Comment by mikestew | Hacker News Reader

Comment by mikestew | Hacker News Reader

Hi, kids! Oldster here. Y'all really need to quit with the "oh, $DEITY, I'm looking at the wrong end of 40 and I'll never work again!" Yes, you will. Yeah, give up that dream of game development (which you should have done anyway, regardless of age). Some brah with his half-assed "Uber for..." won't hire you, sure. But there are plenty of places that would love to have someone that comes in before noon, does the work that needs to be done, and does solid work, and doesn't spend all day at the foosball table.

It depends a lot on how one defines "dead end", too. You have steady work, it pays six figures, but it's a CRUD app? Yeah, go whine to the guy in Appalachia or Detroit. Let me tell you about "dead end": one factory in town, there are only so many management positions to go around, and when that factory closes down you're screwed because your skills don't transfer so well that you'll just pick and move to Seattle where the jobs are. That's a dead end: you're going nowhere.

FoxPro dev and not finding work? That's your own fault. Software dev is a dead end only if you insist on turning down that cul-de-sac, turning off the car, and throwing the keys into a grassy field.

(As a sidenote, the author just comes across as whiny because he's not treated as the special snowflake he really is. If you're so insulted by being asked to do FizzBuzz, then you ought to be able to knock it out in Brainfuck if required. But maybe you can't, eh, Mr. Hotshot?)

(As a sidenote, the author just comes across as whiny because he's not treated as the special snowflake he really is. If you're so insulted by being asked to do FizzBuzz, then you ought to be able to knock it out in Brainfuck if required. But maybe you can't, eh, Mr. Hotshot?)

I remember going through a phase, probably around my mid-20s, when I got quite insulted by being asked to do such simple tasks in interviews. I never showed that during the interviews, obviously, but I had qualifications and several years of experience writing real production software, so what kind of idiot did they think I was and how was writing fizz-buzz going to demonstrate what I could do?!

A few years later, having more often sat on the other side of the interview table, I had learned that the number of people who have somehow achieved impressive looking qualifications from reputable institutions, gained several years of professional experience, and yet really can't write fizz-buzz, is astonishing.

Trivial programming exercises aren't there to determine a good programmer's level of skill, they're there to stop the interviewer wasting several hours on a no-chance candidate who slipped past the screening process and accidentally wound up face-to-face. You get to the interesting stuff that actually tells you something about the candidate after that, and if they're any good at all, your trivial challenge will be a two minute diversion that they solve while probably having a friendly chat with you about something else at the same time.

It's a little surprising to me that someone with as much experience as the author describes here hasn't realised this yet. It was one of the very first lessons I learned as soon as I started helping with interviewing candidates.

It's a little surprising to me that someone with as much experience as the author describes here hasn't realised this yet.

Bing-m'f'ing-O, and you summarize better than I. If one has not only been around the block, but has worn ruts in the sidewalk, then you know exactly why you're being asked to write FizzBuzz. I was actually once asked to reverse a string. "Optimized for memory or speed?" was my response, not a feeling of insult. I guess when I think about it, thanks to your prompting, that's my actual complaint with the article.

Pushing 40 now, I agree with most of this. However, I will say that the way recruiting works for devs is just atrocious.

However, I will say that the way recruiting works for devs is just atrocious.

I heartily agree, but off-topic. It sucks for everyone, young or old. Maybe, just maybe, as the oldsters roll of to management that'll change, but meet the new boss...

The kind of recruiting described in the article here probably sucks more for older candidates, though. They're going to have more buzzwords to match up (or not) with greater experience, but more importantly, as developers get older and more experienced, they tend to be less reliant on this kind of recruitment anyway, preferring to rely on networking or other ways of making contact that bypass the buzzword-driven recruiter dance. If, for whatever reason, you're an older developer who knows what they're doing but isn't able to bypass the kindergarten stuff, you're going to be relatively rare among your peers, while if you're a 24-year-old hotshot looking for their second job the opposite is probably true.

> Yeah, give up that dream of game development

Ha. I'm 42 and currently working on an online version for the card game Dominion. Paid. So it's not a game I invented, but still pretty cool, and very different from the work for banks I've done the past couple of years.

Yeah, there are still jobs.

On the other hand it's going to be harder to land them. My sister, who looks younger than her mid-30s, was at a job interview wherein the founders told her they didn't want any "old people", meaning people over 30.

Age discrimination is illegal. And I wouldn't want to work for the next Theranos or zenefits anyway.

Personally I think age discrimination laws are dumb. People who don't want to hire someone my age will find a reason to select younger candidates. I'd rather have it right there in the job req so I don't waste my time pursuing opportunities that aren't there.

I don't know, most of the time it's pretty obvious I stopped being a "ninja" years ago...

My sister, who looks younger than her mid-30s, was at a job interview wherein the founders told her they didn't want any "old people"

Any company so dense that they make statements during an interview that open them to legal liability is truly a company you don't want to work for. Because I guarantee there's a whole host of other stuff they aren't supposed to do as employer and aren't aware of it. Little stuff like, I dunno, "no, you can't put that in an employment contract and ask people sign it" or "actually, that's not how payroll works in this state".

Specific to your sister, if they don't like old people, I'll bet they wouldn't be fond of having girlz in their frat house, either. Unless she's cute, of course.

I really don’t think that’s what he’s saying, and if at least some of this doesn’t resonate with you, you’ve never looked for (programming) work after 40. The problem is that programming is, by it’s nature, “strange” work. In every other job, you perform some function for a long time, learn all the ins and outs of it, and then move on to manage other people who are performing that function: break their work down into tasks, assign different people to different tasks based on skill sets, suggest timeframes, etc.. That’s true from sandwich making up to neurosurgery. Programming work seems to defy that natural progression. I’ve been doing this for 25 years now, and I’m no better at breaking software development projects down into discrete tasks for _other people_ to carry out than I was when I started - and I’ve never met nor worked with anybody else who could, or even pretended they could. So we have this odd career where you start out as a programmer, and you stay a programmer until you retire. Couple that with the outsiders expectation that programming is getting easier when the reality is that the opposite is true, you have a _lot_ of people with a very low opinion of programmers as professionals - i.e. if you were actually any good, you wouldn’t have to be doing this any more.

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