[Grimm1]

Yeah this entire statement was also incredibly ageist and painting with broad strokes. If your litmus test for good programmer is "number of languages known" you aren't a good programmer. I'm 25, I've been programming for 15 years now and professionally I have more than half a decade of experience and professionally have a senior title. If you want to play that game most older programmers absolutely do not keep up with me and I've worked with a few that should have absolutely clocked out a while ago.

IBM is also a joke, just like Oracle.

Edit: Now that the vein has stopped bulging on my forehead, I agree with your point that experience is valuable. However it comes in many packages and dismissing someone because they're 50 or 25 is equally wrong and you just did the same thing you're ranting at IBM about.

[throwaway189262]

> I have more than half a decade of experience and professionally have a senior title. If you want to play that game most older programmers absolutely do not keep up with me

You sound fun to work with. I agree with you that some old programmers just want to get paid. As I've gotten older I appreciate the reasons more. It still bothers me sometimes but whatever. Work is far from the most important thing in my life these days. When I was younger I was eager to get ahead, now I've realized IC's plateau around the same salary so there's no point to showing off unless you want to be management. And I like to code so no thanks.

[Grimm1]

Sorry, I just get frustrated being told every 25 year old is a no experience green hack. I've worked with plenty of older devs who are absolutely a treasure to this industry.

[throwaway189262]

I'm quite a bit older and some programmers with fancier titles are still asses. I know a guy that honestly sucks and knows it (he's lazy and just wants $$$). He's got "Sr Staff" from demanding a title bump every time he hops jobs. At most companies titles are meaningless, pay is all that matters.

Programmers are all over the place skills wise. The only time I had a team where everybody was competent was when me and a couple good guys got to interview everyone. Just the way it is

[Frondo]

I felt this way when I was 25, like I'd been programming since I was 7 and I was hot shit.

I'm approaching 40 now and only in the last year or two does it occur to me that, even at 25, I was really only middle-grade.

I wonder what you'll think if you look back in 15 years, about your skills now.

[reaperducer]

IBM is also a joke, just like Oracle.

A 100-year-old company with $80,000,000,000 in annual revenue operating in 177 countries is "a joke?"

I don't even know what to say, other than you're simply proving the points the graybeards in this discussion are making.

[Grimm1]

Every time I've interacted with someone from IBM I've found myself questioning how they've managed to continue being a company. Have you looked at their public facing offerings lately? Watson is garbage, IBM cloud is garbage. They're losing ground on pretty much everything that is a modern revenue driver and they're best offering is their IT services.

Their strategy and execution are quite poor.

[reaperducer]

Every time I've interacted with someone from IBM

What percentage of IBM's 362,000 employees have you interacted with that is statistically meaningful?

Have you looked at their public facing offerings lately?

Only two of them. They were impressive. But you and I are looking at different offerings, probably in different market segments.

They're losing ground on pretty much everything that is a modern revenue driver

And yet, its income was up almost ten billion dollars last year. Seems like IBM knows very well how to drive revenue.

IBM has hundreds of products. I suggest you expand your view beyond the very few that are critiqued on HN.

[Grimm1]

Ah you see I've interacted with some of their leadership which was enough for me, whether that is enough to be meaningful I suppose is a matter up for interpretation.

Fair point otherwise.

[HarryHirsch]

I'm 25 and have a senior title

Is this grade inflation? In the physical sciences you get a doctorate in your late 20s, and you still are a greenhorn. Is computing really that shallow?

[unishark]

Definitely in some companies, "senior" is just the very first promotion, coming with 3-4 years experience or a MS. Next comes prefixes like "principal and "senior principal".

[Grimm1]

No, I have 15 years experience in computing. I assure you I am not a greenhorn and you are insulting.

[HarryHirsch]

I was talking about the field, not individuals. You do wonder: at what level of experience is a civil engineer senior? Maybe that explains why bridges do not routinely collapse while large software projects invariably end up being dumpster fires.

[Grimm1]

Apologies. Food for thought.

[reaperducer]

"I'm 25, I've been programming for 15 years now"

No one is going to look at your resume and be impressed by what you did when you were ten years old.

[pmiller2]

Hey, I independently rediscovered the bubble sort algorithm at 10 years old. That should count for something, right? :P

In all seriousness, I wrote my first programs at 7, and, while I don't expect you or anyone else to be impressed about that in the sense of it being a resume accomplishment, having that early intro to programming certainly did help me when I went to college and learned "big boy" programming. Ceteris paribus, I'd probably prefer to hire the candidate who started programming at 10 versus the one who never twiddled a bit until college.

[Grimm1]

I agree which is why I didn't get my title by leveraging those things. Layering social graces on top of technical capability and delivering solidly on some larger scale projects both by planning, leading and executing them, however, will impress. I've been responsible for projects that have closed multi million dollar deals and lead full team rebuilding and system re-architectures.