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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
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.
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.
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!!!
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.
Oh please. Anyone who is capable of earning a University degree, old or young, is quite clearly capable of learning... after all, at least when I went through Uni, we had to learn to get the damn degree in the first place! What you describe is just a prejudice... the "old dogs can't learn new tricks" mentality which is, unfortunately, prevalent in our society.
I*M*HO, there is no specific reason to assume older people make poorer techies. In fact, the manager I work for is in his late forties, and he's probably one of the smartest men I've come across. He's constantly learning new things... hell, he seems to have an easier time keeping up with trends than I do!
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.
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!
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...
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.
Not true. I am an adjunct professor at a local community college. Most of the brightest students I have are actually 30-40+. Granted, this isn't always the case, but the tendancy is that the older individuals actually *want* to learn.
This isn't to say that there aren't young people who are bright and gifted (these *want to learn* too.) But I honestly have to say that age has very little to do with learning capacity. Rather, it's the inquisitive mind, one who is willing to learn new things, that do the best.
IMHO, the most important aspect of a programmer or technologist is the ability to solve problems and the capacity to figure things out on their own. In the end, the technology becomes a tool, and nothing more. This requires an open mind, insight and a huge helping of curiosity....
None of which are directly related to age.
To simply think that younger people are automatically terrific at figuring out new technologies is a silly idea, at best.
Chris
Care to guess how many older workers will get these jobs?
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!
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 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.
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:
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
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.
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. --
"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've been in the industry since I graduated... with an English degree. Most of the EECS graduates I've worked with were... salespeople. Most of the admins, programmers, engineers, and trouble techs have been liberal arts types, chefs, and general knock-abouts who get involved because there's no jobs in the field they came from and this stuff is fun.
There's a basic dichotomy in mindset here: those who think that school is for education and those who think that school is for socialization. If you think of school as a factory which is churning out skilled individuals, you're a) probably disappointed with the American school system and b) probably going to be on the dustheap in ten to twenty years, whether through personal burnout or skill rust.
School to me was a piece of paper that I knew would open doors with people who think papers are important; but I did enough research ahead of time to see that few of the people I respected had studied what they were doing for a living. So I took a degree that I cared about and that I thought would be fun. I had a great time, I learned interesting stuff, I met cool people, and when I was done the BA degree opened doors just like a BS degree would have done.
YMMV.
"Nothing was broken, and it's been fixed." -- Jon Carroll
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