Comment by jitix | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jitix | Hacker News Reader

I think it boils down to one thing: How enthusiastic an old engineer is about technology in general and whether they are proactive on keeping themselves up to date on the latest things (vs reactively learning something when a project requires it).

I worked at a startup for the last 4.5 years which had a lot of older (40-50 yr) people (the founders were in their late 40s). I also interviewed a lot of older people (both with positive and negative feedback). What I noticed is two clear groups:

One set of older devs have been in the tech industry just because they needed a job and have somehow kept up with the technologies in a reactive manner. This set of people have mentality of "this is how we used to do this back in 19xx/20xx". It doesn't always work out.

The other set of people are genuinely interested in technology and proactively seek new things, present papers, blog about stuff, and are always on the look out for the next improvement and the next thing. This set of people tend to learn from their own experiences and improve on things while providing guidance to devs in their 20s/early 30s. This set of people never have trouble finding jobs.

The bottom line is that the tech industry requires you to do continuous learning and be enthusiastic about stuff. If you can't do that you'll have trouble finding jobs when you're older.

Edit: I’m seeing the same pattern at my current job even though the percentage of older devs is lower here.

Who would you expect developers to be speakers and presenters? Those are two almost separate tracks - the people who speak at the conferences and present and the people who spend most of the time doing things. Knowing how to look cool and knowing what the audience like is entirely different skill then being senior developer. One requires social charisma, the other much less so. Some level of social skills is important at senior level (how to deal with juniors without being jerk, how to deal with customers etc), but that is still different social skill then presenting and speaking.

Majority of developers I know, regardless of age, don't like writing in general. Few do and it is great when they do, but most avoid it unless related to job - and it has nothing to do with love of technology.

I dont know why is are some people so obsessed about apparent feelings instead of skill and contributions (both technical and organizational). It is as if projecting various seemingly cool proxies for "passion" and "enthusiasm" was more important then being engineer that takes the job seriously.

I think you and I are doing completely different types of software development or live in very different bubbles.

> Those are two almost separate tracks No they are not. If you come up with some innovation/improvement in your field you should present it to a broader audience. It's not like these seminars and meetups have non-technical audience. So you don't need Elon Musk level of charisma. It's just sharing knowledge.

> Majority of developers I know, regardless of age, don't like writing in general

Not true for me. Most good developers I know like to share their knowledge and opinions via different channels.

> Few do and it is great when they do

WTF! why is not documenting stuff acceptable where you work? what happens when the component needs updates/fixes long after the developer has left? At least document enough stuff so that somebody else can be brought up to speed quickly. Maintainability is a key requirement in modern software.

> skill and contributions

If you're doing the same thing your skill doesn't really improve much after 3-4 years. Most best practices are documented or are otherwise passed down from senior engineers to junior engineers. So it's not like somebody with 20 years experience will write better code than somebody with 5 years experience.

As an anecdotal evidence, I started out fresh out of college 8 years back, did J2EE and some frontend (pre-HTML5).. after 3 years I realized that I knew pretty much known everything about enterprise J2EE patterns and practices as any other person. So I moved into big data (hadoop, MR, etc.), learned stuff, mentored people, etc. Last year I realized that big data field is big enough with enough documentation and established practices that you can train a developer in 2 years to do what I was doing. So I moved into machine learning. I hope to ride this wave for the next 5-6 years until it becomes apparent that any college graduate can be trained to do my work with a couple of years of mentoring.

> Not true for me. Most good developers I know like to share their knowledge and opinions via different channels.

You measure extroversion there. Good introverted developers exist too - in fact developers be more introverted then general population (there are stats on that). So do very good shy or humble developers. While real developers are on average nowhere near the nerd stereotype with social anxiety, plenty good developers are a bit like that (They dont talk much unless they know you a bit).

> WTF! why is not documenting stuff acceptable where you work?

What does that have to do with blogging? I said they dont like writing. I did not said they don't write documentation or comments when needed. How did you managed to twist "not liking to write" in context of blogs to "maintainable software"?

For that matter, real documentation, the one that is targeted at users, is written by technical writers mostly. Developers job is to explain it to writer - it is mostly that docs are more then full time jobs and good technical writer are really better at explaining stuff.

>

How did you managed to twist "measure skills and contributions instead of projecting cool" to "doing the same thing dozens years"? Seriously.

The worst developer out there is is the one that does not do tasks that he does not like. You seem to treat it like the norm and assume that if someone does not visibly loudly jump up and down then he is going to slack it or something.

I don't think it is possible to know everything there is to know about application servers in three years. There are many positions that require neither breadth nor depth and that is fine. If you are in position to mentor people just a year after you entered the field, then the field is too easy and new. I mean, of course any good college graduate can do big data or artificial intelligence. Why would not they? They are best equipped to do math heavy things and they are already adults. Ability to confidently bullshit after 3 months of learning is not the only way how to be a good developer.

And yet there is no reason to bracket that trait with age. There are plenty of people fresh out of school who don't learn anything unless they are told to.

I always hear of this mythical tech geezer who has been doing things the same way for 30 years and stuck in their ways. I don't think I've ever met one.

If people have to "present papers" and "blog about stuff" just to keep a steady paycheck, it's a sign the industry is broken.

The industry itself is only a few decades old.. it'll take some time before it stabilizes to a point where you can largely do the same thing your entire career.

Also everybody doesn't have to present papers, or speak in seminars, etc. but most older developers who are sought after usually do.

Because the person who writes a lot of blog posts is the person who spends a lot of time marketing themselves but not actually getting shit done. If you think a blog post is proof of knowledge, well wow, you'd be shocked at what academia's peer review process is.

Why is that? Given two candidates, one is actively up on current technology and the other isn't, it can be argued the first one has an edge.

I've noticed this as well. The number of people in tech who very clearly have no interest outside of their paycheck is disheartening. Can they do they job? Usually. Will they ever update their skills or keep up with the general direction of the industry? Almost never.

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