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by fit2rule
4406 days ago
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Be careful about groupthink. As you get older, you get less and less inclined to just agree with something because everyone else thinks it. When you're young, its almost impossible not to be a member of the pack - but as you get older, you realize its not enough to be the alpha dog. You've gotta get the whole mob through the job. That's not always a management role, you know. A majority of the aged 40+ developers that I know are still writing code. They're very productive, very certain, and have the experience that a lot of younger guys don't - especially with the social aspect of our industry. Its not enough to be 'the rightest guy in the room'. Its also not enough to be the 'most active developer with all the energy' in the room. What matters is that everyone in the room is right, because of the work being done together, and that the groups' motivation as a whole is more important than any single developer. Of course, if all you've ever done is work on a small (2 or 3) man group, its quite possible the idea of being the oldest guy in a room full of young people is an abhorrent idea to you - well, we old guys are dealing with it and getting the job done in spite of the upstarts. Don't worry, we know - its penance for all the pain we put our elders through, 20 years ago... |
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And I don't work at a startup - this is the 2nd large company (>20k employees) I've worked at, and in both cases, I would say that the percentage of workers over 50 is less than 10% - and most are managers or senior folks.
My question is simple - where the heck did all these people go? I don't think the mortality rate is that high ;-) and I doubt many people can afford to retire that early.