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26 Comments

Does coding favor the youth?

I'm always impressed by the age of developers and software engineers these days.

I swear everyone I talk to is <25, or <30, and anyone older seems to be in management, or they are left to their own devices by their employer to handle particularly difficult coding problems.

My question: do young people have an edge on older people when it comes to coding?

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    Look around any tech company. Who's making all the money? Not the coders. It's the leaders, the founders, and the executives who run things. The ownership class.

    By comparison, engineers are mere replaceable laborers renting out their time. Engineers sweat about asking for a $10k raise. Meanwhile, executives negotiate million-dollar bonuses. So it's not surprising to see older people moving more toward management or leadership roles.

    As Naval put it, "You’re not going to get rich renting out your time. You must own equity—a piece of a business—to gain your financial freedom."

    As for learning to code, I think young people have the edge for sure. They have a ton of free time to invest in developing difficult skills that might not pay off for many months or years. They have more time to play, and often, learning to code resembles play.

    I followed this path myself. As a young adult, I spent a ton of time coding, often just for the fun and creativity of it. I honed my skills while racking up college debt and living rent free. But the "further" I've gotten as a startup founder, the more I've recognized the value of owning, leading, and delegating.

    Now I've come full circle. I'm financially independent, and I can spend my days doing what I want. Which means coding for hours every week, because I love it.

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      The founders of MS, Apple, Google, Oracle, Facebook, Tesla and even your company were all coders. Looking at the list of richest people, most of them can code!

      I think Naval can, too.

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        Yes, and they all transitioned to running the company :)

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        Sure, you start out coding. But as an individual contributor, it's unlikely that you'll match the output of 5 senior engineers that work well together. So figuring out ways to help those 5 people become more productive ends up being a higher leverage task than the original high leverage task of telling 100 machines what to do.

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          Yeah, I think it’s possible but much harder to help them if you don’t understand their work at all. Probably not impossible but much, much harder.

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      Bingo!

      I started coding super young. I still code a lot. 34 now, started programming at 12.

      At a certain point you start to realize the value of time as you get older. You learn more about the value of delegation - maybe my time isn't best spent working in the trenches refactoring and updating the toolset. You tend to self select out, so to speak. Time becomes just as valuable as money.

      For some people it's angling for architecture and management, for others it's starting their own thing. Priorities change over time. We all want more, and what "more" means is different depending on your life circumstances.

      I left the corporate world because I wanted to code more, and to ship code more. The political nonsense got tiring.

      But at the same time I recognize that time is so valuable. If I can communicate effectively with a junior engineer, we can effectively get more done with less time and money.

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      This is pretty subjective. Coders at big tech companies are making juicy six figure salaries with stock options lining their pockets with several thousand or more every couple months. I've been in Senior+ roles for the last ~8 years. Most developers in my tier and above are in their mid 30s and up. More often than not its developers from this group that are the indisposable work horses. Finding and hiring these developers is difficult and time consuming. True "hackers" are hard to come by.

      I've seen a lot of senior developers transition from the individual contributor path to management in hopes of reaching some sort of leadership position. The reality is the management track seems even more cut throat, with way less opportunity and "openings." I've seen more success when folks transition to smaller companies and hire into leadership roles further up the ladder.

      I'm not sure what the top execs make at the big tech companies I've been at, but I doubt few if any are making millions. If your goal is to make seven figures, starting your own business is probably the best bet.

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      How we could become better Product Managers in Web3? Do you think Product Management is a hard skill and could help one in achieving financial freedom?

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      i got in the same discussion with my older brother and he shared similar view to what you commented. now i feel more convinced that i need to be the boss and not spend 2 years learning and perfecting coding!

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      Engineers sweat about asking for a $10k raise.

      Know what you're worth. Does not matter what's your profession.

      By comparison, engineers are mere replaceable laborers renting out their time.

      I read that the costs for making up the loss of knowledge when an engineer leaves are estimated to average 300K+ To me, as someone employing a handful of engineers, this sounds spot on.

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        Engineers are definitely replaceable, but the cost to do so (as you've described) is not trivial. $300k+ is a lot of money, even to large businesses. And don't forgot the costs of hiring itself, and revenue lost while an engineer is onboarding and working towards 100% utilization. I've seen estimates that place that in the many tens of thousands as well.

        I think folks in leadership are subject to similar standards from what I've witnessed. Theres a few who provide a cohesive vision and direction to the company, and are incredibly valuable. The rest are inconsequential talking heads whose positions seem like a rotating door, swapping in a replacement every few years, more often than not another exec from a similar position in a similar company, just working their way through the circuit.

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      This comment was deleted a year ago.

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          This comment was deleted a year ago.

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    I started coding at 8 and Im 36 now. Stopped for some time, and re started some months ago; and Im loving it -again.

    What I think changed is better described by the japanese term "shoshin". Shoshin means something like "beginner's mind". In traditional martial arts is used a lot to explain that paradox by which when you achieve certain level (black belt, let's say) you "think" you already "know". Which is false. In that context, a black belt is just a way to say: you are finally ready to learn. For realz.

    With coding, I feel now less naive than when I was a kid. I've seen lots (like Gandalf haha) and tend to be more cautious. That could be seen both as a good and a bad thing. I think I know more, which prevents me sometimes to just... Do? Naively.

    In a nutshell: ignorance is a bliss. And re learning to be naive, keeping a beginner's mind is important, but hard :D

    So I think yes: they have an -some- edge.

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    I wrote my first line of code when I was 10 and loved it, long before I thought I could do it for a living. Move forward 4 decades and I still love coding and passed over all the management opportunities that came my way. Why earn more for doing something you don't love doing. 99% of my days are doing something I love so I don't feel like I'm working at all.

    As to your question I think younger coders do have an energy and enthusiasm advantage.

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    I'm going to answer this from a purely technical perspective. Others in the thread wrote about it from an earnings perspective.

    I'm 48 and have been coding since I was 8. That's four decades. When I was younger I had more energy and could work longer hours, pull all-nighters and juggle half a dozen projects at once. However, most of the code I wrote back then was either unneccessary or less effective as what I would write today. I wasted a lot of time learning languages, platforms and frameworks than fell by the wayside.

    My fluid intelligence is slightly less than it was. I probably learn slower and need a big longer to digest new topics. I find it slightly harder to focus intensely on a deep topic that I did when I was in my 20s. However, now I know exactly what to focus on. Back then I would be learning all the wrong things, reading every piece of information that came my way. My efforts were diffuse.

    With age comes experience, but also less energy. I would argue that age/experience wins over youth most of the time. These days I'm careful not to adopt every platform and framework that comes along. My efforts are focused on core skills and solving problems. I can't stay up all night hacking new ideas into the early hours, but I bet I wouldn't have to stay up all night fixing bugs either because I'm probably less likely to introduce them in the first place, or quicker at fixing them during the daytime hours.

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    I didn't write my first line of code until I was 25.

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    i think younger people are more passionated about creating code, because it's really powerful to have such skill but after you grow up and get more experience, you have the path to continue writing code or getting better managing teams that wrote that code for you, I think it's about tastes and with what you are more confortable.

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    Coding favors the motivated.

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    Yes and no. 25-34 is a big demographic for the working class generally speaking in other disciplines and especially for individual contributors at tech companies. (i.e. software engineer / developer / etc).

    The edge that younger people have is usually that of A) ability to learn quickly B) no major responsibilities C) early in career / not knowing worth or time yet.

    That's a major reason why tech companies are notorious for ageism during hiring.

    One major revelation one might have in their mid career is that seniority does not necessarily mean difficult problems will be solved. More experience surely does help, but there's a reason why young, determined individuals are being exploited to solve big tech's biggest problems. They are willing to put more hours on the clock out of pure passion for solving a problem, but realizing that their contributions may not represent how they are ultimately rewarded, but rather "shareholders" / owners of the company are.

    So yes, coding and really any knowledge work favors the youth because they are the ones being exploited.

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    Great question.

    And no. Older people can code just as well. It's just that they try not to.

    Coding gets old doing it all day every day for years. If you have any choice, you'll move on to product management, or move out to become an Indie Hacker, or something else entirely. And older people do have more choice.

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    I think it really depends on what motivates the coder. I love making things and I love writing code and designing systems. I've been working professionally for about 20 years and was writing code as a teen for about 7 years before that. I still love coding.

    My biggest problem now is when I work for someone else, I have opinions about how to design systems, write code, and design product, but I don't necessarily have sway in those decisions. That makes it difficult to get motivated in a corporate environment long term. I also don't see as many people my age still in the biz. Having some financial independence, this makes me more motivated to try out indie hacking full time.

    There are lots of people who get into coding for purely financial reasons or because it's something they're into at the time. It can get old for these people, making them want to drop out of it altogether. Technology is always changing, too, so that makes it harder to keep up.

    For me, I love learning about new tech, and often the fundamentals are the same from tech to tech. I enjoy getting faster and more efficient at designing and writing code, and love designing product, so I can't see myself stopping any time soon.

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    Most senior coders realize that the real value is higher up in the hierarchy.

    Courtland has already covered the main points.

    I'd just add my personal example. For 11 years I was a coder in a large corporation.

    I realized that the work I was doing was easily replicable. My employer could fire me any day and not lose much.

    There was no leverage in the work.

    That's why it made sense to move higher up in the business value chain.

    Which meant eventually I went out on my own.

    Coding is the best job when you're starting out because it teaches you how the technology operates.

    You can appreciate the little nuances of a product later on if you've coded in your younger days.

    But most smart people move on from there. They want to capture more of the value that they are creating.

    I think your observation is more a correlation than causation.

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    I start coding (in machine code and Assembler) at 18 in the late 1970's and was professionally in IT up until my retirement about 3 years ago.

    I did the route of leaving coding into Management and Leadership of an IT Department in Multinationals and also 20 years as a co-owner in a privately held software company which had a successful trade sale in 2007.

    Since retiring about 3 years ago I now have the time (and the money) to pursue my own interests and have returned exclusively to learning multiple coding languages, data science and AI.

    I may eventually build my own app or more likely partner with a younger team as it's more fun producing something together.

    With longevity sometimes comes wisdom and the ability to recognise what are the latest fads and what will emerge out of the "Trough of Disillusionment" and onto the "Plateau of Productivity. "
    (See the "Gartner Curve" for terminology explanations).

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    Many but not all coders hone the skill of "solution architect". Unlike project managers or marketing leaders this leads to entrepreneurship. In enterprise software age is not an issue.

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    I don’t know. Maybe if you control for experience, the young have an advantage. If not, then it’s probably middle aged and older people who do.

    I know I’m a much better coder now than when I was 10 years younger than I currently am.

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    I think @csallen has some very valid points. Another thing is, that we tend to look only at the cool, hipster, shiny-tech companies, which are all in the same bubble. In this bubble it is hard to get old as a coder.

    I have worked with some more "old-school companies", where IT/coding is not the main business. And their software engineers were all above age 40.
    During studies I worked at SAP (yes, the big german business solution company). Many of my colleagues and team members were/are over 40.

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      This comment was deleted 2 years ago.

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