

A 55yr Old Developer Tells Us What It's Like In A Youth-Obsessed Silicon Valley - 001sky
http://www.businessinsider.com/what-happens-to-older-developers-2014-3

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pedalpete
He may be in the 'youth-obsessed Silicon Valley', but aren't non-startups less
youth-obsessed, and youth likely don't want to get involved in old-staid big
business.

I say this because here in Sydney, Australia, I'm amazed at how many positions
there are in finance for a Java developer, or C developers at places like
Dolby Labs, or .net developers all over the place. I'd suspect a 55 year old
generalist to have the abilities to get into one of these more stable jobs. Do
they really not exist in San Francisco? What about in other states?

I'd think most start-ups are using more modern languages/frameworks (Rails or
Node.js specifically), so that may not be appealing to an older developer
either.

I say this as somebody who is approaching older developer age. I've just
turned 40, and though I have kept up to date with the latest languages and
frameworks, I suspect that if I continue to develop for another 20 years, I
may not always be up on the newest thing, which is why I'm trying to focus not
on what's hot today, but what I think will be a solid background in 5 years.
If I get that right, then hopefully in 15 years, people will still be using
those systems or looking to migrate to something newer, and hopefully there is
an opportunity for me there.

~~~
_random_
"I'm trying to focus not on what's hot today, but what I think will be a solid
background in 5 years." \- any tips?

~~~
pedalpete
The way I look at it is to not jump on every new thing that comes along, but
try to keep on eye on what's growing and what people are excited about.

For me, at the moment, that means Angular and Node. Four years ago it was
Rails and Backbone. I'm keeping an eye on React, but am not ready to jump on
that bandwagon yet.

Lots of people may suggest Haskell, Scala, Go, Ember, React, etc. etc. and I
may add one or two of those in the future, but at this point, I don't see
enough broad interest in those languages to make it on my list yet. Keep an
eye on job postings and you'll see trends in languages and frameworks growing.

~~~
_random_
Angular and Node are exactly fresh new things. I would say it is better to
learn MVVM/MVC and Reactor patterns those respective frameworks are based on.

