As a senior dev with a house and a good salary im a bit afraid these young devs.

They are hungry, they are intelligent, they work hard, they want my comfort and my job!

I feel like im running naked through a forrest with a ham between my cheeks, chased by a pack of hungry wolves!

And im only 37...

Do you feel the same?

I dont think its wrong though. This is how it should be!

They are hungry - maybe

they are intelligent - not so sure

they work hard - how many skated through school?

they want my comfort and my job! - a lot of them want to stay home and game

Prediction: we will have a glut of low effort script kiddies and lack of senior capable devs in the next 5 to 10 years.

Only a few devs I know are actually "good" at what they do.

"Good" as being responsible and working independently / autonomous (in sense of being a team player, but not start slacking off because no one gave him / her a task explicitly... )

Most of the time my job is to whip devs either in shape or start throwing rocks at their heads to make them think about consequences.

I think that's the best job description I ever made by the way. XD

All that aside, in my opinion the trend to fire people above a certain age will backfire for sure.

* Firing is okay, if said person lacks any interest in learning new stuff and just wants to maintain status quo at all costs.

So. We're all replaceable for sure, but despite that I find thoughts about being replaced rather amusing.

Might sound morbid, but - my job is literally crap. So if someone wants to do my crappy job, sure go for it.

I will just sit here with some popcorn for the remaining time and enjoy the laughs. XD

I used to feel exactly the same.

Then I actually worked with these devs. Their desire for a workplace that treats them with respect and acceptance is their downfall.

"I'm not getting called at 3am because I balance my work and personal life."

"I'm not doing that project because it doesn't build on my skill set."

"That's not fair, I wanted that promotion and you gave it to *person* just because I refused to take calls at 3am."

I've got nothing to worry about with these schmucks. Sure they can call me a sellout, but I won't hear them in my big house or fancy car while I'm providing a life for my family that I never had.

I am 37, too. I barely meet any of these young devs. If I do though, I make sure to help them get ahead in there career and stay in contact if they move to a different job. If you need to hire someone in the future it's always good to know competent people, even if its only for a referral bonus. There is enough room for all of us in the current job market.

I'm kinda in a sweet spot right now. I'm 51 and responsible for Azure DevOps, our in-house Splunk alerting backbone, and a lot of the SharePoint code. NOBODY wants my job.

@Wolle maybe we can meet sometime. Give me a ping if you like c6, nintendo 8 bit and bad horror movies ffim the 80s...

Man, you cant edit stuff thats too old. Anyway, anyone that feels the age of 40 destroying them can be happy they arent 50...

@IntrusionCM hey wanna throw rocks at some of my colleagues? :D

I can understand. I used to work with a young bloke just like that. I miss working with that bloke
My current team is different. The young ones are… not lazy, but not eager either. I prefer to not give a shit about being senior here because as soon as I do something, people may think that’s within a senior’s capability and it is none of their business. I don’t like that

I prefer hungry wolves. Fuck my comfort zone. I need it but not all the time.

I’m in my 40s and I honestly haven’t met many of the people you describe.

I worked with and mentored a lot of junior developers over the years. There were very few who “scared” me and in their case I was generally happy that I could help them a bit on their way. I’d rather work with someone talented and motivated who might end up “ahead” of me than an entitled child.

@PepeTheFrog hm. I think I have enough on my plate, but I'm sure I can recommend as rocks neodyn magnets with super glue.

.makes super fun.

I have never met a junior dev that “scared” me.

Partly because even when they have some knowledge I do mot I have always been able to learn faster than they if I find the area interesting so I end up teaching them.

Partly because knowledge is not everything, experience plays a big role and that they are even more unlikely to catch up in.

But also because there us such a shortage of devs that I don’t see any risk in ending up without a job.

And I have met quite a few devs over the years, 34 years of writing commercial software :)

@sariel It reads like a boast but the contents are just so sad did I miss some sarcasm? Do you genuinly want to live like that?

@dmoen send me an e-mail to wolle@nxtgenengines.com

I'm honestly not that scared.

When I was in college I expected all education to improve significantly and remote work to take over the world, all dev jobs going east.

I was surprised to see this hasn't happened and in fact most places I worked for are saying students today are not up to par and they tried outsourcing a few years ago but went backsies.

I'm in Sweden and we are having trouble finding good candidates for Web dev, somehow most colleges teach mostly theory and students don't even know proper html. and shorter educations are the opposite - no theory.

YOU'D BETTER LOOK OUT OLD MAN!!!

@jiraTicket I am also in Sweden and we have the same problem of finding enough decent devs to fill the empty positions.

@fullstackchris this old man still has a few tricks up his sleeve.

@dmoen old people often have lots of tricks, its called experience ;)

Minus the house.

@PaperTrail why not just learn cool. Instant job security.