
How AWS Cloud is demolishing the cult of youth - SoulMan
http://redmonk.com/jgovernor/2017/05/23/how-aws-cloud-is-demolishing-the-cult-of-youth/
======
joeskyyy
> When you sit down with one of the AWS engineering teams you’re sitting down
> with grownups. At a guess median age would be 40-45, someone like Andi
> Gutmans, now 41, one of the original creators of PHP, who now runs Search
> and New NoSQL for the firm.

Ha... All the senior managers, directors, and VPs at Amazon may be in their
40+ years, but everyone who's actually building the day-to-day code isn't. On
any of the teams I worked for, the average age was probably ~24, and that was
without interns.

This isn't me dismissing the wisdom, skills, and benefits of having seasoned
tech talent, but it's definitely not that way at AWS.

Source: ex-AWS Employee.

~~~
openasocket
Current AWS Employee, and it's not that way where I'm working (Security). At
23 I'm the youngest person on my floor (excluding the intern), there's a
couple people within a year of me, but everyone else is older than 30. On my
team I'm the only one not married, and one of two that doesn't have kids. Two
of the people on my team are the same age as my parents. If I ever want to
make people on my team feel old, I remind them I'm closer in age to their kids
than them :).

Maybe security skews towards an older demographic, but that's been my
experience.

~~~
equalunique
When I was 23, at my job, I was the youngest person on the cyber security
team. Not AWS but US Federal Cyber Sec. I imagine moreso for US Federal but
also for other realms of Cyber Sec., there's a rather dry aspect to both
knowing the "rules" and measuring "compliance" which aren't so attractive to
younger people. That's my supposition, anyway.

~~~
openasocket
Maybe, though compliance is handled by a different sub-division of security
than me. My personal opinion is that what we do requires a wide range of
background knowledge: you need to know assembly, cryptography, networking, OS,
browsers, etc all from a security perspective. And there's a lot of things you
can only really learn from on-the-job training.

~~~
equalunique
I must agree that on-the-job training is effective and possibly underrated in
the field of cyber security. The one domain where it didn't stand out IMO was
cryptography. Being taught how PKI and HTTPS work as a lesson in a course is
valuable on it's own, however, when I think about all the coworkers that I've
encountered who don't quite grasp how that stuff works, such a lesson has
proved to be even more valuable. Would you say your on-the-job training covers
PKI effectively?

------
jasode
It seems the author is not aware of past examples.

Google hired Eric Schmidt at age ~46. Facebook hired Sheryl Sandberg at age
38.

As for engineers, Microsoft hired Dave Cutler age ~46 to develop Windows NT.
Google hired Guido van Rossum ~age 49. Peter Norvig was also hired in his 40s
I believe. Netflix hired Adrian Cockcroft in his mid-40s.

Basically, as startups mature into more established companies, they will hire
older 40+ for specific needs. Same thing that Amazon/AWS has done. This
doesn't change that fact that new garage startups and YC Demo Days will
continue to be dominated by 20-somethings.

~~~
jacques_chester
> _It seems the author is not aware of past examples._

Because the author is plucking one set of anecdata and comparing with another
plucked set of anecdata.

Nowhere in the entire article is any actual demographics about any of the
companies.

All of them publish staff demographics (EEO-1 reports) for gender and race. As
far as I can tell, none publish for age.

Amazon:
[https://www.amazon.com/b?node=10080092011](https://www.amazon.com/b?node=10080092011)
(search for 'demographic')

Google: [https://www.google.com/diversity/](https://www.google.com/diversity/)

Facebook:
[https://fbnewsroomus.files.wordpress.com/2016/07/eeo-1_2015....](https://fbnewsroomus.files.wordpress.com/2016/07/eeo-1_2015.png)

~~~
CobrastanJorji
Exactly. Basing an article entirely on famous people over 30 that companies
have hired is stupid, but even if you wanted to use that as your yardstick for
some stupid reason, AWS still doesn't win. Sure, they have James Gosling (age
62), but Google has Vint Cerf (age 73).

------
ShannonAlther
Misleading title; Amazon is hiring experienced engineers for their experience.
They can do this because they can afford it, and they _are_ doing it because
they want to enhance their services.

None of this demolishes "the cult of youth". If you're running a startup,
hiring young people with no families and the stamina to give 110% to their job
is still the way to go. As experienced as James Gosling, Tim Bray, _et al._
are, they're not going to be working 12 hour days, nor are they critical to
Amazon's survival.

~~~
Retric
That's what most startups do. But, it's not clear if it's a net benefit
because most startups also fail.

Another way of looking at it is finding a group of motivated 20 somethings is
almost trivial. Find a motivated group with 20 years experience is vastly
harder because it's a smaller group who have less interest in joining a
startup.

PS: IMO, it would be a really interesting experiment, but I am not sure how
you would go about it.

~~~
throwaway40483
I think you're looking at this wrong. It's not that a startup chooses between
young/inexperienced/cheap vs old/experienced/expensive. It's that a startup
doesn't get to choose because startup life is brutal. It basically requires
you to have no family and kids, so only young single people are willing to do
it.

~~~
Retric
Being 40+ does not prevent you from being single. Further, long hours and lack
of skill are related. I am not saying you would always rather have say ~35
hours a week from John Carmack vs. 80 hour weeks from 2 or 3 awesome 22 year
olds, but adding 22 year olds also scales poorly.

------
kevinmannix
I get that they're hand-picked examples, but it's still a bit misleading when
every "older" engineer in the article is quite a remarkable individual with
incredible resumes. They'd likely be warmly welcomed at any tech company.

I'm more curious about the average age across the engineering organization,
and specifically older engineers who are solid, good workers but aren't
creators of popular languages or pioneered tech migrations for large company.

~~~
pm90
My experience is that age isn't necessarily a breaking factor in all but the
most frivolous tech companies, but those are the ones you shouldn't care about
anyways. The key skill/ability is mostly having the capacity and willingness
to understand and accept new paradigms and techniques instead of being
enamored to and clinging to "that's how its done" philosophy. Of course, I'm
not suggesting dropping good practices just because they are old; simply
having the willingness to do an objective analysis and comparison and make a
rational decision... that is really important. And almost every older engineer
I've worked with have shown precisely these qualities (maybe a survivorship
bias?)

------
mabbo
Amazon has levels of developer (SDE 1,2,3, P.Eng, Sr P.Eng, Distinguished
Eng.). If you've been in industry for 10 years or more, they'll only consider
you for an SDE3 role or higher- which is a very hard interview.

So yes, Amazon does hire some older distinguished engineers and principal
engineer, but if you aren't at that level, they aren't interested in you. Is
that fair? Maybe. But they also don't fire engineers who never get promoted
past SDE2.

Source: gave 60+ interviews for Amazon while I worked there.

~~~
aidenn0
What about non-developers in the tech industry that are looking to move into
development; would 10 years of non-development experience prevent you from
applying for an SDE-1?

~~~
mabbo
Not sure really. Never came up.

------
andrewguenther
> When you sit down with one of the AWS engineering teams you’re sitting down
> with grownups. At a guess median age would be 40-45...

As happy as I am to see AWS hiring industry veterans with awesome experience,
this statement couldn't be more wrong. AWS is dominated by college hires and
distinguished engineers are very much the exception, not the rule.

------
edw519
"Why 1955 was a good year to be born to shape our future."

Bill Joy, Steve Jobs, Eric Schmidtt, Tim Berners-Lee, Bill Gates, James
Gosling, Dave Winer, Tim Bray, Ray Ozie

 _The center point of this rare astrological alignment in the mid 1950s was
June 11, 1955._

James Gosling was born on May 19, 1955. So was I (note my username).

Whenever anyone asks for my resume, I just tell them I must be a great
programmer because of my birth date and I send them this link:
[http://www.astrology.co.uk/news/1955.htm](http://www.astrology.co.uk/news/1955.htm).

So far no one cares. But it makes me feel good to be in such company.

------
falcolas
An interesting contrast with the widely held opinion that Amazon burns through
development employees; something that mature developers are, IMO, less likely
to put up with.

~~~
borplk
There are a lot of them around to burn through. And you bet trophy employees
get treated differently.

------
aanm1988
> At a guess median age would be 40-45,

Why, because they hire some industry leaders? What is this guess based on?

~~~
monkchips
just from my experience of working with their engineering teams. but in my
follow up post i note that i mostly work with managers, so it's a skewed
sample

