I was just wondering whats the average age of people here, one of the few public forums where I think its mostly humans? If ur curious also maybe drop a quick comment.
Close to 50. Been programming for fun since I was 6, for a living since I was 19. And now, thanks to LLMs, I'm thinking of leaving that behind and becoming the world's oldest apprentice electrician.
That's the usual way yeah, you come in as an apprentice and work your way up. There are specialized job boards in addition to the usual general-purpose ones, which are often run by the government or a relevant union.
In my area, you can hook up with IBEW, the electrician's union and they'll essentially bootstrap you. There's some strings attached, but it's not too long of a commitment. YMMV.
Do it (if you want to). You wouldn't literally be the oldest. My old IT manager retired in his 60s and did this (and is now a working, signing electrician). It even sounds like he kinda got some automatic seniority of sorts, due to his age and maturity.
So yeah, it's doable.
I semi-seriously consider going into the trades after retiring from tech.
Thanks for the encouragement. I'm definitely thinking about it: the money would be the biggest drawback, it'd mean living a lot more frugally, but back of the envelope math suggests I could live on it.
61, got into computing just after toggle switches, punch cards and paper tape, thank goodness.
I was, however ready to swear on a stack of Bibles in 1981 when I picked my major, that there was no money to be made in software. It looked like shareware was going to take over the world and drive the cost to almost zero.
Moore's law was an awesome ride, and I think we've got at least a 100:1 improvement left in efficiency.
71. So far, the oldest to respond.
Only a tiny minority of readers are likely to respond, though. And all you will learn from the responses is the age disribition of that tiny minority! Who knows how well that correlates with the totality of HN users?
Yeah i was thinking that, but at least I have some idea that the age is different than I thought here, most responses are 40 and above apparently which I never would have guessed. I also would never have thought people in their 70's would be here !!!!
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[ 3.6 ms ] story [ 130 ms ] threadSo yeah, it's doable.
I semi-seriously consider going into the trades after retiring from tech.
I was, however ready to swear on a stack of Bibles in 1981 when I picked my major, that there was no money to be made in software. It looked like shareware was going to take over the world and drive the cost to almost zero.
Moore's law was an awesome ride, and I think we've got at least a 100:1 improvement left in efficiency.