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."

Comments

Don't count on it

[Anonymous Coward]

I've been coding for almost twenty years, and have watched the other coders around me dwindle away. I've made sure to keep on the leading edge, learning new tools and technologies, but guess what? Most companies aren't interested in hiring older programmers. They feel that they can get current knowledge a lot cheaper from younger folks. Not only that, but there just aren't many jobs out there that require senior level software engineers, (and I'm not talking about all the "senior engineers" who've been doing it for less than 10 years). You accumulate a lot of knowledge and experience over the years, but today's coding tasks require less experience than you may think.

I've recently had to accept that I'm about halfway through my working life, (early 40s), and there's no way I can keep coding for the next 25 years. In today's business climate, jobs are too precarious, and I can't take a chance that I'll get laid off and not be able to find a job. So now, I'm getting my masters and moving into (shudder) management.

You'd be surprised how much technical knowledge is needed in management, however. System architecture and project management, effectively performed, are skills in high demand. I feel like, even though I prefer coding, I'm positioned well for the remaining 25 years of my career.

I managed to squeeze an almost 20 year career out of coding, and have had a great time. I'm at the end of that path now, however. Time to get on a new one that has solid employment and advancement opportunities for people in their 40s, 50s, and beyond.

I'm gonna miss it though!!!

Re:You know...well, um, yeah. good thinking.

[stanwirth]

The advantages of going to grad school, particularly when slightly older, during a recession are numerous. I did it during the last two recessions (MSc in the early eighties, a Ph.D. and a couple postdocs during the early nineties), so I speak from experience:

• The cost of living goes down during a recession, which does make it a little bit easier to get by on what you'll be earning during your graduate school indentu^h^h^h^h^h^h^hadventure.
• You'll use the time and the freedom and the access to resources to develop a new technology which could be a super-big bargaining chip when you get out of jai^h^h^hschool.
• As a more mature person with, presumably, assets, a decent credit rating and a good relationship with your banker, it's much more reasonable to consider starting your own business when you get out -- based perhaps on some of the ideas you've had the time and freedom to develop in grad school -- and the advanced degree will make it much much easier for you to respond credibly to RFPs, particularly for SBIR/STTR grants to do ongoing technology transfer/R&D/productisation of what you developed in graduate school.
• You make terrific international contacts in graduate school, and are usually required to master a second (spoken, natural) language. This expands your opportunities and employability immensely.
• University career services are particularly helpful to graduates with advanced degrees, because they're able to think creatively about how your unique skills and the technology or principle you've developed (it certainly better be unique and useful, otherwise you've wasted your time and don't deserve the degree!) can be useful to their more interesting corporate and industry contacts. i.e. you're not just the 654th MSCE that just rolled off the assembly line. You have something unique and important to contribute, beyond just coding coding coding for some dumb-ass business process. You're more likely to find yourself in new product development, R&D,
• Play Co-Ed Softball in the graduate intramural league. This may be your only chance to make contacts in the B school and Law school that will be extremely valuable to you in the future, especially if you're considering starting your own high-tech business in the real economy when you finish. Uh, and the med school students might be helpful if you're, like, really old...:)
• Faculty (and people in general) find it easier to relate to people their own age, so being older is a benefit. Also, (on a more cynical note) since you're obviously industry-oriented rather than truly academically inclined, you're not offering any future competition for their little pets and bright-boys, so they're less likely to shaft you.
• It's NOT just "more years of the same academic crap." Some terminal masters' programmes are like that, but in general, in grad school, you will be challenged to think more creatively and critically than you ever have before. You will be required to zoom out to the big picutre and then zoom back in again to the finest details--and then synthesize them into something comprehensive: a new big picture. It's about creating new knowledge and new technologies, understanding things that have not yet been understood by anybody else in the world except you , not just learning more stuff from more stuffy old professors. And it will be this ability to think that will make you valuable over the much longer term, not just specific coding skills on specific platforms.
• They pay you, rahter than you paying them, and the class sizes are much smaller. What a deal!

Re:Older coders welcomed where needed

[pyrrho]

the net boom started in the late 90's, it was common for 20 somethings to fill a company. It wasn't because 20 is like the prime of your logical abilities in life! It was because there were damn few programmers older! There had been few jobs, especially for totally self taught people... and oh, there were few self taught people because there was no PC around if you were older than say 10-15 circa 1980. We were the first wave of computers programmers in any popular sense... the idea of "personal" computer software and consumer software such as games.

I learned computers on the school computer in the closet somewhere, the schools I was in got computer labs just as I left them, and that was still a couple years before other schools were getting them (there were dilligent pro-computer math teachers at my junior and high school).

I'm used to being and old timer. When I was 27 I was already an old timer at these startups. It's like being the oldest sibling, you are oldest even when you are 7 and the little brother is 4.

So we're still here ten years later (7=10 true enough for software engineering purposes), don't be suprised. In ten years you'll notice the ages go up to the 40's. When were 60+... well you get the idea.

Computers are not a thing of the youth. The
Startups might still have 20 year olds becuase they can risk more... but many companies or well funded startups will continue to have ages that rise to my generations level with a few baby boomer guru's flitting about (if they are not busy buying the Seattle Seahawks or something).

In places where computers have existed for fifty years (like science, banking, government, universities etc.) you see the full age range. Not because those places are more conservative. It's because the semi-specialized employees hang around where they know how to make a living.

Young executives and managers are another thing entirely.

Speaking as one of the managers...

[gmacd]

I went through a tough transition from techie/code writer to manager. I hire people old or young that will improve my team. Sometimes that means young people with enthusiasm and a misplaced sense of what the latest technology can really accomplish and sometimes it means hiring someone older who has lived through several "revolutions" in programming that will "forever change" the IT world. The more experienced (often but not always older) programmer/analysts are the better listeners who remember that our primary purpose is to build software systems that people can use intuitively to accomplish their work more effectively. They are also the ones that can resist the temptation to build "clever" code remembering from past code maintenance nightmares that just because something is possible doesn't mean it is good idea.

Lately, to help screen applicants we have found it is extremely useful to test and interview. This quickly helps us identify those with a balance of technical and communication skills. It is remarkable how few applicants carefully listen to our questions before answering. Most use every question as a starting point to launch into a detailed technical diatribe of their favorite projects, scattering acronyms throughout, forgetting that only one of the interview committee members (who have all been introduced and identified by position) has a technical background suitable to understand their answer.

Summary - those managers who want the best team members will find ways that do not prohibit older programmers from making it through the screening process. We will occasionally miss the truly gifted but this is unfortunately but part of risk management.