Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
While there are many exceptions, workers over 30 are becoming more and more like dinosaurs as companies are realizing that they don't want experienced, proven, and accomplished workers because they are too expensive. This is happening everywhere and not just at startups. I have seen this going on in the last few years, as I was an IT guy who watched and researched what was going on. Cheap workers are in, old workers (good performers who have established themselves with good salaries) are out because they are just too expensive. So going into STEM is quite debatable as a valid long term career.
A Web UI developer would need to work in HTML, CSS and JavaScript all day and build complex user interactions. It really depends on what kind of product you're working on. If you're working on something like City Data, then yes, it would suck. If you're working on something like NYT, Facebook, or Netflix, it would be really fun as there's a lot of state management and complex interactions to solve for. Beats being a DBA or some sort of backend developer for business functions.
Of course, if you're working in AI, data science or similar areas, being a backend developer is fun.
I feel bad for the people stuck in antiquated languages suck as PHP, .Net and Java. So popular, yet so dated.
You would be the odd man out in most IT departments if you tried to say that UI was more interesting than .Net or Java...
You would be the odd man out in most IT departments if you tried to say that UI was more interesting than .Net or Java...
I hear ya. Most IT departments are full of deadweights that are still stuck in .NET and JAVA world. Especially the ones at larger old fashion companies that still use the term "IT department".
Last edited by Mr.Hospitality; 11-26-2017 at 03:05 PM..
So what? Your experience is not everyone's experience and cannot be applied to anything as a whole.
Of course it isn't everyone's experience. And I did say in my earlier post that there are many exceptions. Please reread that part.
But the fact remains that many organizations don't want developers who are past 30 and it seems that more and more companies are jumping on this bandwagon. Thus, people should be careful in selecting a STEM career.
Perhaps the pendulum will swing the other way someday. It is impossible to predict the long term implications.
Wow. Based on what I've read in this thread, why would anyone ever be foolish enough to consider a STEM career knowing they'll be a dinosaur by the age of 30? It's no wonder India and China are kicking our collective a$$es in STEM. They're nowhere nearly as backwards thinking as we are.
Science, technology, engineering, and mathematics cover a lot more ground than 14-hour-a-day computer programming jobs.
While it may be true that the greatest scientific discoveries tend to come from younger people (say under 40), that is not an absolute. (For example, Smalley and Curl who discovered buckyballs and launched the field of nanotechnology were both around 60 years old.)
As for the vast rest of us, who are medium grade engineers, scientists, and technologists, or mathematicians working in some of the fields where mathematicians work besides pure mathematics, experience provides increased efficiency and a knowledge of what is out there in the world to draw from. The idea that mechanical engineers developing new casting technologies that allow reduced cost for gas tight castings, or scientists developing new analysis methods to use with mass spectrometry, or civil engineers working on drainage systems to prevent flooding in large cities, or solid-state physicists working on the next smaller iteration of semiconductor geometries, or statisticians who develop ways to qualify new drugs by getting more useful and more predictive results from smaller more efficient data sets, are "dinosaurs by 30" is simply not true, and most companies who hire these people (REAL engineers, mathematicians, scientists, and technologists), know it.
You are only considered over the hill by 30 at millennial hipster owned startups. At those types of companies, the management values "culture fit" more than knowledge. They are 28 and want a frat culture at their office.
This isn't the case at the majority of IT departments though. I work with a guy who is over 50 who spent a decade at IBM in the 80s and a decade with Microsoft in the 90s. He is a seriously good programmer with more years of experience in this field than I've been alive.
Your assessment that going into STEM is foolish because you will be a dinosaur by 30 is not really correct.
Remember that the startup scam is not about creating a company that will sell a product or service for a long time, keeping people employed and adding value to society. It is about creating a company that can be sold for a huge pot of money before the venture capital money runs out, thus making a few who were in on it at the beginning wealthy, and making most of the rest unemployed after the new owners go through the place. And most don't even get to the point of selling for a big pot of money; so the few that started at the beginning end up unemployed too when the money runs out.
ALSO NOTE THAT IN SOME CIRCLES, SOFTWARE DEVELOPERS ARE NOT CONSIDERED "I.T.". IT are the people who set up computers, run network cables, maintain backups, corporate Outlook email servers, etc. In more lax senses, if you touch a computer mouse and keyboard... you're considered IT
Quote:
Originally Posted by tnff
FYI, most of Federal IT is actually contracted out. There are a lot of Fed IT employees, but percentage wise, most are contractors.
Not necessarily a bad thing... as a contractor, you get paid more, vs. fed. employee.
.
Fed. employee gets more benefits over the long haul (say, 10+ years), but you're stuck being a "probie" for 3 years. 1 year if you served in the military
.
While getting laid off for a fed employee means they automatically reassign you somewhere (at least that's what I heard), as a contractor, your prospects of getting a new job will be up to your skills and connections. However, some companies will want to reassign you, so you're covered anyways.
.
If the work you do is in any way essential, then it'll likely to be funded
.
If it requires a security clearance, or at least US citizenship, then they won't farm this kind of work to cheap Chinese or Indian labor.
Granted it's not for everyone. But that's just one unambitious person's gripe about not knowing in advance what this career meant. And I'm sure she'd have the same complaints in any full time job.
...
And NO, I didn't accept ANYONE who didn't like to work and was "bored", lazy or intellectually disinterested to be on that product team.
But the bored, intellectually disinterested people are necessary. Someone's gotta do the boring work. Support. Grunt coding. The superstars are not gonna stick around to hammer out tons of repetitive code.
I feel there's a few types of people that are doing the boring work: 1) Those that want to put in their hours and go home 2) consultants 3) and those who can't move up to make design and development decisions. The author is clearly not 1) or 2)...
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
There Are No Absolutes
