Do people really think this way, besides young people and tech managers?
I'm over 35 and my productivity and capacity to learn new things has only continued to grow over time.
It's true that many exceptional artifacts have been produced by people when they're relatively young. I think this is more a byproduct of ignorance (i.e., seeing the world with a fresh pair of eyes). But as this list shows, maybe age isn't the critical factor -- maybe it's about diving into something new and unfamiliar.
I completely concur. I've been programming since I was a teenager, practically grew up with computers, and I'm 50 now.
I'm still just as productive as I was in my 20's, but now I've got decades more experience than my peers and can see things that the hubris and arrogance of youth never let me see before - like, how important it is to be able to work with others, not hold onto projects selfishly .. how important it is to check oneself before one wrecks oneself, and so on.
If I had a way, there'd be so much advice I'd give to my younger self...
I think maybe it's possible that given a very smart programmer with 1-5 years experience, the value of not having had time to learn the wrong way of doing things far outweighs the value of another 10 or 20 years experience. A lot of our 'best practices' seem curiously tailored toward keeping mediocre developers in check and producing consistent rather than extraordinary results.
Maybe our industry just grinds the greatness out of you by 25 or 30 unless you actively fight it.
I think if someone's better with 5 years' experience than 20 years' experience then they have a very low skill ceiling for the task at hand.
Part of that 20 years' experience, of course, is learning to ignore 'best practices' that actually aren't 'best' at all (or more likely, are 'best' for some situation you're not actually in).
> Maybe our industry just grinds the greatness out of you by 25 or 30 unless you actively fight it.
Maybe people just get tired of churning out CRUD apps after 10 years and want to do something else. A lot of stuff loses its charm after you see behind the curtain.
There’s that saying, something about 10 years of experience vs 10 years of doing the same thing (‘1 year of experience 10 times’ or something like that).
I also remember someone bringing up a good point (it might have been here or something I watched, I can’t remember) that software engineers don’t actually get that many ‘attempts’ at doing a full software system from scratch. How often does the average software engineer get to design a system from requirements, build a system from scratch, take it through production and then into maintenance in that length of time?
There are a lot of brilliant programs or games that were created by people with little programming experience. While the code may be of bad quality, the idea is so good that it becomes very successful.
I’ve met some people with this mentality, and it’s really kind of heartbreaking, because it’s never too late, especially not at 35. Most people who are 35 haven’t even lived half their life, in some countries you’re only half-way to retirement age. I think ageism is a growing problem though, and I’m not sure why. This is anecdotal, but I’ve been the examiner for a quite a lot of young CS students and it’s extremely rare to meet one who isn’t at least five years from being truly useful. It happens of course, but in general, I would much rather hire someone older and more experienced. Yet there is this idea that young developers are better, not every where, but a lot of places. One of the major IT companies in Denmark (KMD) was recently caught having a hiring practice of only hiring people below 36. It’s illegal, but what’s really interesting is that they’ve done this for a decade, and they’re now one of the most struggling major IT companies with heaps of scandals, dataleaks and delays. I know you can’t rightly blame that on their practice of hiring young people, it could be happening for lots of reasons, and their management is probably questionable considering how their hiring practices break the law. Hiring young didn’t help them avoid their troubles though.
To get back on track though, I’ve know people who switched careers as they got older and excelled where they ended up. My mother in law got her PHD after 55, and is currently using it vividly to influence and teach around the country. She was a high-school teacher for 20 years before she got into research. If you look beyond anecdotes though, research has shown that the most successful company founders are 40-49[1]. I’m sure a lot of those people have been trying since they were in their 20ies. As I’ve said I think experience is usually an advantage, but that doesn’t mean it’s a requirement. I don’t think it’s ever too late to go for it, I mean, you probably won’t win the Tour de France in your 50ies, but you don’t have to be successful. There are a few Danish authors who are successful that started late, that you’ve never heard of because they aren’t successful enough to make it on a list like this. They make a living doing what they love though.
Little too early to disclose the details, but it's in the eCommerce content marketing space currently dominated by the likes of BazaarVoice, PowerReviews ... >$5B TAM (for overall marketing automation space) and a CAGR of 15-20%.
Not domain expert.
Personal experience, research, observations of the market dynamics, conversations with others who shared the pain led to identification of the problem space and corresponding hypothesis.
Borrowed elements of proposed solution from adjacent spaces.
Currently in pre-seed stage, so still a lot of work to do.
I’m graduating with a phd in deep learning in 3 months, trying to decide whether to join FAANG or do my own thing. What is the most valuable lesson you learned from your failures?
@p1esk replying to your question as reply to my own comment as for some reason I'm not seeing the "reply" link below your comment.
Unfortunately all failures have their own nuances. In some cases it was the issue with market dynamics, in others I think the idea itself was not good enough. I think we always underestimate the inertia of a market, healthcare and anything to do with government are prime examples of that. Of course I'm sure I also lack something but I try to make it up with tenacity.
Disclosure, some of the attempts were side projects while I was willing to full time, which, while financially better, had its own issues.
Regarding your situation, I'll say take a look at two things, your financial situation and what idea you have.
Not sure if that's what you're looking for but I'd be happy to shoot you an email to chat offline.
I'm over 35 and my productivity and capacity to learn new things has only continued to grow over time.
It's true that many exceptional artifacts have been produced by people when they're relatively young. I think this is more a byproduct of ignorance (i.e., seeing the world with a fresh pair of eyes). But as this list shows, maybe age isn't the critical factor -- maybe it's about diving into something new and unfamiliar.