
On Getting Older in Tech - mindfulgeek
http://corgibytes.com/blog/2016/12/06/getting-old-er-in-tech/
======
epalmer
I'm going to apologize ahead of time. this might be a ramble.

63 year old white guy with little hair and a lifelong beard that is now white.
A tad overweight as well. I feel for so many people expressing angst about
ageism. I've seen it elsewhere but not where I work now.

I suspect that at the faster growing companies and companies in tech centers,
mostly on the coasts, see more pronounced ageism.

My last job was at a bank in Richmond VA and there was clear ageism in IT when
I got their. I moved to compliance from IT for two years and I was very
successful and never observed ageism.

At 53 I moved to a web development manager and developer role in Higher Ed. I
took a gigantic pay cut, if you factor in bonuses and options to work in
Higher Ed. But I got to send my oldest to college at a selective school for
free. A $200K after tax benefit.

I don't look back. My life is so much better now with a 40 hour work week and
being in control 100% on how we architect our web and backend eco-system. I
spend more than 40 hours because I love learning but I choose when, where and
what I learn and work on after 40 hours.

I read these comments from people that are 36, 40, 40+ and shake my head. That
is not old. 63 is not even old. I plan on working till I am at least 67. I
love my job and I especially love the people I work with.

I find these days I spend less time coding and I end up with better
applications because I think through the design before coding.

I'm going to ask around in Richmond VA and see what ageism exists in industry
here and report back.

Keep learning, try as hard as you can to stay in shape and engage in critical
thinking. Good luck to each of you in staying employed and staying happy.

~~~
heymijo
"I find these days I spend less time coding and I end up with better
applications because I think through the design before coding."

^A golden nugget buried in an insightful ramble.

~~~
FroshKiller
And you don't have to be a certain age to learn that lesson and put it in
practice.

~~~
epalmer
Absolutely right. In my job I find that my seniority gives me time to think
more however. It depends on your circumstance and the work culture and boss
relationship.

I report to the CIO and he has little need to know details. He cares about
long term progress and the big picture. He could care less about how we get
there as long as we are taking care of people and doing it honestly.

~~~
Schwolop
Totally tongue in cheek, but you're never too old to learn that you should
have written "He couldn't care less about how we get there..."

------
riprowan
48 yo here, started coding when I was 14, so that's 34 years of building
things.

Here's where I'm at.

I look back at my career and I can tell you about great projects that I got to
be part of, awards and plaudits that I won, big paybacks from projects that
went well and literally saved the company. That's all nice to have war
stories.

But I can't point to any of it and say, "I made that" because - and here's the
kicker - _it 's all gone._

Software is ephemeral. One day your client does an upgrade, and then the thing
that you spent years building and curating like a baby disappears. It isn't
mothballed and put in the basement where visitors can walk by and see it.
There's no photo of you standing by the thing that you can hang in the hallway
and see every day. Your creation just completely vanishes without a trace.

All those years I've also been a musician and recording engineer. I've made a
few dozen records none of which amount to anything that anyone else would care
about. And all told I'm sure that I earned more money in one year of my IT
work than my entire music career.

However, here is a collection of my work that I _can_ point to and say, "I
made that." It's a creation that I can reflect on years and years down the
road.

I take much more satisfaction in my musical creations than from my software
creations, even though I was much more famous and valued as a software
architect.

~~~
Lambdanaut
Dude. Open source software.

~~~
myth_drannon
Even jQuery which is one of the most famous open source projects will be
forgotten in 10 years or even less.

~~~
elbear
I disagree. Software with that level of popularity doesn't disappear.

~~~
myth_drannon
"Unsurprisingly I now use React for most of my coding instead." \- John Resig,
creator of jQuery

[https://twitter.com/jeresig/status/726058698989277185](https://twitter.com/jeresig/status/726058698989277185)

------
blub
I don't find this post inspiring, I find it sad.

It's partly self-encouragment, part PR. The fact that it even exists is proof
that the author is facing some issues, no matter how confident they would like
to appear.

That recipe to stay current looks tiresome. Listen to two podcasts, two
webcasts, subscribe to four magazines, teach courses, go to one conference per
year, blog regularly, read blogs, follow the latest web trends. Your reward:
you are still employable.

And why is it that most older people answering on these threads are so
passionate about learning and about new technologies and the latest and
greatest javascript frameworks. Do they really enjoy having such ephemeral
knowledge and basically competing with anyone that's finished a bootcamp or
not even that?

It all seems fake. Like they're trying to put on a brave face while at the
same time being scared and trying to convince themselves that all this new and
shiny tech that they work with is awesome.

Why not have an honest conversation instead of pretending that learning some
thing or another will make everything ok in the end?

~~~
metafunctor
Nah. The fact that this post exists is evidence that ageism is a thing.

What makes you think older people are passionate about the latest and greatest
JavaScript frameworks? That is not my experience at all. New frameworks are
just the same old stuff in a new wrapper. We've seen it all several times
over. Like, backprop was a cool thing in the late 80s.

I, too, find this post sad, but probably not for the same reasons you did.
This post, that makes me and you sad, doesn't make it any less of a fact that
the young people in this industry think you are a useless dinosaur if you
don't know what the new hot thing is about.

~~~
smokestack
> think you are a useless dinosaur if you don't know what the new hot thing is
> about.

Welcome to the technology industry.

~~~
metafunctor
Hi! I've been here since the late 80s. What do you want to learn?

~~~
smokestack
Tell me how you've survived in technology without learning new technologies!

~~~
metafunctor
Not sure why you think I haven't learned new technologies.

I have learned them whenever I needed to. Most of the new technologies are not
that special. That makes them easy to learn, but, also, kind of annoying
because I can see that they're just repeating a mistake I've seen 20 years ago
already.

~~~
smokestack
I obviously don't think you haven't learned new technologies in 25+ years. It
seemed like the claim to ageism was that the kiddies expect you to know the
hot, new technology. Requiring knowledge of new technologies for candidates
isn't exclusive to veterans. And it's definitely not a requirement of the
other 90% of companies that are using older technologies.

~~~
metafunctor
I thought you thought that, because you said it. Perhaps I missed a nuance,
English is not my strongest language.

My point, going up this discussion thread a few clicks, was that new
technology is not always better than the old. Ageism comes into play when
one's opinion about the new tech is dismissed just because one has some gray
hair.

------
latchkey
Not a bad post at all and it definitely hit home for me.

I'm 43 and have been doing professional development for 20 years (actually 20
years). I moved permanently to Saigon just 1.5 months ago. I'm teaching the
Pivotal software engineering process (agile / extreme) to a 100 person
consultancy full of really smart ~20 year olds who didn't know or understand
process at all.

I keep up on all the latest tech and I have a youthful mind and body (most
people think I'm in my 30's). I'm the oldest guy in the company and the only
American here. This has quickly lead to a lot of personal mentoring on many
levels, not just software, but life in general. The culture in Vietnam is
strong and my team wants to learn from me. It is very exciting and new for all
of us. It has been an amazing experience so far and I look forward to the
future.

The best additional advice? Just be nice. It is so simple. The culture here is
to never raise your voice or get mad in public, so I've taken it to the other
extreme and I just smile and laugh a lot. Even when the servers are melting
down. Viet are shy and have poor personal communication skills. By being
friendly and nice, they have learned to trust me and that has opened up them
up a lot. It has infected my entire team and improved moral almost over night.

Being older has a lot of advantages. I'm loving my 40's way more than my 20's.
Cheers! =)

~~~
3131s
Some pretty sweeping generalizations about the culture after only 1.5 months.
I live in a country neighboring Vietnam and there are similar perceptions of
the culture here, yet in my experience these ideas are baseless and often
ingrained in expats well before ever learning the language or sometimes even
before entering the country.

~~~
latchkey
"these ideas" \-- which ideas?

Yes, there is a ton of racism and generalizations among expats. As soon as I
got here, I was added to a few private facebook groups where expats vent steam
over the craziness of this country. I'm actually not a fan of it because it is
honestly very racist, but I want to know both sides of the story. Much like
democrats read republican news.

The language is _hard_ and learning is going to take me years. I'm trying my
best, but when I say something as simple as 'một' (the number 1) to someone,
they rarely understand me. Vietnamese also want to learn english (my company
has a full time english teacher) and will not help me.

So instead of language, I've focused on learning the culture first and in 1.5
months (also this isn't the first time here, so it is more like 2.5 months) I
think I have a pretty good handle on a lot of it. I make 1-2 (or more) new
friends daily thanks to the friendliness of the people and because I'm out
there networking like crazy. I have over a hundred friends here now, both from
business and personal.

If I stop liking it here, I'll leave. I don't see that happening any time soon
though.

~~~
3131s
You made two generalizations in particular:

 _The culture here is to never raise your voice or get mad in public_

This stereotype also exists about Cambodia, the country I've lived in for 4
years now. I can tell you that it isn't true about either Cambodia or Vietnam,
since I've seen plenty of people in both countries get mad and raise their
voices in public. The same happens of course back where I'm from in the US,
and if I had to guess it happens at about the same frequency but I wouldn't
rely on faulty human memory to make that judgment.

 _Viet are shy and have poor personal communication_

This is just a ridiculous thing to say if you've never spoken to these people
in their native language. I have actually gone through the arduous process of
learning the language in Cambodia, and I can assure you that speaking in a
foreign language clumsily and constantly being worried about your inability to
express yourself will make you more shy than you are in your native language.
And I have to mention that famous park in Saigon where foreigners are
literally swarmed by Vietnamese people eager to practice their English... is
that shyness? I never talked to so many strangers in my life as the couple of
nights that I sat out there.

And actually, please do not think I'm vilifying you or calling you a racist or
anything. I can tell from your post that you're a nice person, whereas in both
Cambodia and Vietnam there are an outsized number of expats who are just
straight-up mean, bitter, and racist. These people unfortunately end up
influencing the perceptions that new expats have.

I'm only encouraging you to come in with more of a blank slate, and to not
delude yourself into thinking that you can know anything about the culture
after 1.5 months. I'll be more willing to hear out generalizations after
you've been there for years, learned the language, and traveled all around the
country. Have you even been outside Saigon yet? I've been to Saigon, and it's
not representative of the rest of Vietnam.

~~~
latchkey
I feel like you're making generalizations about me without knowing the full
story. You've taken what I've said out of context and quoted and commented it
based on your own experiences.

I've been here longer than 1.5 months from multiple trips here. I've also been
to Cambodia. I'm not pretending to know everything about the culture. I've
travelled to other cities than Saigon. I drive a motorbike as well as or
better than locals. I'm working here daily at a company full of (wonderful)
Vietnamese. I'm not an idiot and can form my own opinions. I'm not an English
teacher (which is another unfortunate stereotype in itself). I'm not bitter or
mean or racist. I know about that park. I'm working on learning the language.

I still stand by what I said.

------
delegate
Take acid and go to crazy festivals if you want to stay young. No really, do
it once at least.

You need to bathe in youth from time to time in order to experience it - it's
fantastic.

Of course you need to keep up to date, try to use your wisdom to understand
which technology/language is going to survive the test of time.

For example, C/C++ is going to stick around for a while; make sure you're up
to date (C++ 14 and C++ 17).

Pick technologies with a steep learning curves, don't try to compete with
20-year olds doing Javascript Bootcamps - go five steps deeper.

Broaden your horizon - read poetry, listen to all kinds of new music, watch
experimental movies, travel around, talk to foreigners, eat weird food.

Study physics and philosophy, psychology and economy.

Have lots of sex - your wife will love you again :)

You have kids ? Great! Learn from them - everything. Try to teach them what
they study at school - see if you can figure out a better explanation. Notice
how much new stuff you learn about the subject, about yourself and your kid!

We're all getting old(er) every day - as we age this process seems to
accelerate - and one day we will be no more.

But inside us lives the kid, the 20-year old, the 30-year old. It's still
there, it can still be crazy and fun, we just need to remember to go on a date
with our younger selves. All the rest will follow.

At least that's what I'm telling myself :)

~~~
qznc
> use your wisdom to understand which technology/language is going to survive
> the test of time

I usually use statistics. If you select a random point on the lifetime of
something. There is a 50% chance, that you are closer to the middle then
either start or end. Thus: Always assume you are roughly in the middle of the
lifetime. In other words, if some technology is only one year old, assume it
is dead in another year.

~~~
mysterypie
That's a great rule of thumb. You should give it a catchy name so people
remember it.

When I don't have good insight into whether it's worth my time to learn some
new tech, I'm going to try to apply this rule.

~~~
inimino
This is the Lindy Effect[1].

[1]:
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lindy_effect](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lindy_effect)

------
soham
Elephant in the room, IMHO, is the technical interview process.

In software engineering roles at big/desirable/fast-growing companies, the
interview process favors faster (by definition, younger) minds. Both young and
old are put thru the same/similar coding interviews at many of these places,
and often faster coders are younger, and get the job.

You can't fix ageism without fixing the interview process. Being jovial,
healthy, nice and culturally sensitive are necessary and useful things to keep
your job after you join, but the gatekeeping itself is biased on the other
side, which reduces the intake to a trickle.

~~~
neeleshs
Why do you think often faster coders are younger? With many more tricks up
their sleeves, a more experienced coder will be faster. Or are you saying
compared to literally older people, but not experienced?

~~~
_h_o_d_
Cognitively, people do slow down after 21 or so. It is likely not to be a
linear process, but I'm sure a quick google of research will find this. It is
not, as suggested by the other comment, spurious feeling, but a well-known
cognitive fact about humans. And experience in eal things doens't help with
random tests, expecially if you're 20 more years away from your CS finals.

Whether this translates into a perceptible disadvantage in code tests is less
likely to have been tested, but it is given what we know, and given other
arguments above, quite possible and indeed likely.

~~~
neeleshs
At least one study suggests that unlike athletic abilities that do peak at
around 20, fluid intelligence is more complex and may peak all the way up to
50 years.
[http://m.pss.sagepub.com/content/26/4/433](http://m.pss.sagepub.com/content/26/4/433)

------
rifung
> let’s look at the average age of IT workers at well-established companies.
> Facebook: 28. LinkedIn: 29. Google: 30

I had an interview at Google a couple months ago and noticed that most people
were pretty young. When I asked the person who was in charge of taking me to
lunch about this, he said that it's probably because there are just much more
graduates of CS now than there were before, and that Google would very much
like to hire senior people as well but they're much harder to find.

I wonder how much of what he said is true vs ageism.

On the other hand, I wonder how much of a natural bias there is against older
people if they have to go through the same interview process because it felt
like a mental marathon to me. Although the interview only lasts a day it took
a couple days for me to recover.

~~~
mianos
Also Atlassian says the same. They said last week that they just can't get
senior people in Sydney. Personally I feel older people are not as good at the
little puzzles they set as an entry test.

~~~
bbcbasic
I applied to Atlassian many years ago and what struck me is their refusal to
entertain non java devs to cross over. If they want more seniors they should
consider c# or other language devs who could cross over.

~~~
hultner
That is actually a really hazardous approach, almost every job I've had as a
software developer have introduced me to a new language and as someone who's
been writing code for 10+ years there's hardly a large struggle to learn a new
language or framework, especially if it's _just another c-like imperative
language_.

~~~
saiya-jin
I heard this so many times before about just another language... learning
language itself? yes, can be done damn fast, plus everybody had some java-like
language in their studies. Knowing this means almost nothing, we're talking
about very junior-level resource.

You know gazillions of frameworks to achieve everything these days, their
integration tricks, various app servers, CI toolsets and so on and on?

I mean, if you are senior in something, are you senior also in XXX language,
meaning I give you spec, we talk and you deliver proper maintenable solution,
leading dev team, managing all issues and bumps along the road? If no, and you
just come as described junior, nobody has time to babysit you for
weeks/months, and you are not willing to take junior salary. but that's what
you are to the company.

~~~
matwood
I'm sorry. No actual senior person who is senior at java or c# takes months of
babysitting to switch to the other. The beauty of a senior person over someone
who is junior and knows only js, is that the senior person should have used
many languages over their careers. Picking up a new language and/or framework
is what senior people should be doing best. Most of the factors that go into a
proper maintainable solution are all language agnostic. Good design, DI, IoC,
all of the 12 factor app suggestions are all language independent.

Even when I was back in college many years ago, only the first class taught a
language. From that point forward the teacher of each class said we're using
language X and suggested a book if you needed help learning.

~~~
rifung
I'm not the person you're replying to, but can you really argue that someone
senior who doesn't know a language and its associated frameworks is equivalent
to someone who does know those things or deserves to be paid the same?

Sure, it's true that many things about good design are language agnostic. On
the other hand, frameworks and languages can actually limit or enable what you
can do, and that lack of familiarity with them has the potential to lead to
mistakes.

~~~
matwood
If everything else is equal, then obviously knowing the _current_ language I
need will push that person ahead. IME, the language(s) a senior person knows
is the least important part whether they are a good hire though.

My reasoning for this is that we are always learning new languages and using
new frameworks. Why would I let a better person go when the language is
probably going to change, or worst case they pick it up in a couple weeks just
by looking at the existing code base? One case where I would deviate a bit is
if I was hiring for a functional programming position. In that case I would
prefer experience with some functional language, but that is not much
different than wanting OO experience for a Java/C# position.

------
ChicagoDave
Age will matter more in a loose job market (more people than jobs). In a tight
market as it is today, your skills are front and center, not your age.

That said, the OP is correct. You're only as good as your last two years and
even that's pushing it. If the tech changes, you have to adapt with it.

I'm 53 as of yesterday (the 8th). I started with PDP-11's in the 80's, then
VAX's, then PC's, BASIC at first, then C, then Visual Basic, then ASP, then
C#/ASP.NET, and now I'm deep into AWS (Lambda, DynamoDB, Redshift), NodeJS,
AngularJS 1.x/2, ReactJS, and I'm still learning new technology all the time.

A lot of developers will transition to management and it's on my mind, but I'm
also still drawn to solving problems at a code level. And there's always new
toys to play with like Angular and React. Now we have .NET Core and all of its
interesting avenues.

If you actually care about being a good developer, you will continue to work.

As long as there are jobs. Nothing will help you if the job market contracts.
Then I do believe hiring becomes age-oriented with us older dev's labeled
"over-qualified".

~~~
gaius
_Age will matter more in a loose job market (more people than jobs). In a
tight market as it is today, your skills are front and center, not your age._

The fact that people are still claiming there is a shortage of tech workers,
demonstrates that that isn't true. The industry wants young, cheap workers who
come ready made with the trendiest skills, then it wants to ditch them rather
than retraining or allowing them to accrue seniority, and hire new ones, who
will work 80 hours a week for free soda and "stock options"...

~~~
ChicagoDave
Devs should train themselves. If you're waiting for someone to train you,
you're not going to last in software development for very long.

~~~
dj-wonk
Some rhetorical questions: How does a person know if they've trained
themselves well? What if part of the training involves interacting with other
people?

------
JTenerife
Younger people are not smarter. They might learn faster new things. On the
other hand, older people understand related new things much better as they
already have a large context (experience). The biggest difference of my
current self (44) to my younger self is that I did spend much more energy in
my projects when I was younger. I created results much faster at the cost of
limited consideration. Now, I can still burn for a while, but not as long as
when I was younger.

~~~
cft
Young people:

    
    
        1. Learn faster (better memory)
    
        2. Can keep their attention focused longer.
    

Number 1 actually becomes a bane with old people: my relatives over 70
actively developed an active reticence to learn anything new: I even theorized
that they are instinctively protecting the limited amount of functional short
term memory for vital tasks.

~~~
peteretep

        > Learn faster (better memory)
    

And yet, when I needed to learn XSLT (and then React), I was able to simply
inhale it in one go because of my experience of similar technologies and
functional programming, which come about from having been doing this quite a
while.

Younger and quicker developers took a lot longer over it and to find their
feet because there were many new concepts there for them.

As you get older, there's less to you haven't already learned.

------
ash
Article mentions "RPG" many times: "RPG back-end", "RPG developer". For those
who wonder what it it (like me), it is not a "Role Playing Game", it is IBM
RPG language:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_RPG](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_RPG)

~~~
jgdx
How the author failed to explain this abbreviation is beyond me. Who in their
50s doesn't know that you spell out important concepts and key terms, then
shorten them in parentheses?

~~~
to3m
Maybe it didn't occur to him that people wouldn't know what it is. If you were
writing an article about programming, would you explain what BASIC stands for?

~~~
Jaruzel
No of course not, everyone knows it stands for 'Badgers Are Super Intelligent
Creatures'.

:)

(Beginners All-Purpose Symbolic Instruction Code... which now I type it out,
obviously cheats. From here on, it shall be known as BAPSIC.)

------
lisper
One of the things that has made me old (52) and crotchety is that I learned
Lisp very early in my career. That gave me the ability to see that 99% of
"new" technologies were really just poor re-inventions of (parts of) Lisp.
Even today, Common Lisp -- despite (or, as some would argue, because of) the
fact that it hasn't been officially updated in decades is still not only a
viable language but one of the best choices for many applications. But no one
knows it because it's not the shiny new thing, and even young people still
can't seem to get their heads around the fact that the parens are a feature,
not a bug. And that makes me grumpy sometimes.

The good part was that I was able to build a very successful career while not
having to suffer nearly as much pain as many of my contemporaries. The bad
part is that now it's hard to find people to collaborate with. :-(

~~~
jodrellblank
_Even today, Common Lisp is still one of the best choices for many
applications._

Then why don't people build amazing and popular things with it? I don't mean
one or two people build one or two things, but lots of people building lots of
things.

Nobody uses it, but it's the best choice, can't both be true. And 'nobody uses
it' is approximately true. It's not a mainstream JVM language or CLR language,
it's not an AWS or Azure or Google Web Services language, it's not used for
Linux Kernel, Windows, Oracle, *BSD, SQL databases, No-SQL databases, it's not
used where Erlang is, it's not the research language Haskell is, it's not the
fun esolang or the long-tail COBOL, it's not the new compiles-to-JavaScript,
it's not the back of 3D games or VR engines, it's not behind Amazon's shop or
used where Go is. It's not talked about in StackOverflow's most popular
languages surveys, or most profitable languages for devs to learn, or most
desired by employers. It's not an educational language like it once was.

Yet it's "one of the best choices".

I simply don't believe it. Any perceived advantages it has, in practise must
be a wash.

~~~
reikonomusha
A few notes:

* Google actively develops one of the Lisp compilers. Google Flights powers Orbitz, Kayak, etc. That's Lisp.

* There are several Lisp compilers in active open source development.

* There's a graph database written in Lisp called AllegroCache. It's good enough to support a business (Franz) for more than a decade.

* Another company (LispWorks) also exists and has a large portfolio of clients.

* Lisp has been used to make entire operating systems. Ones of the past, and ones of now. (Of course, an OS needs a community. But where are real OS's with GUIs in other languages?)

* Lisp has been successfully used in my own career for embedded systems to control satellite acquisition systems to, most recently, quantum computing. (At real companies.)

Just because there's not this huge buzz around Lisp doesn't mean no one is
using it.

~~~
jpatokal
I don't even code in Lisp, but I knew the Google Flights engine would come up,
because it seems to be just about the only "serious" application ever written
in Lisp. And it wasn't built by Google, but their acquisition ITA, which hails
from Boston and MIT's Scheme reality distortion field. (And even MIT has
stopped teaching SICP in Scheme...)

~~~
lisper
Emacs, ViaWeb, Macsyma, the DS1 Remote Agent, much of the autonomous
navigation software for the Mars Rover before the Pathfinder mission... And I
have built a number of small-scale web applications in Common Lisp. I'm
running one of them in production right now.

~~~
jodrellblank
And Yahoo! paid 49 million dollars of stock to throw the LISP in the trash and
use something else instead.

It wasn't even worth them spending 1 million dollars - 2% of that price - on
training people.

[http://discuss.fogcreek.com/joelonsoftware/default.asp?cmd=s...](http://discuss.fogcreek.com/joelonsoftware/default.asp?cmd=show&ixPost=31402)

~~~
lisper
Right. And that decision was surely one of the reasons Yahoo is the runaway
success it is today.

------
gumby
Ageism is real in the Vally but it can cut both ways. In my current company we
did a SWOT analysis and one of our advantages was "many old farts, and many
former colleagues friends".

Yes, if you haven't been using AWS and GPGPUs you will be of minimal use to us
but it's really valuable if you have already made a bunch of mistakes on
someone else's dime. And in your 50s you're probably an empty nester, and can
easily put in a 50+ hour week when necessary (which it often is, but not all
the time, in a startup) and get more done in 40 hours than the squirts do in
60+.

You need a mix of ages and backgrounds. A bias to youth is as bad as a bias
towards time-in-grade, or any other such bias.

~~~
bbcbasic
> Yes, if you haven't been using AWS and GPGPUs you will be of minimal use to
> us

> already made a bunch of mistakes on someone else's dime.

What is it with this industries lack of interest in investing in people yet
demanding so many hours that you can't learn anything new at least nothing
deep. Why not just make everyone a contractor but pay them appropriately as a
result.

~~~
gumby
I guess I phrased that poorly! I meant battle scars are important: not
everybody will have them (some will acquire those scars in the future). In
other words, experience is important.

Sometimes experience gets in your way ("No, a scripting language will be too
slow for this") and other times it saves you a huge amount of grief ("Really,
we had better plumb that now, it will save us a lot of pain down the road").

Not sure I suggested many hours (quite the opposite) or not learning anything
new.

~~~
bbcbasic
Maybe it wasn't phrased as intended, but my point is few companies are willing
to take someone on just because they haven't done tech X even if they are
seasoned in tech Y which is broadly similar and have all of the communication,
team working, leadership, problem solving and domain skills. Because they need
to "hit the ground running".

The flipside is that of course employees don't hang around along in IT as they
need to keep moving to gain the experiences they need to make their CV look
reasonable. So I guess it is perpetuated on both sides.

------
johnwheeler
It makes sense to plug [https://oldgeekjobs.com](https://oldgeekjobs.com)

I've taken a small break from working on it, so the traffic has died down
some, but feel free to post your tech jobs for free for the time being.

~~~
dantaylor08
If you're looking for help, drop me a line. As a young(er) engineer, I live in
terror every day of what may come down the road.

~~~
johnwheeler
That's kind of you Dan. Yep -- I remind myself that ageism is the one form of
discrimination that eventually affects everyone. There might be more...I
dunno, but it keeps me on mission.

I run a Medium publication at
[https://blog.oldgeekjobs.com](https://blog.oldgeekjobs.com). If you've got
writing chops, I'm looking for contributors. That goes for anybody. Thanks
again.

~~~
pryelluw
I would like to help you as well. Ill ping you on Twitter.

~~~
johnwheeler
Feel free to e-mail if that works better. john@johnwheeler.org

~~~
pryelluw
I got in touch through twitter but will email you tomorrow morning. :)

------
andriesm
I'm 39, ageism is real, but I'm gonna tell you to quit whining grow a pair,
and what the hell is wrong with you if you cannot sell your strengths, wisdom
and experience?

(BTW: just so it's clear I apply this same rule to everyone - this is the same
advice I would give to any discriminated group, whether women in tech, people
of color, Jewish or Asian or whatever group that find themselves on the victim
side of discrimination)

Stop thinking of yourself as a victim. Be razer clear what your value is.

Almost every one will have some or other circumstance where some trait of
his/her counts against himself, that is life, but these are merely speedbumps
on the way, not show stoppers.

If you can't overcome bias at one specific company or in one specific country,
move or do whatever YOU can do to solve it. Crying aint gonna fix it.

~~~
LesZedCB
Isn't the point that you don't get a chance to demonstrate your value because
you are overlooked earlier on in the process where some hiring manager sees
how old you are and decides you aren't "a culture fit" for the company. Even
if you being hired will make all us 20 somethings 20x more productive, you
won't even get the chance?

Ageism, like most *isms, isn't something that you can simply throw individual
willpower at. Anti-sexism isn't wont for women with willpower, it's a problem
that lies beyond individual power, and requires collective power to combat.

> Crying aint gonna fix it

I think most people know that. It's because some people still deny or ignore
the existence of these discriminations, so it raises awareness.

------
WalterBright
An interesting thing happened to me in college. As I progressed through it, I
found I learned more complex stuff with less effort. A big part of it was I
was able to see what was important to learn and not waste time on irrelevant
things.

As I get older in tech, I have a similar experience. Of course, one can go too
far and think everything new is irrelevant :-)

------
nnain
Young software developers scope out the projects (time required to develop a
project) very differently from older engineers. Seems like the industry has
forgotten the role of the QA engineer! With experience, you know that you need
time for architecture, risk planning and putting things in production. I see
younger engineers quoting 1-2 months to just about every project; just
earmarking enough time need to put together some frameworks and write a basic
code. Cloud technologies and new frameworks definitely do make building
projects easier. But scaling up a product is still not very easy and casual
usage of several new frameworks, comes back to bite very often.

I just hope people stop being so hurried about seeing the first cut of their
products. That itself would fix some issues around this topic.

~~~
JustSomeNobody
This won't change. They've convinced themselves that it is best to move fast
always.

------
djedipus
I think it’s more about not appreciating experience enough as opposed to
discriminating against age. I’m 31 with 13 years professional experience. I’ve
worked as an employee, contractor and as a single person start-up. Last year I
interviewed for ~10 jobs in SV and I was rejected for all of them. None of the
jobs valued my experience enough to consider my asking salary to be worth it.
I make ~$300K USD contracting and was willing to take a pay cut to ~$240K to
work at a big company and for access to big problems. I found out, via a
friend, that one of the jobs I missed out on was due to my asking salary. They
ended up hiring a guy with much less experience for ~$120K for the position. A
year later and the project failed due to lack of experience costing many
millions of dollars. I wanted them to succeed and I know that I could have
done it but I’m not going back to $120K - at $300K customers only let you work
on important stuff, no busy work. This story gets repeated over and over.
There is a culture problem that doesn’t value experience. It’s not my problem
because I'll go to where my experienced is most valued; it’s SVs problem
because it results in failed projects and wasted money.

~~~
saiya-jin
this is not specific to SV, or US for that matter. 10x developers don't get
10x salaries of they work for bigger companies that have sort of rigid pay
structures for given positions. You have to work on your own ('in your own
company') to have that in 99% of the cases, rest are tiny companies with heaps
of cash (how many are those?).

If you would be having same salary (apart from bonuses) as say some senior
executive/CEO, well that won't fly, no matter of your added value or semi-
magical skills. It doesn't matter how rational that might be.

------
jrjarrett
"I have taken big cuts in salary three or four times in my career. I’m talking
10-20 thousand dollars a year." \- HOW can you do that? How does one justify
that kind of long-term damage to ever being in a position that you don't have
to work?

I understand the idea of it; to move into a technology or business with more
room for growth, but if you don't have the time in your career to benefit from
that growth, how can you do it?

If you're in your late 40's, early 50's, with a mortgage and/or children, or
that point where you can choose not to have to work anymore is dangerously
close. One badly-timed layoff, one forced pay cut and you're stuck.

Especially if you're in that age range; the last generation that ever had some
hope for long-term employment with an employer, the generation that saw
pension plans converted to 401Ks and didn't understand just how much you
personally needed to take over funding your retirement yourself. You're
dangerously close to having one badly timed layoff or large pay cut snatch the
choice of not having to work away from you.

------
karmajunkie
I'm always curious whether Zuckerberg stands behind that quote or if he looks
back on it today as part of a youthful hubris he regrets today. I know if I
look back on my early 20s I remember a lot of similar arrogance that I hope
I've shed at least some of today.

------
gesman
I worked at IBM Research where one of the top experts in malware research was
a 60 y/o guy wearing a big copper bell hanging on the rope and he was diving
into assembly level code like a water.

Smart companies want smart solutions to tough problems.

Assuming that solution is coming from certain audience, like age/race/gender
based is a recipe to failure.

Smart companies are after smart people. Who cares about anything else.

------
toolslive
about the value of experience, I had it explained to me like this:

    
    
      If you see a toddler running after a ball that rolls under a coffee table, bending over to go under the table and 
      to pick up the ball... 
      You know what's going to happen next. That's experience.
      There are just different balls and coffee tables.

------
mxuribe
I'm a 42 year old technologist who just got laid off last week, and very much
dread age discrimination. Although I'm told that I look about 8 or 10 years
younger than I look, it still scares me. And, funny enough I'm about as
energetic - or very close to it - as I was when I was 22. Beyond all the great
notes that the blog post's author wrote, I think the parts about "exude
energy...it’s crucial to be spirited." really hit home with me. Especially now
with my current situation, i appreciate this blog post!

------
sleepingeights
"You know what they do with engineers when they turn forty? They take them out
and shoot them." \- Primer (2004)

One of the biggest killers of sedentary professions is heart disease, which is
the number one killer in the US. People who work at Microsoft have told me
they give free soda, sugared "juices" with artificial flavors, coffees and
teas for free to their employees. These all are sources of heart disease, but
the young engineers drink it up like a lost caravan in the desert. It's likely
not that different in any of the other areas as well.

The cost for ailments such as heart disease is known to be one of the most
expensive in the US. It requires extensive testing, support, medications and
visits to the doctors and hospitals. Considering the extremely high health
care costs the US enforces, this places a huge dent on insurance premiums
companies pay as well as accommodation, etc.

These companies want them out before they have to pay more premiums on health-
care and other factors related to health, age, seniority, etc...

------
andrewclunn
Get a job in an industry that uses tech, but isn't itself pure tech
(healthcare IT for example). Then your years of domain experience matter.

~~~
karmajunkie
This is some of the best advice in this thread. There are definitely domains
within technology where experience is a key ingredient, but the best insurance
against age bias is a deep understanding of technology coupled with a deep
domain you have experience in.

------
ldev
Umh...
[http://www.kettlerusa.com/?fullSite=&cartId=&division=kettle...](http://www.kettlerusa.com/?fullSite=&cartId=&division=kettler+usa)

The design. The url. Clicked "add to card" \- default JS alert popup. Then
some HTML pop up showed up saying something about my IP being banned because
of BOTNET? What? Now refreshing the page I get a timeout.

This is literally the worst eshop I've seen in the past few years. I wouldn't
hire a man who made this atrocity and sure as hell wouldn't like working with
him.

------
eanzenberg
Yes! The most important thing I learned in academia is to never stop learning
and to always push yourself to never get stale. Learning doesn't stop at high
school, college or grad school.

------
dwarman
Existence proof. Can avoid ageism. But likely only via competence, creativity,
and rep.

I've been lucky, I guess.I would add to continuous learning: continuous
invention. New stuff in the world, not just new to you. In my case, almost
entirely unplanned drunkard's walk of a career that I don't recommend anyone
emulates, but it sure has been a wild ride.

I'm 69 last month. Started 50 years ago inside discrete component technology
mainframes. Done hardware logic design, firewire and Medialink FPGA, datacomms
Hard Real Time embedded firmware, synchronous and asynchronous comms protocol
design, real time networking design in the Music world (before anybody thought
it possible, we showed em!:), created cool 4G visual programming languages,
lately Audio DSP inside gaming consoles.

Moral: Keep inventing, keeps you young, moreso than just leaning new stuff you
won't be using until it is obsolete. A wide T LI profile doesn't hurt either.
But that is not an after-thought, it's a side effect of your lifetime of
energy and obsessions.

Vaguely thinking of retiring when I'm 72 or so. Want to make more music, DSP
takes too much time.

------
timemachiner
I'll probably be ~36 by the time I complete a PhD in CS. Should I be OK in
terms of finding jobs at hip companies upon graduation (big 4, etc)? My areas
of interest is in ML, algorithms but I'm completely OK with normal software
development positions.

Reason I'm older is I decided I had a passion for it in my late 20s / wanted
to do research, but had to go back to school to take classes before enrolling
into a PhD. Hope my age + PhD wouldn't hinder me for software development
jobs?

~~~
AlexCoventry
My experience has been that if you've got the chops, you've got no worries at
all. Also, fashion is fickle, but right now you'll have people beating down
your door to hire you if you're skilled with ML and algorithms.

I am in my 40s.

~~~
timemachiner
Thanks for your very encouraging words. You really brighten my day. I've
always had an interest in theoretics/foundations and believe a strong
mathematical backbone leads to better understanding of these fields. I simply
couldn't get that working a normal job, so I know I made the right choice to
pursue a PhD. Many, many people recommended against it (especially my friends
who are pulling big salaries in industry), but for me it was always about the
intellectual pursuit.

~~~
XiaomiFan
If you don't mind sharing, what school are you going to, and what is the area
(the more details the better is good)of your research?

------
desireco42
Related to fitness. I never went to the gym. However I was working on fitness
related site for some years and as a lead there, I wanted to be reflection of
this site I cared much about. So I did what I like, walk and running up the
stairs.

Whenever there are stairs, I would run up them. Now, again I am not super fit,
but I don't lose breath, everyone else kind of does. This gives me great
pleasure.

I am older developer, it is getting hard, I will not lie. But, I am on top of
latest technologies, enjoy my work, I am pain in the but.

~~~
prefect42
Perhaps I'm a simple creature, but running up stairs is one of the greatest
pleasures in life ;-)

------
ThomaszKrueger
54 yo here. Although I have a bachelor's in EE, I have been developing
software since the beginning of my career. I am not necessarily nostalgic but
I sometimes ponder about the real time assembly I wrote for a Telex switch, or
the CHILL code I wrote for a telephony switch. All of it pretty much gone, not
being produced anymore. Or the Windows 2 GUI written in C, the multi tier apps
in VB6 and Powerbuilder. They are gone too.

However having participated in these projects give me a lot of perspective,
and I notice that nowadays I tend to write less and be more thoughtful. I see
others here with similar experiences.

Now as for getting old, there is one thing I recommend: get old but never
allow yourself to look decrepit. Be always clean, well dressed. Don't complain
about your back hurting, or show off the medicines you take. No one likes to
be around sickness or weakness, so pretend to be healthy and strong (or try to
be, even better). I aim for this reaction - "that guy looks good for his age".
This usually helps with ageism, at least in my experience.

------
lliamander
FWIW, I'm still on the earlier side of my career (though certainly not just
starting out) and the direction of my learning has been away from fads and
towards older, more established technologies. Erlang, Unix, etc. have all been
around for many years, and while they do receive active development are still
pretty well established and based off of sound engineering principles.

I also try and get beyond the hype. REST/HATEOS is cool? What about the things
it replaced? What are the edge cases? What was the original design intent?

I also read from/talk with older engineers (many of whom I have the privilege
to work with) to understand what things were like during previous fads.

Ultimately, the problem is about staying marketable while giving fair due to
our life outside of work (I prefer the term "unpaid responsibilities" to
"leisure time"). I don't claim to have solved this problem, and I still have
concerns about what the future holds, but my instinct is that staying on top
of fads is a trap that I want to avoid.

------
zoom6628
Im closing in on 54. Having an absolute blast in tech now because i bring 4
decades of coding, life, and a number of different jobs to what i do today.
And I devote every morning first thing to reading and learning something new -
python, azure databases, IPC in C#, C and SBCs, ZigBee. There is so much out
there at a price point that makes learning painless and fun.

In life i stay healthy as a vegetarian and practice yoga. Look after the body
and the mind will largely follow suit but feed the mind with challenges daily
and you will notice that you get better over time at a rate the javascript
kiddies cant comprehend.

Maybe this ageism is jealousy from the kiddies because you think leagues ahead
of them, and also jealousy from old managers who cant do anything productive
now that their body of knowledge is no longer useful? Food for thought, for
someone. I wont be wasting any time to think about it.

------
pfarnsworth
Well, if the author is almost 60, it probably won't matter which career he's
in, he would likely suffer from some sort of ageism. It doesn't matter if
you're a programmer, or in finance, or working at Costco, if you're getting
close to 60, most people will be skeptical as to whether you can really work
as well as a 25 year old.

------
sh_tinh_hair
Yes,there is ageism but there is also some remnant of meritocracy in IT
development and operations (though both the evolution of devops and enterprise
agile + ci/cd tool culture will eventually kill that imo).

The only way to remain in the IT game at the age of 45+ is to learn constantly
and use your aggregate experience to determine what is good and bad and
necessary. When most of the 20+ year IT veterans are in set piece environments
they enabled or abetted...technological advent and invention is the enemy.

All the musings on how great a person you really are contra|outside tech are
band-aids on reality. If you make your living in technology: be better than
the other guy or be useful to them. That's all there is. Otherwise your days
are numbered.

We can ramble on about salad days and personal achievement but the younger
guys snicker and say 'listen to this fossil' and do their thing. As you would
have in their shoes.

------
solatic
There's a reason why ageism exists in the industry and it isn't because of
some undeserved stereotype about old dogs not being able to learn new tricks.

1) Most business-critical projects have long lifetimes. There's a reason why
banks are still running COBOL and mainframes, and why Java's continued promise
of backward compatibility with every new release is so valuable to companies.

2) Maintaining legacy systems is a bitch. Nobody likes maintaining legacy
systems.

3) Therefore no employer wants to hire somebody who writes code which almost
immediately turns into legacy code, either because it's not tested, or not
written using modern language features designed to make the language safer,
etc.

4) Learning to write code in a modern fashion requires continued education.

5) Employers will not budget or pay for this continued education in a no-
compete-clauses-are-illegal environment where smart employees will take the
training and run to another employer willing to pay for the benefit of another
employer which already put in the legwork of investing in that employee.

6) Employees therefore need to spend significant time educating themselves on
their own time. This is great for the minority who are computer geeks who
treat it as a hobby and it's terrible for everyone else.

7) Most people will not spend personal time educating themselves, because they
prefer to invest that time in friends and family. This is all the more true,
not less true, after one's children are grown.

8) Therefore they slowly become unemployable as their skill set turns
obsolete.

9) Therefore employers have a hard time finding older people who do have that
combination of a modern skill set and decades of general industry experience.
And it's for the same reason it was difficult to hire any programmers at all
in the 90's, because the competent labor pool (then in general and now in the
older age group) is basically limited to computer geeks.

10) Continued interviews of older people who did not bother to keep their
skill set modern and honed creates a stereotype that old people aren't
"smart".

It's not a problem that some Chief Diversity Officer at some Big Four company
can solve, because they're either going to literally fight human nature
(people desiring quality time with their families) or they're going to adapt
an affirmative action policy that'll only make the problem worse, as prefer-
false-negative hiring policies set up to protect codebases from incompetence
get overturned for what's essentially a political reason, breeding resentment.

~~~
gaius
_Therefore no employer wants to hire somebody who writes code which almost
immediately turns into legacy code_

But what is "legacy" or not is not to do with technology, but fashion. Let me
give you an example: everyone rants on here about what awful languages PHP and
JS are. Is COBOL really a worse language than either of those? If so why? What
algorithms or data structures can't be implemented in it? What tooling doesn't
exist?

The only reason COBOL is considered a legacy language is because it's
unfashionable, and a large part of that - I'm not even kidding - is the
clothes COBOL programmers used to wear have fallen out of fashion. There's
actually no reason that you couldn't use it for any application you might want
to write today, and it would probably be more productive to do so than some
modern languages...

~~~
mcgrath_sh
COBOL has its limitations for sure, but I am an oddball because I love it. I
took it for two semesters as part of my master's degree and am keeping an eye
out for COBOL jobs by me. I would love to work in COBOL day in and day out.

The hardest thing about COBOL is the mainframe it has to run on. Without that
access, I haven't done much coding outside of class.

------
markmckelvy
As someone who transitioned to tech from finance, I can tell you that this
trend (preferring young workers to old) is not limited to tech. The fact is
companies in general are going to prefer younger people for labor. Younger
people are cheaper, tend to have fewer obligations outside of work, and are
willing to put up with more on the job.

As someone getting older and more experienced, you can take this one of two
ways. (i) You can try to "learn new tech" and "stay up to date" in an effort
to compete with these younger workers or (ii) you can actually listen to the
market. And what is the market telling you? Yes, younger workers are more
valuable for the aforementioned reasons. But it's also telling you that by the
time you are 40 or 50, you should be implementing your own ideas, not someone
else's.

------
wobbleblob
Oh cool, he made a webshop with an RPG backend. I last did that about 15 years
ago, it looked just as awful, and just like him, I was so proud of my
achievement at the time, that I couldn't see what an abomination it really
was. It's a pity, that customer deserved better.

I totally believe age discrimination is real, and the Corgibytes author hits
the nail on the head with:

> Only as Good as Your Last Two Years of Accomplishments

> Kent Beck has suggested that, with consistent use of pair programming, the
> capabilities of programmers don’t differ much after two years of experience.

Experience in our field rots away at an amazing rate. I don't think it's as
short as 2 years, but if you're still regularly using techniques you mastered
10+ years ago, you're probably falling behind. I don't think lawyers, doctors
or stock brokers have this problem.

~~~
smokestack
I doubt that a lawyer, doctor, or (especially) investor could survive more
than a year without constantly investing time in learning about their field.

~~~
GFK_of_xmaspast
Doctors now have to do 'continuing education' and many of them got pretty
upset about that and / or were grandfathered out of the requirements.

------
paulsutter
Elon Musk is 45. Does that make him old? Doesn't seem to slow him down.

edit: just saying limits seem artificial, that's all

~~~
randomdata
How much hands-on tech involvement does Musk actually have in his enterprises?
I imagine his focus is on business, leaving the tech for the tech
professionals that are hired by his businesses.

~~~
anondon
> How much hands-on tech involvement does Musk actually have in his
> enterprises?

From multiple interviews, Elon has stated that he spends the majority of his
time on engineering and design problems, and very little time on business, PR.

~~~
wcummings
PR BS & founder worship. If he wasnt spending time on PR he wouldn't be doing
interviews

~~~
anondon
> If he wasnt spending time on PR he wouldn't be doing interviews

There's a difference between spending minimal time and no time at all on
business, PR aspects.

> founder worship

I only stated the facts. Where is the worship?

~~~
dragandj
If by facts you mean "the picture that Musk's PR machine wants you to believe
as facts" then yes. Unless you spend lots of time with him personally so you
state that first-hand. Somehow, I don't believe in superhumans. Elon is
undoubtedly smart and successfull, but he is not a Batman (or Superman, or
whatever).

~~~
anondon
By facts, I mean what Elon Musk has stated himself.

The interview with Sam Altman in How to build the future is one instance where
Elon states this. In the same interview Sam also states that when Elon took
him for a tour of SpaceX, Elon talked about the engineering aspects in detail
and had a surprisingly good understanding of how the components worked.

Another instance is in the recode interview I think.

And how often do you see Elon going around doing PR stuff? AFAIK not much.

~~~
dragandj
So, in an interwiev, Elon talked _some_ engineering aspects to another
_enterpreneur_ , Sam, and Sam, who never did any rocketry, concluded that was
a surprisingly good understanding of how components worked. How the hell Sam
Altman does know anything about rocketry?

That's exactly what I'm talking about. Elon certainly understands some general
concepts, maybe even decent amount of engineering (for a businessman). He is
obviously an excellent businessman, and, I'd say, even better personal brand
promoter. Everything beyond that is just PR that is obviously excellent since
intelligent people fall for it.

------
orionblastar
Getting older in tech, most of the stuff I learned is obsolete:
[http://www.computerworld.com.au/article/184668/readers_throw...](http://www.computerworld.com.au/article/184668/readers_throw_other_technologies_pyre/)

I'm a legacy software, retrocomputing expert now I guess?

Most of the old commercial software has released free and open source versions
of itself or someone wrote a FOSS clone or whatever to do the same things.

I am 48 years old now, getting close to 50 in two years, and can apply for
AARP and get better health insurance through them.

I ended up on disability, but been trying to learn new things and keep up with
trends and patterns in the industry.

------
vorg
> between 2008 and 2010, I was training Java developers at Circuit City on
> Groovy and Grails. These folk were mostly late 20s and early 30s, and they
> were just fine sticking with good-old, write-everything-yourself,
> don’t-bother-with-frameworks, Java.

You're assuming Groovy and Grails are better to code in than Java and
something like Spring. Grails began as a thin wrapper around Spring. Its
business purpose was to chisel market share away from vanilla Spring so its
backing company (G2One) would get bought by SpringSource, which eventually
happened in late 2008.

------
bungie4
While I believe their ageism in tech. So what. I'm 56, I've been programming
professionally for 30+ years. Code is still code. Theirs not much new under
the sun at a core level.

Consider this, many thousands of lives depend on my ability to write good,
maintainable code everyday. I do Alarms, Telematics and 911 Systems.

So ageism. ya, it exists. But for every 50 year old coder, theirs 150 under 30
in the business. Its just the way it is. But I know, if I was in the hiring
end of the game, I'd drop my dime on the old fart whose got a ton of REAL
WORLD experience over some freshly minted grad every day of the week.

------
blauditore
Out of the software devevelopers I know, only a few percent are 40+, so my
sample set isn't very reliable. But from what I've seen, the average (or at
least median) skill set was better for younger people, where the best ones
I've met are in their 30s.

My assumption is that there has been a point where software/CS started booming
and people started getting degrees in that field. Among the 40+ devs I know
there's a higher percentage of carreer changers, and with a few exceptions
those have been generally less skilled.

------
mixmastamyk
It's good advice to keep up to date and in shape, and always have, but
unfortunately even that is often not sufficient.

Lately potential employers have been expressing surprise that I never went
into management. I enjoy developing so was never interested---until I
encountered a few truly incompetent bosses in the last few years and rethought
my position. So I've read all the classics, such as MMM, Peopleware, etc...
but found it is too late to be hired as a manager when you've never managed
anyone.

------
uhtred
One of the strongest team members at my workplace, super smart, asks more
questions than anyone else, thinks of the stuff the younger guys don't,
basically would always want him on my team as he gets stuff done, is an older
guy. I think he's prob in his mid 50s. (to be clear, I don't actually think
mid 50s is old, but society sometimes suggests it is)

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Icedcool
32yr old here. This is interesting to me, coming from times of 28kbps internet
where the dude with a huge beard was a tech god.

Reading this and reading the posts, I'm aware of what occurs to be a trade off
in young/age, in that young can be cutting edge while old tends to have
wisdom/smarter about approach/worldlyness.

Seems shortsighted to think that young is better.

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LargeCompanies
It's ok to get older in the tech industry as a whole just not in spaces like
are Silly Valley and or places that are trying to be such and draw that crowd.

The best place in tech for older is a govt. job where age skewers older and
you may even be a minority amongst your fellow laid back/no drama, hard
working Indian co-workers. The pay is more then good too!

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bluetwo
I read a study in the 90's comparing more experienced and less experiences
multimedia programmers given identical tasks. In short, it concluded that the
more experienced ones took longer to do the tasks, but did them to a higher
level of quality.

That has always rung true to me, and I see that happening today.

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JustSomeNobody
I think the industry you choose matters. I have done work in the Medical and
Transportation industries and the devs there seem to be older. I tend to
gravitate towards development where the code simply has to work correctly.
This means proven technologies are used as opposed to the new and shiny.

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gbencke
I get inspired by the japanese Shokunin work ethics, it is well described on
the Jiro Dreams of Sushi movie, a explanation can be seen here:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q78xvcnmIMw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q78xvcnmIMw)

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losteverything
"Uncle, What do you think."

It's tech.this age thing.

Forced out of tech by invention/adoption of cell phone age is worshiped in my
jobs today. Like Indians calling seniors "uncle" to show respect.

Age is my shield, my platform, my integrity and my perceived knowledge.

It's tech

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sparrish
I've found out how to sidestep agism - work for yourself. Build it in whatever
'old' language you want, bring value, and profit.

Now I get to sit on the porch and yell at the youngin's "Get off my lawn!"

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ForHackernews
> After years of scoffing at talk of prejudice in the information technology
> field...

It seems kind of ridiculous that white men won't believe in hiring
prejudice/discrimination until it directly affects them.

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JumpCrisscross
This cuts both ways. As a young founder and manager, I must be extremely
conscious of hiding my age. Without knowing the number, my team is fine. Once
they know all hell breaks loose, at least for a while.

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Brian_Bassett
Fantastic article. I am lucky enough to work with Don and he is amazing.
Probably one of the most simultaneously brave and curious people I've ever
met.

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qznc
> I’m only as good as what I’ve accomplished in the last two years

This implies no more salary increases after two years?

~~~
tclancy
No, not at all, just that interviewers are totally uninterested in anything
older than about that date. I've been in the industry for 16 years, the last 9
on my own as a consultant and have been kicking the tires on some full-time
jobs in the last couple of months and it's definitely eye-opening: they really
only want to talk about what I've just worked on and trying to use examples
from anywhere else in those 16 years is met with suspicion. Some of the
hardest problems I solved were when I was limited to ASP and Access. The fact
I didn't build the thing in Mongo and Clojure doesn't mean I can't use those
technologies. Some of it is the impedance between "technical" recruiters who
are really just looking for you to say certain keywords and some of it is the
age gap between older devs and the developers who are typically interviewing
them.

I have a resume that's good enough to get me in the door at a few places
you've heard of this time around but it was also turned down flat without more
than a recruiter call at other places where my current experience exactly
matched the tech they were asking for. I can't help wondering if they saw "16
years of experience" and either thought "too old" or "too expensive". I have
considered doing a little A/B testing on that.

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metafunctor
It just struck me that Zuckerberg is starting to get too old for himself.

~~~
tclancy
And in a few years he will be touting the value of people right around his own
age. It's human nature and one of the most valuable things about getting older
(while continuing to learn) is to be able to see that kind of thing and value
insight from anyone, not just the people who look exactly like you.

Harder to learn if you build up an empire of people who look exactly like you.

------
oliv__
Life is ageist.

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known
Great post; You should focus more on Consulting jobs;

------
JakeAl
My advice to all is to keep an eye on the ball and understand where you are
and where you expect to be every five years and have a plan. If you plan on
being just an expert or individual contributor when you are 40 or 50, then
expect to have to compete with those in their 20s. Not too easy when a 25 year
old has fewer responsibilities at home (like teen-aged children) and can spend
their spare time learning the latest fringe technology to make it more
mainstream. Also not too easy to fit in culturally unless you have the
developmental maturity of a 25 year old. (See my note about The Stakes at the
bottom.) Adults with no responsibilities can drop acid and go to Burning Man
without consequences. Responsible adults cannot without the risks they take
impacting others. (in response to a poster's comment) That's what separates
the men from the boys, to coin a phrase. No offense to ladies or others.

What I am not hearing in all of these discussions is talk of developing
leadership fundamentals. They apply not just to one's job/career but to the
individual and all aspects of their life.

There's 5 levels of leadership:

I. Individual Contributor Self-leadership. Responsible for producing work and
getting along with others.

II. Expert/Manager Expert Best at what they do. Work on more complex projects.
Display a special talent. Design a plan for new products. Further develop
their craft. Innovate on projects. Demonstrate readiness to tackle more
challenges

Manager Managers are tactical, focus on the short term. Lead individual
contributors and experts. Develop staff. Focus is on improving upon weaknesses
necessary to succeed at being more than an individual contributor or expert.
Navigate organizational structures. Maximize talent of team. Think
strategically about how team contributes to organization goals.

III. Leader of Leaders Leaders are strategic, focus on the long term. Focus
shifts to training level IIs on their managing weaknesses. Training and
developing (mentoring) experts and managers. Role is critical to the success
of an organization. Poor managers have a huge and damaging impact because they
leave high turnover and disengagement as well as low morale and productivity
in their wake. Refined communication skills up and down the organization,
acting as a reliable conduit for information to flow up and down. Develop
business acumen. Develop organizational strategy. Develop new leadership
opportunities.

IV. Leader of Functions/Divisions Maximize the contributions of all groups
within the function/division. Strategize the development of the function for
the future of the whole organization. Builds a competitive strategy. Ensures
long term growth. Mentor and engage direct reports. Build key relationships
outside organization. Deepen their intimate knowledge of other functions.
Attune to industry and market shaping factors (sector acumen).

V. Leader of Organization Manages all functional leaders. Sets the vision and
strategy. Ensures future success. CEO Build a team of differing strengths.
Empower functional/division leaders. Create a motivating culture. Share the
vision of the future. Position to be at front of trends.

As you move up 3 things change: \- Scope of your view \- The Stakes/impact of
your decisions \- Proportion of management and leadership

What skills do you need to maximize your potential? What skills do you need to
develop for the next level?

Leveling up is growing up. If you don't like or want to be a manager or
leader, figure out why not, starting with understanding your emotions and
managing your stress and anxiety. This is usually what stifles one's
development.

