
The Brutal Ageism of Tech - deepakkapoor
http://www.newrepublic.com/article/117088/silicons-valleys-brutal-ageism
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hitchhiker999
As a 38 year old who doesn't need to be hired:

I am infinitely more useful as a programmer now than when I was 18. I started
when I was about 6, I had put in my 10,000 hours by around 18. I lacked so
much.

I play on-line FPS to relax after a day of coding, I get to see the speed at
which young people operate, and _how_ they operate. It is limited.

It is hard to remain flexible as an adult, we can fall into the many
'slowdown' traps of ageing. If one doesn't, one can 'kick ass'.

Any community who thinks youth is _exclusively_ valuable, lacks wisdom.

IMHO A combination of 80% experienced and 20% youthful energy appears to
operate as the perfect catalyst for powerful progress.

 _I didn 't realise SV was like this, what a shame._

~~~
wavefunction
There's a whole world beyond SV filled with companies that value experienced
and reliable developers. I'm 35 and I'm the youngest dev at my current place,
by quite a bit.

I've been around the block so many times now I can predict the majority of any
new block. And spending your time outside of work doing things other than dev-
related is great. I am adding a dog to my life on Sunday to help encourage me
to keep up with my exercise regimen and get me outside. Enjoy life, we only
have one!

~~~
hitchhiker999
Where are you? That sounds incredible.

I have 2 dogs, a wife and a new baby. I can lend you them for 3-4 years if you
want ;) Nah, it's awesome. Thanks, and enjoy your new friend - great move!

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credo
This is a duplicate submission. See
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7455757](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7455757)
for the original submission (with 349 comments)

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onmydesk
When you get old enough you realise you wouldn't do what they do now not
because you can't, but because it was pretty dumb.

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thedufer
To go a little off-topic, the jab at Outbox was horribly undeserved.

> “This company sends out humans in Priuses three days a week,” one
> fortysomething programmer groused to me last year.

This was a soft landing for their customers after the USPS shut down their
original system of having customers have their mail forwarded. Their long-term
goals were 2-fold:

1) Allow customers to easily unsubscribe from unwanted mailings (incidentally,
this is why USPS wanted them shut down - junk mail constitutes most of their
revenue).

2) Fix USPS - they intended to get their automatic scanning technology into
USPS itself, thus saving them delivery costs on mail for anyone who signed up
to receive it digitally. This could potentially save them enormous amounts of
money.

They originally wanted to do this with USPS, but quickly realized that they
had much better chances if they started as a private company.

Great article on Outbox: [http://www.insidesources.com/outbox-vs-usps-how-the-
post-off...](http://www.insidesources.com/outbox-vs-usps-how-the-post-office-
killed-digital-mail/)

~~~
wavefunction
The folks behind Outbox were attempting something that was way more ambitious
and interesting than most of the SV startups I see mentioned here, and I agree
that they got a bad rap from the press and the Postal Service.

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Hermel
> Nick Stamos has no kids, few hobbies, and even fewer extravagances. He works
> all the time and is consumed by his company every second he’s away from it.

That of course always helps as entrepreneur. It might also be the hidden
reason behind the ageism. I for one would not want to work as hard today as I
did when I was younger and did not have a family yet.

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Nursie
Not true everywhere.

As an older engineer you might not get the new, cool, bleeding edge project.
But then you might also not be expected to work 15 hour days.

I call that a win.

(I'm mid 30s and while I may not put out as many lines of raw code as I used
to, I understand what I'm doing far better, have a good understanding of
development process and tools, and place high value on robust, supportable
code as compared to most of the younger engineers I've worked with recently -
i.e. I'm far more productive, even if I look like I'm doing less!)

~~~
Nursie
All that said, I've just been reviewing some code written by fellow not-in-
their-20s engineers here and I think I'm going to have to go and vomit
somewhere.

Maybe it's just fair to say that age _can_ season, temper and improve a good
engineer. It doesn't with all of them.

~~~
afarrell
Age does not equal wisdom. Age times paying attention equals wisdom.

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eitally
"Brutal", "Ageism", and "Tech" in this headline are all editorializing by the
author. Beyond the tech bubble there are countless more traditional companies
that depend to varying levels on internally developed software and are happy
to employ competent folks of any age, _especially those not likely to flee
after 6-24mo_ (per a different post yesterday about how to make money as a
programmer). In one of our offices the average tenure is >20yrs, with a couple
of guys beyond 40yrs with the company. A few of them participated in the
original authoring of a critical business system we wrote in the early 90s
(it's been completely rewritten a couple of times since, but still), and
having their deep knowledge is extremely important to us. But we're not a tech
company and we are happy for folks to work a standard 40hr week, with comp
time to compensate for on-call or extraordinary circumstances.

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mattgreenrocks
There is another way: become a member of the Guild of technologists, and break
away from the commoditized pop culture of programming.

In short, work somewhere where your ideas and skills matter more than LoC
generated per day. There's tons of devs who are younger/faster/hungrier than
you who will work for less. Actually, this whole system depresses wages for
development as a whole and you should be pissed about that.

Ageism is unique in that it's a game you're guaranteed to lose eventually.

------
afarrell
I have definitely observed this phenomenon in at least one startup CTO in
Boston.

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personZ
"When a company called PayScale recently surveyed the country’s 32 most
successful tech companies, it found that just six of them had a median age
over 35. (The median age at Facebook, Google, Zynga, AOL, and Zynga was 30
years or younger.) By contrast, the median age for all workers in the U.S.
economy is 42 years."

Given that such an article is going to be dominated by anecdotes (which are
interesting and sometimes entertaining, but very seldom illuminating broader
trends. People often think whatever lot they are in is universal, and that
what misfortunes or difficulties they face are always unfair externals), I
looked for data and this was the best it had. It's a pretty common proof.

Only the 32 most successful tech companies have gone through generally
_enormous_ expansion. Most of them draw primarily from new grads, not least
because such recruiting is easy: New grads are available, and are willing to
relocate wherever you want them. Established workers are less likely to be
interested, and often dramatically less likely to want to relocate.

If you simply polled tech workers across the US who were willing to relocate
any distance, much less thousands of miles, the average age would similarly be
very low.

I'm surprised the age difference wasn't much larger, to be honest.

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paulhauggis
My problem is that I'm not willing to go on coding death marches any longer. I
also question decisions by management instead of forging ahead toward absolute
failure.

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Dewie
> One thirtysomething told me about a friend at Facebook who half-seriously
> claims to avoid sun exposure for fear of premature wrinkling.

From what I've read, there isn't much health-benefit from sun exposure. You
have the vitamin D thing, but it seems that that can be taken care of with
diet/supplements.

Obviously going for a Dracula lifestyle is a big inconvenience. But it seems
that wearing a good dose of sun screen and trying to avoid tanning and
sunburns might be a good investment if you want to avoid premature ageing,
and, if you don't care about that, at least reduce the chances of skin cancer.

~~~
collyw
Is it not the case that Norway and dark places have a far higher suicide rate?
I moved from the UK to Spain, took a salary cut, because I value the sun. It
it less depressing waking up to sun rather than grey most days. That must have
some positive impact on health.

~~~
dagw
_Is it not the case that Norway and dark places have a far higher suicide
rate?_

Not really. Norway has roughly the same rate is the US and quite a bit lower
than France (but quite a bit higher than Spain). The whole darkness leads to
suicide is largely a myth:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_suicide_ra...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_suicide_rate)

