Ageism is too much of a thing in tech. These young frontend js developers can't even hold down F2 to enter the BIOS. So much knowledge lost from companies letting decades worth of experience walk out the door. And it shows, so many modern products have shite architecture.
Ageism is a thing in society; young workers are on the hook serving elder owners “experience” propping up their value store (ephemeral assets/brands), serving their contracts and debts.
Humanity will only ever play the “don’t say these words or you’re ageist.” as reality will always force elders on the young and force the young to shut them out to define their own social value stores.
There is evidence in neuroscience by 13-14 kids brains “switch off” to their mothers voice, favoring new emotional information. Does not seem unreasonable then that even as adults we need to “switch off” and experience new modals: https://www.sciencenews.org/article/mom-voice-kid-brain-teen...
Individuals need to accept their mortality, not just literally but figuratively.
IME, technologists don't care how old you are. The problem is identifying them and finding groups of them. Not all devs are technologists, and, arguably, not all technologists are even devs.
You're out of touch if you think that architecture is what anyone cares about these days. It's about getting PMF and first to ship. Everything else is not even secondary but completely forgotten. If you can manage to make good architectural decisions while shipping incredibly fast - hey, congrats, you got lucky on this project. But I've worked with plenty of devs with 20+ years of experience and what holds them back is their reluctance to just ship shit code real fast.
This ultimately makes them less usable for management because we're not focused on sustainable and clean code - we're focused on getting that next round of funding, beating the competitor to the market, and pivoting wildly to get PMF. (or just more plainly - appeasing our bosses - whether that's the VC, the CEO, the CTO, a VP, a director, or another manager or some customer who gives us money)
You might think your practice is what matters but what you forgot is that no one gives a shit what you think. The employer gives a shit what you'll do and if you'll do what they want. You don't do what they want? HIT THE BRICKS JACK! Go retire.
Employment is for serfs. You want to dictate the rules? Start your own company.
Sadly, I find that I have the heart of a craftsman, so I won’t compromise my own Principles.
True, some (a lot, maybe) folks will sneer at me as a “poor,” and look down on me, for not being willing to compromise my personal Integrity for money, but I learned to ignore that, a long time ago. I’m not competitive, and I don’t care about dying with the most toys.
I like making stuff that will improve lives, and make the world a better place. I’d much rather do free work that benefits a destitute, homeless, recovering drug addict, or a re-entering felon, than be paid for work that is really about entertaining some wealthy, bored, tech bro.
I know that is a minority stance, in this community. I don’t feel (or want to feel) as if I’m better than anyone here, but I also know that I’ll be vigorously attacked, just for saying things like “I want to care about the people that use my work.”
Not saying the following is true of you, but the parallels brought it to mind. I (45) was speaking with a friend (50+) this week about job prospects. He's been employed in a particular creative field for his adult life and feels as though he's missed a boat in transferring into management tiers of some sort, while others around him did so. Did he not take the initiative? Did he not impress the right people? No one told him that perhaps he should consider this path. Resentful vibes. There's a very palpable feeling at these ages that you're potentially near-unemployable.
Now, he'd talk about principles and being a craftsman and doing things the right way. I'd say, sure, but I'd quietly wonder if he's procrastinating, being stubborn, being slow, prioritising the wrong things. My own foibles lead me to make similar mistakes, so I assume it's true for many others also.
If you have the means, or a market for attention to detail, then you absolutely can do things your way. Like you implied, you can get a lot of satisfaction out of simple things and meaningful things. But if, like 50+ friend, someone has bills to pay and desperately needs work, at what point are they making excuses when they should be recognising that many employers don't want stubborn employees prioritising what to them are the wrong things.
I worked for a company that actually had values similar to mine. It had lots of problems, but, in the aggregate, I ended up staying for a long time.
Could I have made a lot more, somewhere else? Absolutely. But that’s never been what I wanted. As it has turned out, I was able to leave the workforce at 55 (like I had a choice). I live humbly, but I also write code I want to write, the way I want to write it, for whom I want to write it, and I learn new stuff, every single day, without having anyone insisting that I compromise my Integrity, so they can make money.
I won’t lie. I was really pissed off (and still find it infuriating), when I realized what was happening.
In many ways, what I find most offensive, is the willful self-destruction, implicit in ignoring experience. It’s really no fun, watching companies, with so much talent and potential, implode, when they could have been so much better.
One of the characteristics of that company I worked for, was their frugality. They were (and still are) absolute tightwads. I got used to making do with limited resources, and figuring out how to motivate and reward employees, when I didn’t have the traditional leverage at my disposal.
It taught me a lot, but was also never comfortable. I would have loved the bucketfuls of money that so many companies seem to have, these days.
But maybe that whole gravy train is suffering a derailment.
Look on the bright side, if your principles are really good (by which I mean reproducible and high quality), then you should be able to use LLMs to crank out the boilerplate faster than the young folks who have no principles or work experience to lean into.
However, if you disclose this, expect large companies to demand your prompts as their work product, which will diminish the moat that you, as a craftsman, have created.
Unless you intend to do so, don’t accidentally turn your craft into a mass manufacturing template, that’s all I’m saying.
Oh, and this is neither her, nor there, but I work very fast. So fast, in fact, that the people I work with complain about it. I’ve learned to slow down, and spend a lot more time, “polishing the fenders,” so to speak. Folks seem to be happy with the results.
I do very good code, based on excellent architectures, very quickly.
I do it for free, because no one thinks that’s worth paying for, and that suits me just fine. The last thing that I want, is some money-crazed manager, insisting that I ship crap, so they can get rich. The poor folks that use my software will get a Quality level that far surpasses much of the commercial stuff out there.
Unfortunately though the lifespan of modern products isn’t very long either, so there’s not much value in investing in old time engineers to build products that could last forever. Any idiot can build a bridge that stands, but it takes an engineer to build a bridge that barely stands, etc.
I don't know that your experience is but I've worked on many products that are 10+ years old. Additionally, I'd take 3 old time engineers over 6 new engineers in a heartbeat. The problem is that every business wants to cut labor cost because that's the MBA way to do things. Why pay USA wages to someone with 15+ years of experience when you can hire three new beginners in the USA or an entire team in another country (again with less experience) for the same amount? The part you're missing from your analogy is the speed and quality of the bridge to be built. Want it done fast and right? Hire the engineers with experience. Want it done fast and possibly going to collapse and end in a lawsuit in 5 years? Hire those idiots.
I would agree with this. Late 40s here, and my comp today is higher than it's ever been, but Im pretty sure my comp as a percentage relative to my peers is at its lowest point ever and will get lower in future jobs.
The underlying reason is that young fresh grads are running circles around old timers.
I hate to say this, but in quite a lot of circumstances, ageism is very well justified for these reasons:
1. IT/CompSci is constantly changing and high growth area, any engineer worth his/her salt will grow rapidly.
2. High performance old-timers have either retired (earning their $$$) or moved up the ladder to manager/director/VP/Founder levels.
3. Regular IC old-timers who have not progressed in their career - companies don't want them, because old-timer who has not grown in his level - is a red flag for companies.
4. There are some old-timers who prefer part-time/consulting type gigs, but I put them in Founder category, all of them have their own LLC/S-corp and run one man consulting/entrepreneurship shop
It's funny when people generalize this way. You cherry picked specific scenarios as if that suddenly supports your claim that ageism is well justified. Anecdotally, I've worked with engineers across age ranges. Sure, there are the "rest on their laurels" types who stagnate in their careers. But there are also battle hardened veterans who can debug issues that are mind bendingly difficult to unravel and are happy to stay as IC. I'm curious what metric you'd pick to validate the claim that "...young fresh grads are running circles around old timers." Because based on the quality of the code and other observable aspects this isn't the case. Google introduced a whole new programming language (Go) because fresh grads weren't running circles around anyone and it was easier to go that route than get them to parity with the industry veterans.
