Ageism in IT?

Embedded Geek writes "It's hardly a new topic, but BBC is running a story about ageism hitting Gen-X, especially in IT. As a 34 year old coder, I was horrified to hear a quote from a *hiring manager*: 'In the IT sector (and coding in particular) younger minds generally work faster -- I would rather employ a keen teenager who code programs computers quickly than an older person.' It didn't help that the person is 32 years old. My kneejerk reaction, the same one anyone else over 30 would have, is that the guy is a buffoon (I'll withhold my preferred, spectacularly vulgar, term). The problem is that I do not believe his idiocy is unique - I have definitely felt the vibe when interviewing. It's frustrating, since Gen-X is finally shedding the media hyped 'slacker' stereotype only to run headlong into this garbage. Have any other Slashdot readers seen this? What is the youngest you can be before some PHB declares you fit for the scrap-heap? Other than stocking up on hair dye and botox, what steps can I take to prepare for the future? Share your war stories here." Ask Slashdot handled this topic over two years ago. Of course, this behavior could be explained away as economic concerns, as the decision to hire younger (and typically cheaper) employees can directly affect the bottom line. However, one has to wonder if the decision to go with less experienced programmers also affects software quality, in the long run. What are your thoughts on this subject?

Comments

Do younger minds absorb quicker?

[bluethundr]

I don't think that the ability to learn is determined at all by age. I believe that nearly anyone can learn how to code at nearly any age. But I would liken this ability to that of playing a piano.

Sure, an older person can pick up the ability and wield a certain prowess and even artistry. But no one, to my knowledge, would argue the fact that a person who learns to play the piano in childhood has a certain "feel" for it that people who pick up this ability later in life can never attain. It's not that the older person can't play sonoriously with rhythm and emotion. But the younger player has a certain reach that will never be known to the older guy.

Andy Hertzfeld (of the original Macintosh development team) claimed that he used to be able to track and house far more complex contructs of thought, and more of them, in his mind when he was in his early 20's than he ever could at the time he was giving the interview (I would guess he was somewhere in his mid forties at that time). He called this ability "the gift of the young".

But in the book Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution [barnesandnoble.com] Steven Levy described how Ken Williams, the founder of Sierra Online [sierra.com] felt a missionary zeal in converting people to the belief that learning how to program a computer could change your life. Ken met Bob and Carolyn Box, who were an older married couple in their fifties. Bob was "...a former New Yorker, a former engineer, a former race car driver, a former jockey, and a former Guinness Book of WOrld Records champion in gold panning." When they both tried to get a job working for Sierra, Ken told them to "put up something on the screen using assembly language in thirty days". According to how the story is told, they both became very able assembly language programmers. Roberta Williams (Ken's wife) considered the Boxes "inspiring" and felt that learning how to program "rehabilitated their lives".

Of course that was a long time ago, and thus far I have spoken only of the abiltity to learn and to become an able programmer. To get slightly more "on topic"; as to whether there is job market opportunities for older folk, there is no reason an employer should discriminate on the basis of age, though I'm sure that many do. But as for the pure concept of programming I myself only picked up some ability in C++ (on my own, not through any school) when I turned 30 as I realized I was getting older and it was basically "now or never". I still enjoy learning as much as I can about it, and consider it a wonderful intellectual exercise, though I have no concrete plans of doing it for a living. I've already got a stable professional life and see it as a very enjoyable and rewarding hobby.

Re:Do younger minds absorb quicker?

[Anonymous Coward]

I am a pianist. I would say that the only advantage that a younger person (read: child) has on an older person as far as pianism goes is that they have a head start.

I personally find the young people (especially the child prodigies who play) to be technically astonishing but dead in terms of the more esoteric parts of a performance. It takes a certain amount of life experience to know how to play with real feeling and maturity.

Being a programmer as well, I can state with absolute certainty that the same thing is true with programming. There is an artistry to programming that beginners lack. Heck, it took me 8 years to find it. And that artistry can allow you to write stabler, more efficient code.

Trying to explain... When one starts out on the piano, one sees individual black blobs on the page. Those blobs eventually start to form notes, and you learn the notes. Just as when you program, you learn the syntax of the language. And with a little trial and error, you can write a program that barely works, just as you can play music that sounds halfways decent.

But then the notes become chords - the chords become phrases, and the phrases become sections. And once you start to see the music in terms of phrases and sections, you need not worry about implementation details (what is this chord, how do I articulate that) and you are free to focus on the higher artistry of the music - what is this trying to get across, what do I want to invoke on the listener...

And once that happens, you have a self-consistent piece of art. Every piece relates to the other, in an unbroken fashion, throughout the piece - from the first note to the final chord. I don't care if it's 20 minutes long - you can still make that happen.

In terms of programming, this means that every module interacts well with all of the other modules, the code is clean and well-written, there are very few to no cases where errors are unhandled or a module will get unvalidated or unexpected input. The code is stable, and provably so.

Finding a pianist who can play the notes is cheap. Just as finding a programmer who can write code is cheap. They are a dime a dozen, and frankly, I'm not sure I would hire one. Finding a pianist who is a musician, or finding a coder who is an artist - that is a rare and precious find indeed.

Oh, and just so you know, I started playing when I was 16. By the time I was 17 I was a piano major in college and surpassing easily people who had been playing since early childhood.

--Russell

Re:Do younger minds absorb quicker?

[SquadBoy]

Of course they can't ask but they can look at you. I look older than I am. But I think this is BS and anybody who wants to hire a "keen" teenager because they are "fast" is not someone I want to work with or for.

Re:Do younger minds absorb quicker?

[finkployd]

To be honest, I think a lot of has to do with the myth that is hammered into kids that "learning is hard" Think about it, we start out in life knowing how to do NOTHING but learn.

We learn to walk, talk, etc at a rapid rate. Then we hit school, and we are constantly told that learning is hard, and we must spend a lot of time on it. Learning becomes less of a natural thing and more of a painful, forced, and utterly boring thing.

It gets even worse for adults, I know some adults (I'm 25, and I still consider myself a kid :) ) who constantly complain that they cannot learn new things. Whether it be a new computer program (or computers in general), a new way to do something at work, a new hobby, anything. Yet this is total bull. I remember struggling at school with algebra , trig, english, pretty much all subjects yet at the same time I was coming home and teaching myself x86 assembly language. One was fun and something I wanted to do, the rest was stuff that everyone told me was hard, took a lot of time, and was forced on me. Sometimes it is an issue of motivation, but I really think many people just believe that as they get older they cannot learn new things and do not even bother trying.

The preception "learning is hard", and "you can't teach an old dog new trick" is probably having more of a negative effect on people than any real biological block to learning.

Finkployd

Re:Do younger minds absorb quicker?

[Anonymous Coward]

Pianos haven't progressed to 2,000 1mm-wide keys, or introduced three-dimensional keyboards, or decided to have little-endian keyboards with the low notes beneath your right hand fingers, or added green keys above the white keys, or added a Dvorak mechanism placing the most commonly played notes beneath your fingers.

Yes, they have. If you want a job creating, say, music for TV commercials, movies, or games, or even be in a band that's going anywhere, you need to be able to run a synthesizer and be able to do most of the jobs of a symphony orchestra. You're probably working at a computer most of the time, and doing the jobs that used to require a composer, a pianist, an arranger, a conductor, and a music copyist.

Re:Do younger minds absorb quicker?

[Cyclometh]

Heh. I used to be an employer, and diplomas were about the last thing I worried about. They're good for what I said, not much more. I'm not impressed by academic credentials, I want to see what you can do.

And as far as "real world happenings", I'm not sure what you mean by that, but I'm pretty comfortable in my understanding of what goes on in the real world.

As far as where I will work, generally I was referring to situations in which there is a choice, which thankfully in IT has, even in this economy, been pretty much true.

And the same to you, by the way. :-)

Re:Do younger minds absorb quicker?

[Alioth]

Not only that, but I think a programmer improves with age.

My coding skills are _vastly_ superior to what they were 10 years ago. Sure, 10 years ago, I could write 1000 lines of code in a week without working up a sweat, and now I write [0] just a fraction of that in a week. But the difference is that fraction of LOC does just as much, and it actually _works_ :-)

[0] Actually, I'm in a BOFH/co-ordinator job rather than a coding job. I needed a break from programming for a living. Besides those jobs are being shipped abroad, so I've moved into work which requires physical on-site presence and so can't be moved to India.

Sorta, but not quite right.

[nadadogg]

Programming is a skill that depends on both quick thinking, and a base to stand on.
Younger people tend to pick up new skills quicker, and improvise without much effort, whereas older programmers may not learn new things very quickly, but will have more of a mastery of their respective language.
If I were a hiring manager, I would probably stick with experienced programmers if it were a mission-critical app, but someone younger if I were, say, trying to create a new game engine.

Age is a number

[wb8wsf]

I seriously doubt that people can't learn just as fast at an older age. I'm 46, and think I'm smarter now than when I first starting programming computers in '75. Age also tends to give one experience from which to draw on. The accumulation of previous experience comes in handy at the oddest times, I've observed.

I have no doubt that there are mentally vacuuous hiring individuals who think that younger is better however, and that is a problem. If I encountered that, I think I might send the CEO of the company a paper letter explaining what I heard at my interview, and why I wasn't going to work there.

Age and Quality.

[jellomizer]

As I get older I find that I am less able to code at the same pase that I did 5 years ago. But the quality of my coding has improved and I am able to produce out far more optimised and stable code then I did when I was younger. Experience has its advantages. Comparing the real time of coding is more important. Before I would spend 40 hours coding and 80 hours debugging. Now I do 65 hours coding and 8 hours debugging. As my experience increases I learned to take the speed down while coding and carefully work out the problem and make sure it workes well. While I was younger I would Code to get it working then try to put in patches to fix any bugs (which sometimes required a rewrite). Depending on the job and its needs I would use different languages to get the job done. Usually when time to code is an issue I normally write Python. While speed of the appication is the issue I would go to C or C++. If you are ranking your programming skills on Lines per Day then go ahead and higher a young whipper snapper. But if you want a good solid application hire the skilled and matured programmer.

Depends on the Individual

[Black-Man]

My son and I started taking drum lessons 8 months ago - together. There is no comparison. While he may be more technical and able to do the marching snare roll, etc. I rock all over him on a kit. We both put in the same amount of practice time.

But I love the looks I get from the middle age women as I walk out of the lesson room. Which is probably the root of the problem. Most middle age folks don't think someone their age *should* be learning new skills and definitely not having fun!

Younger folks work faster? Hell no

[gorbachev]

From the user comments to the BBC article:

"In the IT sector (and coding in particular) younger minds generally work faster."

This is utter bullcrap.

I'm in my early 30s and been doing tech lead (lead teams of 5 - 20 people) for about 2 years now. I've worked with a lot of programmers, young and old. I've supervised, peered and worked under older programmers.

In my experience working faster has nothing whatsoever to do with age. It's everything to do with ability and experience though.

My experience tells me that even if a (really) young person was seemingly working faster, they really aren't, because their lack of experience generally makes them work on the wrong things. They do double the work, work on the wrong things and make more mistakes. That certainly applied to me when I was younger.

This is happening all over the place on the current team I'm managing. The youngest (most inexperienced) people are constantly the people I'm spending most of my time with. The older folks, not only know when to ask for help, but also produce less defects, so their work is much more efficient. They probably type slower though, if that's what "working faster" means...

Sometimes, very rarely though, a youngster can overcome his lack of experience by being truly brilliantly talented. I've had the pleasure of working with a handful of such people. The results these sort of people produce, are nothing short of amazing. Gotta give credit where credit is due. The next time you usually see these people is when they get that corner office with outside view :)

Proletariat of the world, unite to kill ignorance

Stop talking about "ageism"; do something about it

[tmoertel]

Is there ageism in IT? Probably. Nevertheless, there are legitimate reasons why younger programmers are often hired over older programmers.

First, younger programmers have less experience in life. Lacking the well-earned caution of older professionals, they tend to be enthusiastic about their work, which they meet with alacrity. Managers often interpret this enthusiasm as "energy," "speed," and "higher productivity" -- all valuable traits worth seeking an an employee. Even though I know of no measurements or studies to support this interpretation, the perception is widespread, and it's not unreasonable for HR folks to act upon it.

Second, as others have pointed out, younger programmers usually have fewer extracurricular responsibilities to compete with work. Managers see this as increased devotion to the company and the opportunity to get more work for the same money. Again, it's not unreasonable to give preference to people with fewer extracurricular distractions.

Third, in the software industry, experience is rapidly devalued because the valuable mainstream technologies often make one another obsolete. (This is in contrast to, say, the legal profession, where decades-old experience is readily applicable.) While this fact doesn't directly benefit younger programmers, it does put more-experienced (and hence older) programmers at a disadvantage because they are perceived as wanting compensation for their vast, often irrelevant experience. In other words, managers often feel that more-experienced programmers want more pay than they are truly worth.

All of these reasons give managers and HR folks good reason to hire programmers who just happen to be young.

But, there's more to the story

That said, I have been coding for about twenty years. There is no doubt in my mind that the me of today can write much better software than the me of ten years ago, and I can do it in less time. Likewise, when I consider all of the young, hotshot coders who I used to work with when I was a young, hotshot coder, I would rather hire them as they are today than as they were back then. Simply put, they are better coders today.

Back then, we cranked out the code, and our employers loved us. But, being honest, much of that code was crap, and much of our "productivity" was wasted on false starts, gold plating, blind hackery, and all-night debugging sessions that could have been avoided by a more disciplined approach to creating software. The thing is, our managers couldn't tell the difference between fast, furious activity and true productivity. And neither could we.

And that's the most dangerous threat to older, more-experienced software professionals: Lack of measurement. I'm convinced that experienced professionals who have invested in their abilities, made consistent effort to learn from their mistakes, and know how to communicate effectively are worth their weight in gold. In the long haul, they will outpace inexperienced hotshots almost every time.

But without measuring actual performance, you'll never notice. You'll mistake long hours for productivity. You'll mistake unnecessary all-nighters for dedication. And you'll mistake older programmers for expensive versions of their younger counterparts.

So, if you are an older, experienced software professional, stop talking about "ageism". It's a lost cause. Start talking about realisitc productivity measurements. If you want to be perceived as more valuable, you'll have to do it the hard way: You'll have to prove it.

Younger minds...

[Kazoo the Clown]

Younger minds are less likely to notice the incompetencies of management, and will tend to assume management must know what they are doing (after all, they got there somehow, didn't they, and of course they are paying the bills). "Seasoned" programmers aren't usually motivated by the same sort of "hype" used by some managers to motivate the inexperienced towards greater productivity. The actual effectiveness of the results a a long-term issue, and we all know that many in business are too myopic to make the connections in that regard.

Unfortunate sign of the times...

[Stonan]

I'm 32. I started in computers when I was 8 (few years before PCs became available). I first started in programming and back then coding had to be structured, be commented and most importantly not crash, freeze or generally blow up without putting a concerted effort into it.

Then M$ came along in 1995 and released a huge pile of crap masquerading as an OS called Windows95. I feel justified calling it this because I was one of the outside beta testers and got see personally what it was worth. The structure was there (barely). Commented? HA. And as for the 3rd criteria, well, for you younger folks, computers aren't supposed to crash & lockup when you happen to sneeze near them!

This is just an opinion but since M$ seems to be doing so well producing error-riddled software, a lot of other companies are doing the same thing. It's almost like this is becoming the norm. This might explain why experienced coders are being let go.

I use myself as an example. I was in charge of Beta testing. I was fired because I refused to sign my name to a document stating that a particular piece software was as error-free as possible. I knew it wasn't because the errors that I had found and submitted were never fixed. Why? Because the owners of the company wanted to programmers to work on the new changes they had proposed. There were new changes every 2-3 days so no wonder errors weren't being fixed. The final reason I was given was that my vision of the company wasn't the same as managements.

I guess this was, in essence, true because setting me up to take the fall for crappy software when the customers started screaming certainly wasn't my view!