Slashdot Mirror
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?
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.
Quod scripsi, scripsi.
Or a new bunch of people becoming old enough to experience it. I'd feel worse about it if the people who are starting to experience age-based discrimination weren't the ones benefitting from it a few years ago.
'I ain't a liar, baby, and I ain't proud I just want what I'm not allowed.' -- Violent Femmes, 36-24-36
Give me a seasoned vet who has the depth and breadth of experience to have learned all of those "only happens once every x years" type of lessons over some young, fast coder who has yet to learn these lessons.
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
Its easier to sqeeze 80+ hrs out of someone with out kids, house and a wife.
With all these old folks posting on Slashdot? Don't they know it's a site for young people? Sheesh, go hang out on cnn.com, grandpa.
US Democracy:The best person for the job (among These pre-selected choices...)
As a respectable web pornographer I would have to say that when we consider subjects for our titalating erotic material, or as the 31337 call it, pr0n, we do choose to go with the younger crowds. Anyone over the age of 30 is typically considered outdated and useless. Unless of course you are visiting one of our spectacular granny sites.
postmodernsideshow.com
I think what may really be happening is that younger people can devote themselves to a subject with an intensity that older people simply don't have to spare. I know I have often wished, in my studies, that I could be eighteen again and essentially have two-thirds of my time to waste totally, instead of squeezing dribbles of time out here and there for my own projects. I certainly know I spent a lot more time studying new technology back then.
"He who would learn astronomy, and other recondite arts, let him go elsewhere. " -- John Calvin, commenting on Genesis 1
As you get older, you need to make sure to hone your skillset so that younger, less experienced workers cannot do what you do; whether it's significant project management experience, teambuilding, extreme expertise in an area, or something else, you need to make sure you are uniquely valuable, and that your years of experience add to your value-for-the-money, not dilute it.
Managers look at ages 18 - 25 as people they can abuse. They are inexperienced so they won't stand up for themselves, and usually aren't married so they can work them 60 hours a week for low pay.
Religion is a gateway psychosis. -- Dave Foley
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.
i use linux and windows oh god how can i have an opinion
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.
This is totally insane. I'd much rather have an older, _more experienced_ coder, who may be slower (tho I don't believe that to be true) than some fresh out of college coder.
As someone _in_ college, looking at the vast majority of my classmates (actually, as vain as it sounds, _all_ my classmates) people coming out of college don't have any business going anywhere near critical code. You don't become a good coder by going to school, after all, you become a good coder by writing a metric shitload of code and thus getting real-world experience.
I believe I'm so much better than my classmates because I've been doing this since I was 9, and have 11 years experience writing code. And no, I _don't_ spit out as much code as I did back when I was 10 or 11, and poured out code all day long to do whatever dumb little project I worked on then.
But you know what? I code less now, because I use my experience to sit back and think about what I'm going to code, and end up not only writing higher quality code, but less code to get the same job done, as I did back when I was a dumb little kid!
Bah, I'm just ranting now. Think I've made my point at least 3 times by now. ~,^
It all comes down to moola. You can have a well experienced older coder, and one a young kid that can code well....
First of all, the kid is probably half (or less) the cost of the older guy.
Second, you can try to lure the kid into staying in the project for a long time, thereby helping maintainability.
But on the other side of the fence, older coders don't want to be in management, so they'll always be your gruntwork force. If they wanted to be in management, they woulda tried a long time ago.
Surprisingly, though, most techies have no interest in going into management...
Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
There are two sides to every coin. I'm a manager of five developers and six support staff.
In my experience, younger people tend to work like dogs until it stops being fun for them. They will pull all nighters all week when you're trying to launch a product, won't need to leave early for soccer and little league games, and won't get in trouble from their non-existant wife for leaving a few minutes late.
On the other hand, older coders tend to work at a more steady pace, have fewer errors, and spend their time thinking about something before they start jamming out code. They also are more reliable at showing up on time, not burning through vacation and sick time the second it becomes available, and following through with their committments.
It isn't really fair what that manager said, but I think they might have experienced some of what I just mentioned above. Although things like that generally aren't to be said "out loud" behind closed doors you'll hear many people talking about things they have observed managing people.
What's the best solution? A balance of both, in my experience. You need an effective mix, an although young people can be great coders and older people can be off sick, those are the general trends I've seen in seven years being a manager.
You have to remember that you are there to solve your employer's problems. If he's looking at someone to produce 1,000 lines of code per hour then you wouldn't be interested in the job anyway. You want to work somewhere focused on quality over quantity, and that is probably more biased to older more experienced developers in many cases than younger folks.
Case
When I was fresh out of college (a little while back) I ran into something related. My boss definitely preferred me for the fact I was youngest and he probably perceived my general energy as also being faster at programming. But I also ran into another problem. Here's an example:
It's a late Friday afternoon and we've got plenty to do, but with plenty of time. The boss tells me he wants the work done for Monday morning instead of the extra week we were originally told we had. The older developers with families told him they weren't staying late Friday, they were going home. I told him the same, but he replies, "Why? You don't have anything better to do." Apparently since I was young and didn't have any family I had no reason not to work more. I was fuming and I didn't work late. He tried to pull that crap a few more times after that.
So not only are younger minds quicker, but apparently they're also easier to manipulate and take advantage of.
Developers: We can use your help.
When those young, fast and inexperienced coders give them brittle, unmaintainable code that soon collapses under it's own weight, they will call in us old seasoned consultants to fix the problems at a premium price.
A manager that can't distinguish quality of work from quantity has no business making hiring decisions in this industry.
Disclaimer:
What precedes is not meant to reflect generally on young programmers. There are both brilliant and useless coders at all ages.
Trouble making decisions? Just flip for it.
Senior members are far more respected in the field of law, because it is understood that the older a lawyer gets, the more experience they have; concordantly, the more experience they have, the better a lawyer they are.
What does a lawyer do? Pretty much the same thing as a programmer. A good, experienced lawyer will have a specialty area of law, but be able to learn about new legal arenas as the need arises; likewise, an experienced lawyer will know the ins-and-outs of a specific arena in the legal system, including exceptions and loopholes a younger, less experienced lawyer might miss.
Same goes for programmers. An older programmer, generally speaking, will be more sensitive to over-using resources, will have a better grasp of programming methodologies, and will know about many more former bugs and programming mishaps than a fresh-out-of-college CS grad.
--
I Hit the Karma Cap, and All I Got Was This Lousy
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.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
I've been in the consulting world since I was 22 (started working in IT when I turned 20). I'm now 27 and I find that age-ism is the worst form of discrimination, especially among consulting clients. Since I have a well-established beard, I usually pass for 35 and that seems to give my clients the impression that I'm better qualified than one of my peers, who is exactly at the same point in his career. All of my bosses during my consulting career have always told me never to tell my true age to the clients for fear of losing business. This is especially true since the dot-com bust when all of the "young dot-commers were shown to be the frauds they are." This deception sickens me, but I have truly seen a huge difference in terms of instant credibility and career progression when people think that I'm significantly older than I actually am. (I'm starting to get a few gray hairs, so most people now think I'm in my late 30's-early 40's. Also, I got married young and have 2 kids and this reinforces their beliefs.)
I guess the whole point of my commentary on my situation is that people do discriminate based on age and you can either play along and help yourself out (and sell out in the process) or show your true self to the detriment of your career (and possibly of your consulting company's, if you're in my shoes.) That may not be politically correct, but it's the way of the world. Also, I think that it's not as bad to play along with the game to your benefit, as long as you yourself don't start judging people based on age, picking up the habits of those around you.
Why do I h8 apple?
Of course, this behavior could be explained away as economic concerns, as the decision to higher younger (and typically cheaper) employees can directly affect the bottom line.
I am outraged that the widespread discrimination against short folks has taken another, worrying, twist: even in evaluating programming skills!
Sigged!
My intuition tells me that people looking to hire programmers for mission-critical applications (database, infrastructure, medical, etc.) are going to be far more interested in older, more experienced programmers than game companies or in-house applications.
:)
A young programmer might be cheaper, might have more energy and drive, and might in fact produce more code -- but they may not produce the right code for the task. If your requirements are to bang out a rendering engine so you can get your game to market before BubbaSoft, then you want cheap programmers who are desperate/naieve enough to work 90 hours a week, and if they make a few mistakes so you can see through the corners, or your weapon can be slighly embedded in a wall texture... it can be fixed in a patch, noone will care.
OTOH, if you're looking to upgrade the medical database that's been running on a VAX for 30 years, and you really need to move it to a linux/oracle system before your VMS tape gets eaten by mice... you might want someone who's been doing this for a while so the mistakes they make are less likely to cost you 5 years of records.
I'm 34 myself, and I remember the stuff I wrote when I was 24. Yes, I churned out a bit more code, but boy was it ugly by comparison. What managers should remember is that programming is like writing, or composing... the more experience you have, the more elegant solutions you can find, and the more naturally you can express them. Young people don't worry about things like maintainability, or how some other fellow is going to figure out what they did. Some do, but most don't.
Of course, that's my opinion, and being an Old Fart (TM), I might just be biased.... or maybe I just can't remember it right...
Why hire young?
Younger IT workers will often put in absurd unpaid overtime, where most older workers won't.
Younger workers just out of college will often take a job at a low salary for the experience. Older workers won't.
Younger workers are often have more exposure to cutting edge tech than older workers who cut their teeth on cobol, jcl and basic.
Younger workers have lower expectations about benefits, perks, salary, etc than older workers who can remember the 'good old days' of 5 years ago.
Older workers are more likely to have children, families, in short lives. Younger workers are more likely to drop everything and fix that server at 3:00 AM.
Older workers have seen many managers pull many tricks, know how to spot them and how to deal with them. Younger workers are generally more pliable.
=brian
Some of the bad thing that older engineers are guilty of (and please do not flame, I know I am generalizing):
Now for the handfull that feel offended by what I just said (and can back that up):
I was RIF'd in May 2001 just after the dot-bomb collapse, and was unable to even secure an interview. In the two years that followed, I netted only two interviews although I have over twenty years in programming. I know this had a lot to do with my age, since it was communicated to me through recruiters and other sources that longevity in the field directly translates into dollars. They see that hiring younger necessarilly means hiring cheaper.
Read the paper - it's all in there.
"Stop whining!" - Arnold, as Mr. Kimble
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!
Being an Engineer, not an IT person, I would have to say that the IT industry should take a look at other engineering disciplines. If you ever go into a shop where the older engineers are gone, and you have only young ones, run. As you get older, you learn more, and have more experience. What this buys you is that you'll see more of the faults in a particular design alot quicker than a newbie, and you'll probably have a solution quicker.
The older guys are around for a reason. They know their shit. You take that away, and who do the new people learn from? Their own mistakes, that's who, and in the mean time you get bug filled, problematic code.
but that's just my opinion, I could be wrong....
--Keeping the flame wars alive, one post at a time
I think the idea that younger minds are better, faster, more flexable, etc., is simply a smoke screen. The issue I've run into is that I can't compete salary wise against younger kids. I need to make at least $4,000/month, but someone right out of college, with no wife and|or kids might be willing to work for $2,000/month.
-- Galen Rhodes grhodes@the-chatter-box.com Journal: http://journal.the-chatter-box.com/users/grhodes "Consistency
All I can say is - after ten+ years of programming experience (and that's just industry, not counting the stuff I did in college and before) I'm still telling some people what hashtables are. And they were around before I learned to program.
At the most basic level, programming is the same as it was thirty years ago. You can just do more with it, is all.
How programs interact is not even all that different, just mechanisms moved into different worlds.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
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.
Easy, automatic testing for Perl.
... in the hiring managers statements is this:
- The salary demands of a younger employee is going to be proportionally less than the salary demands of a more experienced programmer. Therefore younger = lower cost
- The younger programmer will not at first bristle at demands to work unusually long hours to get a job done. The more experienced person will question the need for working longer hours.
For a quality product there is no substitute for experience. Companies now are not looking to produce a quality product, simply a cheaper one.
Believe in things of which no person has ever learned
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.