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0 pointstptacek15y ago0 comments

If they are making 60k a year, you can make several thousand dollars right now by getting them a rather large pay raise. Otherwise, re-re-read Patrick.

I seem to have been bitten by the radioactive spider that allows me to reliably post the highest-ranking "who's hiring" comment here, and your perspective on the availability of domain expert programmers doesn't square with my reality.

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cageface15y ago

I know several 20-somethings making well over 100k/year coding and managing teams of much older engineers. For the most part they got the domain expertise that implies doing real research in top undergraduate CS departments, but they do exist.

Of course, the smartest thing you can do as a senior programmer is build domain expertise and get out of the more commodified areas, like web app dev. If that's what you & Patrick are suggesting I agree, but you underestimate your juniors at your peril.

tptacekOP15y ago

You're doing a really good job of evading the point here.

If your friends are making $100k/yr, they are squarely in the same hiring demo that 40 year old senior devs are.

The whole thesis behind the article you are commenting on is that companies are hiring young because young devs are cheap. You made a comment to the effect of, "watch out, young cheap people can be domain experts too". I think you're mostly wrong, but I'd love it if you were right, and I'm very much putting my money where my mouth is.

I know that there are anomalously capable 25 year olds out there. I'd love to talk to them, too. But the idea that all of Silicon Valley is built around those people rings false. It may very well be built around 25 year olds, but not the weird ones that run High Frequency Trading Engine teams.

cageface15y ago

A lot of senior devs are making that kind of money not because they are domain experts but because they have been in the same spot collecting raises for a long time. Those are the kinds of people my warning was intended for and I think a lot of these people wildly underestimate how hard it would be for a bright young somebody to walk in and do their job.

I'm not denying that older, experienced programmers with strong domain skills are in demand, of course. I'm just saying that beneath that level the competition is heating up.

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cageface15y ago

tptacekOP15y ago

You're doing a really good job of evading the point here.

If your friends are making $100k/yr, they are squarely in the same hiring demo that 40 year old senior devs are.

cageface15y ago

I'm not denying that older, experienced programmers with strong domain skills are in demand, of course. I'm just saying that beneath that level the competition is heating up.

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