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Comment by aantix | Hacker News Reader

>My sister started as a programmer 30 years ago but jumped into management [...] My sister has 10X the assets I have.

It's so hilarious that he calls himself a "programmer". With 30+ years of experience, you're a software engineer, an architect, and best of all, a consultant.

Then you charge 5x the normal rate of a salaried engineer, work normal hours, and start accumulating real assets.

He needed to put down the technical books, read a book about personal branding and then he could have had his cake and eaten it too.

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Gag me with an entire place setting.

Might as well add "Rock Star" to the list of meaningless drivel.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with describing yourself as a "programmer" when that is indeed what you've been doing for the last 30 years.

The world needs less people spewing streams of hype to describe their own self importance, not more.

If someone has been developing for 30+ years, learning to best describe their track record, position their skill set, and demand a premium for the time isn't hype. It's merely capitalizing on their legacy.

There is an issue with calling yourself a "programmer" when one of his main complaints is the lack of monetary return on his career. Don't choose a commodity title if you want a higher than average return on your time.

I never said "demanding a premium for their time" was hype. I said having to call yourself a "Software Engineer" or "Architect" instead of a programmer was hype, and I still think it is.

I'd personally rather have someone show me the real work they've done to convince me that they knew what they were doing, rather than giving themselves a meaningless title to convince me how good they are.

There are plenty of "Software Engineers" and "Architects" out there that couldn't program their way out of a wet paper sack.

Fundamentally our disagreement is on the importance of the title. Yes, I will concede that there are some people who will be impressed by it, and maybe even be a bit more likely to hire you because of it.

I just don't think that's a good thing.

I know too many people who have been burned by others who used such language, who actually didn't know what they were doing, and as a consequence others who did know what they were doing lost their jobs, and the company spent millions to try to recover, or just plain went out of business.

We're actually on the same page. Proof of performance is a definite must while interviewing.

The title does the initial framing of expectations, that's it.

There's always going to be idiot consultants. And anyone who doesn't properly vet any candidate is likely to get their expectations crushed.

I'm talking more about the title and language that frames the career.

There's a big difference between "I'm a programmer with 30+ years experience. My last project was a rewrite of my employers checkout API."

"I'm a consultant specializing in Ruby on Rails. For my last client, I rewrote the entire checkout process that supports $400 dollars in transactions. I decreased the time it took to process the initial check out by two seconds. With that increase in checkout speed, I provided an additional 10% lift in revenues."

Both could be describing the same process, but with the latter much more in line with the prospective client's goals.

I think we are mostly on the same page.

My point is that the title should not frame the expectations at all, because so many people plaster "Software Engineer" or "Software Architect" on their resumes that the terms have become mostly meaningless (assuming that they ever had any real meaning in the first place), and in many cases are an indication that the person thinks more highly of themselves than they should.

I also think that describing the term "programmer" as a "commodity title" gives it an unnecessarily negative connotation. Despite what marketing people think, it is a perfectly valid description of what many of us do, and does not at all necessitate thinking of a person's skills as "run-of-the-mill".

>>Then you charge 5x the normal rate of a salaried engineer, work normal hours, and start accumulating real assets.

This is dream which happens only when you are asleep. In real life an older person is less energetic, less enthusiastic, can't do weekends, has health issues, has responsibilities, has family commitments etc etc.

Young people work insane hours, they do that for cheap, they show up on weekends and are more flexible in general.

In most cases. Like in everyday cases experience doesn't pay well as you think. Even in professions like medicine and law that is true.

The assumption that experienced people get paid well applies for a minority few people who for nearly all practical purposes are an exception to the whole rule.

> This is dream which happens only when you are asleep. In real life an older person is less energetic, less enthusiastic, can't do weekends, has health issues, has responsibilities, has family commitments etc etc.

This is complete nonsense. The best and most productive engineers I know are in middle age or beyond. In addition to raw technical ability--which does not decline in my experience--they have a level-headedness about making decisions that is rare to find in younger people. It's a critical success factor, especially for complex projects.

>This is dream which happens only when you are asleep. In real >life an older person is less energetic, less enthusiastic, >can't do weekends, has health issues, has responsibilities, >has family commitments etc etc.

>Young people work insane hours, they do that for cheap, they >show up on weekends and are more flexible in general.

Your assumption that income is directly related to your output is wrong. Making better, more qualified decisions is one way to differentiate yourself as you get older. Another is to quantify your output; maybe you do less programming but the pieces you do write can provide the company with a million+ lift in revenue?

Or you position yourself as writing a cleaner implementation, without having to rewrite 3 or 4 times to get it correct (ehem, those "energetic" youngins).

Company's pay for experience all of the time; and when it can be tied directly to increases in profits/revenues, you're way ahead of the game (especially ahead of any Jr. programmer that just blindly pumps out code).

Well put, you have a way of gently articulating something I can barely say coherently.

The term "personal branding" is an oxymoron.

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