I seem to have accelerated my own aging in the sense that my technical prowess and cynicism have grown rapidly in the past 7 years. At 23, I'd never written a professional program in my life. Now, almost 30, I'm probably a 1.8-level engineer. So that's 0.9-1.1 points in 7 years, covering 6 jobs including a failed startup and explosive software failures (none my fault) seen up front and from afar.
My observation is that, as you get older, the jobs available to you get better but they also get rarer. That's partly because you filter out the bad jobs. When someone makes you sign a full-on non-compete to take a coding test-- not just an NDA covering the material in the test, but the works-- you just don't return the email. Anyway, what it means is that when you do get a job, you're more likely to find quality, but you can no longer count on a new job in 2 weeks if your existing one ends, especially because after 35+ you are going to be sized up for some kind of leadership potential, making fit demands very high.
"My observation is that, as you get older, the jobs available to you get better but they also get rarer."
Very true. I think this also comes from specialization. You get better at solving interesting and difficult problems, but more in your niche. The jobs are less about, "They are smart, we can pay something decent while they learn" and more "This is the only person for the job." It's also why fit becomes more important later in one's career.
Annoyingly, the reverse is also true: jobs for generalists are also rare because people tend to assume you don't know what you're doing unless e.g. you've spent 5 years lubing up the tailpipe of the JVM 24/7.
Especially since 95% of the work that needs doing doesn't actually need all that esoteric crap that people love to ask about in interviews but a good solid sensible hand on the tiller of some straightforward code.
My company has had this contractor who is now 40 and it is impressive to see how productive he is. Moreover, as he has developed a great part of the infrastructure he has managed to make himself extremely valuable and hard to replace.
This is quite a feat in my company and in the industry in general as a lot of firms do not want to keep contractors for more than 2 years. He's been at my firm for about 10 years now; 10 years of contracting at I am sure £800+ per day! But I know that behind those high numbers there is some hard work and constant self-marketing.
The career yellow belts (1.2-1.3; 4th kyu) only get more set in their belief in their own rightness. They also tend to fall out of date, despite their expertise in the local maximum they've conquered. Also, since they tend to drive out the 1.4+, they aren't surrounded by better people.
There seems to be a bifurcation that happens very early on, based on a person's first few programming jobs as well as access to non-professional programming resources. Either you plateau as a yellow belt (1.2-1.3) or you start climbing, and that climb takes a long time (a 2.0 under age 30 would be very rare). I've worked about 3000 hours per year for seven years and that got me from ~0.8 to 1.8, but that's also with a lot of early exposure to programming (QBasic, Java in school, applied math research).
The shame of it is that some people conflate the career yellow belts (Expert Experts) with the older people who keep getting better each year.
You probably should make a link to that page on ycombinator for discussion. Well... first cut it down a bit so that it is shorter. (we live in the age of tldr :-p). But I think it was a good read.
True. I'm much less willing to be paid partly in startup monopoly money now...
Agreed. Especially when someone else controls the board (pun intended) and your chances of landing on someone else's 4-hotel Park Place are high. (Wait, weren't there only 12 hotels in the game? Why does every property, even fucking Water Works, have 3 or 4 of them?)
Then there's cliffing. Community Chest => "Fired on day 364. No equity. No severance. No-name company. Fucked reputation. Here's a Revolver. Wait, wrong game. That's Clue, which you don't have. Do not collect $200." Employees can get cliffed, but if a founder tried to "cliff" an investor he'd Go To Jail for fraud.
My brother and I created a version of Monopoly called "Mad" Monopoly, where all of the cash (minus about $2000) was divided evenly between the players at the start, all properties could be developed as soon as they were purchased (no need to own the set), and you could build up to 4 hotels on any property (including utilities).
All rents were calculated by extrapolating the original rents, and you could engage in loans at arbitrary interest rates with other players.
I'm amazed how much this crazy game resembles the current world economy, and I'm convinced that the current economical power-brokers have the same attitude to real money as my brother and I had to Monopoly money when we were 10 or 11.
If this happens (and it's really cliffing, meaning 85% or more of a vesting period, not half-way) -- and assuming your options or stock would have significant value -- hire a compensation lawyer. You might get something; without a lawyer on your side you will get zip for sure.
I'm not sure why you're so negative on the whole startup thing - while there are examples of foul play, the vast majority of founders do try to do right by their employees.
> the vast majority of founders do try to do right by their employees.
Absolutely. But, barring the true home-run success stories, the vast majority of founders lose effective control of the financial dealings of the company by the time they sign the Series A.
My observation is that, as you get older, the jobs available to you get better but they also get rarer. That's partly because you filter out the bad jobs. When someone makes you sign a full-on non-compete to take a coding test-- not just an NDA covering the material in the test, but the works-- you just don't return the email. Anyway, what it means is that when you do get a job, you're more likely to find quality, but you can no longer count on a new job in 2 weeks if your existing one ends, especially because after 35+ you are going to be sized up for some kind of leadership potential, making fit demands very high.