Five false positives about older programmers

Recently, after my 40-year-old birthday, a friend joked to me, "Hey, you are old and not suitable for programmers !" Although I smiled, I felt something. In our line, age discrimination is common. The COBOL people have encountered this problem a few years ago. With the popularity and rise of Java, we write Java programs to laugh at the code they leave and to be stubborn in the face of new technologies.

Now the same thing comes to my head. Maybe you are. Even if you do not have one, it will soon be your turn. Are you still smiling? Yes, I think so.

From: [comming], released on September 9, 2007-

The CRA computer research organization investigates employment, jobs, and salaries of employees in the North American computer industry (Computer Science CS, Computer Engineering CE, the survey is classified by degree and gender. For previous years, see the CRA website.

From: Cre taulbee report

In many aspects, we have age discrimination. We are keen on hot new technologies, learning new things at a speed we have never heard of, and working crazy to bring products to the market. These things are always considered to be done by young people in our industry. I said young workers would be cheaper, right? It's really much cheaper. However, the computer degree trend survey does not support the ability of our managers to always have a large number of cheap workers for arbitrary command. In fact, all the data points to the conclusion that in almost 10 years, the number of students studying computer science (CS) dropped slightly or was the same as in previous years. As Jeff Atwood says, there are even fewer choices to hire programmers. You may have to hire someone to complete your next project. At the same time, outsourcing is facing a strong boycott. Egon, who would you ask for help?

If you think you can avoid the "gray matter" problem of software development, please think twice. In the IT industry, there are some old programmers who are deeply rooted in their mistakes, and inexplicably put older and experienced workers at a disadvantage in the industry. Most of these false positives are nonsense. When everyone is 40 years old, they will become stupid because they are too old. Let us break through these false truths one by one.

False pass 1: Older programmers charge more than new users, so younger developers are more popular.

Fact:Experienced developers are labeled as "expensive" because the salaries of employees in any software company are always the biggest expense. In fact, being young means being cheap. However, although young developers with little experience can help you save some budget, if only young people in your team are willing to pay more in the long run. Young developers have never experienced any failures. They don't even have enough time to go through failures. Guess who they will use for teaching fee? Your. If you miss the deadline and deliver unfinished projects, how much loss will it cause you? Think about it.

Indeed, older programmers have higher salaries than younger ones. But where did you spend more? An experienced software developer buys the lessons he learned from past project development. These are the expensive tuition fees you need to pay when you become his manager. However, if you recruit an experienced engineer, you will not repeat the common mistakes in project management and software development. This means that at the end of the year, you will get a good rating for hiring employees who will do things.

False 2: Older programmers are limited by their existing knowledge, and their flexibility and ability to learn new technologies are inferior to those of younger developers.

Fact:In fact, it is their past experience that older programmers can turn to new technologies, frameworks, and systems at a deeper level. For example, if you understand the GUI framework written in C/C ++, you will have concepts about message transmission, event processing, and MVC mode, this knowledge can help you separate the presentation layer from the underlying logic when designing the system. When you first came into contact with the GUI framework, in addition to learning the code syntax, you also need to understand examples and related code libraries. In addition, you also need to understand all concepts related to them. When you implement the GUI framework for the second, third, or later times, you will find that they have similarities in a deeper aspect beyond the code syntax. You may even notice that the New Gui framework will overcome the potential limitations that you previously spent a lot of effort to solve. These insights increase productivity in ways you cannot directly measure.

False 3: Older programmers have family and other factors, so they cannot undertake hard software development tasks (Interpretation: long and hard work), and young people do not have these burdens.

Fact:To be fair, less experienced software developers will work hard for a long time because of their practice (failure) working 80 hours a week for several months in a row will eventually reach the productivity limit. This situation will exhaust you, And I bet anyone who has experienced this situation does not want to try again. Even with such a tendency, the so-called "family burden" does not exist. Experienced and efficient software engineers are relentless time managers who already have families who are more active in completing their work within the allocated time. They may participate in dance or football matches, but they will schedule the time in their spare time, and they will be highly focused on their work during their 40 hours of work every week. Well-established software engineers must efficiently manage their personal time; otherwise they will soon be buried by the surging work.

Legend 4: Older programmers are not as agile as young people.

Fact:Time does have an impact on the brain, and there is a lot of evidence that older workers may think less quickly. However, agile thinking is only part of the judgment criteria. Thinking faster doesn't always mean thinking better. What is the situation of judgment? An old saying goes: Good judgment comes from experience, while experience comes from wrong judgment. Think about the fact that they have more insights, work done, and successes and failures than young people, and they know that using less agile thinking as an excuse for not hiring older software engineers is a bad excuse. Experienced developers can draw experience from a large number of projects to avoid wrong decisions for today's projects. Young developers have many important new ideas, but they have not been tested and verified. At the same time, these two aspects will bring great value to your team.

False story 5: Older programmers get bored with their work and are not as popular as young people in the company. Young developers are more enthusiastic than they are about their work.

Fact:People who say these things may dislike their opinions and be criticized by others. The people who criticize them have been tested in this industry for a long time. Once again, they have seen stupid decisions put into action. Experienced software developers will find problems very early. If you say that this product will not be welcomed by the market, they will not buy it. Because they have been dealing with customers for many years, and they know that you are saying this only to avoid being dismissed by the company at some point in the future. They will not accept the manager's 80 hours of work per week as the customer wants the software to deliver next month. They will tell you that it will take more than three months to implement the features set with the customer.

Young developers do not often encounter such a situation, so they have little resistance to bad management habits. In this case, managers only need naive new users. If you want to have a great team and a great product, you can remind people to avoid losses once and again when making a wrong decision. But this happens only when you have the courage to admit that you are not at all.

Enthusiasm is gradually dispersed, so you cannot say that your age limits your enthusiasm. If so, Donald knuth, Ward cunnheim, Bill Joy, bill Gates and other hundreds of people who have broken the 40-year-old curse should no longer be interested in the software industry because of their age. But they are not. Enthusiasm is enthusiasm. If you are passionate when you are 40 years old, you can still fall in love with your field. This kind of love is not a one-night stand. Young developers can still start their career with a short enthusiasm, but their enthusiasm will soon fade in the face of difficulties and challenges.

Finally, let me clarify several things:It is not a bad thing to be young, nor is it a good thing to be young.. Most importantly,If a person is not competent in programming, he or she will not be hired at any age.Maintain the diversity of age and experience of the team. If there are differences, you can learn and make progress. However, if you want to hire a boss, do not immediately drop the white-haired brother sitting across you. Forget your prejudice against age and see if they can impress you.

One day, that brother or sister may be you.

 

From: http://blog.jobbole.com/5906/ bole online