Ask HN: Do startups hire 50+ year old programmers?(US) - FredBrach
======
kls
Yes they do, as long as you keep up with the trends, one of the things that
tends to happen is at a certain age, usually in the 30's many developers will
decide to sunset. e.g they just stick with COBOL, Java, etc. It can be a good
career choice, usually there is an apex where wages decline or stagnate for a
5-10 years and then they see their effective wage start to rise given that new
personnel entering the field opt for other technologies and older peers leave
the industry. Given that reality a good deal of older programmer choose to
take that course.

I don't think that age discrimination is as bad in the industry as people
think it is. I think rather sun-setting at some point becomes too much of a
draw for most and you also have those that defect to management. I know in my
start-up experiences when I was young we used to look up to the older
developers that took the effort to stay relevant.

Personally, I would hire someone of any age if they are proficient and have
passion to build something. I think there may be some organizations that may
look at older developers and think well we can't get 80 hrs a week out of
them, but I think they are the minority and I personally would not want to
work for an organization that would expect 80hrs a week a standard course.

~~~
hack_edu
I always frown a little when my older (by a dozen years or so) co-workers get
frustrated when moving to new tech, like git. :( Too often they'll bristle at
the mere suggestion that they should keep the dedicating an hour or two of
their spare time each week/month to reading and learning new things.

Its not hard, regardless of obligations outside of the office. You can't just
sit back and rest on the stuff you learned 10 years ago...

~~~
hsuresh
Why should they do this in their spare time? If it is important to the
business, shouldn't the employers provide time for their employees to learn
new technologies?

~~~
tptacek
This is one of those assertions that is simultaneously true and irrelevant. A
developer who is comfortable in git is better than a developer who's only
willing to use Clearcase. How they get to be one or the other doesn't play
into the value calculation. "That's not fair" is one of the least compelling
arguments in business.

But then, I strongly object to the notion that older developers are likely to
push back on (say) git. More likely, given the developers over 40 that I have
known, is that the developer is likely to think that choice of VCS is banal;
older developers are less likely to fetishize git or hg, which is a
productivity trap for developers who are passionate about their VCS.

~~~
pork
Thomas, this is totally irrelevant, but would you consider yourself one of
those "older" developers? I'm intimately familiar with your comments, but I
have no idea how old you are.

~~~
tptacek
I'm 35.

------
jroseattle
I care about quality output, pure and simple. Productivity in our technology
stack is what I'm looking for in candidates. I've encountered basically two
types of programmers who are 50+ (my guess on their age, based on resume
dates).

Those who (still) possess that curiosity to learn and the drive to create.
They may not be completely current with every late-breaking technology (show
me anyone who _really_ does, for that matter), but they embrace change and
strive for improvement. They are the ones that make you forget about age --
young, old or somewhere in between.

And then there are those who seem like they walked in with their high-school
letterman's jacket on, hanging on something they did years and years ago --
and having trouble transitioning to today's world.

While many people associate those 50 and older as "seniors", not everyone
maintains senior-level status in this business. As we all age, we would do
well to remember to rely on our natural instincts for curiosity and learning
to keep the fires stoked and remain relevant in an industry that will continue
to change for years to come.

~~~
hga
I hope you remember there age, or more specifically what comes with _serious_
experience, when they e.g. look at the symptoms of a bug and say "It's going
to be there" (in the code) and are right more often than not. That's something
I achieved in C/C++, but only after, say, a decade and a half of working with
them. (And this does translate to newer stuff where no one can have that much
experience, although of course not as well).

Or take architecture. I know I've done a good job there when mine solves
problems I didn't consciously anticipate. Again, that took nearly 2 decades
from when I first started programming including a lot of reading on good
software design, starting in that first year of programming ('77-8) and
_never_ stopping. Heck, the older you are, the more time you've had to read
and grok the classics.

Hmmm, to finish with a riff on some other observations in this discussion, the
normal, _average_ outcome of a startup is failure. Perhaps one should consider
non-normal approaches to staffing, like recruiting one or more grey-beards of
the right sort who can save you days, weeks, even man-months of effort on
individual things because of their experience. To paraphrase Scott Adams,
sometimes you have the option of working harder or smarter. The latter
frequently wins.

------
FirstSow
Youth is not a skill. I don't hire green college grads. And I look at anyone
with less than 10 years of experience with suspicion. Knowing Ruby or Scala or
whatever syntax is fine, but it's far less important than the underlying
skills: OO design, distributed systems, threading... Specific languages and
frameworks come and go. Many of the twenty somethings don't really understand
that.

As for working 80 hour weeks, you're fooling yourself if you think people of
any age can do that productively for an extended period of time. Plenty of
research exists on that topic.

The key to hiring is to hire only A players who will be highly productive and
produce quality code. In my experience A players are not twenty somethings. Do
you think Delta Force recruits green beans fresh out of boot camp? Absolutely
not. They recruit from the Rangers and Special Forces. Of course we can't all
hire A players. But I can.

~~~
hga
Actually, I like hiring one or so nearly green college grads of the right
sort, who are willing to be mentored. As long as they are self-directed, can
start working given basic directions and then ask you the right questions (my
favorite example from a guy who'd only done C++: "where is new in C?" "ah, in
C we malloc...."), they can be very productive and follow your vision. And as
they learn, help to refine it.

I believe in trying to balance your team. A very few green apprentices (too
many take too much time), enough seriously experienced masters (you're not
likely to get many) and then journeymen in the middle, all of these aspiring
to reach higher levels.

------
temphn
Here is an honest answer that you won't hear from many others. Startups are
not the best option for 50 year olds.

Most 50 year olds demand high salaries, aren't willing to work long hours (let
alone nights and weekends), are far less familiar with new technologies and
less willing to learn, and are much more cynical than 20 somethings. The risk,
uncertainty, and low structure environment of a startup is just a bad fit for
the age group in general.

Our society hasn't yet adapted to the fact that as people get older in
technology, they get less competent but demand higher and higher salaries due
to their increasing fixed costs (mortgage, etc.).

Those who will argue with you about the above facts want to eat their cake and
keep it too, like the women who want to have kids and pregnancy and a social
life but also want to make it big at a high tech startup. People do not want
to acknowledge that tradeoffs exist: that women with young children can't put
in long hours or that old folks just aren't as plastic and supple.

Some engineers age like Ken Ritchie, and stay sharp. Some go into management
or do consulting on legacy systems. Those are all legit options. A 50
something should have enough savings to bankroll his own startup; that too is
a legit option. But working at a YC-style startup is not likely to be a good
fit.

~~~
tptacek
Our society hasn't adapted to the fact that people get less competent and
unjustifiably more expensive with age because it isn't true.

People who get less competent get less competent; people who demand
unjustifiable compensation demand unjustifiable compensation. Some of those
people are 50+. Some of them are 25. Some 20-somethings code for 2 years,
write an O'Reilly book, and then reposition themselves as "architects". So
many young people did this with the title "CTO" that the term "CTO" got
tainted.

This is something I was taught in 3rd grade, but apparently hasn't percolated
into the public school system, so we're having to teach it to adults at great
expense: _one needs to be vigilant about prejudice_.

Or, in some cases not, because one of the subtexts behind ageism is that
talent is getting more and more expensive, and firms want to avoid engaging
with that reality. At least 21 year olds come bundled with the pretense of
inexperience, so you can pay them 40% of scale.

If I sound self-righteous about this, I apologize; I'm really not upset by it,
because it is one of the more easily exploitable market inefficiencies our
industry cultivates. You guys pay for the "Rails programmer" who foreaches
through N+1 queries because they don't grok SQL joins; I'll pick up the 50
year olds who've shipped Lisp and written RISC assembly.

------
aeeeee
How much do families fit in the with culture of startup? Would it be odd for
an employee to have to leave in the middle of the day to pick up sick kids at
school? Will you be a "good fit" if sometimes your family responsibilities
trump work. What is your desire and inner motivation at 50? It's probably a
lot different than the 20yr and 30yr old startup culture. I would say if you
are 50 yr old that fits in with the younger culture and have the necessary
skills you will do just fine. The reality is though that you are probably at a
much different place than the majority of startup employees. You have probably
see enough to know how to best spend your time and your priorities are likely
different than your peers. The guy doing the hiring knows all of this and
where he won't directly use age as a factor in hiring he will take these other
factors into consideration. good luck.

~~~
tommi
If you are 50 years old, your kids are likely to be old enough to get to home
by themselves.

Personally I'd hate to work in a place where it would be considered odd to
take care of some private business during the day every once in a while.
Stretching and leeway goes both ways.

~~~
MattGrommes
That's not as true any more. I know a number of couples that "started late"
and will be in their fifties just as their kids enter the ~10+ year old age
range where after-school activities ramp up yet the kid can't drive. People
having kids later is probably going to be another of those slow social changes
we'll all have to adjust to.

------
HarrietTubgirl
Sure, but here are some prejudices people will have about you going into an
interview:

\- You don't want to work enough (~80hr/weeks).

\- You aren't familiar with new technologies or languages, and aren't curious
enough to learn.

\- You think slow, and don't have the ability to push stuff out the door
quickly.

\- You want a senior position as an "architect" or "senior engineer" instead
of being an IC like everyone else.

\- You want a bigger salary than everyone else.

\- It's going to be hard for people to relate to you and communicate with you.

If you can fight against all of those, go for it.

------
MaggieL
kls doesn't think age discrimination is as bad as it is. I'll wager he doesn't
think gender discrimination is as bad as it is either. He's more likely to age
than he is to change gender, so we'll check back with him in 30 years.

It's kind of amusing to hear him think of COBOL and Java in the same breath;
I've worked extensively with both. Not at the same time, though. :-)

He is on target in saying keeping your skillset fresh is key. Like the Red
Queen, it takes all the running you can do to stay in the same place.

~~~
kls
I'm old. I have almost 20 years in the industry.

------
splitrocket
Yes. I hire excellent people who are interested and interesting that fit into
the culture of our company. Age/sex/race/gender/etc. are irrelevant.

------
tptacek
We did. Age wasn't a factor in the discussion. If you can play, we want you in
the game.

------
xarien
Speaking as a founder, yes I would. I'd also fire one just as quick.

I'm of the mindset that both employers and employees need to be flexible with
one another. I may need you to pick up technologies you're not comfortable
with and you may need spend your early evenings with your family. I may need
you to work 60+ hours on a given week and you may need to work some of that on
off hours.

It's a give and take situation with any startup employment. What's objective
is what can you deliver and can I obtain a positive ROI from hiring you?

------
devs1010
I don't work for a startup but just wanted to comment since I work with a lot
of older developers, one who must be well into his sixties is rather
interesting as, while he does have his spots where he seems a bit stuck in the
past, is constantly trying to inject new technologies into the organization.
We're a primarily java shop and he writes a lot of scripts in Ruby and always
wants to bring more ruby into projects. I also know he has probably more of a
passion for developing software (personal projects) than some of the other
developers, who are younger (but still much older than me). I think its really
just based on the person. If they really love building software they will keep
up at any age because they see the benefit in their own projects.

------
playhard
Age does not matter. Skills matter. This is interesting. Have to lookup
whether startups have already hired 50 plus year old guys? Maybe phd
professors!

~~~
seanmccann
Age would matter for a startup beyond just skills. Older hackers might not be
able to "keep up" and "fit in" with many startups. Culture fit is really
important, but being old doesn't automatically mean no fit.

One interesting thing about a hacker being 50 is that they potentially have an
empty nest (no kids), much like their 20s. In some cases they might be able to
work "startup hours".

------
ziyadb
Companies in general rarely hire older employees exclusively for their
technical ability.

The typical 50 year old programmer has worked at numerous organizations, with
dozens of teams, using at least as many technologies. This directly
contributes to the development of non-technical skills such as communication
skills, management skills, insight, and stronger perception. They're rarely
oblivious to these skills (as demonstrated by the relatively low numbers of
older professionals selling themselves as "programmers").

~~~
devs1010
I find this not necessarily true at my company, in fact the oldest people in
the engineering department are exclusively developers where the managers tend
to be younger or the same age as them. This may depend on region, as well, the
area I live in now is rather different than Silicon Valley where I think
people wouldn't stick around for years and years as "just a programmer" but in
lower-cost, slower-pace areas, I think programming is often just another job
to people and its something that people will just continue to do for their
entire career.

------
sgricci
When I've hired people, while working as an engineering lead at a startup,
It's never been about age, it's been about skills + personality. Out of a
development team of around 10 people, I'd say 2 were >= 50 years old, a few 30
somethings and the rest around 20-25.

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vaksel
some? yes

most? You won't get hired, because you'll be seen as a bad cultural fit for
the company.

Only real way to get in as someone that old, is if you are going for the
position of a CTO

~~~
tptacek
I wonder how many of the people on this thread who share this opinion have
started successful companies.

