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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.'"
Anyone in the field who hasn't figured this out yet needs to be let go. Programming requires long nights staring blankly at mind-muddling objective languages. Experienced directors/designers have the foresight to be able to properly direct all that youthful energy to the most worthwhile pursuits, rather than just letting them wander aimlessly through some other other geek's code.
When the foot seeks the place of the head, the line is crossed. Know your place. Keep your place. Be a shoe.
What is that? When I was younger I could code more, but I wouldn't say I coded better. Now I take my time and produce efficent, well documented, fully tested code - which functions 1000x better than my 'mass produced' code. Any *good* programmer programs well - not in volume.
Any 50+ year old programmer should be able to keep up with 25yo programmers, knowing how to program isn't just knowing the ins and outs of the hottest language - it is knowing HOW to program so that you can swap languages efficently. (Yes, there is time to learn differences in languages, etc) But anyone worth their salt can jump where needed and go.
Being said, if your first language was cold fusion and it is all you have done for the last 12 years, you may have a difficult time switching to C!
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.
If managers could pay people in their 50's what they people in their 20's, it wouldn't be an issue. As always, the bottom line is the only thing that really matters.
Apparently a sense of humor is the first thing that goes...
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 leave at 5PM because my experience has taught me how to avoid many of the problem new coders create for themselves. I get twice as much done in half the time compared to when I first started. Looking back at my first experiences as a programmer, I laugh at all the late nights spent working diligently to complete code only to find that I had checked in something inadvertently or forgotten to check something in that broke the build. This in turn wasted many other people time simple because I was too tired to think. The idea that technology has changed tremendously and older coders experience no longer applies is LOL. First the technology has primarily gotten smaller and faster. And coding techniques have improved in some ways but degraded in others. It all still ends up as binary in the end, something many of my younger colleagues don't deem to get which leads to some extremely sloppy techniques. These arguments are mainly bull similar to memes like out sourcing saves money (usually at the expense of time and quality).
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?
Im pretty sure the reasons corporations chuck people is because they can hire a young ones for 50 percent the cost of you old people. They look at small term gains vs. long term sustainable profits. If anything the young ones should be guided directly by you older guys, not slapped in some new formation. Really, its a management issue because they do not recognize other peoples skills but their own as valuable. Management is one of the worst disciplines taught at Universities. It generates a whole bunch of dilettantes that believe the "business degree" hype and think "Well, shit I can get a job making big bucks if I do an MBA and still not work very hard at learning anything difficult." I believe this is why its very important to phase out MBA managers in general and only hire someone like an Industrial Engineer or in this case an actual senior level programmer to do management in any kind of production be it software or physical products.
That brings me to an interesting point, / . is just "the ramblings of socially-inept, technology-literate news-mongers".