I thought they were 'under-skirt sticks'...

48 here. Been coding since I was 12. Been doing it professionally since I was 18. On my team, I'm one of the younger coders. The folks who work nearest me are 51, 52, 49, and 55... There are young-uns on my team and my managers range from late 30's to early 50's in age. I ran my own company at one point, had up to 12 employees. That's where I learned that management was not my thing. I'm not a people person, I don't enjoy it, and as a result, I sucked at it. The company wasn't doing well so I shut it down and went back to working for others. The stress relief was amazing. Now I waltz in at a time that's convenient for me, and leave when I feel like it or when the work is done, depending on the current deadline. I bill for the hours I work. Annually, I get paid more than any of my managers do and I work fewer hours. They're not eligible for overtime but expectations are higher on them. As an old guy with tons of experience, I don't have to take every task they offer me. I make suggestions for things that need to be rewritten and get support for doing it. I have a fairly steady stream of solicitation from other sources so I grant myself some leeway. My current customer has had me for almost 10 years so I'm fairly certain they like what I do. Don't get me wrong, I do work hard and there are things I do that no one else on the team can do (though it'd be easy to hire someone else if they wanted).

I stay current by contributing to one or two open source projects here and there. I also hack on my own personal projects learning new skills in the process. My mind isn't what it used to be. I don't find myself 'in the zone' as often and I find that I have to force the code out of me more often. I keep wondering when someone in management is going to realize that I'm just not as smart as they think I am, but then I seem to consistently pull off something amazing and everyone's happy.

There are younger folks on my team who do some amazing things that I can't do and there are younger folks on my team who are largely useless...

I like this place in my life. I realize I'm one catastrophic medical event away from unemployment and have been saving accordingly. If necessary, I could stop working any time, simplify, and live on a fairly meager but manageable income. If I can hold it together for 7 or 8 more years, I can retire in relative comfort.

oh crap.

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HTML is trivial to learn. I use "<pre>" and "</pre>" for everything. I used "<img>" once... I also used "<blink>" once too but that was a stretch goal

HTML is trivial to learn. I use "" and "" for everything. I used "" once... I also used "" once too but that was a stretch goal.

Ding! Ding! Ding! We have a winner!

mod parent up.

no you idiots. I'm complaining about a flashlight app wanting access to my text messages.

Around here (Canada) there's a long-running scam perporting to be a local airline (WestJet)... I get a few of these calls a week on either my cellphone or the landline at work... They always spoof the caller ID with the first 6 digits of the phone number they're calling. ie: if they're calling 780-656-1234, the spoofed caller-id will be "780-656-xxxx" where "x" is random. If they're calling "250-684-1234", the spoofed caller-id will be "250-684-xxxx"... The automated recording is the same in all cases. So it _looks_ like a local call and it's tempting to answer it...

yup. lots of texting apps. Just like lots of flashlight apps. All of the ones in the first 10 pages of results want access to your address book, text messages, wireless settings, blah blah blah ...

I have both a Nexus5 and an Iphone 4S... It's not all peaches and cream over here in Android-land and it's not all fuzzy slippers and hot chocolate in iOS land either...

I have only a single data point so it's probably not worth anything... My only experience with a Black IT professional was a network admin for the company who took over my employer. I was the previous defacto network admin even though my job description was 'embedded firmware developer'. So this company takes us over and hires this guy as the network admin. I meet him in a conference call and his first task is to come up and migrate our servers over to their corporate platform. So I volunteer to give up my weekend to facilitate since he doesn't know our existing infrastructure... He shows up and I give him the nickle tour, show him to a meeting room where he can unpack boxes and start bolting things together. I go back to my cubicle and work on some bugs telling him "if you need anything, just come get me." ... So everything's cool. He gets things connected, and starts migrating data... Around dinner time I check in with him and suggest we go across the street for a bite and a pint while data copies across the network. We have a lovely dinner and chat about families, school, weather, previous work places, etc.. All the usual stuff when you go out for dinner with a co-worker... Then we go back to the office, stop in the machineroom and it's back to business... So that was basically the whole weekend... I made sure he had what he needed from our old servers and instead of sitting around like a lump, I try to get some work done while he configures his new servers...

Monday afternoon, I get a call from my ex-CEO who says there's been a complaint made against me and I need to fly down to meet with HR. In short, the complaint was that I treated him like a subordinate because he's black and that I should remember he doesn't work for me and that I'm not his boss. Prior to that meeting, it hadn't really registered that he was black. I mean sure, I could tell his skin color was different but so is the skin color of 75% of the people I worked with back then. None of my other co-workers were black though. They were either of asian descent, italian, or middle eastern... To me, they're just my co-workers... So I get this mark on my employee record and everything kind of blows over. My future dealings with this IT guy were subsequently 100% about work and that was that. I stayed away from him as much as possible except when unavoidable. A year later, I left the company but reports from my ex-co-workers were that this guy had complained about at least 2 other people in the company and they had eventually let this guy go... Of course you never find out why someone is let go but they hired someone to replace him in exactly the same position almost immediately so the subtext is "this guy has too much 'victim mentality'."

On LinkedIn, this guy doesn't seem to hold on to any jobs for more than 1-2 years and he never seems to 'move up'.

you think Google won't allow MythBusters to use it? You gotta think most Googliers watch MB religiously.

I also have a kid in 8th grade. They seem to teach things differently. I remember we did an entire 1/3rd or 1/4 of a year on each major concept and then that was it. So we did a few months of algebra, a few months of trigonometry, a few months of fractions, etc... What my son has been doing has been a few days to a few weeks on each major thing, but more comprehensively each year. So as his mental faculties improve, so does his ability to understand more of each core topic. He's been doing algebra since 5th grade, a few weeks every year, but each year it gets more in-depth...

It makes more sense. Thankfully I can still help him with it.

His whole life, unbeknownst to him, I've been teaching him basic math concepts... 'This 1/2" socket is too small, get me the next size up' instead of asking for a '9/16"'.. He'd trundle off and spend a few minutes figuring out what the next size up is... When he got older, I was able to say 'this 9/16" is too small. Get me a 10/16"' and he'd spend a few minutes, then come back carrying a 5/8" and a bit of a smirk on his face ...

I think Parents are partly responsible for their childs' education. So many parents leave it up to the school and stay out of it.

Clearly you should offer to sell him your excess sand that mysteriously builds up every year, at 3/4 the price...

no mod points but thanks for that...

I can plug a 128GB USB stick on the bottom of my nexus5 if I really want to get more space; but I haven't even used the 16GB it already has... I realize some people want to be able to load their entire music and movie collections onto their phones just in case they're on the bus and they get struck by the sudden urge to watch S03E01 of Gilligan's Island ...

It's a fucking phone ...

What if they made all the water-facing parts out of copper?