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Comment by cornholio | Hacker News Reader

Developers have a similar attitude, despite currently being one of the most privileged segments of the workforce save perhaps investment bankers. We have a straightforward professional path that does not require massive debt and burning half of our youth doing academic busywork and entry level drudgery - like it happens in almost any other professional field with similar compensation.

The industry requirement to prove that you can produce software is not unreasonable, coding is a craft and selecting developers is like selecting painters: ability to bullshit your way through an interview is orthogonal to the skill.

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I might assert that what developers have is not a privilege. A privilege is something granted out of generosity or grace by another party, perhaps even undue (and hence the grace).

What developers have is some "game", which makes them a "player". As soon as they lose their game, they cease to be players. Their relation to the game is exactly their value and nothing less. Tech employers are higher level players who know that the economy takes no excuses, and they will trim the fat, so to speak, of anyone who cannot contribute to their gamesmanship.

Generally, in most industries, seniority is respected in and of itself. But in software, you see disgraced older people who didn't play the game right, and you wonder if they are to decline away out of sight. That suggests this is not grace granted by another party. Does that look more like a privilege granted (by whom? charitable businesses?), or a loser in a cold and harsh game?

I see more question marks over the futures of software people than I see in other industries where other peers have gone. In other industries, I feel there has been more of a multi-factored consideration for the generational passing of the torch. In software, I feel everyone is always in a sink or swim test, and I think older people sink a little more.

Very well thought out rebuttal. I live in the convergence between telecom/network engineering and code, and I definitely see the disparity that you describe.

"Privilege" is not generally understood to be granted out of generosity or grace. The dictionary definition is "a right, immunity, or benefit enjoyed only by a person beyond the advantages of most" (http://www.dictionary.com/browse/privilege) which sounds like it applies to software developers when compared to the rest of the workforce. One can enjoy a privilege even if it wasn't intentionally granted by another party. And I certainly feel privileged compared to most of my friends and family members who do not work in the software world.

I agree we have a problem with age discrimination, but I can't conclude if our problem is any better or worse than the rest of the work force.

I thought of undue grace or generosity because typically the term is used to criticize the unmeritorious for undue position -- is it not?

What does it mean if I say you are privileged? When one looks further at the definitions listed for privilege, one sees examples discussing kings and royalty for birthrights. If we're discussing whether people are unworthy, then we are on the same page.

To me, "undue grace" and "generosity" imply some actor who imparts such grace or generosity. But that's not required for privilege. Particularly when people talk about enjoying a privilege in the social-justice way (which I believe to the kind of criticism you're talking about), they're often using it to mean a lack of discrimination as opposed to granting an elevated status. For example, if someone has the expectation that they can walk through a store without getting harassed, we may say they enjoy a privilege, even though most people would agree that should be the norm - because there are people who do expect to get harassed. The reason I think it's important to remove an actor who grants privilege is that its causes are often structural and implicit, as opposed to intentional and explicit. And it's less a criticism than it is a way of pointing out that some people's default expectations for how the world works and will react to them is quite different from others.

Put another way, privilege is often used when some people tend to experience a fairer world than others. But expecting a fair world is how it should be! That's not "undue grace", as everyone should experience a fair world.

(Just so we're clear: this is a full-on semantic discussion, and I'm okay with that.)

>A privilege is something granted out of generosity or grace by another party, perhaps even undue (and hence the grace).

That's quite a narrow definition. A privilege is any kind of advantage enjoyed by virtue of belonging to a group as opposed to personal merit. It's not fundamentally imoral and may well be temporary. Certainly no one has to grant someone the privilege of beauty or intelligence.

In relation to other professions , programmers have the strong privilege of being highly in demand in the labour market. This is clearly a temporary situation, and they should absolutely make the most of their "game" towards the tech employers.

What I was underlining is that the tech job market is ballanced, and certainly more favorable towards labour than almost any other.

If you believe that merit is the focus of discussion, then we're actually on the same page and no further definition work is needed.

I saw focus on meritoriousness, undue worth, or whatever is evoked under the sense of "birthright". I'm arguing that it's gamesmanship at play, and not metaphorical birthright, and hence I speak of some of the losers of the game, as well as the higher level players who interface with the economy directly.

A thousand times this. Although I still write code, and I would be comfortable being a tech lead forever, after 20 years I decided to focus my career on management for my own job security. It was either that or specialize in some hot field, but that's not where my heart is. So as a generalist I would be perpetually competing with the ever widening cohort of "senior" devs who have the SV-standard 5-years experience that represents the capping out of their signalable value.

The picture gets worse when you look at typical interview panels at hot SV companies: median-age 26, went to Stanford/MIT, interned at AmaGooFace, base their hiring process on established "rigorous" stack ranking of candidates based on their performance on fixed algo/whiteboard questions. While I can generally do pretty well at these, variance is high and it does nothing to differentiate me from smart but inexperienced people.

I think it's ridiculous that SV treats programmers like sports players with a limited shelf life. Code bases would probably be a lot better, and workplaces more pleasant to work in if experience were more valued. However I hold no illusions about the way VCs work: they require a steady influx of impressionable young blood to exploit with visions "changing the world", so it makes sense that older jaded devs don't fit into that picture. I do think there is an arbitrage opportunity for older talent though.

Spoken like a programmer with years of experience! I feel this all too acutely. My only game these days is to find small companies who are desperate for engineering experience and leadership because their in-house/contract devs aren't getting the job done.

If I went to google or FB or whatever, it would likely be a nightmare of constant sink or swim projects and unrealistic expectations.

Programmer is one of the only jobs where you have to actually show work related talent in an interview. Some jobs have strong credentials, most jobs it's bullshitting and resume.

investment bankers. We have a straightforward professional path that does not require massive debt and burning half of our youth doing academic busywork and entry level drudgery

You’ve never worked in banking I see. There’s a 3-5 year grind of doing nothing but updating Excel sheets 80-100 hours/week at entry level. Pay is decent for the 1-in-10 that make it through this stage (i.e to Associate 3 and up) but the hours are still long and the work dull.

And there’s nothing at all straightforward about guessing which language or “framework” will be fashionable next...

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