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With a Computer Science Degree, an Old Man At 35?
GrApHiX42 writes "I pissed away my 20s and now I want to go to school and get a bachelor's degree in computer science. The thing is, I'll be 35 when I get out of school, and I've read on numerous sites that there seems to be some ageism going on in the IT industry when it comes to older geeks. What have some of the 'older' Slashdot readers experienced as far as being replaced or just plain not getting hired because IT is a 'young man's game'?"
I'm pushing 40 this year. Been programming most of my life. Never completed my CS degree. Worked on some fairly high profile projects in NYC, Chicago, San Francisco. I would say tho, at this point in my life, I'm definitely at the Sr. level and if I was to apply for a 'real' job it would be a Director or VP/CTO position - probably in a small startup.
I know of friends consulting companies that have guys in their 20's-40's. Other friends work for big software companies and have similar age groups. In the end, if you're a good programmer and not over 50 ;) then you shouldn't have a problem. But at some point, you're going to probably start your own company or be at a level above 'straight out of schoole 20-something coder'.
I wouldn't worry about the ageism thing at 35.
My husband was 36 when he got his Computer Science degree. It was a few months before getting his job but this was also at a time when the job market was in a slide. Once he got his first computer science job and some experience he had no problem getting other positions as follow up. Plus, he met me and have been relatively happy together now for 23 years so his degree helped in other areas as well, at least in my opinion and my husband is smart enough to agree with me. So I would definitely say go for it
I used to be an adult but then I grew up.
I say go for it. Consider that we live in a generation that will probably live to be 100. And you'll likely work till 70+. You'll have 35 years doing what you want, to earn enough money to support you for the following 30 years.
I'm 47 and going back for Geology. I'll probably finish at 55, but I'll still have 15+ years to work. My motivation, is that I don't see my career in Electronics being able to warm down to retirement. You're either in or out, nothing in between. But I see Geology as being something you can take on smaller jobs, and slow down to retirement. From what I see, it's much broader than Electronics. Hey, but that's my rainbow...
- High Tech workers, please say NO to Union Carpenters, their Union sees fit to control our compensation.
In my experience - which is considerable, I'm oooold - at 35, he won't have an age problem. That's not old enough to trigger the insurance companies to really mess with the company's expense of keeping him around under the current insurance setup. And who knows, by then, health care may look somewhat different.
A lot of ageism in tech companies is not being willing to pay for the experience an older employee usually brings to the table; but he's fresh out of school, so that doesn't apply to him. It seems to me that the odds are he'll do ok. He'll also have to accept starting wages, of course.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
The above post is great except for this one line: "If you're not currently in a computer-related field and you're asking if you should get the degree and go into it in an entry-level position, that's your call. You'll probably need that degree to break in, even at 35. If it's worth starting over from scratch, go for it."
If you're already programming, but are not employed, getting a degree to reinforce what you know is a good idea and will help you with salary.
On the other hand, if you're not already programming, you're wasting your time. Programmers are (mostly) like writers or artists. You can't help it. You get sucked into it even if you fight it. If you didn't get sucked into it, you'll be a crappy programmer when you get out of college no matter how good an education you get, because you've already proven that you're not, at core, a programmer. You were handed the test and you failed. LUCKY YOU, REALLY.
Furthermore, 35 year olds usually have a life. 20 year olds don't. You really need to do something for 10,000 hours before you get fantastic at it. 20 year olds can accomplish that in three years. A 35 year old with a wife and a family won't accomplish that in a decade.
What DID you get sucked into? What did you spend your 20's on? Dig through that time and figure out what you loved. Do THAT. You'll be good at that. If you weren't a programmer, you won't get hired as a 35 year old programmer not because you're old, but because you're BAD. If you don't fail the first fizz-buzz question you get, you'll fail the second follow-up.
Set yourself up to succeed, not fail.
And after all that, it probably wouldn't even get me a better-paying job, assuming that I could find anyone that wants to hire an engineer in their early 50s at all.
But I don't care, because I'm doing it for my own enjoyment and satisfaction. I quit my day job in December, and I'm hoping not to ever have a day job (other than working for myself) again. I'm much happier now that I'm trying to do entrepreneurial things, even though I'm not (yet) bringing in as much income as I got from the day job.
When I was in my late 20s through my early 40s, I found that experience was much more of a factor in getting hired and getting a good salary than having a degree. I'm sure there are some exceptions to that, i.e., employers that are idiots, but who would want to work for those employers anyhow?
For anyone that doesn't have a degree, AND doesn't have industry experience, I'd recommend getting the degree and doing some summer internships to get experience. When I've been involved in interviewing candidates, I've found that even candidates with an MSCS but no real experience are often not adequately prepared for a software developer position. CS programs tend to be heavy on theory (and there's nothing wrong with that), but almost entirely lacking in practice.
I did it. I managed grocery stores through my 20's and early 30's. I got my degree at 35. While in school, I quit the grocery business and went to work at Comp USA (Yeah yeah I hated the place too). Started as a sales weasel until there was an opening in the Tech dept (repair and service).
When I got my degree, I had a few years of IT (yeah yeah, Comp USA and IT don't go together.) under my belt and got a job in a University IT department as a Help Desk Service Coordinator (one man complaint department). I got this job because of my dual abilities of being able to manage people (from the grocery business as a manager)and because I understood technology with my repair bench experience. I hated every minute of it but it got me in the door.
One of my responsibilities in that position was to work with the different IT departments that were constantly bickering over whose job it was to take care of any given situation. I earned a reputation as someone who could troubleshoot AND get things done. When a position opened as a domain/exchange admin I jumped at it and got the job.
So 9 years after getting my degree I now manage the windows admins, unix admins, mainframe admins, and DBA's at this University.
Yes, you can do it.
Now the bad part. In order to do this, I went into extreme debt paying for school and working for peanuts at Comp USA. It took me most of those 9 years to pay off the debt I accumulated while getting to where I make a decent living now. It is a lot of hardship, a lot of dedication, and some luck in landing a position.
If you are ready to take the step, good luck to you!
I'm about to be 45, and I've been a software engineer since I was around 18 (started way before, but didn't get my first "real" job until then).
Since then, the highest title I've reached is... Sr. Software Engineer, which is where I've been pretty much most of my career. Never had an interest in management, Lead, or anything that would take me out of the trenches of coding.
This also means my salary has been capped where I live at around $125K or thereabouts.
I had some strange idea that the more experience I had, the more money I'd make, no matter what my title was... but I've hit the wall.
There are some who are good at managing people and projects, and some, like me, who just like the CRAFT of it all, and not the overly-serious nature of the responsibilities one takes on in a management role.
Do you have any opinions on that to add here? Maybe I should Ask Slashdot myself? :-)
- Tim
I think there's actually an advantage in being a bit older than the average crowd. I'm not responsible for hiring, but I have to believe that experience and maturity play a huge part in whether or not you get a particular job. After all, once you've passed the minimal hiring criteria (i.e., BS in cs or whatever), the deciding factors will be your skill (however that gets tested in the interview process), and how well you fit in with the team/group/company. Just based on the assumption that people become more agreeable as they age, I'd say you'll be at a distinct advantage over younger, similarly-educated candidates.
"If you love it do it"
I dropped out of HS at 16, after more than a decade in labouring/factory jobs I went to university and graduated at 31 with a BSc with majors in CS and OR. I had a family at the time and still managed to make a few bucks driving cabs. I picked that course to get into the industry but I loved programming my AppleII well before I thought I could make money by programming.
I am now 50 and still "in demand". Not one year since graduating in 1991 have I failed to exceed the average national take home pay by a respectable margin.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
As someone else who interviews a lot of candidates, I agree with the parent. Age does not play a factor at all.
Age shouldn't matter at all in the hiring process, but I can understand why it can impact hiring decisions. Some people have a hard time having a much younger boss, which is likely for an older candidate being hired in this industry, especially an older candidate straight out of university.
Also, for those crazy dot com-type companies that like to work their employees to the bone, older employees are more likely to have real responsibilities (family, health issues, a life, etc.), and more of a backbone to stand up and not take the company's crap. Of course, when making such generalizations, you could also say that the young are foolish and irresponsible. :-)
I could not justify my existence if I were a turkey farmer. Would I terminate myself? Undoubtably, yes.
Outstanding advice. I went back ~35 after a career up until then in network engineering and information security, though I went back and picked up a finance degree. gw0ntum makes a valuable addition. You're going to find it awkward, especially when you have some profs your age or even younger. Some suggestions I'd make:
1. BE HUMBLE: even if you're an alpha, don't play one. set it aside and adopt an alternate persona. your classmates not only don't want to hear about your experience but they're ready to reject you if you show any signs of it. instead, humility is your friend. when you kick ass in assignments and show you're naturally good at some things, your younger classmates will likely respect you then for it. but always keep the humility as your persona. they're going to be intimidated by the age difference and when they find that 15-20 years of age difference really doesn't mean jack u-know-what, they'll be cool with you.
2. HANDLE PROFS CAREFULLY: show your creativity, innovativness, eagerness, etc. by DOING, not by saying. this screws so many nontraditional students up. yes, its important to let the prof know you're eager to learn/succeed. but do it by doing, not by showing off. understand that you're an outlier, so every subtle action you make in the classroom will have 10x the effect. this pisses off your classmates and makes your prof uncomfortable.
3. FIND YOUR PERSONA AND STICK TO IT: my dad's long-time faculty at a university that has a good amount of nontraditional students. i've learned that even the faculty has stereotypes of the nontrads. eager beavers (over-eager volunteer for everything desperate to show their worth low self esteem types), suck-ups (total poseurs that will flunk out but will suck up at first and try to play the 'hey prof, i'm a grown-up like you, give me preference'), one-class-ponys (typically 60+ gals who take one class and blow the damn curve cuz they have no freaking life outside of that one class), over-committers (usually the nontrads who have just come back to academic world and are so clingy and over-committing trying to prove their worth to self and prof), and dominators (nontrads that want to give input to everything, dominate the discussion, share their "worldly" experience on everything and embarrass everyone in the room except themselves). Those are not good choices. Find something subtle, quiet and driven. Sit in the front row, kick ass and let your work show your drive. Let the prof call you out because you get stuff right. They will balance the dialog and keep you from being seen as a show-off - hey, when your work is good, that's the game.
4. FRIENDSHIPS: Be open, kind and friendly to all. I ended up with friends spanning the total range - from girl jocks to geeks to poet-thinkers to hard core achievers. All I had to do was smile, be relaxed, be damn good, and be a team player.
It's a weird situation but if you handle it right, it'll be very rewarding, and that degree does open up tons of doors. Good luck!
You should notch up your perspective. The older generation is not 35 or 37 -- those ages are not old. The generation that did not grow up with computers are 50+ and older. I was active as developer and project lead/manager in Silicon Valley until I was almost 64. Got laid off in 2003 and had to fight for a job in a very gloomy market. Starting in 2004 I worked for 2 years with a startup company where my colleagues were younger than my children, typically. I loved it! What gets to me occasionally is colleagues telling tales about how technically inept their parents are, and painting that generation with a broad brush of ridicule. I have to agree that I am a bit unusual at my age with such technical skills, and I like it.
Which is where a company like Google that appears to take very little account of actual experience over geeky quizzes looses out. They can't package up a standard procedure to evaluating experience so they tend to largely leave it out of their recruitment process.
ecent research actually shows that some people's mental faculties begin to decline as early in life as the 20's.
There - fixed that for you.
The truth is a lot simpler - most people put their brains in neutral after they get out of school.
The brain is like any other tissue - use it or it atrophies. Even BONE will leach its' calcium if it's not subjected to regular stress from such ordinary things as walking around.
The average person doesn't read books any more. They get their information from the echo chamber of the internet - in short, ephemeral snippets that register on the eyeballs but not the brain, because 2 seconds later, they're onto the next "oh shiny!"
Then thare are those people for which life is a continuous learning experience - not just because we have to keep learning to stay current, but because our curiosity leads us to continue learning, continue integrating new facts and attitudes into our knowledge of ourselves and the world around us. BTW - there are also studies that show that most "genius" is probably the result of a combination of that curiosity, plus persistence.
You can have my cognitive abilities when you pry them from my cold, dead brain!
When the ball goes under the coffee table, and the kid goes under to get it - you know exactly what is going to happen next. The kid is going to stand up, full speed, and bang the hell out of his head on the underside of the table.
I spotted my 2-yr old do this the other day, hard but not so hard as to provoke screaming. He spent the next minute carefully proving that it was hitting his head on the table that had caused the pain, and then hitting it again a couple of times very gently and then a bit harder to see when it hurt. I was astounded at the level of reasoning going on as he worked out what had happened to his head and how it had been caused.
Help children born unable to swallow - www.tofs.org.uk
I'll just add a little here as someone who has interviewed a lot of people for Net Admin jobs in the past few years.
For us, a huge missing factor on the younger applicants is, quite simply, maturity. The advantage older applicants have on this front can't be overstated.
Kids have a tendency to engage in "guerrilla maintenance" as we call it here. Just reboot it and see if it comes back up without considering if doing so will take down production.
Kids also have a tendency to not see the bigger picture of how IT fits into the rest of the company. You have to box them in with ITIL processes to keep them from doing dumb things.
Kids also are also not very good at leadership situations in dealing with others.
Those are just the disadvantages the question poster might use to his advantage. It isn't always true (I've got a 25 year old on my team that has broken all the above descriptions, although he was a student of mine some years ago :))
I'm sure someone else will post all the disadvantages you face as being older, and the advantages of being younger. Read them and consider them in how you will minimize them when looking for a job and working it once you've got it. Although the biggest disadvantage I've seen on older applicants that come into the industry late is low expectations of themselves and their career. Shoot for the stars, not the mud.
As a Programmer, thats programmer with a big P. I just finished working on a project with some 20's programmers. Their current framework and opensource knowledge is high. But several things having to do with experience came out. One was they said that I was the only person that they had ever heard that did not want to immediately work with the absolute lastest version of the framework we were dealing with. Having worked for a Bank for decades and knowing the price a framework shift can cost in unintended consiquences I just had to shake my head. One also used a Set class where a List was called for because it solved some obscure exception problem that we had not experienced. I tried to let him know that using the wrong data type would give him headaches down the road. He also would spend days looking for ways of getting the framework to do what he wanted when a half day of actual programming would do the same.
So in a world that filters on buzz words and technologies, what is lost is that fundemental activity of programming, which is an art, which is honed from experience, exposure and practice. You can tell the difference between a journeyman plumber and a master plumber. The master plumber walks in, looks at the problem, walks out to his van and brings back just what he needs and fixes the problem. He also know 10 ways to fix the problem and chooses what he thinks is most appropriate and all that in just a few seconds. Its the same with older (good) programmers. What they (hopefully I am in that class) do is subtle and efficient, like good engineering hidden from view, but just plain works, looking too simple and obvious to suggest that only one with long experience could have plopped that code down as naturally as they did.
As to the degree, that represents a condensed exposure to envirionments, techniques and approaches to thinking and solving problems that can be invaluable (if you pay attention).