Code until you die / older female devs

• enjoy building stuff - what does that look like as you get older? work less hours / higher ethical alignment
• what itch are you scratching by coding? just problem solving? not only, also the process of building
• ageism in interviewing? what happens if you are not needed anymore? open-source?
• invent ways to make coding more enjoyable when not depending on salary anymore
• crisis of identity - got into business because of joy of building stuff, no joy in pair programming / consulting / banking -> launch something yourself, be your own boss, no "external dependencies"
• career/coding break?
  • early retirement, only occasional coding
  • after first child: asked for 3d and got it, after 2nd child: stopped working 2y, missed it, hard to get back in with CV gap
• on average, awful management - dangerous: really good in one specific area, have not seen anything else
• getting older: worse memory, better at seeing bigger picture - need to find places where people care about that
• most contracts due to contacts to persons that work in decent places
• woman in tech: 20% of brain power used to deal with assumptions of other people
• Thoughtworks diversity commitee: nobody had family...
• quality of employees diluted to hit hiring targets - CTO: need representation in promotion panels
• need to put loads of processes in place to make job work, people become "blockers"
• role model for younger female devs
• FT had female leadership team
• on a team with younger female devs - how to make them stay / aid development?
  • processes centered around males - address those
  • double-check how you advertise jobs,
  • don't try to hide the fact you are female just to fit in
• bringing babies to work helped with clients behaving
• what could help diversity?
  • adapt expectations as people age (e.g. peri-menopausal brain fog)
  • could you not replace with 20something new hires? hiring is not fair, but high representation of older devs in interview processes helps
• instigate cultural change at company level - people problem, how to instigate change? older people bring a voice of experience
• values in order: people, money, tech stack
• form a team with different strengths
• banks / big tech still have too much money, therefore hard to enforce better processes
• everybody cares about the projects that make the company the most money - more/better interaction with users
• is what you optimise for compatible with what the company optimises for? (exchange time for money)
• bonus schemes are counter-productive
• cognitive decline is inevitable, do we all need to switch roles before retirement? can fight it to an extent with eating/sleeping well etc
  • part of satisfaction is being good at your job, what if that changes? -> definition of "good" changes over time
• code until you die? perhaps not as a paid developer, but many examples of paid programmers retiring with >60 years