Ask HN: What did you learn too late in your tech career?

That age discrimination post VC infection is real. Back when I started in 90 we had senior engineers with white hair. I distinctly remember brushing aside my father's advice when he cautioned me about such things. "No, not in software. It is a pure meritocracy". Hah. (Implicit lesson: listen to your elders /g)

Second lesson then was that engineering as a career is for chumps; young ones: start your own business.

Age discrimination is real, of course, just about everywhere.

My experience though is different to yours. I joined a bootstraped company in 1992 as emp number 1. Basically me and the founder. We were both in our 20s.

In those years everyone in computers was young. We had no "adults in the room". We did a lot right, and a bunch wrong. I grew a beard to look older. When we had programmer user-group meetups everyone was our age.

That hasn't really changed, except now we are the grey beards :)

Of course we had young workers, I was one of them. Except we also had actual grey beards and -no one- ever said silly things such as "anyone over 30 is over the hills" as was the norm (here on HN) in the 21st post "internet". It was very much a different field, and yes, my first two jobs were with startups, as a matter of fact.

I am 50. Been in software development since 1996 and found it easier to get jobs post 45 than ever. I did my first stint at BigTech at 46 and found what most would consider good paying jobs within 3 weeks both in 2023 and last year.