Being a Developer After 40

remotely?

1.You can't really use ideology to fight them. If a researches comes and says that 2 + 2 = 4, even the most fervent apparatchik (Communist party member) would have had a hard time spinning it into 2 + 2 = -1. While in other fields such as sociology or history... things are a bit more malleable.

2. They're practical and quite far removed from anything that might stir up anti-establishment actions.

3. The "1984" factor: if you need highly skilled mathematicians and physicists for your weapons, you really need them. You wouldn't want to issue your army 7.5mm rounds for their 7.62mm rifles because someone was bad at engineering :)

    That wouldn't make any sense if 
    the only reason was money.

Fewer Swiss would work for tech wages, because they can more easily get jobs in banking, finance, law, medical that pay better and/or are easier. Or hail from old money, and are artists, musicians, run galleries ... A similar phenomenon is at play in tech in the US, which is full of foreigners from EE, India etc.

If you are looking at two remote candidates offering to do the same work, the fact that one lives in India and the other in Paris should not make a difference in what you pay them (well, timezone difficulties aside). You should pay well for good work, and if it's not going to be good work you shouldn't pay at all. 'Pay well' is not relative to where a person lives, it's relative to the market value of that work.

> The market will balance this out.

The employer can also and usually choose between different candidates and maybe there are some or many equally skilled professionals in country x offering their work for much less (because they can because of lower living costs). So, it's reasonable to ask for a lower price in such a context. It's not about disdain.

EDIT: why the downvote?

When you call out someone trying to lowball you and they start ranting, they're really ranting about a narcissistic injury to their self-image.

Someone who does that will be a terrible client, because they're operating from a position of contempt for the people they employ. They do not see you as an equal, but as an inferior.

If the "inferior" challenges their default entitled one-up world view by expecting to be treated like a competent and well-compensated professional, they're absolutely going to have issues with that.

EDIT: funny as it is, my rates were probably a third less than what a local consultant would have charged them.

DO you also think it is weird that people who live in incredibly expensive cities like NY or SF should get paid more money then?

But I agree that basing salaries on costs of living in the worker's country is wrong. Salaries should be based on what your labor is worth, not what your perceived economic need is. It's exploitative, and it's also not fair to local workers who would get priced out by foreign workers willing to settle for less.

Swiss laws and wages don't apply to CERN (workers there also don't pay taxes, or contribute to Swiss social welfare).

It often does sucks if you work at CERN for some university, the salary then depends on their rates, and often you don't know where you will be in 2 years, but you still get UNICA + no taxes...

Then the problem is that getting a staff or permanent position is very hard, then again CERN cannot hire half the world, it's a matter of needs, From what I witnessed most people just take CERN as a stepping stone and move on, unless you're one of the lucky few to get a staff (and you're ok with gambling 5 years to get a permanent).

you find exceptions and cost of living in different places creates some disparity but as a rule "you get what you pay for" still holds water

If you paid people a lot more money you'd get a lot better software.

You get what you pay for alright, regardless of whether you recognise it as such or not.

I think you are verifying it.

Apparently (and unfairly), our society thinks otherwise - family doctors make $150K/year and neurosurgeons make $750K/year :-)

Writing front-end JavaScript is vastly more complicated than the business logic!

I've always done this, though. I have a few friends that are very close, that I can count on for life, even if I don't "nurture" the relationships continuously. But making new friends is really hard.

Thanks for the advice, though.

Just to nitpick, it's more about the strength of the relationships that you have, not necessarily how many friends that you have.

The poorest people I know are whites and I've lived and worked around the world. Yet, the same whites cannot roll into a university and be let in almost for nothing, yet the blacks and Hispanics do.

The concept of white privilege makes a lot of white people uncomfortable, including myself for a long while. It's not simple: white privilege is a result of centuries of structural oppression against non-whites. It doesn't guarantee that all white folks are better off than some POC, but the overall differences are stark. Nor does it guarantee that your life was easy.

Saying "I had a hard life and I'm white" is a single-data point of a very, very large structural problem. Maybe affirmative action isn't the answer, and I'm not certain that it is. But to say that all other things equal, a white person and a black person of the same economic status is equal in our society is blatantly false.

Yes, there are. And you know why? Because jobs are being more automated as we speak. What will people do? Where will they be employed? Instead of being happy for introducing driverless vehicles, automated machinery to maintain and harvest our food, we grow scared for our jobs and turn into Luddites. We should be thinking about improving humanity as a whole, not just going "me me me me!".

And I feel you are a bit blinded from your American standpoint. You know who paid for your GI bill and your ability to be in the military? The state - the working people. You most likely didn't produce anything of value in the military, nor did you likely protect anybody. Jose worked his ass off for the tomatoes on your tables, while you most likely stood around with a gun, if that.

>I agree with scripture, work or don't eat

There are many, many people on this planet, and in the US who DO work, but still can't find enough food to eat. Think about that.

Now the machines are doing most of the work. This is supposed to be a good thing! Ever more of us will not have to work in this new world. Do we let them starve?

White privilege isn't saying you didn't deserve any of that. It's just about appreciating that, despite how it may seem to you, you had some luck with the dice, some luck that you wouldn't have had, had you been black (once again, everything else being equal).

I'm not talking about a basic income (I do think it makes sense in today's society, but that's a whole separate issue).

"Sending the elevator back down" doesn't mean giving out handouts. It doesn't mean hiring people because of their gender or race. It doesn't mean discriminating against white men. It means acknowledging your biases and working to counter those. It's about giving others the same opportunities (specifically, the same benefit of the doubt) you had.

And you seem to have read your own biases into a very objective and clear point. That point being, stop banging on about how terrible it is people get defensive when you use offensive terms.

If your response to that is "but it's not", followed by yet another academic definition of "privilege" is.. stop. You've missed the point.

Offense is taken, not given. If your goal is to have a frank and honest discussion with someone rather than attack them, you do not lead off by using terminology that is racially charged (as if anyone can choose their race), minimizes someone's struggles in life (of which you necessarily know nothing), implies guilt (however slight), and which is frequently used in bad faith to shut down discussions anyways.

That may not be what you personally intend, but that is what the audience hears. Act accordingly.

And if you mean by amalgamating that he united or tied together a lot of different opinions on a lot of different things, how is that unpleasant?

And last I heard, there are tons of job openings asking for experts in Oracle and Java.

So how exactly would that have been terrible in terms of getting a steady income?

You probably spent 4+ years of your life going to some sort of university to get a degree to help get something like 60k euro per year software job. So is spending a couple of months really getting good at cracking the coding interview and doing some practice interviews is definitely worth the $70k+ equivalent after tax salary bump. Even getting a job at a FaceGooSoft european office and later transferring to HQ in SF would be a good idea. Do realize though it's hard to change jobs with an L1 visa vs. H1B once you have one, so that should be your goal.

Now the USA has it's non-salary downsides for sure, but if you're just thinking in salary terms then the USA beats CH as far as I can see.

I know minstrel shows made it to England, but I don't think they ever made it to the Adriatic Sea

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minstrel_show?wprov=sfla1

You see, it is true that in the US the privileged are often white. But that's just noise in the data. Because most of the disadvantaged are also white, and male.

But by building up racial tensions in the lower classes with a fundamental attribution error -- those lower classes are divided -- and therefore, not much of a threat to those who are actually privileged.

This is the same tactic the ruling class has used for hundreds, maybe even thousands of years.

Divide and conquer.

Gee, assumptions much? I'm a mixed race straight male from the Netherlands. I have definitely been on the receiving end of racism plenty of times in his life, and even then there's still plenty of privileges that I got to enjoy and that I wasn't aware of until my late twenties.

These are not binary mutually exclusive concepts.

Pointing out privileges is not an accusation, or at least it shouldn't be. It's just saying: you take <x> for granted like a right, but not everyone get's to enjoy that, and the reason they don't is a lack of being male/white/straight or combination of such. Let's put in an effort to make <x> equal for everyone.

> tells me how would i know anything about discrimination because i'm too white.

Except that this is not what I'm saying. I'm saying that privileges exist at many levels, and there's gradations of privilege.

GP is a white Eastern European man. This brings a number of societal privileges. It also means he missed the boat on a number of others, and had to endure racism against certain stereotypes.

The point is that "whiteness" as a race is a exclusionary social construct that exists in gradations, and not as a yes/no binary thing based on skin.

See also:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bmHct5IHxrA&list=PL6orzhPfnu...

What do you mean, "now"? I'm not making shit up, this has been going on for ages. Look up how Irish were considered inferior to Brits because they supposedly descended from black people, Italian immigrants being treated even worse, then the Poles... I mean "latino" as a race does not exist outside of the US, it was invented there to single out the Spanish population. It's all a social construct and it's all bullshit

Here, let me make things easy for you, Kat Blaque's "white history month" series:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bmHct5IHxrA&list=PL6orzhPfnu...

http://motherboard.vice.com/read/in-romania-vestiges-of-comm...

It doesn't change what I've said above. I still walked into Computer Science feeling at ease with the course before I started, and feeling easily welcomed among my very nerdy peers. (Plus the one girl in the first class I had. Imagine how she felt. Social stigma of computers and being the only girl. Must've sucked.)

You still had some "privileges" by not being black, and not being a woman. "Privileges" in the sense that you weren't automatically assumed to be a thief, for example, when walking in to a store. Or the privilege of actually being granted an interview for a non-secretarial position when you applied for one.

The "white male privilege" people speak of is less to do with people handing you bags of money and opening doors for you, and more to do with those doors not actively being shut in your face simply by dint of gender or skin color.

I speak as a white male who grew up in the 80s and in to technology. I certainly remember it was not 'cool' to be in to computers/tech back then (not like now) but there should be little disagreement that being male was not a hindrance for most desired walks of life (whereas being female, moreso then, definitely was).

> to the narrowed defined male acceptable professions, to most of role models in other professions (all female)

Are you trying to start a competition of who can exclude each other the most?

> In addition to a million other invisible punishments for not following the cultural rules

Such rules are what hold us back. Encouraging diversity where you have the power to do so is a great way to break these rules and help people.

> I, like most of people with my gender went to a profession that was cultural accepted for that gender, and most people of the other gender went to cultural accepted professions for their gender.

It's a sad thing, isn't it? It would be great if we could change our industry for the better and perhaps become an example to others.

We don't even have to look back to when slavery was legal, the blatant use of racism and dog-whistle politics to gain white racist's votes is well documented as being the core tenet to the Southern strategy.

Apple's diversity report [1] states their tech employees are composed of 79% male, 22% female.

Facebook's diversity report [2] shows 85% males in tech vs 15% female.

Google's is pretty much the same, and you can compare them all with interactive graphs [3].

Note the dominance of white and male in the graphs.

The programs you mention for women are great, I agree. These are the steps we need to take if we want women who are interested in technology to come forward join our field. But women are not more easily hired. If that were the case then it would be reflected in, you know, reality.

[1] http://www.apple.com/diversity/

[2] http://techcrunch.com/2014/06/25/facebook-diversity/

[3] http://www.theverge.com/2015/8/20/9179853/tech-diversity-sco...

Bingo. Race is just one facet anyway. We're all born with various advantages and disadvantages, none of which we have any control over. Just as an example, some people are better looking than others ... and those people tend to have an advantage, because they're better looking. They can get better jobs, better pay, etc. all because of the way they look.

So what?

The rest of us just have to work a bit harder. That's how life works. Stop whining. No, life isn't fair. Deal with it.

Except of course during all those times where some whites were discriminated against, people of color always had it worse.

It's worth going back to the original essay discussing "white privilege" -- the text can be found at http://ted.coe.wayne.edu/ele3600/mcintosh.html. A few highlights:

4. I can go shopping alone most of the time, pretty well assured that I will not be followed or harassed. 5. I can turn on the television or open to the front page of the paper and see people of my race widely represented. 6. When I am told about our national heritage or about civilization, I am shown that people of my color made it what it is. 12. I can swear, or dress in second-hand clothes or not answer letters without having people attribute these choices to the bad morals, the poverty, or the illiteracy of my race. 13. I can speak in public to a powerful male group without putting my race on trial. 14. I can do well in a challenging situation without being called a credit to my race. 15. I am never asked to speak for all the people of my racial group.

Irish people in American get to do all those things today, as do Italian-Americans! When's the last time you were called a credit to your race? Me, never -- even though once in the past, the US government tried to deport a Finn under the Oriental Exclusion Act (John Swan, 1909) and Finns were regarded as backward and slow. Times change and that hasn't been a problem lately.

     You are aware that Irish and Eastern Europeans, and on and off through history Greek and Italian, have had all those same problems right?

Literally nobody is denying that Italians, Irish, Eastern Europeans, or people from unfashionable parts of Brussels, or your mother's uncle's cousin from Estonia, have faced discrimination at various points in time, and perhaps still do today.

     White Privilege should just be called White Devil.

It absolutely does not imply that white people are bad, or that white people are devils, or anything of the sort.

The concept of white privilege is a way of viewing things that challenges us to observe freedoms that we as white people have that others don't always enjoy.

For example: as a white person, if a cop pulls me over, I may be treated unfairly. But whatever happens, I generally know that I won't be treated badly because of my race. He certainly didn't pull me over because I'm fucking part Welsh, I can tell you that! Black people don't have that privilege. Now, 99% of the time, maybe their race doesn't have anything to do with their interactions with the police. Most cops are good people. But wouldn't it suck to be black and never really know if a cop was going to treat you badly simply because you're black? And that at least once or twice in your life, it probably will happen? That's some bullshit I don't really ever have to deal with in my life. A privilege I have, if you will.

Now, like I said above, I can't help but wonder if we do need some new terminology here.

I am certain that I have not changed your mind. Again, I'm just defining the concept for you. You can agree with it or disagree with it at this point. That's cool. But your post made it very clear that you had no understanding of the concept. Probably because the term "white privilege" itself was a turn-off. You probably thought it was an attack on white people. It's not.

For instance, Irish-Americans did not have a particularly great time in the US in the mid-19th century by any means, but they had a much better time than African-Americans. They faced serious discrimination, but they rarely were assumed to be runaway slaves.

I think it's useful to acknowledge that even today, some groups of people have basic privileges like being assumed not to be a thief that everyone ought to have, and we can acknowledge that without reducing it to a simple white-nonwhite line.

Most people couldn't care less what their race is, but it sure is an easy card to play.

But as generations of "white" Americans have learned, if you dress from the JC Penney or Sears catalogue, forbid your children from learning their ancestral language, and forget your cultural traditions, you can be white too! It works!

"Undeserving" is not part of any definition of privilege I've ever seen, not even the dictionary definition. I think that's just your personal bias against a meaning that isn't the same that others are intending.

Good. Maybe it's a start of a conversation. What white people have SHOULD not be an undeserved advantage, but that's not the reality we live in.

Imagine being black with a black sounding name, or latino with a latino sounding name, and having to deal with people making fun of the name you didn't choose while growing up, and then having to deal with the consequences of discrimination when it comes to just getting your foot in the door.

You only have to deal with the annoyance when you hear the term. Other races and ethnicities don't get that luxury. Seems to me that the term is perfectly, and ironically, apt.

It's unfair to discuss gender and race without considering class. It is also unfair to claim disadvantage in one without acknowledging benefits from the other two.

This is also the biggest criticism against mainstream feminism. It doesn't address class issues as most of the popular causes are upper-middle class issues.

However, please understand: whether it needs a new name or not (I suspect it does) the concept of "white privilege" does not mean "all white people automatically have it easier than all black people." No conflict there.

White privilege refers to the privilege people have for the accident of being born white. Economic privilege refers to (in some instances) the privilege people have for the accident of being born rich.

Donald Trump is a mediocre businessman, but he's a billionaire pain in the ass because of the power and influence he gained by having a rich, white father.... but if you took his kid and Russell Simmons' kid and threw them both in a nice car and drove them down various roads, one of them is gonna get profiled by cops a lot more than the other, and it's not going to be Trump's.

    We have hundreds of years of high-quality race-neutral rights language to pick from. Why was that language eschewed?

    Who could have guessed that identifying and singling out a particular race for correction and self-abasement would entail some push-back?

Why does it make you feel that way?

    Are you a firm believer of "Han privilege" in China? Are you a firm believer of "Japanese privilege" in Japan? Are you a firm believer in "Jewish privilege" in Israel?

If your understanding of "white privilege" is that it's a belief that white people magically have it easy all of the time, everywhere on planet Earth, I'm happy to let you know that literally nobody is saying that.

If your point is that we should be simply talking about "privilege" and not "white privilege" or other privilege, I understand the sentiment. I think that would be a naive and ineffective approach because on any practical level we can't discuss privilege without also discussing the source of that privilege.

There are some places where beig white is a distinct disadvantage. Like the examples you named. Or, try being a European male in ISIS-controlled territory! That'll get you killed pretty quick, right? No "white privilege" there. In Sunni-dominated regions, in fact, Sunni privilege is a thing. I mean, obviously, right? Sunnis in those regions have a lot of rights that Shia, Jews, Christians, and atheists don't.

So the good news for you here is that the concept of "white privilege" does not involve the notion that white people have magical force fields that render them immune to problems everywhere in the world.

In places like America where whites control nearly all of the wealth as well as the political establishment? For places like this, yeah, it's probably worth taking a look at things and asking ourselves if white people literally controlling almost everything in America might have some effect on equality in America.

I wasn't suggesting that because moral claims are metaphysical in nature, they're automatically wrong or meaningless.

Just that because no such arguments are offered at all, the best the author can hope for is that the argument either strikes the listeners as obviously true, or prods the listeners into further consideration which leads them to the same conclusion.

My point was simply that the only chance he has of convincing some of us (including me) of his assertion is to actually do the work of presenting a decent argument, which he hasn't done.

In earlier comments I wasn't asserting that being a white male has no advantages in the software industry. I was curious about the author's reasoning as to why attempting to counteract it was a moral imperative for white males.

Can you give the context under which this happened? Who where these people? Why did they not think your wife was capable?

I'm not being racist one bit. Just stating a definition.

I really hate these sales pitch documents "Visit our showroom, have some food, and you don't have to buy anything".

Just answer the question, what exactly are you looking people to do?

I have not assumed anyone else's privilege, or lack of privilege. I haven't made assumptions, demanding group guilt or deference, based upon a simplistic caricature or stereotype.

It's not about tearing anyone down.

I read a statement telling me to remember all of the privilege I have enjoyed since birth. My experience differs, and these sorts of simplified claims fail (the same sort of simplification/see what you want that is the root of racism).

Countering sexism or racism or inequality by attempting to force feed sexism, racism and inequality will never move the conversation forward. It is never useful.

If it weren't about tearing people down, you would be trying to support everyone equally without making others feel guilty.

At school, that 1 girl we had in whole class out of 100 students was pampered with so much attention and had it so easy on verbal exams (written of course were equal as far as I can say). Everybody would love to have more girls, from teachers to students, but they couldn't care less. Economic studies were far more sexi rather than geeky IT guys.

Same when working - when hiring, female devs were so rare that there was very strong preference in female candidates (ie all that showed up were hired, but it's fair to say they were good... just not better than competing guys).

Right now, I am sitting in front of a consulting girl from Azerbaijan and a guy from Morocco. Both well performing and highly regarded in our company. This IS fair world, as much as we can do it. Not 100%, but damn good and far better than ever before. So stop whining and rather contribute.

Such an analysis would not yield the results I believe you expect. Most of the minority families from my town have been very successful -- they put high demands and expectations on their children, worked hard, etc. The world didn't expect them to fail, as it does with "white trash" males, and their potential was theirs to make. In no universe am I saying they excelled because of affirmative action or anything of the sort -- they worked for everything they got, and earned it -- but society isn't predetermined to expect failure from them.

I grew up a poor white male in unfortunate circumstances. Nothing was expected of me (I often joked about wishing I was Jewish, because then I'd have expectations), and every door was shut. There were no advantages. I remember one particular malignant teacher saying to another, after I had left a room, "water flows to its own level". And of the white males who I grew up around, most did menial jobs and cycled in and out of unemployment, some went to jail, etc. 90%+, roughly, still live in that small town.

The whole white male privilege thing seems to be a classic divergence between the median, and the mean. A small percentage of spectacularly successful white males pull the mean up, while the median lies in the masses of people living miserable lives. But the masses have to suffer and acknowledge their privilege because of the mean.

Or maybe we should simply discard with the whole premise of trying to simplify large groups on traits.

Who are you to judge someone, and tell them to "remember/check their privilege" without knowing all these intimate details of struggles throughout their life, all these factors, regardless that you seemingly know just one of these infinite characteristics?

Well, that's exactly the problem with the "white male privilege" verbage: it's just one single angle of the global problem regarding social / ethnic class issues.

Even from an Euro-American perspective... When it comes down to it, who has more "privilege" or social status? A college educated Asian-American woman from an urban, wealthy family? Or a poor, rural uneducated white male from, say, Appalachia or the Deep South?

Yes, there are obviously people with lower "social standing" than the poor, rural, uneducated white male -- and color or sex does play a part. But the point is, sex and race are not the only factors that make up social status, even from a Euro-American angle.

If you factor class issues in the entire world, it gets even more complicated. Each area has their own quirks and social structure.

Unfortunately I find that many people who advance the "check your privilege" arguments are not very nuanced. Social status is complicated. So I think it does a disservice in the end. Again, let's take that a poor, rural, uneducated white male in Appalachia, no job since the coal mines shut down, on benefits, etc. They come across an article written by a college educated woman, in an urban area, probably making quite a bit more than he is. And this person is telling all white males to "check their white male privilege".

What do you think this person is going to think?

The way it is discussed here, the privilege theory is unfalsifiable. You can always trot out more (unmeasured) privilege categories to explain any empirical data.

Like the saying goes, "He who refuses to do arithmetic is doomed to talk nonsense".

While I'm microranting, I'd also love to hear how big a factor privilege is compared to other factors for people's success in life.

Something like: Privilege: 40%, Effort: 30%, Luck: 30%, with a breakdown of each kind of privilege, and explanation of how it's measured. Give me that, and I'll start taking it seriously as a way to understand the world.

The point I wanted to make was supposed to be more along the lines "If you, in your current situation make yourself non-white your ride will be harder then if you make yourself white" and wanted to bring it up because I tried that on a few occasions. And the experience was really weird because the change was my scarf and slight adjustment of my facial hair :) Fortunately it doesn't happen too often because I live in fairly cosmopolitan city.

> If I would like to work abroad I have to keep in mind that people think very little of us and that the only thing we've got going for us is that we either take the jobs no one else wants or that we can be paid less than the native citizens.

On one hand I would want to dispute this, because at least where I work (and I hope other large EU offices of multi-national corporations would be similar), we hire non-eu colleagues all the time. I have already worked with people from Russia, Armenia and Ukraine in my office and from what we have talked, they haven't been less compensated than the rest of us.

On the other hand, there was the experience of one of my Russian colleagues that couldn't find a sub-let, because landlords were afraid to have him because of his nationality.

But speaking of the the situation you are describing sounds similar to one I have been 3y ago? Living with my gf and 3 other random people to share the rent, working for ~8000$ a year as a junior QE (actually half of that, part-time-ing, while trying to finish school). Morgage ~20 years sounds about right as well. Now that I am the 'programmer with experience' I earn around 25k$/y.

To return to the point of "sending the elevator down", the assumption was that the assumed defaults of our industry that still more or less are 'caucasian-look', 'male' make your life easier, and if you happen to flip any of them you make it harder. If you want to add 'american' or 'westerner' to the mix to account for your brand of harder difficulty, that is fair.