>> The average career length of a programmer is 8 years in the US (2003 survey) >> and >> the main reason invoked by those that left is their perceived lack of >> productivity. > >TL;DR: Opinions about unproductive older programmers is ahead of the science.
I've been programming every day for 42 years, in over 60 languages, four of which I helped author. When interviewing for jobs I find that I have experience in all of the technologies (e.g. I've been using Java since it was called "Oak", written a game for Andriod, and I'm writing a book on Clojure). However I find that I get interviewed by 20-somethings who have never done a job intervew and haven't even bothered to read my resume. Inevitably I get rejected because I'm "overqualified", which is l33t speak for "old". Would you reject a builder, pilot, or lawyer for being "overqualified"? If you don't believe me, next time you watch a talk, say at Google, you'll find that when they pan the camera around the room there are no grey-haired people in the audience. As for being "unproductive", I have averaged 4+ files changed per day over the last 12 years in my open source project. There is a myth that programming is a young person's game. I must say that I have noticed one real decline over the years. I have much less patience for programmers who never heard of Knuth. That's like a physicist who never heard of Newton. Tim Daly Curmudgeon at large -- -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Clojure" group. To post to this group, send email to clojure@googlegroups.com Note that posts from new members are moderated - please be patient with your first post. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to clojure+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/clojure?hl=en --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Clojure" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to clojure+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
