Programmers: Before you turn 40, get a plan B

Re:Programmers: Before you turn 40, get a plan B by tptacek on Tuesday June 09, 2009 @11:34PM (#650519)

None of what I wrote above exempts you from keeping up with the superficial trends of the industry. If things shift from J2EE to Python on the DLR with .NET libraries, you still need to keep up with that stuff. So yeah, if you're stuck with recruiters (and, don't be), be keyword compliant.

But the big scary force in this article is, "over 10 years, your C++ experience makes you progressively more expensive and less attractive to a Ruby shop". That's true, if all your 10 years were about was C++. C++ is a distinctly dumb thing to build a career around.

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Re:Programmers: Before you turn 40, get a plan B by timr on Wednesday June 10, 2009 @12:28AM (#650573)

"C++ is a distinctly dumb thing to build a career around."

For that matter, so is Ruby, Rails, Python, and everything else that's popular today.

In ten years, everyone will be using Blub, and badmouthing those dumb ol' guys who were slogging around in Ruby. It's the one thing in life I can guarantee.

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Re:Programmers: Before you turn 40, get a plan B by tptacek on Wednesday June 10, 2009 @12:51AM (#650593)

I agree completely, in case it sounded like I was just ragging on C++. When I do that, I accompany it with all the many reasons why C++ deserves the treatment. =)

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Re:Programmers: Before you turn 40, get a plan B by stcredzero on Tuesday June 09, 2009 @11:50PM (#650537)

So yeah, if you're stuck with recruiters (and, don't be), be keyword compliant.

Most recruiters and big company HR departments are among the biggest destroyers of meaningful language there are. "Keyword compliance" is just another of the forces trying to dumb us down and turn us into automaton neurons in a big brain, exchanging and processing signals we don't have any inkling of.

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Re:Programmers: Before you turn 40, get a plan B by Retric on Wednesday June 10, 2009 @12:05AM (#650549)

I got my first programming job in 2002, because I knew Pascal, If you where a consulting firm with 10k employees then you need to keep up with industry trends, but we are not. You can try and keep up with all the latest trends, but it pays better to focus on about 3 areas and know a lot about them.

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Re:Programmers: Before you turn 40, get a plan B by brown9-2 on Tuesday June 09, 2009 @11:38PM (#650523)

Sounds to me like you and the recruiter have totally different target audiences.

Just my two cents, but I think you might be doing yourself a disservice by dumbing your resume down to their level... Unless the type of job you're looking for is just a cookie-cutter "latest pet framework" position.

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