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Study Shows Programmers Get Better With Age

Posted by Soulskill on from the practice-makes-perfect dept.

mikejuk writes "It's a prejudice the young and old both share, but with opposite conclusions, of course. Young is best or old is best — most have an opinion. Now we have some interesting statistics ingeniously gathered and processed by Peter Knego, 'big data' style, that 'proves' older is better when it comes to programming, at least!"

3 of 352 comments (clear)

  1. Known this one for a long time... by Anrego · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Claims of agism always seemed funny to me in the context of programming (or really most industries).

    Someone with 25 years experience is far more employable than someone with 5 years because they... have more experience?

    It's not like the "olden days" where how many years of service you'd get out of someone mattered. Now people are lucky if they have the same job for 5 years. Manpower requirements fluctuate so much in today's industry that the days of "get a job out of school and stay there till you retire" are long gone.

    And there is value in young blood as well, but you really need a mixture of people out of university with new ideas and people with experience to make them work (or who understand why they won't). Even if a person loses touch with current technologies, it is worth having people around who have seen a lot of shit fail and know the warning signs.

    This of course assumes we arn't talking about someone who learns to program at the age of 40 or something.. then all bets are off I guess.

    A guy where I work is retiring in two months. We have known this for like a year and we are _still_ scrambling to get all the info out of his head (we maintain some very old systems... and he was around when they were _designed_). If I retired tomorrow no one would give a shit. "Just hire another c/c++/java guy with a little asm". Obviously this more more related to knowledge than skill.. but still.. that's value!

    Also.. interesting (yet pretty thin) way of getting the stats! And I can't be the only one who was pleasantly surprised not to find some huge 50 page report at the pointy end of that link.

    1. Re:Known this one for a long time... by TheGratefulNet · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Someone with 25 years experience is far more employable than someone with 5 years because they... have more experience?

      I'm 50 and have been coding (for a living) since about 20. I'm not up on the new maths but I think that counts for 30 yrs doing software.

      yet, I can't find a job right now. been looking more than I'd like to admit. I'm in the bay area, I have been a serious software (and now, self-taught hardware) geek, I've worked for a who's who of silicon valley. but I can't find jobs or offers and occasionally I'll find contract 'offers' but they are lowballs, below market rate and somewhat insulting. I've been in the bay area for nearly 20 years (started at DEC back in maynard before that). yet I can't find a job.

      so, you tell me. ageism? the onsite interviews I've gotton, most of the group members are all young (20's and 30's).

      one female member that I interviewed with actually, literally, said this "hmm, you've been 'everywhere'. and, wow, you've been working longer than I've been alive!" she was in her early 20's and so, yes, I have been programming longer than she has been breathing.

      I'm not getting offers and its even hard to get a phone interview.

      (just one datapoint, if you care)

      --

      --
      "It is now safe to switch off your computer."
  2. Bias/self-selecting sample by Manip · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Unfortunately the data might just prove that good programmers continue to older age while their less skilled kin get promoted out of it. I also hold the opinion that older programmers who were typically maths graduates are far more skilled than the younger "computer science" graduates (I include myself in the latter group).