Column website www.jiuzhang.com | | nine chapters algorithm
According to statistics, the median age of the American worker is 42. However, the median age of employees at Facebook, Google, LinkedIn, and Salesforce is 30 or younger. The median age of Facebook employees is 28.
(Source: SmartInsights – Goo.gl /LNiSP6)
Many programmers can’t help but ask: is being a programmer really a dead-end job after the age of 35?
A lot of people in their 40s who are still active in the field
Believe it or not, there are still many successful programmers in this field well past their 40s. Some of them are even the best in the business.
For example, Rob Pike and Ken Thompson, both in their 60s, created the Go programming language. They are quite senior engineers at Google, and you can be sure that their work is well rewarded. Robert Martin, Kent Beck, Steve Wozniak, they still have a big influence on the industry.
Age is not the most important thing, but your performance and impact in the industry is outstanding. We all work in a job market that only cares about your abilities and whether your abilities are needed. As long as your skills are still in demand, you won’t have to worry about finding work.
Really, as long as you still have an active brain and the ability to type code; You can continue your career in this industry until the day you die.
But there are some things that are true in this industry
1. Age discrimination is indeed widespread in the industry:
The following are the number of age discrimination cases reported by the DEPARTMENT of Fair Employment and Housing from 2011 to 2015:
The first thing you need to know is that age discrimination (as well as sexism, racism, etc.) is widespread in the industry. These aren’t ubiquitous, but where they do occur, they can have an impact on whether or not you get a job.
(A) In your 35-40 years of age, you probably expect higher pay and better working conditions than a 25-30 year old with equally applicable skills.
(b) The cutting edge skills and techniques you learned in school when you were 35 to 40 years old are now 10 to 20 years behind; Programming technology is rapidly evolving, new technologies are emerging, languages, frameworks, and new technical theories are likely to be updated every year. If you don’t keep up with The Times, you are at risk of being eliminated from the industry.
2. At many companies, programmers don’t have a viable “technology ladder”
At such companies, the title of “senior engineer” is already the highest attainable level for programmers, and once the position reaches the top of the pay scale, they must move into management in order to move up, even though they may not be the right fit. (Many people regret going into management, but you can always find your way back into development if you want to!)
By “management” I mean more than just managing people. In a company with a future, someone has to manage technology — a CTO, for example. Many Ctos still code, but few feel CTO is a dead-end job.
Some companies deliberately hire more mature software developers, especially at remote sites, as their “reserve management.”
If you want to stay in software development past the age of 35-40, you can
1) Work for a large company with a skill ladder or dual career ladder
2) Become a full-time independent contractor
3) Become a consultant
4) Start your own company
5) Do contract software development as well as daily work
6) Keep your existing skills, learn to reflect from your work experience, have good interpersonal and communication skills, and actually do your job well
Adjust your attitude and don’t frame yourself by age
1. Recapture your passion
Remember the first time you wrote code? The overwhelming excitement and excitement — changing technology, challenging work…
This industry makes you see the energy, the latest, cutting edge ideas and opportunities constantly emerging all the time!
You say you are not as quick as young people, not as smart as them, no! It’s just that they’re just like you were, unhesitatingly accepting opportunities, learning, and making mistakes along the way. That passion, that passion full of dreams!
Does that ring a bell?
All you have to do is get back to how you felt!
2. Innovation requires setting aside experience for a while
There’s a coding adage that goes something like this: sometimes adding code doesn’t improve software; removing code does. The same is true of life, especially as a programmer. There is more philosophy in this sentence than you might think. Anything that prevents you from “uncoding your life” — whether it’s an old program you should have abandoned a long time ago, or a stale idea — is holding you back.
As experienced programmers, our toolkit is full of “tried and true” technologies that are the foundation of our skills. But this is both a blessing and a curse.
For example, it is sometimes faster to write our own parsing routines than to import pre-written code packages in advance. This is often because we want to check to make sure there are no errors in the code package before we start the program. But our instincts are actually quite out of place. We should have entered the open source package and verified it. If the result is a bug in the code package, try to fix the problem until it is perfected. Reusable code trumps reinvention.
Most of the time, “tried and true” experience is the enemy of innovation. The only way to make progress is to “be skeptical of what you already know.” Only when you’ve tried something new and tested it will you know if it works, and then you can decide what to do.
Usually, this method will take a lot of time and you’ll probably end up falling back on your old habits. But along the way, you add new ideas to the toolkit on your own and discover which technologies are valuable and worth keeping. Making these choices is the most important, and intuition plays a crucial role. Fortunately, you have decades of experience and a better intuition than most. Just don’t let prejudice clog your source of inspiration.
3. The body is the capital of revolution
That year, you are in their early 20 s, the music in the headphones all cut off from the outside world, you only send the glimmer of a computer screen, you now all over the world, are those code messy to coke cans, left a piece of pizza box, three to four in the morning, some hungry you ate the last piece of pizza, liver, then what is sleep? Who cares…
Time flies, you have been old, can not toss about their own. Your weight, your muscles, your eyesight… Don’t ignore the doctor. Lose weight, exercise, and go to bed earlier! Exercise and a regular lifestyle will keep you energized. You may have more challenges than young people, but you can only meet them if you take care of yourself and have enough energy.
conclusion
The best thing about programming is that it’s all about your passion and your ability to learn, as evidenced by the careers of thousands of brilliant old programmers. If you don’t have these qualities, then development is a bad career for you at any age. But as long as you have passion and ability, age doesn’t matter, even if you’re in your 40s, 50s, or even 60.
More IT job search tips: click here to read
- Onsite: 12 Tips to get you started!
- 25 questions to Ask your interviewer!
- 10 Tips for Getting your face Off!
- North American IT company Fulltime salary disclosure
- IT resume big hoso | “how to write technical resume” essence summary of the lecture
- What about the questions you have done in the interview?
- Frozen period the uncensored | Google, FB, Amazon, Linkedin freezing period
- How to learn about an IT company before an interview? Try the official tech blog!
- Google | large companies how to upgrade have promotion mechanism, promotion?
Welcome to follow my wechat official account: Ninechapter.
Elite programmer exchange community, regular release of interview questions, interview skills, job information, etc
