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Hiring a software engineer in their late 40s: Pros: Cons: Do not cite the deep magic to me, product manager, I was there when it was written. 234 comments
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 @Matthewcford @SamJSharpe @saramg I think itโs more on experience than with age, because I had the same impression since <40.  @sleepyfox @saramg with regards to that item: Pros: deletes half of the stack, reducing maintenance costs and making it easier to use . They would delete 90% of it, but know itโs not worth the fight. Cons: tends to rant on about how they would have done it in ancient languages like Perl/php ;)  @phredmoyer @sleepyfox @saramg  @phredmoyer @sleepyfox @saramg Pros: is right about most things Cons: can't say so without insulting everyone @saramg @schizanon @phredmoyer @sleepyfox pft! Amateurs! Iโve been doing that since I was about 14.  @schizanon @phredmoyer @sleepyfox @saramg As a 50y old software engineer. I approve of this message!  @phredmoyer @sleepyfox @saramg Iโm in my twenties, and there isnโt a single system Iโve seen that I couldnโt have written better in Perl. I would also have deleted 50% of the stack, but no one will let me. So I guess I have to wait until Iโm forty. Pros of staying around that long: Iโll be the one supposed to put up a fight when someone tries to delete 90% of the stack, and I justโฆ ๐ค wonโt. ๐  @phredmoyer @sleepyfox @saramg Cons: deletes half the stack reducing maintenance costs and why is it all Perl now? Cons: doesnโt actually know Perl but replaces the rest with Perl anyway and why is the patient data missing?  @phredmoyer @sleepyfox @saramg Do you also consider Javascript "ancient"? It was released the same year as PHP. @sleepyfox @saramg 50s is knowing that if you rewrite the stack you'll be stuck writing code for the rest of eternity as you're beyond even your senior devs level. @stevenharman @saramg One *weird* advantage of us olds: we know that not everything is going to be 32 or 64 bits. Hell, we may not even trust two's-complement!   @saramg As an SRE in very late 40s (omg 50 on Friday what?) can confirm, except second pro is more "Will rebuild said stack 2x as fast and half as buggy whether you like it or not", and our nemesis is more likely to be a project manager than a product manager. @carorolyn @saramg hell yeah. I apologise to all the amazing project managers I've worked with. But the ones who exist only to pass on buzzwords from middle managers and declare that we now have to use (buzzword)... don't deserve the title.   @arnan Proper devs nitpick things I don't get? I'm genuinely intrigued what you've got against "stacks"! It just seems kinda appropriate term, for anyone lucky enough to have anything close to a well-layered architecture. @saramg @JeniParsons True for most professions, I should think. Certainly for civil servants. ๐  @saramg As a product manager, I appreciate working with software engineers who give zero fucks. With them, you know where you stand. (And I have the tendency to give zero fucks, too. But that might be because I'm in that same age bracket.)  @natalie_romana @saramg Just because you mention "the family" BEEN THERE, we WERE ALL A BIG FAMILY DURING HARD TIMES .. "we need some sacrifices .. the times are hard .. we need to hang on .. " .. and WE DID .. then finally came the times of "Really Good Money" .. did we see anything "more" from all that ? .. Suddenly "we are a family were some members are LOT more important than YOU and YOU are NOT so important ( to get a bonus ) " .. been there, seen all of it, yes I don't have any more ..  @gilesgoat @natalie_romana @saramg my family try to make me watch Jordan Peterson videos, soโฆ    @saramg@fosstodon.org This is why I moved to contracting. 6 months in one place, for a decent pay, is a sweet spot that keeps me interested long enough to impress and then move on before I get too jaded with the place.  @saramg i'm in my early 40s and the fucks i give are so low that i don't even work in the industry anymore, because i don't think it's worth the money. i'm very good at what i do. but i don't wanna. @thor @saramg Financial Independence Retire Early. Was a (big) thing a couple of years ago, e.g. mr money mustache made it somewhat popular https://www.mrmoneymustache.com/ @jnbhlr it's not that you can decide to go this route spontaneously, but more that i found out how i'm mentally equipped and i'm working from that. @jnbhlr with that said, even if you're the average person and you decide to quit a job you've had for a few years, you can keep going on benefits for at least a year or two, even if nothing's wrong with you. @jnbhlr you will receive about 66% of the income you had while you were working. there is a time penalty if you resign yourself, of a few weeks. if you're fired, there is no penalty. @jnbhlr i've been off the job trail for a bit longer though, so my benefits are not as good as that. my income's about 1/3 of the average currently. but this is workable, if you just learn how to be a bit frugal. @thor so "you're not good enough with money" but you're "a bit frugal"? Maybe you want to try to work on your money skills as you get half of the equation figured out :-) @jnbhlr i know i'm bad with money so i use tricks to fool myself into being better. @jnbhlr if there is money in the account that the debit card is on, that'll evaporate quickly. if i keep the money in an account in another bank that doesn't have a card and takes a day to transfer, that makes it less easy to impulse buy. with scheduled transfers 3 times a week, you get a steady amount of money to spend. @thor Scientists developed a guidance chart on how to try reduce impulse buyings https://www.projekt-meinding.de/fileadmin/md/uebungen/Tipp-Wirklich_MeinDing.pdf maybe you can get that translated as I think it's fairly good @jnbhlr the main approach i use is that i try to rig my life so i'll be forced to do the right thing. @thor That's totally the way to go from all I know: Make the "right thing" easy and the "wrong thing" hard. Good luck! @thor for me not logging into amazon/ebay/paypal by default and keeping the passwords not in the browser but in the seperate password manager helps some :-) @jnbhlr i can be pretty determined about these impulse buys... it's hard to explain. they're more like compulsions than momentary impulses. @thor No need to explain. Do I need a 3D printer in the sense that I will print enough to justify the space/money taken by it? Maybe not. Did I buy a 3D printer? Yes. I entertained the purchase for about 10 years though :-) Now I need to practice my cad/slicing tuning skills...  @saramg @saramg I work at a gov. Agency in Sweden and it is such a nice place, basically all the prestige shit is non existent so the last points are almost seen as pro's too.  @saramg I find that it isn't the Gen-X engineers that don't respect this old-as-the-hills ex-developer ex-sysop product manager citing ancient lore to them. It is the younger ones who have decided that it has to be us-versus-them. I believe the appropriate phrase is "fuck around and find out" That was me. I gave it up at 60 because I'd solved the same problems and had the same arguments with managers so many times it was getting boring. At one point I did try moving up (as some people see it) to project management, but I didn't enjoy it and wasn't any good at it. Now I play my guitar and write science fiction. @saramg The uneasy part (for me ?) is the "zero fucks" part: @philsherry @saramg thank you. This was my exact reaction. I am hoping it was sarcasm ๐ค. I am nowhere close to 40, and have all the "cons"  @saramg @patterfloof as an autistic I really appreciate people who give zero ducks about the we are family bullshit @saramg And once they cross 50 they will tell you their due dates and deadlines are all ๐ฉ and don't really matter.      Most common phrase: [in weary voice]: Look, I just want to get shit done. It could have been written in half the amount of time we spent talking about it. ๐คฃ  @saramg I think it's not related to "late 40s", but instead "someone who has 20 to 30 years of experience" fits all of this! I know to have 20 to 30 yrs of experience one is probably 40+, but there are exceptions.  @saramg Well zero fuck given is something also exhibited by 30s and 20s software engineers I can share some experience with it, but applying it to every person in an age in software engineering might be a bit harsh. Prejudice might be built with statements like this - Chatgpt is watching :) @saramg Thank you. I turned fifty at the start of this year. I feel deeply seen. :totoro: @saramg Also, I am so using this in actual conversation: "Do not cite the deep magic to me, product manager, I was there when it was written." Absolute perfection. :totoro: @saramg not sure why โgives zero fucksโ is a con - maybe because Iโm in my middle 40s ๐ ๐ . Can you clarify? ๐ @saramg oh believe me, dozens of fucks are no problem above 40, the rest of the list is correct ๐   @saramg 38 and starting a new job in a few weeks. On my way to be exactly this person! The, where do i see myself in 10 years. @saramg @tomklaasen thatโs about as accurate as accurate can get.    I'm an #AncientGeek (age 67) and I can confirm that the number of fucks given decrease exponentially with age ๐  @saramg Look, I *know* I've never interviewed/worked with you, so where were you hiding your cameras? I am definitely In This Picture, aaaaand...eh, it's fine. Whatever. And by the way, if you don't let me fix that problem I've been nagging you about, the SEC is going to Roast Us Alive when it comes to light. You let me know what you want me to do, I'm going to lunch... ;)   @saramg Hit 48 this year. Can confirm amount of fucks given, though I am an SRE. I figure approaching 50 means your resume makes you very employable in our field, so not giving fucks is an option younger people, or people in other fields don't have. I.e. everybody would, it's just that in our line of work, when approaching 50, we _actually get to do so._ @saramg @marcoarment Very excited to enter this phase of my life. Very early on in my new position I told my manager โI donโt do fire drillsโ.  @saramg Could I add, โGrumbles about not being consulted before the RFQ was submitted because I know I will be the one to fix itโ?  @saramg are you talking about me? ๐ i have to say that i have seen too much "family" as an excuse for exploitation to even take anyone who says these things seriously. i do enjoy helping people making their own experiences, even if i have to do the pull requests ... the rest is just two more decades of training y pattern recognition models.  @saramg โWill rewriteโ sounds like early 30s. Late 40s is โis tempted to rewrite, but will notโ.  @saramg pfft, wait until you hit mid-50s. Not only do I have zero fucks to give, I'm not sure I even remember what they look like. @saramg I'd say the same for many other fields -- I go through this in communications, PR *so* often.  @saramg I give such few fucks that I've maneuvered myself into a niche so specialized that I had to start my own thing. @saramg In their 50s: *points at specific section of deep magic* I actually wrote that part. See, the reference note has my old email address in it?  @saramg I'm closer to 50 than to 40 but the answer is COBOL! Sorry, what was the question again?  @saramg @marcoarment Oh I havenโt given a fuck for corporate stuff for a long time. Iโve paid my dues and have realized that being married to your job is a really bad idea.  @saramg my team is mostly people in their late 30s and 40s, while I'm the youngest on it by far, and I'm constantly amazed at how fast they do things
 @saramg what does it say about us that we've been trans since age 30, but also have been in our "late 40s" by this description since, like, 25?  @saramg As an engineer/scientist in my 40s I can confirm most of this :)  @saramg     @saramg I feel like this could be written about the age group and not just software engineers |
Gregory's Server
@saramg are these firm reqs? I'm only in my early to mid 40s.