“We Love Older Programmers” | Hacker News Reader

“We Love Older Programmers”

jobtipsforgeeks.com

30 pointsfecak8 comments

It's not a matter of age. It's a matter of experience.

I'm 37 now, and a year ago I was working with a 20-something project lead with a lot less experience than me who insisted we create a robust system for reporting errors in a SaaS product we were launching.

He wanted to associate codes with our error messages, create a searchable index where people could type in the error code to get the message, and do sophisticated instrumentation and metrics in the code, so we knew how many errors we were getting, etc.

The effort would've taken a while, so I told him we shouldn't worry about any of that and just focus on launching the project to generate the customers who would generate the errors--then we'd know how to prioritize their importance. I explained his robust error system might evolve naturally from that.

Turned out, we butted heads on so many on things, and I decided to leave. More time went on, and they never ended up launching anything--I suspect because they didn't focus on what mattered, and I attribute that to a lack of experience.

FYI - I'm the creator of https://OldGeekJobs.com, which I've been iterating on for about two weeks.

It's a real problem--the idea that older, experienced programmers are inflexible. I've only grown more flexible with age. When you're wrong so many times, you can't help but be. I'm also better at weeding out the good ideas from the bad. I don't think I'm perfect at it by any means.

I pretty much agree that has been my experience. Taking a project from zero and knowing where to push at every stage to have a successful project.

Question. What makes the jobs in OldGeekJobs.com a good fit for older developers?

The jobs highlighted in green were posted by employers on the site knowing older candidates will apply. Those candidates can feel comfortable applying knowing they're welcome.

It's hard to build a two-sided marketplace, so I'm aggregating jobs from StackOverflow and iterating on the UX (I've got some good ideas to test).

I'll keep highlighting the jobs in green from the employers who go there and post directly though.

What are your thoughts on this?

Great initiative. This is very much needed.

I would like to participate in a social group of veteran software developers. So we can share experiences and do networking. Promote blogs from developers like this one. http://blog.markwatson.com. I saw this on the other thread.

This is not just helping ourselves. It is opening the future for the current generation of young developers.

I wrote the piece here, but commenting because I'm genuinely curious how you decide how a company qualifies as 'friendly' to old geeks. Is it just a matter of saying so in their job spec?

Please see my response below, and let me know your thoughts on it. I changed the verbiage in my leader because both of you asked the same question, and that tells me I need to do a better job explaining.

Also, maybe we can link up and work together in the future if doing that makes sense.

Thanks. Feel free to contact me, info is in my HN profile, would love to see your site succeed. I find myself advocating for the older engineers on a regular basis, so a site like yours is a welcome change.

Old programmers, like the person who taught me, are very good to have in any team. They know something that all of us "youngsters" don't.

   - This has been done before
   - [New technology] is a fad and will die out
   - Being "cleaver" isn't making something un-maintainable
   - Here are all the cases that you need to look out for. I've done this before
   - A replacement isn't an alternative and a replacement is feature complete

When I get to the point where I start a company, I don't think that I'll ever form a team without at least one 40+ member. It's a waste of resources to do otherwise. Saves you a lot of time and energy of fixing mistakes when someone on your team can predict all of the mistakes you will be making.

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