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You’re How Old? We’ll Be in Touch

244 points| tchalla | 9 years ago |nytimes.com | reply

248 comments

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[+] hirundo|9 years ago|reply
I'm a grey beard who applied to a company specifically advertising for young developers. Got the job without mentioning my vintage. That was six years ago and they still haven't seen my face. I waited a while to gently break the news to them. If you're a technological senior citizen remote work is your friend.
[+] markbnj|9 years ago|reply
Heh, I applied for and landed a position on the SRE team of a youngish startup that is almost entirely remote. I'm 55 and there is one other guy in his 40's I think who works out of Northern Cal. Other than him I'm 20 years older than everyone else and it's been a blast. We recently did a week-long retreat and I had a truly good time, which surprised me. Really the only thing I can say after 20 years in the business is you just never know. I got lucky this time around and fell in with a group of people who are perfect for me.
[+] ourmandave|9 years ago|reply
Ah, "Grey beard". The term Microsoft used to separate the old from the young at a conference when they first introduced the .NET framework. Classic "old bad, good new" sales.

As in, "you Grey Breads remember using C++ and MFC, etc."

Yes I remember. Because it was yesterday just before I came to your conference!

I still went home and started learning what the hell XML was though. =(

[+] teuobk|9 years ago|reply
How did they "specifically advertise for young developers" without running afoul of age discrimination laws?
[+] bbcbasic|9 years ago|reply
Plastic surgery is another option for onsite jobs.
[+] RottenHuman|9 years ago|reply
how do you work for someone without them knowing your age? Do you keep that out of your CV? How about credentials and signing your contact? Seems very strange to me.
[+] gozur88|9 years ago|reply
They gave you a job without ever seeing you in person? That seems kind of rare.
[+] Animats|9 years ago|reply
Jobs for "Digital Natives" from Indeed.com [1]

"You’re a digital native with a demonstrated interest in startups, technology, social media, and shaking up industries...." -- Laundry Locker customer support lead. Not exactly a job that requires extensive qualifications.

"Digital Native - You can find anyone's email address anytime, search the depths of the web with ease, and possibly format basic HTML without skipping a beat...." - Marketing and social media intern

"Are a "digital native" - social platforms, Google, ordering online, etc. are all second nature to you. Upserve is the smart restaurant management assistant..." - Sales position. Must be able to order food online.

"Consider yourself a digital native. As an Account Executive, you will be responsible for fully immersing yourself in the clients’ business, products, consumers..." - Young and Rubicam advertising, multiple positions. Gotta keep out those old print media people.

We're not talking about understanding the technology here.

[1] http://www.indeed.com/jobs?q=%22Digital+Native%22&l=

[+] vazamb|9 years ago|reply
I feel like "Digital Natives" is a term non-technical, business people (most in entry level positions) use to make themselves feel better about the fact that their jobs don't require any kind of special skill or knowledge.
[+] ihavedigits|9 years ago|reply
I started hobby programming in 1981 and formally learned Digital Theory in 1982...I must be a digital native!
[+] sien|9 years ago|reply
This is a market failing that anyone who is hiring can exploit.

I've worked for a guy who hired young, smart guys without much experience who he felt had potential and who also had some 55+ year old developers who he thought could do things. He was one of the best managers I've had.

So be smart and realise that people who don't fit into what you expect might find it a bit harder at some places to find a job and that you can get better people if you consider people who were not initially what you expected to hire.

[+] hodgesrm|9 years ago|reply
It seems as if there's a moneyball story on tech hiring that has yet to be written.
[+] bbcbasic|9 years ago|reply
Or hire remote, smart, Haskell developers from cheap countries.
[+] dijit|9 years ago|reply
I don't see many old sysadmins in companies I've worked in. Even fewer older developers, I have a slight worry that this career path has an affinity for youth- which I won't have for much longer.

So this is disheartening to read.

[+] coldcode|9 years ago|reply
You have to understand that people like me (35 years experience) are rare not just because people don't hire us, but there were 100 times fewer programmers back then and many have switched to management or moved on since then too. What happens 35 years from now of course I have no idea, I doubt 100% of all people will be programmers. The key is staying at the leading edge of whatever you are doing which of course keeps getting harder as the width of programming gets wider. The thing I miss most is being able to do everything and not be so specialized.
[+] nhebb|9 years ago|reply
If the Bureau of Labor stats are to be believed, the software industry workforce has doubled every fives years. Assuming new entrants to the field are younger, industry growth is the probably largest factor in the age distribution of programmers. As a 52 year old who's starting a new job search this week, I'm crossing my fingers on that logic.
[+] aswanson|9 years ago|reply
Tech fields have an inherent disuse for seniority. Beyond five years, no one gives an f how long you have worked with a given toolchain/language. It's the hunger games. Medicine, finance, law, accounting...rightly or wrongly respect decades of experience. Tech is Logan's Run. Plan accordingly.
[+] ubernostrum|9 years ago|reply
FWIW one of the factors in choosing my current employer (I'm not "old" by any other industry's standards, but starting to have some visible grey in my hair) was how many of the people I met there who were older/more experienced, married with kids, etc.

Which is nice. People care about work/life balance, have been around the block a few times so there's less stereotypical startup attitude. Also some of the best in-office conversations with co-workers I've had.

[+] kordless|9 years ago|reply
Any company which allows it's employees to discriminate on age isn't worth your time spent being sad about not working there.
[+] rawnlq|9 years ago|reply
People working in tech also tend to retire early or start doing their own thing due to their salary.
[+] contingencies|9 years ago|reply
don't see many old sysadmins ... well, how many do you actually see anyway? Usually they're invisible. Secondly, the profession of sysadmin is disappearing fast with automation, and older and more experienced people have probably ridden that wave somewhere else already.
[+] di4na|9 years ago|reply
Just so you know, i am a young apprentice in an IT department. The official average age of developpers here is 41... I can count the employees under 30 in my two hands. Could probably even count the one under 35...

So the opposite exists too...

[+] dba7dba|9 years ago|reply
Of the 3 Linux admins that were above me last decade or so, none are still in the industry. One went into medicine, one went into real estate, and the last I believe became a firearm instructor.

None had passion for Linux or sysadmin per se. It was just a job they could get with enough pay and lifestyle (stable location, hours etc) they wanted. When they got older, they simply moved onto different jobs that they thought could pay them more or enjoyed more.

I do wonder, how the job market of linux/sysadmin will shape out in 20 years...

[+] technofiend|9 years ago|reply
If you want to talk front-line production support, dealing with extremely time critical issues whilst remaining calm sysadmins then they skew 35+ where I work. We need guys who can handle the pressure. They're also the guys asking me for lab servers and training so they can keep up with what's coming next. Some people just enjoy the job and learning new things.
[+] Animats|9 years ago|reply
Are there still sysadmins? Or is everybody loading containers into the cloud using an orchestration system now?
[+] czep|9 years ago|reply
This is a world where job posts for "Senior Engineer" ask for three years of experience.
[+] quantumhobbit|9 years ago|reply
And job posts for "Junior Engineers" somehow ask for the same three years of experience.
[+] driverdan|9 years ago|reply
We say three years plus for senior engineer. We have people with that experience who are fantastic software engineers and completely deserve the title. You don't need 15+ years of experience to be a good engineer, but it helps.
[+] WalterBright|9 years ago|reply
Nobody would pay me to invent a new programming language, so I had to start my own business.
[+] shultays|9 years ago|reply
This kinda makes me remember this quote from "Primer"

  You know what they do with engineers when they turn forty?
  [to Aaron, who shakes his head]
  They take them out and shoot them.
[+] jimmywanger|9 years ago|reply
A lot of older programmers seem to think they have 20 years of experience, when they only have the same year of experience 20 times.

If you don't keep up to date and current, it's not ageism.

[+] drtse4|9 years ago|reply
> A lot of older programmers seem to think they have 20 years of experience, when they only have the same year of experience 20 times.

A lot of younger programmers seems to think they have 3 years of experience, when they only have the same month of experience 36 times.

Experience is made up by the experiences you had, if you have never worked in a proper environment or never actually tried to improve your craft, years doesn't matter much.

And the myth of "being up to date", it can mean different things for different people. Sadly sometimes it just means that you need to have played with the latest fad that will disappear in a few years. In that case i'd prefer someone that's not up to date but can learn something different and it's used to do things the proper way.

[+] sidlls|9 years ago|reply
You represent the other extreme with your comment. Very few software projects have more than two or three years of "experience fertility," for the kind of experience you mean. There's a difference between someone who can't even last a year to get a project from prototype to some semblance of maturity and someone who wants to move on after one to two years when a project reaches the point at which maintenance overtakes new development.

What's the difference between somebody who works on four different projects over 8 years for company X and somebody who works on four different projects for four different companies over the same period, in this context?

[+] flukus|9 years ago|reply
True, but this applies at every experience level, not just older people.
[+] hoodoof|9 years ago|reply
When this becomes an issue I'm planning to just leave the industry. Do something else.
[+] MrLeftHand|9 years ago|reply
The common job spec:

Have a degree in CS + everything else that is vaguely related to IT.

Have at least 3+ years commercial experience in: C/C++,Java,Perl,Python,Javascript,Node,AngularJS,React,Linux,Windows,Mac,Maven,Agile,LAMP,Ruby,Bash,RegExp,SQL,NoSQL,C#,Android,Photoshop,AWS,Swift,iOS,Docker,rkt,UX,UI,Backend, Frontend, Salesforce, CRM, CSM, MVC, Scrum, Waterfall, JUnit, TDD, Cobol, Fortran, BASIC, UML, Git, SVN, CVS, JQuery, Assembly.

Fluent in English and three other languages.

Good communication skills. You have to be able to explain everything to illiterate shareholders and customers over the phone or Skype.

Be proactive and willing to take risks, but only the ones we approve of.

Desired is everything else not on the list.

Oh, you are 45? Sorry but we are a young dynamic team. We only take people under 25 or androids with 2TB+ RAM and an expandable storage unit.

[+] seizethecheese|9 years ago|reply
Lots of folks commenting here on there not being many older developers around. Well considering there are at least 10x more developers now than there were 30 years ago, and people generally get into it when they're young, this is completely expected.
[+] cpprototypes|9 years ago|reply
Recently I got an email about a job that seemed interesting. It's a well known company that used to be a startup but is now a mature company. I went to the job description page: 8+ years experience, tech stack I'm familiar with, mostly backend work, seems ok so far.

Then I get to the last line. Open office, has video games, happy hours, other typical things designed to attract those in their 20s. It's all a hidden message screaming, if you're old, don't apply. And they want someone with 8+ years experience! It's ridiculous.

[+] bogomipz|9 years ago|reply
This is a strange dichotomy:

There are voices that are stating there is a serious shortage of highly skilled tech workers in the Valley and as a result the H1B Visa quotas must be dramatically increased and policies amended to allow for foreign workers.

There are also regular claims of ageism in the Valley against people who are possibly not only highly skilled but also possess many years of real world, "rubber on the road" experience.

Are these two things not at odds with each other?

[+] Myrmornis|9 years ago|reply
Isn't one way to ensure your continuing relevance to avoid managerial positions? In my experience a lot of older people are less attractive employees because after 10 years of management their skills are very generic and hard to specify.
[+] ilaksh|9 years ago|reply
Ageism is endemic in Sillicon Valley and it starts at the top. Look at Y Combinator -- the founder basically 'ageismed' himself out of his job and put a kid in charge of the business.
[+] damaru|9 years ago|reply
That's one side of the story - I think there is also an imbalance of old folks in higer ranking job, from politics to multinationals, no?
[+] beachstartup|9 years ago|reply
we started up when i was 25 and i attribute much of our success to hiring people older than us, by up to +30 years.

the benefits go both ways. 30-50 year old engineers don't like working for 40-60 year old career-management dipshits who have never done their jobs before.

[+] zaidf|9 years ago|reply
I think it is ridiculous that we have a minimum age for presidency but no max. age.