Anecdotal: I'm a part-time CTO (long story) of a startup. I'm 30 myself. We hired 6 engineers in total up until now: three interns in their twenties, who're very smart and motivated but also inexperienced; two programmers with a few years of professional experience who can get to real decent (well written, unit tested, etc) code on the first go; and 1 guy of over 40.
When hiring, I was very skeptical of the guy over 40. His CV showed that he had spent most of his time building boring information systems for government agencies. This did not feel cool and startuppy at all. Also, he's gray-haired and he looks a bit dorky. We really liked him in person though, and he seemed to know what he was talking about, so we hired him anyway.
Only a few weeks later, I was already certain that he was the best hire we made up until now. Hypothetically, when forced, I would fire any two other team members to be able to keep him on the team (and he's on only half weeks). He's experienced, very much down to business, he cuts through the crap and through technical fads, and currently ensures that we're building the most lean and simple backend that I've ever seen. In a programming language that he's never seen before, and with a database engine that he's never used before.
For me, the general takeaway was that the wisdom to "not only hire copies of yourself" is very true indeed. More specifically, "older" guys (for tech industry standards) often have a lot more fundamental skills to bring to the table than perfect command of this year's technologie du jour.
As an older person, I commend you for looking past your comfort zone. Your anecdote certainly doesn't mean that all old people are better developers, but I tell people that I've already made most of my mistakes 10-15 years ago on other peoples' projects. Gets a bit of a chuckle, but it's reality - we all make mistakes when learning.
I just did a prototype demo for someone - took about 6 hours - and it was more fully functional than something they'd had a team of people working on for weeks. It's rare that there's that much of a difference, and to be fair there were weeks of communication and discovery going on that I didn't have to deal with. But the other team was also using an older PHP framework which they were painfully not comfortable with (I later found out mandated for bad reasons). Judging by their code, they wouldn't have been comfortable in any framework, but that's another story.
This is far less about how great I am, and more about understanding common problem domains, knowing your tools, knowing when it's OK to cut corners and when not to, and how best to communicate with people. Some of that comes with passion and dedication, but some of it only really comes over time, and the more the better, usually combined with the passion and/or dedication for maximum results.
Ditto. Had the exact same experience. Half my team were a lot older (50s and 2 x 40s) than me and the other half younger. We ran leaner and meaner then the other engineering teams in the company. Also learnt a lot from them myself and age never even creeped up as a barrier. Matter of fact I can't even recall thinking differently of them apart from how awesome & reliable they were.
The more I think about it, ageism is mostly about reducing perceived costs: Older people have families, more experience (in general), demand higher salaries, and are less likely to put in crazy hours. They can still totally be worth it.
The odd thing is hiring older workers is generally a great idea. From an organisational perspective programming teams don't scale vary well so hiring less skilled people is generally a terrible long term strategy. Personally, I have worked with a few hundred programmers and I can only name 3 that where competent before 30.
Outside the valley you find a plenty of really competent programmers mostly in there late 40's along with a few people that are nearing retirement age and while often gruff tend to blow your minds. As in "we stopped testing his code years ago." Or just calling someone team _. As in you could get 15-30 people working on a project or if your lucky Bob.
There are two perceived problems with hiring older programmers:
1) Older programmers won't put up with bullshit. They expect to have reasonable goals, be listened to, be compensated fairly, and have a reasonable schedule. They've been around the block enough to identify bullshit and will leave when it starts getting too high.
2) Older programmers really don't always understand the "cool" social crap that teenagers are into this year (for good reason--most of it is garbage). Unfortunately, most of what Silicon Valley is interested in is "cool" social crap so that they can get a big buzz and flip the company to Google or Facebook.
Funnily enough, companies that value that silly thing known as "profit" are quite happy to hire older programmers. It's just a function of Silicon Valley not believing in profit that is causing the ageism.
Point 1 == Nail hit firmly on head! I'm 31 and far more streetwise than I was 10/15 years ago. Youngsters tend to get excited quickly and you can make them do all sorts of cool things, working for free, no contracts, perpetual internships etc etc.
It seems everyone these days is a "founder" of something. I own sites that do things these youngsters can't do (Turn a profit) but I've never, not for one moment ever thought I was a founder of something great, just trying to earn a living!
I agree with the companies that believe in profit thing. Once you strip out the happy clappy, social crud employers just want people who can help them turn a profit.
Then the "problem" should be self correcting assuming the companies which make money survive (which they do), and those which don't focus on making money evaporate (which they do). Or maybe it's not a "problem" if only some companies are doing it, because they value things which the older people don't have interest in, and so the older people self select themselves out by choice.
Is there a list of companies which value profit so the people who complain about the "problem" (from companies most likely to not be around after too long) can go work for them?
One of the biggest indirect causes of ageism I've seen is the traditional career path forced many engineers out of engineering - there is/was an attitude at places like IBM of: "If you want to make bank, you need to go into management or sales". Years later, an engineering crunch makes engineering into "where the money is", but you largely lost a generation of technical experience that took a break of a decade or two.
My father got lucky in that he was successful in his transition out of engineering, and was 67 by the time his position went extinct, but there are a whole bunch of folks who would rather have been engineers than otherwise, but ended up missing out on a couple decades where the daily tasks of building software changed dramatically so gained less in technical expertise than they should have, and were left hanging around age 50.
I have a ton of cultural criticisms of the current tech industry, but the one thing that it is absolutely getting right is valuing creation. The damage that could have been caused by the Google/Apple cartel has been limited largely by the startup industry that, for all its faults, has as a crucial belief that the act of building things is valuable, and that people who make things are the ones who create the most value.
I'm a 40+ engineer in the NYC metro area and I've never felt more in-demand in my life! I think it boils down to a simple idea: computer-science is a dynamic field and THE FUN PART is that you need to always be learning.
There are still some colleagues my age who still wax about the days of writing JCL for their mainframe jobs and never evolved past the 80's and perhaps they gave a bad name for others who built on their of years of experience with evolving knowledge.
I decided in 2009 to specialize in mobile, when I realized how impossible it was for the startup I was working for to find any high throughput engineers, let alone high throughput engineers with niche expertise in mobile. I think it is an advantage in some ways during interviews that I can talk about decades of awesome projects I worked on while also being among the first to ship an iPhone app or a top ranking iPad app.
As they say, luck is when preparation meets opportunity. It's my job to make myself lucky.
Here's the thing, the software-is-eating-the-world explosion really took off in the early 90's (or at least that's when myself and a bunch of friends I knew got into it). All the people that got into writing software back then are aging and most that I know aren't planning to stop. I myself am on the doorstep of my 36th birthday. For those of us that have slogged it out for multiple decades now aren't simply going to go sit at home and wish we were 20 again. The sheer number of aging engineers will cause this problem to reach a breaking point. Those of us that have been instilled with the "disrupt the establishment" ethos in the 90's and 2000's will find a new industry to disrupt...our own.
For a long time I looked around at the relative lack of 40+ developers and founders in my field and considered it worrisome; what will I do when I get to that age? do I need a massive bank of savings just in case?
But I think it's also easy to see it as an opportunity. We are staggeringly lucky generation; software is the future and it isn't going the way of mass automation or obsolescence any time soon. There is probably another two hundred years of foundational innovation left in the field, we're still just scratching the surface of information theory and what's possible. Experience is likely to increase in value.
As individuals; by cultivating just a little higher order thinking, and seeing above the surface layer of raw code, it shouldn't be hard to offer meaningful value and insight for the remainder of one's lifetime. I don't think the key is learning to "adapt", progressing from one fad language or technique to another, so much as it is to see the similarities between these fads and to understand them at a higher level of abstraction. To understand that SOA programming is the same thing as micro-kernels, or CSP, for example, and to seem to offer new wisdom by regurgitating the old.
In that spirit, I've observed that the successful senior engineers I've come to know don't decry constant change, but constant same-ness.
I think ageism in tech will mature along with the industry as well, that was the first wave and a very disruptive one, so this generation has disruption as a modus operandi.
Back then old meant something different as it was a new industry, older people didn't grow up with tech and there was a huge valley/difference between someone that gets tech and a generations before that didn't have it. Everyone below 40-50ish (and definitely everyone in their 30s and below) has had tech around their whole lives and at a more core level as it was new and attracted mainly young people then, but now it attracts all people and has had people working in it for decades (past mid 90s when the internet went mainstream, most are still doing it).
I have to say working for over a decade in tech/programming that most of the really good programmers were over 30s (and all good product developers were either close or over 30), this is because it takes 10 years to get good at anything even if you start in your teens, shipping products for 10 years can't be sped up. Someone out of college at 23-24 needs to work until 33-34 to be really good. To discard that is futile and young programmers might even be scared away from this line of work if there are no future prospects. I also believe it will be detrimental to our entire country as technology is so important now.
Funny enough in game development some of the best I have worked with were actually in their 40s nearing 50s even though it is also seen as a young industry, game companies wouldn't ship anything without experienced developers of 5-10 years, you can't get that experience and then be worthless at 35.
When there is a new industry, the people in it at that time sometimes gain more valuable lower level experience because the platforms/layer is still being constructed. So engine developers that are older were almost always better than younger because they have the core knowledge without the layers of fluff that product cycles can add. Just like back in the day hardware was more prevalent and a population of people that were in it then are sometimes better at it because they were around when it was big.
The market is also solving ageism by paying programmers better than managers many times. Noone will desire to go manage if it is a step down. There was a temporary moment in time when there were NO development managers, sales/marketing/bizdev couldn't manage it. So they NEEDED programmers to go into management to make sense of it and they are good at marketing so it stuck in the collective psyche. That has changed dramatically and I believe this will mature the industry.
Also, let's not confuse ageism for VC funding selectiveness, they will always choose younger because the term sheet is easier with younger that are less knowledgable about value. The 'problem' with older coders is they know they can ship and know their value.
Who knows, if the WhatsApp guys were younger Facebook could have gotten it cheaper. If older developers build more value, VCs will see they can flip for higher amounts and that may also help this perception problem.
Ageism isn't just a problem for older developers, it is a problem for younger developers as well in that they are smart contributors that will be shut off after 10-15 years of solid work, right when most of them will be in their prime and contributing to society.
Guess what, there's a lot of software being written by people not in their 20s in places like Kansas City, Boston and Nashville. The world doesn't revolve around Silicon Valley.
But the benefits are definitely hard to compete with. I worked for 8 years back in South Florida, 4 at a web hosting company, another 4 at a digital media company. Having to buy pop-tarts/soda in a vending machine, 2 weeks vacation, dealing with dinosaur middle management. It's incredibly frustrating.
Now I'm in the Bay Area and I often consider getting out but in general the jobs here just have better benefits. I'm not just talking about foosball/ping pong tables. I'm talking Gourmet meals, 3-4 weeks vacation, unlimited sick time, people who want to work on interesting technology problems, great salaries plus equity.
If I decided to leave my job today, there are a ton of good options all over with the exact same comp package, because they have to to be competitive in this area. I could relocate but I'd feel I was held hostage by the other options in the area I chose to move to.
I've seen the other side and it'd take a lot for me to go back.
And that's really the thing a lot of these articles miss. While 20-somethings are making software to automate burrito delivery to other 20-somethings with drones in San Francisco, there's a whole world full of developers solving real problems each day. But it's hard to convince the rest of the world that there's more to the software industry than the Bay Area echo chamber.
Edit: I know not all of Silicon Valley is doing pointless startups.
Nashville represent! I build mobile apps for a living and I love that the environment here is diverse and creative. Walk into a coffee shop and you see people talking, writing, and socializing - not bent over their identically sticker-covered Macbook Pros.
As an iOS dev here, you can expect to make 85-100k and spend < $1000 / mo on rent. There's also no state income tax, so you get a 9.6% bonus right off the bat. Not too bad if you ask me!
Ageism is a real problem, but in my opinion ageism is often cited by job seekers where the problem is something else entirely. In tech, there seems to be quite a bit of discrimination today against employees who have worked for many years at the same position, and that discrimination is typically aimed at large environments. Startups seem to be ok with hiring older engineers who bounced around and worked in startups in the past, but they usually won't give much consideration to a 50 year old who developer has spent the last 25 years at an insurance company or major bank.
Take two 50 year old engineers. The one who has had 10 jobs over the past 25 years is considered infinitely more employable than the one with 25 years at the same department of the same company.
This case isn't ageism, it's the expectation of career stagnation, yet many of those engineers with that 25 year tenure think it is. It's a leftover from the days when loyalty was tied to tenure, and loyalty was valued highly in the hiring criteria. Those days are over. Loyalty is nice, but loyalty that negatively impacts your career options (no learning or improving, inability to use marketable tech skills, etc) is foolish.
That makes a presumption that someone who spent 25 years at the same employer stagnated. I spent nearly 10 years at my first employer, but in that time I had three different positions. On my resume I have started listing it as three separate positions, which seems to confuse some people but is an accurate portrayal of my time there. I do not think one employer == one role is an accurate assumption and that "10 jobs over the past 25 years" vs. '25 years at the same department of the same company" is a false dichotomy that assumes people like me do not exist.
More for the rest of us. If you're too old for most startups to look twice at your resume, apply to CircleCI: https://circleci.com/jobs. We value experience, and our backend is even written in Lisp [1].
The author of this piece contacted me and at least two other co-workers of mine who are identifiably over 40 asking us to comment on this subject. I told him I thought there is a simple mathematical reason why the industry skews young -- we are hiring as rapidly as we can in most cases. Of course, as is too common in journalism, his story was already built and he was only searching for confirmation of it.
What's the distribution of software engineers by decade across a 40-year range? Is anyone here willing to argue that it's completely flat? Of course not, there are far more SWEs in their 20's than in their 60's.
I have never once had my age be an issue at work or in an interview. My resume clearly states my work experience, and goes back 20 years. I don't have to hide anything, and I don't expect I ever will. Am I willing to believe there are employers out there who try to discriminate by age? Of course there are, just like there are fraudulent companies you could work for, sexist assholes you could work for, etc.
None of these matter because you don't have to work for these people. As a competent engineer your skills are in demand, and you get to pick where you'd like to work. If you aren't a competent engineer, no amount of plastic surgery will get you hired, and please stop using your age as an excuse.
I've been hiring for our engineering team recently, and for us ageism is a very real thing that we try to combat. But it's not what one might expect. We're building a team of experienced engineers, and experience is key. Zuckerberg made his comment in 2007, but I bet he has highly refined his thinking since then.
We look at engineer hiring to determine what's valuable, and what's teachable. Do we want our engineers to be current? Yes, but only reasonably so. Anyone who has been around long enough will recognize that most currently popular technologies in use as tools of the trade are simply iterations on ideas that have existed for a long time. Any individual who thinks we're in the dawn of some amazing age where the tools are only understood by a certain generation is, for lack of a better word, foolish.
So, for us being current is really just status at a point-in-time. It's entirely teachable (or better yet, learnable.) But what's valuable? Understanding your trade is important to us, but having real experiences under your belt is super-critical.
Have you ever run a large-scale operation where your code was mission-critical? That's important to us. Ever been responsible for deployment that required zero downtime? That's important. Ever had to ship code and the difference between success and failure meant revenue and jobs? That's important. Ever actually done more than one thing besides {web/mobile/admin/etc.}? That's important.
So, we try to combat ageism by ensuring we give young folks a chance. Not everyone gets that opportunity, but we do so sparingly when we feel such an investment is worth our time, money and effort.
Wise thoughts here, especially on "reasonably current" and teachable.. I share similar characteristics in what I look for in engineering hires, especially when certain aspects of the tech landscape change so quickly. Especially around "programming language" requirements: I don't really care if you know Ruby/python/PHP/JAVA so much as you've worked in a high-up time scalable environment, working in large code bases, with solid tech design chops, you'll fill in the 'language' requirement pretty quickly if you're actually the right type of person to hire. Even more so if you're motivated and have a strong desire to work with our tech stack...
Some companies are addicted to long hours & naive employees.
It's also a natural progression of an engineer to start off as an employee & then take an independent identity. So it's common to see older engineers become consultants & business owners; who then hire the younger, cheaper, more impressionable employees.
Maybe I'm an outlier; I'm a 55+ engineer working at a mobile startup. Maybe not; 20% of Google's employees are >55, according to a Kissmetrics chart. But, who knows maybe the 55+ crowd at Google consist of only geniuses and janitors.
I see an old/young tradeoff between pattern recognition and fluid intelligence.
Maybe why some older developers show less enthusiasm for the next really "awesome" idea is that is really isn't that new. Maybe the older developer has already learned the hard way the downside of the Dunning-Kruger affect, where: the more you know, the more you know what you don't know.
On the other side of the coin, maybe older developers have a blind spot towards opportunities that have failed in the past. Because the timing wasn't right. Because the audience wasn't ready or the infrastructure was premature. The secret of a good joke (and startups) is timing.
Perhaps some startups are best structured like a team sport; with both younger players at the peak of their brilliance and with older players that can both play and coach.
> maybe older developers have a blind spot towards opportunities that have failed in the past
Yes. A lot of things have to come together for something to work. Something can fail many times before succeeding. A little irrational optimism can be a good thing. Hitting the ground running at the exact moment is very challenging.
I think ageism is only an issue for the parts of the technology industry that's attractive to young people. There are also the other massive parts of the technology industry that's simply less visible or interesting to young people because it's not 'cool', like in banking, aviation and defense. A multinational bank's IT arm easily employ the same number of people than, say, Apple. The problems these industries face are complex and challenging. These are industries where experience counts. I see being 45 and wanting to work in a Silicon Valley internet startup industry being a bit like being a 45 year old who wants to try make it in the chart music industry. You'll need that botox.
Agism? I don't think so. I have over 20 years of "real world" (who counts any more) experience (cut my teeth in 6502 assembler at age 10) and the real truth is that I am too expensive, and not too old for majority of companies out there let alone startups.
Take your average 20 something year old hot shot highly sought after programmer, well I make 3 times as much as him. As soon as that little tidbit of information is out of the bag, I'm suddenly "too old" or would not be "good cultural fit" for the budding startup.
Sad thing is, it's true. Most of the companies these days are not really solving hard core problems any more and don't really need someone of my level of expertise and skills (how many are in the guts of an OS, databasse or compiler, or need their server performance insanely tight). Most are hoping to disrupt Facebook or Twitter, and for that "social" stuff kids who don't know what they are worth are better suited anyway.
I dunno. I can think of three ways in which an older developer might have a hard time finding a job:
(1) If someone doesn't keep up with currently relevant technology, they will find themselves without the job skills that employers are looking for, regardless of whatever other qualities they may have. This isn't ageism.
(2) If someone works at the same place for 10+ years, getting raises every year and becoming more and more valuable because of their knowledge of the innards of one or more huge codebases that are specific to that company, they're likely to have a hard time finding another job doing something different that pays as much or more. It's very easy for people to settle into a routine for many years that doesn't necessarily carry over to another job. Someone in this situation might have to take a pay cut (maybe a big one) to start from square one doing something else at another company. This is an unfortunate reality of being a software developer, but it also isn't ageism.
(3) If a really young entrepreneur is hiring for their startup, and they haven't had the life experience to develop the maturity and insight to avoid being biased towards hiring people who are just like them, it is possible that they will favor a younger developer over an older developer based on age alone. They may not even be aware that they're doing it, they might just feel like all other things being equal, the younger developer is a better fit for the company. This could be ageism sometimes, and it's very unfortunate when it is.
(1) and (2) are the perils of having a long career as a developer. Employers who don't hire someone because of these reasons are making rational hiring decisions; they're not making decisions based on being biased against someone because of their age.
I don't know how often (3) happens though. I could see it being a problem in SF, where I've heard the job market is disproportionately composed of startups. I don't think it's like that in the South Bay (at least not to the same degree), where there are tons of large and established companies that are less likely to do this.
"If someone doesn't keep up with currently relevant technology, they will find themselves without the job skills that employers are looking for, regardless of whatever other qualities they may have. This isn't ageism."
Except.... I do see younger people getting hired who don't necessarily keep up with current technology. It may just be that they're ultimately cheaper, and it's just financial. But I do suspect that older devs are held to a higher standard on this front ("what? you're still using Rails 3? luddite!")
It's not necessarily rational unless the company holds all candidates to the same standards ("current with technology", for example).
What do you think 1) really is, though? Do you think "keeping up" with 100 different mvc frameworks that do roughly the same thing is "keeping up?" That seems to be what that code phrase is usually used to mean. Are younger programmers not as easily accused of this or worse than not keeping, not knowing enough fundamentals? The whole notion of keeping up with technology change in programming contexts sometimes seem silly to me. Is it really that big of a change that you can start to do with JavaScript web apps what you could do 20 years ago?
What you describe in (2) doesn't just apply to software developers. It can also apply to sysadmin/SRE-type roles. I'm what passes for an "expert" at operating a very complicated yet unremarkable piece of software used by maybe 100 companies world wide. My salary has gone up rapidly over the last 5 years mostly because of my knowledge of this niche (and near EOL) software.
My next job likely will not be using this software so I'm doing my best to keep up with what's changing in IT generally. I even schedule a time once per week to work on a side project just to make sure my development skills stay sharp-ish. Despite the effort I put in, I expect that I'll likely have to take a pay cut if (when) I go to another job at a different company.
If it sounds like I'm complaining, I'm actually not. This is just how it works I guess.
Isn't it obvious that adolescent startup founders wouldn't want to hire adults? That would be a complete role reversal of their entirely lifes experience with adults.
I'm also not surprised that investors are biased. As a group, they are just people with money. That feature doesn't preclude them from being unreasonable in the way (one would hope) being an engineer implies a certain level of objective rationality...
What does surprise me is the fear that is apparently spreading among aging engineers. You didn't get where you are by being afraid. Every problem you've ever solved proves your ability to bend systems to your will. You design your own fate. Don't make yourself vulnerable by believing anything else.
</rant>
On a more practical note, if college students had more opportunity to team up with older professionals on small co-owned projects, I think that would go a long way toward bridging the gap. Exposure is key. That's like, behavior therapy 101.
I wonder if this is a 'Valley' or just a 'Startup' thing as it doesn't seem too common here in Australia in the part of the industry that I work in (defence and now gaming); though maybe I'm just lucky and have been in the right parts.
We have a massive age range all the way from 20 to 60 (I guess), with most of the better engineers in their 30s-40s it seems, though to be honest you wouldn't really know unless you asked - there are guys here that you wouldn't guess were 40.
Personally I know I'm a far better engineer now in my mid-30s than I was in my 20s and to be honest I STILL feel like a beginner excited to finally find his feet. I don't see this stopping anytime soon. I don't want to get into management and luckily don't have to and I'm sure at 45 I'll be a far better software engineer than I am now (well, I sure hope so at least :) ).
|The authors examined the high points of the careers of both great inventors and Nobel-Prize winning scientists, and they found that the late 30s were the sweet spot for strokes of genius
The gist is that this number (38ish) has been slowly creeping up over the past century; it is generally higher in those fields which require a synthesis of huge amounts of knowledge (experimentalists) and earlier among theorists. Notice that essentially no one has done anything groundbreaking in their 50s (yet).
I don't really get the pragmatism behind ageism in tech entrepreneurship. That is, in a field in which human abilities are augmented by ever-more faster computing, and in which ideas, experience, and relationships would seemingly be as important (if not much more) as youthful energy...how is it logical that its best people would solely be among sub-30-year olds? It just doesn't make any sense.
[+] [-] skrebbel|12 years ago|reply
When hiring, I was very skeptical of the guy over 40. His CV showed that he had spent most of his time building boring information systems for government agencies. This did not feel cool and startuppy at all. Also, he's gray-haired and he looks a bit dorky. We really liked him in person though, and he seemed to know what he was talking about, so we hired him anyway.
Only a few weeks later, I was already certain that he was the best hire we made up until now. Hypothetically, when forced, I would fire any two other team members to be able to keep him on the team (and he's on only half weeks). He's experienced, very much down to business, he cuts through the crap and through technical fads, and currently ensures that we're building the most lean and simple backend that I've ever seen. In a programming language that he's never seen before, and with a database engine that he's never used before.
For me, the general takeaway was that the wisdom to "not only hire copies of yourself" is very true indeed. More specifically, "older" guys (for tech industry standards) often have a lot more fundamental skills to bring to the table than perfect command of this year's technologie du jour.
Hire older people!
[+] [-] mgkimsal|12 years ago|reply
I just did a prototype demo for someone - took about 6 hours - and it was more fully functional than something they'd had a team of people working on for weeks. It's rare that there's that much of a difference, and to be fair there were weeks of communication and discovery going on that I didn't have to deal with. But the other team was also using an older PHP framework which they were painfully not comfortable with (I later found out mandated for bad reasons). Judging by their code, they wouldn't have been comfortable in any framework, but that's another story.
This is far less about how great I am, and more about understanding common problem domains, knowing your tools, knowing when it's OK to cut corners and when not to, and how best to communicate with people. Some of that comes with passion and dedication, but some of it only really comes over time, and the more the better, usually combined with the passion and/or dedication for maximum results.
[+] [-] hnnewguy|12 years ago|reply
This is a great anecdote, though I don't fully understand why it surprises people.
Most people in their early 20s are still "kids", both socially and work-experience-wise. Give me a hungry 30+ any day.
[+] [-] not_paul_graham|12 years ago|reply
[1] Your profile indicates that you might be based out of Europe.
[+] [-] semerda|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|12 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] leothekim|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] craigyk|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Retric|12 years ago|reply
Outside the valley you find a plenty of really competent programmers mostly in there late 40's along with a few people that are nearing retirement age and while often gruff tend to blow your minds. As in "we stopped testing his code years ago." Or just calling someone team _. As in you could get 15-30 people working on a project or if your lucky Bob.
[+] [-] bsder|12 years ago|reply
1) Older programmers won't put up with bullshit. They expect to have reasonable goals, be listened to, be compensated fairly, and have a reasonable schedule. They've been around the block enough to identify bullshit and will leave when it starts getting too high.
2) Older programmers really don't always understand the "cool" social crap that teenagers are into this year (for good reason--most of it is garbage). Unfortunately, most of what Silicon Valley is interested in is "cool" social crap so that they can get a big buzz and flip the company to Google or Facebook.
Funnily enough, companies that value that silly thing known as "profit" are quite happy to hire older programmers. It's just a function of Silicon Valley not believing in profit that is causing the ageism.
[+] [-] Dale1|12 years ago|reply
It seems everyone these days is a "founder" of something. I own sites that do things these youngsters can't do (Turn a profit) but I've never, not for one moment ever thought I was a founder of something great, just trying to earn a living!
I agree with the companies that believe in profit thing. Once you strip out the happy clappy, social crud employers just want people who can help them turn a profit.
[+] [-] Tohhou|12 years ago|reply
Is there a list of companies which value profit so the people who complain about the "problem" (from companies most likely to not be around after too long) can go work for them?
[+] [-] yeukhon|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jowiar|12 years ago|reply
My father got lucky in that he was successful in his transition out of engineering, and was 67 by the time his position went extinct, but there are a whole bunch of folks who would rather have been engineers than otherwise, but ended up missing out on a couple decades where the daily tasks of building software changed dramatically so gained less in technical expertise than they should have, and were left hanging around age 50.
I have a ton of cultural criticisms of the current tech industry, but the one thing that it is absolutely getting right is valuing creation. The damage that could have been caused by the Google/Apple cartel has been limited largely by the startup industry that, for all its faults, has as a crucial belief that the act of building things is valuable, and that people who make things are the ones who create the most value.
[+] [-] zomgbbq|12 years ago|reply
There are still some colleagues my age who still wax about the days of writing JCL for their mainframe jobs and never evolved past the 80's and perhaps they gave a bad name for others who built on their of years of experience with evolving knowledge.
I decided in 2009 to specialize in mobile, when I realized how impossible it was for the startup I was working for to find any high throughput engineers, let alone high throughput engineers with niche expertise in mobile. I think it is an advantage in some ways during interviews that I can talk about decades of awesome projects I worked on while also being among the first to ship an iPhone app or a top ranking iPad app.
As they say, luck is when preparation meets opportunity. It's my job to make myself lucky.
[+] [-] ascendantlogic|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] colmmacc|12 years ago|reply
But I think it's also easy to see it as an opportunity. We are staggeringly lucky generation; software is the future and it isn't going the way of mass automation or obsolescence any time soon. There is probably another two hundred years of foundational innovation left in the field, we're still just scratching the surface of information theory and what's possible. Experience is likely to increase in value.
As individuals; by cultivating just a little higher order thinking, and seeing above the surface layer of raw code, it shouldn't be hard to offer meaningful value and insight for the remainder of one's lifetime. I don't think the key is learning to "adapt", progressing from one fad language or technique to another, so much as it is to see the similarities between these fads and to understand them at a higher level of abstraction. To understand that SOA programming is the same thing as micro-kernels, or CSP, for example, and to seem to offer new wisdom by regurgitating the old.
In that spirit, I've observed that the successful senior engineers I've come to know don't decry constant change, but constant same-ness.
[+] [-] drawkbox|12 years ago|reply
Back then old meant something different as it was a new industry, older people didn't grow up with tech and there was a huge valley/difference between someone that gets tech and a generations before that didn't have it. Everyone below 40-50ish (and definitely everyone in their 30s and below) has had tech around their whole lives and at a more core level as it was new and attracted mainly young people then, but now it attracts all people and has had people working in it for decades (past mid 90s when the internet went mainstream, most are still doing it).
I have to say working for over a decade in tech/programming that most of the really good programmers were over 30s (and all good product developers were either close or over 30), this is because it takes 10 years to get good at anything even if you start in your teens, shipping products for 10 years can't be sped up. Someone out of college at 23-24 needs to work until 33-34 to be really good. To discard that is futile and young programmers might even be scared away from this line of work if there are no future prospects. I also believe it will be detrimental to our entire country as technology is so important now.
Funny enough in game development some of the best I have worked with were actually in their 40s nearing 50s even though it is also seen as a young industry, game companies wouldn't ship anything without experienced developers of 5-10 years, you can't get that experience and then be worthless at 35.
When there is a new industry, the people in it at that time sometimes gain more valuable lower level experience because the platforms/layer is still being constructed. So engine developers that are older were almost always better than younger because they have the core knowledge without the layers of fluff that product cycles can add. Just like back in the day hardware was more prevalent and a population of people that were in it then are sometimes better at it because they were around when it was big.
The market is also solving ageism by paying programmers better than managers many times. Noone will desire to go manage if it is a step down. There was a temporary moment in time when there were NO development managers, sales/marketing/bizdev couldn't manage it. So they NEEDED programmers to go into management to make sense of it and they are good at marketing so it stuck in the collective psyche. That has changed dramatically and I believe this will mature the industry.
Also, let's not confuse ageism for VC funding selectiveness, they will always choose younger because the term sheet is easier with younger that are less knowledgable about value. The 'problem' with older coders is they know they can ship and know their value.
Who knows, if the WhatsApp guys were younger Facebook could have gotten it cheaper. If older developers build more value, VCs will see they can flip for higher amounts and that may also help this perception problem.
Ageism isn't just a problem for older developers, it is a problem for younger developers as well in that they are smart contributors that will be shut off after 10-15 years of solid work, right when most of them will be in their prime and contributing to society.
[+] [-] foolinaround|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] allochthon|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] daveqr|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gmjosack|12 years ago|reply
Now I'm in the Bay Area and I often consider getting out but in general the jobs here just have better benefits. I'm not just talking about foosball/ping pong tables. I'm talking Gourmet meals, 3-4 weeks vacation, unlimited sick time, people who want to work on interesting technology problems, great salaries plus equity.
If I decided to leave my job today, there are a ton of good options all over with the exact same comp package, because they have to to be competitive in this area. I could relocate but I'd feel I was held hostage by the other options in the area I chose to move to.
I've seen the other side and it'd take a lot for me to go back.
[+] [-] ascendantlogic|12 years ago|reply
Edit: I know not all of Silicon Valley is doing pointless startups.
[+] [-] gamegoblin|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bengotow|12 years ago|reply
As an iOS dev here, you can expect to make 85-100k and spend < $1000 / mo on rent. There's also no state income tax, so you get a 9.6% bonus right off the bat. Not too bad if you ask me!
[+] [-] fecak|12 years ago|reply
Take two 50 year old engineers. The one who has had 10 jobs over the past 25 years is considered infinitely more employable than the one with 25 years at the same department of the same company.
This case isn't ageism, it's the expectation of career stagnation, yet many of those engineers with that 25 year tenure think it is. It's a leftover from the days when loyalty was tied to tenure, and loyalty was valued highly in the hiring criteria. Those days are over. Loyalty is nice, but loyalty that negatively impacts your career options (no learning or improving, inability to use marketable tech skills, etc) is foolish.
[+] [-] vonmoltke|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pbiggar|12 years ago|reply
[1] As we all know, all greybeards use Lisp ;)
[+] [-] gaadd33|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jgrant27|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sulam|12 years ago|reply
What's the distribution of software engineers by decade across a 40-year range? Is anyone here willing to argue that it's completely flat? Of course not, there are far more SWEs in their 20's than in their 60's.
I have never once had my age be an issue at work or in an interview. My resume clearly states my work experience, and goes back 20 years. I don't have to hide anything, and I don't expect I ever will. Am I willing to believe there are employers out there who try to discriminate by age? Of course there are, just like there are fraudulent companies you could work for, sexist assholes you could work for, etc.
None of these matter because you don't have to work for these people. As a competent engineer your skills are in demand, and you get to pick where you'd like to work. If you aren't a competent engineer, no amount of plastic surgery will get you hired, and please stop using your age as an excuse.
[+] [-] jroseattle|12 years ago|reply
We look at engineer hiring to determine what's valuable, and what's teachable. Do we want our engineers to be current? Yes, but only reasonably so. Anyone who has been around long enough will recognize that most currently popular technologies in use as tools of the trade are simply iterations on ideas that have existed for a long time. Any individual who thinks we're in the dawn of some amazing age where the tools are only understood by a certain generation is, for lack of a better word, foolish.
So, for us being current is really just status at a point-in-time. It's entirely teachable (or better yet, learnable.) But what's valuable? Understanding your trade is important to us, but having real experiences under your belt is super-critical.
Have you ever run a large-scale operation where your code was mission-critical? That's important to us. Ever been responsible for deployment that required zero downtime? That's important. Ever had to ship code and the difference between success and failure meant revenue and jobs? That's important. Ever actually done more than one thing besides {web/mobile/admin/etc.}? That's important.
So, we try to combat ageism by ensuring we give young folks a chance. Not everyone gets that opportunity, but we do so sparingly when we feel such an investment is worth our time, money and effort.
[+] [-] taude|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] briantakita|12 years ago|reply
It's also a natural progression of an engineer to start off as an employee & then take an independent identity. So it's common to see older engineers become consultants & business owners; who then hire the younger, cheaper, more impressionable employees.
[+] [-] musesum|12 years ago|reply
I see an old/young tradeoff between pattern recognition and fluid intelligence.
Maybe why some older developers show less enthusiasm for the next really "awesome" idea is that is really isn't that new. Maybe the older developer has already learned the hard way the downside of the Dunning-Kruger affect, where: the more you know, the more you know what you don't know.
On the other side of the coin, maybe older developers have a blind spot towards opportunities that have failed in the past. Because the timing wasn't right. Because the audience wasn't ready or the infrastructure was premature. The secret of a good joke (and startups) is timing.
Perhaps some startups are best structured like a team sport; with both younger players at the peak of their brilliance and with older players that can both play and coach.
[+] [-] waveman2|12 years ago|reply
Yes. A lot of things have to come together for something to work. Something can fail many times before succeeding. A little irrational optimism can be a good thing. Hitting the ground running at the exact moment is very challenging.
[+] [-] kokey|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] super_mario|12 years ago|reply
Take your average 20 something year old hot shot highly sought after programmer, well I make 3 times as much as him. As soon as that little tidbit of information is out of the bag, I'm suddenly "too old" or would not be "good cultural fit" for the budding startup.
Sad thing is, it's true. Most of the companies these days are not really solving hard core problems any more and don't really need someone of my level of expertise and skills (how many are in the guts of an OS, databasse or compiler, or need their server performance insanely tight). Most are hoping to disrupt Facebook or Twitter, and for that "social" stuff kids who don't know what they are worth are better suited anyway.
[+] [-] mwfunk|12 years ago|reply
(1) If someone doesn't keep up with currently relevant technology, they will find themselves without the job skills that employers are looking for, regardless of whatever other qualities they may have. This isn't ageism.
(2) If someone works at the same place for 10+ years, getting raises every year and becoming more and more valuable because of their knowledge of the innards of one or more huge codebases that are specific to that company, they're likely to have a hard time finding another job doing something different that pays as much or more. It's very easy for people to settle into a routine for many years that doesn't necessarily carry over to another job. Someone in this situation might have to take a pay cut (maybe a big one) to start from square one doing something else at another company. This is an unfortunate reality of being a software developer, but it also isn't ageism.
(3) If a really young entrepreneur is hiring for their startup, and they haven't had the life experience to develop the maturity and insight to avoid being biased towards hiring people who are just like them, it is possible that they will favor a younger developer over an older developer based on age alone. They may not even be aware that they're doing it, they might just feel like all other things being equal, the younger developer is a better fit for the company. This could be ageism sometimes, and it's very unfortunate when it is.
(1) and (2) are the perils of having a long career as a developer. Employers who don't hire someone because of these reasons are making rational hiring decisions; they're not making decisions based on being biased against someone because of their age.
I don't know how often (3) happens though. I could see it being a problem in SF, where I've heard the job market is disproportionately composed of startups. I don't think it's like that in the South Bay (at least not to the same degree), where there are tons of large and established companies that are less likely to do this.
[+] [-] mgkimsal|12 years ago|reply
Except.... I do see younger people getting hired who don't necessarily keep up with current technology. It may just be that they're ultimately cheaper, and it's just financial. But I do suspect that older devs are held to a higher standard on this front ("what? you're still using Rails 3? luddite!")
It's not necessarily rational unless the company holds all candidates to the same standards ("current with technology", for example).
[+] [-] dinkumthinkum|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tacoman|12 years ago|reply
My next job likely will not be using this software so I'm doing my best to keep up with what's changing in IT generally. I even schedule a time once per week to work on a side project just to make sure my development skills stay sharp-ish. Despite the effort I put in, I expect that I'll likely have to take a pay cut if (when) I go to another job at a different company.
If it sounds like I'm complaining, I'm actually not. This is just how it works I guess.
[+] [-] balls187|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] eadlam|12 years ago|reply
I'm also not surprised that investors are biased. As a group, they are just people with money. That feature doesn't preclude them from being unreasonable in the way (one would hope) being an engineer implies a certain level of objective rationality...
What does surprise me is the fear that is apparently spreading among aging engineers. You didn't get where you are by being afraid. Every problem you've ever solved proves your ability to bend systems to your will. You design your own fate. Don't make yourself vulnerable by believing anything else.
</rant>
On a more practical note, if college students had more opportunity to team up with older professionals on small co-owned projects, I think that would go a long way toward bridging the gap. Exposure is key. That's like, behavior therapy 101.
[+] [-] Fr0styMatt|12 years ago|reply
We have a massive age range all the way from 20 to 60 (I guess), with most of the better engineers in their 30s-40s it seems, though to be honest you wouldn't really know unless you asked - there are guys here that you wouldn't guess were 40.
Personally I know I'm a far better engineer now in my mid-30s than I was in my 20s and to be honest I STILL feel like a beginner excited to finally find his feet. I don't see this stopping anytime soon. I don't want to get into management and luckily don't have to and I'm sure at 45 I'll be a far better software engineer than I am now (well, I sure hope so at least :) ).
[+] [-] erddojo|12 years ago|reply
The people in SF/SV building apps are mostly in their 20s-30s.
The people building cool technology are mostly in their 40s-50s.
[+] [-] kansface|12 years ago|reply
|The authors examined the high points of the careers of both great inventors and Nobel-Prize winning scientists, and they found that the late 30s were the sweet spot for strokes of genius
The gist is that this number (38ish) has been slowly creeping up over the past century; it is generally higher in those fields which require a synthesis of huge amounts of knowledge (experimentalists) and earlier among theorists. Notice that essentially no one has done anything groundbreaking in their 50s (yet).
[+] [-] tsunamifury|12 years ago|reply
I know 20 year olds making brain wave analysis breakthroughs and 50 year olds making poker apps. And the reverse.
Great work knows no age.
[+] [-] danso|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ascendantlogic|12 years ago|reply