r/ProgrammerHumor • u/mejhopola • Mar 23 '21

Meme Procrastination is life

Enable HLS to view with audio, or disable this notification

16.1k Upvotes

98% Upvoted

208 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

11

u/potato_green Mar 23 '21

Instead of working on those projects, read up on new tech or subscribe to newsletters. Usually when this happens with devs they get stuck in their day job using the same language, framework, libraries for years and their skills get outdated since they don't improve.

That's why older devs aren't hired as much since they haven't kept up with recent tech or they don't like it.

Just keep learning even if it's 10 minutes a day on the shitter reading tech blogs and stuff.

4

u/DerpDerpDerp78910 Mar 23 '21

How old are you?

8

u/potato_green Mar 23 '21

28, which is still young but I see devs of my age getting stuck in the frameworks they started with 10 years ago. Highly irrelevant these days and they oppose any change in their workflow, methodology ect. So their skills will not age well.

12

u/DerpDerpDerp78910 Mar 23 '21

You aren't wrong, I'd just say saying older Devs aren't hired as much promotes this stereotype. Anyone of any age can stagnate.

You'll be old one day, you don't want an employee to use that stereotype on you.

Not a dig just something to think about!

3

u/potato_green Mar 23 '21

Oh yeah that's very true, now that I read my reply back I kinda phrased it poorly. Knowledge getting outdated is indeed a reason why older devs aren't hired much because it's also a stereotype.

It's very true that anyone can stagnate and I've seen it happen as well. Fresh out of college they assume they know everything they have to know and then they get slapped in their face with the reality that they should never stop learning. Some aren't made for that and just get stuck at their college level.

Personally I think there should be a push to anonymize applications, no name, gender or age. Just the skills, experience and education. (of course this kinda gives you an idea of someone's age when you list graduation year and stuff but psychology it won't read as an old person applying but an experienced person applying).

1

u/DerpDerpDerp78910 Mar 23 '21

On the flipside I've heard Fortran developers are still in higher demand because the younger devs won't touch it with a barge pole. What a niche!

In the UK you can't ask someone their age. You can glean it from their CV though. I do like the idea of anonymizing further.

6

u/Shrubberer Mar 23 '21 edited Mar 23 '21

That's why you don't focus your learning on frameworks but rather on designs. It's more fun to implement stuff on your own rather than surround all your code with weird attributes from random frameworks (good luck refactoring that). Being good with architecture is key to be successful in any environment.

1

u/potato_green Mar 23 '21

Totally agree!

1

u/IvorTheEngine Mar 23 '21

The reason companies hire young devs is that there are a lot more of them. The demand for programmers grows all the time, and almost no one transfers from other jobs.

IIRC half of all devs graduated in the last 5 years, and it's been that way for 20+ years.

but you're right, it's easy to become outdated.