
What they say about age is true - st3fan
http://scripting.com/stories/2010/08/28/whatTheySayAboutAgeIsTrue.html
======
pg
Ironically while arguing one side of the case he becomes an example supporting
the other. He sounds so grumpy and closed minded. Who'd want to hire him?

His thesis that technology hasn't changed is false in any case. E.g. while the
fundamentals of algorithms haven't changed, that sort of knowledge is less
central than it used to be; for better or worse, software development seems to
be evolving into something where you glue together building blocks made by
other people rather than writing everything yourself.

~~~
maddalab
The grumpy-ness aside which is difficult to judge in an unbiased manner and
every one for himself, the question is still relevant, and something that I
can relate to tho not being in the affected age segment.

I look around at my last 2 work places and have yet to meet more than the
occasional mid-40s professional who is in positions of technical ownership.
Most of them have moved into positions of management (paper pushers for the
most part), architects (whatever that means) or moved out (to whatever it is
they do, hopefully something interesting).

Those who did move into management and position involving architecture were
not necessarily more technically proficient than those who moved out, with a
history of accomplishments that identified them as suitable for those
positions. In most cases it was just a case of who one was acquainted with.
Put simply the technical field is not a meritocracy beyond a certain
watermark.

I have yet to hear a cogent argument on why folks in their late 40s or early
50s are not adequately represented in programming positions start ups or
otherwise. What is unique about programming as a practice that make it
unsuitable for professional beyond a certain age?

In most professions that have similar age barriers to early exit (sports comes
to mind immediately) one case expect to be compensated handsomely for the
short while that one has is holding on to the position, this is not the case
with programming.

Leaving aside the argument that most programming positions do not require any
education because they are no longer "creative" functions just functions of
component "assembly" and as such do not require the experience gained from
years of practice, what changes does the industry require to undertake to
effective use the experience of folks who have worked hard to gain it?

I certainly do not have the answers.

~~~
pg
The answer may be related to the early age at which mathematicians seem to
peak.

Another factor is the rate of change in technology. Mere experience may be an
obstacle there. When you start knowing nothing and pick a technology to learn,
you naturally tend to pick the newest one. Whereas for an old person, learning
new technologies is something you do out of duty as much as eagerness. An old
person learning new technologies is keeping current. A young person learning
the same new technology is learning to build stuff, which is much more
exciting.

~~~
dieterrams
> The answer may be related to the early age at which mathematicians seem to
> peak.

I may have been searching badly, but I couldn't really find anything to
support this idea, at least in terms of a cognitive deficit. The following was
the best discussion about mathematicians and age that I found:

<http://sps.nus.edu.sg/~limchuwe/articles/youth.html>

Bullet points:

\- Mean age of best contribution by mathematicians is 38.8 (based on counting
references to research by historians and biographers). This is roughly the
same for other SET researchers.

\- The Fields Medal cannot be awarded to mathematicians over the age of 40,
which skews the mean age of mathematicians receiving their field's most
prestigious award.

\- As mathematicians get older, they take on more administrative work, have
families, etc., which reduces the time and energy they have to devote to
research. (I'm reminded of how Andrew Wiles basically shut out the world while
proving Fermat's Last Theorem.)

\- Rapid expansion of the field meant an increasing proportion of
mathematicians were young, thus more discoveries were by young people.

\- Math is a field where someone can make a great contribution without having
acquired a large body of knowledge.

\- Young math prodigies get a disproportionate share of attention.

~~~
mechanical_fish
_The Fields Medal cannot be awarded to mathematicians over the age of 40._

Say _what_?

Geez, you're right. Wikipedia:

 _The Medal also has an age limit: a recipient's 40th birthday must not occur
before 1 January of the year in which the Fields Medal is awarded. As a result
some great mathematicians have missed it by having done their best work (or
having had their work recognized) too late in life._

Clearly someone needs to endow a better math prize. You know, one that is for
the best math, not the best math by a specific sort of person.

~~~
dagw
That would be the Abel prize. Although I wouldn't call it a better or worse
prize. The two awards simply have different goals they want to recognize. Abel
is more of lifetime achievement award and Fields is more of a recognition of
brilliant younger mathematicians and an encouragement to go on to greater
things.

------
hga
" _Facing facts, I've been sidelined in tech for quite a number of years. No
one offers me a place in new startups. When I was younger things were a lot
different._ "

In a previous discussion I mentioned my first (and last) extremely unpleasant
interaction with Dave Winer and someone mentioned I was a member of a large
club
([http://diveintomark.org/archives/2003/04/21/whats_your_winer...](http://diveintomark.org/archives/2003/04/21/whats_your_winer_number)).
That might have more than a little to do with his inability to get offers in
new startups.

I'll also note that anyone who says there's no difference between C and an OO
language doesn't know what he's talking about. Or in this case C and a
language that's largely Scheme semantics with a C style face. And then there's
compilation vs. interpretation. Feh.

But the OO part is a big deal (at least to the extent it is used by
BrowserScript). Learning a new language is generally fast. Learning a new
paradigm like OO or functional programming is generally not.

~~~
tptacek
Sure, C is a language in which virtually everything is expressed using fixed-
width integers, in which developers must choose and remember which region of
memory every variable resides in, in which object lifetimes are of crucial
import but left entirely to the devices of the programmer, and in which the
programmer is addressing the hardware nearly directly, instead of an
interpreter. And sure, Javascript is none of those things. But: both of them
require semicolons at the ends of statements!

Oh, wait.

~~~
Vivtek
Also, curly braces!

~~~
nostrademons
Psst, the semicolon comment is funny because JavaScript doesn't actually
require semicolons at the end of each line. It will automatically insert them
for you if missing, which has led to a number of hard-to-find bugs.

Its curly-brace behavior, however, is pretty much exactly like C.

~~~
Vivtek
Oh. I feel kind of stupid now.

~~~
tptacek
You actually just lost 3 measurable IQ points by learning about semicolon
insertion, so don't feel _too_ bad.

------
rajbot
Dave Winer is the guy that famously ranted he would never support the new JSON
Facebook API: "To Facebook the answer must be no"!

Then he when everyone laughed at him, he silently edited his rant to appear a
bit more sane [1].. It's not that he _wouldn't_ support the json api, it is
that he _couldn't_ , because the programming environment he wrote doesn't have
a json library.

It's 2010. Would you hire a programmer that who can't parse JSON?

Edit: Even better.. would you hire a programmer who, when asked to design a
json api, refused to do so and instead yelled at you about the superiority of
XML-RPC?

[1]
[http://www.scripting.com/stories/2010/04/21/tofacebooktheans...](http://www.scripting.com/stories/2010/04/21/tofacebooktheanswermustben.html)

------
frognibble
I immediately thought "no hire" after reading the author's comment about
Javascript and C. The rest of the paragraph strengthened my opinion. Age is
not the issue here.

------
frognibble
I am a 50-something engineer who recently worked at a well known startup. I am
planning a new startup now. I reviewed my contemporary connections on LinkedIn
to see how many I'd consider for my startup. I did not find many.

Many of my contemporaries have climbed the management or technical ladders to
the point where they have not practiced the skills needed in a startup for
years. They are managing fifty or more people. They are architects at large
corporations. They are not designing products and writing code.

A smaller group of my contemporaries are set for life financially. They are no
longer working or are only pretending to work.

Of those that are still actively working, I know that some of them have
ratcheted up their lifestyle to match their high compensation. It would be a
major adjustment for them to live on a startup salary.

There might be ageism in the startup world, but I think it's definitely the
case that the pool of eligible and interested 50-somethings is small.

I personally have not experienced ageism. I was 20 years older than everybody
else at my last startup.

------
henning
I think he isn't offered opportunities in other people's startups because he
doesn't seek them out. Does he expect the world to come banging down his door
because he was an early blogger and blogging tool developer? Other early
bloggers went on to command much greater audiences.

Who in their right mind thinks JavaScript is a "gratuitous reinvention" of C?
They're more different than they are alike.

Maybe he should learn how to build LAMP server farms if he wants to work in
startups doing them. There's no reason he can't start his own and work with
people who aren't ageists.

------
erikstarck
I wouldn't hire Dave Winer in a startup because he is an internet legend and I
would assume he was very expensive.

Part of his salary would probably have to go on the marketing account but I'm
sure there are wiser ways to spend that money in a startup.

I would be more OK with having him in a technical advisory role or something
similar. That would give me most of the publicity value at a much lower price.
(I would then of course also make sure his experience was utilized to the
fullest extent possible, probably as a mentor to the tech team.)

Not sure he would like that, though.

------
bconway
_If you invest in tech companies, try bringing in some tech experience. It
might push your comfort level. It also might make you much more competitive._

Let me know when you're willing to take startup pay ( _real_ startup pay, not
$100K instead of $130K). Most 50 year-olds that I talk to aren't.

~~~
nir
If you're a startup with little cash looking for talent, you can either (a)
offer co-founder level equity, (b) employ, perhaps remotely, people living
where market rate is cheap or (c) hire someone at market rate for limited
scope consulting work, hoping they produce enough value to be worth it.

Unless your name is Steve Jobs, when you choose (d) hire someone for far below
market and compensate them with employee level equity, you're basically
looking for a sucker. Most engineers realize this way before they turn 50.

------
mikecane
>>>No one offers me a place in new startups.

Pretend this was not written by him, because I don't want this to come off as
attacking anyone.

Reading just that alone, my reaction is, "Well, why SHOULD they?"

Isn't having coding skills the same as having made a living as a writer? I
don't see novelists complaining that no one has "invited" them to write books.
They do it without any money up front in the hopes someone will like it and
publish it (some self-publish in e, these days).

I thought being able to code was like a ticket to mint money, if you had a
great idea and the willingness to push at it. Isn't that how everything on the
Net came about? Maybe I'm just missing something here. But the fact remains if
you sit around waiting for an "invite" to _anything_ , you're bound to be
waiting a very, very long time.

I'd rather be _doing_ something than waiting any day.

------
mechanical_fish
I have a hypothesis: One secret to staying "young" in software is to avoid
uttering statements of the form:

 _we chuck our experience, wholesale, every ten years or so... These are
gratuitous reinventions._

Even when these statements seem to be true. Don't train yourself to think like
this. It isn't going to help.

Yes, people -- especially the young, but the old as well -- go over the same
ground a lot in software. That's called _practice_.

It's partly a generational thing: New generations need to learn from mistakes
by making some of those mistakes; the process of having your elders lecture
you about the mistakes is great, and can save you valuable time, but it is
imperfect. Some things you just have to experience for yourself.

But it's mostly an evolutionary thing. We reinvent because the environment
keeps changing, especially in computing, which has been rocked by epochal
changes over the course of the last forty years. (Take out your iPhone and
compare it to the machines and networks in use in 1970. Then compare the
_owners_ of modern smartphones to the owners of machines and networks in
1970.) The reinvented thing never turns out quite the same as the original,
and those differences -- many of which look like accidents, some of which
_are_ in fact accidents -- are usually where the progress can be found. The
new tool fits the new problem better than the old tool because it evolved in
the presence of the new problem.

~~~
wccrawford
Or to put it in a car analogy:

If we hadn't reinvented the wheel, we'd be using stone tires.

Reinventing is not always a mistake... And sometimes you have to make a lot of
mistakes to make progress.

------
evo_9
This is really a factor if you make a factor, or better yet - let it dictate
who you are. If you think you are 'too old' then you probably are. But what if
you don't think about age because it's silly and instead you continue to
improve yourself, learn the latest tech and generally make yourself someone
worthy of being in a startup? Granted there are other factors such as
financial/family obligations (mortgage, college tuition for the kids, food on
the table, etc) that might make not ideal for a start-up - but age shouldn't
be something that enters the equations (well up until I point though I have no
idea what that 'point' would be).

I know I've thought that this ageism thing could be a factor. Hell I was
nervous 'admitting' I am 43 in another post and when I signed up for the
start-school (like it's wrong or something). But the thing is, because I don't
think about age, and because I continue to learn and grow, it's never come up.
It probably helps that I played a sport at a near pro level and know how to
'train' and consequently look 34 instead of 43; but the reality is we
influence ourselves more than we realize (it's a internal mental game thing).
Bottom line is if you want it bad enough you make it happen.

------
skowmunk
I agree, many people undervalue other's experience.

I think its a treasure trove of information as to what worked and what didn't
work, especially if one can cross apply those lessons across knowledge
domains/areas of technology.

~~~
_delirium
This is one area Google does things relatively well, I think. Especially when
they branch out and design a new thing with heavy CS content, the lead
designers are often in their 40s or 50s and have experience with significant
past systems in related areas: Rob Pike, Lars Bak, Ken Thompson, Peter Norvig,
etc.

I think one reason is that people of that age are mostly the ones who even
_remember_ various useful solutions to problems and tradeoffs that have come
up in the past. CS is strangely bad at digitizing its history: I can get a
philosophy journal issue from 1890 on Jstor, but many CS journals and
proceedings from as recently as _1980_ are still dead-tree only. And many are
still relevant, e.g. the V8 js engine is strongly based on 1980s Smalltalk
compiler research. A handful of important papers (say, by Turing) have been
piecemeal scanned and put online by interested people, and a handful of
university classes cover historical aspects, but overall I don't think history
transmission is taken particularly seriously in CS circles. So, it ends up
being more of a living-memory sort of deal, where if you want knowledge from
the 1970s/80s to influence your designs, you have to hire people who
personally remember it.

------
nir
A lot of people here seem to focus on reasons why startups won't hire Dave
Winer, but the this isn't a Winer-specific situation. Startups aren't filled
with personable JSON-loving 50 year olds, or even 40 year olds.

One reason may be that most current web startups just don't do work that is
difficult or innovative enough to warrant that level of experience/cost. You
don't need 20 years' experience to create Reddit, for example, and even though
a veteran team might have avoided pick the wrong language initially or storing
users' passwords in plaintext, these didn't really hurt Reddit that much.

There's also the employee's side. In my late thirties I already find it hard
to get excited about self indulgent social-location-based-nano-blogging apps
aspiring to get mentioned at Wired. When you look for something that's either
really challenging or tries to solve a real problem, your range of choice is
greatly limited.

------
mustpax
_If I can't get into the game, I can't imagine there's much chance for most
other people in their 50's to play a role._

The arrogance of this statement is just mind boggling. Why exactly does the
author think he's orders of magnitude more employable than other engineers of
his age group?

~~~
dpritchett
If you want to parse that extra-pedantically it looks like Dave's just self-
assessing himself as being in the 51st percentile of 50ish devs. I'm pretty
sure everyone thinks they're above average.

~~~
mustpax
Please. He's saying that, if he can't do it, others of similar age must be
hopeless. That simply means he believes he's at the top of his field, not just
above average.

------
DanielBMarkham
I think if you feel the need to defend your ability by blogging you've already
lost the battle.

 _Just go do it_. Then the argument is moot.

Startup entry costs get lower and lower everyday. All of those zillions of
barely-useful web apps that everybody is funding provide a nifty base to
launch and begin interacting with a market. It's really not the same business
environment as it was just ten years ago. That's not meant as an argument for
age discrimination, just an acknowledgment that things have changed. The best
guy to find is some graybeard who kept the best of the old stuff and is also
learning the new stuff.

Unfortunately the temptation in tech is to rest on your laurels and try to
coast on using natural intelligence as opposed to continuously learning new
things. Sometimes this gets kids right out of college -- take the corporate
9-5 job and the punch-the-clock mentality. Sometimes it takes longer. But once
this attitude begins the logical conclusion is blog articles like this.

------
Tichy
What about startups founded by "old" people? Wouldn't they like to work with
people of their own age group?

I think if I were 25 and launching a startup, hiring somebody twice my age
really might feel a little bit weird.

Maybe this alone could explain it - if people only like to hire people who are
younger than themselves, there would be fewer places willing to hire the older
you got.

~~~
wccrawford
The owner of my company is a only few years younger than me and that feels
-weird-.

I suppose that when I'm 50, it won't feel quite as weird to work for people
younger than me, but the bigger the gap, the weirder it's going to feel.

------
tomjen3
I call bullshit. If there where a systematic discrimination against any group
of people, some startup could win big by hirering these people that are as
good, but nobody seem to be willing to pay for.

But since not a single one has done so (at least publically), something else
must be stopping them.

~~~
neilk
That argument is frequently made to deny the existence of _any_ form of
discrimination. Note that it would have applied to say, black people in the
1950s in the USA.

~~~
tomjen3
Except one thing, you where likely to get into trouble if you had a black man
hired to do what would have been considered a white mans job, so the black guy
was strictly speaking not worth the same as a white man because he would (in
directly, but pretty certainly) cause you problems with your customer.

That is not true today in Silicon Wally, because nobody knows who wrote the
code one is currently using.

