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."
I don't know about everywhere else, but the coders where I work (Liberty Northwest, who's parent company is Liberty Mutual - both big insurance companies) are all pretty goddamn old. Even the people who do web stuff (relatively "new" technology) are at least 30+. I don't think I've ever seen a coder under 30 here.
Of course, a lot of it has to do with the type of company you want/are working for. LNW/LM has lots of old but fairly stable hardware in use. I see lots of COBOL books on shelves, litterally. There's no place for flashy people with their flashy coding - at least not in this insurance building. The management seems to like their coders old, experienced and on the crotchety side.
Note: I'm a young, brash contractor that was brought in for a Win95(!) to Win2k migration project six months ago. So my views are somewhat biased, though not any more than anyone else's I suspect.
Exocet Industries - Taking over the world, one computer at a
It's Logan's Run all over again folks.
Sorry about the writing. Robot fingers, you know? Cliff Steele in DOOM PATROL #23
Its completely true, at least in México, that you can see older people pushing code.
But I blame this on the stupid idea that coding is unimportant, and everyone should go ahead to leading people as fast as posible.
I should extend over this, I'm sure I will sometime, but I can say now this is causing terrible problems on the side of quality of coding in Mexico.
The average quality of the code produced by mexican programmers is terrible.
Yeah, you see a few of them here or there in your cse classes. We always called those guys dad. WE had Dads 1-6.
I saw that Dad 2 got a job with a local software company. It was good to see him go because it was gross to see him always hit on all of those mediocre cs girls.
IMO
A programmers value is determined by experience and ability to learn. Since someone new to the IT field has little experience, being hired is determined mostly by their ability to learn. Since young minds are better suited for learning, they are going to be hired more often. This is the trend I have seen at my company.
"I can not bring myself to believe that if knowledge presents danger, the solution is ignorance" - Isaac Asimov
Stupid me, sorry...
Yeah, flamebait, I know. You are probably in your twenties...
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.
My father joined a large corporations programming team, at age 48, he doesn't have any IT degree, (he was initially a teacher), or other related qualifications, just a lot of experience in the field. (And if I may say so, a pretty smart fellow :o). He did it the only way I can see it being done: start from the bottom. Here's what he did:-
1. Joined the Support section (let's face it, anyone can make it in there without a degree)
2. After a few years in support, he'd made enough contacts, that he was able to get an interview in the programming section, and successfully got a position.
I really cannot see any other way, for an "older" IT person to get such a job, there is simply NO WAY that someone over say 40 will be hired as a coder straight up, unless they have very specific skills that are required by the employer.
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 ;-)
You are farked just like the rest of us. Go to grad school until the economy improves.
...And when they came for me, there was no one left to speak out for me." - Martin Niemoeller (1892-1984)
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!!!
As an 'old coder' (30 languages since 1968), I can tell you the natural process, that being one of evolution, is for the seniors to become managers. Move up, it's where you belong.
The cruel truth is that younger people will work for less money than older people are willing to accept.
Boobies never hurt anyone. - Sherry Glaser.
..because old people actually expect reasonable money and decent hours.
John Glenn may not be too old to pilot a big bird into space, but he may have an easier time flying back to his old job than many of the old-school mainframe programmers being brought back into the fold to avert disasters caused by the year 2000 problem.
With demand exploding for programmers fluent in COBOL, Fortran, and other "legacy languages" to apply fixes to millions of lines of code, the job outlook for elder mainframe gurus eager to get their fingers back in the bits has never looked better. A study published last year by Hunter College computer-science professor Howard Rubin predicted that up to 700,000 code-cutters will have to be spliced back into the workforce in the next three years, and callow Web-geeks schooled in C++ and Java just don't have the right stuff.
The problem? Getting the workers to the work.
For an industry that has mushroomed by dangling dad-sized salaries before unmarried post-adolescents willing to move anywhere at the drop of an IPO, the Graying of High Tech presents an intriguing dilemma. The huge financial institutions that are desperate to get their mainframes on track for the millennium, says Bill Payson, president of Senior Staff 2000, a leading database of elder IT workers, "want full-time people, on-site, in downtown Chicago, yesterday. But these guys aren't going to live in a motel for six months. They're living on a golf course in South Florida or San Diego County, and they're very hard to pry loose. They moved there because they don't like Chicago - there are no drugs where they live, and no crime."
Frances Nevarez, president of Automation Training Specialists - which offers training to programmers for Y2K-related and other jobs with AT&T, Hewlett-Packard, and other firms - sees the same problem. The retirees, she says, "like where they live. They have homes that they set aside so they could leave the rat race."
It's not that senior programmers don't want to tackle the job, Payson says. "Thirty-seven percent are interested in the money," Payson claims (which can vary from US$35 an hour for grunt-level coding to $150 an hour for top-level programming), "and 63 percent are bored."
For the generation of technicians who came of age in the post-WWII era, the 74-year-old Payson - an ex-Marine - observes, there's also an emotional eagerness to serve: "They're turned on by a sense of patriotic duty. They want to save the country's ass."
The task facing "solution providers" hired by the huge institutions to engage the services of older programmers, Payson says, is to find innovative ways to move mountains of code to Mohammed. One possible solution for linking the ailing mainframes to COBOL-gurus in retirement communities, Payson suggests, is the Net.
Don Heath, president of the Internet Society, thinks using the Net and the Web to coordinate Y2K problem-solving teams is a "great idea." But Heath, who sits on the board of a company that builds problem-prevention tools for IBM databases, also acknowledges that many of the older firms that will be slammed hardest by Y2K glitches - like banks - are the most skeptical of engaging the expertise of an off-site, online work pool.
"They're reluctant. For the larger data centers, it's an issue of style, methodology, operating procedure," Heath says. "It's ill-founded, but it's based on history as well as inertia."
Steven Laine of Systems Partners - a solution provider with clients like Intel, Wells Fargo, and Charles Schwab - agrees with Heath that the typical project manager "wants people who will be sitting there on site, where they can see them." As the supply of up-to-speed legacy-language specialists are snatched up, however, Laine says, "the clients are going to have to be more flexible."
Another group that has been looking at the Net as a way of enabling older programmers to get back on the job is educators. When the University of Santa Cruz Extension launched a course called "Year 2000 Orientation for Experienced Programmers" in September, the class f
With jobs opening up in places like Mexico and India where the labor force is cheap and educated, the American code monkey doesn't stand a snowball's chance in hell. What you need to do is move on to more specialized fields, like MechE or EE. Nobody would trust a bunch of cheapo foreigners with stuff that people would depend on for their safety, so those fields certainly won't be going away any time soon. On the other hand, those of you managing "Linux boxen" are quite replaceable.
--sdem
First of all, an employer who hires someone younger as opposed to older with similiar creds better keep his mouth shut. It's a small world, and it's a lawsuit waiting to happen. These days, older can mean more experience. And with companies spending less, age increases the chances of a company getting a developer whose been around the block a couple of times and can step right in and be productive. As for those two ladies, I hate to say it, but they're screwed. There's such a disproportionate amount of male engineers, and male-biased engineers at that. When they do get a job, unfortunately, they will be looked at as a quota-fill, until they prove otherwise. I hope they read this and get motivated!
Sorry, but many companies aren't interested in hiring scraggly-bearded hotshot hacker-wannabes to write payroll code. They're looking for stable and mature people who will show up, on time, everyday. Not finger-signing really cool dudes who part-tay every weekend then come in with hangovers on Monday and spend the rest of the week trying to put undetectable backdoors into the check printing code or copy the executive payroll file for their own enjoyment.
The poster who noted that leading-edge programming languages are only leading-edge for a couple of weeks is absolutely correct. COBOL may not be cool, but it was once leading-edge and has persisted because it works. Want to take bets on whether applications written in COBOL or applications written in (enter name of flashy new language here) are more likely to still be running in 20 years>
This is dead on. Younger people are far more exploitable (as a group) than older people. They are less likely to have their own families, more likely to be willing to work ridiculous hours, and less willing to stand up for themselves.
In Soviet America the banks rob you!
If you are an older person with the same level experience as someone fresh out of school (in a particular domain), you are much less hirable regardless of profession. Why? You're value as an investment has dimenished greatly. If you are going to be collecting retirement in 20 years, why would I hire you verses someone who won't for another 40 years? Chances are, if you're just getting into something at age 40, you're not going to do anything that changes the industry.
If you're older and have experience, well, that's a different story entirely. Mostly depends on why you're making a career change.
int func(int a);
func((b += 3, b));
There are always going to be more and more college graduates coming who are willing to code for less money. Younger people who are willing to work longer and harder who may not have established a family of their own yet.
The demand is going down and the supply is growing fast.
The real shortage is COMPETENT management. If you learn and can implement real software management practices, then your more marketable.
"Code Monkeys" are dime a dozen, and most younglings dont pay much attention to the management practices of software development endevours until after they are in the business a while.
Just a tip for professional growth...
If you think about traditional professions, 30 is young, especially in complex technical fields like lawyering, doctoring.
In such professions you generally complete your degrees in your mid twenties (that is if you are fortunate enough to have rich parents). Then you start clawing your way up the ladder.
My experience is that the best programmers and designers are in their mid thirties. But the computer programmer industry is known for chewing up people and spitting out useless husks.
As for the computer industry right now. Your chances of getting a job right out of college is pretty low. Your chances for getting a job with a few years of experience is pretty low, and your chance of getting a job when you are past 40 is basically nil.
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.
I read once in a while stories about students having difficulties finding their 1st job in the IT industry, but from what I see around me, it also seems hard to keep your job when you pass, say, 40. My uncle was a damn good software engineer, but now that he's 50+, he has a hard time finding and keeping jobs. I'm not complaining for myself, I'm 30, with a good job, but I wonder, how long is it going to last? I think it's pretty sad to see a lot a sw engineers transitionning to management, not because they really like it, but because it's the accepted conventional way up. What if I love development and want to stay in it?
:)
And now, you tell us about mid-aged (and over) people *starting* a carrer in IT.. I don't know, but it looks like it's going to be tough for them.
But again, my view is totally biased by my personal environment and experience. I haven't checked any statistical resources out there (may be I should have before opening my big mouth
{Science sans conscience n'est que ruine de l'âme}
how all the older coders say: "Companies don't want us, in this market they want all you kids who will work for peanuts"
while we kids all say: "Companies don't want us, in this market they want people with experience."
Bah. You know, as I finish undergrad (graduation tomorrow - woot!) I see SO many just BAD programmers. It seems like any idiot can get through a CS degree. I only have a 3.2 (*sigh*) and I don't see myself finding a decent job. So, I did this 'fast track' thing and did 6 grad hours this semester. While I don't see many jobs with BSCS + 0yrs exp, I do see a few jobs for BSCS + 2yrs or MSCS + 0yrs.
sig
Care to guess how many older workers will get these jobs?
Geezers have a chance if they're connected. Most older folks have a much larger network of well-placed friends, and can count on them to help with HR hurdles. And, if there's just no other way in, an older worker who fabricates a long list of "experience" on their resume is more likely to be believed. So not only is it possible for a freshly-minted software geezer to find work, they may have much higher starting salaries.
I graduated from a tech school (please do me a favor and slashdot them!!) in October of 2002. I got my "Associates in Specialized Technology Degree in Computer Programming", and it's basically worthless. I got a job as a sys admin at a really great company, but that's mostly because my dad's a manager there ;). Yeah, I know enough to be an admin, but only because of stuff I learned on my own, not from school. Over half the people I went to school with can't find jobs anywhere, and these people were all really intelligent and skilled (well, most of them were). Seems that every job opening out there wants at least a bachelors degree and two years experience. Some want far more. Entry level positions that could maybe lead to programming jobs usually start out with nothing resembling programming. I know that at my company, a good portion (well over half) of our developers are over age 40, and I'd say we've got at least a few over 50 or 60. Seems that, at my company at least, it's harder for young people to get in, since our business is doing well, and we can afford to pay for experienced coders.
These are just my experiences as a recent grad.
-Jon
This space for rent, inquire within.
I think the biggest issue is simply keeping up to date. I work at an academic lab that does DoD contracts. 95% of my co-workers could be my parents. The problem we're having is not of age but of abilities. The current people there are all stuck in their particular languages. We have an Ada person, and the rest are old school C people. The newest ( and relatively younger ) people that have come in, including me, are pushing to start using c++ and OOP methodologies. Our problems are two fold, updating the C people, and highering new people that already have a handle on c++ and OOP.
:P )
It's not so much about age but about what the person can do when hiring. I've interviewed a couple people this week already across a range of ages, and luckily of both sexs. We haven't gone with anyone yet because they aren't versed well enough in what we want even if it is the baby boomer of languages.
So wether you are young or old, don't pigeon hole yourself into a single technology or language. Investigate the new ones that look promising.
( Note: I only used the c++ issue as a particular point, there is obviously much more that we care about than knowledge of a certain language, so don't flame me for being short sighted
"Not knowing when the dawn will come, I open every door." - Emily Dickinson
I've been programming since 1968, from vacuum tubes and punched cards to today, custom OSs, drivers, softare and hardware testing, web sites, networking, firmware, translators, and all sorts of jobs, some boring, most interesting, some exciting (like the one using a real gun, had to test with Michael Jackson playing real loud to drown out the shots :-). I was laid off in September when the company shifted direction to a Windows project which they planned to convert to Linux, but not yet, and I know next to nothing about Windows (in fact, that was why I got the original job years before). Haven't even had a response to any resume yet. Northern California, no where near the bay area, and I like that.
I do NOT attribute my dismal job search with age, I have never felt my age was a problem. I believe my problem right now is that I am a jack of many trades and master of only a few. I am a good employee, havbe always worked smart, not hard, 8-9 hour days, never had a job which expected 12 hour days, but I have no problem with them in emergencies and rushes, just not days on end for months and years. I have worked with people who routinely put in 12 hour days, and frankly, their code sucked hind tails.
I think it is a matter of so many programmers out there that companies can hire the best buzzword match, if it doesn't work out, fire them and try again. Or a new project comes along, one new skill required, fire the old buzzword match, find a new one. I have learned Java three times, always got the job done, but didn't use it again for several years, and it had changed enough in between to require partial relearning.
But I do not think my age is a problem.
Infuriate left and right
- 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!
...it was probably put on Monster only because DOD regulations require (or at least they used to when I worked in defense several years ago) that it be posted publicly if no one in-house is (officially) qualified.
They probably have a few people in mind (that one or more managers know or are related to) that have these exact qualifications but they can't hire them unless the job offer is made public first.
This is quite common in the defense world. I doubt that they really need 56 people with those exact requirements unless it is for a brand new project.
Microsoft's VP of Customer Service is Helen Waite. If you are having problems with their products go to Helen Waite.
Age itself isn't really the issue. Any negative arguments are generalisations. All you have to do is convince them that while the stereotype may be true about most older coders, you're not most older coders, you're you.
Then you point out how your age means you've got experience to bring to the fore and, most of all, you've learned to deal with issues maturely. One of the main problems in a lot of "younger" software companies is that all the early 20s coders think it's an entitlement and get in to rages at every bit of stupidity, bad mouthing people, talking about how the company sucks, moving on etc.
Once you've been around, you realise every company has its compliment of bad managers etc. and even that sometimes those bad managers are actually perfectly good managers, you personally just happen not to have the full picture. You work well anyway, rather than complaining. That's a huge bonus to an employer.
The question is, and one I find myself asking as I get older, do you want to put up with the same crap the younger coders do? Or do older coders fit the stereotype because, funnily enough, as you get older, you learn more and realise coding can be a sucky lifestyle?
That $50,000 job is great for a single guy but suddenly it's not so great for someone with a house and kids.
Those long hours just before a release are fine for someone who just has to go back to an empty room but a major issue when you have to pick the kids up, take them to ballet and then put them to bed.
The sudden change of deadlines that mean you're working over the weekend and you're not told until Friday afternoon don't give the flexability you need for family.
Having a conference during the school holidays that the company HAS to have a demo ready for becomes an issue if it's the only time your kids can go on holiday with you.
Maternity leave? Sure, it's a protected right. You still expect to be getting the same promotions as the guy who isn't six months behind on the latest technologies?
Your wrists starting to ache? The young coders can burn through five years before their carpal tunnel syndrome gets really bad. Now you're older and know how much pain it can cause, are you prepared to burn your body up like they are?
Coding is a high paying lifestyle. It's also a pretty abusive one to your body and your family life over the long term. Most older people aren't prepared to put up with that once they're old enough to realise. Most younger guys are too stupid to realise. Knowing what it entails, if you're prepared to put up with it anyway, there's still work.
that programming isn't just a job or field of study.
Instead it is an "art" and you either have the gift to program and truely zone out and become the code, or you don't.
Age means nothing as long as their is that real talent to know how to follow code and feel your way through every loop and line.
The only real big hurdle is actual experience. And younger coders and older people new to the "art" of programming will all face this. Yet I believe it's an easier hurdle for older people since they do tend to at least have real work experience usually lacked by the younger programmers.
I just started a new job and I am 48. We do xsl and xml web development. Who gets the job is based on ability, not age. I am the old man (wise?) on our team.
With the market flooded with experienced engineers with BS and MS degrees. Mid-life crisis cases with a class or two on their resume don't stand a chance in the job market.
Actually, open source is employing about a hundred and fifty people at at least one company in Baltimore, MD (and I hear they're looking for a couple of -good- SysAdmins). Add to that all the sysadmins at the various research universities that are running Beowulf and Mosix/openMosix clusters, and you start to see a different picture.
Honestly, I personally haven't had a problem finding a job...
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.
At my company (if we were hiring), we'd only hire experienced programmers (including former interns) right now. "Just out of school" with no practical experience wouldn't be considered. This is a product of both the current state of the company and the local hiring market; we're very short-term focused currently and there's a glut of good people in our local market - I personally know over a dozen good programmers who've been job-hunting in the last 3 months. If we hire, we're going to cherry-pick.
However, some other factors that will influence the ability of a new coder to land a job are:
- contacts - a very large amount of jobs still get filled (at least in part) via contacts and "word of mouth". Especially smaller employers like to have someone they know vouch for the candidate, at least to the extent that the candidate isn't a total asshole and some companies now won't give more than a "yes, he worked on those dates" reference for former employees, for fear of lawsuits. Get yourself friends and associates in the business area you would like to work in.
- grades - they're just about the only evidence that you're competent in your new field.
- previous work experience - a lot of programming deals with particular business or technical information and someone with experince in a particular field will have a chance landing a job programming for that field; a former nurse at medical supply co., an accounting clerk for a in-house accounting software, etc. Most disciplines are getting computerized to at least some extent, so an older worker can try to put experience to work in the new job. I know of an ex-"blue collar" guy who used to work warehouse and delivery jobs and had to re-train after an accident; he managed to (eventually) get a job working on inventory software despite being over 50 with some modest disabilities. He started in Quality Assurance and then managed an in-house transfer to a coding position.
- the local market - if experienced people are on the streets looking for work, new coders are competing to some extent with that pool of talent. Newer training and lower salary demands can somewhat counter-balance this though.
- language skills - multilingual coders have an edge for some positions
Good luck.I'm over 40, have only 5 years as a coder, and after a long search, I found a good job at a reasonable salary. While it may seem obvious to say 'no one will pay for software when you can get it for free', it's simply not true. Most coders don't make, and never have made, shrinkwrap apps. The jobs lost in this area are negligable compared to what happens when the companies clamor for more IT people based on a ridiculously overhyped economy propped up by VC's looking to make the fast buck before the balloon pops. Even if you weren't paying attention, it was obvious that most of the tech companies would fall down, go boom. Anyway, old apps are getting upgraded, and new ones are on the horizon. :P Times is bad; you just ride it out.
I know an accountant having trouble finding work too. Though he blames Bush
Write code becasue you enjoy it or have a problem to solve. Don't go to school because you think your going to get rich coding. The software world is moving away from the closed source model faster than you can imagine. Those dummies in jail won't have a clue and the crap they make, even if guided by those who do know something, will never measure up in quality to free software. Being able to use free software to solve real problems will be useful and valuable. The source is alive. A CD full of binary crap is just a coaster and might as well be written by convicts.
Bill Gates would be the RIAA of software. He did not count on free software eating his lunch. I wonder if he funded this Indian programming effort. Here, he's going the other way. Instead of trying to get convicts ready for life outside of jail by teaching them progrmming, he's trying to get programmers ready for jail by changing the law. Screw you Billy!
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
You'd have to shoot me before you could promote me, can't think of a worse thing than to be taken from a hands-on tech. role to become a paper-pusher... what a nightmare! That's why I went contract, no career pressure, and I'm a far better developer that I could ever be as a manager.
Go permanent? In your dreams and my worst nightmares.
I'm an EE. Actually, a BSEE, and an MSEE, and I have my MBA for good measure too. I knew that I didn't want to work in software and coding, so I took a hardware specialization in ASIC and digital.
Well, lo and behold, after four years in the workforce, two layoffs, slavedrivers at my first job, all that work is being farmed off to Asia, eastern Europe and other low-paying locales. No joke - you can walk to an average ASIC provider with $200,000 and get a 2 Million gate ASIC with an embedded ARM, SRAMS, and ADC/DACs designed turn key. Those types of ASICs with design services used to cost almost ten times that amount. That also includes mask and tooling costs, btw.
In fact, most of the rest of hardware engineering has cratered in the same way. Cheap foreign labor has usurped the profession because electronic devices, like software, have for the most part become non-locale-specific commodities. Those electronic devices only need to pass Underwriters Laboratories or Canadian Standards Association safety certifications, and if they don't they just get redesigned. No engineer in electronics that I have ever known in my short career has needed their Professional Engineering degree, but I'll tell you that none of these guys who would have a product for sale here in North America would sign off on the design documents and be personally liable for them if they were designed outside of the United States and Canada, even under their project control.
Contrast this with, say, civil engineering, where the engineer has to stamp his life away on the lower left corner of the blueprint of that bridge or building, and if something goes wrong and it falls down and kills people, it's his ass. Plus, they need to be on-site almost all the time, because they're virtually all locale-specific type of projects at one point or another, particularly when it comes to the geotechnical aspect of it. I sure as hell wouldn't trust someone to design and spec out bridge trusses if they lived somewhere else, nor would I want it to be built on a mound of quicksand (as the Alberta Provincial Legislature was).
What's even more sad is that I've personally seen cover-ups of folks whose consumer electronic devices have burnt up in the end application due to overcurrent latch-up on a power IC, yet nobody needed their P.E./P.Eng. designation. Only in higher voltage power systems design has an EE required his/her professional designation and to stick his/her neck out. Well, that and for those who develop military and aerospace systems. But who cares if a piece of software asserts a line too long or wiggles it the wrong way to send a device into a tizzy, right?
The real solution is to reregulate the profession such that safety, both software and hardware side, become personal liabilities for those who have designed them. Small errors are liabilities for civil, mining, chemical, and mechanical engineers that need to be corrected. Yet small errors in functinoality are things that "we just have to live with" and accept for redesign. You can bet diamonds to dollars that the SW/HW design clowns outside this country have virtually full immunity on a personal if something happens or will at most get fired. Big whoop. Once you change SW/HW engineering to a locale-specific and safety-specific craft for which individuals become personally accountable and necessary locally, you will fundamentally restore dignity to the profession and cauterize the wounds that are causing the outflow of this profession to other countries.
As for me, after a couple of layoffs and general disgruntlement with the profession, I'm going to look at getting into management consulting and using my MBA a bit more. God knows half the companies I used to work for sure need an internal overhaul. But it's cultural- and location-specific type of work, it is very versatile, you can consult for yourself or someone else, and you can't farm most of it out because it needs to be local.
Hey, I'm 37, and I've been in the field professionally since I was 22. I'm not the youngest at my current client, but I'm hardly the oldest.
In fact, most people I see in this business fell into it from other fields entirely. I've only met a few out here in the real world that actually went to school specifically for programming. Most got degrees in other fields.
I really don't know that age is that much of a factor either, except that the younger ones actually chose the field during college instead of afterwards.
you obviously have some other skill and experience to boot. That's your edge over the younger crowd. If you're looking for a menial 9-to-5 position, that's not going to be worth squat. If you're looking for something a little higher up the ladder, you're far better off.
If all else fails, kill yourself.
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:
Few programmers work to develop code as a marketed product. Nor should they. Software that is designed as a profitable product will always be inferior to software developed to solve a problem directly. It is easy to demonstrate impericaly ( a little more convoluted to prove logicaly) that software is not a good sustanable buisness without resorting to sleezy practices ala MS. Most viable commercial software products were produced for use in house befor being marketed. With Open Source, companies will be able to do more, in house, and for less cost. That will allow them to hire more programmers while retaining the same budget.
Those 40+ workers won't have a snowball's chance in hell in the current market. Roughly what anyone that doesn't currently have a job, I might add.
Not only that, but I suspect that many people with CS degrees - the technical rough equivilent of an Engineering degree or such - are getting a mere fraction of what other people in technically inclined career paths are getting. The situation doesn't look like it's going to improve, either - at least not within the decade, and probably longer.
I see tech workers having several options from which to chose from. The available options are probably not anything that will happen without a fairly large pull on the government from the private citizens of the US: civil liberties have been pretty low on the totem pole of things to do for the government of late.
The first thing that could be done would probably be to form a union. Many people in the tech industry protest this it seems, though, because they might see 'union' being attributed to 'lower' work, such as manual labor. However, I do not see this as meaning that it shouldn't be done, or that it would be bad for tech workers if it were done. It would provide for wage and sallary standardization for specific tasks and job requirements. Granted, the people with lucrative 200k$/year jobs would probably lose out.
Another option - and probably the best - is to get a government licsensure board set up, such as what conventional engineers have. This would act positively on several fronts. First, it would change being a 'tech worker' from being simply that - someone with technical skills that is seen by management to perform menial technical tasks - to a trained and licensed professional.
Then, in turn, commericial software could not be sold without a licensed programmer's 'signature'. (This could work much like the current engineer scenario of a single engineer watching over draftsmen - the real programmers (people that hvae been programming for years, with many languages, etc - programming managers, basically, instead of the clueless IT Managers we have now) look over, debug, and LART the 'coders'. Granted, there'd probably be a higher ratio of programmers/coders than there is of engineers/draftsman, simply because it takes a lot more man hours to review code than it does to look over a blueprint.
Additionally, this would do several things for the quality of code. It would increase, one, because there would at least be a minimal level of competence on a given project (as shown by the licensure test taken by the programmer).
Second, an programmer putting his stamp of approval on a project is much more likely to pay attention to the overall quality of the product, since his license is on the line. There will have to be some more thought done on how to determine whether or not a programmer is responsible for a problem with his software, of course, but I think it can be safely said that large vulnerabilities and inherrently insecure software design would result in such a license revocation. It would, of course, be determined by the governmental licensure board.
Thirdly, this would be a positive long-term thing because all the Indian and Asian imigrants that are currently working here without their blue cards, and many with, would not be able to work in the capacity of programmer. Hopefully 'coders' would have to be licensed too, a requirement being that they be a civizen.
Similar rules can be drawn up for system administration, although I'll argue that the infastructure is already largely there. sysadmins follow previously defined guidelines, for the most part, and work within a boundry. They have things like Cisco's intensive certification program which is largely respected in its higher manifestations. Etc.
The fact of the matter is, the software industry has been going through an 'industrial revolution' of sorts, similar to what occured about 100 years ago. Ideas have been formulated, mistakes have been made, and now we're still going over step 1 and 2 wi
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
With the industry in the shitter like it is, I am having a hell of a time finding work. I just recently graduated with a degree in CS from UCF, and it's near-worthless. There are a million people out there with actual on-the-job experience in ADDITION to their degrees, and they too are working for pitiful wages in whatever they can get right now. I think if anything, age is a BONUS as long as you have the experience that usually goes along with it.
-- Having a Creationist Museum is like having an Atheist place of worship
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.
Your problem is...your traditional thinking and how you let it limit your imagination. You overlook your ability to change and do. You are a victim of your own age discrimination.
It's a different world now...I promise. Move with it or die...it's really that simple.
Stop being so IT centric and give yourself credit for being able to make decisions without panicing. Then look around and realize what an asset this can be and find an employer that values that. You can jump into any other field and find a home...project management is needed from the medical industry to tourism...from energy management to child adoption.
Why limit yourself, when so many others are already trying to do that as well. You are in charge of you...take a chance and find out what you can really do. You may just learn something about yourself in the process.
Good Things about young coders
1. Work cheap
2. Work long, work hard
3. Don't die as easily.
Bad Things about young coders
1. Transient, bored easily
2. Fuck everything in site
3. Inexperienced.
4. Priorities b0rked (cock first, code later)
5. Client schmlient
6. Fuck everything in site
7. Normalization is too conformist
8. Want everyone else's job
9. Fuck everything in site
Good Things about older coders
1. Stable
2. Experienced
3. Choosy about who to fuck
Bad Things about older coders
1. I forget
-mike
-- Karma Whore? You betcha!
-- Karma whore? You betcha. --
The only tactic I can think of that I'd be comfortable with is: "disarm them with honesty!"
How do you think the typical interviewer would handle a nearly-forty sysadmin/programmer who points out:
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So, what do you think? Am I unemployable?my greatest weakness is my inability to work a regular schedule. i need flex time in order to work efficiently. i put in above and beyond in terms of number of hours, but sometimes i come in four hours late; sometimes i take off a friday and work saturday instead; sometimes i'll come in at 7pm and work until noon the next day. however, when i'm at home and not sleeping, i am almost always abvailable on call should something come up. if you have more rigid scheduling requirements, i'll do my best, but no promises.
in my everyday life, i love things that are quick and easy. just like my wimmins. but when it comes to writing code, i will not rush to get a project out the door. i understand that i will be maintaining that code probably until hell freezes over, and i'm going to do it the right way the first time. if you misbudget development time - that's your problem.
i don't like microsoft. there, i said it. i will not use a microsoft development environment, and i will not use a microsoft os on my development desktop. i will not program in asp, com components, or vb. if you need that stuff done, surely there are less principled employees on the payroll that will take up those tasks.
when it comes to public web applications, i will not write any code that is not standards-compliant. life is too short, and the art of web development is so broad, that i won't waste any time on platform-specific or browser-specific code. if we're talking about an internal application where the user-base is known, i will still strive for standards-compliance, but will consent to using proprietary technologies if there are no other options.
ah, what the hell. I figure it would keep me out of places that i'd hate to work in anyway.
pr0n - keeping monitor glass spotless since 1981.
Try not to be so literal. Not everyone...but certainly many. Of course not everyone wants such a role. Cool...less competion...that's a good thing, no?
Programmers, when properly trained/skilled, are prime examples of individuals that live and die by being organized. They understand how to prototype and draft and forecast. They know how to allocate and redirect and terminate and archive. They now how to start, stop and restart.
These are all things that define project managers. Project management/planning is one of the highest demand categories in modern industry. A good project manager can make or break an otherwise successful product. If you've run out your interest in coding, or you're simply not able to find a programming job, consider project management in any of a hundred fields. You'd be surprised how interesting it can be, and how useful your present skill set is going forward. My background allows me to talk directly to our software people, and they appreciate that. My background allows me to build my own custom tools, instead of writing a clumsy spec that some intern has to try to follow. My background allows me to prototype in minutes what would take a team days...and if someone wants me to make a decision based solely on the information on the white board, my background allows me to imagine the flow of details quickly and with confidence. I manage projects....and without programming skills to back me up, I'd be forced to carry a crystal ball.
Again, many industries need planners and project managers. Don't let the job define you...step in and define your work by your own standards. Find a company with a problem that needs your skills at large, not just as a programmer, but as someone that can see the big and the small of it. Someone that can handle details and deadlines....detours and debates....specifications and routines. You can still write scripts and run data dumps...you're in charge, remember?
We try very hard to hire the best and compensate accordingly - young or old. Experience is an asset but not a necessity. A college degree is an asset but not a necessity. The key to catching our eye and getting an interview is to have a resume that stands out in some way. The key to getting hired is to demonstrate flexibility (our market changes daily), fast learning ability (we move fast, gotta keep up), a clear understanding of the items on your resume (how can we expect you to learn what we do if you don't understand what you did?), reasonable communication skills (can't team-work without it) and good problem solving skills (gotta fix your own bugs). Does that mean a middle-aged greenhorn college grad will have an easy time? Of course not. Do something extraordinary outside the confines of your coursework and we'll take notice. Participate and contribute in a significant way to an open source project, write a complex and amazing piece of code and bring it with you, etc. Is that hard? Yes. Will it take a lot of time above and beyond your coursework? Yes, of course. Is that the only way in in this market? Yes, absolutely.
Trees have visible rings because they make a lot of wood during fat times, and only a little during lean.
It's the same way with programmers' ages. During boom times, companies will pick up a glut of programmers, including youngsters. This is what happened during the late '90s: They were hiring a lot of people, fairly indiscriminately. Further, the population of new programmers (or new people in any career) is disproportionately young. Young people are more likely to be either switching careers or just beginning a career than are older people, so we made up the bulk of this boom's new recruits.
You can see they cycles if you look at an older technology company. For example, I got started working for an air traffic control company (Lockheed Martin (formerly Univac, formerly Sperry-Rand, formerly...)) which had been in the computer business for 50 years. The programmers came in generations, because when there was an economic upswing, young engineers were hired, and then a decade or so would go by in which there were few new hires (and usually a few losses) and then the cycle would repeat again.
I think that the illusion that only young people can/should be programmers has a lot to do with the newness of the companies: Companies that didn't exist, or weren't in the computer industry 10 years ago haven't had the chance to develop a good age spread of employees, because this is their first cycle.
Of course, it depends a lot on what you know and what you've done: At LMATM, the coders in their 60s were freakin' good: They'd survived several rounds of layoffs for a reason, and they were seasoned veterans before I was born. If someone has 40 years of relevant experience doing good work, that's hard to argue with. On the other hand, someone whose experience is soleley with 40-year-old ways of thinking might actually be a hindrance. I think it would also be hard to be a new programmer in your 50s or 60s: There are biases out there in favor of youth, and a brand new programmer would not have the experience to offset that.
"The situation doesn't look like it's going to improve, either - at least not within the decade, and probably longer" - I believe you're right about that or though I would give it even longer time, say 20-25 years before things get better. Why? Becasuse this sytem is f-up, corrupt and too old to get another growth phase like it was in the 90ies when recruiters begged you to get in touch with them. Now, you have to chase recruiters if any are left out there. Things changed so much that it is already scarry. So, what is my plan? Do what you can, I'm doing MS, but even that might not be enought, because believe me people who are less qualified but have personal connections will keep their jobs and prevent more quality workers from replacing them. It's the game of survival now, egos get very edgy and cunning when it comes to game of survival, people of low morale through personal connections will do everything to keep the world from changing, because if the world changes they have to go, so there will be a lot those personal and bitter fights ahead. At the end good karma will win, I'm sure.
IP was invented for the sake of lawsuits.
I have been programming for 25 years and switched to web dev about 6 years ago. Living in Seattle, where there are even more unemployed programmers than latte stands, I have never had much trouble finding a job, including during the dotcom bust a couple years ago. I think the important thing is to have a history of constantly learning new stuff. I know guys who smugly spent the late 1990s raking in money doing Y2K conversions on old COBOL programs while I was making less money doing web pages. Those are the guys who are hard up for interesting jobs.
You might have had a problem finding a job three years ago if you were 35+, but probably not because most places would hire anybody who was even remotely competent. These days if you are light on experience (which most really young people are) you are completely screwed. Every company I've seen needs people who can be immediately productive and require no training. If anything, I would imagine that a 25 year old programmer with 3 years of experience would have a significantly more difficult time finding a job than a 40 year old programmer with 15 years of experience. Companies don't hire young people because they're cheap, they hire old people because they are just as cheap. This may be unique to Silicon Valley...
Of course the philosophy at big software shops is different. Microsoft, Sun, Oracle, IBM all like to recruit directly out of college/grad school. It's easier to teach people the "right" way to do things that way. This also lets them pay people less. Of course they are able to do this because they don't need people to be immediately productive. They can afford to invest a few years of brainwashing, err training.
- The first two points will weed you out of a company that insits upon deadlines and schedules, with managers that presume highly of their abilities to budget and schedule everything oh-so brilliantly.
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The last two points are guaranteed to prevent you from getting jobs at Microsoft-dependand shops, or anywhere that is stuck in vendor-lock in general, since they are essentially building on proprietary bases.
This opens the larger and somewhat off-topic debate: True freedom only exists when you are no longer dependant upon money.You'll surely notice that only CEOs or politicians can have a claim at true freedom: their salary is high enough that if they reach a "mutual disagreement" with the organization, they can afford to just hand over their resignation, take a few months of vacation and reappear at the helm of another organization 6 months later.
Meanwhile, most mere mortals actually need a job to make ends meet and are therefore forced into making decisions that go against their moral principles, such as accepting a job doing somehting they hate.
The obvious conclusion is that since their is no freedom without financial independance, there is also no democracy except among truely free men who can afford the consequences of their decisions.
Software is not supposed to be about how to work around a useability issue. - Ken Barber
Somone's age correlates strongly with when, why and how they got intot he business. So age may correlate with performance and employability, but the *cause* may be the underlying factors.
I started when I was 13 and am 35 now. I'm a guru. People who picked up programming as a job skill in college tend to be weaker. Also, people who hopped into the biz in the dot-com era because it was hot lack the passion and mindset.
So a 30 year old web-designer probably picked up coding in their mid 20's in 1999 (any punk with a nose ring who looked cool could get a job in web design back then). Likewise, a 50 year old is more likely to have been working the back room of an insurance company sice '74.
Both are a different breed from us 35-45 senior dev or architect types, who grew up coding till 3am on our Commodore 64's, and who had it imprinted on our then-pubescent brains. Our age is not as important as the history it correlates with.
I also wrote something about this before that I think people would enjoy reading.
Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm
A lot of you kids seem to be assuming you're talking about somebody trying to get in...and missing those of us who've been here for 10, 15, 20 and more years.
...zdnet?... a few months ago, where it said that in the tech sector (thir largest, behind retail and fast food!), the unemployment rate is around 15%.
Let me put it this way: on a techie mailing list I'm on, with maybe 30-50 heavy posters, and including people who some of y'all might recognize the name, the last time we polled ourselves, last year, we had over a dozen of us out of work. Since then, several have gotten jobs...and several more lost 'em.
This matches what I read in
In the Chicago area, when I left for FL in Jan, it was about 20%.
Does the word "depression" come to mind?
And for the jobs that are available, HR, who, in general, barely know how to bring up email, put a laundry list of languages *and* packages that would require any three people to cover, and don't want to pay for it.
I've recently seen one in my neck of the woods, that want an experienced person to do troubleshooting and installs, with up to 75% travel, and they want to pay $30k/yr for this. Would you like fries with that?
Finally, there's yet another, almost unprovable issue: ageism. I'll bet you a drink that the interview I had last spring, I didn't get the job, because the owner was early 30s, and everyone else in the office seemed to be early 20s.
At 50+, I wouldn't "fit into the culture".
Meanwhile, let's all just sit back, watch them CEOs take their paid-for GOP legislators' tax breaks, and export jobs overseas (e.g., IBM's 500 seat call center in India), and bring cheap labor H1b's over here. Ah, unions and labor laws are *so* 20th century...as is a decent living.
mark, programmer/software developer/Unix/Linux sysadmin, 23 yrs experience, 21+ mos. out of work
On my last Job (all staff laid off on Dec. 31, 2k3) I shared the office with the Senior Developer, a 40 year old with 20 years expierience in Pascal/Delphi Developement who had a University Diploma in Informatics (that's what it's called in germany, go figure...). :-) )) who new all those new goodies and he has the RL expierience. I'd pick him over any hotshot podknocker on *any* IT related project I can think of. And I'd advise anybody to do the same. 3 Days with him are more worth than 2 weeks with a team of twens with all but a handfull of coding-years each. The same would count if he were fifty or just before retirement.
He didn't know zilch 'bout OSS, Linux and the lot. I went about evangelizing him and six months later he was way ahead of me in gcc, Python, Java/Netbeans and co.
I was/am the young guy (well, sort of young (32
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
So the coding future doesn't look good at the moment if you live in the US and want to work in voice telecom (not that I would recommend that industry after working in it for 10 years, perhaps VoIP has a better track record). However, if you want to do high and low level design documents and integration test when the code comes back you might be able to find something.
If you care so much about money, perhaps you should go into finance instead of computer science. If you have no passion for what you do, what are you doing in an "enthusaists" forum anyway?
I believe in doing what you love and not worry about money. In our field, it's actually quite easy to accomplish.
And I'm sick of this "IT" this "IT" that; everytime someone tells me that he works in "IT," I'd ask them exactly what they do. None of them knows crap about technology or computers. I'm sick of the constant whining by "HTML Coders." They deserve what they got for dropping school/job/whatever to join the dotCom gold rush.
I'm damn sick of computer science students not knowing shit about computers. If you came into this field for the money, what right do you have whinning about your income? The field no longer offer you the good pay; then leave. Switch to investment banking or car repair or strip dancing. Stop whinning.
A poet never think about striking rich; they do what they feel passionate about. Programmers shouldn't be any different. If Linus didn't get paid for Linux, why should you demand a certain pay? If I were the recruiter, I will reject you whinners because only failures worry about salaries, not the work to accomplish. Be thankful that we are damn lucky to be able to make a good living doing what we love.
It's bad times. So what? I know of people who can't wait to retire and I know of people who just love doing what they do and refuse to retire. Your happiness is your choice.
This may never be stated explicitly, 'cuz it might violate some labor laws, but most managers prefer staff that are younger than them. It's easier to lead discussions, dominate meetings, tell people to do things that they don't want to do if it's someone who doesn't have a few years on you. There may be exceptions, especially among very high status people (such as POTUS) where other factors override age, but I'll give you a dollar for every exception if you give me a dime for each instance of the rule. Geezers are better off building their own companies or doing other things to demonstrate their abilities than wasting time interviewing with managers who'll be thinking (but never saying) "I can't push around that old fart. Better go with the kid."
--- Attorneys Assisting Citizen-Soldiers & Families -
I once had to go through some code, about three or four pages worth, that a guy wrote when he worked over night (just had to get it done.) I was like ... what the hell was this guy thinking.
Halfway through the code were some comments. It was my code. D'oh.
Glonoinha the MebiByte Slayer
The Washington, DC, area has more jobs now than a year ago. If you can't get a job in New York or SF/SJ, please pick yourself up and move to DC.
Older coders who are more likely to get a security clearance are needed, especially if you have any old military or government experience.
The trick is finding the position that gets you your first security clearance. Take less money for it. Once you have one, you will have little problem holding a job in the DC area.
Besides government, there are also many non-profits and lobbying groups in the area. National Geographic is looking for an experienced webmaster, for instance.
While AOL and Wolrdcom/MCI/UUWho shed some people, it is looking like many of them are ending up in other places. Plus MCI is moving their main operations to Northern Virginia.
Jobs might not be as cool in the DC area as they were three years ago, but the good news is that there are jobs at all, and that there are cheap places to live in DC. South of DC in Maryland, $250k buys you a spacious McMansion. Cheap rents in Oxon Hill and SouthEast DC. Just don't live in MD north of DC or in Northern VA, it is expensive there.
No, it is not nirvana, but there are jobs here.