Modern Devs eh....

[PAH]

What do they do on a Friday lunchtime? Watch coding hints and tips videos over a bag of doughnuts in the conference room!

I think you may have been sucker punched with the 'boss key' and it wasn't hints and tips videos they were really watching.

Don't feel too bad about it, being sucker punched is better than being donkey punched.

[minestrone]

You have programmers under 30 on site? I haven't seen any of those for a long time.

WHS.

Nobody hires graduates now, too easy to get bobs.

The recursive cycle of grad recruitment, learn on the job, go contracting, fail a startups, get it right on plan x, hire grad recruitments for plan x is totally bust.

Sad.

Can someone tell 'Call Me Dave' that?

[NotAllThere]

OTOH The Bob cycle is

Boot camp training
Development for two years
If any good -> management or analysis
If no good -> stay in development

So, quality drops, eventually making it economically unfeasible to continue to out-bob, in-sourcing begins.

In the meantime, older contractor programmers clean up...?

[Bunk]

We've got a few here, we use them to fetch the coffee and doughnuts.

We also have a policy where the person who breaks the overnight build has to bring the cakes in.

Or get the first round in in the pub later.

[MarillionFan]

The OP is getting confused between young developers and young IT contractors.

Young developers have always been hairy palmed, lonely geeks whose only relationship with real life and more importantly girls was removing the bikinis of models on the computer and replacing with flesh coloured pixels and whose idea of a heavy nights drinking was over doing the coffee at 4 in the morning (see Nick Fitz for more stereotypes)

Young contractors on the other hand were talented, quick and extremely confident whose ability to chat up women was the stuff of swordsman legend and whose ability to do the job the next day after 20 pints at the pub, a fight, spit roasting a hooker with another contractor and having a kebab with extra chilli sauce at three in the morning was common place.

Now they've all died out and become old contractors.

[Sysman]

OTOH The Bob cycle is

Boot camp training
Development for two years
If any good -> management or analysis
If no good -> stay in development

So, quality drops, eventually making it economically unfeasible to continue to out-bob, in-sourcing begins.

In the meantime, older contractor programmers clean up...?

I certainly saw that pattern in the Third World. If you got someone good they'd either be promoted or disappear to a multinational who would be quite happy to pay off the sponsors who had paid for their UK degree at overseas student prices.

[Sysman]

Or get the first round in in the pub later.

Another memory from permie days. The boss would inevitably escape from paying restaurant and bar bills, telling his juniors to put it on expenses. Yes, boss would sign the expense claims, but it didn't half hit your cash flow. And of course the boss was keeping under the radar for BIK.

[Bunk]

The OP is getting confused between young developers and young IT contractors.

Young developers have always been hairy palmed, lonely geeks whose only relationship with real life and more importantly girls was removing the bikinis of models on the computer and replacing with flesh coloured pixels and whose idea of a heavy nights drinking was over doing the coffee at 4 in the morning (see Nick Fitz for more stereotypes)

Young contractors on the other hand were talented, quick and extremely confident whose ability to chat up women was the stuff of swordsman legend and whose ability to do the job the next day after 20 pints at the pub, a fight, spit roasting a hooker with another contractor and having a kebab with extra chilli sauce at three in the morning was common place.

Now they've all died out and become old contractors.

Were you in Berlin last year?

[d000hg]

Working on site at ClientCo... most of the devs here are in their 20s and 30s.

What do they do on a Friday lunchtime? Watch coding hints and tips videos over a bag of doughnuts in the conference room!

When I was their age we were all off down the pub on Friday lunchtime.

Modern kids eh....

The good programmers have always done this. Like any profession, they got good by spending all their time on it, rather than having a life.

edit: It seems I inadvertently agreed with MF.

[d000hg]

Yep, some fresh from uni with their plastic software "degrees"

Being in software before they had degrees in it isn't a test of ability. At least not the way you suggest.