A place to cache linked articles (think custom and personal wayback machine)
Du kannst nicht mehr als 25 Themen auswählen Themen müssen mit entweder einem Buchstaben oder einer Ziffer beginnen. Sie können Bindestriche („-“) enthalten und bis zu 35 Zeichen lang sein.

vor 4 Jahren
123456789101112131415161718192021222324252627282930313233343536373839404142434445464748495051525354555657585960616263646566676869707172737475767778798081828384858687888990919293949596
  1. title: Old Geek
  2. url: https://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/201x/2016/09/14/Old-Geek
  3. hash_url: e3f5dfb37e7a8852e79d5484cc319df0
  4. <p itemprop='description'>I&#x2019;m one. We&#x2019;re not ex&#xad;act&#xad;ly com&#xad;mon on the ground; my pro&#xad;fes&#xad;sion, ap&#xad;par&#xad;ent&#xad;ly
  5. not con&#xad;tent with hav&#xad;ing ex&#xad;clud&#xad;ed a whole gen&#xad;der, is most&#xad;ly do&#xad;ing with&#xad;out the
  6. ser&#xad;vices of a cou&#xad;ple of gen&#xad;er&#xad;a&#xad;tions.</p>
  7. <p>This was pro&#xad;voked by a post from <a href='https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Gosling'>James Gosling</a>, which
  8. I&#x2019;ll re&#xad;pro&#xad;duce be&#xad;cause it was on Face&#xad;book and I don&#x2019;t care to learn how to
  9. link in&#xad;to there:</p>
  10. <blockquote><p>Al&#xad;most ev&#xad;ery old friend of mine is screwed. In the time be&#xad;tween
  11. Sun and LRI I&#x2019;d get lines like &#x201c;We nor&#xad;mal&#xad;ly don&#x2019;t hire peo&#xad;ple your age, but in
  12. your case we might make an exception&#x201d;. In my brief stint at Google I had
  13. sev&#xad;er&#xad;al guys in their 30s talk about cos&#xad;met&#xad;ic surgery. It&#x27;s all trag&#xad;i&#xad;cal&#xad;ly
  14. crazy.</p>
  15. </blockquote>
  16. <p>He&#x2019;d linked to <a href='http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-09-08/silicon-valley-s-job-hungry-say-we-re-not-to-old-for-this'>It&#x2019;s Tough Be&#xad;ing Over 40 in Sil&#xad;i&#xad;con Val&#xad;ley</a>,
  17. by Carol Hy&#xad;mowitz and Robert Bur&#xad;son on Bloomberg. It&#x2019;s sad&#xad;den&#xad;ing, es&#xad;pe&#xad;cial&#xad;ly
  18. the part about try&#xad;ing to look younger.</p>
  19. <p>I&#x2019;ve seen it at home, too; my wife <a href='http://laurenwood.org/'>Lau&#xad;ren</a> is among the most awe&#xad;some project
  20. man&#xad;agers I&#x2019;ve known, is pro&#xad;fi&#xad;cient with sev&#xad;er&#xad;al soft&#xad;ware tech&#xad;nolo&#xad;gies, and is
  21. pol&#xad;ished and pro&#xad;fes&#xad;sion&#xad;al. While she
  22. has an OK con&#xad;sult&#xad;ing biz, she oc&#xad;ca&#xad;sion&#xad;al&#xad;ly sees a full-time job that looks
  23. in&#xad;ter&#xad;est&#xad;ing. But these days usu&#xad;al&#xad;ly doesn&#x2019;t both&#xad;er reach&#xad;ing out; 40-plus wom&#xad;en
  24. are ba&#xad;si&#xad;cal&#xad;ly not em&#xad;ploy&#xad;able in the tech&#xad;nol&#xad;o&#xad;gy sec&#xad;tor.</p>
  25. <p id='p-2' class='p1'><span class='h2'>On the oth&#xad;er hand</span> &#xb7;
  26. To be fair, not ev&#xad;ery&#xad;one wants to go on pro&#xad;gram&#xad;ming in&#xad;to their life&#x2019;s
  27. sec&#xad;ond half. To start with, man&#xad;agers and mar&#xad;keters make more mon&#xad;ey. Al&#xad;so,
  28. lots of places make de&#xad;vel&#xad;op&#xad;ers sit in rows in poorly-lit poorly-ventilated
  29. spaces, with not an atom of peace or pri&#xad;va&#xad;cy. And then, who, male or fe&#xad;male,
  30. wants to work where there are hard&#xad;ly any wom&#xad;en?</p>
  31. <p>And even if you do want to stay tech&#xad;ni&#xad;cal, and even if you&#x2019;re a su&#xad;perb
  32. coder, chances are that af&#xad;ter two or three decades of se&#xad;nior&#xad;i&#xad;ty you&#x2019;re go&#xad;ing
  33. to make a big&#xad;ger con&#xad;tri&#xad;bu&#xad;tion help&#xad;ing oth&#xad;er peo&#xad;ple out, re&#xad;view&#xad;ing de&#xad;sign&#xad;s,
  34. run&#xad;ning task forces, ad&#xad;vis&#xad;ing ex&#xad;ec&#xad;u&#xad;tives, and so on.</p>
  35. <p>Fi&#xad;nal&#xad;ly, there&#x2019;s a bad thing that can hap&#xad;pen: If you help build some&#xad;thing
  36. im&#xad;por&#xad;tant and im&#xad;pact&#xad;ful, call it X, it&#x2019;s easy to slip in&#xad;to year af&#xad;ter year of
  37. be&#xad;ing the world&#x2019;s great&#xad;est ex&#xad;pert on X, and when X isn&#x2019;t im&#xad;por&#xad;tant and
  38. im&#xad;pact&#xad;ful any more, you&#x2019;re in a bad place.</p>
  39. <p>But hav&#xad;ing said all that, Bay Area tech cul&#xad;ture to&#xad;tal&#xad;ly has a
  40. blind spot, just an&#xad;oth&#xad;er part of their great di&#xad;ver&#xad;si&#xad;ty suck&#xad;age. It&#x2019;s hurt&#xad;ing
  41. them as much as all the de&#xad;mo&#xad;graph&#xad;ics they ex&#xad;clude, but ap&#xad;par&#xad;ent&#xad;ly not enough
  42. to mo&#xad;ti&#xad;vate se&#xad;ri&#xad;ous ac&#xad;tion.</p>
  43. <p id='p-1' class='p1'><span class='h2'>Can old folks code?</span> &#xb7;
  44. I don&#x2019;t know about the rest of the world, but they can at Ama&#xad;zon
  45. and Google. There are all these lit&#xad;tle com&#xad;mu&#xad;ni&#xad;ties at Google: Gay&#xad;gler&#xad;s,
  46. Jew&#xad;gler&#xad;s, and my fa&#xad;vorite, the Grey&#xad;gler&#xad;s; that&#x2019;s the on&#xad;ly T-shirt I took with
  47. me and still wear. The Grey&#xad;glers are led by Vint Cer&#xad;f, who holds
  48. wine-and-cheese events (<em>good</em> wine, <em>good</em> cheese) when he
  49. vis&#xad;its Moun&#xad;tain View from his reg&#xad;u&#xad;lar DC digs.
  50. I&#x2019;m not claim&#xad;ing it&#x2019;s a big pop&#xad;u&#xad;la&#xad;tion, but in&#xad;cludes peo&#xad;ple who are do&#xad;ing
  51. se&#xad;ri&#xad;ous shit with core tech&#xad;nol&#xad;o&#xad;gy that you use ev&#xad;ery day.</p>
  52. <p>There&#x2019;s no equiv&#xad;a&#xad;lent at Ama&#xad;zon, but there is the com&#xad;mu&#xad;ni&#xad;ty of Prin&#xad;ci&#xad;pal
  53. Engi&#xad;neers (I&#x2019;m one), a tiny tribe in Amazon&#x2019;s huge en&#xad;gi&#xad;neer&#xad;ing army. There
  54. are a few fresh-faced youth&#xad;ful PEs, but on av&#xad;er&#xad;age we tend to griz&#xad;zle and sag
  55. more than just a bit. And if you&#x2019;re a group try&#xad;ing to do some&#xad;thing se&#xad;ri&#xad;ous,
  56. it&#x2019;s ex&#xad;pect&#xad;ed you&#x2019;ll have a PE ad&#xad;vis&#xad;ing or men&#xad;tor&#xad;ing or even bet&#xad;ter,
  57. cod&#xad;ing.</p>
  58. <p>Like I do. Right now there&#x2019;s code I wrote match&#xad;ing and rout&#xad;ing mil&#xad;lions
  59. and mil&#xad;lions of <a href='http://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonCloudWatch/latest/events/WhatIsCloudWatchEvents.html'>Events</a>
  60. ev&#xad;ery day, which makes me hap&#xad;py.</p>
  61. <p>Not that <em>that</em> much of my time goes in&#xad;to it<span class="dashes"> &#x2009;&#x2014;</span> &#x2009;in
  62. fac&#xad;t, I helped Events more with plan&#xad;ning and pol&#xad;i&#xad;tick&#xad;ing than cod&#xad;ing.
  63. But a few weeks ago I
  64. got an idea for an&#xad;oth&#xad;er project I&#x2019;d been help&#xad;ing out with, a rel&#xad;a&#xad;tive&#xad;ly
  65. cheap, fast way to do some&#xad;thing that isn&#x2019;t in the &#x201c;Minimum Vi&#xad;able Product&#x201d;
  66. that al&#xad;ways ship&#xad;s, but would be super-useful. I de&#xad;cid&#xad;ed it would be eas&#xad;i&#xad;er to
  67. build it
  68. than con&#xad;vince some&#xad;one else, so&#x2026; well, it turned out that I had to in&#xad;vent an
  69. in&#xad;ter&#xad;me&#xad;di&#xad;ate lan&#xad;guage, and a pars&#xad;er for it, and I haven&#x2019;t been blog&#xad;ging and,
  70. er&#xad;m, seem a lit&#xad;tle short on sleep.</p>
  71. <p id='p-3' class='p1'><span class='h2'>Ad&#xad;vice</span> &#xb7;
  72. Are you get&#xad;ting middle-aged-or-later and find you still like code? I think
  73. what&#x2019;s
  74. most helped me hang on is my at&#xad;ten&#xad;tion span, com&#xad;pa&#xad;ra&#xad;ble to a gnat&#x2019;s. I get
  75. bored re&#xad;al&#xad;ly, re&#xad;al&#xad;ly fast and so I&#x2019;m al&#xad;ways wan&#xad;der&#xad;ing away from what I was
  76. just do&#xad;ing and pok&#xad;ing cu&#xad;ri&#xad;ous&#xad;ly at the new shiny.</p>
  77. <p>On top of which I&#x2019;ve been ex&#xad;tra luck&#xad;y. The ev&#xad;i&#xad;dence says my
  78. taste is super-mainstream, what&#xad;ev&#xad;er it is I find shiny is like&#xad;ly to ap&#xad;peal to
  79. mil&#xad;lions of oth&#xad;ers too.</p>
  80. <p>Any&#xad;how, I don&#x2019;t usu&#xad;al&#xad;ly wear a T-shirt, but when I do, it&#x2019;s <a href='http://www.tyrrellmuseumshop.com/shop/adult/t-rex-skeleton-tshirt/'>this
  81. one</a>.</p>