When does a software developer retire?
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When does a software developer or programmer retire? Is it (when his brains can no longer thing) OR (when his hand and fingers can no longer type) { :suss::cool: :~ } OR do we live forever ???
After (s)he makes his/her millions. That CTO position is looking more and more attractive... Peace!
-=- James
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Null pointer jokes aside, there haven't really been enough full time software developers reaching retirement age to really get any kind of a representative answer. I'm guessing most of us are going to retire when we get sick of or incapable of keeping up with the pace of new technology and have the money on hand to do so. However I also strongly suspect that most of us will probably retire way before traditional retirement age and use our money to go into some other line of work that we previously enjoyed as a hobby. So I'm guessing mid 40's onwards for many of us but skewed to the lower end of the age spectrum versus traditional white collar jobs.
"The pursuit of excellence is less profitable than the pursuit of bigness, but it can be more satisfying." - David Ogilvy
I'm personally convinced the Y2K fizzle-debacle was engineered back in the 60's and 70's by a bunch of guys doing their retirement planning.
Software Zen:
delete this; -
When does a software developer or programmer retire? Is it (when his brains can no longer thing) OR (when his hand and fingers can no longer type) { :suss::cool: :~ } OR do we live forever ???
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I think it's when they start double posting.
"Normal is getting dressed in clothes that you buy for work and driving through traffic in a car that you are still paying for, in order to get to the job you need to pay for the clothes and the car and the house you leave vacant all day so you can afford to live in it." - Ellen Goodman
"To have a respect for ourselves guides our morals; to have deference for others governs our manners." - Laurence Sterne
Obviously they just implode after GoodbyeWorld()
Joe Negron - eBusiness Architect VP Head Supreme Chief Muckety Muck
modified on Monday, March 24, 2008 2:32 PM
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I'm personally convinced the Y2K fizzle-debacle was engineered back in the 60's and 70's by a bunch of guys doing their retirement planning.
Software Zen:
delete this;Gary Wheeler wrote:
I'm personally convinced the Y2K fizzle-debacle was engineered back in the 60's and 70's by a bunch of guys doing their retirement planning.
:) A lot of Cobol programmers were resurrected for that so maybe it was also a devious plan to get a bump in income in their golden years. :) Actually the whole public attitude towards Y2K of how it was overblown and overhyped post new years day 2000 pissed me off: I was a network tech in 1999 and we spent a *heavy* year upgrading, patching and replacing software at dozens of very large companies and hospitals etc. Our own work was just a small representation of what was going on all over the planet that year. On new years eve 1999 I was sitting in a hospital doctors lounge with other network techs waiting to see what would happen. We were pretty confident but the administration wasn't and asked us to be there. It all went off smoothly for us and most other sites world wide thanks to a *hell* of a lot of hard work but for weeks afterwards it was the butt of late night talk show jokes and generally the common attitude that the whole thing was way overblown and to this day it still pisses me off that no one really understood the reason why it went smoothly was all that hard work by so many people to make sure it was ok. Just one example: the hospital we did the work at had sofware for patient tracking that would have had major issues with the age of patients, new born babies being 30 years old etc.
"The pursuit of excellence is less profitable than the pursuit of bigness, but it can be more satisfying." - David Ogilvy
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Gary Wheeler wrote:
I'm personally convinced the Y2K fizzle-debacle was engineered back in the 60's and 70's by a bunch of guys doing their retirement planning.
:) A lot of Cobol programmers were resurrected for that so maybe it was also a devious plan to get a bump in income in their golden years. :) Actually the whole public attitude towards Y2K of how it was overblown and overhyped post new years day 2000 pissed me off: I was a network tech in 1999 and we spent a *heavy* year upgrading, patching and replacing software at dozens of very large companies and hospitals etc. Our own work was just a small representation of what was going on all over the planet that year. On new years eve 1999 I was sitting in a hospital doctors lounge with other network techs waiting to see what would happen. We were pretty confident but the administration wasn't and asked us to be there. It all went off smoothly for us and most other sites world wide thanks to a *hell* of a lot of hard work but for weeks afterwards it was the butt of late night talk show jokes and generally the common attitude that the whole thing was way overblown and to this day it still pisses me off that no one really understood the reason why it went smoothly was all that hard work by so many people to make sure it was ok. Just one example: the hospital we did the work at had sofware for patient tracking that would have had major issues with the age of patients, new born babies being 30 years old etc.
"The pursuit of excellence is less profitable than the pursuit of bigness, but it can be more satisfying." - David Ogilvy
I wasn't meaning to denigrate the work people did prior to 2000. I had to do a moderate amount of work myself on my software to make sure it was compliant (actually, I was compensating for a BIOS that wasn't, but that's another long story). I remember trying to explain to people how much work went into Y2K preparations. I also remember a certain amount of frustration like you felt when they claimed we were running around like Chicken Little claiming the sky was falling. Maybe we should have let a little bit of it fall, just to keep them on their toes...
Software Zen:
delete this; -
I wasn't meaning to denigrate the work people did prior to 2000. I had to do a moderate amount of work myself on my software to make sure it was compliant (actually, I was compensating for a BIOS that wasn't, but that's another long story). I remember trying to explain to people how much work went into Y2K preparations. I also remember a certain amount of frustration like you felt when they claimed we were running around like Chicken Little claiming the sky was falling. Maybe we should have let a little bit of it fall, just to keep them on their toes...
Software Zen:
delete this;Gary Wheeler wrote:
I wasn't meaning to denigrate the work people did prior to 2000
I know, I'm just sensitive about it, it's a small part of history that I was involved in that will forever be thought of wrongly by the average person, there's worse things. :)
"The pursuit of excellence is less profitable than the pursuit of bigness, but it can be more satisfying." - David Ogilvy
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Gary Wheeler wrote:
I'm personally convinced the Y2K fizzle-debacle was engineered back in the 60's and 70's by a bunch of guys doing their retirement planning.
:) A lot of Cobol programmers were resurrected for that so maybe it was also a devious plan to get a bump in income in their golden years. :) Actually the whole public attitude towards Y2K of how it was overblown and overhyped post new years day 2000 pissed me off: I was a network tech in 1999 and we spent a *heavy* year upgrading, patching and replacing software at dozens of very large companies and hospitals etc. Our own work was just a small representation of what was going on all over the planet that year. On new years eve 1999 I was sitting in a hospital doctors lounge with other network techs waiting to see what would happen. We were pretty confident but the administration wasn't and asked us to be there. It all went off smoothly for us and most other sites world wide thanks to a *hell* of a lot of hard work but for weeks afterwards it was the butt of late night talk show jokes and generally the common attitude that the whole thing was way overblown and to this day it still pisses me off that no one really understood the reason why it went smoothly was all that hard work by so many people to make sure it was ok. Just one example: the hospital we did the work at had sofware for patient tracking that would have had major issues with the age of patients, new born babies being 30 years old etc.
"The pursuit of excellence is less profitable than the pursuit of bigness, but it can be more satisfying." - David Ogilvy
Well sure, there were far fewer problems because the problems got fixed in time. I also was at my post that night and nothing untoward happened. (Probably because were using OpenVMS and Oracle.) I'm sure others had a much tougher time leading up to 2000 than my colleagues and I. The worst problem I remember fixing in our code was in a (character-based) program that displayed the year as two digits, which is OK, except that in 2000 would display as "100" rather than "00", I merely had to add a
%100. :doh: The worst thing I had to deal with was third-party products: One vendor decided that their product we were using wasn't worth fixing and that we should find another product, but they told us in 1998, so we had plenty of time. Another vendor said they'd get us a compliant version in time (by 1999-07), but then in 1999-09 they finally admitted that they couldn't do it and we'd need another product. :mad: -
Gary Wheeler wrote:
I'm personally convinced the Y2K fizzle-debacle was engineered back in the 60's and 70's by a bunch of guys doing their retirement planning.
:) A lot of Cobol programmers were resurrected for that so maybe it was also a devious plan to get a bump in income in their golden years. :) Actually the whole public attitude towards Y2K of how it was overblown and overhyped post new years day 2000 pissed me off: I was a network tech in 1999 and we spent a *heavy* year upgrading, patching and replacing software at dozens of very large companies and hospitals etc. Our own work was just a small representation of what was going on all over the planet that year. On new years eve 1999 I was sitting in a hospital doctors lounge with other network techs waiting to see what would happen. We were pretty confident but the administration wasn't and asked us to be there. It all went off smoothly for us and most other sites world wide thanks to a *hell* of a lot of hard work but for weeks afterwards it was the butt of late night talk show jokes and generally the common attitude that the whole thing was way overblown and to this day it still pisses me off that no one really understood the reason why it went smoothly was all that hard work by so many people to make sure it was ok. Just one example: the hospital we did the work at had sofware for patient tracking that would have had major issues with the age of patients, new born babies being 30 years old etc.
"The pursuit of excellence is less profitable than the pursuit of bigness, but it can be more satisfying." - David Ogilvy
John C wrote:
It all went off smoothly for us and most other sites world wide thanks to a *hell* of a lot of hard work but for weeks afterwards it was the butt of late night talk show jokes and generally the common attitude that the whole thing was way overblown and to this day it still pisses me off that no one really understood the reason why it went smoothly was all that hard work by so many people to make sure it was ok.
And some of us made sure that Y2K was not a problem in the first place. I know it was kind of useless, but all my employers were y2k long before the stress hit, even the Cobol and RPG jobs were done long before. Did the ones who weren't in crisis get a mention? No, the quiet average programmer with a bit of foresight got no mention either. Everyone who busted their behinds to make sure Y2K went off without a hitch was largely ignored regardless of when they fixed it. People wanted a disaster, we disappointed them.... :rolleyes:
_________________________ Asu no koto o ieba, tenjo de nezumi ga warau. Talk about things of tomorrow and the mice in the ceiling laugh. (Japanese Proverb)
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John C wrote:
It all went off smoothly for us and most other sites world wide thanks to a *hell* of a lot of hard work but for weeks afterwards it was the butt of late night talk show jokes and generally the common attitude that the whole thing was way overblown and to this day it still pisses me off that no one really understood the reason why it went smoothly was all that hard work by so many people to make sure it was ok.
And some of us made sure that Y2K was not a problem in the first place. I know it was kind of useless, but all my employers were y2k long before the stress hit, even the Cobol and RPG jobs were done long before. Did the ones who weren't in crisis get a mention? No, the quiet average programmer with a bit of foresight got no mention either. Everyone who busted their behinds to make sure Y2K went off without a hitch was largely ignored regardless of when they fixed it. People wanted a disaster, we disappointed them.... :rolleyes:
_________________________ Asu no koto o ieba, tenjo de nezumi ga warau. Talk about things of tomorrow and the mice in the ceiling laugh. (Japanese Proverb)
El Corazon wrote:
People wanted a disaster, we disappointed them....
but the timestamp on one of the IRC servers I used was off by over 10,000 years till sometime in march. Doesn't that count as the apocalypse? :rolleyes:
Otherwise [Microsoft is] toast in the long term no matter how much money they've got. They would be already if the Linux community didn't have it's head so firmly up it's own command line buffer that it looks like taking 15 years to find the desktop. -- Matthew Faithfull
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When does a software developer or programmer retire? Is it (when his brains can no longer thing) OR (when his hand and fingers can no longer type) { :suss::cool: :~ } OR do we live forever ???
void main(int argc, char **argv) { .. exit(0); }
Steve
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El Corazon wrote:
People wanted a disaster, we disappointed them....
but the timestamp on one of the IRC servers I used was off by over 10,000 years till sometime in march. Doesn't that count as the apocalypse? :rolleyes:
Otherwise [Microsoft is] toast in the long term no matter how much money they've got. They would be already if the Linux community didn't have it's head so firmly up it's own command line buffer that it looks like taking 15 years to find the desktop. -- Matthew Faithfull
Was the IRC down or just had the wrong time... if it were down that counts as apocalypse... if it was just the date that is drink more of your favorite beverage until it all looks the same time...
_________________________ Asu no koto o ieba, tenjo de nezumi ga warau. Talk about things of tomorrow and the mice in the ceiling laugh. (Japanese Proverb)
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When does a software developer or programmer retire? Is it (when his brains can no longer thing) OR (when his hand and fingers can no longer type) { :suss::cool: :~ } OR do we live forever ???
For me, as soon as possible. Which in reality, means in fifteen to twenty years; longer if my 401k and IRA continue to tank. (As I tell my wife; I'm okay if I can just code, but I can't stand dealing with management and the bureaucracy and yes, they've both generally gotten much worse over the years.)
Anyone who thinks he has a better idea of what's good for people than people do is a swine. - P.J. O'Rourke
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Gary Wheeler wrote:
I wasn't meaning to denigrate the work people did prior to 2000
I know, I'm just sensitive about it, it's a small part of history that I was involved in that will forever be thought of wrongly by the average person, there's worse things. :)
"The pursuit of excellence is less profitable than the pursuit of bigness, but it can be more satisfying." - David Ogilvy
John C wrote:
it's a small part of history
I gave a talk at a company where the people couldn't understand the Y2K problems. I asked how many were going to keep their current bank checks after the turn of the century. With puzzled looks, I asked someone to look at the date preprinted on the checks - of course, when they read "19_ _" there was a big ah-ha moment. I then asked how many tombstones needed changed for the living spouse's death year where the "19" was already engraved in stone. There were several.
Gary
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Was the IRC down or just had the wrong time... if it were down that counts as apocalypse... if it was just the date that is drink more of your favorite beverage until it all looks the same time...
_________________________ Asu no koto o ieba, tenjo de nezumi ga warau. Talk about things of tomorrow and the mice in the ceiling laugh. (Japanese Proverb)
The MOTD was dated XX XXX 19100. I was being flippant because it was the most serious problem I actually saw. Sadly I was visiting family on the other side of the country and didn't know where their breaker box was when midnight rolled around. :((
Otherwise [Microsoft is] toast in the long term no matter how much money they've got. They would be already if the Linux community didn't have it's head so firmly up it's own command line buffer that it looks like taking 15 years to find the desktop. -- Matthew Faithfull