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Comment by golergka | Hacker News Reader

I'm a 35 year old software developer, and I'm painfully aware that I'll face it, sooner or later, and working my ass off to build professional network, skills and experience that will set me apart and keep me marketable.

However, I don't think this ageism is unfair, at least in my case. I already feel that I'm not as fast as I was in my 20s; I'll probably be even slower on my feet and harder to adapt and learn in my 40s. If I don't acquire meaningful and provable (two different, both equally important components) experience and wisdom, then not just the perception by hiring managers, but my objective value as a professional will decline.

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I'm 41. Traditionally, as you got older you had more demands on your time, but you could offset that with experience which made you faster and better. I don't know if I'm slower than I was in my 20's, but I definitely know that I spend a lot less time developing my skills outside of work than I did back then. I have two kids, a house that needs fixing, and a million other things to do.

I wonder if part of the reason so many IC's go in to management is simply that "how do you handle a team conflict" has a more evergreen answer than "how do you do some random task in X framework, describe the cost of different approaches in big-O notation, and do it fast". Or, of course, you've had 20 years to build up your network of professional friends and you all get each other the nicer jobs.

> I spend a lot less time developing my skills outside of work

As someone that can see retirement on the horizon... screw that. When the work day is done, I close the laptop lid and eschew technology. If I am not getting paid to develop any skills, then I am on my time. I've never known a heart surgeon that practices on his kitchen table in his free time. I'm not going to practice standing up some k8s stack in my free time.

A family member is a doctor and spends a great deal of time on continuous professional development (mostly reading journals to stay up to date on new approaches and best practices).

I assume as he gets closer to retirement the ROI for this effort will diminish.

Unfortunately we're all running not to be in the forefront but not to be left behind.

You can well believe that when VR is disseminated, surgeons will practice at home.

Unfortunately this is not an option everyone can avail of since we are, by the design of our society, in competition with our peers for necessities like housing and healthcare. I might not want to spend my evenings learning NextJS (also wtf is up with Vercel and vendor lock-in? Why the hell does anyone use this?) but my peers may.

Older data scientist; let's call it 20+ career years and I started late.

I can look at a situation and usually almost instantly see the right approach. Couldn't do that when I was earlier in my career; at least not with the same level of confidence (which is supported by my results working in practice).

I can mentor my team-mates to be able to do the same. Work with me for a few months and your skills will certainly improve. I can spot errors in thinking as well as errors in code; correcting the errors in a person's thought, in how they approach a problem, can have profound results fast.

A good thing about having kids is that you become a decent manager. In my case with 4 kids tou have to improve those skills and is useful in professional life.

I agree. Experience is improves many tasks, from system administration to architecture. I'd say the latter is almost impossible without extensive experience.

Nitpick: the complexity of a task rarely changes.

> I'll probably be even slower on my feet and harder to adapt and learn in my 40s.

My experience is the following: you have a lot less time to learn, indeed.

But the huge problem rather is that you have seen a lot of programming ideas getting in and out of fashion, so that you smell the bullshit in the trend that gets in fashion (and is paid well) much better than the younger folks. This way, in your mind you become more annoyed having to learn bullshit things.

Also, a huge problem is that, because you have seen a lot more things, you often really know better how things could be architected better, but you can't convince less experienced managers and colleagues of this, so you become more and more cynical.

> I'll probably be even slower on my feet and harder to adapt and learn in my 40s.

I'm in my 50s, and in my current job, I've arguably adapted faster than the 20-30 somethings. As for learning, I've probably learnt more in this industry in the last 10 years, than in the previous 10. But that's the tech world for you. More people enter, more technology appears, more stuff to learn or at least be aware of.

A couple of related things I would suggest after 30+ yrs in this industry:

Try and become an expert in one thing.

That one thing should be a 'basic' thing, not something built on top of that. Such as core languages, or how cryptography works, or networking stacks. Never become an expert in a 'framework' if you can help it. They disappear as quick as they appear.

In what sense?

Fast picking up new things?

Fast pumping out keystrokes?

Fast because you're spending 14 hours instead of 8 per day?

Fast trying something and then ditching it away?

Fast because you don't consider the long term consequences?

Fast because you can focus and you're not distracted by career, politics, and administration?

> I already feel that I'm not as fast as I was in my 20s;

I’ve also observed this but there’s another way to frame it - you’re doing a lot less thrashing around. Instead of brute force testing 5 approaches to a problem, experience allows you to narrow it down to 1 or 2.

Note that not all experience transfers along with acquiring new skills. E.g. I haven't used any tricks for building table based HTML layouts in a while. This process happens everywhere to some extent, but it happens especially often in fields where tech advances quickly, like in IT. I guess that's the core of the issue?

This. I’m able to thought experiment out many solutions and only need to implement test 1 or 2.

I'm 38 and technically a manager, and the young guys I am interviewing leave me with an ambivalent taste.

On one hand, I as a manager am filled with dread, as very few of them are interested in technology the way everyone in my generation of IT workers was. They know their narrow stack and are frustratingly incurious about anything else. They reach the edge of their competence and just... stop.

On the other hand, I know that if I keep my skills sharp, I can easily downshift into an IC and even keep my salary, because the competition is just nonexistent.

Are you hiring for a specific req? What country?

Data engineers, and Russia.

Good luck. The U.S. market is kind of the opposite, hard to find a job these days even if you're good.

> because the competition is just nonexistent.

Only if the hiring org can tell the difference

They can, if they have millennials or xers doing technical interviews.

> I already feel that I'm not as fast as I was in my 20s;

I'm turning out 10x better products though, and I can anticipate and avoid many classes of problem I couldn't back then.

I am a better and more productive engineer at 45 than I was at 25.

I believe most ageism in hiring is not really anything to do with how good you are, or how fast you are, it's to do with young people having fewer things tying them down (e.g. young kids or aging parents) and being more available to work harder for the company. Mothers in particular have been on the wrong end of this for years.

And being cheaper too.

It really is just this. And “fast” is mostly a function of “willing to work 10+ hours a day”.

My manager once told me we were going to turn down a very capable software engineer candidate because he was older and probably just going to try to pivot into a management role. I was disgusted but didn’t speak up.

Frankly, I do see a certain form of nepotism at play in some places as well. Let’s just say we don’t have the most diverse tech workforce.

46 here... while I'm certainly slower than in my 20s, I'm also much more relevant, which in my professional context is absolutely valuable.

Considering age alone is unfair.

Chances that you are not even slower. With age we experience time differently - some things perceives faster others slower.

I will turn 64 this year. Started programming in 1974, employed since 1979. I never moved into management for long, I don’t like it.

If you want to stay employable master the fundamentals. Despite all the surface churn software development changed very little during my career. I still use Unix (Linux), vi (vim), SQL, and C-family languages every day. And I use lots of newer stuff too.

Don’t focus on frameworks or other fads and fashions. You may have to learn them but don’t think “React developer” describes a long-term skill you can rest on.

Make as many friends and contacts as you can at places you work. Not just fellow nerds — I have contacts who run companies, work as CFOs and logistics managers, have senior positions at Silicon Valley companies, banks, government. A good network of people who respect you will prove invaluable. Treat your work colleagues like gold, help them get jobs, stay in touch.

I don’t have the energy of a 20-something anymore, I can’t work 16 hours on pizza and beer like I used to. But I don’t need to burn so hot, I usually already know how to solve the problem because I’ve seen it ten times already.

I’m 36 and am better than I’ve ever been. Especially with the LLM thing going on (and paired up with the elixir stack) I don’t have enough time to build all the things I want.

I am also a technical interviewer from time to time for a recruitment platform and see a lot of people and often see people stick to their own little niche and not learning anything outside of it (especially with Java tbh). Like they’re not even following the advancements in the Java language, not to mention their “3 years kubernetes experience” where they didn’t even bother to learn the basic primitives.

I don’t know, I find it weird to stop learning

It will be a lot more productive to work your ass off to build capital to say goodbye to the rat race in your 40s...

But one naturally acquires experience and wisdom working in the industry. Very few people would trade their wisdom for a faster brain. Usually, the daydream goes "if only I could go back in time with the wisdom I have now", not the other way.

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