Comment by peapicker | Hacker News Reader

Comment by peapicker | Hacker News Reader

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As a grey beard programmer who started programming at 9yo in the late 1970s, I have never had to work 60 hr weeks - except for a two week period where I chose to rescue a project that had been mishandled. Only one project had code thrown out and I agreed with it as it really wasn’t our core business and even though it worked it wasn’t a good fit.

The large majority of my career (26.5 yrs now of 35.5 yrs earning) has been as a very senior engineer with multiple patents at a very large formerly SV HQ company.

I never have seen age discrimination - in fact have productive colleges who are nearing 70 (I personally am a long way from even normal us retirement age still) both male and female and still learning and writing great code.

I just thought my anecdote could counter your more dour analysis- although despite that I agree with the heart of your message…

You have to love it to do it for a lifetime.

Also, AI is mostly Artificial and not so intelligent. I do not fear for your generation once management realizes that it isn’t all that.

Really happy about 2 things: 1) we agree that (as you put it) you have to love it to do it for a lifetime and 2) You haven't had to put up with what most of us do.

> in fact have productive colleges who are nearing 70

Yeah, its not like you turn 47 and your brain just turns to yogurt. The changes are real, but subtle; e.g. I'm better at foreseeing and avoiding risks.

Here's the thing though: the things which didn't happen to you are, by and large, completely out of your control. I won't name any names (cough a south-american river cough) but some companies are notorious for throwing engineers into the thunder dome until they burn out, and are then summarily discarded.

Whether you face age discrimination, or whether your code is thrown out, or whether you are thrown into a death march, but can't leave the company because your options haven't vested--those aren't things you do to yourself, its something other people who have control over your income do.

There isn't some technique you can use, or some effort you can put in, to ensure you don't see age discrimination. Although I have had colleagues who color their hair and beard. But by and large, if you don't experience any of those, its just because you got lucky.

Engineering management is hard, and not many people are good at it. Whether you get a good one or bad one matters.

You are right, I am lucky to work in a healthy work environment which doesn’t have those issues, and that is out of my control.

I have no illusions that the company at the macro level doesn’t value the individual specifically and my divsion’s mgmt could be forced into getting rid of people on a whim (ie not enough revenue per headcount, we changed the deal), despite them being genuine amazing humans as managers (a very rare thing)

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