<story><title>An old hacker&apos;s tips on staying employed</title><url>https://madned.substack.com/p/an-old-hackers-tips-on-staying-employed</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>tharne</author><text>In addition to ageism, I think the proliferation of the MBA&amp;#x2F;McKinsey school of thought really works against older programmers. You have an increasing number of managers who have little to no domain knowledge around 1) Programming, and 2) whatever industry they happen to be working in. What&amp;#x27;s worse, is that they see no problem with this because they think they &amp;quot;understand business&amp;quot;.&lt;p&gt;What this leads to is a lot of dumb decisions. One example in this case is that, to someone who&amp;#x27;s never written a line of code, a 25 year-old developer is the same as a 50 year-old developer, but at half the cost and without the hassles of things like kids to take care of. You need to have a decent understanding of the work developers do, in order to understand the value the 50 year-old developer brings and why paying him or her 2 or 3x the 25 year-old is actually a bargain.</text></item><item><author>jes</author><text>I’m 61 and have been working in high tech since 1983 or so, writing embedded software, doing system administration, and managing people.&lt;p&gt;The article strikes me as good advice. I didn’t find anything to disagree with in it.&lt;p&gt;Ageism is a thing. People have all kinds of biases of which they may or may not be aware. You have them too, and so do I.&lt;p&gt;A line from another source that I keep in mind is this: “If you’re always getting angry, you’ll turn your nature against the Way.” [1] It doesn’t pay to be the angry, unapproachable person in life.&lt;p&gt;[1] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.dailyzen.com&amp;#x2F;journal&amp;#x2F;bloodstream-sermon&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.dailyzen.com&amp;#x2F;journal&amp;#x2F;bloodstream-sermon&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>wmeredith</author><text>&amp;gt; You have an increasing number of managers who have little to no domain knowledge&lt;p&gt;After seeing this time and time again, and because I was getting older, I made a conscious decision to move into management. Be the change you want to see in the world, right? Now my output is mostly spreadsheets and powerpoint, but I enable my team to do good work as I insulate them from the bullshit. I can always get down into the trenches or work on a side project if I need to scratch that creative itch.</text></comment>
<story><title>An old hacker&apos;s tips on staying employed</title><url>https://madned.substack.com/p/an-old-hackers-tips-on-staying-employed</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>tharne</author><text>In addition to ageism, I think the proliferation of the MBA&amp;#x2F;McKinsey school of thought really works against older programmers. You have an increasing number of managers who have little to no domain knowledge around 1) Programming, and 2) whatever industry they happen to be working in. What&amp;#x27;s worse, is that they see no problem with this because they think they &amp;quot;understand business&amp;quot;.&lt;p&gt;What this leads to is a lot of dumb decisions. One example in this case is that, to someone who&amp;#x27;s never written a line of code, a 25 year-old developer is the same as a 50 year-old developer, but at half the cost and without the hassles of things like kids to take care of. You need to have a decent understanding of the work developers do, in order to understand the value the 50 year-old developer brings and why paying him or her 2 or 3x the 25 year-old is actually a bargain.</text></item><item><author>jes</author><text>I’m 61 and have been working in high tech since 1983 or so, writing embedded software, doing system administration, and managing people.&lt;p&gt;The article strikes me as good advice. I didn’t find anything to disagree with in it.&lt;p&gt;Ageism is a thing. People have all kinds of biases of which they may or may not be aware. You have them too, and so do I.&lt;p&gt;A line from another source that I keep in mind is this: “If you’re always getting angry, you’ll turn your nature against the Way.” [1] It doesn’t pay to be the angry, unapproachable person in life.&lt;p&gt;[1] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.dailyzen.com&amp;#x2F;journal&amp;#x2F;bloodstream-sermon&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.dailyzen.com&amp;#x2F;journal&amp;#x2F;bloodstream-sermon&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>joelbluminator</author><text>&amp;gt; without the hassles of things like kids to take care of&lt;p&gt;That&amp;#x27;s not accurate. At 35 there are young kids, maybe even 45. At 50 they&amp;#x27;re pretty much independent, at least aged 10-12.
So actually, if you hire a 32 year old dev you should be more concerned about kids than if you hire a 50 year old.
So if that&amp;#x27;s the concern, only hire 18 year olds I guess, or maybe even 15.</text></comment>