The Yutes

I recently had the opportunity to talk a little PostgreSQL with the Salt Lake City PostgreSQL Meetup group (thank you for having me by the way). Great bunch of people who were really engaged and asked a lot of questions. On the way out of the event, I was chatting with one person (who had made a lot of great contributions to the discussion, man, I love interactive people) who told me that there was a data group in the Utah area (I forget the name) that went from well over 4,000 members, to only about 140 or so today. That's a shame. Then he said one more thing that really caught my attention, because it's been on my mind quite a lot too: "We can't get younger people out to the meetings because they don't see any need to learn in person."

For those who don't me, I'm old. I turned 62 this year. I'm slowing down. I can feel it. At some point (years from now, many years from now), I'm going to stop gallivanting all over the globe talking SQL Server and PostgreSQL. When I do, I honestly want to see a whole cadre of younger (much younger) people picking up the torch and carrying forward the idea of sharing, and yeah, sharing in person, in order to make all us data people better. Sadly, I'm not seeing it now, and we need it now.

Sure, there are stellar young people doing some amazing stuff (looking right at Anna Hoffman, you are incredible). There just aren't very many of them. And yeah, technology plays a factor. There are more younger people in the PostgreSQL community than in the SQL Server community. However, they're not the majority. Also, they're not the main speakers. Those are still, primarily, people closer to my age than not. The attendees, speakers, organizers, across the board, all of them, trend quite a bit older.

Yet...

Globally, the average age for developers is 25-34. These are the people we should be seeing attending meetings. They're not there.

In my opinion, the problem is two-fold. First, I think these younger people don't see the need for in-person learning. After all, everything is online. You can watch Youtube videos to learn everything you need to know to work on PostgreSQL. If not, there are plenty of blogs, articles, what not, all online. There is one, huge, thing that you can't really learn online though that they're seriously missing out on. Talking to other humans. Yeah, social interaction. Because, let's face it, development is a social sport. Larger projects inevitably involve multiple humans. You need to learn how to interact and the best way to learn that, like anything else, is by doing it. Further, they're not building a network of people that they can help and who can help them. Can you learn 100% online? Sure. Can you build up your human network 100% online? Not as well, not as extensively, and not as deeply. Heck, I watched a couple of people who had taken very active part in the discussion exchange info, right there on the spot.

The second part of the problem, the Yutes, the younger people, just aren't going to the same places online that we reach. No, I don't know where they are. I wish I did. I'd march over and start doing a Steve Buscimi imitation, "How do you do fellow kids." We need to find all these people and we need to convince them that, while we may be old, fat, slow, we also might be on to something with this in-person learning stuff.

What do you think?

Grant Fritchey

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