
Can you start a successful tech career later in life? - kunle
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/currency/2014/01/can-you-start-a-successful-tech-career-later-in-life.html
======
pg
One of the best examples I know of is someone we hired at Viaweb, Jonathan
Yedidia.

[http://www.disneyresearch.com/people/jonathan-
yedidia/](http://www.disneyresearch.com/people/jonathan-yedidia/)

He had a PhD in physics and then became a professional chess player (44th in
the world IIRC). He hadn't done much programming, but I knew him from high
school and figured someone as smart as him could learn to program pretty
quickly. Which is exactly what happened. Now he's a CS researcher.

~~~
larrys
Disney Research is an impressive place that I never knew existed.

------
snowwrestler
The answer is certainly yes. There are many people working in the tech
industry who are older than 35, 45, or even 55.

Tech is not any different from other professional fields like law, medicine,
engineering, etc., other than being a much younger industry.

Being a much younger industry, it is easy for the young people in tech to
believe that one must be young to succeed in tech. But in reality it's a sort
of "anthropic principle"\--obviously a young industry will be filled with
young people in its early days.

But, those days are over, and the industry it maturing. With each passing year
it gets easier and easier for older folks to break into tech.

Can they become dynamic founders of aggressive, entrepreneurial, successful
companies? The answer is still yes, to the extent that anyone can do that.
That type of talent is very rare generally, so it will also be very rare in
older workers. But certainly there are examples of older workers who start hot
tech companies. Marc Benioff was 35 when he started Salesforce. Martin
Eberhard was 43 when he started Tesla.

------
callmeed
I've been hacking since childhood but my formal education took longer than
normal (becoming a teen parent meant I had to work full-time and go to school
part-time). I had 2 technology jobs before starting my own companies. I've had
my own startups/businesses since 2000 and I'm now in my late 30s.

My biggest fear career-wise is that, should my company go under or sell for
non-FU money, I am basically un-hireable. I feel like I am a _founder until
death or retirement_ now. Most of me is fine with that because I love it, but
part of me would like having the other option.

I even wonder if being an older founder makes it hard to hire young talent or
raise money. Dave McClure even said on TWiS that they don't even want founders
over 40 in their accelerator.

Fortunately, I've got plenty of skills, experience and I _look_ younger than I
am (I pluck the gray hairs out of my beard). We shall see ...

~~~
sillysaurus2
You'd be fine. The most important thing is whether you have a portfolio to
demonstrate that you can get stuff done. You do.

------
AndrewKemendo
Something completely unstated here is the practical demands required of
startup employees and founders and entry level tech workers. Most of those
demands conflict with someone who has kids and other responsibilities, such as
long and odd hours with a high pace. Statistically older people will come with
more baggage and are much less willing to put up with harsh and in some cases
ridiculous work schedules that are required of interns and new hires.

This is the same for any high competition job and I think Wall Street is a
perfect example for this because it is very similar in practice.

There are way more parallels between Wall Street and Silicon Valley than I
think either group would care to admit.

------
Sindrome
I recently interviewed for a Sr Dev position at a large 200+ Los Angeles based
consulting firm. Before the Interview I decided to check out the people who
work there on LinkedIn. Of the 30 or so developers I found only 5 had a
CS/CIS/EE/CE/Math degree. The rest where 30 somethings with degrees in
English, Music, and other under utilized fields. Most of them had attended one
of those 1 year coding school programs. Some where holding Senior positions
with less than 3 years of development experience and no formal degree.

Obviously a top tier company’s roster doesn’t look like this. But it was
interesting to see how much the job market for developers has changed. This is
my first time looking for a new job in 7 years. Clearly the demand for tech
has changed the landscape and made lots of opportunities for middle aged
people with little to no experience.

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marktangotango
I was 32 when I got my first programming gig. I had programmed a lot as a teen
then did other things in my 20's. Went back to school and got a BS. I think my
grad date being 10 years after a pipeline students makes people assume i'm
younger than I am :)

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julianpye
I think there is an additional question here, which is if you can return to a
tech career that you started early on but abandoned when you forayed into
management. But one day you realize that your hobby of programming is so much
more satisfying. I am trying this right now, but it's not easy, especially
since people think that you are moving downwards if you're going back into
tech.

~~~
belluchan
I spent about 6 months in management and it was the worst experience in my
career. I will never do that again. I'm back to writing code. I don't know why
anyone would want to be a manager.

~~~
onedev
Can you expand on why you thought your experience was so bad? I'm just
curious.

~~~
belluchan
I was the direct manager for software engineers at a big public hosting
company. Being a line manager was miserable. I thought going into management
I'd have more ability to influence things but I had less. I had no time to
write code, and so I wasn't taking part in technology decisions outside of
approving with whatever the team decided, and they are smart people, they
didn't need any hand holding. I couldn't influence anything at all with the
director who managed me, all I did was communicate whatever he wanted to the
engineers. I couldn't influence other teams. I basically sat in meetings,
listened to 1-1's and just relayed information. Another team had someone
struggling and so I got to do a bit of mentoring there, but I didn't have to
be a manager to do that. It just seemed like I was always fighting with HR for
my engineers, fighting my boss for my engineers, trying to get other teams to
respond to my engineer's needs. It sucked. I think the people on my team were
happy with me, but I want to write code. I want to make things. Engineering
has a career track that makes sense, when I looked at managers who were my
peers I saw politics, and one-upsmanship. I just want to make good products. I
don't want to play mind games. I want to do the best I can. I don't need to
rise up the ranks. I just want to learn and do cool things with software.

It was a great learning experience though, because before I became a manager I
thought that was like a natural progression, something that I had to do,
something that I felt I couldn't shirk from, something where people recognized
me for my skills, but in reality it's just a shit job, a dead end, unless
you're one of the few who advances up the latter, because you know what, all
of my managers and my manager's managers were all just relaying their
manager's will down the pyramid.

When you are a software engineer you see things you do create value. You build
things that work and do stuff. When you're a manager, I have no idea what I
contributed. What did I do last week where I earned my pay? I have no idea.

Anyway, I'm glad I survived and am back to writing code. It involved getting a
new job at a new place as soon as possible before I got too rusty. I was
writing code at home all that time so that helped.

~~~
onedev
That painted a pretty insightful picture, thank you for posting it!

I was curious because I had heard for quite a number of people who had
switched tracks from engineer to management and found it unsatisfying but they
didn't go into as much detail as you did in your post.

------
julianpye
Another important point is that for older techies, there is a different mental
mindset when it comes to making code public. Of the best S/W engineers that I
know, no one has a Github account. They give talks in small groups, give lots
of personal advice, some are champions of pair programming, but they don't put
their code in public. It makes it harder to network and gain attention.

------
onedev
I can do whatever the fuck I want and nobody is going to stop me. Seriously.

~~~
moocowduckquack
Well jolly good for you. Out of interest, do you want to do anything
particularly outlandish and is anyone actually trying to stop you? Because
otherwise this level of extreme seriousness may be entirely uneccessary.

~~~
onedev
I'm tired of this pseudo-intellectual banter about age and if it matters.

No it doesn't matter. Go out and do what you want!

------
smtddr
Absolutely, but because of ageism you'll probably have to prove yourself in
some way a little more than others. I suspect someone in their 20s can get by
without having some github and/or webapps on their LinkedIn but if you're
...say...40+ with no tech-work to show anyone, you're going to have a tougher
time. You really ought to have _something_ that shows what you can do. I'd
argue that just about anyone, regardless of age, gender or race would do well
to have some URLs showing some kind of work they've done. I know the door-
opener for all my jobs beyond my first one(AT&T) was because of all the
hacking & coding on my blog and youtube channel that I linked to on my
LinkedIn. I know this because they told me in the interview and/or the email
when they first reach out to me. The material tells them, at the minimum, that
they're not completely wasting their time evaluating me. Or, based on the
content maybe they know immediately I'm not qualified and never contact me.

For the record, besides AT&T I've never used my social-network to get a job.
All of them since have been cold-calls from them based on my public-LinkedIn,
or me sending a company I'm interested in my LinkedIn profile... then I cross
my fingers.

------
bayesianhorse
Later in life? You mean like after 18?

------
gab008
I am attending Network Security and Compliance courses and I have in class a
50 and something guy.

At first everyone kind of smiled, but then smiles disappeared, as it turned
out he was much better than most in class. Additionally he had a better job
than the rest in the class as well.

So I agree, the answer is yes -I guess.

------
anuraj
Would be difficult to say the least, especially if you do not have a STEM
background. As PG says, at least 10 years hacking experience is the minimum
bar. But if you are an innovator/marketing genius and can muster a tech team,
you can definitely be a successful founder.

------
alaskamiller
30 is when you finally get it though.

~~~
michaelochurch
That's the cruelty of age discrimination. By the time you're any good,
opportunities start disappearing.

(At 30, you're still quite hireable, but you do start losing options. Most of
the options that disappear from 22 to 30 are of horrendously low quality. I
hope that is also true from 30 to 40, 40 to 50, etc.)

~~~
busterarm
As someone who is changing careers from support/ops into dev at 30, age
discrimination terrifies me.

I'm already having problems in my current career when prospective employers
google me and find out I'm building up my GitHub account. They either think
I'm going to leave immediately or they think that I'm trying to backdoor my
way into a dev position at their company.

This happened to me twice this week and both places decided I was doing this
before even asking me about what my goals were. I was laid off two weeks ago
and really need some work, but it seems that right now I'm unhirable.

~~~
michaelochurch
_I 'm already having problems in my current career when prospective employers
google me and find out I'm building up my GitHub account. They either think
I'm going to leave immediately or they think that I'm trying to backdoor my
way into a dev position at their company._

Wow. It sounds like those are some crappy companies. Where are you located?

After 30, the quality of jobs that is available becomes higher but the
quantity is lower. That has a lot to do with capitalism's pyramidal shape.
There just aren't as many good, age-appropriate jobs, as there are bad ones.

Thus, you need to be open to a national search. I'll warn you ahead of time
that many startups are absolutely shitty when it comes to relocation: either
none or some ridiculously small amount like $2,500 (pre-tax!)-- a full-service
move, for a 1BR apartment, will burn up more than that. If you ask for 2
months' spousal unemployment to be included in your relo-- which is just a
reasonable request at "a certain age"\-- most startups will balk. So you need
to save up for that.

After 30, every job search might be national. Sometimes you need to go into a
beastly expensive tech hub to get the job you want, and sometimes the best
move is to get out of those places. Strategically, the best thing to do (if
you can stomach the moves) is often to switch between being a bigger fish in a
smaller pond and vice versa-- similar to the dynamic of alternating between
tech jobs to bid up your autonomy level and technical achievement and finance
jobs to bid up your salary.

~~~
busterarm
Thanks for the info. Both positions were remote, actually.

I've been working remotely for the last 5 years now and wanted to keep that
up.

I'm pretty comfortable with relocating and don't have the life-baggage that
would make it expensive but I'm not going to do it for the career I'm about to
leave. When I start looking for dev work I plan to do exactly what you said.

------
konop
"Tech companies don’t require their engineers to be coding wunderkinds" \-
really? What tech companies advertise for mediocre, non rock star devs who can
muddle through some tutorials?

~~~
thirsteh
Wanting and requiring are quite different. Very few companies actually have
many of the kind of people you describe.

~~~
marktangotango
At my current company the old timers consider themselves to be rockstars, and
they've written the biggest pile of crap I've seen yet. There are two we (the
newer guys) have decided should never be allowed to code again, and tell mgmt
this.

------
hindsightbias
Yes. In a few years, it will be seen as a silly question as affordable
healthcare options allow creative folks to leave their corporate drone jobs.

------
eegilbert
When did longform start discussing things posted 5 hours ago? This, more than
anything, makes me feel old.

------
alien3d
im in 30 and gonna lunch own accounting software middle or end of the year.got
also few friend accountant in their 40 expert in excel macro and
function.ain't to late

------
michaelochurch
The age discrimination culture (see here:
[http://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2013/12/14/vc-
istan-6-th...](http://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2013/12/14/vc-istan-6-the-
isms-of-venture-funded-technology/) ) is an artifact of a few bad-apple VCs
with some really ugly intentions. It's there to put this shitty time pressure
on people so they act like their careers are going to last 4 years-- and
sprint, making unhealthy sacrifices that aren't sustainable-- instead of 40.
If people feel like getting to 35 and not being CEO will ruin their lives,
they're more inclined to play into the degenerate risk-taking that VCs want
them to do with their careers (since it leads them naturally into get-big-or-
die business strategies that enrich the VCs).

The danger is that it might become a reality. VCs are the analogue of the last
generation's Hollywood entertainment executives and Hollywood's age
discrimination culture is horrific. (As a writer, you're done by 50.) If we
end up with the ageism problem that Hollywood has, when I am that age, I plan
on shanking the parties responsible with dental tools.

------
notastartup
damn this is like the complete opposite of me. I want to get out of the whole
tech game once I make enough money to not have to work a 9 to 5 job. I wrote a
quick rap verse about it.

    
    
        Jus trying to make a quick buck
        get outta this tech game but still no luck
        need to make it before i turn thirty
        before i end up old and dirty

~~~
sillysaurus2
Is the implication that >30 year olds are old?

~~~
johnjlocke
Apparently so. It's the stupidest thing I've ever heard. SV, specifically
startup culture, is a large part of the tech world, but far from the only
portion of it. I suspect the preference for young founders is not being able
to "see the world through hacker eyes", but as was suggested earlier the
willingness to burn the candle at both ends in order to make a startup succeed
to the level that VCs wish. Young people are less likely to have families or
an outside life.

