
Where do all the old programmers go? - FuNe
http://www.infoworld.com/article/2617093/it-careers/it-careers-where-do-all-the-old-programmers-go.html
======
Yetanfou
They take up farming, of course. Having explored the most 'modern' parts of
society they're ready for a new challenge. Also, having dealt with virtuality
for so long it is time for a dose of reality.

Me, I bought a farm in Sweden. Harvest is in, manure has been spread, looking
to grow my first 'beer crop' (barley and hops) within a few years. The forest
needs some attention but that is what winter is for.

What comes around, goes around. Programmers (and developers and architects and
others of similar ilk) turn to the land while farmers are surrounding
themselves with technology. GPS-controlled tractors, milk robots, ID-based cow
feeders, etc. Horticulture is being robotised. Forestry will go that route
soon enough, with clear-cut harvest being replaced by individual tree
harvesting.

~~~
npiazza83
While not ready for retirement I'm getting up there and I am buying a house
soon with between 1/4-1/2 acre piece of land attached. Its a reward and
opportunity for me to experiment with a large "garden" for myself and my
family and maybe enough for friends or to can/jar.

I get this impulse but I'm still plugged in enough to want to automate things.
I'm looking at farmbot on kickstarter and thinking how I could build my own,
program or automate various systems and sensors. I'm extremely excited about
having one foot in both worlds.

~~~
Yetanfou
I'm not retired, by no means - I'm 51. I'll keep on hacking for as long as I
feel the urge and find some need. I do concentrate on trying to make our (way
of) life less dependent on a steady income stream - in other words, I use time
and some money to make us less dependent on future money. A farm with enough
land to support a family is a good start, especially one which has both arable
land as well as productive forest. Hence my choice, although the fact that I
studied forestry at an agricultural university might have something to do with
it as well.

------
coldcode
To work is where I go (59). You won't meet a lot of people like me because
when I started (1981) there were way fewer programmers than today plus some
became obsolete, some became managers, and some got burned out. So the chances
of meeting someone like me if you started in the past decade is not high. This
of course makes it hard to decide how much age discrimination there is as it's
hard to quantify, unlike gender for example. For me I got this job based on a
manager from a previous job needing here what he already knew I could do.

~~~
jhauris
The vast growth of the programmer population as a reason for why there aren't
as many older programmers is a very compelling reason. I'm surprised I haven't
seen it before.

~~~
coldcode
I think there are 20 million or so programmers (not sure how you count this)
today. I bet there were less than 1% of that back 35 years ago though of
course no clue how to measure that either.

~~~
aws_ls
One way is to look at total revenue of IT/Software Industry at present and
compare it with 1981. My guess is that even after adjusting for inflation it
would be more than 100 times growth. Many of the present great companies were
not even formed and some had just formed.

I started working in the mid 90s. Joined a company which had few 100
employees, when I left it had around 300 times more.

------
fecak
They find companies that value their experience and don't just hire those who
already know how to use all the shiny things. They do independent consulting
after spending years building their reputation as someone who delivered for
past co-workers and managers. They go to mature mid-market or large companies
where those in management and hiring are perhaps a few years older as well.
Sometimes they need to retool

Anyone thrust into the job market for the first time in several years (say
10+) might find it somewhat unrecognizable. Job search has changed
significantly in the ~20 years I've been in recruiting.

I've developed a bit of a niche business in helping older programmers (I'm 44)
"rehabilitate" themselves and prepare to enter a job search (writing/reviewing
resumes, consult on job search strategy, etc.). It's mostly people who don't
want to go into management and still want to stay in the code.

I can only think of a few people that left the industry entirely, out of
thousands (I also ran a Java Users Group for 15 years, which has a large
contingent of older programmers).

------
Isamu
I'm 55 this year, still programming. And I still love it ... well, I love
trying new things.

One of my friends that I started my first job with is now at the CTO level,
while I keep turning down opportunities to "advance" into management. Another
friend of mine quit after the Senior Director level because he started hating
his life, and went back to programming/embedded engineering for the fun of it.

Age does make you wonder if you were turned down for an offer because of
subconscious ageism, but I am not aware of rampant problems with it.

You do have to be careful to give everybody's proposals a chance, instead of
just pattern-matching to something awful in your past.

Keeping an open mind is a discipline.

Having kids helps you rediscover what you once loved, helps you recover from
jaded oldsterism.

~~~
Roboprog
Once in a while, I get to help my college age daughter learn "R" programming.
That's a pretty interesting language, which she probably knows better than I
do now. (at least operational knowledge of the library, but not all the
Computer Science aspects)

Conversely, it's interesting that my adult child is now having to deal with a
bout of "imposter syndrome" :-)

------
zanethomas
I'm 66, started programming 40 years ago, and I'm not going anywhere!

Seriously, I love what I do and will continue programming as long as possible.
I'm addicted to learning and the satisfaction of good, clean, simple code that
gets the job done.

------
childintime
A related phenomenon is that programmers have no collective identity to rely
on (or uphold). The struggle of the classes and the topic of the bigger social
good is relatively meaningless to them. They can't put a finger on these
issues, they belong to other classes. Programmers are by nature but also by
nurture very much individuals, and as individuals, without nurturing
collectivity, they are easily manipulated and put against each other.

So programmers don't work on socially relevant or desirable problems, but on
some relatively obscure scalability issue that exists only inside a few
internet behemoths. They need soldiers, not wisdom.

With these employers dominating the marketplace, socially relevant innovations
take a back seat. Society doesn't help either, as open source sadly isn't tax
funded (because tax-fundedness is a pivotal privilige of the disfunctional
political class).

So being a programmer often is (cor)related to the strength of youth, and
youth ends at 40.

However, no craftsman worth his salt loses his abilities, instead he has
experience about what works and what doesn't, and becomes more effective at
what he does. He doesn't run trying to catch his own tail.

For example this guy here, at
[https://millcomputing.com/docs/execution/](https://millcomputing.com/docs/execution/).
What he and his team have done is a work of beauty and is the fruit of
experience and intuition.

The young and the old work together.

------
stray
At about 40, it _does_ start to get more difficult to get hired. And by 50, it
is all but hopeless.

And the salary offered begins to go down at 40 too. Sharply after 44 or so.

Where I am now, at 51, I have had to learn to get by on what I was making as a
SysAdmin 20 mumble years ago. But at least I have a job. Before getting my
current job I was having to learn to get by without a place to live too.

~~~
fecak
If you are willing to share, I'd be curious to hear more about your situation.
I've seen salary plateau at certain career levels and ages (40s usually), but
saying salary goes down at all (let alone sharply) is something that I expect
is not a general truth about the market at large. My anecdotal data comes from
~20 years in recruiting engineers.

There are several reasons you could see a salary drop (stagnating skill set no
longer in demand, move to company that pays less, move to industry that values
programmers less, etc.), but age alone isn't likely to be one of them.

~~~
stray
Would a significant gap in employment be _that_ damaging?

I was severely burned in an automobile accident (60%, 3rd degree) on June 6,
2006 -- and was completely unable to work for a couple years. It took a little
over 4 years total from the date of the accident till I got another job.

Every job since then has been with a startup.

~~~
fecak
A four year gap in employment is a much more logical conclusion to a reduction
in salary than your 44th birthday. Even if it was something like an accident
(I'm glad you are better now BTW), candidates are sometimes reluctant to share
medical issues on resumes/cover letters (and rightfully so in some instances)
which can lead to the reader making all sorts of assumptions about _why_ you
haven't had a job in n years.

------
kazinator
There aren't that many older programmers because they are diluted by the large
numbers of younger programmers in a growing field.

Even if everyone who was employed in a software dev role in 1975 or even 1985
were still employed in a software dev role today, they would be so outnumbered
by younger people as to be a statistical blip. (Whoa, age discrimination!)

Also, older people will tend not to suddenly switch to software development.
The major entry path is through young people becoming developers. Most people
over 50 in development are people who were 20-something in development,
possibly younger. So how many 50-somethings there are in dev has mostly to do
with how many 20-somethings were in dev thirty years ago. It could be
different if large numbers of non-dev 50-somethings suddenly retrained as
devs, but they don't.

------
tgamba
At 49 I am still coding and still learning. I architected and implemented
node.js services this year and have done lots of interesting modern web
development. I am well respected within my organization and in fact have been
poached from one team for another.

Ageist hiring practices are a reality, but not all companies are so biased.
And you could not pay me enough to go into management. I want to make things.
Perhaps that is why I am still viable.

~~~
hashkb
You could definitely pay me enough. Great managers help more things get built
than great engineers. They do it in a different way, but as long as they don't
suck, they are critical. Good managers are much harder to find than competent
engineers.

~~~
saiya-jin
I think he meant he doesn't want to do the management job. Ie moving from
abstractly creative work to endless series of meetings, conf calls, creating
powerpoints excels and whatnot. Yes they are necessary, but it doesn't make it
a cool job that brings fulfillment and happiness.

Most devs move there over time, and then complain how cool coding actually
was, but they are already in money/debt trap

~~~
tgamba
Yes-- that is exactly what I mean. If I found myself in an organization where
management looked appealing I would make the switch. It has never happened.

------
eranation
They become architects / development managers / product managers / pre-sales
engineers / professional services consultants / founders of startups / project
managers / security advisors / dev ops managers / tech recruiters / biz dev
managers / even sales...

~~~
hbcondo714
Some of the best product managers I have worked with are former
programmers...they just get it. When I hire people in these roles, I often
specify "technical" in the job title to attract these former programmers.

~~~
mywittyname
Programming develops the skills found in good program managers. I think it's
because so many of us build things that don't exist constantly. So we build a
natural intuition about what are valuable problems to solve and can do it in
ways that people would never consider, even "domain experts".

A domain expert might try a naive or brute force approach to a very specific
problem, while a programmer would see a graphing problem and instantly think
of several different techniques to apply and be able to tell what outcome
they'd produce.

------
skookum
These articles are getting old. Pardon the pun.

The main reason older programmers are so under-represented is that the field
has grown exponentially over the past 2 decades. With ever larger influxes of
college grads the previous smaller cohorts get more and more diluted across
the industry.

> "Many programmers find that their employability starts to decline at about
> age 35," Matloff writes. ... "Statistics show that most software developers
> are out of the field by age 40," Matloff continues ... (Matloff declines to
> mention which statistics he's reading.)

So basically he's spouting BS to match his talking point.

IMO, older programmers who have done good work in the past are at a major
advantage: we have a network of former co-workers who can speak to our
abilities better than any whiteboard interview can and who can alert their
managers/recruiters that we are someone worth going after.

I realize my experience is anecdotal, however having made two job changes in
my 40s, my experience could not be more different from what Matloff implies:

\- When chatting with former co-workers, if I even remotely hint at
considering a switch, I have their recruiters kicking down my door the next
day.

\- I have employers skip phone screens to get me into a loop faster in the
hopes of getting a jump on other potential employers.

\- I've had some offers without interviewing both times I was looking for my
next gig. Other offers' interviews felt like formalities because they had to
have a loop in the big company HR system.

\- I have a constant stream of "would you consider this great opportunity?" on
LinkedIn despite the fact that one can easily reverse-engineer my approximate
age from my profile.

\- etc., etc.

It doesn't feel like "employability starts to decline at about age 35" from
where I'm sitting. And lest I be labelled some special outlier, I have a good
number of friends & former co-workers in the mid-40s age bracket who are
having similar experiences.

The fact that a handful of SV startup bros only want to hire their long-lost
twins doesn't make the bulk of the industry old-programmer-averse.

~~~
kafkaesq
_I have a constant stream of "would you consider this great opportunity?" on
LinkedIn despite the fact that one can easily reverse-engineer my approximate
age from my profile._

I'm sure they could, if they bothered to actually read it (which basically no
one ever does). In general, "feeler emails" are a poor measure of serious
interest in one's overall profile.

Basically they're just trying to ping you to see if (1) you're in the market
and (2) remotely interested. _Then_ they'll actually look at your profile --
and make the kind of assessment you would have thought they made _before_
reaching out to you.

------
mark_l_watson
Many of us still work. I am in my 60s and I still work about 20 hours a week.
I love designing and writing code, and I also do software maintenance and
devops, and I write about one computer science book a year (working on two
right now: one on Haskell and one on Cognitive Science).

I don't earn the very high salary that I used to earn, but that is OK because
I am doing what I want to do.

------
ChemicalWarfare
Mid 40s here. architecting/engineering Java monstrosities by day (although
it's not too bad lately - fat jars/docker etc), hacking on some personal pet
projects with newer tech (been getting into Elm and some Haskell lately) by
night.

------
ctordtor
I turned 40 this year, most of the developers I work with are older than I am.
The answer is in Federal contracting.

------
philk10
Michigan!!

Worked in the SE of England as a programmer for 20 years, moved to being a
tester ( had 20 years experience of how things could go wrong) then moved away
from the rat race commute of London to low-cost of living Michigan and
couldn't be happier.

Currently learning how to program mobile apps so that I can test them better

------
stuff4ben
GTFO of "the valley" and you can have a very productive career past your 40's.
Seriously, I know this is HN, but the world doesn't revolve around SJ and SF.

~~~
Roboprog
Irony: I work with a group of about a half dozen devs for ... _UC Davis_ (same
uni as the prof mentioned in the article). We are all 50-ish, and work with
minimal hand holding.

We do grant work for the state, and to some extent, the federal government. We
are not doing "super scalable" stuff, but we still have thousands of users,
many daily, and some of the entry forms for things are _huge_ , with much
complicated logic to be _legally_ compliant.

I have set myself up as the resident Javascript guy (Angular), but I have to
admit, it feels odd when I go to the local JS user group - it's a much younger
crowd, overall. The funny thing, though, is that Angular/JS feels quite a bit
like the interpreted language, proto-MVC, stuff I did on PCs back in the 80s
:-)

------
JamesBarney
I have a question for all the veteran devs out there.

How do you keep from getting burned out on the mismanagement that plagues our
industry?

Is it personal perseverance? Are you just super selective with what jobs you
take? Is the love of building something stronger than any feelings of
frustration with poor management?

~~~
aws_ls
Not sure if I qualify as old. But have coded for 20+ years. And have always
loved it. The other aspects of work (sending email, meetings, making
presentations, documents, etc) may feel like work based on the situation, but
coding rarely(if not never). TBH, one does procrastinate, even for coding. But
once you start it, and soon you tend to enjoy it.

Being selective helps, so if you can afford to say 'no' to projects you don't
like, you should. Another more important thing about being _selective_ is
IMHO, what you choose to believe and what path you choose for yourself. We
will find all kinds of examples in others(people we know or people we read
about). But perhaps taking inspiration from the likes of say Nikola Tesla, who
were working in their 80s until they died. A lot of other people also work in
management roles late into their life. But I think, programming is more like
being a Scientist, in the way that the kind of brain muscles which get
exercised.

Can't speak about perseverance, as its easier to keep doing something you
like. But yes, it does help to keep abreast of latest technology. I started
doing C++ coding, then did Java about a decade. Now mostly program in Go, but
fairly competent in C++/Java as well. And I also try to be a full stack
engineer - coded Android app, and also UI in JS/Dart(This aspect of being a
full stack engineer, of course may not be necessary for every one).

Taking breaks to learn some new tech, also helps, I am taking an 'Intro to AI'
course on a MOOC. And also spent time learning about Bitcoin and how it works.

Sometimes, if my work does not offer me strong enough programming challenge, I
do programming challenges on sites like Hacker Rank (and earlier Topcoder)
just for fun.

On burnout: Yes, that can happen. I think, it happens when you are working in
an unhappy position for too long. Sometimes, it may happen when you keep doing
a project for too long, even though it was your own baby. No easy answers.

So, I think, its mainly love of programming for me. I hope to keep doing it,
till late in life.

PS: I see the question was posed few days ago. But its still not answered. So
answering, just in case you check for replies.

------
notacoward
The part of the article that really rings true for me is the part about
specialization. Certainly a lot move into management of one sort of another
(line, product, project). Some move into "architect" roles or CTO offices
where they apply their wisdom (and biases) to affecting technical direction
other than by actually coding. However, many still remain in coding roles, but
the coding tends to be more specialized:

* Outside of tech companies, in other orgs with their own specific tech needs (e.g. financial or scientific).

* More infrastructure, less user-facing.

* More "old school" like embedded/OS work.

I'm 51, and I specialize in storage. Consistent with this pattern, I've had
many colleagues and collaborators in their 40s and 50s (after that it really
does get pretty thin). We might be less visible than people doing the
mobile/VR/ML kinds of stuff that are en vogue in the Silicon Valley VC/YC
ecosystem, but many of us are still in high demand. There are even headhunters
who specialize in facilitating such hires. They don't focus explicitly on age,
but their focus on specific domains often results in a greyer-than-average
contact list. You just have to know where to look.

------
henrik_w
Data point: I just turned 50, and I am happily coding away as a developer.
Couldn't be happier - I still love to code.

~~~
swah
Glad to hear - do you take special care of your wrists? I'm 32 and with some
problems already...

~~~
drather19
The biggest difference maker for me in terms of alleviating repetitive strain
was switching from a mouse to a trackball. Something about not having to tense
my arm up and move the mouse all over anymore...

~~~
swah
I never had pain on my right hand which I use for mousing. My mild pain is the
left hand - two hypotheses: this hand is weaker, and too much alt-tabbing.

I suspect lifting weights already improves this generally, as I have periods
of much less pain which coincide with being more active.

~~~
bitwize
I had wonky, comes-and-goes knee pain which cleared up when I hit the gym and
started doing squats.

If you have a body pain problem, "see if lifting doesn't help" is good advice,
but you have to be careful, i.e., don't be a dumb gymbro and load on more
weight than you know you can hamdle with good form.

------
rubidium
An article that contains a bunch of anedotes to refute another article that
contains a bunch of anecdotes. Hmm...

I want to see the data of where they go and determine from that.

~~~
FuNe
Yes - the article is not very good but I couldn't find anything decent (didn't
search long though). Put this up mostly interested in what actual people might
have to say.

Data point - in my 40s (doing DevOps atm). Truth is in my company (one of the
big ones) I do not see a lot of older folks doing technical work (I might be
the oldest in a team of about 40 people). So I'm wondering - where is everyone
(and why am I not there too)?

------
TeMPOraL
They get cast into void.

~~~
lfowles
Many of them stick around as a memory leak.

------
nkassis
I work in a place where I'm in the low end of the age spectrum at 30. The
company is in the Financial industry and was founded in the 70s. It has a long
history of using technology so many engineers started 10-20+ years ago. The
company offers great benefits and salary are above average which is what I
think many of the engineers here optimized for when coming to work here.
That's also what I felt led a lot of the engineers I worked with in my
previous job for one of the big tech companies to leave after 5 years or so.
Most of them ended up taking jobs with companies which seemed to offer better
work life balance and benefits.

A lot of them also ended up in management. Some because it was the only path
available for advancement. Many orgs just don't have (or make) space for
distinguished engineers and the career path for SE ends at the senior level to
which most can attend in less then 5-10 years. After that there is nowhere to
go for them but management. Another issue is the demand for distinguished
engineers is lower since you need less of them then junior and senior devs so
it's a limited pool of jobs.

------
mcv
To me, it has become easier to find work when I approached 40. I'm 42 now, and
I've had plenty of co-workers who were older than that. Any company that
refuses more experienced programmers is foolish.

My dad retired as a professional programmer a few years ago. He started in the
1970s, and had been doing a lot of Java before his retirement. He's
occasionally doing some work on an open source project now.

------
inestyne
I have yet to meet a recruiter that wasn't desperate for demonstrated talent.
Every corporate shop i've seen has older programmers doing the real work and
younger programmers paying the tech debt and building UI.

I think most of these articles are focused on startup culture and marque
companies. (ie. 1% of the market)

------
akavi
Does anyone have hard numbers on what the cohorted attrition is for
programmers? Ie, of the individuals employed as programmers 10 years ago, what
percent are still employed in programming? 20 years ago? 30 years ago?

I've tried to search for this, but I think my google-fu's not up to snuff.

------
oblio
An old joke about this:

They go to the elephant graveyards of IT, banks.

------
ThomaszKrueger
54 yr old here, 32 of experience in programming. Working on a startup,
learning something new every day. Never short of offers, grateful for that and
for having a rewarding profession.

------
anon1253
They take up farming, coffee brewing, bagle cooking, photography, anything
that doesn't involve a computer screen directly streaming nightmares into your
brain 18 hours a day.

------
empath75
I'm 40, and I'm just getting _started_ as a software developer after years
doing other sorts of IT things (networking, tech support, sysadmin, etc).

~~~
retro64
Exactly. I'm older than you by a few years and I don't even waste my time
considering my age.

Too much to do to worry about this nonsense. This constant rumination about
age discrimination in the industry is the only thing getting old from my
perspective.

------
jstelly
There are lots of developers in their forties and some in their fifties at our
company. We would be happy to hire more.

~~~
blacksmythe

      >> lots of developers in their forties and some in their fifties at our company. We would be happy to hire more.
    

You can try oldgeekjobs.com

------
memracom
Just how many new programmers were produced between the years 1975 to 1985?
Not a whole lot. That's why you don't see too many old programmers around,
because they were pioneers in a new field. They are still around but they get
lost in the crowd of new younger and less-experienced programmers.

------
Apreche
If anyone knows where, let me know. I'm gonna need to head there pretty soon.

~~~
stray
/dev/null

------
dredmorbius
Other than anecdotes, is there any actual longitudinal data which tracks
programmers and technical types across their careers?

------
adultSwim
They're taken out back and shot

------
jnaour
/dev/null probably.

------
diyseguy
into the soylent of course!

------
tremon
They gosub without return.

------
landmark3
they die

------
clifanatic
> you'll probably check the box next to "project manager" instead of "software
> developer"

Actually that's a demotion as far as I can tell.

~~~
cheriot
Right?! Engineers reporting to non-engineers is a bit of an anti pattern. A
front line manager needs to manage the work being done and not just the
schedule.

