Generational developers

April 16, 2008

I’m seeing a large cross section of age groups represented at the MySQL conference.  The typical late teens through mid twenties are here, as expected, but I’m seeing a high number of people who are clearly older than that - many likely mid 40s or higher.  It could just be that database work is typically suited for older workers looking for more stability (’keep the systems running day in day out’), but it might also represent an uptake of MySQL at more established companies as well.

Anyway, that’s not quite what I was writing about.  What crossed my mind was the children of many of these older people.  Will they grow up in to software people as well?  Will we perhaps see consultancies handed down from generation to generation over the next several decades?  Software as an industry has barely been around 30 years, so I’m not sure it’s been on too many peoples’ minds, but I still wonder.  My dad is an accountant, but didn’t bring me up to be one, and I had little interest.  Some of that may have been because I had no way of having visibility in to his profession.  Beyond ‘take you child to work’ days, there’s not too many professions where children can get hands-on experience of what their parents do.  With many types of software, that’s not the case.  Anyone can get started with most tools, especially with Open Source.  Put another way, will Linus’ kids take over the kernel in another 20 years? 

Posted in Conferences, Ideas, MySQL, Software, opensource