
Ask HN: Programmers Above 50, Is It Possible to Have a Career Past Your 50s? - thewarrior
This article is on the frontpage so this might be a bit redundant but this article points to a worrying reality that we young programmers don&#x27;t want to confront.<p>http:&#x2F;&#x2F;blogs.law.harvard.edu&#x2F;philg&#x2F;2015&#x2F;04&#x2F;<p>Many people just dismiss the issue by saying , &quot;If you don&#x27;t stay with the times then you deserve to be fired&quot; but if MIT Grads , who are in the 99th percentile of ability and pedigree are in such a bad situation then one can only imagine how bad it is on the ground.<p>So , I&#x27;d like people who&#x27;ve been in this field for decades or those who are above 50 to share their advice and experiences.
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kpgraham
I am 64. I wrote my first program in 1970 and have worked as a programmer
since 1976. Programming was a good career choice. For many years I was a
manager and pretty much hated it and returned to programming. I quit my job
and went to work at IBM as a software engineer the year I turned 50. I was the
oldest person in my department, and was a bit of a father figure to some of
the kids there. Otherwise I did not fit in and left after two years. I worked
at about the same salary on a job for the next ten years and now, at 64, I
have a nice job helping to translate COBOL to Java. I am still making a six
figure salary, but I will retire in 313 days (I wrote an app that gives me
exact time down to the second). I had no problem finding a job when I was 62,
but the job was one where I needed Java skills, plus in-depth knowledge of
legacy programming languages. I taught myself Fortran, then Cobol, then PL/1,
then Focus, then Basic, then VB, then Java, then Javascript, then Ruby. I find
it easy to upgrade my skills. I code in PHP for fun in my off time, so when I
retire, I will still program my little PHP projects for fun. Programming is
not what I do, but who I am.

~~~
arsalanb
This is something I just had to to — [http://teespring.com/programming-is-who-
i-am](http://teespring.com/programming-is-who-i-am)

~~~
zengr
Good one, would have backed it if it had a round neck tshirt.

~~~
arsalanb
Edit — Yes, I made a slight mistake in the URL.

Here you go — [http://teespring.com/programming-is-what-i-
do](http://teespring.com/programming-is-what-i-do)

------
fecak
I'm in my early 40's, but I've recruited software engineers for almost 20
years and I until recently I ran a large Java Users Group over 15 years, which
gave me quite a bit of exposure to an older range of engineers.

I know many 50+ programmers who are doing quite well (monetarily, respect,
responsibility, balance). Some independent consultants, some at startups, some
with big firms, etc. A fairly wide variety. Not all had to go to management -
in fact, I'd say most of the ones I know didn't.

The one trend I've seen is that older engineers that ended up staying with a
single employer for the longest (say 10+ years in one job) generally have the
most difficulty finding new work when the time comes.

There could be a few explanations for this. One could simply be that people
who work for one company for a long time may have a smaller network. That
could make job hunting more difficult. Another could be the whole "ten years
of experience or one year ten times" cliche.

I do believe there is often some bias against candidates who had
extraordinarily long tenures at one company, which may be associated with the
thought that these candidates may either be too comfortable at their current
job (not need to learn) or so ingrained in a particular work culture that
other companies fear that they will not be able to adapt.

~~~
vonmoltke
Why is tenure at one _company_ automatically assumed to be tenure at one
_job_? I used to work for a major defense contractor. For every engineer there
who spent nearly their entire careers in a particular role on a particular
program there was another who spent 20+ years moving from program to program,
often as a sort of internal consultant. I would honestly put that latter
person ahead of both the former and the person who changes companies every 2 -
3 years if I were hiring.

~~~
fecak
I don't think it's always assumed, and I would absolutely agree that someone
who has moved around as an internal consultant who may be building things for
different parts of the business (some firms might call them SWAT teams or fire
jumpers) would be coveted by other firms. It depends on the company.

You reference a 1:1 ratio between engineers in one role and engineers moving
around. Based only on my experience I would estimate that ratio closer to 5:1.

~~~
vonmoltke
I'm sure it depends on the company and how it is organized. We had design
groups that handled most hardware and software design. Those engineers only
worked on a program until the production design was finalized, at which point
they usually went to a different program, sometimes in a completely different
city.

We also had a third category, who were the engineers that worked in support
activities like manufacturing and failure analysis. They might have the same
"job" for years on end, but the job itself changed constantly.

------
smt88
There tends to be a lot more money in management, consulting, and other areas
that don't require daily coding. I've heard many non-technical people say that
if you're still coding after ~35, you must be lacking important people skills.
I don't agree with that kind of generalization, but it seems to be a common
viewpoint.

The major problem for older programmers is that people believe that the
ability to learn decreases with age. I think I've seen some research to back
it up, but it was more about _willingness_ to learn, as well as having to let
go of long-held ideas.

For example, few grandparents will figure out how to use a new smartphone as
quickly as their grandchildren will. It may just be because the form factor is
new, and they have to forget a lot of their understanding of how such devices
work. It may also be that they no longer want to invest the time learning
something that won't pay them back before they die. (That may sound harsh, but
my dad, who is 72, often gives this reason for refusing to learn how to use a
smartphone. In his mind, things change too rapidly and the time would be
wasted.)

Another problem is that older programmers have higher salary requirements. My
company interviewed (and eventually hired) a 60-year-old iOS developer, and he
asked us for double what the developers in their 30s were asking for.

(It's also a lot more expensive to pay for health benefits for an older
person, but it's not that much compared to the salary issue.)

I hope that a solution could be provided by the anonymity of the internet.
Perhaps older programmers could truncate their resumes and remove the years
they earned their degrees, and then they could find contract work. I
personally have had many contracts where the client had no idea how old I am.
Toptal might be a good option.

~~~
frostmatthew
> I've heard many non-technical people say that if you're still coding after
> ~35, you must be lacking important people skills. I don't agree with that
> kind of generalization, but it seems to be a common viewpoint.

I've never understood that viewpoint either - nobody ever says "if you're
still a doctor or lawyer after age X you must be lacking Y"

~~~
mpdehaan2
Note: I'm not close to 50 like this topic asks, but I think this perception is
a weird one I haven't personally witnessed.

I think this stereotype/assumption (east coast, FWIW) - is probably due to the
radical uptake on the field. There are a lot of young people, and that's
starting to die off a bit more as computers are "a given" and those people
themselves get older.

Simply put - there will be a LOT of people in this bracket in not too long,
and a lot of useful work to do. This group will also have some of the most
architectural experience.

My last company had most of the developers in their mid thirties (as am I),
for instance. Admittedly, that's not over 50, but larger companies tend to
skew a bit higher in that direction.

New startups also generally pay less, which is also a reason more experienced
engineers sometimes don't go to new startups - or even seek out larger
companies. While there are some aspects that may be boring, larger companies
also have more resources, sometimes have more interesting labs, and while you
can see and change less of the system, you are less apt to have to deal with
certain parts of the system you don't want to deal with too - because there's
more specialization and organizational seperation.

As people get older, there's simply not going to be a management job for each
of them, and not everyone is going to want to do management - and that's
great. Management is not "better". I suspect the ageism will go away simply as
more people get older and realize they too are not just out of college
anymore.

And having that experience is good for everyone.

Hopefully it also slows down the rate at which javascript programming
frameworks are replaced as these folks also get tired of replacing things
every two weeks :) Ok, kidding on that last part.

Anyway, my guess is ageism in tech isn't really proven yet. it's a theory,
based on the wrong assumptions.

However, yes, if your company is still shooting nerf guns at each other, and
irresponsibly managing release schedules to be in constant crunch time, a wide
amount of people aren't going to want to work for you.

~~~
hnnewguy
> _I think this stereotype /assumption (east coast, FWIW) - is probably due to
> the radical uptake on the field"_

Hmm, I like this, and I think you may be right.

Unless you worked in a pretty scientific field, just 25 years ago "computers"
were associated with games, and were something that "kids used". Now they're
ubiquitous. And this _just happened_ in a generation or two. Over the next
couple of decades, the workforce will be chock full of people who grew up
programming, or at least tinkering.

~~~
riffraff
> 5 years ago "computers" were associated with games, and were something that
> "kids used".

Are you sure? 25 years ago I was around ten and I knew a ton of people with a
NES, but _computers_ were expensive and stuff for Serious People.

------
jroseattle
The only advice I can pass on to the "younger" crew is to simply be prepared.
You can do so in two ways, both of which are necessary:

\- Stay relatively current but continually grow your knowledge depth. Imagine
a full-stack developer who has little awareness of anything new in the past
ten years...don't be that person. Complacency for your career will kill your
prospects fast. An advantage that you develop over time is that the latest
tech is often nothing new, and is instead just a repackaging of prior
concepts. Leverage that advantage.

\- The "past your 50s" monicker is a moving target. Do not assume that 50 is
the threshold that you cross when you have to start dealing with ageism. It
will be different for many (it's often much earlier), and you won't see it
coming. One day, you'll be relatively dismissed by someone younger than you
due to your "age", and you'll think "what the $#@% just happened?"

In the end, I'm still an eager beaver who gets excited at seeing interesting
ways to solve engineering problems more effectively than the past. And because
of that, I feel like I keep the best parts of what is normally considered a
youthful approach.

As always, your mileage may vary.

~~~
michaelochurch
_Do not assume that 50 is the threshold that you cross when you have to start
dealing with ageism. It will be different for many (it 's often much earlier),
and you won't see it coming. One day, you'll be relatively dismissed by
someone younger than you due to your "age", and you'll think "what the $#@%
just happened?"_

One of the things that galls me about this industry is its belief that
experience (which is not the same thing as age) is a negative.

If you come from Microsoft or Google, you'll be assumed to be "political". If
you come from a no-name company, people will think you're a loser who wasn't
good enough for the tech giants or elite startups. If you have failed startups
on your CV, people assume that you'll be bitter about the ones that got away.
If you were at one job for too long, that counts against you; but if you had
too many jobs and were a "job hopper", that ruins you as well.

It's ridiculous. It makes no sense. How are people not able to get past the
idea that people are more than their experiences, and that _most_ people
improve with experience (even of the negative kind) and age rather than
becoming "damaged goods" because they weren't millionaires by age 27?

End rant.

~~~
jroseattle
> One of the things that galls me about this industry is its belief that
> experience (which is not the same thing as age) is a negative.

I see this as something that shifts during economic cycles. For example, right
now nobody appreciates much that came from those who survived the dot-com
bust. Those skills will be invaluable in the next downturn, whenever that
happens.

Regarding "TwiFaceGoogSoft": there is an old maxim -- never hire anyone
directly from {big-tech-co}, if that's the only place they've ever worked. (In
the 1980s, it was IBM. In the 1990s, it was Microsoft. In the 2000s, it was
Google.) The maxim developed because those ex-big-co employees were perceived
as failures when encountering a non-advantaged environment. The prevailing
wisdom was to hire those people "once-removed" from those companies, so they
wouldn't learn those lessons on your dime. It might not be fair, but the
perception has remained for a long time, even as the big-co name has changed.

In the end, as an industry we need to simply get better at hiring. All these
biases only serve to screw us up.

------
58andstillatit
I'm 58 and have been continuously employed as a software engineer since my
20's. Even now I can find new jobs. I have watched friends & colleagues wind
up in the situation of being unemployed (e.g. due to being laid off and being
unable to find new work). Generally this was due to them getting complacent,
staying at one place too long, and not keeping skills current. I've
consciously avoided falling into this trap by continuously learning, changing
jobs when no longer growing in my current job, and preferring start-ups (which
tend to be new development using new technology). While this has kept me
employed over the years, it does exact a toll. Sometimes I think if I had gone
into another field (medicine, law, academia) I'd be coasting toward retirement
now instead of working burn-out hours at a software start-up. The question in
my mind is increasingly not " _can_ I keep my career going?", but instead "is
it worth it?". Sigh. Not sure what advice to give anyone, but the above is my
experience FWIW.

------
creeble
I'm 55, and having a hard time figuring out what I should do for the next
10-20 years. Programming seems unlikely, though it's what I enjoy the most as
a vocation. I am not as current as I should be, and that's probably a death
knell for programming.

A comment on Dave Winer's blog post about "hiring Doug Engelbart"
([http://scripting.com/2015/04/24/iWouldHaveHiredDougEngelbart...](http://scripting.com/2015/04/24/iWouldHaveHiredDougEngelbart.html))
in the 80's. I interviewed Doug Engelbart in the late 80's when I worked at
Autodesk. The problem with Doug then (and, perhaps, with others in his
situation) is that he wasn't someone that would work _for_ you. He was only
interested in "finishing Augment", the project he started over 20 years
earlier. The likelihood of him being a mentor or otherwise being a contributor
to an existing team was very close to zero. Dave Winer wouldn't have hired him
in 1987 because he wouldn't have taken the job.

I'm not saying this is true about all graybeard legends, but Winer sure picked
an improbable example.

------
kabdib
I'm 54. Got my current job when I was 52 (prior to that, 11 years at
Microsoft).

I think if you're not over-specialized that you can still do well. Doing be a
person who just writes device drivers, or just does web stuff, or just writes
toolchains. Do it all, and at depth when you can.

I tend to get into projects that are 2-3 years in scope and involve actually
shipping new technologies at consumer scale. This will teach you all kinds of
interesting things, from fundamental product underpinnings to making devices
manufacturable.

Keep coding, that's for sure. It's not a young person's game if you keep at
it. My father in law retired, a firmware engineer, at 75.

~~~
vonmoltke
> I think if you're not over-specialized that you can still do well. Doing be
> a person who just writes device drivers, or just does web stuff, or just
> writes toolchains. Do it all, and at depth when you can.

When reviewing job reqs, I see the opposite. Outside the web and mobile
arenas, companies seem to want people who are highly specialized in what they
do.

~~~
juliangregorian
Perhaps, but in a few years when the company has a down year will you be
replaceable by the next specialist, or are you able to get a few fingers in
different pies by being diversified?

~~~
vonmoltke
That's where I see a Catch-22. You need a specialization to get hired, but in
doing so severely limit your job options. Of course, in some sense that is a
side effect of demanding specialization in the first place.

I did real-time radar signal processing for six years, and hardware production
support on radar electronics for 3.5 years prior to that. I can't convince
anyone that these experiences are easily transferrable to other areas such as
robotics and medical devices. In fact, I don't even get the chance; hardly
anyone will even give me a phone screen. Yet I have been doing NLP for the
past three years and can't get recruiters to leave me alone about it.

------
janesvilleseo
I am not a programmer but my father is. He is currently in his lately sixties
and coding since the punchcard. He has work all over the country and gone
wherever the work was. He had recruiter after recruiter contacting him.

The gaps between gigs started getting longer and longer. He was on top of his
game, stayed current, but yet it became incredibly hard to get a job.

He has thrown in the towel and is now retired. Not because he wanted to, but
because he had to. Nobody would hire him.

I don't have an answer to this other than anedoctal evidence. I suspect that
it will become less of a problem than it is today as the current younger
programmers age. Just a guess, maybe blind hope.

------
bischofs
I'm 25 and find this kind of depressing, any good society takes care of its
elders (read: not old, just older) These are the folks that toiled away on the
compilers, libraries, and patterns that we have been standing on to build the
current generation of tech, and this is how some of them have fared? I suppose
the ruthless competition of this industry is a double edged sword.

~~~
MCRed
They're also the ones who understand how things work!

As we've gotten more open source software out there and faster computers,
programmers are naturally moving up the stack using higher and higher level
languages. Where before you needed hand customized C++ (with some assembly!)
to do something you often will now use a scripting language.

But in doing so a lot of hard core engineering and architecture understanding
is dissipating.

People pick node because it's hot without knowing enough to know that it's
going to be a problem for a large project, etc.

I've seen engineers toiling away with the wrong technology experiencing great
deals of frustration but not even realizing that its' because they have the
wrong tool.

I think a big part of the problem is that companies are too often run by
business people who don't understand software. So the managers of programmers
are often not programmers. (It should be engineers all the way up to the CEO,
and including the CEO if you're a technology company.)

So we have business guys picking technology stacks and stuff like that.

Engineers have been commoditized, and they feel like we're interchangeable
cogs, the certainly don't know enough tho tell the difference between a
mediocre and good backend or fronted engineer.

And so, of course they don't value experience.

Over time people retire, some retire young, and so teams shouldn't have an
even distribution of ages, but they do need wisdom. So, somebody should be
wise on each team.

------
mrlyc
I'm 60 and my friend is 63. He does COBOL and finds jobs easily. I write Linux
device drivers in C and have been looking for work for a long time.

------
ChicagoDave
I'm 51 and have had a programming, analyst, or architect position since 1985
give or take a few dry spells. I've been independent in Chicago for 18 years
and outside of the .com bust and the recession, it's been pretty good.

The one truism is change and you absolutely must follow the trends. When web
work migrated from monolithic stacks like ASP.NET to front-end smorgasbords
based on JavaScript, I had to learn a lot of JavaScript frameworks. This was
not easy on my psyche or my personal life, but the work paid off and I'm still
employable.

I think living in a diverse economic area like Chicago helps. Chicago has
finance, healthcare, travel, food service, consulting, and a very healthy
entrepreneurial community.

And most importantly, I still like what I do for a living. I'd certainly trade
it for other things (I'm not fond of sitting all day anymore), but as careers
go, I feel pretty lucky.

------
dhoerl
I'm 64 and doing iOS development full time, and get hit on by recruiters all
the time, so I guess the answer is yes. But you will find huge negative bias
due to age (many companies desperate for iOS talent will ignore you - ask me
how I know this.)

~~~
coldcode
I'm 57 and doing iOS but yeah, I think some people want to ignore you if your
resume is too long thinking you are making it all up. But I am in the DFW area
which is basically a Silicon Black Hole for programmers anyway.

~~~
mikecaron
This said, I'm thinking that it's probably better to just list the last 5-10
years of experience and drop the older stuff. Though, when listing education,
it's probably difficult to list your education without saying when you
graduated (there by indicating your age).

I'm 38 and I'm reading these things, getting a little worried, though I'm a
very quick learner and trying my best to stay on top of what's going on (it's
getting harder, things move so quickly!).

~~~
vellum
A lot of people leave the graduation year off.

------
jackfoxy
At 52 I became interested in F#.

By 53 I determined the future of software engineering is in strongly-typed
functional languages. I left my job as technical director for a product line
of CoreLogic's and began a professional sabbatical studying, writing articles,
and speaking.

Eventually had to go back to some contract work.

At 55 I was hired by the young Stanford and Yale alumni founders of Tachyus as
the first engineering hire to develop the strongly-typed functional software
platform for the company. Tachyus is doing very well.
[http://www.breakoutlist.com/](http://www.breakoutlist.com/)

------
sgustard
I'm 46 and on my 4th founding engineering team. Coding every day, learning new
frameworks with each new role. Home for dinner every night with my kids. My
coworkers and I are all in the same age range, we've circulated from one
startup to the next, some quite lucrative, others flame out, but no one ever
questions our abilities. Don't work for the man, especially when the man is
just a boy.

~~~
angersock
_Don 't work for the man, especially when the man is just a boy._

Hah, I love it.

Then again, working for older people that think they know something just
because _old_ is equally tiresome.

~~~
MCRed
Boys can be found at any age. The difference between a man and a boy is
whether you have a beard. Ok, I'm kidding.

Seriously, though, my boss, the CEO of the company I'm a co-founder on, is 25
years younger than me. He's not a boy, though he has boyish good looks. (Can't
get him to keep the beard.)

There are a lot of boys running startups in the Bay Area, and it's true most
of them are younger, because if you don't have wisdom or common sense, time
tends to give it to you. So those who will learn do, when they've had enough
experience.

------
sheynkman
I am 48 and a General Partner at a VC fund. On the board of five tech
companies. Founded three companies where I was CEO. Coded and still code every
day since my Stanford CS days in the late 1980's.

Right now: Scala, Node/AngularJS, Ionic. Use GitHub, CircleCI, and deploy to
Docker clusters. Use JIRA to stay sane.

Worked at Oracle, so traditional database (DBA level) and now use Couch +
Mongo.

Do my own UI/UX. Can do Photoshop -> LESS/SASS/CSS. Know how to get Gulp to
generate spritesheets :-)

Go to tech/programming conferences and meetups.

A full-stack unicorn. How's that for a VC?

~~~
yesimahuman
Kirill, even two years after we met during TechStars Cloud mentoring, I still
haven't met a hacker-VC that comes close to you. Awesome you are using Ionic.

------
pixeloution
I'm 44 this year -- my last job change was two years ago, and it was to a Top
10 tech company. Now I'm responsible for heavily influencing the hiring
decisions in my group. Here's the thing: most programmers are awful.

They can write code but they don't understand half of the libraries or
technologies used. They learn the abstraction layers but have no interest in
knowing how things work. And these symptoms get worse with age.

There's a point where most people get tired of relearning their skills; they
no longer peruse new information in spare time, or even at work. If you aren't
always learning, and examining things on a deep level, yes you'll be sunk by
your forties. But I believe this is a choice on your part.

------
_throwaway_away
I don't know, i have sent perhaps 25 or so applications during last few years
for various remote Frond-End positions. I'm very-very good and i like what I'm
doing, thank you very much. My happy day is when I receive automated rejecting
letter, that happens in 10% of cases. In other cases, silence. I have failed
to score a single interview. And I'm 50 :-) I guess i need to hold on of my
current and boring job for as long as i can. Also i have been thinking, what
those youngsters are so afraid of. In remote position i will not die in their
precious Aeron chair and spoil their foosball game...

~~~
brlewis
I'm curious how this compares to younger remote front-end applicants. My
company doesn't hire remote. I wonder if competition is higher for remote
positions.

------
uptownJimmy
My impression is that age-ism is definitely a thing, but that it's a lot more
complicated than just how old you are. The ugly truth is that a lot of people
just don't present a very attractive package to the world as they get older.

There's a whole 'nother set of life challenges that we face in our middle
years. Most folks do almost nothing to prepare themselves for these
challenges, and that becomes increasingly obvious with age. But it's not
simply the age that matters.

~~~
danesparza
It would be helpful if you could give an example of those life-challenges. If
nothing else, it could be a sanity check to other middle aged developers (like
myself). :-)

~~~
uptownJimmy
I am afraid of saying almost anything about this, for fear that it will be
taken wrong.

We all have a LOT of "life decisions" to make between the ages of 18 and 35
(or so), and I think most people make many bad ones. In a country where 2/3 of
the population is overweight-to-obese, you can't very well look around
yourself and say: "These folks are making a lot of really good decisions!" or
"I'd like to hire all of you! You look like awesome, dynamic people with lots
of gumption and sass!"

Eating really crappy food, and in great quantities for many years, makes you
look and feel sluggish. Drinking booze every night after work, often in great
quantities for many years, makes you look and feel crappy after a while.
Letting yourself get gradually more complacent about your marriage, work, sex
life, body fitness, personal habits and all the rest of it makes you look
boring and feel bored.

I'm not saying that age-ism isn't a thing. People love to throw -ism's at each
other, it's one of the eternal human flaws. But I think that some (perhaps
many) people who cry "age-ism!" are not being completely honest with
themselves. Most folks seem to let a lot of the air out of their tires as they
get older, tend to get stuck in a lot of bad habits, and it shows on their
faces, in their bodies, in their attitudes, in their energy levels, and in
their eyes. You can't blame an employer for noticing.

------
petercooper
He's now fully retired but my dad moved pretty heavily into microcontroller
work at the very end of his career. It seemed to be an area that leaned
towards older, more experienced developers with lots of electronics experience
(which he had).

If I had to extract any pattern I see with older developers who are doing
well, it's that those who can connect together a life of experiences (such as
with electronics, management, medicine, law, or other areas they may have
worked in) can really make more sense for many projects than less experienced
developers. It's no coincidence that it seems to be the older developers who
are the TDD, BDD, Agile, etc. gurus - they're the ones with the years of
experience of dealing with _people_ and applying that to our discipline.

------
cafard
Yes, it is possible. I am over 50 and various friends who are programmers are
also. We are not disrupting _x_ or changing the world in Silicon Valley, we
are doing this and that for associations, non-profits, federal agencies, etc.
around Washington, DC. And we may not (OK, do not) have the MITish resume that
intimidates hiring managers, we might have made our previous job change nearer
40.

Having said that, yes, those in technical professions can be vulnerable. A
neighbor, an electrical engineer, got pushed out between 50 and 60, and never
again found paying employment. My father, a geologist, got caught in a purge
of better paid employees when he was about 50, and took a while to find work
again.

------
oakwood
If I can offer another angle: I'm not a full-time programmer and never was,
but I code in a number of languages to support my real day-job (finance). I'm
getting close to 50 and I feel the value of my coding skills only increases
year after year. Why? Because if you combine solid programming with deep
subject domain experience, you offer something that is quite rare. I've always
thought of my coding skills as an insurance policy should my day job implode.
The premium is quite steep though - I spend a lot of time keeping-up with
language developments, new frameworks etc.

------
marktangotango
I'm 43 and have not experienced any problems finding work. I picked up a
CS/Math BS degree at the age of 37. I'd been working as developer for about 10
years, but got the degree becuase I find the field generally interesting. I
leave my first degree off my resume which was 15 years prior. So, from my the
graduation date on my resume people assume I'm a lot younger than I am. Plus
I'm often told I look young for my age.

Edit I would add that my current job the majority of developers are late 30's
early 40's similar to myself.

------
vasilipupkin
Yes. But, you have to keep up with current technology. My father is 65 and his
phone is ringing off the hook with offers. But he knows C++, Java, Android,
Win32, Python, D, etc. etc.

Put it this way, if you do not find keeping up with current technology
interesting and fun, then you probably should not be a programmer

------
Diederich
I turned 45 this year, and my career is on an excellent upward trajectory as
an ops programmer, which is what I've been doing since I was in my early 20s.
I hesitate to call myself 'devops', but that might fit. But I write code most
of every day, and things have never looked better.

------
dwarman
Many times this question has come up. All oldsters have different stories, but
the one constant seems to be that programming is what we do anyway, and still
a bit surprised people want to pay us.

I'm 67, wrote my first program in 1963, been employed in computers since 1967,
traversed the entire stack from hardware through designing 4G graphical
programming languages, with a focus (if it can be called that) on embedded
Real Time dataflow systems. A classification that maps well onto many kinds of
products. I've never been tempted into management. Yes, I don't have the first
ten years in my resume. But at the same time I've never got a job by
submitting my resume through the front door. Never. Even my first (at a
computer manufacturer, as a commissioning tech) was by referral. My current
one via an internal recruiter who liked my generalist CV on Linked In and
called me. Others by coworkers who moved on and called me along. You need to
be visible, to be found, to be reckoned good, and to develop some kind of rep.
In my case, at the junction between hardware and software. The other thing you
need is to always keep learning.

------
raphaelb
I have practically no sample size but my own father shifted into more project
management into his 60s and he's as in demand as ever running a team of 10-12
secs.

And I've personally hired a developer in his 60s for a startup. He was retired
but just loves to keep programming and so took up some work with us. He seems
to be in reasonably high demand as another company has been trying to hire him
in the last month too.

------
thrwwy457
Speaking from experience... It's not easy getting a programming job after 50,
after programming my whole career. The dating analogy applies, as usual. (Job
is to old as date is to unattractive.) Yes, you can get a date if you are
unattractive, it's just not as easy. You have to work harder, and/or have
something special to offer.

------
swang
Everyone in their 20s/30s worried about their jobs in their 50s... well maybe
shouldn't worry about it too much. Definitely think and plan for it, but
life's too short to worry about how you will work in 20 years because of
current trends.

And I mean it in two ways. One, some of us won't make it to 50+, so why worry
about it now? Two, in ~20-30 years there will be a lot of programmers in that
age bracket. And maybe by then PHP or Perl or C# will be legacy and will
require oldbeards to maintain them. And maybe the stigma of being an old
programmer won't be there any longer. Or maybe by then all the robots will do
the programming and a "programmer" essentially becomes a robot repair and
maintenance job.

So I think it is way too early to worry if you're in your 20s, because by the
time you're 50, everyone's stories about being 50 now may be irrelevant. Or
you'll be dead. Or it won't matter.

------
abbabon
Hi, I'm 26 but I've had my thoughts on the matter. Mainly panic. In my country
one usually have to plan from he is 18 how to save the funds for his pension
and I'm concerned about the past 50 mileage.

After reading about 50% of the comments here I feel such relief. Thank for all
the commenters!

------
peterhi
When I started in the late 70's the "horizon" was being 30 years old. There
were almost no pure programmers beyond that age, they had all gone into
management or consulting. It was quite scary to see your preferred career path
stop short.

Then home computers (ZX81s, Spectrums, VIC20s) came along and created a new
field. After that the internet happened and everything took off again.

I finally got into management at 52 purely based on the fact that I was the
longest serving engineer at the company (all of 4 years) when my boss left.

I'm 54 now and the work is not slowing down. Changing jobs would probably be
an issue as I have to give two months notice and that would be a pain for most
potential employers and is not something I look forward to but lets stay
positive here.

Age is a state of mind, for all parties involved.

------
quizotic
I'm 59 and based in New England. I worry about this all the time. But so far,
the worry has been a bigger problem than the reality: I've left stable
employment situations to start up my own things, thinking that was my best
insurance against hypothetical age discrimination.

------
Tloewald
I just turned 50. I'm a web front end guy having started my career in a
multimedia startup. I have as deep or deeper experience in all the latest hip
technologies as anyone I work with, as well as broad and deep experience most
of them lack. One of my colleagues is roughly my age, most others are 20-35.

I have also worked in management, which I don't much care for. In the projects
I work on, there are quite a few people around my age — some like me, others
of the legacy tech variety. I think — some significantly older than I.

I don't think working past 50 is an issue if you have the skills and
flexibility. But don't expect your salary to keep arcing up exponentially the
way it does in the first few years.

------
pjmorris
52 here. I've had a mixed career, ranging from F500's to start-ups, to
consulting companies, to solo consultant. At 46, just before the financial
crisis, I took a Dev job with the most stable of the companies I'd consulted
for. I'd still be there, probably through retirement, but I had/have one more
ambition. So, I'm working on a PhD and hope to land in academia. Failing that,
I left on good terms, and keep in touch with, the crew at my last job.

I don't know that I'd recommend rolling the dice like I have, but if you keep
yourself curious, fresh, and focused on solving problems people have, I think
there are ways to beat ageism.

------
AnimalMuppet
I'm 53. I still program full time (embedded C++, but I may be moving into
Android soon - like, this year). I've spent most of my career in embedded
systems, which is kind of a different environment from most of programming.

My last two jobs, I've told them straight up in the interview that my career
goal is to never be a manager. Both times I got hired anyway.

On my current job, I had to write the central piece that tied all the other
pieces together in six months. There wasn't time for a learning curve.
Experience is a big advantage in that kind of situation; I had 24 years, and
it helped.

------
rlx01
I work in mainframes and have always done pretty well. Worked for a few
companies, seen the world. I'm late fifties. Maybe I'm 'lucky', but somehow
the more I learn the luckier I get.

------
philk10
I'm 51 and was a programmer for most of my career, 20 years at a small company
and moving from BCPL to C to VB to .Net At 40ish with family grown up I looked
for a change and moved to being a tester - and then just before I was 50 moved
from the UK to the US for a job. I've been active and made my name known in
the testing community and there is a demand for good exploratory testers.
Still learning ( mobile was a big learning curve ) and showing I can add value
for all sorts of projects and at different parts of the s/w lifecycle

------
Fr0styMatt8
I continually find this idea that there aren't older developers really really
strange, from my own experience. Every job I've had has included me being on
the younger end of the spectrum and developers a lot older than me.

The lead developer at my current company is in his mid-50s and he's as
interested as anyone I've known (and more interested than a lot of engineers
I've known) in learning new APIs, etc.

I know, anecdata and all that :)

------
oaksagelew
I'm 57 and still programming for a living. Currently I'm involved with a
startup building an iOS app, and am building am Apple Watch app on the site.
I've been programmimg for 41 years, starting in high school with FORTRAN IV
and IBM mainframes, then PDP-11 minicomputers in BASIC and assembly, then the
Apple II and 6502 assembly. And then all the other hot technologies of the
decades - Windows 3.1/C, Mac/C, .Net, C#, ActionScript/Flash, Java, and now
Objective-C and Swift. Did some short stints with COBOL and RPG-II, Lisp,
Prolog, and even Forth.

I had no problems securing the position I have now, and last year, while
looking for full-time work, recruiters who were less than half my age were
interviewing me, and i did get to some initial phone interviews. I didn't see
any evidence of ageism - not from recruiters and not from companies interested
in speaking initially on the phone with me.

I think what really helps is to be current in the technologies, be a self-
starting continuous learner, never being afraid to try something new and
different, and demonstrating exactly how you can add value to any employer or
client who's interested in you. Knowing more than tech is hugely important:
You have to have outstanding social and emotional skills as well.

I intend to program until my last day on this planet. Can't think of a better
vocation and avocation - to start with a blank IDE screen and, after a few
weeks or months, have an application working for a client or fielded in the
market.

So, don't despair, focus on all the other experiences you've accumulated, and
demonstrate - don't just tell about - your abilities and how hiring you would
add value to any organization.

------
caludio
I am a 48 full-stack developer and I (still?) get at least a couple of job
interview offers a week. I am at an interesting point in my career, though,
where the company I work for decided for me to try a more managerial role (not
because of age or technical impairments... it's more complicated than that).

I've accepted the new role, just because I'd like to take a step back (as in
"looking at the forest and not at the trees"), manage and mentor people and –
why not – step out of the f*cking comfort zone. You should do that, right?

Anyway, now I am very puzzled about how to present myself in the near future:
a 48 "rookie" manager (who needs to prove himself on the ground) or a
seasoned, bad-ass developer with 25+ year experience on any software tier you
can mention? I can sell myself very easily as the latter, while the former...
I don't know.

Luckily I am not losing ground on the technical side, which means that I can
easily switch back to a more technical role (architect would be awesome)...
but this bound me to _this_ company, which provides me the luxury of this
choice in the near future.

Interesting times ahead... you'll never get old unless you want to :)

------
fsk
I'm 40 and feel like my career is almost over. It's a big shock to go on
interviews where I'm the oldest person there by 10+ years.

~~~
jschwartzi
The best engineers I've worked with have kids that are my age.

------
Sanych-2
I'm 52. Program full time. Had to learn new technology about 6 times or more
(IBM/360, CPM/MS DOS, Win-Desktop, Win-ClntSrv, Win-3 tier, AS-400), now
learning Web and Mobile. I've been a Manager and Developer and all together.
Currently I am working in a team where half programmers are about 50. And we
doing a popular international product, growing fast.

------
bjbos
My experience is that an older programmer brings a wider variety of skills to
a project. For instance the project I'm working on right now involves both
old-fashioned serial NMEA data (6 bit ASCII anyone?) as well as big data
skills. And I'm doing quite well. I'm in my forties now and working as a
contractor. I do have to bite my tongue now and then to prevent me from saying
things like "we already solved that in the nineties", but other than that I
feel I'm really contributing as I am the only one who oversees the whole
technological landscape.

It does take some effort to keep up though. I still don't feel I've quite
mastered this "everything is an delegate" kind of programming young javascript
programmers tend to use.

Other than that I'm really looking forward to growing old as a programmer.
It's the job I love.

------
blendo
I'm 58. I started with Fortran in the 80's, C/C++/Perl/SQL in the 90's,
Java/SQL in the 00's, and Python/JavaScript/a bit of Scala/SQL more recently.

I'd credit my interest and persistence, rather than skill, to whatever meager
success I've managed to eke out.

------
colomon
I wonder if the "drop dead age" is getting older? I'm 44, and I cut my teeth
on the first 8-bit home computers in junior high school. Most programmers ten
or more years older presumably got their start on mainframes, likely
programming COBOL, FORTRAN, and/or assembler. I can see how someone looking
for Windows C++ programmers in 1995 might have looked askance at an old COBOL
expert.

On the other hand, it seems to me what most people are doing today doesn't
look that much different than 1995. Sure, the tools are fancier, the resources
much greater. But it's still largely GUIs on top of C- and Lisp-like
languages. Maybe it's just wishful thinking on my part, but it seems to me
there was a lot more fundamental change from 1975 to 1995 than from 1995 to
present.

------
ialex
Im almost 30, i will keep programming forever since its something i enjoy but
i have a different plan for my 50+, i would like to have enough passive income
so i can work on whatever i would like to and dont stress about having a job
if it becomes hard to find it.

------
quaffapint
I'm in my 40s and working the same enterprise programming gig since the late
90s. I keep up to date with doing work and learning on the side. I don't want
to manage, not do to the people, but the red tape and politics.

I do often wonder if I should leave and get another job before I appear 'too
old'. The few interviews I've had over the past couple years my age didn't
seem to be an issue, just weren't positions that would work out. At some
point, if I choose to really leave or get let go, I'm rather worried that I
will appear too old on paper to get my foot in the door, even though the
knowledge and experiences should be there.

------
desireco42
So I am 45, and it is definitely possible, but I think it is more that we are
pulling it out on shear strength, after all, we are smart people. I think some
kind of balancing would be beneficial, how exactly and what would be fair, I
don't know.

I just know that we have to make space for people who are not as capable to be
able to be productive members of our teams, we get them from two directions,
senior guys who maybe didn't stayed as current with their skills and also
young people who are coming into profession and not all of them are super
smart and capable. I see no reason for not including those two.

------
ExpiredLink
[http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/philg/2015/04/](http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/philg/2015/04/)

>> _Lesson: Unless you are confident that your skills are very far above
average, don’t take a career path that subjects you to the employment market
once you’re over 50 (and /or make sure that by age 50 you’ve saved enough for
a retirement that begins at age 50 or 55 and during which you won’t have
employer-provided health insurance for up to a 15-year gap between age 50 and
Medicare age)._

This pretty much sums it up.

------
cognivore
I'd be curious to know what the answer to that is as you cycle through the
ages. What percentage of people at 30, 40, 50 & 60 are able to have a career
in programming?

There going to be people who won't be able to at all those ages, but what
percentage is the question.

Anecdotally, I'm 49 and getting better and better (great yearly reviews as
well) so it's true for me. So the answer the the questions is "yes", but that
doesn't help much.

------
rafaelm
I'm 32 and I've been learning how to program for quite some time. Basically, I
got bored of my career and wanted to change.

Sometimes I wonder if I'm not wasting my time because by the time I have
enough experience I'll be too old to be employable.

Sure, I could always be a freelance programmer, but if that doesn't work out
it would be nice to know I can get a job somewhere. But this industry seems
incredibly ageist.

------
kpga
Thank you all for your comments. They are a big encouragement for me. This
thread struck a chord and I feel like telling you my own story:

I am not that old (44) but still..

I practice programming since I was 14, tinkering with ZX Spectrum basic and
then assembly. After finishing pharmacy school in my home country (Greece - my
parents insisted not to study CS) i went to the UK where after one year of
formal CS education I landed my dream job as a software engineer in a big, now
defunct, telecomms company (Nortel).

The highlight of my career? meeting Linus Torvalds in a conference about
operating systems in 1997, where I went as a representative for my company,
and having beers with him afterwards discussing the Linux threading model. He
was not that famous back then. Top guy.

Anyway, shortly after that I had to come back to my home country and and
although I had good offers from companies in the UK and the US I decided to
stop my career abroad and live in greece.

The problem was that money as a programmer here was not that good, but mainly
that there were basically only windows application programming jobs, VB6,
VC++, MSAccess and the like. Boring stuff which I disliked since I was doing
unix systems - network programming up to that point (that was 2001).

So i decided to change career, working as an IS - business consultant in
multinational companies (AA and Ernst & Young), jobs that had nothing to do
with programming. I did that for some years but got bored and pursued a Phd
while working part time in my family's real-estate development business.
However the real estate sector totally collapsed in Greece in 2009 because of
the financial crisis and I had to change career path Yet Another Time (yat,
similar to yacc in unix terminology :) So now i run my own small-scale
pharmacy business (Pharmacy was my first degree).

The thing is that I feel somehow unfulfilled. Although I never stoped
programming, for the last 15 years this is a hobby for me and not my main
occupation. I feel unfulfilled because I now know that programming is my true
passion and I should have never deviated from it, professionally-wise. Anyway.

Sometimes I envision that, because of necessity (the economic situation in
greece is deteriorating fast, to say the least) I will have to abandon my
doings here and pursue again a carear as a programmer abroad. But how? not
only I am 44, but for the past 14 years I had no formal Software Engineering
job.

Meanwhile, I am building a webapp using all the latest and gratest sexy toys
(javascript, laravel etc) hoping that it won't result in a total waste of
time. At least I am having lots of fun.

kk

------
don_draper
I'm in my early 40s and I don't have a problem finding work. I tend to work
for big companies though. I would like to work at smaller, startup-like
companies in the future, but it sounds like there is bias against older
workers in that realm.

------
johnward
I'd be more interested in knowing if it's possible to have a life before
retirement?

------
tbyehl
My dad made it to a couple months before his 65th birthday (2005) as a Cobol
programmer. At that point he was probably still employable as a Cobol
programmer if he had been willing to relocate outside of Florida.

------
JohnDR
After 27 years in Structural Design, I became a programmer at 50 years old and
I am doing fine with it. You can do what you decide to do, limits are only
opinions of other people and only limit them not you.

------
creativityhurts
This older discussion on HN is relevant to the topic
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3437233](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3437233)

------
proveanegative
I would love to hear answers to the same question from operations and
reliability engineering people.

If you have worked in both development and operations positions would you say
that operations is harder to stay in?

------
dovg
Wouldn't be interesting people with certain age have more meetings with people
like them, to improve network, know each other, make projects together, etc?

What do you think?

------
ebel
If you are awesome at whatever you do, you will be in demand.

------
andyl
I'm 51 - no way I'm getting hired as a programmer. But I am coding for my own
business, doing better work than ever.

I used to be in general management, but retrained as a programmer because I
love the tech, and to be location-independent. With today's development tools
I am as productive as a team of ten back in the day.

It is strange to me that old people are pushed out of the industry.

~~~
moosey
I'm just surmising here, but at 35 it's something I need to start thinking
about. If I can't find a job when I'm 50, this is what I'd assume I'd start
doing: just start hacking.

I mean, with modern computing, the cost for creation is very low, so it seems
like with some effort and a lot of knowledge (gained over a 30 year career),
it shouldn't be too difficult to create a living wage outside of standard
employment.

I mean, as long as you aren't looking for that billionaire breakthrough and
constantly trying to figure out burn rates.

~~~
andyl
I started training on the dev tools at age 46. Big learning curve: linux,
ruby, erlang, devops, sql, css, javascript, growth hacking, etc. etc. Now have
my first customer, coding hard every day. Not aiming for billions but millions
- yes. I started on this path because I felt the dev tools and hacker
community were developed enough to support this independent style of work. So
far everything feels very good. It is very sweet to forego the hassle of
investors and employees. Since you're only 35 you've got time to prepare if
you decide to go this route.

------
hga
Yes, as someone who went to MIT I can attest that it is very bad, at least as
of the mid-90s-early-00s when I was 35-45. I believe the primary reason I was
able to get jobs in that period was that I erased all evidence of my specific
age in my resume (in the middle of a job search so I had a nice before and
after to compare) and could pass as a college student. Still had to be careful
about what I said, e.g. no mentioning PDP-11s....

If it's not your calling, avoid the field unless you have solid and achievable
plans to e.g. move to management or start consulting before you turn 40. If
you're not "good with people", good or able to become good at playing the
"political" game, be very very careful if not "avoid the field like the
plague".

~~~
GFK_of_xmaspast
The difference w/r//t the people in the article is they graduated from MIT.

(Also I sort of recall jobs being thick on the ground in the late 90s)

~~~
hga
I'm not at all sure about that. I was in the D.C. metro area back then, and
_very_ few of the people and places I worked for and with, let alone applied
to, grocked MIT back then; that might be different now. It was very different
in the Boston area in the '80s (well, until the end of the Cold War and the
local recession simply ended the original area high tech scene, the web one
that followed in the '90s did not grow from the old one), and I assume the Bay
area.

I'm also not sure it would have made a difference, seeing as I was working
towards becoming a scientist when finances forced me into a sordid life of
professional programming. As in, a degree in chemistry wouldn't have
necessarily helped all that much in getting programming jobs, whereas my
history of serious success in such jobs did make it easy, until as I judge my
age started to become a factor. There really was a significant difference in
the middle of that job hunt when I erased all evidence of my age from my
resume.

------
jacknews
Just, a ridiculous question.

~~~
oakwood
Why? This is actually a really interesting question - especially given the
HackerNews readership - so much of today's code production is for vapor ware
I.e. Here today, forgotten tomorrow. There is some value in understanding what
leads to career longevity in this business.

~~~
jacknews
In part because of betteridge's law, whereby a headline that is a question
implies an answer of "No!"

The phrasing of the question simply re-enforces the stereotype that older
programmers lack the drive, energy, quick-learning ability and so on that
young superstars are supposed to have.

The reality is that of course older programmers can have a career, but they
have to fight against those stereotypes, which appear to be endemic, at least
in sillycon valley, and not to mention the lower wages that the capitalists
want to pay these younger practitioners.

The question could (and should) have beens asked as "What should older
programmers do to highlight the advantages they can offer due to experience,
and how to combat the stereotypes and rapacious financial exploitation that
the industry exhibits.

