, I'm too addicted to the imperative paradigm even though I get my
toes wet with functional from time to time since it's baked in with some of
the stuff I use.

~~~
jlarocco
Okay, maybe I didn't make it clear.

The problem isn't that people weren't learning new stuff. Everybody knew the
newer languages - how else would they know they wanted to use them?

Unfortunately, not everybody can drop everything and re-implement a large
system in a trendy new language.

~~~
chaostheory
> how else would they know they wanted to use them?

By reading blog posts and articles about new 'hotness'. I often want to use
something without having previously used it.

------
nirvana
There's a persistent myth that needs to be put down:

It doesn't get at all harder to learn new technologies when you get older. In
fact, it gets a whole lot easier.

There's an old saying "You can't teach an old dog new tricks", and this is
true, to the extent that any cliche can be, when referring to people becoming
set in their ways. For many professions, where the technology doesn't' change,
this is true. For programmers "set in your ways" simply describes the method
by which we pick up new technology since that's what the profession is all
about. (I prefer books to youtube videos, for instance.)

Learning new languages and new technologies and new platforms is a whole lot
easier now than it was 20 years ago, in part because the technology for
delivering information is a lot more available (hell the internet alone is a
huge impact) but also because, having learned a dozen languages the next
language is a lot easier to pick up.

~~~
GFischer
I'm 31, and I have coworkers in their late 30s and early 40s, working in a
large multinational with legacy systems.

The truth is, while it doesn't get that much mentally harder to learn new
technologies, it is very hard psychologically.

For someone used to a large paycheck, to being the go-to guy in the technology
and set in their 9-to-5 ways, to get out of their comfort zone, and admit that
what they know is no longer relevant is scary as hell, especially for those
with families.

So, rather than update themselves and make up all that lost ground from
getting too comfortable, they'll try to keep in place the old legacy systems
only they can maintain.

I got caught in that trap too, one of my main responsibilities is maintaining
a Forte 4GL system ( <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forte_4GL> ).

While I've kept myself relatively up to date, it was on Microsoft .NET
technology only, and I'm still a few years behind. I wanted to supplement my
income, and took a look at the online marketplace, and it confirmed what
Hacker News was already showing me: my skills are useless, I don't know Ruby,
Javascript, the open source stacks, Amazon Web Services or anything currently
relevant and in demand.

I can either try to switch into management, or accept I'm obsolete and take a
large pay cut (or try to improve myself on the side, probably by trying to do
a startup) if I want to stay relevant.

~~~
brandall10
I'm 36, and you sound exactly like me when I was 31. Same situation,
surrounded by a team who was on average 10 years older than myself married
with children, working on mostly legacy stuff. Nobody seemed to really care
much about their jobs, just wallowing in skill rot. When I was 32/33 or so I
was offered to go into management.

I turned down that management offer, kicked butt where I could and got
promoted to a principal engineer. It was at that point I realized I was in a
dead end job, went nuts in my free time reading book after book, tutorial
after tutorial... and two years later finally summoned the courage to do a
Rails project pro-bono on the side for a small local marketing firm; for about
4 mos I was putting in 60-70 hour weeks between my day job and side gig.

Now I have another Rails project lined up for a NYC fashion site that pays
about 15% more per hour than my day job and I've been contacted for no less
than 5 full time Rails positions, one of which I interviewed for and turned
down. The demand for this stack is fierce. And you know what? I'm madly head-
over-heels in love with the latest and greatest the web has to offer (ie.
meteor.js gives me goosebumps, and at the very least in the near term I want
to do a front-end mvc project ala backbone). I'm not great - _yet_ \- but I
feel like for once I'm really in the game. It's exhilarating. I feel more
alive than I have since my early 20s. This NYC contract is about to be signed,
and once that happens I'll be saying goodbye to the windows world altogether,
join a co-working space, build a network, go to local tech meetups, etc, to
ensure I have a steady stream of work. It also helps to have at least 6 mos of
savings in the bank to mitigate risk.

Seriously, go thru easy/free books like Learn Python the Hard Way, Eloquent
Javascript, Michael Hart's Ruby on Rails Tutorial, the tutorials on the W3C
site. You should be able to do all that in a couple months, and that's
probably 50% of the battle (okay - there's alot more, but once you have some
foundation the rest will be much easier).

EDIT: Wanted to mention about the full time Rails positions, 3 were for small
startups, 2 for larger companies. Naturally the small startups you can expect
to take a pay cut if you're mostly maxxed out in your compensation in your
respective area. But the 2 corporate Rails gigs the recruiters wanted to put
me in at or slightly above my total compensation package at my current job
(partly due to those being a mixed environment and needing someone with both
C#/C++ and Rails skills).

~~~
smountcastle
Be careful.

"Now I have another Rails project lined up for a NYC fashion site that pays
about 15% more per hour than my day job"

Contracting is vastly different than being an employee. Your employer pays
considerably more than 15% more per hour for you (employer portion of taxes,
portion of health insurance , etc.) As a contractor you'll be responsible for
those expenses.

~~~
brandall10
That 15% is not taking into account base salary (I'm including bonus + 401k
matching)... it's more like 25% if you look at it that way ;). And this is a
pretty entry level rate... in a year from now I know I'll be able to command
at least 50-70% more.

Health insurance can be had for barely more than the cost of fuel I was using
in my daily commute, which is $200/mo. Yes, I have to do my own taxes, and yes
they'll be a bit more, but as a sole proprietor I can also deduct many
expenses. It's pretty much a wash. I firmly believe people make a bigger deal
out of this than it is, it's a fear thing.

But this is beside my point, I'm transitioning out from Windows dev, and it
doesn't have to be some huge sacrifice like many make it out to be. I have a
plethora of full-time work I can take in front of me if I wish, I decided the
1099 route makes more sense for me at this moment in time.

~~~
carguy1983
The starting point for your contract rate should be the thousands number of
your salary multiplied by 1.5

i.e., if you make $50k a year, charge $75/hr. If you make $100k/year, charge
$150. How much do you think an associate attorney at a law firm that makes
$150k per year is billed out at? CPA? Management consultant? All of these
professionals are generally billed out at a median rate of nearly $200/hr. And
the top end is astronomical, like $800/hr or more.

The hardest part about software consulting/contracting is learning to say a
polite "fuck off" to the people not willing to pay your price. Everything else
is easy. Making some money is the easy part. Earning respect is the difficult
part.

"No less than 5 offers" - CHARGE MORE MONEY. As an engineer it is your
responsibility to the craft to increase the prestige and respect of the job.

~~~
brandall10
First and foremost, I named my price on this contract, which will be 27 hours
per week average for the first 3 months, then option to renew for another 3
months. By your metric I should have asked almost 3x as much. But I'm not
charging for a principal .NET guy, I'm charging for a jr. Rails dev. Put it
another way, I'm probably at 1/3 the speed of a sr. Rails dev. There will be a
day... so in a way, perhaps by this scale I took a huge pay cut against the
risk. More than the $$, I get tremendous amount of value from this experience.
It's my first paid 1099 (well not quite, but in this space it is). I get to
work with a top-notch client and design firm, and I have a very sr. guy on
retainer the client pays for for my use to help out on areas I get stuck and
review all my code (FWIW, he is actually the one who introduced me to this
client, we worked together on the prior project as well).

I also have another client who wants me to bid shorter term work (they did
offer at a rate that's 40% higher) but I told them to hold off for now because
I want to get used to the new contract first and make sure I'm comfortable
with the cadence.

Key point - I will consistently be raising my rate, but for now I'm making
almost as much as my day job and working much less hours, and I need to get
out there network, get good, etc... and the rest will come. I'm approaching
this in a way that aligns with my own principles. I'm not trying to be a
bottom feeder in this market. I just am getting my feet wet with a minimal
portfolio and simply happy to be in a position that I can make the transition
into something I'd much rather be doing.

------
wissler
The element of truth in this article is that wisdom is not only not valued by
many companies' management, it is actively despised. What they want from a
software developer is a cog in a machine, not someone who has enough wisdom to
to see how things would be much better if over the long term fundamental
changes were made.

After years of doing the same stupid things year after year without ever
thinking very deeply (due to such thinking being of no value in that
environment), the cog gets burned out, slow, and stupid, and is then easily
replaced with a younger cog.

------
aneth
Either that or programmers will have to play catch up and become fully
literate.

------
Radzell
This seems like a very bad assessment of software engineering forgetting the
cursial reason why older programmer have trouble finding job. The fact is that
computer science is only really been a legitament profession for maybe 40-30
years. When it first was taught no one could of predicted the speed at which
software engineering would become a dominate force in the world's economy nor
seen how fast technology changes. So in the begginning computer science was
viewed like math, physics, or any science it was taught so that you learned
the basic first then you learned the newer and more innovative things. This is
no longer the case. Yes most programmer will experience c/c++, some may even
lean x86 and MIPS, but we now know that computer science require a constant
change. It is no longer acceptable to just know c/c++ you must learn new
languages all the time. Whether you decide to learn node,js, ruby, scala, or
what ever cutting edge languages we are not groom to pick up languages in 2
weeks if needed to. Most great programmer are taught to teach themselves the
newer technologies to stay relevant. Something I see my professor in college
never really learned.

~~~
cageface
Just a tip: basic grammar and spelling contribute more to your long-term
professional success than you might guess.

