Where Do All of the Old Programmers Go?

full-of-beans asks: "I work as a software developer for a large UK based international organization. Most of my colleagues that program are under 40 years old. Those that are over 40 tend to be in either Management or IT Support! I was wondering were do all the old programmers go? They can't all end up in management. I know we don't get paid enough to take early retirement. Is there some other career that tends to attract 40+ year old programmers, if so I'd like to know, because I'm not that far of 40 myself!"

Comments

Bankruptcy or Public Service

[Marxist Hacker 42]

Seems to be the only other choices. Private industry, since globalization and commodity coding offshore, has no place for old programmers anymore. They cost too much in salary and benefits in comparison to a young person just out of college, preferably India Institute of Technology, where they train the next generation of yes men.

Re:Bankruptcy or Public Service

[rkanodia]

My father is an IIT graduate who worked on (among other things) Project MAC at MIT in the 70's. He ended up becoming an executive by the 80's but quit so he could go back to being a developer. And, like you said, it's hard for people his age to find work in the private sector. He eventually settled in as a systems architect for Apple, of all places. I guess they realize (unlike most companies, which, as you said, dump their old hands in favor of cheap noobs) that it doesn't matter that he costs twice as much, because he's ten times the programmer they'll get by recruiting straight out of schools.

Re:Bankruptcy or Public Service

[CastrTroy]

The problem is that everyone, not just programmers, expects to be getting paid a lot of money, just because they've been doing their job a long time. Take a look a bus drivers. They get a raise every year, and by the end of their career are making twice as much as the newer guys. Are they really bringing any more to the organization just because they've been doing it longer? Obviously in programming it helps you to provide more for a company once you've been around a while, but eventually you top out in what you provide to the company, and therefore so should your salary. Similarly, if you start at a new company, you may be less useful than those who although they have only been programming 5 years, all of it has been with that company, and they are able to provide a lot to the company. If you're doing the exact same thing you were doing 5 years ago, what makes you think you should be getting more than cost of living increases every year?

Re:Bankruptcy or Public Service

[crystall]

I've worked for both public service and private companies. If you love to code and don't want to be a manager, public service is a great way to go. It's fairly secure compared to the private sector (except when the legislature starts messing with pension plans). I'm 53 and have been coding since the days of punch cards. And yes, you can teach old dogs new tricks - last year I made the switch from Cold Fusion/Sybase to OracleForms/Oracle/PLI.

And I'm not alone. Half my state gov't shop is over 40. What we oldsters can offer the young-uns is experience. It may not have been the same language or the same platform, but we've learned a few tricks over the years. And we're not just fogies sitting on our butts wasting taxpayer dollars - our agency leads our state in e-govt offerings.

Re:Bankruptcy or Public Service

[aeoo]

"Yes men" are precisely the people who are bound by conditions -- they fear for their lives and those of their families, and that's exactly why they are "yes men". The man who can say NO when needed is precisely the kind of man who is not affraid to lose life and comfort. Because such man doesn't produce yes'es and no's out of fear, he is less likely to be biased and is more trustworthy, but at the same time, timid people are often affraid of such a man.

It is ironic, but it is people who love their families the most who end up hurting their families by creating a world where the power is so unevenly distributed. If people were less skittish, and yes, this means, not so worried about their families, then it would be difficult to bully people and boss them around, and there would be fewer scams and inequities, and the families would benefit. In the long run cowardice hurts us all.

Law School

[stlhawkeye]

I realized a few years ago that your typical lawyer doesn't know jack about technology, and you're typical IT person doesn't know jack about the law, judging by the number of Slashdot posters who run their mouths about IP rights without understanding them, or asserting the right to do things that they clearly have no right to do (note: saying you should have a right that you don't have is fine, saying you do have a right that you don't have is ignorant; this is the practice I'm referring to).

So I decided that, since I'm an argumentative armchair law nerd, I may as well get paid for it.

But mostly, I want out of IT because it's generally unstable and I don't find the work to be satisfying. The contributions I wish to make to the world do not lie in software development, and so I'm getting out.

Most 40+ programmers don't work....

[kawika]

...for large companies. By that point in your life you've learned enough to know that big companies move slowly and make dumb decisions. By age 40, you've either moved into management to participate in the stupidity, or you've left for a small company or consultancy. At least that's the way it's been for me and my friends.

I love programming and will write code until I die. It's fun (in a perverse way) to come in to various companies, fix their WTF code and look like a hero.

Re:Mentoring

[jcr]

I had the priviledge to work with an older programmer -- and he was amazing.

I had the good fortune to run into several people like that in my career. One of them went to work for IBM the year I was born, and he knew not only the current state of the art, but how we got here, and what was tried and discarded along the way.

My old boss at the first graphics hardware company I worked for, got into the electronics industry when the field was still known as "radio". For fifty years, he kept up. I learned more from him and people like him in my first year at work, than I'd picked up in all my formal schooling.

-jcr

Re:look forward to your exciting new career ...

[koreth]

and more familiar with newer technologies at the same time!

If that's true of you, you have only yourself to blame. Age has nothing to do with it. I'm pushing 40 myself and I still make it a habit to regularly devote time to playing with new technologies that might end up turning into something useful down the road. And once familiar with those technologies, I look for places to apply them. Yesterday I spent most of my day working on a real-time streaming AJAX UI for a multi-user financial application, hardly a technology that went out of fashion with disco and bellbottoms.

There are a lot of capable young IT workers out there. I have the pleasure of working with a bunch of them at one of my jobs right now. But there are also a lot of boneheaded young IT workers who are only in the business because it looked like a lucrative thing to major in, and who will be sick of the whole thing and looking to switch careers by the time they're 30. I've worked with some of them too. Trouble is, employers can't always tell the difference between the two. Meanwhile, as a going-on-veteran-status programmer, I have a resume with lots of references from past employers who can confirm that I'm worth what I charge. There are lots of companies out there who value a proven track record, and I doubt that'll change any time soon. Only time can give you a track record of any kind.

In my observation, it's far more about your attitude than your age. If you can maintain an attitude of, "Wow, that's neat, I need to learn more about that and try it out," you'll probably do quite well no matter how old you are. If your attitude is, "I've learned how to do X, and that's what I do, so don't ask me to do Y," then yeah, familiarize yourself with the employees-only section of your local fast food joint, because the demand for X will dry up at some point.

To employers who know how to hire good coders

[McMuffin Man]

I work in a coding shop where the average age is over 40. We work in an industry where bugs have more significant repercussions than in most. Management responds to this by making sure to hire people who have had a chance to learn how to write quality code, and how to compensate for their own weaknesses, whatever those are.

When faced with a choice between a bright recent grad from a top engineering school with great interships and a can-do attitude vs. a forty-something engineer who's been around the block, worked on various architectures, at various levels of the system, held various roles in a team, and had to pick herself up and dust herself off after a failure or two (and who wants more money than the new grad), my VP will take the experienced programmer almost every time.

I'm under 40, and I love having all of this wisdom around to learn from. Our best, most productive coder is over 60, and he thinks so clearly and with such accumulated wisdom at an architectural level than he can see problems during the first design sketch that a clever new grad would figure out only while thinking over why he was unemployed after his product failed in the market. The young men and women on our team are very, very sharp, but brains is no substitute for brains and experience.