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Is it Possible to Age Yourself Out of a Job?
An anonymous reader asks: "I'm a programmer with more than twelve years of experience. In all that time, I've never been a 'senior' developer. I'm competent and I work hard, but I don't think I am quite a senior developer in terms of technical or people skills. More and more I feel that I'm aging myself out a job. By this time, employers expect someone with my experience to have advanced some, and they may not be willing to even talk to me now, thinking that my pay requirements have grown while I have not. Even if I did get hired someplace new, my peers would likely be much younger than me. What do you do when you have an applicant like that? Are my fears legitimate?"
read a lot of programming books and learn as many useful programming languages as you can. even if you don't want to be a senior developer, you can still be the guy everyone goes to when something has to be done right.
when searching for a job if you think they will overestimate your salary requirements be upfront about what you expect to make to eliminate that problem.
Snowden and Manning are heroes.
As somebody who hires people at startups and small companies, my take is "maybe". Programmers are a quirky lot, and I try to take each one individually. Although the arrogant ones get the press, there are quite a number that are ridiculously modest, and you might be one of those.
Even if you aren't, there are advantages to age. The biggest one is maturity. There are mistakes that every novice makes that are (I hope!) behind you. Instead of a drama generator, you are probably a drama shock absorber. Even if your people skills aren't as great as you like, they're probably a lot better than 12 years ago. And best of all, you can see that with age comes some self-awareness. Everybody has problems, but in hiring one of the things I really look for is an awareness of your limitations and the ability to manage them yourself.
When evaluating somebody in your situation, one of the big questions I'd have aside from the usual ones (e.g, can you do the work) is whether you are still like the work and are eager to improve. For example, I feel like every programmer should learn a new language once a year. That doesn't mean that you become expert in it, just that you are stretching your brain. Or you might have a side project you're excited about. Or you might be studying software architecture patterns. Anything that proves you aren't a clock-puncher who just isn't sure what else to do.
So I'd say as long as you are doing work you want to do and doing it well, don't sweat it much. You may have to work harder to find a job than some young hotshot, but there are plenty of employers who value a steady producer who won't be a pain in the ass.
Well, first your fears are not founded. I have seen a lot of aged programmers in non-senior position. But that doesn't mean you should be among them. It's never too later learn some new staff. Chose some relatively new technology or area which you think will be in high demand, which is interesting for you and which is not crowded for now. Self-teach yourself. Do some staff for free, put it on the net or otherwise - whatever, but get experience in that area. Put it into your CV. Then the time is right it's you who will be sought after.
be just pay. Younger people tend not to have families and, lacking experience, will often be coerced into working longer hours etc. They could be afraid that you would not put up with such conditions and bolt as soon as you got the chance.
I'm 26, but I am saving like hell because I know that age discrimination is rife in this industry, and the more I save for retirement right now, the less I have to worry about such things.
Monstar L
I hate to say it, but yes. When reviewing a resume, I look for things like growth & ambition. At 12 years experience, I've seen very good architects. If one wasn't even Senior, I'd wonder why that is. Lack of ability? Lack of desire? Clock puncher?
In most cases, I'll never know or have the chance to ask the candidate. Instead, I'll just move to the next 99 resumes in the stack.
I know this isn't what you want to hear, but hopefully honesty will help.
I wouldn't work for someone under 25 years old. Unless they paid me very, very well.
I don't mind working "for" a peer (in age).
I'm 27. I'm hoping my next job (in 1 year) will allow me to be a director (as the experience I am getting at this new job will justify it).
You've obviously reached that point in your career, and you can't avoid it anymore. You must go into management. This is not as hard nor as painful as some would suggest. There is a useful, illustrated guide to becoming a manager. Just follow the example of the hero of the strip. You might even look into finding a hair stylist who can give you that new look (assuming you still have hair at your age). Watch out for engineers with strange ties, and never hire a consultant who looks like a dog. You'll do fine! See you on the golf links.
I know exactly how you feel and have sort of done the same thing to myself. I guess the thing employers look for is experience plus skills. The longer you work without learning something new, the more archaic your skills become, but you offset that with experience. If you want to make yourself more attractive that noob candidates, you can make yourself competitive with the young bloods by going out and getting certified in more recent technologies. For example, if you've got 12 years' experience developing in C++ on Unix, you probably aren't going to attract anybody looking for ASP .NET in C#. But, you can always go out and get that certification, and I'll tell you something: MSCD + 12 years experience programming C++ in Unix is far more attractive than an MSCD by itself. If you're on equal footing in terms of current skills but have more real world experience, you win.
This is, of course, assuming you already have your degree. If you've got this much experience and are still concerned about your ability to compete with greenhorns with degrees, you may also want to consider finishing your degree. Word of advice, though: don't expect to have a career again until you finish. Quitting your career to go back to school only looks good if you actually finish school! And if you have a degree (e.g., a BS in CS), then go for your MBA and then you will be management material.
Just my advice, there are plenty of other pros here who I'm sure can elaborate on or even contradict my advice, but I guess that's why you're asking. Cheers, and good luck!
I can't speak from experience about your situation, but I think you might have a number of very good options.
There are probably unlimited more things we could think about. You shouldn't underestimate your 12 years of experience, especially if you are a hard worker, and have a reputation of getting things done.
One last thing, I get the feeling from reading your question that you might have the problem where you keep your head down and work hard, and as a result people forget who you are, and then forget you are even there. The squeaky wheel gets the grease, pardon the cliche. As I pointed out above, it is in your best interest to maintain some level of connection to people around you and above you in your company. The more they see you and talk to you, the more they feel they know you, and the more likely you are to be presented with opportunities for advancement.
"read a lot of programming books and learn as many useful programming languages as you can"
Too low level. A senior developer is going to be closer to the "big picture". Focus your skills more towards that area.
I've been a software engineer for 25 years. No issues. There is no expectation that you should move to management at some point. The main expectation is that you are able to keep up with technology as it changes. I've moved from COBOL to C to Java to perl to php. I've used more scripting languages than I can remember. You have to keep moving forward. You never stop reading. Provide mentoring to less experienced engineers. Never hide what you know. It is not good being the curmudgeon that keeps his knowledge to himself. You become a teacher. Understand where projects you have participated in have succeeded or failed. Bring that experience to that table. Most of us have seen more product the never made it to market than have made it. Your experience in knowing why projects succeed is something import you bring to the table. Plus you are the senior guy you get more opportunities to take lead on the cool projects. So I would not worry. I am seeing more people with some gray and missing hair. So as long as you produce, people will continue to hire you.
*sigh* This is part of the problem with programming. This is rarely an issue in any other career (except maybe medicine). For just about any other occupation, candidates who are married with children are more desirable because even though they may have commitments outside of work, other people are relying on them, and they are less likely to make haphazard career decisions. Simply put, they are better long term employees -- they are already committed to their families and are therefore more committed to their employer. Yet, somehow, in IT, a family is often a liability. Something about that is not right in my book.
I'm 26, but I am saving like hell because I know that age discrimination is rife in this industry, and the more I save for retirement right now, the less I have to worry about such things.I'm 28 and I'm out of the programming game. Enron's collapse did me in. I'm going back to school to do something more rewarding with my life, probably major in mathematics and then either teach or maybe try engineering. If the IT industry wasn't so abusive maybe I'd still be in it, but I'm just not that interested in programming anymore (for a living, anyway - I still program in my spare time). You know, if there was ever an industry in the last 50 years that needed to unionize, it's IT...
> Something about that is not right in my book.
Life's not fair - deal with it. Each profession has pros and cons. Quit whining and start learning something new. It's nothing to do with unions, and I've never found it abusive. At least, I don't take any crap. You need to try working in a few places until you find something you like - perhaps contracting.
It's usually those who take ideas and hard work, not always their own, and communicate them that are the ones that get flashy titles and big money. The hard working individuals often don't get the thanks they deserve. I am a college student, and recently I was elected to webmaster for an honorary fraternity. I get no respect from anyone! Whoever held this position before me set a bad example for me to follow. I often get left out of emails, people don't remember what I do, and get bossed around. It feels like I work for these clowns and its just stuff I do in my free time. What I am trying to say is, it feels your issue is less about age and more about image. You feel someone 'aged' would be inexperienced with the new technology. The solution then must be to show that you are able to perform as well as someone younger, or perhaps even better than them with your experience and knowledge.
With any technical skill you can never age yourself out of a job! There are always continual education programs for most careers. You can take a course/seminar/certification/etc here and there to make sure your skills keep inline with modern standards, make you look more appealing for employers and promotions. People skills are a difficult to learn. It's something that develops with practice.
I do believe Ageism, or Age Discrimination, is against the law in most developed countries. For the US, more detail about this is located by googling "Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1967." Of course your fears are legitimate. If you are not appreciated where you work at maybe its time to find a change, a change in how you are perceived by others, maybe even discuss it with management. You can always ask "What can I do to become a senior developer?" What can that hurt? If they say you can never move up in your life there, is this really where you want to be? If they give you tips and guidelines to follow, take courses etc follow them.
It is probably just that communication that is missing.
from one anonymous coward to another.
I agree. He should get a job teaching at community college or something.
I spent a lot of time early on walking through HR and sitting in on interview processes and their aftermaths to let HR understand beyond any uncertain terms where I stand as their manager and what I expect out of them.
I have a simple rule that I demand they abide be. Pay is proportional to proven skill level. Age can kiss my ass. A 14 year old coder of the newest and greatest Firefox or a middle aged old hand, or someone who's been in my organization for x years and who has been lukewarm and suddenly caught on fire, it's all the same. When the light comes on it must shine on a hill and not be stuffed under a rug.
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
You have not said whether you are not a Senior because you have chosen not to be.
If you have chosen it, make that clear to your management, at interviews, etc. Just say that you enjoy the technical work, but don't want the responsibility of a Senior position. Unlike many careers, that is believeable, because in our field it is not an uncommon choice. As I team leader, I value having a few people who are just going to get the job done, and do it well. You won't be able to call for the big bucks, but I can't see why you shouldn't always be able to eat.
If, however, it isn't a choice, and you want to get on, then tell your line manager so, and ask for help in doing it. It is part of his or her job to help you progress.
What luck for rulers that men do not think. - Adolf Hitler
Sure, it's called retirement. Next!
A related and somewhat provocative question that it hardly every asked is whether programmers 'peak' and are less effective after a certain age or not.
I know it's widely believed that mathematicians have already peak by their late 20s or early 30s.
I am now in my mid-30s, and i believe that my memory and ability to hold a lot of things in my mind at once has deteriorated quite a bit in the last 10-15 years. I have a lot of experience that makes up for it of course, but i think at some point i suspect i'm going to become less productive as a programmer (it may have already happened).
I don't want to contribute to ageism because i know that there are a lot of great programmers in their 40s, 50s and beyond - i just think it's an interesting question. Anyone have any opinions?
(I remember hearing that Steve Wozniak thinks that for him the magic age was around 40)
People with MBAs are happy to pay people highly with MBAs... if you can't beat them, then join them.
My little Linux and tech blog
Here here my friend. I'm 24, and have been doing IT for 6 years. I made my hobby my job, and in search of a new hobby I began taking flying lessons. I hope one day to make it my new career. Then IT will be more fun again =)
You say you lack the technical and social skills to get to senior level. Develop either one or both.
:-)
Specialise:
Get some focused, advanced specialist trianing in a subect that interests you and is commercially interesting. Invest some money in doing this.
Develop your social skills:
There are courses in social skills, customer handeling, consultancy skills etc. Get a good training and develop what you already have further. You are asking for the opinion of others here, why not expand that communication urge to fields where it can be beneficial to you personally or, even better, professionally.
Get some management skills:
If it interests you in the least, get some business degree, a MBA or some form of management training. It may not be what you want to do now, but it provides an option to be of value to a company later and keep a job.
Bottom line:
Invest in yourself. Don't be scared of investing some money in this, but choose quality and choose education in a direction you feel confident will provide you options. Be cautious of things you like now and think are fun: They may not add extra skills. Also be cautious with things you do actively dislike: it may take a lot of effort to master something like that and you would have te grow to like it if you want to be succesfull in it.
Good luck from a chemical engineer/project manager/sales representative/marketeer/manager. Yes, I chose the diversify option
Sig (appended to the end of comments I post, 54 chars)
Yet, somehow, in IT, a family is often a liability. Something about that is not right in my book.
The main reason why family is considered a liability in IT is because IT is an industry where sweatshop labour is considered the holy grail.
Families have a tendency to get in the way of Dad working 18 hours a day, and the sorts of demoniacs at the top of the IT management pile don't want that. They want people who are willing to work for as long as possible at a stretch, for as little money as possible, in as poor conditions as possible. It's the entire reason why importing people from India has become so popular.
India at least used to be a third world country, and so you can import someone from there, pay them south of $250 a week without any other sorts of benefits, and expect to get 18 or so hour workdays out of them, and they'll still think they've died and gone to heaven. An American rank and file employee on the other hand is never going to put up with that, but American managers crave being able to treat their staff like that, because it keeps overhead to a bare minimum, which means more money in their pockets...which is also the *only* thing they care about.
That is the reason why IT managers don't want workers having families...it's because they don't want to treat IT workers like human beings. They don't want to *acknowledge* that IT workers are human beings, because doing so means they lose more money than they're comfortable with. The "money is more important than life itself," crowd don't care about anything else...in the end they don't even care about their own lives. All they care about is the size of their bank balance.
I'd like to present an opposing view to the posts that have been modded up so far.
I believe that yes your fears are definitely legitimate. You state that you don't see yourself moving up from your current position even though you expect higher pay. Unfortunately these two options are not compatible.
Companies constantly judge the value that they get out of an employee versus how much that employee costs. The reason managers get paid more is that they are able to leverage more people (=value) and therefore create more overall value as a result.
If you haven't already, you will definitely hit a ceiling in terms of pay. If your salary continues to go up past that ceiling (due to company policy or a friendly manager), you will be the first person earmarked to go when the company downsizes (as a result of the previously mentioned value judgment).
I do understand that it might be harder for you to gain the required people skills to move up, especially in an industry that, at the lower ranks, requires very little in terms of people skills. But people skills, just like any other skill, can be learned and acquired by practice.
The good news is this: if you do make an effort to acquire those people skills, you'll be able to move up the ladder much quicker than those younger than you because, as mentioned in another post, the level of maturity you should now possess will definitely play a big role in the more senior roles.
You're right. Those who can't do, teach! :)
Though I'm not as mean as the AC parent. "Growth and Ambition?" Pah!
Age is a factor if most of the candidate's experience is irrelevant.
Reduce, reuse, cycle
Life's not fair - deal with it. Each profession has pros and cons. Quit whining and start learning something new. It's nothing to do with unions, and I've never found it abusive. At least, I don't take any crap. You need to try working in a few places until you find something you like - perhaps contracting.
Wow. What great advice! I almost wish I'd said something about "going back to school to do something more rewarding with my life, probably major in mathematics and then either teach or maybe try engineering" in my original post! You know, assuming you don't have Asperger's Syndrome, I think you'd be terrific management material. Again, thanks for the wonderful advice! Cheers.
Hooters?
Disclaimer: I only read the article title. Please mod me down!
Vehicle Stars used car search is my current project
Who marked you insightful? This was just plain fucking rude. You didn't even make an effort to fully read what GP wrote.
I can authoritatively say it's a lot more difficult in the job market when you're older. Age bias does play a factor but there are other factors as well. One is an industry trend to try to keep costs down by removing any advantage of seniority in skills. And the non supportive attitude of fellow programmers doesn't help when they take the stance that competence is a fact of employment status rather than luck.
Everyone here is talking about increasing your knowledge. You have that already.
How can you be more accountable for your organization's success?
Companies are looking for folks who can get things done directly impacting their bottom line.
If you're not doing that, you're just another programmer and if your salary gets too high, well, they can find someone cheaper to write the same crap.
The opposite of progress is congress
Good, now after you have vented your spleen let me correct some of your facts and reasoning:
First, based on my experience other countries lead in the "slaverunner" routine. In fact, I would prefer to work for all of the American bosses I have worked for in my career any day compared to some of the British ones I have encountered. With nearly all of Americans the result was the most important item and how many hours did you clock on it was irrelevant. Similarly, most of them defined sane and achieveable deadlines instead of a UK-style deadline which is known to be blown beforehand. There is a reason why Britain is the only EU country to start throwing toys out of the pram every time the EU working time directive is discussed. And you can guess what it is.
Second, any IT person complaining about antisocial working conditions should look at the BioTech industry. They have take the leaf out of the IT book and have gone where no IT PHB Slaver has dreamed to go before. IT is a family friendly calm 9-5 desk job by comparison.
Baker's Law: Misery no longer loves company. Nowadays it insists on it
http://www.sigsegv.cx/
Actually I'd agree with you about unionising the IT industry. We take alot of shit. I haven't taken a coding job in a white because the conditions here are shit or laid back depending on the employer (most of the laid back ones are banks or government). I've copped the shit ones where they not only expect 18 hours a day but will fire you after your section of the contract regardless of performance. As a union organiser I disagree strongly with these sort of practices but I still need to eat. At the moment I'm working in pathology because frankly the pay and conditions are far better.
I, too, feel the flapping wings of Time passing over me and worry that I will never have the chance to be a manager/supervisor. But, on the other hand, in the past eight years I have seen the number of people in the network I administer double while no one in the IT hierarchy has bothered to add staff to me group, my manager is two states away and feel confident in not comunicating with me for weeks at a time, and I am performing proxy-management of projects while my boss administers the other plants. My co-workers (in other states) are closly supervised and in competition with each other for supervisory positions in yet-another-state. Oh, and my pay had had hefty increases in the past five years based on my performance.
Am I worried that I won't be in management? A little, but not enough to leave my job. Do I think I will be "promoted" at any time? That depends on what you mean by promotion. Me, I think increased money and responsibility is a promotion, just one the Corp. VPs won't notice. It keeps your head from being specially selected for a lopping.
Just a thought.
Here will be an old abusing of God's patience and the king's English.
You could change career, but you'd be doing it on pretty flimsy grounds. Why do you think maths or engineering will be any less abusive? Besides, what's bad about abuse? Can't you develop a slightly thicker skin, or learn how to give as well as take? Come on man, pull yourself together! :)
Depending on how large the company is that you work for, there might be plenty of other career opprtunities besides management.
For instance, after I was labeled as a 'programmer', I've since worked as a 'systems analyst' (determining technical requirements from the business requirements), 'systems engineer' (pretty much the same thing, but I also got to size the hardware), 'systems architect' (more broad looking, planning infrastructure), etc.
All of these, for the most part, require talking to people, however, so there are other options -- such as specialization:
I've also been system administrator, database programmer / database administrator, web developer, etc.
What you have to do is decide what you want to do, and how you can get there. Sometimes, you're not going to find those opportunities within the organization, and you have to move on. Sometimes, you can talk to people, and get those opportunities created for you.
Build it, and they will come^Hplain.
Well, we wouldn't expect YOU to downplay the value of abuse ;)
Attention deficit disorder is a complicated issue, spanning several major... HEY LET'S GO RIDE BIKES!
even though you expect higher pay.
Where does he say this? "and they may not be willing to even talk to me now, thinking that my pay requirements have grown while I have not" isn't saying that he wants more pay, it's saying that other people are going to think he does - just like you demonstrated.
the level of maturity you should now possess will definitely play a big role in the more senior roles
Which he says very clearly that he doesn't feel he is qualified for, and doesn't want: "I don't think I am quite a senior developer in terms of technical or people skills." - the bad news for him, is that many management types are just like you, they briefly skim for key words, and make up their own content, regardless of whatever it was that was really written, and thus are likely to react in exactly the way he predicts, by saying "This old guy wants tonnes of money and a management position, but has no skills or experience to justify it", when what he really wants is just "a job" - he's not asking "how do I get more money or promoted", he's asking "how do I keep my job that I like, despite being older than everyone else around me"
The main reason why family is considered a liability in IT is because IT is an industry where sweatshop labour is considered the holy grail.
You clearly have never worked at an architecture, marketing, or any other firm that is driven by the need to have brain-hours to make money. They all flog their people to be caffine-overdosing, red-eyed drones. It's everywhere. The only way to get to the top is to stand on top of others. The only way to stay at the top is to keep the others down. There are exceptions of course - but they usually rely on graft or extortion (ex: AutoDesk - great working environment because they can extort $1000/seat out of all of their customers every year. Don't like maintenance? Every three years the format changes to be incompatible with previous releases, and the upgrade charge is *suprise* the same price as 3 years of maintenance!).
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
In the programming business, the top 10% of the programmers are about 10x as productive as the middle 50%. The middle 50% are 10x as productive as the bottom 10%. Experience plays a big factor in productivity, but if you aren't in the top 50%, 12 years of experience won't make you as good as a person with 2 years of experience who's top 10%.
At some point, if your salary requirements increase much at all, you're priced out of the market.
And if you're at the lower end of the productivity spectrum, it can cost more to manage and support you than you produce.
However, you may just need a more challenging job, and an environment where you can advance. Getting too comfortable happens all too frequently.
...thinking that my pay requirements have grown while I have not...
There you have it. The first thing that jumps out at me is that you haven't risen above 'junior developer' skills or responsibility after 12 years of experience, which is a major red flag. This is according to your own self-analysis. Maybe you should invest in job-related classes for self improvement, certification, or a professional consultant who can tell you if you are selling yourself short.
Life's not fair
In other news, suicides are up. When a game's not fair, nobody wants to play.
Wow, get me a job with your former or current employers. Every project I've been on since 1999 has been behind schedule before the first line of code had even been thought of. Most were delivered early or on time with the last 5 years all being based on face time only, even if telecommuting or flex time were given lip service.
/. community reads /. during work hours.... ;)
If you take those two statements together, you'll see something had to give, and it was working hours. Only in the past 2 years have I forced the issue of the 40 hour work week back into my life. I'm now somewhere between 40-45 hours a week instead of 70-95, and I still manage to deliver those ridiculous deadlines. What I have noticed is that I am now working 6-8 straight hours a day (as compared to the estimated 3 hours of value add work in some government survey I'm too lazy to pull up - that's due to email, phone calls, meetings, people interrupting you, the web, bathroom breaks, coffee breaks, etc) If you think about it, that makes a lot of sense, as most of the
But, I'll make this comment, after many years in IT, my upward career swing is stalling. Does that have to do with my attitude? Undoubtedly, as traveling more than 10% is out of the question for the next couple of years (kids can have that effect). It also has to do with the realization that I'm already at an apex of sorts, and there's really no opportunities for advancement without career development of the sort that involves major changes (sr architect (technical) -> technical director (mgmt)). Unfortunately, the particular type job I'm looking for typically involves geographically spread out operations and 25%+ travel. This causes a conundrum where I have to decide whether to travel, or work below my level. Pick your evil.
I'm sure I'm not the only "older programmer" out there that's realized this.
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
Unionizing IT is not the answer. A couple of years ago I did a contract in a unionized IT shop and it was a nightmare! Incompetent, unqualified, downright lazy people in critical support positions, and protected by the union. Unions cater to the lowest common denominator and cause quality and productivity to suffer. Individuals have as much power as a union, they just need to stand up for it!
I have been in IT for 20+ years, I have worked in a lot of different shops, and you only get abused if you accept it. I have worked in shops that expected long hours, and I only did it if I felt like it. If the situation got too bad, i.e. they start demanding that I spend extra hours, I walked. The beauty of IT is that there is ALWAYS another job out there. In 20+ years I have only been out of work ~2 months total, and yes, I have changed jobs twice in the last 5 years. Outsourcing is completely overblown, computers are here to stay and only getting more integrated into our lives and businesses, there is going to be IT work for a very long time.
This concern is not limited to programmers, it applies to system administrators as well. I'm 42 and have little desire to get into management, but the pressure to do so is very strong. There are people younger than me who are directors and vice presidents. Some are good and some are total dolts.
I'm a pretty good admin who can implement and manage several types of network systems (servers, switches, firewalls, messaging, etc). I'm probably at a dead end in the corporate world, so working for a consulting company may be the next step.
Self awareness - try it!
I'm 26, but I am saving like hell because I know that age discrimination is rife in this industry, and the more I save for retirement right now, the less I have to worry about such things.
That's good advice, regardless of the prevalance of age discrimination. As the economy gets more dynamic, the idea that your skill set will always be in demand, is going to get more and more archaic. It would be nice if there were a way to buy an insurance policy against falling demand for your skill set, but we already have the next best thing -- invest your money, while you can earn it, in the entire economy through an index fund, and if the world leaves you behind, at least that investment will be worth more. In 70 years, you could still be drawing (investment) income due to a job you had that no longer exists, simply because you saved *while* it existed.
So, don't think you have to be a victim -- you can do something about the uncertainty in the job market.
Apology to Ubuntu forum.
Last I checked, you don't put your age on your resume. You can also trim your work experience list to the last 10 years and skip the dates for the education part -- most interviewers don't find that information relevant anyway.
Once you're actually in the interview, its won't be about your age -- it'll be about your fit for the job. If they want someone with median skills and you have median skills, you'll be fine. If they want someone with expert skills but only median experience (which they often do) then you won't get the job.
Are you sure you're in the right field? If you enjoy the work, then okay. If its just for the paycheck and you're not advancing in skill despite you're experience then you're in the wrong field. A late start in the right field would be better than turning in to a modern equivalent of the mainframe guy.
Moderating "-1, Disagree" is simple censorship. Have the guts to post your opinion.
I'm confused as to why you even bothered with this semi-coherent and absolutely irrelevant excuse for a retort. He already quite succinctly exposed you for the idiot troll you are.
Seriously. Nearly every programmer I know over the age of 40 works in a mainframe shop maintaining legacy COBOL programs. These programs never go away - ever. People try to rewrite them, but I've never seen a COBOL conversion actually succeed. COBOL guys, unless grossly incompetent, are untouchable. They all seem to be labeled a Sr. Engineer regardless of what they actually do or what their skill level is.
And flying will be less fun :)
Also see InfoWorld.
And see Tech Republic.
Then go read everything written by Norman Matloff.
I18N == Intergalacticization
As you gain experience you should take on more and different projects, honing you skills to a higher level. If you are doing the same job in the same way you did 5 years ago you are either lazy or stupid.
As you progress you should begin taking lead and then management roles, work on longer term R&D project, train jr. staff member, do less *grunt* work and more high level planning, work on infrastructure etc.
Either that or go back to school. If you aren't growing you are dying.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
Keep on keepin' on. Get new languages as you need them. Be flexible. Number one, above, probably has an awful lot to do with it.
When I started using the Internet there was almost nothing out there but Nix or Mainframe command lines. If you couldn't handle those you were SOL. I started reading /. very early on when it and the web were new. Still read it almost every day. Good going, Taco.
Good luck with aviation. I had the same dream, but 9/11 killed aviation hiring (and my dream) for me. My commercial pilot's certificate has been sitting on a shelf for a year.
Ah - abuse. I must change my career immediately.
Career-wise, I think you should get into management or other supervisory positions as quickly as you can. Enrol to a management programme in college, or do anything possible to get entitled to add "management skills" on your CV (resume).
Another possibility would be to become a teacher. Get any advanced computer science and education qualifications you can find, and go teach.
Note that education may be too pricey in USA, but it may be much cheaper for you to enrol to a UK distant education programme, like the ones offered by Open University.
I would respectfully suggest you find a new company to work for then, or to start your own. I happen to work for one of the companies that Fortune named as a top 100 company to work for, and they treat me quite well, even on the helldesk. The money is good, hours are right at 40/week, and vacation time is ample, especially as your years of service go up.
I have worked on the other side of the fence as well, where I was an intern and expected to work 9+ hour days on weekends plus work really early and really late hours around my class schedule during the week. It sucked, but once I found a job with a real company post-graduation, things really started to look up. Good companies are out there, you just need to find one.
Hey, can I bum a sig?
What is true is that salaries top out quickly...so if you want to keep getting more than nominal salary increases, you eventually have to go into management. What is also true is that as you age, you have to stay on top of the technology. Too many people get themselves in trouble by attaching themselves to a technology. I remember when the Defense industry died in the late eighties, lots of Cobol programmers hit the streets and started screaming "age discrimination!!!" because no one would teach them C++. This is why I've made damn sure I have things like "XML" and "Python" and "Javascript" on my resume now. If you're good, you can stay in this career as long as you want, but it takes work, and it takes planning. Be prepared to quit jobs that are decent, but use outdated technology.
The cake is a pie
It's advancement that's the real problem. (I'm an "older programmer" too.) A forty year old programmer is generally making the top of the pay scale for programmers. There's no where to go. You can either be happy with making the roughly the same salary until retirement, or you can leave programming and become a manager.
I learned long ago that after about 8-10 hours of coding, any extra hours have a negative effect. I've worked with people who put in 12 hour days, and I can generally do more in 8 hours. I'm convinced that they could as well. But you have to find managers that understand that.
The cake is a pie
>"I'm a programmer with more than twelve years of experience.
Ah. Very good. You're just getting started. This next part is where the fun begins.
>In all that time, I've never been a 'senior' developer.
Maybe you should try it. Being a senior developer implies you know skills beyond just coding.
(Of course, as a senior developer, your coding skills must already be rock solid)
At the very least you should be able to design your own modules (major feature sets)
and come up with additional requirements (that you can help deliver) when someone describes what they want.
You also need to be able to see the work through the full development lifecycle
to the bitter end and beyond into maintenance. (the full Monty)
For brownie points. Becoming the "go to" person is always a plus.
(Goto may be considered harmful in programming but it's really good for your career)
Mentoring others is a plus. Being able to contribute to design discussions is a plus.
>I'm competent and I work hard, but I don't think I am quite a senior developer in terms of technical or people skills.
Programming is not all that developers do. Working hard is not enough. Work smart instead.
Older developers can't compete on volume, we have to do it on efficiency and quality.
You need to be able to consistently show good results, and ideally with as little wasted effort as possible.
If you're always working hard then you have no time to take on additional tasks.
You can't be the goto guy (or girl) if you're always up to your neck.
>More and more I feel that I'm aging myself out a job.
If you feel old then you will be old. Developing software is a game of the mind.
The more you learn, the more you realize there is still to learn, and the younger your mind.
A "young" mind can live in an old body, and vice versa.
Being young in mind means you are still able to learn.
Managers that equate physical to mental age are best avoided anyways.
If their their judgment is bad in that regard, it will likely be bad in others.
When I get involved in hiring people, I always look for those
who show a consistent ability and interest in learning new things.
People who are young may get a temporary free pass, since they have no real history to be examined,
and since the basic assumption is that they are still capable of learning.
But if they show a decided lack of capacity to learn, that free pass evaporates quickly.
In any case, the more experience you have, the more you can compete.
Not by coding; coding inexpertly applied is only wasted effort.
You have to know where to apply the effort.
If you leave this up to your managers, who do less programming than you,
and if you don't suggest anything, then what does this say about your competence as a developer?
>By this time, employers expect someone with my experience to have advanced some,
>and they may not be willing to even talk to me now, thinking that my pay requirements have grown while I have not.
You need to deliver enough skills that what they assume your pay requirement to be will be considered a bargain.
If you deliver additional skills that they can't do without (new something-or-other must-have technology)
then you will be able to ask for more money than they expect from your age based requirements.
>Even if I did get hired someplace new, my peers would likely be much younger than me.
So what? Don't you like to work with young people too?
Some are good looking. Others are pleasant to work with. Some are quite smart.
Just like some older folk.
In any case, unless you are in management. All your non-management co-workers are peers.
If you want to work as a non-manager as you get older,
you will need to deal with some and eventually all of your peers being physically younger.
Time is a one way street (so far). You have to deal with its effects.
>What do you do when
Getting a union will only hurt IT. Employers know how to put their own people and informants in unions, and everything gets corrupted in no time. The solution is to find a way to earn money without relying on a company at all, to get outside this slavery system alltogether. This means opening your own startup, becoming a contractor, working as freelance... Unfortunately you do need not only technical ability and great personal stamina, but also lots of luck and some form of starting capital to start (the good news is that this starting capital doesn't really need to be money, it can be social capital as well, although of course the most secure form of capital is money). Such plans work best when you are debt-free and kids-free, however.
You can have my keyboard when you pry it from my cold dead hands.
I lost my "low number" ID for slashdot a long time ago, and have to make due with this one. *wink*
I only look human.
My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling
Why is this not an option? I got sick of programming for a living, I discovered that I love teaching, and now I'm back in graduate school for a PhD. It's hard (sell your house, sell a car to pay off the other one; moreover, convince your wife that it's a good idea), but not impossible. For some it's the best choice overall.
I got my Linux laptop at System76.
Damn. I thought I had posted and forgot about it at first.
I'm 25, have been doing IT for 7 years now, and ironically enough, have also taken up flying lessons (I've got just over 60 hours logged and am working on getting my practical scheduled).
I haven't decided on whether or not I want to try to make a career out of aviation (initially it was just something that I decided to do for fun), but it certainly would help to have something extra to fall back on. At the moment though, so long as they'll have me I'm sticking with my current job. It's for local government, and as such the pay is mediocre at best, but the position is very stable, workload is light, benefits great, and retirement plan is just amazing (at 51 I can retire with a pension check coming for the rest of my days.).
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
You should be doing that regardless of industry, because the earlier you put money away the more the interest will compound.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
I don't believe age is a factor in most companies' hiring practices.
Now you !@#$% kids get off my lawn!
Serving your airship needs since 1995.
Nearly every programmer I know over the age of 40 works in a mainframe shop maintaining legacy COBOL programs.
...} that's unmaintainable and not very user-friendly. The solution is to write a replacement in a HLL that just blows it away. You don't port COBOL code. You make it obsolete. If your language has a for-each loop, regexps (or even just string.split), and a gc, you've already won.
Maybe I'm just too young, but I work with programmers of all ages, spread pretty evenly from low-20's to 50's (or maybe older). (We're a Python shop, FWIW.)
These programs never go away - ever. People try to rewrite them, but I've never seen a COBOL conversion actually succeed.
Even if COBOL conversions are usually failures that doesn't mean that COBOL will never go away, for the same reason that I don't know that any dinosaurs evolved into housecats but I don't have any friends with pet dinosaurs.
For example, ITA software "entered a market already dominated by two big, entrenched competitors, Travelocity and Expedia, and seem to have just humiliated them technologically". Their competitors relied (and maybe still do) on such cutting-edge technology as screen-scraping the output of mainframe assembly programs. ITA are writing new high-level code. Zing.
My last couple jobs have been the same sort of thing: we have an old program in {Fortran, BASIC, Algol,
The good news (to keep this relevant) is that old guys are just as good, if not better than, young guys at this. If you're good, we can use you. We've got people older than dirt. My company has done every stupid thing in Office Space (and then some), but we'd never be so stupid as to fire a good programmer because of age.
If you've been with your current company for awhile (1-2 years), take it up with your manager and/or your HR person. Tell them your concerns, and what you want to achieve. You should get some kind of encouragement and assistance in getting there. If they don't feel you're ready for it, be prepared to accept criticism, but on the other hand they should be willing to help you. "What does it take to achieve X? What do I need to do?" are good starting places.
But that presumes you know what you want to do. Lots of people I know don't want to climb TOO high in the corporate ladder. The jobs become something they don't want to do. Make sure you understand your goal and what it entails BEFORE shooting for it.
Myself, I've been doing IT since 1991, so that makes (2007-1991) 16 years experience. And the only reason I'm a Senior PA is because I took a job, and the only payscale that my requested $ would fit into is the Senior PA. At my current company, I'd have to become a Lead Architect if I were to convert.
Word of warning: never ever imply you want to "change groups" or "move out" of a company. If there are layoffs coming, you'll be on the top of the layoff list. Seen it happen. Focus on "growing" and "adding value".
Consider seeking a sizable "career company." These companies often put a priority on existing for the sake of providing their employees jobs, and like having a few greybeards who are very familar with their codebase. As long as you realize that your job is to get things done, you'll always be considered valuable. (Just don't become someone who's attitude is "My job is to keep my job.")
No, I will not work for your startup
I think you've hit the nail on the head. Unions are rarely the employees anymore; they're often extortion rings masquerading as employees. However, there are a few places where unions do what they're meant to - I can guarantee the airline industry unions have been a boon to their members. But you have a point, where's there's money (in this case, union dues), there's bound to be corruption.
I have been in IT for 20+ years, I have worked in a lot of different shops, and you only get abused if you accept it.I suppose that came off as suggesting my past employers were abusive, and that's not the case. I mean the environment is abusive, though I can't imagine why that is. Grocery store or fast food restaurant employees don't deserve the sort of environment I've seen in some IT shops... No, it's not that bad, but the management doesn't always seem to mesh up with the profession.
The beauty of IT is that there is ALWAYS another job out there. In 20+ years I have only been out of work ~2 months total, and yes, I have changed jobs twice in the last 5 years.I dunno, it seems to me the jobs get fewer and farther between, but I'm glad to hear you haven't had that experience. It seems to me outsourcing is more threatening to junior and midlevel professionals. If our homegrown programmers can't get in the door, how can they ever work their way up the corporate ladder to where you're at? I think part of the reason you're in a more secure position is because of your experience. Outsourcing is removing the opportunity for new talent who will fill your shoes when you move up or retire.
Outsourcing is completely overblown, computers are here to stay and only getting more integrated into our lives and businesses, there is going to be IT work for a very long time.Well, let's all just keep rooting for the free market. Either outsourcing isn't a problem and everything is fine, or it is a problem. If it is, then as other countries keep taking our money, they'll experience inflation and start demanding more money from us (this is already happening in India), and those employees will eventually cost too much to justify the added expense of importing them. I don't see outsourcing as something sustainable in the longterm, but I do see it as something detrimental to the US IT sector now. Just the other day, I bumped into a guy I used to work with (mid- to senior-level Applications Developer), and asked him if he was still working for the same company I'd worked with him at. Well, it turns out they'd fired their entire IT staff of about 50 and replaced them all with folks on H1-B visas at a fraction of the cost. Anyway, that's my experience. Like I said, I'm glad it hasn't been yours, and I hope it stays that way. Cheers.
We refer to people like yourself as "10 years of the same year of experience". I hope you were being too modest in your summary. If not, you will have a difficult time ahead of you.
Sorry.
At the entry level end of IT I think there are more factors to consider. During the boom years of lot of people jumped on the bandwagon and got into IT and were good enough to bluff their way through the interview, but bombed in the job, costing companies plenty. Another factor, is that fewer US students are going into the sciences and engineering fields, and IMO the quality of the education (especially undergraduate) they are getting has gone WAY down in the last 10-15 years. Add these two factors to lower wages for Indian and Chinese talent and you have a perfect storm of sorts.
I believe all of this is temporary because as you mentioned India is starting to feel the bite of inflation, but also as their economy grows, their own internal needs for IT is causing a shortage of IT talent, all this causing Indian IT to not be as big a bargain as it once was.
I suspect this is happening to a certain extent in China, but being Communist gives them a certain advantage in not only hiding it, but for them to just force more people through the education mill, and up their supply of talent.
Why is this not an option? I got sick of programming for a living, I discovered that I love teaching, and now I'm back in graduate school for a PhD. It's hard (sell your house, sell a car to pay off the other one; moreover, convince your wife that it's a good idea), but not impossible. For some it's the best choice overall.
No worries, I was being sarcastic. The post I was replying to was flamebait, but I decided to bite with a little sarcasm. No, I'm following in your footsteps. Going for my Masters, and my wife's on board, though we're both still undergrad at this point. I'm planning on teaching music (hence the name enharmonix) and math (hence me knowing what /. is), but would consider engineering in the private sector if an opportunity were to arise. But yeah, I'm done programming too (w/ the possible exception of contracts, but then only to put toward tuition). Anyway, good luck and wish me the same! Cheers.
"I'm 26, but I am saving like hell because I know that age discrimination is rife in this industry, and the more I save for retirement right now, the less I have to worry about such things."
That's so smart and I'm impressed. Age discrimination is a fact of life. Although many people realize the value of experience, there are some who, as the original poster described, treat older programmers who haven't moved into management as less worthy. At a previous place of employment, I volunteered as part of an interview team screening possible programmer/engineers. I saw this team's recommendation to hire and not hire get overrulled by a younger first line manager. That FLM passed over two older men with degrees and experience, that were recommended by the team, to hire a younger person who was not recommended by the team. That younger person was much less fit for the job, not because of age, but he was less able. I quit doing interviews for that FLM after seeing that happen. The irony is that the younger person hired is still with that company, still doing menial work, not the kind of programming that was needed.
As an aside, I also saw that same FLM hire a really tall programmer, a guy who was 6'8". He wanted a forward on his lunchtime basketball team. The tall guy was a decent programmer, so that worked out ok, but it was strange to see someone in authority make such strangely self-serving decisions.
Save your money, buy a house. Be prepared to lose your job. I'd suggest cross-training as an IT person. Hospitals and such don't seem to have the kind of anti-agism that I've seen in the tech sector. Certifications such as CNE and MSCE, despite their lack of true measure of competence, are still valued as check-point qualifiers.
Good luck to programmers.
Best regards.
Good luck on the check ride.
P.S. I highly recommend joining AOPA. It's $30 for the first year, and provides some great learning and networking opportunites.
Have you just stopped looking for a gig? Or have you turned any gigs down? Just curious. I have a vauge idea what the job market is like in aviation, and while intimidating, I figure the worst thing that happens is that I stay in IT and get to build project planes at home as a hobby (I'd love to build a jet engine project plane).
I've thought about that. True, I could ruin flying as my hobby and it would turn into just a paycheck. But if it ever got to that point, I would hopefully have planned financially to dump a shitty job and go work somewhere flying where I enjoy it, even if the pay is lower then I'm used to.
It's all about perception. What you know isn't nearly as important as what people think you know. How competent you think you are is much less important than how competent you can pretend to be. If you want to improve your position as a developer, there are a few things you can do:
1) Beef up your resume. There are classes you can take which will help with this. Creating a good resume that highlights accomplishments instead of listing duties can move you to the top of the interview list. Remember, though, no lying!
2) Job hop. This is a risky move, because companies don't like to hire people they think might leave. It is also unstable, which is unsuitable for many people. Still, it can get you a lot of varied experience in a brief time. A good way to get this same benefit without as much risk is to join a consulting company for a while. They can also help with Option 1.
3) Move into management. Getting an MBA (as untasteful as it is to some of us) will give you a shot at a new, higher-paying career path.
4) Fake it until you make it. Act confident (not arrogant!), take on tasks (slightly) above your ability or outside your experience, and learn by doing. The problem with reading books and learning languages is they don't help until you use them in your job. So just combine the two, and read the books (and websites, and sample code) when you're ready to use them. It's just like college, 'cept different.
5) Network. People are always saying, "It's not what you know, it's who you know." (They ought to say "whom you know," but they don't.) Once you have people who know you and believe in your abilities, they will help you get better jobs. Consulting is a good way to do this, too, as long as you do well.
Best of luck!
I feel the same way as the original submitter, except I'm a scientist. In my current organization there are no advancement options for scientists -- you either go into management, or you go back to school and get additional degrees so you can demand more money. Although my skills have improved dramatically, I have not had the time to get my PhD, and I do not have the patience or temperment for management...not to mention that science is what I love, while managing people and budgets would drive me to gunplay.
This may or may not be good advice, but I'll offer what I'm looking at doing -- changing career just slightly. I'm looking to move into a related field where my experience would be applicable and desired, but which hopefully will have better career options. Some companies love getting cross-field applicants that will increase the company's skill set.
Genocide Man -- Life is funny. Death is funnier. Mass murder can be hilarious.
Either outsourcing isn't a problem and everything is fine, or it is a problem. If it is, then as other countries keep taking our money, they'll experience inflation and start demanding more money from us (this is already happening in India), and those employees will eventually cost too much to justify the added expense of importing them.
Just because Indian labor prices itself out of the outsourcing market doesn't mean those jobs will come flying back to the US. They'll just go to the next ambitious third-world country on the totem pole with meager wages and few pesky employment regulations.
Theres always another more desperate contestant to race you to bottom in this global economy.
Where does the school board find them and why do they keep sending them to ME?
Getting a thousand turbine hours is not too hard. The only catch is, you have to be able to support yourself on basically minimum wage for five or six years. I'm in IT and a flight instructor/charter pilot as well (flexible IT hours.) If I was in my early twenties and a new pilot though, I'd scrape up a few hundred multi-engine hours and go work for a regional to build up the turbine time.
Thank you sir. I very much appreciate the advice. How do you suggest scrapping up turbine hours? Is multi-engine prop time the same as turbine time? Sorry for all the questions, I'm only 10 hours or so into my Student license, and hoping to get my Private my the end of March.
I'm sorry; I meant scrape up the turbine time by going to work for a small regional airline. The one in my neck of the woods takes on pilots with around 700 hours of flight time, and around 100 hours of multi-engine time. Multi-engine prop time is (probably) not the same as turbine time, and you won't need turbine (turboprop or turbojet) time to get hired at a regional airline. Hope this makes sense. Best of luck with your studies, and let me know if I can help at all.
See Norm Matloff's website:
http://heather.cs.ucdavis.edu/itaa.html
It isn't just about H-1B visas, it also documents significant, serious age discrimination in the IT industry. It starts at about age 35, plus or minus a few years, which, I gather from your statement, is about your age. No wonder you're feeling a bit old. But the age discrimination is driven by the same motivation as the H-1B visa pressure: money. Younger programmers are willing to work unreasonably long hours for their salaries. At 8 hours a day five days a week, a person puts in 2000 hours a year. At an average of 10 hours a day, 2500 hours a year, effectively cutting his/her salary by 25% (Company's cost savings is less due to fixed cost of overhead). This is a significant savings to a company. Once you start to realize that a good life isn't defined by the next release date and you start to work more 8 hour days, your value to the company goes down. They can't complain because they're not paying you overtime. But they can lay you off. You're too old. At 35.
Although many might lament the quality of the "non-IIT" indian educations (see other articles), there are very few "third-world" countries with education systems that are remotely on par with china or india (not that I would call them third world, but let's say emerging world)...
The jobs may not fly back to the US, but I don't think we'll be seeing the level of outsourcing to other so-called thrid world countries as they don't have the population nor the fractional amount of locally trained talent pool (needed to fill out any organization) that would be able to sustain any reasonable amount of outsourcing over time (making it worth it for a company to invest in the first place). Not saying it won't happen eventually, but you don't just stick up a tent, call it a university and start churning out graduates to bulk out companies (and still be successful at it).
For example, if you follow the history of chinese, korean, and indian out-sourcing you might have been able to predict the current situation by looking at the graduate student population over the past 20 years.
Early on, those countries were definitely being "brain-drained" by the US and Western Europe (although not so much Japan, because of their immigration policies) because the educational and commercial opportunities were better than their home countries. It was only a matter of time for the educational opportunities to get better in their countries, followed shortly by the commercial opportunities. With the local commercial opportunities, and some ties to the US (through graduate student coming over and returning to their homes), they built up enough critical mass to start attracting outsourcing.
Russia (although, not third world) already had the good educational opportunities and now are getting more commercial opportunities (and would be more if their commercial environment was better). If we look at the graduate student population as a leading indicator, perhaps Eastern Europe or Iran is probably the next wave, although it will probably take a while. I think the line of countries in line to be the next outsourcing hub is NOT very long though, and these things will take quite a while to play out (15-20 years or maybe more)...
You wrote:
/. very early on when it and the web were new."
;-)
"I started reading
I'm glad you've started contributing! You have a very interesting story. Why didn't you sign up earlier? There's nothing like the cred you earn with a 4 or 5 digit Slashdot number
The days when the Internet was new were definitely not the Golden Years. Remember Mosaic? Heck, remember Lynx? Man, I'm glad those days are gone. I still think the pre-Net BBS years were pretty cool, though. I felt so connected with my C64 and 300 baud modem...
- Murphy's Corollary: - It is impossible to make things foolproof because fools are so ingenious.
or advance to senior. If you need to find a new job(which you will sooner or later) It will be a red flag that you weren't promoted.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
>Sure, they do the same things the apps I used to write did, they just take 300 lines of macro language running on an 800K-line interpreter/execution environment in 400M of memory to do what I did in 200 lines of C that ran in about 80K.
>But, at least people were able to write these new apps while they were seriously hung over (from the looks of their code...)
I sure hope I get to be as cranky as you when I get older. It must give you limitless possibilites go on and on about how things were better before.
The surprise isn't how often we make bad choices; the surprise is how seldom they defeat us.
Here's a perspective that might be interesting. Almost all of us in the IT biz have, at some time, done helpdesk work (whether explicitly or as an unrecognized part of another job). It's been referred to as "paying your dues" or "doing your time" in the industry for a while. My difference is that I've been doing it for ten years.
What's wrong with him, I hear you say. After all, who would stay in a job which requires little in the way of skill, pays almost nothing, and is staffed mainly by teenagers expected to move on in six to twelve months?
Well, let's address some of those misconceptions.
Firstly: the pay level. As you might imagine, I'm pretty much at the apex of the game. No-one wants to have to explain to the higher-ups why they're paying executive rates for a phone wrangler. And yet I can still pull down around 60K, around twice what some of my colleagues might be making. Even having let all the local pimps know I won't even look at anything under 50K, I'm still turning down offers every week. It's not senior sysadmin territory, but it's comfortable enough to get by, have a moderate entertainment/toys budget, and do some investing.
Secondly: The work environment. Yes, many helpdesks are a sewer. But interestingly enough, management are more willing to listen to someone making as much as them, who has a little grey hair, stress lines and a good suit, and who can spin a calm, compelling request for change which includes things like budget and personnel impacts, grade-of-service projections, and whatever this week's buzzword is. Underpaid wild-haired inarticulate teens in T-shirts don't have the same air of authority. As a result, I can often shape the work environment to suit myself. Being able to just walk away after every shift end is a big psychological factor as well.
Thirdly: it's actually harder to stay than move 'up'. Because of my experience and approach, I'm semi-continuously headhunted by other areas of whatever employer I'm with. There's a pressure to move on to supervisory or management roles, or 'temporarily' fill in other roles such as network admin, sysadmin etc. And yes, I've done some of these. If nothing else, it looks good on a resume and provides a jumping-off point if I ever decide to move on. But to be honest, management work drives me up the wall and system administration's a thankless grind. Sure, I could go get an MBA and Cisco certs to complement the raft of other minor items I've collected over the years - the money might be a little better, but I'd still be working for boneheaded CEOs or wallowing in self-employment paperwork.
Personally, screw them all. I decided when I hit 33 and had zero savings to retire before 35. The top of the helpdesk game makes enough for me to invest, and I'm good enough at analytics and pattern-matching to find damn good investments indeed. It looks like I'm on track, too. Hell, at this rate I might even make it before 34. Whether I decide to continue working or not at that point will depend on what else I want to do.
Why am I in the helpdesk game? Because I'm not planning on working my guts out for other people for the next 30 years, and this job is (a) very very easy, and (b) pays enough so that I can go from destitute to comfortably retired in 12 months if I know what I'm doing.
People here are smart enough to learn the intricacies and concepts behind multiple programming languages, computer systems and the latest bleeding-edge Silicon Valley products. Investment and tax law, even with their occasional changes, are piddlingly simple in comparison. Why waste the best days and years of your life in an office when you could be making ten times that sitting on the beach drinking rum (or hacking on a top-of-the-line lappy, if you prefer)? If you ever miss the office, you can always go back part-time - after all, it's not as if you'd need the money.
So is this traditionally young person's job hard to get into? Like crap it is. Maturity, experience, and being able to talk to the boss on their own level opens doors everywhere, regardless of how many grey hairs I have or whether I was graduating highschool when some of my co-workers were born.
I can't speak for every employer, but I've done a fair bit of interviewing & hiring over the past year, and my experience indicates that many technical interviewers are looking for employees that have demonstrated an ability to take ownership of (and solve) problems and have demonstrated that they've improved their own work processes/practices and those of their fellow team members. Many desirable candidates became "The Build Lady" or "The Source Control Guy" or something similar because there was a need in their organization, and the candidate decided to fill that need by implementing some solution.
I've shared these observations with a former coworker who is in a situation similar to yours: he has been in the same role, working with the same technologies, for the past decade or so, and he wants to broaden his skills and make himself more employable. My former coworker understands conceptually how he can advance his career, but his own fears often prevent him taking action. I think that he feels that any solution he comes up with needs to be technically brilliant and will perfectly solve whatever problem he is addressing. I've told him that my own experience shows that is not true. Nobody is an expert on everything, and virtually every solution has flaws, so don't let the fear of failure or the fear of the unknown prevent you from trying something new.
Now, maybe the situation that I described isn't relevant to your situation, but it's clearly relevant to some people, so I wanted to share.
People like you are why most employees everywhere are totally incompetent. You are deliberately making the Peter Principle happen -- promoting people to jobs that they CAN'T do just for the heinous crime of doing well at jobs that they CAN do. Nicely done. At least there's some justice in the fact that you have to suffer the effects of a government that operates under precisely the same principle (when it isn't falling prey to nepotism and cronyism, that is).
Seriously, when was object-oriented progarmming invented? Distributed systems? Multi-processor programming? The Internet? Scripting languages? All this stuff was invented decades ago, it just took Moore's Law this long to make most of it practical. If we'd all had bit-mapped windowing environments back then (instead of just those folks over at Bell Labs), we'd have been spared the horrors of Hungarian notation — if you don't remember a variable's type, just hover your mouse over it and the editor will tell you! Hell, CSS just celebrated its tenth birthday, the web itself is even older (not twenty-five years, probably closer to fifteen). Ruby's been around longer than that...
Hell, in my case, things are better now than they were just a couple of years ago. I remember spending days writing Perl scripts because the only thing worse than writing EJB deployment descriptors was getting XDocletto do it. Now, I just annotate my class with "@WebService", and it's all taken care of behind the scenes (as it should be).
Of course, some things are becoming too easy — it bothers me how many developers are writing code that automatically generates database tables. The problem is, they generally don't specify foreign keys, or constraints, or a lot of the other features that a good data model brings to the table... I sure hope I get to be as cranky as you when I get older. Don't make me call your mother!
Just junk food for thought...
We have a programmer who is 64 who takes on all the legacy Cobol tasks that the youngins can't get their heads around. Lets see, he IS smart, he DOES get things done, and he is NOT a jerk. When he needs to learn something new, he gets a book and asks someone for help. He is doing incredible things at work and in the community. He would fit into any place that has high standards. I have NEVER heard him whine.
Yes, in an ideal world, it would be all about skill. In the real world it's about X years in Y technology. With 5 years being the sweet-spot.
What really sucks is that only languages (or whatever) are considered. Things like structured methodology, or understanding algorithms, are entirely overlooked.
I'm doing okay now, but I'm not doing as well now as was in 2001. My ambition didn't change, the job did - suddenly and drastically.
I tried that. I took a graduate level class in PM, and got a graduate level certification. Then I got a Project+ cert also. I also have a degree in business to go with my degree in math with comp sci concentration.
All worthless. Take a look at the job boards. When it comes to hiring PMs, there is one - and only one - thing that matters: recent, verifiable, experience as a PM, and managing exactly the technologies in whatever the employer happens to need.
Today, the IT job market is just too saturated to start in something where you don't have experience. Employers are cherry picking.
Of course there are always exceptions: if you know somebody, or if you are a good liar, or just get very lucky. I don't know if I would count on any of those things.
JMHO.
Of course the concerns are genuine.
It must be agreed that even though there might be a lot of persons earning good money doing COBOL, the numbers of such people are probably getting lesser and lesser.
Also, the way software is developed is probably changing. Nowadays there is more and more of factory type work where you have a programming pool who are given assignments. (Specs are written by business analysts working with team leads). Programmers don't see the picture, let alone the big picture and what is required is only to deliver functional output. This can be handled well by raw techies and so there is less value add for a "senior"s experience. This is because there is more package and solution buying (eg: WEB page, authoring tools etc) and less ciustom development.
The OP doesn't mention his profeciency or level. Given that, a lateral move to a smaller organisation may be just the thing to enable him to rise quickly. In this scenarion, he would have to have good project management skills.
end
Why do IT people work 18 hours a day?
Because the sales people will take on all sorts of assignments and there is no planning based on resource availability. This is particularly true in the case of software support (inhouse and outsourced).
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"", for fuck's sakes, ""!
Then there's the sales people promising the moon to seal the deal. I worked at one of those for 2.5 years. To be fair, it was probably the best programming job I had, despite the hours, because the one thing this company did was reward their programmers. 20% bonuses per year were common, up to 40% if you met your deadlines, not including stock options, and they were paid quarterly. Telecommuting was encouraged, and truth be told, 60 hours a week didn't seem like it, when you didn't have to spend 10-20 hours a week commuting.
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
1)Noone is using any of those 3 languages, anywhere.
That doesn't look like a requirement for the chart. How many people were using APL in 1960?
And of the 4 languages (having trouble counting?), they are being used. D is used for DTrace, among other things. I know people using Io for (paying) projects. Fortress (more like Fortran than C) may be too new to be used on any real project yet, but again, that's not a requirement for it being a new and innovative language. And Arc is used by Paul Graham for his spam filtering experiments, which you're probably reaping the rewards from now.
2)Those languages are no different than existing languages.
Even if that's true, what does it have to do with anything? Were the 1960's more innovative because we got COBOL 61 and FORTRAN IV? What was innovative about them?
But none of these are new paradigms or ways of thinking about programming.
Fortress has a multiprocessing for-loop by default. Io makes (micro)threads so efficient you can spawn a billion of them, which opens up a lot of new possibilities. Arc is trying to enable the power of a full Lisp but without requiring parentheses around every expression (which seems to scare off a lot of people).
If these aren't innovative, then nothing in the 1980's or 1990's was, either. The last languages I know that changed my thinking so much were Smalltalk (1970's), Lisp (1960's), and ML (1970's). If "innovation has slowed", it happened back around 1980, not around 2000.
You can pick them up in a weekend, a week tops.
But you'd just be writing the new language in the style of a language you already know.
I stopped looking, partially out of pessimism about the market, and partially because while my aviation dreams were on hold, life marches on. Had kids, couldn't wait for a pie-in-the-sky dream any more, went back to IT.
Sorry to hear that. =( I hope you get to fly again when time permits.
I wouldn't worry about your age, I have several peers who are lower level devleopers but are they're in their 40's or 50's. State your pay requirements in cover letters.
The group of software engineers I work with have been around since the 1980s. They have brought the project from C in the 1980s to C++ and Java in the 1990s and now AJAX/Java web enabling in the past two years. Yeah, I am 41 and I am the "young guy". Don't worry to much.....you will do just fine. Age.......it is a good thing. And guess what....you can't stop it. You have no choice but to die or get older.
I am 49 years old, a software quality professional/ automation engineer who works primarily in Perl these days. I have been through the job hunt a few times during the last couple years, following a 9 year stint with an employer who began to shrink and laid me off. I have worked 18 years in this industry and have gone from being a reasonably attractive young man to the edge of being an old codger. So I have seen the equation change over the years. I have gotten quite a bit better at my job and have taken on new skills.
I think there is indeed ageism in the data industry. But, I think it is not so rampant as to be a big problem for any individual. I think that some, say, people of Chinese heritage who have a strong accent, or African heritage, or women have at least as big a challenge in this regard.
I have interviewed with groups where, I could tell from the start, they wanted a young-looking person, preferably someone they could imagine being in their imagined social group. If you don't fit that role, those groups may not take you seriously.
Best thing is, move on to another group, bearing in mind that there are others, of other less-empowered groups, doing the same math, where x is not age, but the perceived difference of race, or gender or whatever other difference there may be. Chances are, the hiring group is not going to be turning out truly good work, because homogeneity does not serve the objectivity and creativity that is required in this kind of work.
My advice is to try to learn, learn, learn: other languages, and protocols, how to set up servers and databases, more in depth about your language, anything that separates you from the next person. Keep some notes somewhere about what you learned, simply because at some point, there is so much that no single person, young or old, can recall it all.
There is indeed an advantage to being older that far offsets any increased forgetfulness or lack of physical energy. It is just that you have seen lots of approaches to problems and where they ultimately succeeded or failed. You need to foster this, and capitalize on it. It is rare that anyone will listen to you say why something succeeds or fails, but such considerations will affect your work and allow you to code defensively.
Read books like "Magic of Thinking Big" by David Schwartz and "If you think you can".
I'm going through a tough employment spot myself. I've been doing PHP/Perl/Javascript stuff for a web advertising company for the previous 5 years. Thats come and gone and I've put my name out there for hire. Everyone in my area is doing their online development in .NET so its either switch or move out of state.
.NET experience has been strictly learning for personal gain. I got the impression that despite my experience they still see a developer with less than 1 year of experience instead of a developer with 5 years of experience. I've kept up with other concepts and development environments but despite all that they're still looking at me as someone not developing in .NET professionally.
.NET development, studied and started developing in the environment. I'll get in someplace as a developer, learn faster than my new peers, work harder than my new peers and move up the ladder.
So I've started interviewing but my
So I have to bulk up on my knowledge, practice and sell them the fact that I understand all the core aspects of software development and will quickly get familiar with the tools they're using. I've purchased a over a half dozen books on
sell yourself on your positives and work on everything else.
For some reason I refuse to use either spell check or the spacebar properly.