How to manage old, unmotivated, change resisting programmers? - panjaro
======
twunde
To be clear, your "old" programmers should be among your most valuable
employees as they should know what pitfalls to avoid, what the warning signs
are and should know a great deal of design patterns or tricks to help improve
your project.

Motivating older programmers is different from motivating younger programmers.
They've seen layoffs, acquisitions, failing companies. They've also seen
multiple project management philosophies come and go and generally aren't
impressed with agile and scrum. Most older programmers I've worked with want
some combination of the following: money, being able to do good quality work
and good work-life balance. They're unlikely to pull all-nighters or work more
than 40 hours because at this point they've seen how destructive and
ineffective those are. To motivate them you can offer flexible hours, remote
working privileges, vacation time. You can also check with them to see if they
want to explore different roles (would they want to do some project
management? UX design? devops/system administration? Also you are doing
regular 1:1s, right?)

Now you may encounter some problems with these older programmers learning new
technologies (I had a former COBOL programmer give up on web services even
though he was using Microsoft COM apis on a regular basis). In these cases,
there are two good solutions. 1) Spend extra time with the programmer, mapping
the terminology they're learning with the terminology they're familiar with.
2) Have them work on different projects that are more closely aligned with
their current skills.

------
partisan
Let's start removing "old" from the list of things we want to filter out of
our workforce. Age discrimination is real and it surfaces in the most
insidious ways such that adding it to a list of negative traits just seems
natural.

~~~
panjaro
we don't want to filter out, but manage.

~~~
Someone
Your question implicitly suggests that you wouldn’t have problems managing
_young_ , unmotivated, change resisting programmers.

If so, do you think there is an innate difference between old unmotivated,
change resisting programmers and young unmotivated, change resisting ones, or
could your attitude towards the two groups be different?

~~~
muzani
Young people generally don't resist change because change benefits them.
People who have invested 5 years into an obsolete skillset are most resistant
to change.

------
playing_colours
I did not have experience with the whole team or department consisting of such
guys, my situation was just several individuals (and I could not just fire
them) within overall good collective. My appoach was to be very
straightforward in communications, no motivational bullshit and no teaching
tone. Just straight to what I expect from them to deliver. And I tried to give
them tasks that are less related to critical core functionality - more like
admin tools, etc.

Do not expect any wonders from them, and you cannot just change them - try to
reduce risks,harm, and demotivation they can bring and treat them as adults.

~~~
jermaustin1
That is exactly what the manager at my last company did. Unless the workload
was too great for the rest of the team to do alone, the more aged members of
the team worked on internal tools (unless those were too high profile).

------
LarryMade2
What sort of change?

Have you asked them what they don't like about the change? - Just letting them
say their peace to the right people will alleviate some of their anxiety,
especially if the concerns are repeated and addressed or at least responded
to.

Does it clearly solve problems in the existing system? - Show them the pain
categories in the old system that the new one will address, features that work
better or are easier to maintain.

Are you giving them enough learning/experiential on the new system? - Let them
try out new methods on the new system such as testing solutions that they feel
might not work, so they can see all is good, or really less impossible they
may have thought.

Once they feel effective on implementing the change then they will better cope
with what needs to be done and work toward it.

------
andrei_says_
I’d type out an answer but I just saw Sandi Metz’ amazing talk on influence in
the context of software teams.

Highly recommended.

[https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=VzWLGMtXflg](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=VzWLGMtXflg)

As for the rest, I’d take a step back and check if it is possible that the
“old, unmotivated, change-resisting” could be possibly judgments (hint: they
are) and what did they result from.

Example: I requested that we make changes X, Y and Z, and Peter refused on the
premise that ... (to replace “change-resistant”)

Also, Peter is 45. (To replace “Old”)

Working with judgments is difficult because they close the possibility for
dialogue. Working with observations opens possibilities for inquiry.

Also, even programmers can feel when they’re being judged, so there’s that.

------
SirLJ
Lead by example e.g. don't ask them to do stuff you wont and make it about the
team, if they like to be part of it, they have to pull their weight and have
to have the backs of their coworkers...

If the team does poorly, most likely will be disbanded, so they'll have a
vested interest to stay together and for the people who don't want to be part
of it, you as a manager have to find them a better fit in another team in the
company and replace them with a better fitted employees...

------
superbrama
First, check if old person really does want to grind hard on coding. If not,
there could be issues that came up or accumulated over time. Burnout is most
likely example - how many humans do well staring at code for decades? Not all
programmers become more productive over time. Just an anecdote really but
surely this is the case for many.

------
raarts
Get someone older than you to manage them.

------
neofrommatrix
Is this at Oracle? :-)

~~~
csnewb
Sounds a lot like the other old school tech companies as well:
IBM/Cisco/HP/Intel/etc...

