Slashdot Mirror
Job Chances for Older Coders?
emtboy9 asks: "As the semester winds to a close, exams fall upon us students once again. Today, outside of one of my programming classes, I overheard a conversation between a pair of middle aged women about programming degrees (which they are involved in), and this made me wonder. With the job market in IT being as pathetic as it is, what are the real-world chances of someone who is taking a programming course getting a job. In the places I have worked, all the coders were fairly young. So the question is, what are the chances for an older person, who is just now learning programming to get a job in that field?" Ask Slashdot last touched on this topic back in February of 2001. In the intervening two years, have things gotten worse or better for those who have been in the industry for a long time?
"With the increasing popularity in such places, tech and trade schools and even colleges and universities are spitting out MCSEs, CCNAs, A+, Net+, etc certified techs, as well as people of all ages (one person in my VB class is nearly 60) who are trained to write code.
With that in mind, I guess I thought I would throw that out to the Slashdot crowd to see what kind of experiences they have either as a middle aged person entering the IT workforce for the first time, or as a younger tech, or even a manager, faced with either working with, or hiring someone who is from a completely different generation."
Younger coders tend to be (erroneously) hired because many people think they're on top of the newest technologies. Here's a news flash: Newer technologies are only new for a short period of time.
This is why you see so many corporations, and smaller companies too, with interned developers, and why it's so common to hear, especially in the IT world, of rounds of layoffs followed by hiring fresh new faces from India or someplace.
The truth of the matter is that enthusiasm about programming, and computers in general, is what a lot of people should be looking for. It's very easy to keep on top of the newest technologies when doing so is a hobby rather than a once-a-week training seminar. One enthusiastic programmer can easily do more than an entire group of slack-jawed code monkeys with no real desire to do what they're doing.
Younger programmers might get hired more quickly, but they also run the risk of getting laid off pretty fast, too, if they pick the wrong place to get a job.
Look for ways where all the life experience you have can be use to advantage. There is more to many software jobs than pure code. Solve problems. Pure code can be jobbed out to India ;-)
Most of what you will be competing against is dollars. As single person, coming out of college, with limited expenses is a cheaper date. While we would wish it otherwise, the wisdom of age, and to some extent even experience, is not valued greatly in the IT sector.
Today, as the "way back link" shows people buy experience or "hot tech". They buy it cheap because most of it is learned by students or people fairly young. They are always exceptions, but they are exceptions.
If you are 40+ you are going to have a hard time switching positions, unless you know a hot tech. The fact is you want more money than the developer who is 24. You believe your experience brings value and to some extent it does, but...how much? With CS grads coming out of college, glad to make 26k a year, can you take such a job? Can you afford a 10k pay cut?
What I found is people will not let you take a pay cut because they fear you would leave for better money, but they will not hire you for better money, because they could hire someone 24, for 40% of what you make now. So I see more stay with companies, waiting to retire, or go into consulting.
- they'll accept lower compensation, and
- you can work them harder
Older coders are much more likely to have families, children, and (dare we say it?) lives than fresh cannon-fodder from the universities. They're going to want to spend the weekend helping the wife paint the nursery, and they're going to want to go home before somebody yells at them because dinner's cold. They're also going to raise more of a stink when the pointy-haired boss decides to cut corners on the healthcare policy yet again, and they're more likely to notice that company-wide salary freeze plus ever-decreasing benefits equals less compensation every year. They might be wise enough to realize that those paper stock options aren't going to mean as much as, say, money. Et cetera.Breakfast served all day!
I've been in the industry for almost 20 years (25 if you count school/uni.), mostly contract both here in Oz and formerly in the U.K.; I find it bad enough having to run to stand still and keep up to date on all the new technologies - you all know what I mean! Unfortunately, people still see the I.T. industry as the universal panacea to employment problems, after all "how difficult can it be to programme one of those computer things?"(!)
What few of these poor schmucks are told or realise is that different languages are basically just a change of syntax (plus some relatively minor technique changes) and therefore easy to pick up if you already have the grounding. It's the underlying design and analysis skills (the ones you can't really teach) plus straight-forward experience that people are looking for in the more mature developers.
If an employer wants inexperienced developers, the newbie graduate will be be favoured as they will have lower salary expectations. If they are looking to the more mature person, it's because they are looking for the I.T. skills and not the "life" experience.
My current employer just sent round some c.v's for us to comment on for a work experience (read: unpaid) position we have - God, I hate doing that - and half of them were "mature" people moving from other industries which have slackened off. You try to ignore that you are potentially consigning the unchosen to failure and potential unemployment, thinking "there but for the grace of God go I". You look at the scant overview of I.T. skills that their three/six month "training" course has given them and know that most haven't got a chance - they've been sold a fantasy by the training agency.
The fact is that I.T. is a young person's industry, be it due to misconceptions or not, and unless you get in early it will be very hard to make it stick. We all know how rapidly the technology changes and how hard it can be to keep up; when you have a house and family there's even less time available - I've learnt to read and walk (without bumping into things/people) just so I can use the train/walk to work to read manuals - it's only my long experience, adaptability and up-to-date skills that have seen me through these last few years of lean times.
If you can show the ability to adapt, have plenty of hands-on and can keep up then contracting is the way to go for the older developer IMHO. Employers don't want to take on permanent oldies (like me, shit I'm only 41!) but the contract industry cares less about the person and looks more for the right skill-set and the experience to back it up. It's kept me in good money thus far but I have to admit it's getting harder to keep up all the time.
Go permanent? In your dreams and my worst nightmares.