
Why won't anyone hire middle-aged geeks? - abennett
http://www.itworld.com/career/136164/why-wont-anyone-hire-middle-aged-geeks
======
zdw
Because middle aged geeks have lives, a mortgage, etc., and have progressed to
the point that they can command higher pay.

People hiring would much rather roll the dice on a PFY that doesn't have a
clue but has a lot of enthusiasm, and will work for peanuts.

Fundamentally the problem is that salaries are low, because there are very
very lax professional standards in IT work compared to other disciplines
(engineering, law, medicine, etc.), mainly because training is task focused,
not concept focused. (Thus why we end up with legislation driven requirements
like SOX and HIPPA, which exists because too many incompetent people were
trying to do jobs they were never properly trained for)

~~~
kjhgfdfgh
Personally i'm relying on those falling educational standards we keep hearing
about.

I may be >40 but I can actually read and write, something which seems
challenging for new graduates.

~~~
gaustin
Just wait until "standard" English becomes text speak. When that happens the
advantage evaporates. The plus side is that the vowels on our keyboards will
get a rest.

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jarin
I had an interesting conversation with a friend about this the other day:

Friend: Dude, check out this guys code, I haven't met him yet, but like him
already, identified the problem as NP complete

Friend: (code link)

Me: yeah that looks good

Friend: too bad, I don't like hiring people older than me

Me: too bad that's illegal

Friend: yeah

Friend: I definitely do and have, I just prefer younger people in general,
they're less likely to be stuck in their ways or not take direction

Friend: Or think, I know better than this guy

Me: but he might know better than you

Me: well meet the guy first

Friend: he's coming in today

Friend: I am open to that, I like to hire people smarter than me, as long as
they know that I make the decisions and sometimes I will not agree

~~~
asmithmd1
I would guess your friend has worked his way up in a large bureaucracy. From
his quote: "as long as they know that I make the decisions" he is more
concerned with people knowing he is in charge than in reaching the best
solution.

~~~
endtime
I wouldn't guess that. My company is four people, and it's my first full time
job. When I hired a contractor for a few weeks, who I'd guess is in his mid
30's (I'm 24), he couldn't handle it when I made a decision he didn't agree
with. Totally destroyed the relationship.

~~~
asmithmd1
Maybe you could have communicated why you made the decision you did and not
had the relationship go south. Or you could have said something like, "You
obviously feel strongly about this, I don't have time to discuss it right now
but lets make some time before or after work in the next couple of days."

People have different motivations; often they just want to be heard but some
times they need to be "right." Sometimes you can make a meaningless concession
so that they are "right" and have them full speed on your side again instead
of fighting you.

~~~
endtime
I did that, several times, and I wasn't blunt or aggressive (which made one of
us) - I'm not totally socially inept. I "lost" more of those arguments than I
won. I genuinely think it would have been okay if I weren't fresh out of grad
school - the guy in question was often condescending when trying to make a
point.

Maybe he's an exception, I don't know, but I definitely think the age
difference made things worse.

~~~
jarin
Please don't take offense to this, but if you're fresh out of grad school you
probably don't know as much as you think you do. Not to say that automatically
makes you wrong, but you should definitely be more prepared to justify your
decisions, even to people who work under you.

~~~
endtime
No offense taken. I think I recognize my own limits (Stanford's a good place
to learn them), but I also know our customer base better than a contractor,
and at the end of the day I'm the one who has to maintain the code. There were
certainly situations where I went with what the contractor said rather than
what I preferred because he made reasonable points (e.g. "this would add a
dependency to the project") or just general software engineering stuff where I
deferred to his experience. I also think I was more than fair about discussing
and justifying my decisions when I did have to make the one he didn't like,
but it didn't seem to mollify him.

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masterponomo
There is a stigma attached to middle-aged job hunters. Why hasn't he found his
dream job by now--is he fickle and hard to please? Why isn't he already rich?
Why does he need to work for me, the youngish owner/manager, instead of me
working for him? Why can't I find any significant contribution to computer
science in his background? How many sick days is this old dude going to take?
Why doesn't he add /her after every him? How old IS that cell phone he's
wearing in a belt holster? Is he sitting there thinking in COBOL while writing
PHP for me? Will he infect my codebase with some alien thoughts from 1975? Why
hasn't he affected a clipped accent so he can talk more quickly and hiply? Why
is his irony hidden whereas ours is not? That's a lot of stigma to wade
through on the way to finding out he's probably pretty good.

~~~
rick888
"There is a stigma attached to middle-aged job hunters. Why hasn't he found
his dream job by now--is he fickle and hard to please? Why isn't he already
rich? "

It's funny you mention this. An unmarried (and has never been married) friend
of mine who is in his 40s says he has the same problem with dating. Women
wonder: why isn't he married? is he afraid of commitment?

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michaelcampbell
Because we have the "benefit" of experience and thus, generally higher
salaries.

Many companies treat coders/developers as 100% fungible; any of them can do
anything any other can. It's just code, right? So get the cheap one instead of
the expensive(r) one. It's the same mindset that thinks offshoring is a slam
dunk, based solely on the cost.

~~~
famousactress
I'm sure that's definitely a factor, but I think there are a number of other
variables in play (perceived or real). I think there's a tendency to think
that in a younger developer you might find more passion, optimism (or at least
lack of cynicism), open-minded approaches to problem solving, etc. than in an
older one. I think also compared to a number of other industries, the premium
put on experience isn't always valued very highly. I think it's increasingly
easy to look at successes from little companies full of scrappy recent
graduates and wonder why you need someone with 10+ years on your team... For
the record I've got 11+ or so years of experience and am rapidly approaching
'middle aged' :|

~~~
Swizec
An important point to note here is that especially when it comes to
programming, a recent grad != zero experience.

Personally I'm not even a graduate yet (1.5 years to go -ish), but I can
already cite 5 to 7 years of experience in the industry depending on how
stringent you want to be and at least 12 years of general coding experience.

I would wager a lot of those "scrappy young companies chock full of
enthusiastic fresh graduates" were in a similar position with people who
actually had a lot of experience despite being fresh grads.

~~~
famousactress
Oh, totally agree. Didn't mean to suggest that grads have no experience.
Plenty of them have loads of great work under their belts by the time they
leave school.

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angrycoder
Startups would be wise to consider 'middle-aged', 'experienced', or 'old man'
developers when forming their team. Sure, they may cost more than a couple of
college kids, but you are basically getting 4 employees in one:

1) A normal application developer who can code to whatever stack you are
using.

2) A system level developer who can push aside whatever application stack you
are using when that stack becomes problematic. She can do this because she has
been building these applications before the stacks existed.

3) A process consultant.

4) A business consultant.

Numbers three and four are the keys here. I typically turn over 5-6 mid-sized
projects a year. Even if the 'old-man' developer you are looking has only
worked on large projects chances are they have completed at least half a dozen
in their career. This right here is what you are paying for. The ability to
pick their brains about what processes and practices were successfully
internally and why. What clients were successful and weren't and why. What
kind of long term problems you are going to run into based on your short term
decisions.

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spenrose
Because we are social animals who automatically situate ourselves in
hierarchies with those around us, and non-managers with grey in their hair
create instant conflicts for many young adults' social-hierarchy construction
reactions. We have an animal urge to defer to people who look like our
parents, and another animal urge to be deferred to by our subordinates.
Ironically, by the time our own hair has some grey in it most of us have
gotten pretty good at understanding and resolving these conflicts, but for a
27 year old semi-alpha, the presence of an older person (especially man) in a
nominally beta role can instantly raise their blood pressure.

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Maro
So, based on what's being said on this thread, you better move out of
programming/IT by the time you're 40, otherwise you're screwed (or on the way
to be screwed)?

~~~
Swizec
Quite the opposite. All you have to do is be better than the young
whippersnappers.

~~~
Maro
What's being said in this thread is that many (most?) companies don't want to
pay for that.

~~~
Swizec
No, what's being said (imho) is that most companies don't want to pay an
automatic experience premium unless you can prove you are worth the premium.

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sosuke
Be aware they say middle-aged (usually 40-60 years of age) when the stats
actually say that unemployment rose in those 55+ and actually dropped in the
25-54 range. I don't think the facts completely align with the title. I know
many folks who are 40+ who will think this was about them when it's about
people 15 years older.

~~~
locopati
25-54 is a huge range. These days, 25-35 or 40 could very well mean no family
obligations (and thus greater flexibility wrt pay, location, travel). 35-54
likely means family. The splits there would be interesting to see (not having
looked at the article yet).

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ben1040
Other than starting your own business so you don't have to worry about someone
making biased hiring decisions, and staying on top of skills, how do you
mitigate this?

I actually like coding and making things, so I don't necessarily see the
executive suite somewhere I want to be when I'm 50.

~~~
kls
Consulting and freelance, as well there is not as much bias in enterprise
software development. As well one that many people do not think about is end
of life technologies, COBOL, visual basic and other older technologies can be
a bastion for those who want to do them. They pay well due to the lack of
interest by the majority of technical personnel and owners of the technology
are happy to just get someone who will support something that is not the
latest and greatest.

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JoeAltmaier
Old guys rant about things. And drone on about the old days. And often propose
"old-fashioned" solutions. Which confuse and worry young hiring managers.

Yes, I'm an old guy.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Admit it, cultural considerations will have their effect. And no culture moves
faster than IT.

~~~
rbanffy
Considering we are rediscovering things like RISC, Lisp and noSQL, I say it
moves very fast, but in circles ;-)

~~~
hopeless
Don't forget the cyclical centralisation / decentralisation of
infrastructures. "Cloud" is the new old Mainframe.

~~~
rbanffy
Actually, "cloud" is the new VAXCluster.

~~~
hopeless
Ha! My Dad was a VAX programmer... it all comes full circle :)

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tychonoff
As an independent consultant for decades, I've found the opposite to be true.
Clients don't care about my age since I'm just passing through. I've never
taken a programming course, but a Mathematics education has really helped. It
also helps that today's programmers are often semi-literate, so I look
positively Shakespearan by comparison.

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benjash
"Middle Aged" Geeks generally have other commitments.

Judging by my dad's experience in the IT industry. He's just too savvy.
Younger employees are seen to be easier to manipulate and more like to fall
for the tricks that big employers like to use.

Fundamentally. Young geeks are massively cheaper and eager to work for less.

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famousactress
Eh. Apologies for snarkiness, but I think reading IT World may be worse for
your career than aging.

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maurycy
Entrepreneurs. There is a profit opportunity, soon.

If there is no demand for middle-aged geeks, their salaries are going to drop
eventually. And, if their productivity is at least as good as young-aged
geeks, it means that there is an obvious arbitrage opportunity.

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hsmyers
The article does not deal with 'how' an employee gets hired. In my experience,
HR is an almost airtight barrier against age while direct communication with
the individual or team that you might work with is usually fair and quite
open. You may fail, but mostly for good reasons; don't fit in with the team,
horn locking with the current alpha etc. It is a humorous fact that I learned
(at a late age) to refrain from commenting on the 'quality' of hard and
software before learning what was favored in the direct interview process.
(Never disparage Microsoft until you learn what products are in the dev
chain--- or for that matter what database is being used! :) )

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ChuckMcM
Its a common dilemma. Generally I find it relates to pay and skills rather
than age. In that for a given skill there is a market rate. If you're an
engineer and you've been in the industry for long enough you may find that
annual adjustments moved your salary above the market price.

If you're middle age, and you've kept up with the latest technologies, and
you're adding to your skills basket, generally it seems you're still employed.
If you 'retired in grade' at some point and thought you would work until you
could collect social security doing the same thing you've always done, well
that hasn't worked out in practice.

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JoeAltmaier
...or minorities, or women

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ultrasaurus
I doubt it's a major component, but at least in Canada, there's a program that
subsidizes workers under 30 [1] with degrees for their first year. Cash flow
is king, so you'd have a strong bias for a 29 year old over a 39 year old.

[1] <http://www.youth.gc.ca/eng/common/yes.shtml>

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colomon
Damn, 55-years-old is middle-aged now?

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dustingetz
the really good ones aren't looking for jobs, and the mediocre ones aren't
worth the salary they seek.

good ones, we're hiring full stack web engineers in Blue Bell, PA:
dgetz@wingspan.com

~~~
Deestan
You are inconsiderate and dismissive.

I don't want to work for you.

