
Not Just Any Old Geek - johnwheeler
https://blog.oldgeekjobs.com/not-just-any-old-geek-13caa19bc187
======
daemonk
I am getting to old geek status myself. From a more cynical perspective, I am
not sure if we can compete with early twenty-somethings who are unjaded and
buy into the silicon valley mystique. They are willing to work 12 hour days
and still do the faux-japanese salarymen afterwork socializing that supposedly
builds "culture".

Older geeks don't buy into this ping-pong table propaganda. Tech companies
probably won't be able to squeeze all the extra work out of us in the name of
passion and culture. I guess the question is, can experience/skill/efficiency
really out-produce a legion of young programmers who are willing to work
1.5-2X the hours? I have no idea.

~~~
jwr
I wouldn't worry. We can actually Get Stuff Done, which at the end of the day
is what really counts. Inexperienced young programmers working 2x the hours do
not necessarily produce Output That Works (I know, I've been one myself).
Sure, not every company will realize that, but then again, you don't
necessarily _want_ to work for every ping-pong table company, either. Cultural
fit and all that.

~~~
uola
Honestly, even as I'm getting older, this isn't at all obvious to me. Someone
with five years solid experience with web development might very well be far
more effective than someone with twenty years experience of working in corners
of large companies with various technologies, especially when you consider the
expected salary.

I think it good that people are talking about these things, but sometime it
seem like people think it's a big conspiracy, rather than a factor of how the
ecosystem and market looks.

~~~
czep
If you were having cardiac surgery, would you prefer your surgeon to be a year
out of med school having done the operation oh 3 or 4 times, or the proverbial
graybeard who has done it a thousand times?

If you were wrongly convicted and awaiting a death sentence, would you pick a
22 year old attorney fresh from law school to defend you?

If you have a field full of tomatoes that needs picking, do you save a few
dollars an hour hiring the young guy at minimum wage who is healthy, has no
family, and will easily work beyond maximum hours without reporting it, or do
you hire the older tomato picker who needs a higher salary because of his kids
and can't work more than 7.5 hours a day because of his bad back?

So are we law and medicine or are we tomato pickers? I had always thought of
engineering as the former but sadly the more articles I see on how "culture
fit" discrimination works, maybe we've commoditized the industry into a low
wage manual labor job.

~~~
rubber_duck
Umm the more comparable parable would be "or the proverbial graybeard who has
done ~~it~~ kidney surgery a thousand times"

The stuff you did in software 20 years ago has absolutely nothing to do with
the stuff that's being done today. Like holly shit most people weren't even
using source control back, unit testing and automated testing in general was
SciFi, it was done by QA departments if you were big enough to do it.

People were writing C and the major problems of the industry were how to fit
shit in to x MB of ram and x CPU cycles.

Security was abysmal - you didn't even have process isolation on OS-es.

The languages and the practices are also completely different - disregarding
the "we did it in the 60s with LISP in this paper" crowd - outside of academia
people were just getting in to the OOP which was the pinnacle of abstractions
back then.

This is the drag&drop and copy-paste as an abstraction VB shit era.

Unless you were at one of the cutting edge places that were actually
innovating back then in terms of process and stuff there's likely nothing from
that skill set that transfers on to the problems that we are dealing with
today beyond the CS grad basics.

~~~
ryandrake
> The stuff you did in software 20 years ago has absolutely nothing to do with
> the stuff that's being done today.

The longer I'm in software the more and more I find this not to be true. The
stuff that has changed is all surface level. The underlying principles are the
same. The skills needed are the same. The attention to detail and other
attributes needed to get the job done is the same. The problems are basically
recycled or scaled up versions of the problems we had years ago.

~~~
Animats
There's new stuff that's a significant advance (machine learning that really
works), there's stuff that's just different (like most of the web backend
technologies), and there's stuff that's worse (security).

------
mark_l_watson
As a programmer in my 60s, my (rather obvious) advice is to save and invest
throughout your career so you have financial flexibility as you get older. I
still very much enjoy working but when I have unbooked time I really enjoy
that also.

It also helps to have great hobbies. I enjoy writing (I am finishing up a
Haskell book, and I have a partially written book on cognitive science that
will get finished some day), I take many online classes, read a lot, hang out
with friends and family, hiking, kayaking, etc.

As we get older we do slow down. I don't charge very much money anymore as a
consultant and I am careful to only take work appropriate to my skills. Now
when I write, I do so at a slower pace.

There is a natural order in life and I accept that.

~~~
tome
> I am finishing up a Haskell book

I'm really interested to hear that! Have you announced this at all or written
anything about it?

~~~
mark_l_watson
[https://leanpub.com/haskell-cookbook](https://leanpub.com/haskell-cookbook)

~~~
lubonay
Hey, I noticed a couple of things you might wanna improve in your leanpub
profile page: 1\. The first sentence has the word "Consultant" twice in a row
2\. The first paragraph mixes first and third person, i.e. "Mark Watson is an
awesome programmer. I use a bunch of techs" 3\. The profile pic is stretched
horizontally

~~~
mark_l_watson
Thanks, I will edit that right now.

------
amcrouch
This is an AWESOME idea and I totally appreciate both Tim's original article
on the subject and your efforts on this job site.

As a CTO I have long appreciated real world knowledge and experience over
inexperienced, cheap, eagerness. Our employee's are all 30+, most have
families and I believe that leads to well balanced and focused employee's.
That is not to say I would not hire a younger employee but with age comes the
kind of experience you need when building a new company quickly.

To be honest the "we work hard and play hard - we are a family" line would
have put me off of a role even in my early 20's. Just because I want to work
hard, it doesn't mean I want to always be hanging out with a team, I want a
life as well.

I actually think that the ageism in tech is a result of it being a young
industry. As more and more dev's go grey the problem will resolve itself.

One final note I have seen here and on other places - The why not become a CTO
or Start your own company suggestion is fine for those that want to but there
are a large number of developers who actually _love_ being a developer and
have no interest in moving up into management. That's great and I hope that as
the industry matures people realise that being a developer for your whole
career is a choice and not a failure.

~~~
peterbonney
> I actually think that the ageism in tech is a result of it being a young
> industry. As more and more dev's go grey the problem will resolve itself.

Tell that to devs who worked in the dotcom boom, or the PC boom before that.

~~~
amcrouch
Perhaps then the issue is that all developers see a path to management as the
only way to progress their career and in actual fact there is only a minority
of developers who love their job enough to want to do it for their entire
career?

~~~
peterbonney
Many, but certainly not all. The best developer I know started his career
writing software for the original Macintosh in the 80's. He's still primarily
a developer.

Here's the important question: how many twenty- or thirty-something startup
founders hear that and think "dinosaur who writes GOTO statements" (false),
versus "awesome hacker who has been constantly seeking out the newest
technologies for 30+ years" (true)?

~~~
amcrouch
That is an interesting point.

Once again I say in a start up I want experience. I want developers that can
deliver with minimal management and who GTD rather than work twice as long to
deliver tightly coupled, dependency riddled, fashionable code.

Also another point to your comment. If the founders are 20 or 30 something, is
that why they are only hiring 20 or 30 something developers. It's their
contacts in their network, previous co-workers and friends. Perhaps the issue
with start ups in that not that higher percentage are started by 45-50
somethings. Hence it would be interesting to see the split of developers ages
compared to the co-founders age.

------
nlh
Every time I read a post on here about ageism and that sort of crap in SV, I
feel obligated to gloat ever-so-slightly that not all VC-backed, small, fast-
growing, interesting startups out here fall into that mold.

I've been extremely lucky to have joined what I see as the least ageist group
of people I've ever worked with. Our CEO is in his late 40s. One of our
engineers is in her 20s. One is in her 50s. I'm 38 and on the younger end of
the curve, and that's totally, totally cool.

We have lives outside the office and go home at night. If we feel like working
on the weekends, we do, and if we don't, we don't. We have the occasional
happy hour after work (like, every few months), and nobody is ostracized if
they have other plans.

Sorry for the shameless self-promotion, but I think it's important to remind
everyone that the culture of 20s-or-bust has exceptions, the culture of work-
or-die has exceptions, and the culture of your-life-is-your-startup most
definitely has exceptions.

I wish more startups followed suit.

(ps - [https://www.scalyr.com/company](https://www.scalyr.com/company) in case
you don't believe me!)

~~~
audleman
I'll chime in here. I work for a startup with two co-founders, one in his 50s
and one in his 40s. I'm in my 30s and have two developers in their 20s.

The founders are smart and know how to interview for talent, not age.

------
AdeptusAquinas
It seems to me that, as others have suggested, this might be just a silicon
valley bias, real or perceived.

At 32, my skills in both hard and soft outstrip anything a developer in their
early twenties could match, no matter how passionate or innately skilled they
are. There is a certain 'momentum' you pick up as you get older, especially if
you have been constantly feeding it with new experiences, learnings and
failures. Having confidence and the skill to back it up can only be obtained
with a decade or two in the industry.

And if my contracting rates and employment prospects are anything to go by,
employers recognise that.

~~~
mikekchar
I would say that in my late 30's I was hitting my peak in terms of raw ability
and experience. At least as far as ability is concerned, I really didn't hit a
downturn until much later. Now, getting on to 50, I'm noticing that my ability
to deal with complexity is quite a bit diminished. But my tolerance for
complexity is likewise diminished. When I would have accepted a poorly
factored solution, now I scratch my head until I find a way that allows me to
understand it.

When you get down to it, do you _really_ want to tailor your code base to the
top 1% of coders? How will you sustain that practice? By paying people 4 times
as much? Even then you aren't going to nab all the amazing people. Hire some
people who know how to dumb down your code base. It pays dividends.

~~~
initram
>When you get down to it, do you really want to tailor your code base to the
top 1% of coders?

I think I agree with your sentiment, but to me a "top 1% coder" is someone who
knows how to make things simple and readable, and knows the best abstraction
to use for the goal. It's not the person who can write and/or follow the most
complicated code. To me complicated code is generally a sign of a poor coder.
There are exceptions, but they're rare.

------
epalmer
I will be 63 in a few days. If 37+ makes you an old geek I must be ancient. At
least I am employed.

~~~
njloof
If you remember fixing a Y2K bug, you must be an old geek.

~~~
dexterdog
There are plenty of people who worked on Y2K bugs who are not even old enough
to be a US President.

~~~
pc86
I mean that sounds neat but the math doesn't match up.

You have to be 35 to be President, so being generous let's take a 35 year old
now, so they were born in 1982 give or take (2017-35).

They would have had to get a programming job right out of HS and even then
best case it would have been halfway through 1999. More accurately, they
likely didn't enter the workforce until 2004 or 2005.

~~~
ccallebs
Y2K bugs didn't disappear when the clock struck midnight on December 31. Many
appeared for the first time.

~~~
pc86
Who was fixing Y2K bugs in 2004/5?

------
superJimmy64
(Not that it really matters, but I'm 27...) A few things came to me after
reading the post:

Firstly, how this situation shared by the OP and many others is pure insanity.
That the very people who grew up with this technology during the baby years
are now struggling to have a place now that it really has taken off.

Secondly, for those in their mid-30's and onward, to realize how immensely
skilled they likely are at writing (if not already recognizing this fact). One
of my favorite parts of staying up to date in this industry is getting to read
every and any type of work/post/article from the older guys (still must admit
that 37 doesn't feel old to me). Because your time was spent communicating
primarily electronically, this skill has spilled over into creative writing
and all other forms, which makes for incredibly well-written pieces which keep
me going to this very day. So thank you for that.

Thirdly, how amazing it is that a person can now come up with an idea, build
out the details and launch the website within 24 hours if truly determined.
Loved the website, definitely think that as younger generations start to take
advantage of the current tech and build their own on top of it, that there
will be a need to differentiate between the various abilities/experience of
devs.

Nice work.

~~~
cholantesh
>(still must admit that 37 doesn't feel old to me)

Same; I find it a bit terrifying that 35+ is considered 'old' in our
industry...

~~~
skrebbel
It's not, but he has to call himself old to give his business idea
credibility. (which I think is fair, by the way)

~~~
superJimmy64
I dont think its as much a business-motivated thought, as it is an observation
about there being a very distorted age spectrum associated with working in
tech-related industries.

------
zackmorris
I'm pushing 40 and am starting to measure my productivity by how much code I
remove in a day, not how much I write. Is anyone else feeling that way? That
much of what we do is a waste of time, that perhaps software is evolving in
wrong directions due to issues like income inequality (wealth and expertise
being at opposite ends of the spectrum) or worse is better? Sometimes I stare
at the ceiling realizing that the entirety of what I'm working on can be
represented by a symlinking filesystem or Excel spreadsheet. I'm not.. tired,
more like, I'm tired of witnessing everything I've ever worked on being
obsoleted in 3 years because yet another framework reinvents the wheel or
proprietary solution opens a new market due to vendor lock-in. How did the web
of declarative interoperating data become walled gardens and SAAS? There is
money to be made yes, but is this progress?

At some point, the problems fall away and it all starts to look more like the
wheelings and dealings of Mad Men than computer science. Then the choice seems
to be whether to make the most of things (find meaning in the unfulfilling) or
take an early retirement.

I'm not worried about finding work after I'm over the hill.. I'm worried about
the very real possibility of my legacy being a portfolio instead of a real
contribution to the betterment of humankind - building an R2D2 or software
that actually frees people from labor. Anything short of that real progress
feels like a waste of time, and I understand why it might not be prudent to
hire someone who doesn't have profit as a primary motive. What really keeps me
up at night is the thought that the idealism I’m feeling is nearly identical
to what I felt as a youth, and I don't know if something has gone terribly
wrong with the state of things or if the world just passed me by.

P.S. I love my job. Really! I’m just running out of time for the future to
arrive when I could be working on it now.

~~~
CaptSpify
I feel very similar at times. I don't mind re-inventing the wheel if it's a
much faster wheel, but typically... they hit the same pitfalls that the first
wheel-builders hit.

I do love my job, but I also don't want to move to the next new, hot framework
because it's new and hot. I keep wondering if this is what burnout feels like,
but then when I get home and I can work on any project I want, I find that
there is so much cool stuff to learn that I get excited.

------
jmspring
I got invited to a YC event - meet companies, they pitched - a recruiting
event. More than a few pulled the "we work hard, play hard, are a family"
card.

If you have friends/family, avoid such.

Cultural fit is bull shit. It's about getting people to work more at a fixed
rate. I've been there, done that, ran away to better things.

As someone expected to write code - make sure "operations" isn't a hidden
requirement - devops - could meaning call duty. If you were not required to be
operational when hired, and suddenly fall into the roll, start looking around.
Operations takes planning, but some use "culture" as an excuse for lack of
planning.

~~~
osullivj
Claiming "we are a family" in a business environment is always a reg flag for
me. Team is a much better metaphor. Sports teams back each other up, but
ultimately underperformers get dropped. You don't get fired from a family, you
don't stop being a brother, sister, father or mother.

~~~
dfsegoat
This. The most tight knit people I've met are in military special operations:
Nothing comes close to the combination of technical skills, teamwork and
ability to mitigate "interpersonal friction" that those guys have, IMO.

The telling thing is: Not once have I heard these folks refer to themselves as
a "family" \- almost like it is an insult to what family really is (separate
and sacred). Only have I heard them refer to themselves collectively as a
"team" or a "community".

~~~
porker
> military special operations: Nothing comes close to the [...] ability to
> mitigate "interpersonal friction" that those guys have, IMO.

Any training material, courses or books on this? I need to improve my handling
of "interpersonal friction".

~~~
dfsegoat
Check out any books / articles relating to the Marine Corps' "The Basic
School" \- It is where newly commissioned officers (and warrant officers)
learn how to lead Marines.

My fav is: "One Bullet Away: The Making of a Marine Officer" \- by Nate Fick.

Long story short - The Basic School and training cadre are so effective at
producing outstanding leaders, that MBA programs like Harvard and Wharton have
built in a number of aspects of it to their "team building" courses /
sequences: [http://news.smeal.psu.edu/news-archive/2014/united-states-
ma...](http://news.smeal.psu.edu/news-archive/2014/united-states-marine-corps-
offers-mba-students-unique-glimpse-into-leadership)

------
hanginghyena
Another old geezer here (43!); had a good run in my twenties and wound up in
technical management a few years ago.

A couple of tips:

\- The "hands on" technical skills that launched your career have capped (top
salary) and declining value

\- If you take time to learn / think about how the underlying technology works
(vs. just cut / paste / edit code), you can master related new technologies
faster than the average bear.

\- It is also worth noting that technical challenges tend to repeat every
couple of generations; the software developer community is operating within
the same set of fundamental constraints (coder time, CPU speed, network, data,
etc.), the main thing that changes is which constraint matters. And they
repeat: at some point, CPU will be the constraint again and all ninja coder
tricks of my twenties will matter again.

\- Architecture, process design, and people herding skills only grow with
time; 80% of my value as a manager consists of making unnecessary work go away
(without drama). I am much better at using these skills at 42 than I was at
24.

\- If you ever see an opportunity to build a side project that could turn into
a business, take it. Even if you don't replace your income, this gives you
additional control over the direction of your late career and skills you
acquire. Note that I said side project and not startup; the intent to get more
control over your direction without walking away from your day job and
associated income / benefits.

~~~
cerrelio
I'm 38, and I now find myself being coaxed into management. I was away from
the Valley for about a decade and returned 4 years ago. My career has
basically continued from where I left it despite not knowing most of the hot
technologies when I returned. I simply learned them, and avoided the fads.
Experience definitely helps you sidestep cargo cult development, spinning your
wheels and wasting company time.

I've worked with many junior devs over the years and I can see two axes along
which engineers develop: those who know/learn actual computer science and
software design (the math, software patterns, etc.) and those who don't; those
who learn new technologies, and those who don't. If you're in both of the
"don't" categories, your career stalls after about 4-5 years.

Learning processes rather than technologies is very valuable, because
processes _produce_ things. Technologies are just the building blocks. I've
seen too many developers who are one-trick ponies. They build the same systems
over and over, only changing what technologies they use. "Sure, I can build
you an MVC content management system in PHP!" -> "Sure, I can build you an MVC
CMS in Rails!" -> "Sure, I can build you an MVC CMS in Node.js!" Those
developers don't age well.

Also, like you mentioned, I highly recommend trying your hand at
entrepreneurship. If you have enough process skills, you can eventually handle
designing and pushing a product. You might feel uncomfortable moving away from
your vim window into the meeting room, but that's where the greater rewards
are. And those 20-somethings are going to help you do that.

~~~
pmoriarty
_" You might feel uncomfortable moving away from your vim window into the
meeting room, but that's where the greater rewards are"_

Greater financial rewards, maybe. But not necessarily greater intellectual or
emotional rewards. Not everyone's cut out for or enjoys management or running
a business.

There are people who just love getting their hands dirty in tech and hate
meetings, power point presentations, kissing up to and hobnobbing with upper
management, making up budgets and writing reports, herding cats, giving pep
talks, dealing with HR issues, and the rest of the things that managers often
have to do to be "successful".

I'm happiest when I can just go nose down working on interesting technical
problems, when I'm collaborating with other engineers on the same, or
mentoring junior engineers, with all the corporate BS taken care of by my
manager.

~~~
cerrelio
"Not everyone's cut out for or enjoys management or running a business."

That type of thinking will do you in. If you can take technical resources and
produce a functioning system, then you're cut out for management. The people
problems you'll encounter are largely irrelevant. Learning your charges'
quirks, dislikes and styles is like learning a new language or API.

And if you believe in Alan Turing's compelling philosophical argument that
people are just fleshbound Universal Turing Machines, then it's easy to carry
over from development to management. You just end up putting a fleshy, slower,
intelligent computational layer between you and the dumb, fast calculators you
normally solve problems with. Program the people to program the machines.
Abstraction is a core concept in development.

At some point you'll see that you can create bigger things by commanding a
team or department. A single person rarely ever makes a huge contribution on
their own.

------
coldtea
The fact that 40yo is considered "old" in this industry is why we have such
shallow culture and so much cargo cult and rediscovery of stale (or even
discarded) techniques as the latest BS fad.

Consider a law firm or hospital with no professionals over 40...

It fits with SV, because it just needs code monkeys to build what's basically
simple apps in whatever language du jour. Things that are touted as big
solutions in web-land for example, have been done, tried and are commonplace
in all other parts of IT.

Places and firms that build important stuff, where Computer Science matters
(embedded code, OSes, databases, critical systems, etc) do hire "older"
people, and some even mostly older people.

~~~
Roboprog
E.g. - "No-SQL" reeks of the "Codasyl" model from the 60s, which relational
databases replaced for good reason, whether or not Structured Query Language
is the only way to interact with the tuples/tables.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CODASYL](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CODASYL)

Ad nauseam...

~~~
coldtea
Exactly, NoSQLs are nothing new -- they are the tried and failed old, that got
replaced by RDBMS for good reasons (unless you also have a good reason, e.g.
you run at Google's scale).

People do "data science" and don't even know the various canonical forms
(which are mathematical notions that apply to all kinds of data models, not
just SQL DBs).

~~~
Roboprog
Then there's a "nuance" aspect you could use: maybe we _do_ want a
hierarchical model -- in a "middleware" level, for a specific app, just not
for the operational data store used by multiple applications.

But your "yellow belt" coder might not do this, or, might build out a bunch of
layers for something trivial, because that is what was in The Book.

Amen! (preaching to the choir, at this point, sorry)

------
pavlov
A particularly strange thing about SV ageism is that some of the same people
who think a 40-year-old is useless also hope to live forever. (Singularity,
longevity breakthroughs, whatever.)

What do they expect to be doing at 1000 years old?

The explanation that springs to mind is that young techies lured by longevity
expect to be part of "the only generation". Anyone older is too out of touch,
and younger generations basically won't happen as immortals can't have kids
nilly-willy. So the world would be eternally ruled by a cabal of geriatric
techies born around 1990. Now that's a dystopic thought!

------
Jean-Philipe
I didn't feel this kind of bias here in Berlin.

When founding FitAnalytics.com, we were three young students fresh from
university, but all of us highly appreciated more senior programmers (40+)
joining the team. Even if their language didn't fit our stack (C++ for a JS
position), my experience was extremely positive, feeling that some programmers
just get better with age, no matter the language du jour.

Regarding pay, I feel that it's actually rising with age. I'm now myself
heading towards the mid-30s and I'm not concerned at all. Some of my older
programmer friends make more money than me and have more fun as well.

~~~
alpeb
It seems to me Berlin's startup ecosystem is heavily optimized for very young
people. It's awesome the immigration process is so easy, but the minimum wage
requirement for IT jobs is just 38,688 EUR. Lots of companies sponsoring
visas, but with wages rarely above 50k EUR, even with a relatively low cost of
living, they're only attracting young singles willing to sacrifice in order to
get a blue card. And from the job pages videos I've seen (like Zalando), they
explicitly state they're looking for young talent, and of course the ping-pong
table propaganda (love that term!) is pretty standard.

~~~
Jean-Philipe
Zalando is a bad example. First of all, it's not a startup, and certainly not
part of any startup scene. Secondly, it's not exactly the best place to work
at, same goes with any Rocket Internet company for that matter.

I do agree that a lot of young startups are more friendly to young people. But
the tech scene in general is okay. I don't think it's difficult to find work
as a senior here. I get 90k+ offers on a regular basis for attractive
positions and interesting technologies to work on.

------
devnonymous
Interesting idea whose time perhaps has come. As a 38 year old developer who
frequents HN and sees age related posts every once in a while, I am worried
about my prospects after turning 40... Although I have _no_ other reason to
believe that I've been discriminated against over my age so far. Maybe this is
a more of a Valley syndrome, or a US syndrome. In anycase, the fact that our
industry itself can be thought of being around 40-50 years old now, something
like this is perhaps a good thing.

------
Normal_gaussian
Hey, is it possible to add the ability for other countries to post?

We are a young and small British company who are getting very frustrated at
having too many inexperienced applicants!

~~~
onion2k
Posting things like that and not having a URL/email in your profile is a
missed opportunity.

------
buro9
This is neat, I would request that it could be international though.

Restricting jobs to just US states is limiting, especially as many of the
companies listed do hire internationally too.

Just add "Not applicable / International" to the states drop down, and a
Country picker.

------
headmelted
I actually love this.

I've never worked in the valley, and honestly I feel no pressing urge to based
on what I hear with regards to the bias in favour of twenty-somethings who can
work 15+ hour days and live off of ramen.

I'm pushing into my mid-thirties this year, I'm married with two young
children, and I simply can't work the kind of hours that I could ten years
ago.

The thing is, I didn't do it then either, even when I could. I've always had
the mentality that if I'm going to commit to your project, you're going to
compensate me in cash or equity. It may also be why I'm happier in my career
now that I contract than I ever was before. A days (genuinely hard) work for a
days pay.

I simply never understood why someone would give so much of themselves for
free in the pursuit of someone else's goals without a substantial slice of the
pie. I still don't. And I suspect this is in large part why older developers
are looked over (although maybe there's more to it).

Good job on the site, it certainly looks like its getting a lot of traction!

~~~
EliRivers
_I simply can 't work the kind of hours that I could ten years ago._

I find this is true in two ways; not only do I have better things to do now
than donate free overtime to my employer, I am far better at not needing to.
My best work in recent memory involved reading and thinking and sketching for
a day and a half, and then adding six characters and a space to the front of
one line of code; a decade ago, there is a real chance I would have ploughed
into the problem with rewrites and architecture changes and all sorts of bad
ideas.

This does not solve the perennial problem that a less-skilled programmer
thrashing away for days appears to be doing a lot more for the company than
someone who sits unmoving for a morning and then strokes the code with a
feather.

~~~
DeltaWhy
What were the six characters?

Reminds me of the old joke/parable about the mechanic charging $1 for turning
a screw and $499 for knowing which screw to turn.

~~~
EliRivers
S, T, A, T, I, C, all lower case, and a single space character. Guess the
language :)

------
BatFastard
If I had a few millions under my belt, I would start a company that only
employs empty nesters. Kids are out of the house usually. So you have a lot
more free time.

You have great experience, you know how to work with people, you know how to
get things done, you have probably worked in 40 different techs.

If you are writing software at this age you do it for love, not for money. I
love to create, and software leads to the least cuts, burns, and pulled
muscles of any career or hobby I have pursued!

------
dejv
If you want long career in programming you should really do serious career
planing during your 20s to make sure you check all important boxes: correct
technologies, mix of different kind of companies, team sizes and roles.
Otherwise you might get into complicated position down the road.

I am in the early 30s and on top of my ability, but I don't see my future too
bright from here. 10 years ago I make decision to do freelancing and work
strictly alone. It was blast, but once my stream dry out I don't think I will
ever find actual job: guy in late 30s/early 40s with string of trivial or dead
end projects for unknown companies, no experience working in team and such.

I am ok with it and I am having awesome time (and always had). Everybody just
have to know on what career path they are and have plan B in their pocket.

~~~
smrtinsert
"correct technologies". hah, good luck. if any of us had a crystal ball we
would be billionaires, not still coding.

~~~
dejv
It is very simple if you want to be employable person, just stick to trendiest
and coolest stuff and switch when there is market demand for new tech. For
past decade thats like Java/PHP -> Rails -> Objective C -> Node.js (or
whatever).

The point was that you should plan in advance if you want to be employeable
and make sure to not stick in dead-end job/project. If your last ten years
were spent writing ActionScript for unknown company, then good luck finding
new job.

------
hobaak
I am female, over 40 and an engineer with some management experience under the
belt. When I go to event in SF (Valley is still better), I know that I am an
outlier. One of the odds that deters conformity of the data model. I am happy
to break the mold and willing to do it.

------
mrschwabe
If Jaromir Jagr, at 44 years of age, can play at the highest level of
professional hockey in the world, leading his young team in points (and 2nd in
goals) last season [1] just imagine what a programmer can do with the same
level of focus and determination at that age and beyond.

[1] [https://www.nhl.com/panthers/stats/regular-
season/skaters/p](https://www.nhl.com/panthers/stats/regular-season/skaters/p)

~~~
onion2k
Isn't the main argument against employing older developers that they _won 't_
have that level of focus and determination? Pointing to an statistical anomaly
and suggesting that older people can be that focused is easily countered with
an argument that, while that's true, it's far more likely that a younger
person will have the traits you're looking for, so you should employ them
instead.

A rare example of a hyper-focused older person[1] isn't a reason to hire older
people. Hiring is about filling a position with someone capable of doing
what's necessary. _It 's not about finding someone exceptional._ You want to
get someone in and get them up to speed as fast as you can in order to move on
to doing things that drive your business forwards. To that end, older,
experienced people are very often better than younger people because they've
already proven they can do the job.

[1] 44 isn't old.

~~~
arethuza
"won't have that level of focus and determination"

More like they won't have that level of focus and determination for a poorly
run project - so it's not that they can't it's more that they won't see the
benefits to _them_ of that level of dedication.

NB I am 51 and quite happy in a technical role.

------
jkot
> _I’ve published a dozen articles ... build software with thousands of paying
> customers. ... work on open source Python. ... read almost 40 business
> books, and I live and breathe HackerNews._

Why not start your own business or become CTO? Why work for someone less
experienced?

~~~
Insanity
Starting your own business always entails some risk. Some people are not
comfortable taking that risk, surely if you have a family to support it might
not be feasible. This depends a bit on the country where you live, but where I
live you are liable for your company - which means that what you own privately
is shared.

I don't know how it's like where he lives, but the risk might not be worth it.
It also takes a huge amount of dedication and work to make it work, I can
imagine that at his age, his priority would lie with his family. (Hell, I'm a
decade younger and my priority lies there, wife + kids should be a priority).

Of course, the CTO option seems good in that case :-)

~~~
jkot
Consulting business is pretty low risk.

I started my own business when my wife was pregnant. I found it much more
family friendly than 9-5 cubicle job.

~~~
Insanity
True that seems to be low-risk, and 9-5 cubicle might not be family friendly
either. But I'm working for a company where I can choose my own hours to a
certain degree (in between 8-12, leave after 8 hours with one hour break). So
I can be home rather early.

Plus work from home means that I can easily take care of making dinner etc.

But I didn't consider a consulting business and actually I have no idea how
your day looks like in that area. Care to elaborate, I'd love to hear about it
:-)

~~~
jkot
Location independence, 60% time without work...

------
Futurebot
I'm glad someone created this service and I hope it succeeds and sticks
around. Since it won't/can't fix everything, here are my suggestions for
dealing with ageism in technology:

1) Try to make your fortune early. Most won’t, but try anyway. Better to have
given it a shot in your twenties/thirties/maybe forties, than to sit around at
56 wondering what you’re going to do with yourself.

2) Never stop learning. Everyone has to become lifelong learners in this new
hyper-competitive economy. Even moreso for those with traditional
“disadvantages” like being considered too old. Keep up with trends, keep
reading those whitepapers, go back and review the basics every so often (this
is a good idea anyway, IMO), learn at least the basics of the new whiz-bang
thing that comes out (even if it’s just the “hello world” equivalent), and
generally keep yourself “interview ready.”

3) Physical appearance matters. They may not be able to ask your age, but they
can look at you, and they’ll form an opinion either consciously or
subconsciously; though many find this incredibly distasteful, it is the
reality. That means consider carefully whether smoking/alcohol/other
intoxicants that affect your physical appearance are worth it. It behooves you
to keep a regular exercise schedule. Cosmetic surgery is also an option; there
are many tells for age you can fix: eyelid and eyebrow droop, under-eye and
various other facial lines, hanging chin. Hair dye and grafts are also worth
considering, as a receded hairline and whites/grays are obvious tells.

4) It probably goes without saying to keep up your professional network.

5) Another distasteful one, but perhaps worth thinking about: if you’re
someone who is in the age bracket that is often considered “very likely to
have a family,” but you don’t (especially if you don’t ever plan to), state
it. Signaling that you don’t have large, difficult-to-discharge obligations
could give you the edge you need; you might get mentally re-bracketed. I
haven’t tried this one, since I’m not yet in the bracket nor do I appear to
be, but I would probably do so if I were.

6) Companies that are truly hard up for good people (and not just the “we
can’t hire (at the wage we wish to pay)” companies) will just have to be more
flexible. Maybe they already are.

Until we can fix the social / economic issues that underlie (some parts of)
ageism, the above might help someone dealing with it on the ground.

------
mynameislegion
How is 35 considered old?

~~~
paganel
My question exactly. I'm 35 and do not consider myself to be old, far from it.

~~~
fecak
Part of this depends on where you are, if we're strictly talking about "old"
in the engineer sense. 35 wouldn't be considered old in most parts of the
country.

------
Macuyiko
Nice idea, but the site itself is clearly copied from
[https://weworkremotely.com/jobs/new](https://weworkremotely.com/jobs/new) \--
even down to the segment headers. The only notable change is setting the font
family to monospaced...

~~~
buro9
They look nothing alike.

The HTML structure is different

The CSS is different.

What limited JS exists is different.

The layout of each list item is different.

The only similarity, is that it is a list of jobs grouped by location and
date. But that is a pretty obvious common pattern for a job site and hardly
represents plagiarism.

~~~
Macuyiko
Check the new post page I actually linked to! All text is almost a verbatim
copy. I'm not accusing of plagiarism (I didn't mention the word), but just
notice the similarities, even down to "Example: Send a resume to
jane@company.com" and the category listing.

Here, see them side by side:
[http://imgur.com/a/9Rclx](http://imgur.com/a/9Rclx)

~~~
BatFastard
Macuyiko has a good point.

------
Tistel
Ugh. This is so me. I turned 40 last year. Did CS, writing code is still the
fun part of the job. Anyway, I used to maintain a fashionable amount of
stubble. This year I noticed my beard was starting to go grey. Now I shave a
lot more to hide it. This is the first time in my professional life I have
started worrying about being judged on how I look. I also need to change the
way I dress. I am too old to keep doing the tshirt, jeans and running shoes
thing. I think I will go with: polo shirt, jean and leather shoes. Ha! Those
damn whippersnappers won't spot me!

try searching for: "kids in the hall He's Hip. He's Cool. He's 45!"

If the story about Gosling is even 10% accurate, that is shocking.

------
jontas
At 33, with over a decade of experience as a professional software engineer, I
have no interest working for a team that values long hours over steady
productivity, elegant solutions, and thoughtful architecture.

I know that plenty of companies have been built "quick and dirty", but
honestly I think any company, regardless of size or stage, can benefit from
someone with experience gained from building real applications.

I live in NYC, not the valley, so maybe attitudes are a little different here,
but I have no trouble finding work at companies that value my experience.

------
raffandi
I find it troubling to hear that a 37 year old calling themselves old. There
is no place for ageism in this world. Everyone has their own merit and it's
got nothing to do with their age.

------
matthewowen
I don't know if this has already been observed... but that fateful hiring
decision (the lack of cultural fit with the 20-something brogrammers) sounds
like a great one: there evidently was poor cultural fit.

I know that you believe your experience is valuable and your perspectives
correct. If you didn't, you wouldn't hold those perspectives. But likewise,
the exact reason these people are starting their own company versus going and
working under you at Xerox is probably because they disagree with your
approach.

I don't profess to know what the right answer is here. But I am very skeptical
of claims of age discrimination when the author also says that these young 20
somethings don't know what they're doing and don't appreciate the hard won
lore an older developer can bring. This clearly undermines the age
discrimination notion, because it indicates that there is an attitudinal
difference, and that difference could well be a net negative and a thoroughly
reasonable thing to hire based on.

Again, this isn't intended as a judgement on who has the right perspective. I
think many (not all) younger engineers would have fuller perspectives if they
had more hard won experience, but I also think many (not all) older engineers
may have a bias toward BigCo approaches that are at a different place with
regard to the trade of between quality and speed to first version. But a lot
of people start companies because they want to do things their way.
Complaining about the way they choose (outside of things that are actually
illegal) seems futile.

------
bsder
My one comment would be: GET OUT OF THE VALLEY. People have far less
resistance to hiring people of various ages outside of Silicon Valley.

------
okreallywtf
I don't work anywhere near silicon valley but I am in a very small (<10
people) dev shop on the east coast and my experience has actually been exactly
opposite. Out of the 4 developers I am currently the youngest at 32 (we had a
23 y/o at one point though for a period of time). The IT/dev industry here
seems to be older on average with lots of devs in the 40-50 range.

I have noticed some minor ageism towards younger developers but it tends to be
more jovial teasing and joking about how lucky younger devs are to have the
tech ecosystems that we do as opposed to 10-20 years ago. Most of the ageism I
see is related to popular culture (music, movies, etc) which can still be
somewhat toxic when any age group assumes that only the media from their
generation was good and everything else is crap. I have noticed more bias
against devs without formal education (which everyone else has with either
bachelors or masters in CS) but if a well self-taught dev without a degree
came in I don't think it would be an issue.

For the most part though the "older" (its hard to think of people in their
early-mid 40's as old right now) devs have a wealth of experience from whom I
parasitically absorb as much as I can. It doesn't hurt that they are as
competent in new tech stacks as most younger devs (even if they are more
conservative about when to adopt new tools, giving them time to mature). The
culture here is that someone has to make a really good case for why we should
pull a ton of overtime, more often than not someone made promises they
shouldn't have and its not our job to deliver on timeframes we were not
consulted on. What OT work I have done I have been compensated extra for but
it is partly the influence of the older devs that makes me feel like I should
expect compensation when I go above and beyond. Thats not to say I'm not
willing to do it to help the company (which helps us all), but I think I was
able to pass the naive stage a lot quicker and I could have been taken
advantage of much more in a bigger company without our developer culture.

------
jaysonelliot
When a 37 year old has to say he's "old," there's something terribly wrong
with our industry.

How is any industry supposed to build a repository of expertise and wisdom if
we're telling people they're washed up before they're even old enough to have
their student loans paid off?

------
ChuckMcM
Ageism is definitely a thing but its also an interesting strategic advantage.
Historically the company with the best mix of experience and energy have been
the ones that succeed in the long run. That said, for the first 2 - 5 years of
their life a company is pretty much a random series of experiences teaching
the employees what they don't know. They have to get to the point where they
can actually _see_ that there is a lot to learn and not enough time to learn
it before they can _value_ someone who has that experience.

Old engineers are like security enhancements, they seem to cost more than they
are worth until you experience an event that would have killed your company if
they hadn't been there.

------
awt
I have achieved some consolation for pouring years of my life into
technologies which I should have known would become obsolete by spending the
last few years studying classical languages (mostly Attic Greek), the
knowledge of which will _never_ be obsolete. I believe there is also some
value in studying the classics of Computer Science as well (Turing, Shannon,
McCarthy, Graham, Dijkstra, etc.), and doing CS archeology (building retro
computers from old parts, etc.).

This knowledge won't help me get a job as a coder at an SV startup, but it
does help me to understand why I shouldn't try to get it, and to ease the
discomfort of a fate of relative poverty.

------
losteverything
Any jobs? I know:

Format c: /s

FWA BSS 0

\027&l10

And I have my own laplink (with cables!) and will let you borrow my Compaq
portable laptop.

~~~
kbob
Yeah? I know how to invoke IEFBR14 and could probably reimplement it from
scratch.

------
agentultra
I think it takes all kinds to make a good team. Young, old, men, women, and
everyone across the spectrum. As an older geek now it's easy to look back at
how naïve and energetic I was in my youth... but I did a lot of good work then
too. I'm not much slower now but I'm much more calculating and tactical.

I work on a team with an unbalanced mix of age... but working with my younger
colleagues is always a pleasure. We help each other back and forth with
various aspects of the problem.

------
nathan_long
> It’s not easy getting a job at a Silicon Valley startup of twenty-somethings
> when you’re a 37 year old programmer like me.
    
    
        [CTO drives up in an Uber, lowers the window]
        CTO: "Old woman!"
        You: "Man!"
        CTO: "Man, sorry. Who here knows React?"
        You: "I'm 37, I'm not old!"

------
rcarmo
I'm _so_ going to use that walker image. With luck, I'll remember it if I ever
need a real walker later on.

~~~
rootbear
I want make one for my mother! But it needs a blaster mounted on the front...

------
mathattack
My 2 cents...

1 - The key to avoiding age discrimination is looking for a boss your age or
older. Nothing stops the applicant from pre-selecting companies this way. This
is also true if you have kids.

2 - There's less age discrimination ("cultural fit") in the Peninsula than SF
because execs are more likely to have families.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
>The key to avoiding age discrimination is looking for a boss your age or
older. //

So age discrimination is how you avoid age discrimination ... hmmm.

------
gwbas1c
My experience is that a lot of the companies in the valley that are run by
young people are very immature. The good companies hire a wide spectrum of
experience levels.

"Reading between the lines," I think the original poster needs to be a bit
more selective about where he applies.

------
hellweaver666
Nice site but it's very US-centric. Opportunities are available all around the
world, why limit to only US states/cities (I have a whole bunch of jobs in
Amsterdam that I could share if only it was possible!)

------
iandanforth
Blog - "Post your jobs free"

Actual website - "Post a job for $50"

------
DrNuke
A competent old geek is able to set up properly and very quickly but the day-
to-day huffing & puffing implies a mix of stamina and boredom, that's why ping
pong as a culture fit.

------
zem
37 (!)

ironically, 37 was the last age at which i felt "young", for some vague
psychological reason 38 was the year that tipped me into "sliding towards
middle age".

~~~
zackmorris
Same here (now 39). Also same initials but with an "s" in the middle :-)

------
djb_hackernews
Interesting idea, and I see age discrimination at my tech company every day,
but I think the name is pretty lame and I can see it probably exacerbating the
issue.

------
sjclemmy
As long as you're interested in software development and that's why you get up
in the morning, it doesn't matter how old you are.

------
ThomPete
I think Slack and Pando are actively hiring more experienced developers. Think
luckily we will see this trend continue.

------
ensiferum
Ok, so this is an advertisement. It'd be nice if people could clearly label
things for what they are.

------
9NRtKyP4
I'd love to see this expanded to London, as someone who is fast approaching
old geek status.

------
jensC
I wished something similar would exist in Germany too. Maybe I should start a
oldgeekjobs.de!

------
gopi
Goodluck with your YC application

------
kranner
Great idea but I'm not sure it's a good idea to post non-green jobs at all.

------
odonnellryan
I would absolutely _love_ to have some more experienced people on my team.

------
emodendroket
How much do people figure this problem is specific to the Bay Area?

------
DanielBMarkham
I love it. Good luck!

------
inanutshellus
When I was a 20-something I'd scratch my head at having hired guys that had
never heard of version control, and didn't think in OO terms. I turned my nose
up to procedural programming they wrote with ease.

I wrote them off at the time out of tech-bias-myopia that is intrinsically
age-based. Question is, what will I be written off for that I can then blame
on age? What if I disagree with the new trend?

"These young whipper-snappers with their javascripts on the servers! Fools,
the whole lot!"

