
The Brutal Ageism of Tech - GabrielF00
http://www.newrepublic.com/article/117088/silicons-valleys-brutal-ageism
======
skrebbel
Anecdotal: I'm a part-time CTO (long story) of a startup. I'm 30 myself. We
hired 6 engineers in total up until now: three interns in their twenties,
who're very smart and motivated but also inexperienced; two programmers with a
few years of professional experience who can get to real decent (well written,
unit tested, etc) code on the first go; and 1 guy of over 40.

When hiring, I was very skeptical of the guy over 40. His CV showed that he
had spent most of his time building boring information systems for government
agencies. This did not feel cool and startuppy at all. Also, he's gray-haired
and he looks a bit dorky. We really liked him in person though, and he seemed
to know what he was talking about, so we hired him anyway.

Only a few weeks later, I was already certain that he was the best hire we
made up until now. Hypothetically, when forced, I would fire any _two_ other
team members to be able to keep him on the team (and he's on only half weeks).
He's experienced, _very_ much down to business, he cuts through the crap and
through technical fads, and currently ensures that we're building the most
lean and simple backend that I've ever seen. In a programming language that
he's never seen before, and with a database engine that he's never used
before.

For me, the general takeaway was that the wisdom to "not only hire copies of
yourself" is very true indeed. More specifically, "older" guys (for tech
industry standards) often have a lot more fundamental skills to bring to the
table than perfect command of this year's _technologie du jour_.

Hire older people!

~~~
not_paul_graham
But are you based in SF [1]? I think that this article is more specific to the
west coast tech scene in the United States.

[1] Your profile indicates that you might be based out of Europe.

~~~
skrebbel
Indeed, I'm Dutch and based in the Netherlands. So is the startup in question.

The problem highlighted by the article is relatively SF-specific indeed, but
you see the same vibe in Dutch startups (less so in older tech businesses
here, but there it's just that 50 is considered old instead of 40 - the
difference isn't that big).

I don't see how that makes the anecdote less strong though. Why wouldn't there
be similarly competent 40+ year old people in SF? I feel that startups that
are open to hiring older people in a climate like the one described in this
article have a competitive advantage on the job market. It makes me anecdote
only _more_ applicable to SF, not less.

------
Retric
The odd thing is hiring older workers is generally a great idea. From an
organisational perspective programming teams don't scale vary well so hiring
less skilled people is generally a terrible long term strategy. Personally, I
have worked with a few hundred programmers and I can only name 3 that where
competent before 30.

Outside the valley you find a plenty of really competent programmers mostly in
there late 40's along with a few people that are nearing retirement age and
while often gruff tend to blow your minds. As in "we stopped testing his code
years ago." Or just calling someone team _. As in you could get 15-30 people
working on a project or if your lucky Bob.

~~~
aortega
Not so much. I'm 35, started programming at about 10 in my TI99-4A, typing
games from magazines, etc. the usual stuff.

No way a 40 year old guy have more experience than me in general programming,
unless he was working at Microsoft or IBM at that date, and surely they are
about less than 10000 of those guys in the world. Of course there are 40 year
olds that may have way more experience than me in a specific language or
technology.

My point is that if computer tech is only 30 year old, then you won't find
programmers with more than 30 years of experience, no matter their age.

~~~
SomeCallMeTim
>No way a 40 year old guy have more experience than me in general programming

I started programming toys in 1979. [1] I started programming "modern"
computers in 1981. I was selling games when I was 15 in 1983. My "real"
professional experience started in 1987 with a contract to write a video game
from a major publisher.

So yes, it's not hard for someone to have "more experience" than you in
general programming.

[1] I had one of these:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Trak](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Trak)

~~~
kstenerud
OMG THANK YOU! I had one of these as a kid, but couldn't remember the name! We
used to have competitions to have it go from the living room, out to the
kitchen, through the table legs, and back again. I was 5 years old, and
wouldn't have another programming opportunity until 3 years later when we got
a C64.

~~~
madengr
Ha ha, I'm 42 and always wanted a BigTrak too. I finally bought one a couple
years ago when they remade them. Sucks though it does not have the dump wagon
accessory.

[http://www.bigtrakxtr.co.uk/home](http://www.bigtrakxtr.co.uk/home)

------
bsder
There are two perceived problems with hiring older programmers:

1) Older programmers won't put up with bullshit. They expect to have
reasonable goals, be listened to, be compensated fairly, and have a reasonable
schedule. They've been around the block enough to identify bullshit and will
leave when it starts getting too high.

2) Older programmers really don't always understand the "cool" social crap
that teenagers are into this year (for good reason--most of it is garbage).
Unfortunately, most of what Silicon Valley is interested in is "cool" social
crap so that they can get a big buzz and flip the company to Google or
Facebook.

Funnily enough, companies that value that silly thing known as "profit" are
quite happy to hire older programmers. It's just a function of Silicon Valley
not believing in profit that is causing the ageism.

~~~
Tohhou
Then the "problem" should be self correcting assuming the companies which make
money survive (which they do), and those which don't focus on making money
evaporate (which they do). Or maybe it's not a "problem" if only some
companies are doing it, because they value things which the older people don't
have interest in, and so the older people self select themselves out by
choice.

Is there a list of companies which value profit so the people who complain
about the "problem" (from companies most likely to not be around after too
long) can go work for them?

~~~
sunir
B2B software vales profit and only profit. A cursory list:

[http://directory.thesmallbusinessweb.com](http://directory.thesmallbusinessweb.com)

~~~
davidgerard
Yep. The money is in doing boring and useful stuff. Also boring. And very,
very boring. But crikey, the money. "Where there's muck, there's brass."

------
jowiar
One of the biggest indirect causes of ageism I've seen is the traditional
career path forced many engineers out of engineering - there is/was an
attitude at places like IBM of: "If you want to make bank, you need to go into
management or sales". Years later, an engineering crunch makes engineering
into "where the money is", but you largely lost a generation of technical
experience that took a break of a decade or two.

My father got lucky in that he was successful in his transition out of
engineering, and was 67 by the time his position went extinct, but there are a
whole bunch of folks who would rather have been engineers than otherwise, but
ended up missing out on a couple decades where the daily tasks of building
software changed dramatically so gained less in technical expertise than they
should have, and were left hanging around age 50.

I have a ton of cultural criticisms of the current tech industry, but the one
thing that it is absolutely getting right is valuing creation. The damage that
could have been caused by the Google/Apple cartel has been limited largely by
the startup industry that, for all its faults, has as a crucial belief that
the act of building things is valuable, and that people who make things are
the ones who create the most value.

~~~
Zenst
You mention IBM, one aspect that always bugged me was upto the mid 80's they
had a thing about people with beards and was some sort of unwitten policey
(never worked for them) that nobody could have a beard and any intervewing
with them entailed making sure you had a good shave. I worked with a chap at
RAND who went onto work for IBM porting AIX onto the mainframe (least that was
the initial project he was joing for) and was somewhat begrudged that he would
have to shave his beard of just to get the job irespective of his ability.

That has all changed and yet back then was accepted standards from what I
could tell. More a insight into culture change but I have not heard of any
agisim culture inside IBM before or now, just a beard thing, which has passed.

With that anybody have any insight as to any agisim aspects inside IBM past or
present?

~~~
Taek
I worked as an intern at IBM last summer. It seemed like my entire team was a
stagnant pool from the 70's. The languages were C and HLASM, 'high level
assembler.' None of my managers knew anything about newer languages like
Golang or Haskell. We built hash tables by converting strings to integers and
then using modulus. They laughed at the idea of a Linux machine being useful
as a server.

That said, most of the new hires were under 25, and most of the older people
had been employees since the age of 25. But definitely the older people got
all the respect.

IBM's full time offer to me was a solid 1/2 of Google's offer after stock and
bonuses (over 2 years), with no room for negotiation.

~~~
pvdm
How old are the creators of Golang and Haskell ?

~~~
gaadd33
Ken Thompson is 71, Rob Pike is ~58, Haskell creators seem to be in their mid
50s.

------
zomgbbq
I'm a 40+ engineer in the NYC metro area and I've never felt more in-demand in
my life! I think it boils down to a simple idea: computer-science is a dynamic
field and THE FUN PART is that you need to always be learning.

There are still some colleagues my age who still wax about the days of writing
JCL for their mainframe jobs and never evolved past the 80's and perhaps they
gave a bad name for others who built on their of years of experience with
evolving knowledge.

I decided in 2009 to specialize in mobile, when I realized how impossible it
was for the startup I was working for to find any high throughput engineers,
let alone high throughput engineers with niche expertise in mobile. I think it
is an advantage in some ways during interviews that I can talk about decades
of awesome projects I worked on while also being among the first to ship an
iPhone app or a top ranking iPad app.

As they say, luck is when preparation meets opportunity. It's my job to make
myself lucky.

~~~
nostromo
That's reassuring, but... What's the average retirement age in the US? 60? And
here we are consoling ourselves about still being in-demand at the ripe old
age of 40.

~~~
gaoshan
Keep in mind that most of us aren't earning pensions and our 401Ks are earning
peanuts so retirement at 60 effectively means "living on social security and
whatever you managed to scrape together". Retirement will mean poverty for a
great many people, I fear.

~~~
zevyoura
If your 401k was earning peanuts over the last year, you were doing something
very wrong.

------
ascendantlogic
Here's the thing, the software-is-eating-the-world explosion really took off
in the early 90's (or at least that's when myself and a bunch of friends I
knew got into it). All the people that got into writing software back then are
aging and most that I know aren't planning to stop. I myself am on the
doorstep of my 36th birthday. For those of us that have slogged it out for
multiple decades now aren't simply going to go sit at home and wish we were 20
again. The sheer number of aging engineers will cause this problem to reach a
breaking point. Those of us that have been instilled with the "disrupt the
establishment" ethos in the 90's and 2000's will find a new industry to
disrupt...our own.

~~~
colmmacc
For a long time I looked around at the relative lack of 40+ developers and
founders in my field and considered it worrisome; what will I do when I get to
that age? do I need a massive bank of savings just in case?

But I think it's also easy to see it as an opportunity. We are staggeringly
lucky generation; software is the future and it isn't going the way of mass
automation or obsolescence any time soon. There is probably another two
hundred years of foundational innovation left in the field, we're still just
scratching the surface of information theory and what's possible. Experience
is likely to increase in value.

As individuals; by cultivating just a little higher order thinking, and seeing
above the surface layer of raw code, it shouldn't be hard to offer meaningful
value and insight for the remainder of one's lifetime. I don't think the key
is learning to "adapt", progressing from one fad language or technique to
another, so much as it is to see the similarities between these fads and to
understand them at a higher level of abstraction. To understand that SOA
programming is the same thing as micro-kernels, or CSP, for example, and to
seem to offer new wisdom by regurgitating the old.

In that spirit, I've observed that the successful senior engineers I've come
to know don't decry constant change, but constant same-ness.

~~~
ilaksh
Interesting points but a few things I disagree with. Its not so much about
offering meaningful insight as it is about being a bro you can hang out
with..in a lot of cases..I.e. fitting in with the "culture". So I think the
slightly older guys are going to have to find common ground to band together
on because they aren't going to mesh culturally with the youngsters
necessarily. Other thing about two hundred year, humans will be irrelevant
within 40 years, and software development, if we were able to see into the
future, will basically look like magic.. for example direct manifestations of
simulated realtime imaginations of a multiperson via programmable matter.

~~~
theorique
_Its not so much about offering meaningful insight as it is about being a bro
you can hang out with..in a lot of cases..I.e. fitting in with the "culture"._

People are talking about this a lot in the context of women too - is this
"cultural fit" expectation keeping women out of the profession?

I think women _in general_ are equally able to hang and be a bro, but in some
cases it means they need to adapt, and some women are resistant to operating
in a masculine space.

------
daveqr
Guess what, there's a lot of software being written by people not in their 20s
in places like Kansas City, Boston and Nashville. The world doesn't revolve
around Silicon Valley.

~~~
gamegoblin
Yyyyep. Step into one of Walmart's cubicle farms in Bentonville, Arkansas and
it's mostly middle aged folks hacking away in C# and VB.

~~~
Kerrick
Or step into somewhere like my workplace in downtown St. Louis, a skyscraper
built in 1911 renovated into modern offices.

The bootstrapped, 6-year-old former startup I work for is filled with people
from their 20s on up past 50s making, selling, and supporting Software as a
Service, with the developers hacking away at a RESTful API and Ember.js apps.
Plus, we share the building with Kickstarted startups like Pixel Press, VC-
funded startups like TrakBill, etc. and we're a couple blocks from an
incubator + coworking space with 80 startups at every stage.

Being away from Silicon Valley doesn't make you automatically boring, or a
cubicle farm, or even full of old people

~~~
collyw
So having all the buzzwords is what makes you cool?

"RESTful API", "Ember.js apps", "Software as a Service", "sharing the building
with kickstarted start ups".

------
fecak
Ageism is a real problem, but in my opinion ageism is often cited by job
seekers where the problem is something else entirely. In tech, there seems to
be quite a bit of discrimination today against employees who have worked for
many years at the same position, and that discrimination is typically aimed at
large environments. Startups seem to be ok with hiring older engineers who
bounced around and worked in startups in the past, but they usually won't give
much consideration to a 50 year old who developer has spent the last 25 years
at an insurance company or major bank.

Take two 50 year old engineers. The one who has had 10 jobs over the past 25
years is considered infinitely more employable than the one with 25 years at
the same department of the same company.

This case isn't ageism, it's the expectation of career stagnation, yet many of
those engineers with that 25 year tenure think it is. It's a leftover from the
days when loyalty was tied to tenure, and loyalty was valued highly in the
hiring criteria. Those days are over. Loyalty is nice, but loyalty that
negatively impacts your career options (no learning or improving, inability to
use marketable tech skills, etc) is foolish.

~~~
vonmoltke
That makes a presumption that someone who spent 25 years at the same employer
stagnated. I spent nearly 10 years at my first employer, but in that time I
had three different positions. On my resume I have started listing it as three
separate positions, which seems to confuse some people but is an accurate
portrayal of my time there. I do not think one employer == one role is an
accurate assumption and that "10 jobs over the past 25 years" vs. '25 years at
the same department of the same company" is a false dichotomy that assumes
people like me do not exist.

~~~
fecak
I'm not saying the assumption is fair, and there are certainly exemptions. I'm
saying that startups tend to assume that if you've been at the same place for
25 years, there is a reason for that, and the reason is usually negative.

When you say 'people like me', keep in mind that just because you have had
three different roles at one company in itself doesn't mean you didn't
stagnate, just as the person with ten jobs may have stagnated.

All assumptions have some danger, and I'm not condoning the behavior. I think
it's valuable to explain to people who feel they are being discriminated
against based on age may be more likely associated with stagnation (actual or
assumed) based on extended tenure.

~~~
vonmoltke
Yes, and I think that bias is (quasi-)ageism.

I'm certainly not saying that someone who has held multiple positions has not
stagnated, either, simply that fundamentally the only difference between me
and someone who worked for three different companies but had the same roles as
I did is merely the company nameplate. To make different assumptions based
solely on that is illogical.

~~~
fecak
It's quasi-ageism, I guess, in that junior level workers are difficult to
accuse of stagnation. So although junior level workers may stagnate, it may be
assumed that they didn't yet. I've seen devs in their early 30s as victims of
this stagnation assumption (10 years in some traditional industry).

------
pbiggar
More for the rest of us. If you're too old for most startups to look twice at
your resume, apply to CircleCI:
[https://circleci.com/jobs](https://circleci.com/jobs). We value experience,
and our backend is even written in Lisp [1].

[1] As we all know, all greybeards use Lisp ;)

~~~
gaadd33
Do you guys use Weblocks or Clack or something similar?

~~~
pbiggar
We use Clojure (I'm informed that Lips-with-a-capital-L might mean something
different than that, in which case I apologize for my lack of purity and bad
nomenclature.)

------
sulam
The author of this piece contacted me and at least two other co-workers of
mine who are identifiably over 40 asking us to comment on this subject. I told
him I thought there is a simple mathematical reason why the industry skews
young -- we are hiring as rapidly as we can in most cases. Of course, as is
too common in journalism, his story was already built and he was only
searching for confirmation of it.

What's the distribution of software engineers by decade across a 40-year
range? Is anyone here willing to argue that it's completely flat? Of course
not, there are far more SWEs in their 20's than in their 60's.

I have never once had my age be an issue at work or in an interview. My resume
clearly states my work experience, and goes back 20 years. I don't have to
hide anything, and I don't expect I ever will. Am I willing to believe there
are employers out there who try to discriminate by age? Of course there are,
just like there are fraudulent companies you could work for, sexist assholes
you could work for, etc.

None of these matter because you don't have to work for these people. As a
competent engineer your skills are in demand, and you get to pick where you'd
like to work. If you aren't a competent engineer, no amount of plastic surgery
will get you hired, and please stop using your age as an excuse.

------
jroseattle
I've been hiring for our engineering team recently, and for us ageism is a
very real thing that we try to combat. But it's not what one might expect.
We're building a team of experienced engineers, and experience is key.
Zuckerberg made his comment in 2007, but I bet he has highly refined his
thinking since then.

We look at engineer hiring to determine what's valuable, and what's teachable.
Do we want our engineers to be current? Yes, but only reasonably so. Anyone
who has been around long enough will recognize that most currently popular
technologies in use as tools of the trade are simply iterations on ideas that
have existed for a long time. Any individual who thinks we're in the dawn of
some amazing age where the tools are only understood by a certain generation
is, for lack of a better word, foolish.

So, for us being current is really just status at a point-in-time. It's
entirely teachable (or better yet, learnable.) But what's valuable?
Understanding your trade is important to us, but having real experiences under
your belt is super-critical.

Have you ever run a large-scale operation where your code was mission-
critical? That's important to us. Ever been responsible for deployment that
required zero downtime? That's important. Ever had to ship code and the
difference between success and failure meant revenue and jobs? That's
important. Ever actually done more than one thing besides
{web/mobile/admin/etc.}? That's important.

So, we try to combat ageism by ensuring we give young folks a chance. Not
everyone gets that opportunity, but we do so sparingly when we feel such an
investment is worth our time, money and effort.

~~~
taude
Wise thoughts here, especially on "reasonably current" and teachable.. I share
similar characteristics in what I look for in engineering hires, especially
when certain aspects of the tech landscape change so quickly. Especially
around "programming language" requirements: I don't really care if you know
Ruby/python/PHP/JAVA so much as you've worked in a high-up time scalable
environment, working in large code bases, with solid tech design chops, you'll
fill in the 'language' requirement pretty quickly if you're actually the right
type of person to hire. Even more so if you're motivated and have a strong
desire to work with our tech stack...

------
briantakita
Some companies are addicted to long hours & naive employees.

It's also a natural progression of an engineer to start off as an employee &
then take an independent identity. So it's common to see older engineers
become consultants & business owners; who then hire the younger, cheaper, more
impressionable employees.

------
musesum
Maybe I'm an outlier; I'm a 55+ engineer working at a mobile startup. Maybe
not; 20% of Google's employees are >55, according to a Kissmetrics chart. But,
who knows maybe the 55+ crowd at Google consist of only geniuses and janitors.

I see an old/young tradeoff between pattern recognition and fluid
intelligence.

Maybe why some older developers show less enthusiasm for the next really
"awesome" idea is that is really isn't that new. Maybe the older developer has
already learned the hard way the downside of the Dunning-Kruger affect, where:
the more you know, the more you know what you don't know.

On the other side of the coin, maybe older developers have a blind spot
towards opportunities that have failed in the past. Because the timing wasn't
right. Because the audience wasn't ready or the infrastructure was premature.
The secret of a good joke (and startups) is timing.

Perhaps some startups are best structured like a team sport; with both younger
players at the peak of their brilliance and with older players that can both
play and coach.

~~~
waveman2
> maybe older developers have a blind spot towards opportunities that have
> failed in the past

Yes. A lot of things have to come together for something to work. Something
can fail many times before succeeding. A little irrational optimism can be a
good thing. Hitting the ground running at the exact moment is very
challenging.

~~~
musesum
Many times it is blind enthusiasm. My first exposure to that was being
surrounded by VC's in 1983 who wanted to invest in our company. We had one of
two project management systems, in the market, that worked on an IBM PC. By
1985, there were over 140 competitors. 140; that's a lot of developers hitting
the ground running.

------
kokey
I think ageism is only an issue for the parts of the technology industry
that's attractive to young people. There are also the other massive parts of
the technology industry that's simply less visible or interesting to young
people because it's not 'cool', like in banking, aviation and defense. A
multinational bank's IT arm easily employ the same number of people than, say,
Apple. The problems these industries face are complex and challenging. These
are industries where experience counts. I see being 45 and wanting to work in
a Silicon Valley internet startup industry being a bit like being a 45 year
old who wants to try make it in the chart music industry. You'll need that
botox.

------
super_mario
Agism? I don't think so. I have over 20 years of "real world" (who counts any
more) experience (cut my teeth in 6502 assembler at age 10) and the real truth
is that I am too expensive, and not too old for majority of companies out
there let alone startups.

Take your average 20 something year old hot shot highly sought after
programmer, well I make 3 times as much as him. As soon as that little tidbit
of information is out of the bag, I'm suddenly "too old" or would not be "good
cultural fit" for the budding startup.

Sad thing is, it's true. Most of the companies these days are not really
solving hard core problems any more and don't really need someone of my level
of expertise and skills (how many are in the guts of an OS, databasse or
compiler, or need their server performance insanely tight). Most are hoping to
disrupt Facebook or Twitter, and for that "social" stuff kids who don't know
what they are worth are better suited anyway.

------
mwfunk
I dunno. I can think of three ways in which an older developer might have a
hard time finding a job:

(1) If someone doesn't keep up with currently relevant technology, they will
find themselves without the job skills that employers are looking for,
regardless of whatever other qualities they may have. This isn't ageism.

(2) If someone works at the same place for 10+ years, getting raises every
year and becoming more and more valuable because of their knowledge of the
innards of one or more huge codebases that are specific to that company,
they're likely to have a hard time finding another job doing something
different that pays as much or more. It's very easy for people to settle into
a routine for many years that doesn't necessarily carry over to another job.
Someone in this situation might have to take a pay cut (maybe a big one) to
start from square one doing something else at another company. This is an
unfortunate reality of being a software developer, but it also isn't ageism.

(3) If a really young entrepreneur is hiring for their startup, and they
haven't had the life experience to develop the maturity and insight to avoid
being biased towards hiring people who are just like them, it is possible that
they will favor a younger developer over an older developer based on age
alone. They may not even be aware that they're doing it, they might just feel
like all other things being equal, the younger developer is a better fit for
the company. This could be ageism sometimes, and it's very unfortunate when it
is.

(1) and (2) are the perils of having a long career as a developer. Employers
who don't hire someone because of these reasons are making rational hiring
decisions; they're not making decisions based on being biased against someone
because of their age.

I don't know how often (3) happens though. I could see it being a problem in
SF, where I've heard the job market is disproportionately composed of
startups. I don't think it's like that in the South Bay (at least not to the
same degree), where there are tons of large and established companies that are
less likely to do this.

~~~
balls187
#3 is against the law in the US.

~~~
humanrebar
It's not illegal to pass up a 39 year old because of his or her age.

~~~
balls187
True, Age 40 and above are protected.

------
eadlam
Isn't it obvious that adolescent startup founders wouldn't want to hire
adults? That would be a complete role reversal of their entirely lifes
experience with adults.

I'm also not surprised that investors are biased. As a group, they are just
people with money. That feature doesn't preclude them from being unreasonable
in the way (one would hope) being an engineer implies a certain level of
objective rationality...

What does surprise me is the fear that is apparently spreading among aging
engineers. You didn't get where you are by being afraid. Every problem you've
ever solved proves your ability to bend systems to your will. You design your
own fate. Don't make yourself vulnerable by believing anything else.

</rant>

On a more practical note, if college students had more opportunity to team up
with older professionals on small co-owned projects, I think that would go a
long way toward bridging the gap. Exposure is key. That's like, behavior
therapy 101.

------
Fr0styMatt
I wonder if this is a 'Valley' or just a 'Startup' thing as it doesn't seem
too common here in Australia in the part of the industry that I work in
(defence and now gaming); though maybe I'm just lucky and have been in the
right parts.

We have a massive age range all the way from 20 to 60 (I guess), with most of
the better engineers in their 30s-40s it seems, though to be honest you
wouldn't really know unless you asked - there are guys here that you wouldn't
guess were 40.

Personally I know I'm a far better engineer now in my mid-30s than I was in my
20s and to be honest I STILL feel like a beginner excited to finally find his
feet. I don't see this stopping anytime soon. I don't want to get into
management and luckily don't have to and I'm sure at 45 I'll be a far better
software engineer than I am now (well, I sure hope so at least :) ).

------
erddojo
These stories are starting to wear thin.

The people in SF/SV building apps are mostly in their 20s-30s.

The people building cool technology are mostly in their 40s-50s.

~~~
tsunamifury
This generalization is so impossible to make its laughable.

I know 20 year olds making brain wave analysis breakthroughs and 50 year olds
making poker apps. And the reverse.

Great work knows no age.

~~~
mattgreenrocks
> Great work knows no age.

And there's not enough of it to go around.

------
danso
I don't really get the pragmatism behind ageism in tech entrepreneurship. That
is, in a field in which human abilities are augmented by ever-more faster
computing, and in which ideas, experience, and relationships would seemingly
be as important (if not much _more_ ) as youthful energy...how is it logical
that its best people would solely be among sub-30-year olds? It just doesn't
make any sense.

~~~
ascendantlogic
It's not a capability thing. It's a make-you-work-more-hours-for-less-money-
than-the-older-engineer thing.

~~~
adamnemecek
But why do they care so much about hours and not about output? I would kind of
understand if this was for some web technologies since older devs might not be
up to speed with the latest compile-to-JS language but I can't imagine that
someone who has been writing say C++ for the last 20 years would not perform
better than someone fresh out of school.

~~~
UK-AL
Most starts ups aren't using C++. 90% of starts up do the "latest compile-to-
JS language" thing.

~~~
na85
That's because 90% of startups have only the most shallow bit of innovation
going on, but they want to seem hip and au currant.

So they use whatever the latest angular clone is.

~~~
invalidOrTaken
I think a much more charitable interpretation flies: there is a reason people
invent new technology (it's better on at least one dimension than the old),
and startups aren't held back by legacy considerations.

------
zxcvvcxz
As a young person, this is ridiculous. Assuming I was a founder that could
afford to hire people, I'd kill to have older and experienced engineers to
learn from, and work for me. I don't care if they can only work 9-5 weekdays,
that's probably more productive hours than the 80 hr/week young people I see
with less experience playing table tennis and mixing social time with work
time. Not that I'd reverse-discriminate or anything, but why not favor proven
track records over young age as a starting point?

The story about Ionic seems a little ridiculous. And while I sympathize for
Stamos, surely there must be more than age being the difference for raising
funding. Even if it is a big factor - I can't imagine all VCs being idiots,
seeing a better product in an obviously valuable market and then passing.

------
jmspring
Fourty plus segment here, work in a group where the average age is actually
mid-30s despite a couple of junior people. Some of us are generalists, some
specialists, all have kept abreast of assorted technologies as our careers
have progressed.

The narrowest experience is actually amongst the mid/late 20 somethings in our
group. I'm not sure if it is that lack of systems experience, not much
exposure to C and lower level languages, or what, but they need more mentoring
than what I recall needing at the same age.

I'm currently doing that for a couple of them and it is actually both
challenging and interesting. Challenging mainly in how to convey tasks, teach
them troubleshooting (without the hand holding), and a few other items.
Interesting because we all learn differently and seeing how others approach
problems either reminds me of my own trials or forces me to think out of the
box on how to explain things.

Personally, I've always been a bit of a control freak when it comes to
development -- I want to know system level through whatever level I am
developing at. This often includes system administration, database management,
etc. This has become much more challenging as new technologies come about --
so in those cases, say NoSQL, I will focus on one or two solutions rather than
trying to understand each. Build a basis for the concepts, where it is useful,
and then test, collect data and reevaluate.

------
stefan_kendall3
This article might more aptly be titled the brutal ageism of silicon valley.
Or perhaps the brutal ageism of startups.

There are red flags that you can easily spot in a job interview or job posting
that indicate that the employer wants 80-hour weeks. And who signs up for
80-hour weeks? Naive young people who don't value their time and don't have
other commitments, like side projects or family.

~~~
jedanbik
Red flags like what?

~~~
stefan_kendall3
"We work on very hard deadlines" "Looking for someone with energy to manage
all aspects of" "We have a fast pace of development" "We want someone
completely dedicated to the vision"

It's easier to gauge over the phone or in person. It's often the way things
are said that act as a trigger. If a founder works 60-80 hour weeks, it's
going to be expected that you will too.

------
balls187
Hearing disparaging remarks about "greybeards" pisses me off something fierce.

Much of my early career success can be attributed to working with many senior
engineers who taught me a lot very quickly, given their knowledge and
experience.

There is also reverence/nostalgia for "pioneers" in my field. It's fun to
tease them about punchcards, but it's also great to hear their stories about
their experiences when they first started as programmers.

Then again I'm 33 so my opinion no longer matters.

------
ghaff
If I were an SV employment lawyer, I'd be making a copy of the "careers" page
referenced in that article. I suspect that would look very very bad as Exhibit
A in an age discrimination case against the company in general. Sure, there
_could_ be other interpretations (maybe) but...

------
austinz
Is the stuff they talk about in the article true? Devs discussing banging
girls over the weekend and having NSFW conversations that sound like they were
ripped out of a 3 AM freshman dorm room filled with marijuana haze? Code
filled with variable names that would make a 13 year old titter? I work for a
well known SV tech company in a group with many NCGs, but neither me or my
coworkers would for a moment consider any of the above acceptable behavior in
a professional environment. I also worked at a startup, but it was more
hardware focused and filled with older engineers (and was slightly more button
down than typical). I honestly can't tell if these stories are journalistic
hyperbole, or actual things that happen in a part of the tech sector that I've
never seen before.

------
specialk
Is a twenty-something founder going to hire people twice their age in the
early days of their company? Unlikely.Twenty-something founders hire people
they know, who are usually their own age. Friends from college, or the other
twenty-somethings from their last company.

As a early-twenty-something I only know a relatively small number of engineers
30+, and have only worked with a handful. Compare that to the dozens of
engineers my own old that I know, and have worked on projects together. If I
founded a company tomorrow I know which 4 friends from college I would want on
my team, they're all other twenty-somethings.

The only engineers over 25 I have worked with (excluding open source projects)
were my bosses at previous companies. I simply wouldn't know who to hire.
Anyway, would any self-respecting engineer take a job at a company found by
one of their interns or recent graduates from a few years back? I highly doubt
it.

In my hypothetical would I really hire someone who was twice my age? Probably
not. To be honest I'd be afraid of their experience. I'd feel maybe their my
training wheels. They have a lot more experience than me, will their
experience take over my company's vision. Part of the mentality as a twenty-
something founder is proving yourself, be that to your colleagues, your peers,
your parents, or whoever said you just wouldn't make it.

I find it hard to find other twenty-somethings hiring many people twice their
age in the early days. Maybe without even realising it a culture similar to
that of college creeps in. Every new hire creates culture, and from my
hypothetical I don't have a very diverse team to start with if I start with
college friends and other twenty-somethings.

Somewhere in the early days no one seems to be spotting the 'culture' problem
start-ups are creating. Was this problem unintentionally created? Or was this
problem created sub-consciously created intentionally? Would I as a twenty-
something founder sub-conciously create a company where my Dad or my even my
cool Uncle wouldn't want to work at? Probably.

~~~
kasey_junk
This is spot on, and as an experienced dev I can tell you the other side. It's
not just the culture problem, it's what can you possibly offer me to come work
with you in your early stage startup?

I demand a very high premium for the work I do for others, and if I were going
to start my own business, I wouldn't hire inexperienced people to do it with.
I know the people I need to know to get financing/sales/engineering/etc. and
they all have proven successful track records. At best you could bring passion
and new ideas, at worst your college culture would creep in.

Don't get me wrong. I enjoy working in environments with younger developers.
Mentoring new developers is one of the most rewarding things I do. But my
employers have me do it because hiring young folks is a cost of doing
business.

That said, I don't think anybody is worried about ageism creeping into 3
person ramen startups. The issue is 2 fold A) if your startup becomes
successful enough to need my expertise, and you don't hire me because you
don't see the value of experience, that is bad for both of us. B) There
currently seems to be severe bias in SV investors against older founders
and/or startups that employ early stage experienced folks. Paul Graham has
this bias and is proud of it. That is the ageism that gets me upset.

Finally, I will say, writing good software is a craft. Like all crafts,
learning from experienced craftsmen is central to getting good at it. If
writing good software is something that is important to you (it needn't be,
and might even be detrimental) you need to go meet and work with older
developers.

------
nickbauman
I'm over 40. I feel like I'm doing the best work of my life right now. Maybe
that's an indictment of my past work, but until the last few years, I wasn't
doing anything with ML, with AI/Planning or Operations Research, Expert
Systems, hardware-software interfaces etc. Now I'm doing those things. I was
doing LoB software mostly: moving data from a database into a screen and back
again.

In order to do new kinds of work, I had to turn down jobs for the boring stuff
I knew I could do. I chose to work on stuff that scared me.

So: work on things that scare you. Things that you find mysterious. Things
where the machine teaches YOU, not the other way around.

Sooner than later.

------
holdenc
Who's more unemployable -- an older developer? Or, an older developer with
noticeable plastic surgery? I suppose there's some truth in the article, but
most older developers, or even just technically astute individuals, that I
know would never consider plastic surgery. And, as an aside, most older
developers I know would never settle for the younger developer lifestyle of
sacrificing their free-time and non-tech-relationships all for some street
cred, adventure and a healthy paycheck. Good older developers I know are just
interested in different things.

------
kabdib
Older workers, while more experienced, are also more expensive. You can't hire
a 40 or 50 yo hacker for what you can pay someone a few years out of college.

On the other hand there is a basic cost to each employee regardless of salary,
so the higher pay is not proportionally as high as comparing salaries.

On the gripping hand, older employees often have families, who incur more
expense for health care and so on. You can expect older people to have health
issues on their own, too. This is a fairly big deal in the US, where the
health care payment system is broken.

------
kevinalexbrown
Perhaps the question we should be asking is why talent doesn't seem to
increase with age as much as we'd like. Let's assume for a minute that the age
bias is important and useful. Why is that?

More importantly, what could we do to facilitate an increase in creativity or
productivity or 'talent' over time? The fact that we don't has a huge impact
on the kinds of things society achieve.

I don't think it's correct to just say "brains get less flexible" and give up.
Most Nobel Prize winners (even in theoretical physics) tend to do their prize-
winning work after this cutoff (I believe average is 40+). I suspect it has to
do with the fact that scientists frequently have to shift the problems they're
looking at as they go from grad student to postdoc, and grant to grant.

If I had to guess, I would say that it's not biological age, but time spent in
a particular field that suggests how big a breakthrough you can make, because
you get stuck thinking in a particular way. If young people have an audacity
that lets them tackle new problems, we might focus on how to preserve that
audacity as we get older by making it easier to switch fields.

~~~
jared314
> The question we should be asking is why talent doesn't seem to increase with
> age as much as we'd like.

This question has been answered many times before. People are re-solving the
exact same problems with a new framework, platform, or language every two to
five years, sometimes less. The "solved problems" never seem to stay solved.

Alan Kay had a good point when he said the last 25 years (now 35 years) have
been more about pop culture than actual engineering[1].

[1]
[https://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=1039523](https://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=1039523)

------
jayd16
Maybe I'm just some young punk but I have a clear picture of the "old man"
engineer I don't enjoy working with. I will say when you were born has very
little to do with what makes you that old man, though.

I'd say its the "I'm too old for this shit", attitude. If you want to get in
early and leave early that's fine but If you don't put in extra hours, there
will be decisions made when everyone else is in the office and you went home.
Then you bitch and moan like its ageism but they're asking the team to conform
to their hours and that's just not going to happen.

Plus there are plenty of people who have the "I've been doing it this way for
XYZ." Don't tell me innovation stopped when you got the Sr. in your title. If
you're coding in Java and refuse to type your collections, I hate you.

If you click with the team and have gray hair, I'll love to learn from you.

------
mhewett
Having been a "young developer" and now an "old developer" (mid-50s) here is
how I see the pros and cons of older developers:

Pros of being older: 1\. Wisdom from having written a million lines of code
and having run into all the bugs before. 2\. Can more capably see the pros and
cons of the latest fads. 3\. Not as distracted by the need to play. 4\. Don't
drink as much (the younger generation drinks a LOT! 5\. Capable of providing
adult leadership.

Cons: 1\. Even those of us in excellent shape just don't have the energy we
used to. 2\. Family distractions lead to lack of free time to keep up with new
developments. 3\. Family distractions lead to more errors. 4\. We are sure
we've seen everything already. (And boy are we wrong!).

All in all, my next startup is definitely going to have a mixture of wise,
seasoned hands and energetic young devs.

------
maguay
Could it be that young founders feel more comfortable with employees their age
or younger, and that older developers give young founders a sense of impostor
syndrome? That seems as likely a reason for this phenomenon in new, small
startups as anything.

------
LordHumungous
Only idiotic Silicon Valley startups don't hire old workers. Everyone else
knows the old fogies are some of the best engineers around.

------
dhughes
About ten years ago I went to an IT job fair while I was in first year CS I
had gone late in life so at 32 I felt I was finally doing the right thing. I
thought maybe I could get some tips maybe even get a job even just
apprentice/intern, anything.

Well I could have run around the job fair naked and on fire and I bet I still
couldn't get anyone look at me.

One local CS professor not mine he was the other one at the Uni didn't even
look up or acknowledge me. What's a hoot is he was older than me smoked weed
and partied with his students, talk about having a mid-life crisis.

------
varelse
If they'd spend the time they spent getting botox on Coursera or in youtube
lectures learning the current skills that are in demand, they might just see a
better result.

Pushing 50 and it frickin' works for me...

------
xupybd
What we need is a movement of `experienced` devs to get out there and form
some companies that employ mainly older devs. I'm sure the quality from such a
company would be incredible.

~~~
mattgreenrocks
They exist, but they don't emit quite as much noise as SV companies do. :)

~~~
TinyBig
Do you have any recommendations on where to look for these companies? I figure
they must be out there but I am not sure where to look.

~~~
mattgreenrocks
I found my gig by putting this on my SO Careers page: "I'm looking for a
challenging position requiring significant programming expertise; preferably
involving systems-level programming and/or CS theory". Open source work
helped.

Older technologists are out there, but they're a bit nomadic.

------
microcolonel
Is this even really such a specific issue? Good businesspeople will not throw
away enormous potential value, regardless of its origins, less competent
businesspeople will make the less competent judgements of ageism, racism,
sexism etc. at the cost of their business.

There are a lot of crappy businesspeople willing to toss the plasticity of
young employees, and the experience of older employees away; these are the
people we hopefully aren't giving venture funds until they figure things out.

------
karcass
From where I sit, I can't figure out if this is a real thing or just hype. I'm
45, and had exactly zero trouble switching jobs recently, becoming employee
#15 (developer #5) at a startup that just did its A-round. They said they
liked the fact that I had done a bunch of different stuff, including founding
a company in the 90's, and that I had an obvious passion for what they were
doing. So, I'm not (yet) freaking out about the bits of gray in my beard.

------
c0mpute
Personally, my experience in the valley (being hired as well hiring people)
has been not been guided by age. My experience has been with the startup since
it was at 50 member to well over 100 now.

I am in early 30s, which means I am mostly interviewing for senior engineering
position. I have been part of teams where we have made offers to several folks
older than I am for similar or higher position. This is the only time when age
does come up for discussion (is he really qualified to be a senior or not?)

However, some patterns I do notice from time to time are:

\- Younger folks are more eager at times to do more.

\- Their enthusiasm also comes with quality of work that needs some additional
care. But, it is critical we mentor them during these times.

\- Older folks are generally more clear on what they want to work and how they
want to solve a problem. Experience most likely.

\- The really bad situation to be in is when some of the older (senior) folks
don't drive and take initiatives and just wade through. With someone senior
you want them to be there to mentor, help, guide, keep an eye out on many
things, but we have seen a few senior folks who don't make that effort - This
is probably the #1 problem I have seen in teams. A sense of agility is almost
vital.

\- I have seen the same lack of "drive" amongst some younger devs as well.

\- End of the day, its not age, its almost the subject scale of how passionate
they are about their work that has worked for us. Old/young is really
irrelevant.

------
socrates1998
As a person going through a career change, ageism is something I am sort of
concerned with. If it takes me a few years to become "good" at what I am
doing, I am really pushing being considered "old" in the tech industry.

However, I really think it is a money issue that is subconsciously present in
how the tech industry hires or funds people. It's much cheaper to hire/fund a
23 year old than it is a 33 year old.

23 year olds negotiate a lot worse. They are easier to manipulate and take
advantage of. You can convince a 23 year old to take a cut in salary for "huge
potential". A 33 year old with 10 years of experience will have been fooled a
few times and be much less willing to take a bad deal.

Also, there is a misconception that the 23 year old has comparable skills to
the 33 year old.

If the 23 year old has been coding since he was 15, then he has 8 years
"experience". We all know that is sort of bullshit. While some teenagers take
coding seriously, it's a lot different than working on a real project with
deadlines, customers, and "It has to work" attitude.

So, the hirer/funder convinces himself that the younger person has similar
skills AND will be easier to guide or manipulate.

It's not just in tech that this happens, but it is more prevalent because tech
is such a fasting changing and relatively young industry.

I mean, at one point, railroads were the latest thing and people starting
railroad companies were young guys full of piss and vinegar.

I think as time goes on, you will see a gradual changing of attitudes, but it
has surprised me how long this prejudice has stayed.

------
hartator
I am hearing a lot of stories about why youngster are overrated but not really
a lot the other way around.

Maybe it's an unpopular opinion here.

In reality, young people are less paid than older counterparts in almost every
economic sectors for the same skills. I mean that'a known truth! Silicon
valley is the opposite? Good for the them.

I think there is 2 strong biases against older founders that might explain the
situation:

1) The man is not a programmer and don't have a feeling for high tech stuff. I
know founders here in Paris in their forties. They are starting web startups
while not even knowing how to connect to wifi! But because they are old and
have connections, they get funding! You are telling me in the valley it is the
exact opposite? It seems just fair to me!

2) The man is a programmer and a good one. In their forties, you might expect
him to make something like 350k and have a good title like CTO or lead
developer. Why he will risk everything to start a new company? I can
understand why people feels it's odd. Maybe there is a 1:20 odds to make it so
he must aim for at least $7m to make any financial sense to him. Or maybe he
is not a good programmer.

~~~
valleyer
> In their forties, you might expect him to make something like 350k and have
> a good title like CTO or lead developer.

What? There are quite obviously not as many CTO or "lead developer" positions
as there are junior engineering positions. So why are you assuming that
everyone that old must have such a great job?

------
blisterpeanuts
There are a lot of comments here about competence of software developers at
various ages and levels of experience.

However, the New Republic article was more about technology entrepreneurs who
aren't necessarily coders or engineers in the traditional sense.

These entrepreneurs and the VCs who seek them out and fund them tend to have a
bias toward youth, because there have been some stunning success stories among
the young, as laid out in the article and in many comments here (Torvalds,
Wozniak, etc.).

But, the skeptics interviewed in the article argue that these 20-something
wunderkinden are the edge cases, not the mainstream. Historically, scientists
and technologists have tended to accomplish more in their 30s and 40s and
beyond.

In the world of software development, certainly there is a mixture of talent
across the age spectrum. There are excellent programmers in their teens and
twenties, and mediocre coders in their fifties. But there's a general
consensus that experienced programmers in their fifties are better able to
avoid some classes of mistakes that twenty-something coders simply haven't had
a chance to see yet (but will).

------
k2xl
Oh please. This article is just ridiculous. I find it hard to sympathize with
any of the characters or to find any semblance of truth in anything that was
presented.

Someone gave the same argument to me regarding Y Combinator - They only invest
in 22-28 year olds... Which is statistically probably accurate, but here's a
question that people don't think about: What do you think the average age of
someone who applies to YC is?

The "discrimination" arguments toward older developers made me laugh. The sad
thing about this article is that it seems personal - these specific guys that
are mentioned were likely just not able to pitch their idea effectively, but
blame it on the young kids "seducing" VCs with their "baby faces" and "fresh
college degrees."

What, do they think that VC's just go, "Oh you sort of LOOK like Mark
Zuckerberg. Take my money."

Just because someone says they "Love your idea" and that it is "Better than
others they've seen" doesn't mean anything unless they write a check. My past
startups pitched VCs who said this all the time (I was in my early 20s btw) -
I used to think we were being discriminated for being young!

Btw, who do you think has a better chance of landing a deal with a large
company - a 23 year old fresh out of college or a 50 year old with 20 years of
business experience? Do you think that VC's are oblivious to that fact?

"He figured it was only a matter of time before nCrypted Cloud made them both
very, very rich. The only thing they were up against was 50 years of
accumulated bias."

LOL @ that statement. I've heard the same kind of statement countless times
from startup founders of ALL ages.

~~~
gammarator
> What, do they think that VC's just go, "Oh you sort of LOOK like Mark
> Zuckerberg. Take my money."

It's a reference to something pg said about himself:

"""And Graham knew that he had his own biases. “I can be tricked by anyone who
looks like Mark Zuckerberg. There was a guy once who we funded who was
terrible. I said: ‘How could he be bad? He looks like Zuckerberg!’ ” """

[http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/05/magazine/y-combinator-
sili...](http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/05/magazine/y-combinator-silicon-
valleys-start-up-machine.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0)

~~~
k2xl
That isn't aegism, that's someone who "looks" like Zuckerberg. Lots of people
who look like Bill Gates gets funded too.

And there's a difference between investing 15K in a startup and 1M+. I highly
doubt anyone invests millions of dollars because a founder looks "young"

------
tiler
It could just be the case that we are at a point on the programming timeline
where much of the work done by the deeply technical grey-bearded wizards from
the past few decades has been abstracted away into APIs, programming
languages, and design methodologies. These tools give people who have
programming skills the oppourtunity to sacrifice a few months learning them to
gain the creative power that not too long ago may have taken years. So this is
not a period of time where the older programmers can rest on their laurels.

What we consider very basic geometry calculations today, so trivial we teach
them in elementary school, would be beyond the capabilities of even some of
the fabeled Ancient Greek Geometers. Again, this is only because many
generations of mathematicians have refined and abstracted away much of the
detail that at one point was necessary to perform these now trivial
computations.

------
sgustard
The issue from the kids' viewpoint is this: They expect to be rich and retired
in ten years. Anyone still working after that point must have failed in some
way, and they don't want to spend their time at work staring into the eyes of
their aging feeble counterpart who still has to schlep into the office every
day.

------
mgkimsal
How much overlap is there between the types of companies in this article and
the typical "we can't find anyone qualified to hire!" company? I suspect it's
not total, but there's probably some overlap.

I can't wait until these 22 year olds of today hit their 40s and they reap
what they've sown.

Zuckerburg said "younger people are just smarter"? Certainly there's a degree
of hubris in youth that you don't lose without experiences of failure and
compromise. But that's usually not "smarts" \- just youth. I've had similar
encounters with people where I've been able to guess parts of their business
(and failures), and it's because I've already had my own.

One example - pardon the long rant...

I did a bit of prototyping with some college students about 15 months ago.
Core idea was "coursera/udacity for medical students" \- something like that.
Being medical students, they saw a lack of useful material focusing on them,
and wanted to fill that niche. "You'll have trouble getting content, and will
likely run in to IP issues with professors and universities". I said this
within the first 10 minutes of meeting them. "Oh no, we've already got people
lined up, ready to create content," was the reply.

That intrigued me, because content is the hardest part. We met again, and
again, and I did a small (small - like weekend prototype) set of code to let
people upload instruction content based on the structure we'd laid out.
Then.... nothing. Days to weeks to months... Nothing. What happened? They
mistook "hey, great idea! yeah, I'll do it" sort of nice/polite feedback as
real commitment. The few instructors who actually were interested in going
further discovered they had to clear their involvement with their respective
universities, as it seemed to constitute teaching and would conflict with
their existing contracts (IIRC it could have been worked out with
money/licensing, but there was no revenue at this point).

So... months later after a lot of legwork on their end, they came to the
conclusion that I'd come to after 10 minutes. That's not to say "Ha, I was
right, dumb idea" \- the idea _will_ happen, imo. They just sort of ignored me
- I was an 'outsider' \- they 'knew the space', etc. I'm the old guy who's not
at university - how could I possibly know what student life is like _now_ , in
2012? They could have saved themselves a lot of time by focusing on the issues
I'd identified up front (which... was not just tooting my horn here - an older
colleague identified the same issues on the same initial evening meeting).

But hey, "younger people are just smarter," right? Nothing is so cut and
dried. Smarter people are smarter, energetic people are energetic, etc. There
are 50 year olds that run rings around many 25 year olds that I know, both
physically and activity-wise.

~~~
kansface
I don't think this anecdote really illustrates your point. One day, some naive
kid will actually be stupid enough to solve this problem. For that matter, I
would guess a large number of highly successful startups solve exactly these
sorts of problems. pg calls these schlep problems-
[http://paulgraham.com/schlep.html](http://paulgraham.com/schlep.html). I
agree, this is not a cut and dry space.

~~~
mgkimsal
But see... in my view, the work involved is _not_ contacting people saying
"would you write content for this?". I can't say I was entirely naive, but I
trusted them too much early on that they understood my concerns - they didn't.

In this case, if you want 50 well-respected professors, you have to go out of
your way to identify 100, then identify potential concerns (licensing issues
with existing publishers and universities) and solve _that_ problem. Building
a website for people to upload slideshows and movies is a solved problem
(hundreds of times over). Building a process to extract out valuable content
from people who would otherwise not create digital content, then monetize
that, that is _not_ at all a solved problem, at least in many verticals.

Yes, someday, someone's going to crack this. I really don't think it'll be
"some naive kid". The way you're saying it makes it sound like it's the
"naiveté" which is the magic potion in all this (gosh he just didn't know what
he didn't know and just 'made it happen'). That's a nice narrative, and does
happen now and then - people win the lottery now and then too. But by and
large it doesn't happen that way.

Certainly this space will get solved - probably in the next few years - but
it'll be a licensing deal between the larger publishers and universities and
someone who builds a platform _for_ them to generate revenue from these
captive audiences.

Of course, I might be 100% wrong, but judging by the number of students I talk
to with "why isn't there a ..." ideas, I don't think so. _most_ of the time
the reason there isn't a good FOO when you're in the education world (as a
student or teacher) it's because there's policies and purchasing procedures
which prohibit it, not because someone hasn't thought of the idea yet.

------
nilkn
I think the greatest thing about older developers is that they understand
bureaucracy and office politics. The truth is that there's more to being a
great developer than just writing code with your headphones on. Some of my
bigger productivity gains have been from learning how to hustle in the office.
That said, I'm still pretty young and I feel I have a considerable amount to
learn, both technically and professionally.

As an example, during my first year out of college, I often found myself
waiting upwards of a week for someone else to get me something I needed to
complete one of my tasks. I didn't know the right way to prod a coworker--or
in this case, actually, boss--to get you what you need so you can get stuff
done. Examples like that abound.

------
HypeTsu
Experience is not a matter of age, as it is not a matter of time. One need not
be fooled by the elder who claims 20 years of experience, when in fact he has
1 year of experience repeated 20 times. That is why a teenager can possibly
have the same experience as his middle aged counterpart.

Innovation is not a matter of age either. It's mostly about observance and
imagination which are qualities that can either increase with age, if one
nurtures it, or diminish with age if one is unaware.

That is to say; both experience and innovation are NOT age related.

As human beings, we cannot help but be influenced by prevailing outlook in our
immediate social circles, and the media we're exposed to. It is our
responsibility to be aware of this bias, and find THAT WHICH transcends age.

------
zwieback
The Andreessen quote "You can't start designing bridges at 10" sums up another
problem nicely: the young, talented or not, may be wasting their youth on
ultimately meaningless projects while the hard engineering disciplines are
starved of fresh talent.

------
mariodiana
More evidence that we are in an investment bubble. Nineteen-ninety-nine called
-- wait and see.

------
kfcm
The year 2000 saw me in my early going on mid-thirties, and I was the youngest
person in the room.

Then I went to work for a pretty cloistered company for the next eight years.
One closed local office and one declined offer to move to HQ later, I started
looking around. And suddenly found myself the oldest person in the room.

I had done contract work for many of these companies prior to 2000, often for
the very same departments or groups. The irony of the situation is the lead
and management positions which had been filled by guys in their late 30s, 40s
and 50s, were "now" filled by guys in their late-20s and very early 30s. And
the difference showed.

This is in the Midwest, so ageism isn't just a SV thing.

------
sjg007
It irks me when a journalist doesn't do their homework. Take for instance:
"Unfortunately, the problems the average 22-year-old male programmer has
experienced are all about being an affluent single guy in Northern California.
That’s how we’ve ended up with so many games (Angry Birds, Flappy Bird, Crappy
Bird) and all those apps for what one start-up founder described to me as
cooler ways to hang out with friends on a Saturday night."

To dissect this: 1\. Rovio is a Finnish Company (Angry Birds) 2\. Flappy Bird
is a guy from Vietnam. 3\. Crappy Bird... ?

Not one of these examples illustrate the argument that they were solved by 22
year old affluent males from Northern California.

------
awt
After a certain point, if you've made enough friends, you will likely never
have to interview for a position again unless you want to. Interviewing is
where ageism is probably most pernicious, and that process can be avoided.

------
Zenst
I started my IT path early in the 80's working for a Goverment facility doing
COBOL programminmg at the tender age of 17. Agisim back then was against young
people and more the older people working in the industry. This was born out
when a year later a new batch of trainee's of which one I was mentoring was
actualy being paid twice what I was. This was soley due to age.

I moved on to another company and trippled my salary in the private sector,
though again was told by the recruiter if I was over 21 I would of got paid at
least £2k more than I was.

After a short time I moved into contracting at around the age of 19, doing
COBOL work. Again I had many issues due to ageisim for being so young in what
was a old generation feild. Interviews would be a complete grilling of which I
excelled and shone above and with that got the work. Age was still a factor
then and as a young contractor I was often dismissed by people soley due to my
age. Though would always shine above them in technical ability, because I had
too.

After a few years contracting and the isolation of being a contractor amongst
permies(permenant staff) I would feel left out and moved back into permenant
work.

Times changed, now it is the reverse and sadly I missed both boats, being at
the age of 47 and with the IT feild often shafted on many managerial levels I
somewhat regret not working in a building trade as many people I know did and
made better money, more free time, less stress and burden. Not forgetting it
is a older trade and with that TAX wise more adapt in NI contributions
(National Insurance - UK thing) being a pitance on contract to IT, which is
full rate. Then there was the introduction of IR35 desigend to penalise
contractors in IT directly.

It still is finding it's feet and whilst law and accounts have there long
standing estabilished exams of recognition, IT still does not. With any
certification easily expiring in a few years and nothing holding up for a
lifetimes of work.

Sadly that still prevails and IT is often the butt of all departments in many
a company and often shat upon, little reward for good work that saves money
over other departments who add little value.

But during my time, one event stuck out. I went for a permenant job at a
company - PC Database work, Dataease and turned up at reception ontime. Was
left waiting for 30 minutes then handed a form to fill out, which was basicly
a HR form regergitating what was already on my CV. I then had an intervew with
the HR manager. She was very curt and rude and said, that is a lot of money
for somebody your age and was very dismissive and really put me off the
company. I had the IT department intervew with a manager and contractor they
had in who was an `expert` in the feild. Shone thru and even educated the
contractor about a hidden debug mode, happily answeared the question about
post codes in so much detail that it was scary (post codes same as USA ZIP
codes). This resulted in a job offer before I even got home, offering me more
than I was (the recruiter) asked for. I turned it down flat for a lesser paid
role as the HR experience had put me off completely from that company.

So whilst agisim is a problem, that problem has gone from looking down upon
young people, to looking down upon older people.

But the real issue of IT and one that will carry on for many years is one of
establishment, be it certification and exams that stand the test of time akin
to accountants or lawyers. Until that day, IT will always in many companies be
the shat feild for many due to upper managment mentality. Which ironicly
enough is the older people mostly. Younger managerment (CEO's etc) have more
respect for IT and also sadly less respect for older people in IT.

With that I often wished I was born earlier or later instead of catching the
shit-tide from both ends from when I was young and now older.

------
MCarusi
One of the most common theories floated around about why younger programmers
are so "preferred" is that older programmers tend to get stuck doing things a
certain way or not adapting to new languages or programming paradigms.

The big issue is that you see this with people in any profession, and of any
age. People naturally stick with what's comfortable to them, even in their
twenties. It could be that tech is such a rapidly changing field that this
gets so much attention, but applying this to a certain age demographic in a
single profession is only doing tech a disservice.

------
tim333
I think part of the problem with VCs giving money to older guys to start a
business, as opposed to writing software, is that if they were any good at
building business that you'd kind of expect them to be rich already. When that
is the case such as Joel Spolsky (49 ish) raising money for Stack Exchange
there are no problems. Basically any VC would write him a cheque. But I can
see the problem with a 49 yr old guy saying give us money for our startup,
we'll make you billons in spite of having made zilch the last 30 years that
VCs might be skeptical.

~~~
loomio
The article focuses on an example of a guy who had totally proved himself with
past success, and yet still encountered ageism.

Here's how he's introduced:

> The most impressive entrepreneur in Scheinman’s portfolio who hadn’t caught
> on was a fortysomething Boston-based engineer named Nick Stamos. In the
> early 2000s, Stamos had been the chief technology officer at one start-up
> that eventually hit a market value of $1 billion. He later co-founded
> another that earned tens of millions of dollars in annual revenue. Everyone
> Stamos had ever worked with raved about his technical chops, his relentless
> salesmanship, his flare for innovation. “The picture was remarkable,”
> Scheinman says.

~~~
k2xl
Well maybe his idea sucked? Or maybe he bombed his pitch? I mean come on why
assume aegism? There are way too many counter examples.

Even if a VC says they like the idea doesn't mean that it is investable.

------
guiomie
Would you guys say this is more of a west coast issue then east cost ?

~~~
hibikir
Well, I can tell you that in the midwest, if anything, the difficult part is
to find young developers. Back when I started, it was not uncommon to have 22
year-old dev leads. a 30 year-old was a dinosaur, or in management. Today,
most companies around here are pretty much ignoring kids out of school, and
hiring 30 somethings. Last year, I worked in a team where the youngest dev had
been programming professionally for 15 years, and we weren't working with any
old legacy stuff.

What has happened is that most of the bad developers that I worked with 20
years ago are working in banks or outside of development, because it's much
easier to hide your incompetence in our 20s than in your 40s.

Now, Silicon Valley is full of fresh meat, and of companies whose best asset
is having a guy that is fluent in venturespeak, so I am sure the experience is
very different. Just like it's harder to find a .NET job in Seattle if you
haven't worked at Microsoft before, given how many former Microsoft employees
are available to compete with you.

------
zacinbusiness
It's stories like this that make me hope that I will bust out a killer app
within the next year or two. As a programmer I've been hacking at code since
my late teens, just like most devs, but I never took it seriously until about
5 years ago. And I've been designing my app for 2 years now and I think it's
almost ready to put into development. But I don't want to release a piece of
junk, and yet I also don't want someone to release it before I can finish.

------
johnny99
Given the insane war for talent in SV, the idea of a neglected pool of highly
competent engineers should cause a stampede to unearth them. It certainly
planted a seed in my mind.

I wonder if ageism is driven in part by social media. Us olds seem to be less
present on Github/Stack/Twitter/etc (HN, oddly, seems a bit of an exception--I
_love_ the posts about historical computing). Maybe reduced visibility equates
to reduced opportunity.

------
jordanb
Another interesting thing that this article touches on is VCs being biased
against Boston, or more broadly, biased against companies headquartered
anywhere except the Bay Area.

Given the increasingly insane economics of the Bay Area they're attaching
millstones around the necks of the companies they invest in. And just like
with ageism the purported benefits on which they base their biases are dubious
at best.

------
Beliavsky
Considerable research has found that fluid intelligence declines with age.
There is a 2006 paper "Age differences in fluid intelligence: Contributions of
general slowing and frontal decline".

We know that 50-year-olds are not as strong physically as 20-year-olds. The
brain is an organ, and it would be surprising if every part of the body except
the brain worked less well as one aged.

------
davidgerard
Someone with decades of experience could be _your_ competitive advantage.

(I'm also thinking of a friend whose kids have grown up and the house is paid
off, so she and her husband are now looking around the startup scene, because
they can actually take a pile of risks again.)

Hire old people! They know stuff!

(CoI: I'm 47 :-) )

------
seanccox
TL;DR: Kids in their 20s can be shallow and superficial, focusing on
appearances rather than qualifications or demonstrated abilities. Given wealth
and power, they become ageist despots.

For some companies, I'm sure hiring Socrates, rather than Alexander, is more
productive.

------
alphadevx
Recently I interviewed a candidate, who upon meeting me said "Oh, I was
expecting somebody older". It seems it cuts both ways: if you are a manager
you are supposed to appear "older", otherwise some people have difficulty
reporting into you.

------
delinka
"For as long as he can remember, all he ever wanted to do was to build a
start-up that would go public..."

Me, too! I just don't pout publicly about my sad fortune. Instead I take a
job, using my decades of experience, doing interesting things.

------
jmd_
I'm curious when I read these articles: does this also mean making a career
switch, or maybe attempting to start a career, in programming post 30 (with or
without a degree) is incredibly improbable? Does that ring true to people
here?

~~~
krapp
As one of those people, I really hope not. But then I wasn't planning on
touching SV with a ten foot pole anyway. I suspect outside the bubble where
the culture demands and obsesses over youth, it doesn't matter as much.

------
rasengan0
Dude, this long term strategy sounds too mature: "By contrast, he says,
economies that embrace the Silicon Valley model writ large—throwing massive
amounts of money at highly speculative investments—are suspiciously bubble-
prone."

------
Cenfath
"Don't trust anyone over 30."

The denizens of VCastan propagate this nonsense like it is a moral imperative
shouted from the mountain top. One day those very denizens will be over 30,
and at that time it will be a completely different story.

------
bowlofpetunias
tl;dr: immature companies have immature staffing policies.

It's not even remarkable, and may have nothing to do with ageism, although
that will be the effective result if it concerns large parts of an industry.
Just like the sexism and racism of tech, it's mostly about hiring policies
mirroring the identity of the companies and the people who founded them.

It doesn't mean it shouldn't be addressed as a serious issue, because it
hampers the industry and is detrimental to society, but in the long run, those
companies will adapt or die.

------
sivanmz
The fastest way to age is by working 80 hour weeks, living off of pizza, beer
and Red Bull, and burning out.

At what point will early obsolescence distort the supply of willing workers
and compensation demands?

------
jgrant27
Youth is wasted on the young. My younger self included.

~~~
collyw
I had a great time.

------
graycat
As best as I can see from Silicon Valley (SV) VCs, what they really like is
not youth, age, ideas, or advanced technology but 'traction'.

If SV makes mistakes on age, then maybe they invest too much in very young
entrepreneurs. One cynical reason is that people so young can be easier to
manipulate. If they have a great business but are doing a poor job managing
it, then the VCs can bring in one of their buddies as CEO; apparently in the
past this was more common and, really, an intended act.

One SV firm wrote me, "We would not consider investing in anything like your
project before you have 100,000 unique visitors a month."

Okay. Suppose 100,000 different people come to my site, on average each person
comes 5 times, on average each time they come they see 8 Web pages with 5 ads
per page, and suppose I get paid $2 per 1000 ads displayed. Then my monthly
revenue would be

100,000 * 5 * 8 * 5 * 2 / 1000 = 40,000

dollars. Then why the heck would I take their term sheet where I would
suddenly go from owning 100% of my company to owning 0% of it with some chance
of getting back to maybe 60% on a four year vesting schedule, when during
those four years the VCs could fire me for any reason or no reason and,
really, just take all of my company the day after I cash their check.

And, my company is based on some technical work, and as the company grows I
will need to do more technical work. Then a Board would need to approve the
budgets for the technical work but would not understand that work. So, the
Board would be reluctant to approve the budgets and, more generally, would
want to exercise their 'fiduciary' responsibility to 'control' the company.
They would kill all prospects of growth for the technology of the company. VCs
don't always do this and clearly have not done that for Google, but the VCs
write their agreements so that they have the power to do such things.

The solution of the two entrepreneurs in the article is to (1) see a suitable
problem, (2) think of a good solution, (3) write the software to implement
their solution, (4) go live by having the software run on a Web site or
selling it, say, as an app. They should think of (1) and (2) so that they can
get to, say, $40,000 a month in revenue just with their own checkbooks.

For the VCs, from a Fred Wilson post at AVC.com some months ago, the average
ROI is poor, really, just awful. So, Darwin will be along shortly, and the
ranks of the VCs will thin out.

Net, the VCs will have to make money or do something else. If they make money,
then their LPs will continue to invest and it will be a little foolish to say
that the VCs are making mistakes.

Recently Fred Wilson had a lecture on 10 ways for an entrepreneur to be their
own boss and emphasized that getting venture capital is not nearly the only
way.

My background in doing projects was from US DoD work and also academic
research. From those two, I have had to conclude that VCs do projects in very
different ways. While I do believe that VCs are making some big mistakes, some
of the VCs are making money. Maybe Benchmark, Sequoia, USV, and a few more are
making money.

------
LeicaLatte
Tech is already so divisive against women. Now we are alienating older men
too? This is suicidal for our industry.

------
kapilkale
If the ageism has no merits, shouldn't the problem self-correct due to the
arbitrage opportunity it creates?

~~~
vegustui
Nope, we do't live in a free market. Eg: some have access to capital while
others don't.

------
vijayr
This is a very depressing read. I can understand in industries like modeling,
acting etc but in tech?

------
ChristianMarks
I've witnessed it myself. The solution in my case was to work with my ancient
friends.

------
michaelochurch
The ageism culture doesn't come from programmers. Young engineers (I am one)
venerate the badass older programmers. It comes from the business people
who've colonized us.

Business is full of degenerate narcissists, and the one thing narcissists
can't stand is age, though it awaits us all.

Because we've been colonized in recent years-- the R&D culture that used to
characterize programming has been replaced by closed allocation and
commoditization and project-management bullshit-- by business people we've
lost our culture, and they've imposed theirs on us. That's where the age
discrimination comes from.

Ageism is also to their benefit because it puts this shitty time pressure on
the young, encouraging them to work ridiculous hours and make unreasonable
sacrifices that they think will help their careers (but often do the
opposite). Whether young or old, we all get screwed by the ageism culture.
Young people get abused because they're convinced that opportunities will dry
out in 5-15 years, and older people get demoralized and pushed out of the
industry for no good reason.

The best way to fight it is to point out the dynamic that causes ageism:
_chickenhawking_. Read this--
[http://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2013/12/14/vc-
istan-6-th...](http://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2013/12/14/vc-istan-6-the-
isms-of-venture-funded-technology/) \-- and be enlightened. The truth about
what is behind ageism is embarrassing to the purveyors of it, and knowledge
should be multiplied.

~~~
untilHellbanned
chickenhawking is spot on.

------
leccine
Young people just smarter. Also, less experienced this is why they re-invent
hot water every day (hello node.js). I have seen "young people" fail countless
time because they could not get away from the "being in the Silicon valley, I
must be super smart and I am always right" attitude. The most performant
techie people are 30+ with significant relevant experience, they are not
getting horny about a useless new technology over a blog post, understand the
stack all the way, fluent in their language(s) and can make great decisions
based on their experience (wisdom) and knowledge. The CEOs in their mid 20s
are guys, nobody will remember maybe 1 out of 100 makes it to history the rest
is just going to lead a mediocre company and quit when they realize that the
IPO won't get them anywhere (if they make it to the IPO at all). As Paul
Graham pointed out regarding LISP, using something that your competitors don't
understand gives you an edge. Apply the same to hiring, and get some 30+ guys
on your team now! Will ya?!?!?! :)

------
codeonfire
Can you really expect VC's not to be assholes? I think maybe the article is a
little quick to play the age card in regards to the example give. Just because
someone acts like an asshole and acts disinterested doesn't mean they're not
interested. And, there are other ways to start a business. If someone doesn't
like older people, people with kids and families, fuck 'em. Find something
else.

------
joesmo
In addition to specific industry issues, ageism in tech in the US seems to be
reflective of the wider culture at large here. Older people in the US
generally are not respected and their experience and contributions are
generally neglected. The "stick them in a nursing home" attitude is extremely
common, but even before it gets to that point, disrespect for the elderly is
common and is expressed in attitude and culture. Why would Silicon Valley be
any different? In fact, considering the amount of young people in SV, I would
expect this to manifest itself there the most. In a culture that generally has
no respect for its elders, a culture that considers most elders superfluous,
why would anyone expect something different?

------
yukichan
Experience is a liability. You learn all kinds of things as an engineer that
quickly become obsolete. Even in the web environment. If you're still worried
about hasLayout or rounding corners with images, or god forbid using tables
for layout, or even setting explicit widths on your web pages instead of
responsive media queries, you're adhering to obsolete ways of doing things
that are hurting you more than helping.

Edit: Am I being downvoted because I'm wrong or because you just don't like
what I have to say? Both are wrong reasons to downvote, but you go, you go
downvote. My comment is reality. It may not be what you want to hear, but it
isn't a low quality comment. I'm so tired of this silly site and it's potato
filled echo chamber.

~~~
greenyoda
Experience also gives you the kind of skills that don't become obsolete, and
which can't be learned in just a couple of years of practice:

\- Writing reliable, maintainable and testable code

\- Strategies for solving problems that are very large or very difficult

\- The ability to interact well with developers, product managers, executives,
customers, etc.

\- Knowledge of algorithms and other fundamental things in computer science

Being a good software developer is about a lot more than just dealing with the
mechanics of the particular software environment you happen to be using today.

~~~
pacaro
Someone much more experienced than I am once said to me that experience
doesn't teach you more answers, it teaches you more questions.

The answers change as the landscape evolves, but know which questions to
ask...

