Comment Ageism and Programming... (Score 1) 861
Whether it matters or not, there are going to be the idiots in the business world who keep making uneducated assumptions or heavily economically influenced decisions(derived from more business type people ) that will affect the technology world until the end of time or until we start making technology oriented business positions require that the applicant have some degree or experience in the technology field they wish to manage or sell. With this being said, I think whoever says younger people code better/faster than older people might have been misunderstood to some degree, but in the end probably has no idea what effect his/her decision regarding the previous assumption is going to have upon the future of technology for their company. Innovation definitely comes from new perspectives, but there is a key to sociological structures that keeps a corporate structure healthy. If one pulls in nothing more than a bunch of college kids to do work for them they are banking on the fact that the Universities have taught these kids information that is cutting edge enough to compete with the other corporations of a similar technology field. In my personal experience, not that I am an expert by any means, I have found that the typical college runs about 7.5 to 15 years behind the curve when it comes to teaching technology theory. This is part of the reason why so many trade schools exist to bring people up to speed with modern day technology. Of course, we all do realize that we have the MITs that churn out the genius minds, but those folks aren't going to be cheap either and are going to be hell to manage. For this discussion we can assume we are talking about the typical college graduate.
It has been my experience that the older folks might take a little longer and could be a little more expensive for the corporate structure, however the older generation has experience with the company and the vision of the company, has learned what works and what does not work, and has been knee deep in trying to keep up with the cutting edge technology their company is in competition with. This means that any corporation, or human resource/ management figure, who believes that they can reduce costs and increase productivity by cutting the senior engineers and replacing them with two green bows has a long term nightmare they haven't begun to fathom.
First, if said corporation/individual chose to take this path, they would quickly realize that all of the "new" folk they hired have no clue how their current software/technology works or what works best with their current corporate vision. Thus, you are going to have to keep "some" seniors around and hope you chose the right ones.
Second, later on down the road, they would quickly come to realize that the younger folks they hired, while they do have visions of grandeur and the energy level of a humming bird on liquid caffeine, don't have the experience required to know what does work and what does not work with the current day technology demands and limitations. While the older folks, who no longer work for them, had this knowledge readily available and being applied on a regular basis (thus the value behind keeping software engineers as long as possible).
Finally, the management would soon see that they not only were producing twice as much software but that their software bugs just doubled and their development time just tripled because they now have to spend extra time developing or fixing "new ideas" or "fresh concepts" without the guidance from their senior software staff. On top of this, they now have a group of younger generation people burning themselves into the ground to get these new systems working (which by the way I have seen some ideas from younger folks that are brilliant in concept but horrible in application). You also end up with lots of personal problems in regards to the younger generation because, after all, they are JUST out of college (or close to it), spent their entire time behind a computer, and now they have the freedom of a job and a life... can we feel the party animal crawling out from the bowels of the younger generation yet?
I think that any corporation who thinks less of the employees (especially software engineers) that have been with them for longer periods of time are in for a terrible wake up call and I do hope to find out what companies start this practice because I personally, and any person I am in contact with, will make sure not to invest in that company, or continue to have an investment in that company, knowing they are in for a very bumpy economical and productive ride in the next 5 to 10 years. While the short term appearance will be twice as much at half the cost, the long term result will be triple the cost with double the headaches. By this time, said company is already lining up their now old software engineers (who were the young) for execution while they bring in a new group to make things even worse.
The idea might sound good to some typical business oriented mind who has no clue about the development cycle, but to those veterans...we know much better and realize that the older you get the wiser you become to the ways of development for product "X".
-N03L
It has been my experience that the older folks might take a little longer and could be a little more expensive for the corporate structure, however the older generation has experience with the company and the vision of the company, has learned what works and what does not work, and has been knee deep in trying to keep up with the cutting edge technology their company is in competition with. This means that any corporation, or human resource/ management figure, who believes that they can reduce costs and increase productivity by cutting the senior engineers and replacing them with two green bows has a long term nightmare they haven't begun to fathom.
First, if said corporation/individual chose to take this path, they would quickly realize that all of the "new" folk they hired have no clue how their current software/technology works or what works best with their current corporate vision. Thus, you are going to have to keep "some" seniors around and hope you chose the right ones.
Second, later on down the road, they would quickly come to realize that the younger folks they hired, while they do have visions of grandeur and the energy level of a humming bird on liquid caffeine, don't have the experience required to know what does work and what does not work with the current day technology demands and limitations. While the older folks, who no longer work for them, had this knowledge readily available and being applied on a regular basis (thus the value behind keeping software engineers as long as possible).
Finally, the management would soon see that they not only were producing twice as much software but that their software bugs just doubled and their development time just tripled because they now have to spend extra time developing or fixing "new ideas" or "fresh concepts" without the guidance from their senior software staff. On top of this, they now have a group of younger generation people burning themselves into the ground to get these new systems working (which by the way I have seen some ideas from younger folks that are brilliant in concept but horrible in application). You also end up with lots of personal problems in regards to the younger generation because, after all, they are JUST out of college (or close to it), spent their entire time behind a computer, and now they have the freedom of a job and a life... can we feel the party animal crawling out from the bowels of the younger generation yet?
I think that any corporation who thinks less of the employees (especially software engineers) that have been with them for longer periods of time are in for a terrible wake up call and I do hope to find out what companies start this practice because I personally, and any person I am in contact with, will make sure not to invest in that company, or continue to have an investment in that company, knowing they are in for a very bumpy economical and productive ride in the next 5 to 10 years. While the short term appearance will be twice as much at half the cost, the long term result will be triple the cost with double the headaches. By this time, said company is already lining up their now old software engineers (who were the young) for execution while they bring in a new group to make things even worse.
The idea might sound good to some typical business oriented mind who has no clue about the development cycle, but to those veterans...we know much better and realize that the older you get the wiser you become to the ways of development for product "X".
-N03L
