Is there life after code?

C

Crux

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Hi.

So here's the question, what happens to programmers who's been at it for 15+ years?

Do they shrivel up due to all the coffee, do they create their own little personal tesseract (a la Interstellar movie) in order to never have contact with a project manager again, or does Management simply fold them up and stack them in a basement somewhere for when they need people who understand their archaic systems 20 years from now?

Or is there something else?

I mean, if you're between 30 and 40 years old, your basically a pioneer in this field. Congratulations. So, now what?

Feel free to give me your opinion, share ideas, or start a flame war.

And try to use big words like "Information Technology Architect" or "Information Systems Analyst" or even "The Guy Who Has To Finish Everything and Anything Thrown At Him In Less Than Five Minutes" (although, I'm curious as to what certifications there are for that last one.).

Ready....GO!
 
We get put in little offices to work on legacy systems. Also, we often work from home, because our social skills aren't always quite up to scratch. Neither is our dress sense for that matter.
 
You have to have more than 30 posts and a user name other than Crux in order to ask these questions.
 
Code language are always changing and new languages are being introduced almost every year.

Analyzing your question. "Is there life after code?" If it is standing still then No. If it is constantly evolving then Yes. It's the circle of life.
 
craiglotter said:
We get put in little offices to work on legacy systems. Also, we often work from home, because our social skills aren't always quite up to scratch. Neither is our dress sense for that matter.
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Speak for yourself :)

We work in agile teams where all the walls are whiteboards, we work on open desks without dividers. We have laptops and frequently move around. Some ride Harley Davidsons, Kawas, Suziku etc. (in the summer :) ) to work.

I don't think anyone has less than 10 years experience. And everyone is at least on their 2nd programming language/tech stack and in 2017 will be moving onto their 3rd.
:)
 
So, as a programmer in his 40's, here's my take on the various possibilities and their likelihoods:

Some developers do become obsolete - they get comfortable doing some narrowly scoped job, and just do it for 20-years. They lose track of technology, and the complexity of their current task becomes the equivalent of muscle memory, so they have a very hard time doing anything else, and eventually have to take a big pay cut just to get by.

Some developers become managers - there's a bifurcation here too: Some managers just become administrators - managing project schedules, dealing with complaints, tracking up on bug progress, obtaining requirements for development work from other departments, which are then passed on to their developers, etc. Other managers, treat this as an opportunity to leverage their skills, and treat it as more of a team-lead role, and apart from the admin work, they work directly with the team, defining what has to be done, hands on, in the code, and essentially builds, what they would like to build, would they have had 10x the man-hours in which to develop. Not everyone can become a manager, so this tends to not be the most common option.

Some developers get progressively better, drawing on experience to not waste time, communicating with management better, since they have a much better idea of what management actually wants, and being able to pick up new technology more quickly, since believe it or not, that new language is kinda like LISP, and that new threading model is kinda like the the mainframe they programmed 25 years before, and those obscure new algorithms that are needed are of the same class that they investigated extensively in some job 20 years earlier. In Silicon Valley at least, most developers fall into this camp. The average age of my teams have always been between 40 and 50, and the older guys almost always outshine the younger hires for quite a while - the guys who were the top devs 15 years ago at 35 are mostly still the top devs at 50 - people in the top percentiles hardly ever become less productive just because they get older - quite the opposite.

Finally, there are the programmers who build up just the right experience across multiple disciplines, resulting in them having an extremely rare combinations of skills, that allows them to lead the development of something "new". Or similarly, the developers who originated and developed ground breaking software, who now have a unique level of expertise on the subject or an uncommon perspective, having been involved with the from-scratch development of such a successful project. These developers tend to become technical leaders within companies, developing prototypes for groundbreaking new projects, and guiding the technical strategy of enormous companies.
 
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The best programmers I know are 40+. There is some weird assumption that you lose the ability to code when you hit 40 when actually, those that haven't moved on to management/analysis are by definition generally the most experienced and effective and know how to be constructively lazy. Possibly some older programmers adopt new platforms more slowly, and some get stuck in old paradigms, but there are plenty that are right up there although unfortunately there is rabid ageism in the industry. Youth has the advantage of employing its enthusiasm to pull all-nighters getting something to work - older guys tend not to be as gung ho, but they make up for it in insight and experience.
 
cguy said:
So, as a programmer in his 40's, here's my take on the various possibilities and their likelihoods:

Some developers do become obsolete - they get comfortable doing some narrowly scoped job, and just do it for 20-years. They lose track of technology, and the complexity of their current task becomes the equivalent of muscle memory, so they have a very hard time doing anything else, and eventually have to take a big pay cut just to get by.

Some developers become managers - there's a bifurcation here too: Some managers just become administrators - managing project schedules, dealing with complaints, tracking up on bug progress, obtaining requirements for development work from other departments, which are then passed on to their developers, etc. Other managers, treat this as an opportunity to leverage their skills, and treat it as more of a team-lead role, and apart from the admin work, they work directly with the team, defining what has to be done, hands on, in the code, and essentially builds, what they would like to build, would they have had 10x the man-hours in which to develop. Not everyone can become a manager, so this tends to not be the most common option.

Some developers get progressively better, drawing on experience to not waste time, communicating with management better, since they have a much better idea of what management actually wants, and being able to pick up new technology more quickly, since believe it or not, that new language is kinda like LISP, and that new threading model is kinda like the the mainframe they programmed 25 years before, and those obscure new algorithms that are needed are of the same class that they investigated extensively in some job 20 years earlier. In Silicon Valley at least, most developers fall into this camp. The average age of my teams have always been between 40 and 50, and the older guys almost always outshine the younger hires for quite a while - the guys who were the top devs 15 years ago at 35 are mostly still the top devs at 50 - people in the top percentiles hardly ever become less productive just because they get older - quite the opposite.

Finally, there are the programmers who build up just the right experience across multiple disciplines, resulting in them having an extremely rare combinations of skills, that allows them to lead the development of something "new". Or similarly, the developers who originated and developed ground breaking software, who now have a unique level of expertise on the subject or an uncommon perspective, having been involved with the from-scratch development of such a successful project. These developers tend to become technical leaders within companies, developing prototypes for groundbreaking new projects, and guiding the technical strategy of enormous companies.
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And some start their own businesses.
 
garp said:
Yeah, at which point you never again have time to do any real coding yourself, LOL.
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I'm 47. Started five companies since I started working full time in 1989, wrote most of the code and still do. I do usually partner with someone to run the business side of things though.
 
biometrics said:
And some start their own businesses.
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Agreed, although my comment is more about what happens to their skillset rather than what career path they take - pretty much everything can be applied to either their progression in their own founder CEO/CIO/CTO role or an existing company.
 
cguy said:
Agreed, although my comment is more about what happens to their skillset rather than what career path they take - pretty much everything can be applied to either their progression in their own founder CEO/CIO/CTO role or an existing company.
Click to expand...

Running your own business changes priorities as to skills. I regularly need to learns new languages and tools but at the same time also use older languages and tools, it's a mixed bag. I certainly won't fit into the corporate world and the language flavour of the month mindset.
 
I was busy with a serious response, but then SA's rubbish infrastructure decided to screw with my rhythm; you would think that with all our advances in technology, web forms should be able to recover after power failures.

Anyway failing that, here's a bit of humour...

The only thing separating new vs. old programmers...... is larger fonts.
bigger font.png
 
[)roi(];18546966 said:
I was busy with a serious response, but then SA's rubbish infrastructure decided to screw with my rhythm; you would think that with all our advances in technology, web forms should be able to recover after power failures.

Anyway failing that, here's a bit of humour...

The only thing separating new vs. old programmers...... is larger fonts.
View attachment 397072
Click to expand...

Jeez you must be old, I've been using a laptop (docked) as my main PC for 16 years. It has a built in UPS. :p
 
The first portable I worked on - if things hadn't changed, I'd be blind by now.
IBM-Portable-PC.jpg
 
biometrics said:
Jeez you must be old, I've been using a laptop (docked) as my main PC for 16 years. It has a built in UPS. :p
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Also have a Macbook, but I only that for onsite work, far more productive behind an iMac with dual monitors -- portables generally suck in comparison... As for UPS did I somehow miss the built option for desktops? :whistle:

Hey who are you calling old -- if I was 47 I'd keep my comments... oh wait... as of the start of this month I am :D
 
[)roi(];18547598 said:
Also have a Macbook, but I only that for onsite work, far more productive behind an iMac with dual monitors -- portables generally suck in comparison... As for UPS did I somehow miss the built option for desktops? :whistle:

Hey who are you calling old -- if I was 47 I'd keep my comments... oh wait... as of the start of this month I am :D
Click to expand...

Btw, was it you that mentioned PL/I the other day?
 
cguy said:
The first portable I worked on - if things hadn't changed, I'd be blind by now.
View attachment 397078
Click to expand...
Quite similar, the first one I got to try out was the Osborne at a computer camp.
osborne1.jpg
As for blindness, my worst was sitting inches away from an old Blaupunkt TV, which filled most of my desk space leaving very little for the TI-99/4A or the Basic reference. Fortunately Lazik undid most of that damage; glasses not required.
 
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