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Tech's Dark Secret, It's All About Age
theodp writes "Universities really should tell engineering students what to expect in the long term and how to manage their technical careers. Citing ex-Microsoft CTO David Vaskevitch's belief that younger workers have more energy and are sometimes more creative, Wadwha warns that reports of ageism's death have been greatly exaggerated. While encouraging managers to consider the value of the experience older techies bring, Wadwha also offers some get-real advice to those whose hair is beginning to grey: 1) Move up the ladder into management, architecture, or design; switch to sales or product management; jump ship and become an entrepreneur. 2) If you're going to stay in programming, realize that the deck is stacked against you, so be prepared to earn less as you gain experience. 3) Keep your skills current — to be coding for a living when you're 50, you'll need to be able to out-code the new kids on the block. Wadwha's piece strikes a chord with 50-something Dave Winer, who calls the rampant ageism 'really f***ed up,' adding that, 'It's probably the reason why we keep going around in the same loops over and over, because we chuck our experience, wholesale, every ten years or so.'"
Ditching experience would be unheard of in medicine, engineering, law, carpentry, pluming, construction, etc, etc, etc....
But only us have the balls to say that youth trumps experience, I wasn't aware kids were born with all computer science concepts from the get go.
How is it that a senior programmer ends up in sales?
Maybe we are not taken seriously because our professional low self esteem.
"Programming requires long nights staring blankly at mind-muddling objective languages."
Actually, no, it doesn't. I have never done this and never will. And yet I'm gainfully imployed as a programmer and my bosses (including the owners of the company) constantly tell me they value my contributions to the company.
"If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you." - DM
A while back, a friend of mine -- a very experienced software development manager -- was running a development team, and was planning to hire a developer who was in his early 40s. One of the team members openly objected to the candidate because of his age, saying something like, "How could he possibly be up to date on current technology or keep up with the rest of the team? He's so old!" My friend eventually hired him anyway, and the "old" developer turned out to be a superstar, one of the best on the team.
That was about eight years ago. The guy who raised the objection is now about the same age as the candidate he had wanted to reject. I wonder if he's facing the same kind of age discrimination, now that he's "so old."
Building Better Software
I wrote this last year on Stackoverflow. Still holds true this year. Edited slightly to remove reference to another post there.
I'm 49 and I'm a programmer.
Well actually I'm a DBA, IT consultant and Business Analyst too. But in my heart I'm a coder - and I think I'm getting better with age. And I make a nice living at it, thank you - but I put a lot of effort into setting myself up that way.
There has always been ageism in IT. I entered commercial IT relatively late in my mid-20 after being a research scientist (biological - but writing scientific code for analysis). When I went to move jobs at 28 looking for an Analyst/Programmer job one recruitment company told me I was 'too old'.
Ha. Since then I've done a rollercoaster so far as coding is concerned - followed the big corporate trail up though systems analyst to project manager by my mid-30s before deciding I really missed coding. Went to a small organisation as senior developer then morphed into DBA for 7 years - but started writing code at home which grew contacts and income until I started running my own consultancy a little over 10 years ago. I purposely don't grow larger because I don't want to spend my time managing other people, but I do have a large network of other consultants in complementary fields (graphics, management consultancy etc) I can collaborate with.
My clients are nearly all in the SME sector, most I talk to the boss directly and they no or limited development support inhouse. Age in this case is an advantage as experience with systems in business means that people trust me as I can both deliver software, and deliver the right software for the business context. There is something awfully satisfying about being able to go to a client and say 'you need to spend $10k on this hardware and software development to support this' and the client does it because they trust your abilities and the experience you bring to recommend that decision. It helps I'm a complete neophile too and I replace my skillset every 5 or 6 years - I'm currently moving to Python and .Net (and raving about Ironpython for desktop apps)
So I spend about 50% of my time writing code, 25% doing 'business IT consultancy' and 25% general purpose IT to support that - for instance several of the systems I've developed for my clients are web based - and I run the web servers to host them.
And lastly it's a great job for fitting with family life and commitments. I have my office in the house (large room, lots of computers and screens) and I work probably 10 hours a day, but it fits with family. I've been at home when my kids were small and when they've come back from school as they've grown older. I don't even have to be in one place - last week I had to see a client on site at the same city when my son is a student, so I go in, see my client at lunchtime, sit in Starbucks all afternoon coding on my laptop, then take him out for dinner. Perfect mix :-)
So ageism - phah. Ageism is only a problem if you associate with people who are ageist - and as a society we're growing older and many of those older people who do have work going are not going to be comfortable with giving it to youngsters. There's plenty of opportunity for older developers, but you have to play to the strength of the experience you've accumulated and adapt. If you don't learn new technologies and stay excited by what's happening then that's your problem, not ageism.
Myself I see myself coding until I drop. I'm actually looking forward to being more flexible as I get older - when all the kids have left home we've plans to equip a camper-van with all the tech I need and wander around europe nomadically for a year or three working remotely as needed.
Coding is the best occupation ever invented. Who on earth would want to give it up?
You caught grief on this but I have to back you up on this.
As SMART and EDUCATED as a 20 year old is, they are IGNORANT and INEXPERIENCED.
So over my life time, I went from "making 20 year old mistakes" to "making 30 year old with 10 years experience" mistakes to a point in my late 30's where with about 15-18 years of experience including a half dozen years of objected oriented experience and project management on top of a computer science degree (not a business degree with computer science) I finally knew a little bit. Not as much as consultants who worked on 3 major projects at three different companies a year had at 15 years but I didn't make the obvious mistakes due to ignorance and inexperience.
And about that time I started working on things developed by 20 year olds (because they were "cheap") which made all the old mistakes and were impossible to fix because the mistakes were embedded in the design.
I have nothing against bright 20 year olds managed/lead by an experienced senior coder/analyst/designer. That's a cost effective method for business that produces reasonable results. But you do not want the 20 year olds running the shop. And that's what happens when you start laying off and refusing to hire anyone over 45.
And think about what business gets out of it. Failed multi million dollar projects or "successful" but poorly performing or hard to maintain projects. And projects which reflect the utter lack of business expertise the young eager programmers bring to the table.
Meanwhile, the young eager programmers work incredible hours (10+ to 12+ or more) for 10 to 15 years, including weekends and holidays, and late night support calls, and then they get about 10 decent years, and then THEY get laid off and dumped.
Unbelievable.
Thank god I did follow the management path. They have all the coders working 10+ hour days and weekends right now for an emergency project which will get the upper managers big bonuses and the line workers maybe 10% (for working an extra 40% for a couple years). Will be very happy when the market tightens up again (which unfortunately means ageism since the boomers ahead of me have to frikkin retire). And I sympathize with the poor graduating 20 year olds- they are screwed. No jobs so no experience and a $40k college bill.
Hard times for all right now.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.