
I'm not 54. I'm 22 with 32 years experience - mooreds
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/im-54-22-32-years-experience-louis-loizou/
======
blunte
So I'm a relatively old guy dev/architect, and I've definitely been frustrated
by the age issues.

But it really comes down to "good enough". Companies have some pre-determined
pay scale for a new position, and more experienced applicants typically want
more pay. Given two candidates, both who look like they might be able to do
the job, companies may choose the less experienced (cheaper).

While the younger candidate may provide less overall to the company, the
difference may be not only difficult to judge, but it may be impossible to
test given that you cannot try both options.

And in terms of design, I would argue that humans are so varied that often
even really horrid designs attract business. That's not to say that younger
designers make worse designs, but that sometimes practically anything would
work; it just might bring in a different audience. The result could be the
same in terms of bottom line.

What I've decided at this point in my life is that we older people need to
either go build our own companies/opportunities, or just roll with whatever
job and find our personal satisfaction outside the office. Or just travel a
lot to lower cost countries, work a lot less, and have a lot of fun :).

* s/manage/judge

~~~
burtonator
It's tough to value the difference between a Python programmer with 5 years
experience and 10 years experience.

The second is not worth 2x the first... but what's the delta?

~~~
zackmorris
Probably exponential. The programmer with 10 years of experience doesn't see
twice as far into a problem as someone with 5 years, but more like 4 or 10 or
100 times as far.

The reason why is pretty straightforward but I don't hear it talked about
much. Any human mind is pretty good at solving a problem, and two heads are
better than one. But the bottleneck is the basic communication between people.

So the more contextual background (experience) one has in a problem, the
faster one is able to explore the problem space and iterate before he or she
begins writing the solution in the real world. That's not going to be replaced
by Agile or any other workflow in the foreseeable future.

I saw this firsthand from my supervisor when I had a 1 year contract at hp in
my mid 20s (he was in his 40s). I was used to dealing with C++, compilers,
some scripting with PHP and Python, that sort of thing.

It took me about a day to complete a ticket like writing a method to, say,
load some data and show it on the screen in C++ or HTML. Meanwhile he was
swizzling data in spreadsheets, piping it around the shell and doing deep
analysis on it in large single passes in a functional manner with the vector
and matrix processing techniques of MATLAB. He'd go from unstructured data to
a report in an hour or two. Stuff that would take me days, weeks, or not even
be feasible with the techniques that I was used to.

I look back on that year as being as important to my education as all the
years before that and college combined. My only regret is that I see so far
now that it almost hurts to write the code where the money is. A deep
reservoir of discipline and frankly stamina are needed to protect the mind
from being drug down by the antipatterns surrounding us.

~~~
scarface74
_Probably exponential. The programmer with 10 years of experience doesn 't see
twice as far into a problem as someone with 5 years, but more like 4 or 10 or
100 times as far. _

Even if that’s true, most companies are at most looking at the next fiscal
year and VC backed funds are just looking to survive until their next funding
round or to their exit.

------
buf
This is one of the biggest concerns I have as an aging developer.

When I was younger, I could focus on the craft of software engineering, but as
I age, I feel like I have to branch out my skill set as sort of a safety net
to ensure that I'm still desirable.

My one comfort is that my network is vast compared to when I was a
20something, and now when I look for a new job, I just ask my network and the
recommendation they give is usually strong enough to get me in the interview
room.

~~~
jrs95
Well alternatively you could get a corporate job, stay there for a long time,
and use your position of seniority to block anyone from using technology you
haven't learned about ;)

~~~
stcredzero
This is why corporate standards in 2019 should address how systems integrate
into the rest of the company, and not how they are implemented. The history of
the past 2 decades bears this out.

------
ssivark
Looking at some of the comments here, I'm surprised at the hubris on display,
discounting experience. Of course, 20 years of experience will look like 20x 1
year of experience if all you look for is ability to whiteboard algorithms, or
crank out lines of code in language/framework X. But that indicates more of a
flaw in being unable to evaluate experience.

I wouldn't be surprised if it takes someone with N++ experience to reasonably
evaluate the value brought by someone with N experience (cue: Blub paradox).
So, yeah, a bunch of people without experience can easily be blind to the
value being brought to the table by experience.

I would expect experienced folk to better understand people, have figured out
how to work effectively in a team, strategically prioritize what needs to be
done, nudge meetings/conversations in the right direction, and mentor younger
team members and help them out with advice in tricky situations. If your
mental model does not value that, of course you would not value experience.
_You need a critical mass of experience in an organization to do this
effectively -- it can 't just fall on the shoulders of one person in middle
management with a few years of technical experience and an MBA._

If you step back and defocus, the above qualities look a lot like leadership
pixie dust sprinkled liberally throughout the organization -- the lack of
which correlates with several repeated failure modes one might see in young
Silicon Valley companies today.

Addendum: I'm not fond of the headline as it stands; it robs the dignity off
age/experience.

------
amelius
Problem is, people of age 50+ will complain about working on unethical stuff
like keeping people hooked to a feed of stupid videos, or tracking them across
the web. In contrast, 20-somethings will either think it's cool, or they
simply need the money.

~~~
williamdclt
Just anecdotal evidence, but I don't find this to be true at all.
20-somethings around me need less the money that older people (they are well
paid, no kids, no mortgage, no old parents to support, no car...) and are more
idealistic and critical of the system.

~~~
kazinator
Oh 20-somethings need money; it just hasn't occurred to them.

Upside:

> _no mortgage_

Downside: can't make down payment and perhaps never will.

~~~
scarface74
Seeing that in the city where I live - a major metropolitan area with plenty
of tech jobs - you can get a brand new 3000 foot house in the burbs, great
school system for around $350K with an FHA loan and 3.5% down, a house is far
from unaffordable for the average developer with 5-7 years of experience.

~~~
loeg
Representing $350k for a 3000 sq foot house as average is disingenuous. That
simply isn't true in the places where the majority of tech jobs exist (major
coastal metros).

In Seattle, 3000 sq ft homes go for a floor of about $750k, and that's in the
extreme south end of town. In SF, try $1.5mil. $500k+ in the outer extremes of
NYC. Average developers can't all move to whatever cheap metro you're
describing; there simply aren't enough jobs there.

~~~
scarface74
You really think that the only place you can find a tech job is on the west
coast?

I must be imagining things that I’ve been doing pretty well for myself in
Atlanta for 20+ years....

And posters on HN wonder why I always rail against the Silicon Valley/HN
bubble.

[https://www.glassdoor.com/blog/25-best-paying-cities-
softwar...](https://www.glassdoor.com/blog/25-best-paying-cities-software-
engineers/)

~~~
loeg
NYC isn't on the west coast.

Do you think all the average west coast developers can move to Atlanta? No;
there aren't the jobs. And if/when there are, housing prices rise
correspondingly.

I'm glad ATL works well for you, but it isn't the average experience.

~~~
scarface74
There are other cities in the US you know where software engineers work....

Why isn’t it the average experience?

[https://www.matrixres.com/salary-surveys](https://www.matrixres.com/salary-
surveys)

------
sosilkj
My takeaway, based on observations over the past few years, is that for many
knowledge-work professions today, particular software engineering, there's a
rather steep discount curve applied to one's experience. In many cases, your
experience simply doesn't matter at all -- or, worst case, it counts against
you. This obviously depends heavily on what 'segment' of the job market you're
in -- nonprofits and the public sector come to mind as probably exceptions --
but I think it holds for a good portion of the software job market today.

~~~
stcredzero
_for many knowledge-work professions today, particular software engineering,
there 's a rather steep discount curve applied to one's experience._

Software Development comes down to a whole lot of cost/benefit tradeoffs. A
project can accumulate tens of thousands of those. The valuable sort of
experience in software actually comes in the form of well generalized
cost/benefit decision making heuristics. There are also poorly formulated
cost/benefit heuristics which can prevent the creation of value. (The worst of
these, being unfounded bias.)

I think a big part of the problem, is that those who don't have such
experience aren't in a good position to evaluate how good or bad someone's
heuristics are. There is a tendency in situations like that for people to fall
back on their own biases.

------
antoinevg
Older developers can usually do in one day what takes a hotshot 20-something a
week.

More importantly what we deliver costs significantly less to maintain.

For managers in for-profit [1] companies there's a clear argument for why
you'd want to hire us:

a) There is a significant $$$ value that comes with a 5x increase in project
throughput. [2]

b) Maintenance costs make up >= 60% of the TCO for your software. [3]

\---

[1] I realise this excludes most of the companies represented by the folk who
frequent HN these days.

[2]
[https://books.google.com/books?id=PPm4EkDnAx8C&pg=PA203](https://books.google.com/books?id=PPm4EkDnAx8C&pg=PA203)

[3] [https://stackoverflow.com/questions/3477706/development-
cost...](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/3477706/development-cost-versus-
maintenance-cost)

~~~
drugme
_More importantly what we deliver costs significantly less to maintain._

Which management is often too inexperienced to appreciate the value of.

~~~
beardyw
I would agree with that. I spent 43 years as a developer and I would say at
the end I had 2 important insights: 1 - to always consider the person who had
to pick up my work and fix it or change it. That is, making it easy for them,
not impressing them with my brilliance. 2 - that apart from the above, only
the end result is important. The language used, the framework, package, or
methodology have no importance except in achieving the end result and point 1.

I would say that if that is how you work you are old, or old beyond your
years.

------
argd678
The concern I always have with people with a lot of experience, and I’m in
that category too, is that they’re not going to bring a wealth of refined
wisdom as much as quirky opinions from years of subtle misunderstandings and
past experiences that are irrelevant in the current context. If they were
actually bring value that had been ratchet up, then that would be very
valuable, but that’s rare.

~~~
stcredzero
I guess it's on older developers to get across what is refined wisdom versus
what are merely quirky opinions from years of subtle misunderstandings.

For many years, the Smalltalk community tried to get a certain message out to
the public, but it didn't get across to the mainstream programming community
nearly as successfully as what Chris Granger managed to do with Light Table. I
think the lesson there, is that the onus is on the people who have the hard
won experience and the valuable contrarian view to explain it to everyone
else.

~~~
argd678
It’s not based on age is what im getting at, there’s more opertunity to learn
with age, but is by no means a guarantee that your insights are correct.

~~~
marcus_holmes
I worry about this. I have a well-developed gut (in all the ways) and it tells
me things that I have learned to trust, but I cannot explain to others
clearly.

Are my gut instincts still correct, or were they correct in the previous
context, and now not so great? How do I develop a heuristic for telling the
difference?

~~~
stcredzero
_How do I develop a heuristic for telling the difference?_

Perhaps this is why, "The unexamined life is not worth living?" One needs to
constantly re-examine one's experiences with regards to first principles. This
way, one can wrest generalized experience and rational decision making up out
of the mire of gut instincts. Toyota's "Five Whys" is a good first step for
that.

~~~
argd678
The method I use is to mentally list out everything I know about a topic so as
to hold it in my mind at once, then throw it a way and consider everything I
have not considered yet. Essentially forcing a new perspective and using the
old knowledge as paths I’ve already been down. If they’re still correct I’ll
just discover another angle they’re correct I hadn’t considered before or
simply realize something new.

------
TomMckenny
These are valid points but only to a degree. Disagreement in the value of
experience is not the real problem.

The real and more serous issue is that discrimination is not rational. It is
not about value or merit, it is an innate dislike, to varying degrees,
regardless of merit, circumstances and value.

It has happened/is happening to other groups and the pattern is identical. It
is probably a bit confusing because the group affected has generally never
experienced it before. It may also be useful to a persons morale to convince
themselves that if they only try harder, they can get any job. A pattern that
might have actually worked when younger.

But even in this thread you have comments of the form "all people over 40 are
X". And you have this in every thread on this topic and, because agism is
generally acceptable, it includes language that, at least on this site, would
unthinkable used against other groups.

To such people your abilities and price are irrelevant. While relevant skill
is certainly a necessary condition to employment, it is in no way sufficient.
Where bigotry is not overtly used, irrelevant conditions are piled on (such as
randomly chosen college exam questions or culture fit) until the candidate can
be plausibly dis missed.

So until the underlying irrational distrust and dislike is addressed, all the
merit in the world will still only get you employed shrinking subset of
organization.

------
taheca
I just have to say, if you are an "aging developer" and want to partner with
someone with some integrity on some side ideas that could become main ideas...
hit me up. I have 20+ years in recruiting/sales and we can tear shit up.

~~~
DrScump
I may be interested, but I don't see any contact info in your profile.

------
EliRivers
Can I pay you like I'd pay 22 year olds? :)

~~~
mixmastamyk
According to this site some new grads are making $200k in total compensation
in sillycon valley. Would love to be making that.

~~~
scarface74
I would never move to Silicon Valley at this stage in the game for only $250K.
With the cost of housing that would be a serious downgrade in our lifestyle.

------
segmondy
Lol at mobile AI chatbot...

That ruined the entire article for me, might have as well said machine
learning on the blockchain ...

------
kazinator
Just don't be one of these: 54 with 1 year of experience, 32 times over again.
:)

------
olivermarks
unfortunately 'age is a state of find' meaning you find out people think you
are too young or old to perform given tasks. Rarely a good idea to focus on it
when discussing your value IMO

------
sonnyblarney
You do not need to dress like a hipster to be 'creative'.

~~~
13415
How the guy dresses is irrelevant, unless he's looking for jobs with a dress
code.

~~~
rubinelli
Every job has a dress code. Some just formalize it.

------
Markoff
i think if you are in 50s and still looking to work for someone else then you
are doing something wrong, no matter how great are your experiences

------
jswizzy
I work with an aging boomers who complains about ageism all the time. He
wanted an outrage salary which our employer couldn't afford. He asks for help
but then insults everyone who tries to explain what ever concept it is he
isn't understanding. He talks down to everyone and gets upset the second
someone suggests he does something in a way he hasn't done before, don't
suggest he use a framework or library ever because he will rant about how he
never uses them and doesn't need anything new. He makes fun of anyone who
threatens him. Anything newer than C is is a waste. Maybe this is 10% of
Boomers but this is the experience I remember when I think of older
programmers.

~~~
meigwilym
This is the reverse of the "millennials are all snowflakes" style of thinking.

The guy's probably just an arse.

~~~
mixmastamyk
Am remembering the video about how millennials don’t do mornings, etc.

------
cocksure
"Older people" (whoever they are) must take half the blame for ageism :)

Not sure if it's statistically valid or what, but anecdotally the loudest
"older people" are the kind who start and end every conversation with "Ugh,
kids these days! Am I right?! Back in our day, bla, bla, bla..." I believe
this sort of thing does make people think the geezers might be somewhat out of
touch with the present.

Generally, this is just an attribute of traditionalist society. According to
it, only older people can be president (for youngins don't have the requisite
"wisdom"), women should choose family over career or the necessity for the
older people to shit all over the "youngsters today".

edit:

Let me elaborate. My central point is that traditions rule in traditionalist
society and generations dismissing each other is not unique to programming
community. I did want to add that to change the status quo guys like the OP
must outshout the more traditionalist voices, but I thought that was self-
explanatory.

An example of the latter is Emile Ratelband [0] who argues he shouldn't be
held back by traditionalist assumptions about his abilities due to his age. I
support the man.

[0] [https://www.npr.org/2018/11/08/665592537/69-year-old-
dutch-m...](https://www.npr.org/2018/11/08/665592537/69-year-old-dutch-man-
seeks-to-change-his-legal-age-to-49)

~~~
stcredzero
_anecdotally the loudest "older people" are the kind who start and end every
conversation with "Ugh, kids these days! Am I right?! Back in our day, bla,
bla, bla..."_

I'm curious that the information in this quote is characterized as "bla, bla,
bla." When I see a politician mix up climate and weather, isn't it valuable
for me to tell about how we had piles of compacted snow at the end of our
driveway, we could literally tunnel rooms out of we could sit in? (Today, the
same region is lucky if they have a white Christmas.) Why isn't that
information useful and relevant?

When I see a programming community make the same mistakes other similar
programming communities made in the past, isn't this useful information?

Your comment suggests that you have a bias, automatically assuming the
experiences have no worth.

