You Know You're an Old Fogey Software Engineer When...

J. Timothy King — Thu, 23 Aug 2007 01:03:52 +0000

Today, I came to a realization. I’m now officially an Old Fogey Software Engineer. You know, like those narrow-minded, intolerant, old-time veterans of the field I used to look down on when I was but a young Whippersnapper. They were so limited in their view, only being able to do what they have always done, always disagreeing with me, always putting roadblocks in my way, always wiping out my carefully crafted abstractions in favor of in-line code, always throwing out my object-oriented design in favor of procedural, always turning my portable, reusable code into use-once code. I never stopped to think that their objections might have been born from decades of experience and life-long expertise.

Now that I’m officially on the other side of the fence, I’ve discovered a new rule: When your junior colleague thinks his fancy object-oriented code is simpler than your straightforward procedural code, you know it’s time to raise your rates. Because they’re not listening to you, so you know you can’t be charging them enough.

Experience - Tag - In a past life…

You Know You're an Old Fogey Software Engineer When...