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Age Bias In IT: the Reality Behind the Rumors
CWmike writes "Is high tech really that tough on older workers, or are they simply not pulling their weight in an industry that never stops innovating? Age bias: Some consider it IT's dirty little secret, or even IT's big open secret. Older workers have been hit harder by the recession. '[Age bias is] something that no [employer] talks about. But it's a reality in tech that if you're 45 years of age and still writing C code or Cobol code and making $150,000 a year, the likelihood is that you won't be employed very long,' says Vivek Wadhwa, who currently holds academic positions at several universities, including UC Berkeley, Duke and Harvard. Wadhwa's observation indicates that age bias is a simplistic label for a complicated set of factors that influence the job prospects for senior tech employees."
Or are they just not pulling their weight?
I am over 45 but I work for a company with a HQ in japan. The work environment is completely opposite when it comes to age. In our shop if a older guy speaks everyone just shuts the hell up and does what he says.
Where I work we would gladly hire a C programmer, of any age, if we could find one.
Do you mean not willing to work 100hr weeks for 30 hrs pay?
If you're making that much, you can retire early, so it all works out!
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
We would kill for more Cobol programmers. Many of our big iron people have retired and we need to replace them. None of the younger applicants have the experience that we need to maintain our mainframe systems... and they don't want to learn. These systems are not going away but the human resources are.
Especially since a lot of IT managers in their 20s are usually the ones who arn't so great at producing actual software so are slowly moving sideways into project management before they get found out and don't like being picked up on stupid technical decisions by someone old enough to be their dad. I speak from personal experience.
There is an age bias in IT, always has been. It is my observation that this engenders a younger, and therefore, less experienced staff who have no access to older people who have a lot to offer in terms of their experience and developed skills. And so one sees these younger developers struggle with issues that an elder would have a ready solution to. In the development shop I work in it constantly amazes and frustrates me to see the inexperience manifest itself in the functional code delivered. FRs and NFRs that I take for granted are missed completely, requiring a return to the codebase to implement later, if at all.
It is not a matter of pulling weight. More, it is a different weight that the elder will pull, and that is not measured in sheer volume of code, but in quality and the reduction not only in gaps and defects, but also improved long-term productivity. Intangibles in a project-led culture that IT has become, where the load is transferred to in-production where disproportionate levels of human support are required to keep systems and services running.
soon they will want a post doc for help desk Level 1 and then can you a few year later.
I would have though that anyone that is 45, making 150k and writing COBOL probably already developed most of the system they're working with and is in a pretty safe place until someone decides to drop SAP on top of everything.
Business is driven almost entirely by profit. If you're a highly paid person who has skills that aren't in the critical areas I'm at a loss for why any company should feel compelled to keep you on, regardless of your age. Knowing one or two languages, IMHO, is a suicide move. Besides, as one who helps technical and business folks achieve their goals, I don't want single-skilled people like programmers. Like it or not, I can get those a dime a dozen overseas. The needs for the organizations I've been with have been a mix of business process, design, and technical knowledge. Evolve or be unemployed. Or relocate. People bitching about there being no jobs often haven't explored relocation and there are jobs, just not in your locale perhaps.
In the midwest, a C code or Cobol code programmer makes about $80,000. The fact that you are making $150,000 a year could mean that your demographic is having trouble affording salaries which are nearly double to the adjacent timezone. When times are good then good talent is hard to find and when times are bad things get more competitive. I believe age bias does exist in some circumstances, but most of the time they are selecting the programmer with 20 years experience over the fresh graduate with no experience.
This is pretty much the way the world works now. Younger people are just pretty much happy to have jobs and are willing to work for less money. Anyone who is older just needs to learn to adapt to the 70-80 hour work weeks getting paid for 40. The reason many older people seem to be unemployed or laid off is they just have unrealistic expectations about what their "skills" will get them these days. Most places I have worked the older guys we hired just could not keep up with the pace of their younger counterparts and don't last long.
Age is a minor issue if you ask me. A larger issue is that you tend to hit a wall on compensation around your early 30's. Meaning, my experience is that around $130K consistantly is about the best you can do working for someone. Once you reach that barrier, the logical next step is to start building/marketing your own products/services. Personally, I am not a big fan of services because you have to keep your work performance at such a rate that burnout because a big issue. Also, being an older developer, the advantage you have over younger developers is that hopefully you have saved a good part of that high salary rather than blowing it on fast cars and houses so that it opens up options for you...
In short... As a developer, you need to either grow or dwindle. Some do not have the skills/desire to move forward. For those, the decline in wages and stagnation of performance is clearly going to be a problem over the long haul.
Older workers tend to have family responsibilities and are likely to spend more days working at home. They don't keep up with social networking, and are often (but not always) out of date with respect to gadgets.
OTOH they don't spend much time texting peers, updating their Facebook page and showing up haggard from painting the town. They don't waste time going down paths they learned long ago were unproductive, such as creating applications with a completely wrongheaded architecture.
From where I sit, the real problem is with tenured workers, those that have been with the firm for 10 years or more and (almost invariably falsely) think they created the place, and are entitled to special treatment. One of the advantages of youngsters is that they tend to move around a lot.
!
know why?
- I even didnt get an answer any more when saying how old I am
When I faked my age to 35 and still sent my list of features, they eagerly invited me for interviews
to withdraw with an: sorry we already filled the job
not saying: with someone cheaper!
I work as an interface between public and private sector IT. All the young and lower middle age guys work in the private sector. They move around a lot, pay varies wildly, do completely different jobs one to the next that require completely new skills(granted you must learn new skills in IT to even keep a job long term in most cases). Once they are over the hill, I see most of them move towards public sector IT jobs. Stable work, much lower new skill development required, steady pay, good bennies(you know, cuz you're old), and a pension plan so you can say you'll retire with 20 years in that pension at 70. Is it age bias as much as the natural progression of things when you see that kind of migration day in and day out? I don't think so. At some age you just get tired of all the learning, you get bad at remembering all those new things, or you just want to cruise out your final years. Employers like to make that decision for you before you do it to them, is all.
The problem with this industry (and not just this one in fact) is that while the industry never stops innovating, the individuals on the other hand hate innovation like nothing else. All of them? Of course not! Otherwise we wouldn't have any innovation. But most of ordinary workers do. And why do they hate it? Because it ultimately means they have to learn something new just when they finally got used to the old way of doing things. Do you find it surprising that most of the big things in computer science that we today take for granted, like the OOP, lambda calculus, or even high level languages needed about 20 years to get mainstream acceptance? It is roughly equivalent to a generation of programmers. If people refuse to constantly learn better ways of doing their job then the only real way to "learn" those things as a company is to hire new programmers for whom those new ways are just as natural as the relational model for you and me. It is not at all surprising that you won't find a lot of old and experienced programmers who can write high performance servers based on event loops, because not so long time ago we all thought that the only way to write servers was to use threads. Most of the people never change their opinions so if you want a programmer who understands how to write high performance servers then you will find it very difficult to hire someone below 40. The loom industry in the 1700s were also "age-biased" because the old people refused to learn how to use power looms. The history keeps repeating.
Karma: Positive (probably because of superiour intellect)
My experience with older workers is that they are slower in general when it comes to software. Slower to pick up newer technologies, slower to develop existing tech etc. HOWEVER... they are usually far more knowledgeable with technologies they are invested in. That's the tradeoff. If you are using a language that's been in place for years then the older coders are generally better a providing better quality with less revisions.
This changes with Hardware. The older worker tends to be much MUCH more valuable. The difference being that software developers get comfortable, where hardware changes so frequently they are forced to keep up with it, or lose their job. They are so well versed in the typical issues that hardware has, even down to the make of the hardware (Cisco switches have X problems typically... just do Y to fix it). It's a huge shift.
That's why older developers shift to project management, which doesn't change much over the years.
I think it greatly depends on your domain. If you're a C programmer with 20-25 or more years experience with operating systems you're eminently employable. Extremely so, in fact. If your experience is application software on the other hand, then you're almost certainly in trouble. However, since this is about IT and not technology companies I think the finger is squarely on the second group. C is probably on its way out of IT - as a systems programmer I think that makes a ton of sense, myself. It may never be out of the systems space though.
As for COBOL, I think he's flat out wrong. If you can program COBOL you'll have a job - programmers are retiring faster than the systems they maintain. And, no, it wouldn't make any sense for someone new in the field either, because chances are good they'd outlive the systems. I bet just about every COBOL shop is hiring.
This is all Matt Groening's fault. Before the "Abe Simpson" character debuted, older Americans were treated with respect in every industry, from modelling to aeronautics, as they are in every other nation in the world.
Gently reply
If I made $150k a year, I'd be on a boat, motherfucker.
"Is high tech really that tough on older workers, or are they simply not pulling their weight in an industry that never stops innovating?"
Problem often is that innovating and progress are different things. Yes, young inexperienced recent graduates will innovate and work hard on creating new concepts. Usually the new concept is an old concept the young techie is not familiar with and "re-invents the wheel". Usually the young techies are indeed hard working and push through what they made up. This may seem like being "innovative" and "productive" but the end result is that with young inexperienced gurus you get a lot of more unmaintainable mess. The statement "never stops innovating" is often unfortunately true but not a good thing.
Yeah, I think that that statement if you're still writing Cobol code the likelihood is that you won't be employed very long was just a quip-- the author of the article was trying to be funny, and that was the oldest language he could think of. I expect that the workers who can maintain Cobol probably aren't likely to be laid off without warning, because they can't be replaced by twenty-one-year-old coders who are willing to work for ramen noodles and a vague promise of a stake in some future IPO.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
Although I've been working for the same Co for 8 years that doesn't mean I don't shop around. In my case coding would be a relatively new thing for me--I have no practical job experience. The places I have applied (for coding jobs) are all looking for experience, it's a big impediment to not have 3-5 years of "this or that" under your belt. If you want to start in the field, you have to be prepared to earn college grad wage, which in my area is about $40K if you're lucky.
A few months ago I applied for what would essentially be my current job, but at a different company. I have several colleagues working there, so I had the inside scoop and knew exactly what the job was and what a candidate needed ... The interview process was extensive, multiple people over multiple days... they were critical of skills I didn't have, despite them not being listed as requirements on the job posting or even things that I would have to deal with as part of the job--since I knew exactly what the job entailed... and in the end they claimed that their top earners in these posts were making the same as my current salary (about $80K), so it was likely that if offered the job I would by lucky to get 75% of my current wage. It had nothing to do with age and everything to do with them wanting a bargain worker, someone with more skills than they need and willing to work for less then they ought to be paid. I have a feeling whether I was 30 or 60 wouldn't matter to them at all...
I see a ton of you wanting C jobs here in the US, and a place hiring said coders. Look no further than Wal-mart. They are basically begging for programmers with C knowledge for their Store Systems. Plenty of spots open there if you want to do C.
From my point of view, there are lots of embedded positions available.... most of them require C.
That said, even though the example in the article was a bit suspect, the point was valid. It is obvious, two people with the same skills, one making less, of course the lower paid person gets the job.
I work for a small IT consulting company. One of the owners is my age or a year older (I'm 44) and one is ten years younger.
One or two are 5 years younger but with similar life situations (married, working wife, young children) but most of them are late 20s, single and unmarried.
When you talk to these guys its almost like you have nothing in common outside of technology; several work events seemed really tailored towards this age group (ie, Christmas party held at Dave & Busters). I chose just not to go -- either I went without my wife, or we spent $50 on a babysitter to drive to a video game place I would probably amuse myself in but wouldn't seek out and where my wife would flat-out refuse to go.
I sometimes wonder if this kind of "age gap" isn't part of the problem -- younger tech managers want a "company spirit" and somehow find older workers uninterested in the video games, nerf guns and all the other frankly immature bullshit that passes for "employee engagement".
Hey old timers, if you're a US citizen and clearable, there's plenty of "work" for you in DoD contracting.
Want to be on the cutting edge of 1990s technology? Want to legitimately justify never doing anything? Afraid of new technology? Does the prospect of building a web app got you running scared? Enjoy being bogged down in process? Do you like the Kafka-eske labyrinth of OPSEC? Like being stuck on ancient platforms because of the specter (and paperwork) of "configuration management"? Do you enjoy doing activities like filling out justification forms more than you like design and programming? Do you look forward to having all of your ideas stymied? Is professional sclerosis appealing to you?
Then look no further! You can have all this and more by going to work for a big DoD contractor on a big multi-year contract.
You too can enjoy working in an environment where there are very few technical people under 30 years of age, and where everybody else is pretty much a loser.
I can't wait to get out of this f.cking job. I'd rather be broke and working for a startup. At least I'd be doing something constructive.
I've re-educated myself every few years, as needed from punched cards all the way to tablets. From Fortran all the way to C++, JS, CSS, etc. I've worked for the same company for 35 years, made it through over 20 layoffs. I think it is skill, training, work ethic, and yes, personality. I've moved to the tech ladder. I volunteer in the community and have a happy, close family life. Maybe, some of you should consider coming to the Hidden Silicon Vally, Oklahoma. Where the houses are reasonable, the taxes are lower, the recreation is abundant, the air clean. Our rush hour is from 5:00 to 5:05.
Never trust a man wearing a coat and tie!
Teach.
Maybe Vivek Wadhwa needs to get out of the class room and actually get a real job.
It has nothing to do with your age. If you have been working on a Domino Mail server for the last 10 years, Im sure as shit not going to hire you to manage my 2010 Exchange cluster. If you have been writing C or COBAL for the last 10 years , why would i hire you to do my .NET programming?
it all boils down to "Do you have experience in ____________" if you reply NO, then your skills are not needed.
and BTW, just hired a 50+ year old DBA, who has all the UPDATED skills we are looking for. Didn't think twice about age.
I'm over 45, and lost a 6 figure job in 2008 along with many others when our company folded. I've held two jobs since then, and still get rave performance reviews, but only make 50% of my former salary (much less if you consider bonuses. While I have a few hundred K in retirement plans, I am unable to contribute more (unless I sell my house at a loss and maybe lose a few kids) and may never be able to. I expect to be working until I die and I wonder at what point will I not be able to get another IT job.
Can't say that I didn't see this coming though.... Hard times ahead for all of us I think.
I'm trying to see where the age discrimination plays a part here. They are saying "If you are over 45 and still writing in C or Cobol" your job is at risk? What does age have to do with this at all? Is the over 45 even worth mentioning besides for shock value? Let me rephrase it, "If you haven't kept up with modern technology and aren't willing to adapt to the companies new needs, but still want to be paid the same 145K salary you started with, your job might be at risk". I know every story sells more when they call it discrimination, but this dosn't sound like it. Discrimination is 2 candidates apply for the same job, and the company hires the one that has less of the needed skills, based on a different factor (age/gender/race). At least from what I am gathering, they are saying "a company would like to hire someone for 60k that will know the latest technology over someone who wants 140k and does not know what he needs for the job. How is this discrimination? That is like calling it sexism when a company will hire a man who has 5 years experience in C++, Java and SQL will likely be chosen over a woman who knows Microsoft Excel for a senior programing position. You aren't doomed if you are older, you have to study and keep up with modern languages. News at 11, technology moves fast, to work in technology you have to keep up with it or be replaced.
FTA:
In the course of every project, it will become necessary to shoot the scientists and begin production.
When I got my first "real" development position the age of death was about 40. That was late 90s. Now it's 50-55? Seems there is an improvement.
The first thing in a technical interview is the evaluation of whether you know your stuff...
I now have 18 years of professional experience strictly in C++. I know it inside and out. I can't tell you how many interviews I've been on which I was asked why you wouldn't want any virtual functions in a class. Most answer, "because you don't need any." The real answer is in the event you are concerned for space you don't want the overhead of the vptr. Now what's the diff of a vptr and vtable? I've been told over and over again by the interviewers nobody gets either of those right.
Why exceptions? if you cannot give more than 5 good reasons then you're not going to make it.
Why not exceptions? If you cannot answer it then you're not going to make it!
Why is inline good? Why is it bad? explain both!
What's the difference between a stl list and an intrusive list implemented by Boost?
C++0x now C++11... What's an rvalue reference and how can it help with the dynamic resizing of a vector?
When should you use a map vs a hash map... Ahhh... now it's science not the language. Can't answer that when you are getting up there in age... they are not interested.
Multi-threading... What are the different types of locking? Explain them! What's an atomic operation? Lockless sync?
The second thing is how flexible you are. Your age is going to make them sensitive towards that. They will find things you don't know and judge your response. I've found "I don't know but this is my guess and this is how I would discover the real answer." The guess tells them how well you can extrapolate which is incredibly important in software development (i.e. gleaning relevant information from poorly written docs, which NEVER happens!) The second tells them that you are used to finding new things and utilizing them.
The third thing is your energy level and excitement. If you're an old goat you're going to cause problems. If they see the sparkle in your eye as you solve the problems they put before you then they won't see your age.
It all comes down to perception of reality. If in reality you are "old" then it is up to you to make them see young. If you are young then you are lucky, they are going to see young.
If at first you don't succeed, skydiving is not for you.
So, a number of salary surveys have shown that engineers hit their peak salary around the age of 45-55, but it then declines. This is quite the opposite of very many fields - lawyers, doctors, etc can work until they are 70.
My son is planning to major in math and just take a minor in computer science, then work as a data analyst. What do you think?
UK companies do the vast majority of their recruitment through employment agencies - usually specialist ones where at least one of the staff can at least spell 'C' (though none can spell 'Perl'), even though none of them actually know what it is.
That allows the employers to keep their hands clean, disavowing an knowledge of the dirty practices that the agencies use every day: lying to candidates, fabricating vacancies (bait and switch), age/gender/race/disability discrimination and salary "negotiations" (see lying to candidates) all on the basis of "we don't think you'd fit in" or "that vacancy's been filled".
If you do leave your age off your CV, or "mistype" it down by 10 or 15 years, you'll get interviews but no offers on the basis that you lied on your application. If you put in a tru age of 40+ you won't even get an acknowledgement email - and if you phone up, you'll be fobbed off.
The agencies act as the gatekeeper. Most companies won't recruit directly and agencies come and go with such fleeting regularity that you can't nail a complaint to them - just like cowboy builders go bankrupt every few years to avoid liability for shoddy work - though oddly, they always seem to employ the same names and "type" of staff.
To see if there is an age bias, just look at the profile of the current employees. Although software development / support / design has been mainstream since the early 80's, few of the technical staff in any major organisation are over 35. That can't possibly be because all the older ones have been promoted (they haven't, the age of the supervisors is similar). it's simply that the staff who did start out in the 80's or 90's have largely been tossed on the scrapheap, or somehow don't meet the "fit in" criteria for vacancies.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
The discussions seem to be pretty biased towards coding. In the sysadmin side of things, I don't tend to see a ton of age bias. Where I do see it is where you get 50-somethings who are applying to be sysadmins, but because they moved career's 5 or 10 years ago from something completely different. But otherwise, a late-40's or 50's sysadmin is usually in a pretty senior position, because they usually have a lot of root experience. I see a TON of older people when I do various training courses. They're excellent teachers simply because they have so much experience and can bring so much depth to the course. But I'm not a coder, so I can't comment to the coding side of things.
But it's a reality in tech that if you're 45 years of age and still writing C code or Cobol code and making $150,000.
It is basic business, if you know C (or pick your language) and are just a programmer and well "experienced" making 150K, a company looks at your as an expensive asset. You may think you have 20 years of experience and add value, but chances are you really have 5 years of experience 4 times over. The company will just replace you with a 5 year experienced programmer or new-grad and pay them half your salary.
You need to be more than just a good programmer these days to stay in the top-earning spots. You need to constantly evolve and gain experience and never rest on your laurels. It isn't an age thing, it's a laziness/comfort thing. It's becoming more of a youth-entitlement thing, but in the end the result is the same. You stop moving forward in your contributions and expect to have your salary keep moving forward. Companies know this and weed these people out.
I have seen several types of IT people in my experience.
- At my first job the oldest guy was almost 50. But he hadn't learned anything new in the last 25 years, and was still operating like it was 1985. This guy would have a problem finding another job.
- At my current job I have a colleague who's 68, near retirement, but just learned Python. He's an expert in certain fields, and keeps up-to-date on programming techniques. I highly respect him, and would rather work with him than the almost 50 year old from my first job.
- Another guy of about 50 has basically moved out of programming and now is system admin as he couldn't keep up.
- Another guy of about 60 is very skilled in C++ and moderately in Java and Python. His code is of very high quality, even baffles big name vendors (we do cooperate with some).
- Some also have the skills to move to management positions, but not every programmer has the mindset for that.
So overall it's a mixed bag, but I find that those who are willing to keep learning and stay on top of their game, are valued employees. This is a two way process, the employer should also invest in their employees. But then an older programmer can be a vary valuable asset, given their experience. Especially because as long as you avoid RSI problems, they can stay highly productive well past the age of 70. (yes we have a officially retired guy here who still contributes).
Sure there are still a few places where they value a C, FORTRAN or COBOL programmer, but in most places it's C++, C# or Java, with some PHP, SQL and Python mixed in. If you keep updating your skill set, I think you can find employment even as an older programmer. Isaac Asimov told me to never stop learning new things. I think he was right.
RogerWilco the Adventurous Janitor
So how many of software people end up starting their own companies and developing their own lines of products or doing projects (and end up hiring more people as well)?
You can't handle the truth.
Except for those just starting out with no experience, this is true in all industries.
If you're a company trying to tighten your belt in a recession, you are not going to lay off the people with enough experience to do the job, who are young enough to be ambitious and energetic, and who have relatively lower salaries. You are going to lay off those who are older and slower (let's face it, once you get into your 40's, and especially beyond them, you slow down), who have a lot of knowledge and experience (the bosses always figure they have the greater knowledge and experience, anyway), but who are larger compensation relative to the less experienced.
When I was laid off my (non-IT) job at the height of the recession, a couple of the vice presidents semi-joked that all that would be left of the company would be the partners and young kids, none of them particularly good at doing the day-to-day work.
I'm turning 50 this year. Have a good full time job and more side work than I can do. But I have an advantage, I didn't go to college so I never got a piece of paper saying I am an engineer, I have to prove it everyday! I learned C from the K & R book, then C++ as it came along. I learned Java in 96 or 97. PHP around 2003. Learning Scala these days. I can administer networks databases, and, servers of most types (I know several dead operating systems and languages). Because I never stop learning and I never refuse to do something just because I don't know how. I just say up front, I don't know that API, it will take a little longer. I love to do the things I don't know. Plus I don't live in a world that has a cleanly defined line between management and contributor. I have moved back and forth many times. I currently have a VP title in a smaller company, but spend most of my time writing java code, and when something like a DNS record needs to be changed or a new router needs to be configured, I just do it. I used to have to find the manuals, now I can pull it up on my phone. No excuses. Flexibility is what it takes to keep your career going as you get older. I have worked for big industry players as both an engineer and as a manager. Those companies don't always last and neither does any single technology, the only constant is change. If you don't love change, get out of this business.
"I was gratified to be able to answer promptly. I said I don't know." Mark Twain
For $150k a year, it goes pretty damn far in the real world. I could retire at 50.
Then again, unlike people making $150k, I don't own a $750k house with a balloon payment that doubled the mortgage. If that's the real world, then I guess all the "Insightful" mods are in foreclosure on taking on bad mortgage loans.
However, in my fantasy world, my mortgage is easily maintainable with a household income of just $70k a year. And in that world, $150k would pay the house off in 10 years, and bank a 401k in half the time for only one working adult in that house, with both able to retire at 45 or 50.
If reality only encompasses the Bay Area, you might have a point, supposing that "fantasy" is the rest of us, or the 50% of the world that lives on less than $2 a day. Haha, silly fantasy world, nobody really lives on less than $150k a year, right?
I8-D
I'm going to take a wild guess and say that it probably has a lot more to do with the $150,000 a year salary versus the age. It has been a trend for a long time now that companies are cutting salaries and benefits of employees to reduce overhead costs and improve the bottom line/profit. If a company can bring in one of the millions of unemployed Americans to code C, COBOL, or your language of choice for less money, you bet they are going to do it. It doesn't take a professor affiliated with multiple universities to figure that one out...
...then I guess we are screwed.
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
What, I can't wear my Dr.Who T-shirt?!
Do I need to get a shirt for some current hip-hop guy.
I once had a job where I was the last technical person on staff, and it was heartbreaking to watch all my friends (100+) get the red-slip one by one, just because the Government signed a newer followup contract, closed the old one, and hadn't done the necessary expenditure justifications under the new contract. So many lives ruined by a single Government signature on one single piece of paper. It's sad, what simple economics can force corporate management do.
As someone who is a couple years away from the black balloons I'd like to add, fitting in. I've had two situations where I went on interviews to meet the team. They were all in their early twenties with the exception of one. The exceptions wasn't old enough to drink. Technology has an "in" crowed. If your significantly older than the group they will not feel comfortable with you. You have to communicate with the people you work with. Age is a huge factor with the way you communicate. Take the three, brief and narrow, examples of how different generations communicate below. Hopefully, they will help you see the barrier I'm referring to.
The first where all about the hardware. They knew the Heathkit catalog like their calendar. For some, I'd go as far as to say, "it was their calendar." These/we folks communicated on BBS's and Gopher. Email and Newsgroups were new and cool. If you knew how to use them, and talked about MIPS and registers, DMA and IRQs, and the latest bus and memory technology, you were "in".
The second generation were mad gamers. They might not have known hardware outside of what processor or graphics cards were the best for gaming but they could build an IPX, and eventually IP, network in a heart beat. BBS's and Newsgroups where old and grubby things of the past. BB wha? Goph who? ICQ, IRC, and multiplayer games where/are their method of communication. If you could network and game you were "in".
The third generation could care less about the hardware. The amount of storage on a device or if it is capable of performing a multimedia function is as deep as they go in that direction. They are all about the communication. I'd go as far as saying, "they are one with communication." A device's technical stats are interpreted by how does it fit in with my music, movies, friendship network. You know your "in" with this crowed because they will have "friended" you.
Having to work for a living is the root of all evil.
I hire people based on their real abilities and attitudes.
Anything that's related to appearance is definitely useless.
All that happens because it's very rare to find people that's really able to understand abilities and real meat.
Sent as ripples into the electromagnetic field. No single photon has been harmed in the process.
Put your hair in a pony tail and wear a tie-dye t-shirt to your next interview. If you can't beat 'em, join 'em!
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
The problem is that code isn't worth $150K / year in most places. If you're 45+ and expect to get paid that without taking a management post then you had better be working in an industry where experience and lack of mistakes are greatly favored over cost to implement. There aren't many of those industries. If you're 60 and willing to write code at the same cost as those with less experience I'd gladly hire you tomorrow but at 3x the cost mistakes have to be so costly to justify the extra experience. Those jobs do exist (flight control software, medical scanner embedded software, etc.) but they are not common place. If I can't leverage your experience to a material scale due to the constraints of the job then why should I pay for it?
Tell your son to major in math and minor in finance. Much better combination.
Just because I can hook a shark from a boat, I do no offer to wrestle it in the water.
COBOL today is a niche mainframe glue language, not a general purpose language. If you know only COBOL, you'll be out of work. If you know CICS, DB2, IMS, etc and know how to glue them together with COBOL, you'll be in demand.
COBOL is a horrible old language, but there is a professional subset of COBOL that people use, who actually have to program in it. They bypass the weird quirks, use standards to minimize the other quirks, and have a set of best-practices. Unfortunately, no one teaches this COBOL that I know of.
I think this gap is the difference . No one wants a COBOL programmer, they want people who know how to use the industry standard glue language to write business applications.
If he wants to stay in academia, great, if he wants to get into the software industry, he better take that math VERY seriously to work in the algorithm portions of software: compression or crypto, and sometimes data mining. If his math isn't up to snuff to really wrestle with those things, it will be unlikely his software skills will be at the ready for serious industry work without more significant post-grad industry experience vs that of a CS major. Though from interviews I've done, pure CS doesn't mean you know much more than syntax these days.. but maybe that depends on the particular school you go to.
I guess one thing I would say as well is, anyone who can wrap their head around pointers and recursion and make the step past those concepts, then they are among the rare few who truly belong doing software work and should go CS all the way.
It's not that they don't want to hire older workers. It's that older workers don't want to take a job at the new wage levels that are popping up all over. Younger people, just out of school, are happy to take anything. Finding out that your $150k job now pays $60k sucks, but it's the new reality for lots of people.
I don't think it's purely age-related. I'm 41, and in high demand for my coding role.
Conversely, I work with a guy who is just a few years older than me and is likely on his way out of this industry. Differences? He's *completely* unwilling to learn anything new; I joined this firm in part to help them modernize their web stack -- ColdFusion -- and promptly recommended Rails (which I hadn't worked with previously) and learned enough to do functional Rails coding in a couple of weeks. This other guy, however, has been whining about having to learn something new, asking why ColdFusion isn't good enough (the answer to that question is too long to begin!) and saying he doesn't want to have to "learn Linux" (he's an old Microsoft guy; we're in the Pac. NW)
Couple his utter unwillingness to learn and keep up with technology with the fact that his family is always the reason he can't work late and sometimes is out of work, and I could see passing him over at hiring time. I stay current, or at least try to, love to learn new things, and don't have a family that I'm beholden to (not that there's anything wrong with having a family, but come on-- if you're picking between two employees, one with a family asking him to leave work early and take little Missy to the dentist, and one without, all else being equal, who are YOU going to hire?)
So I could definitely see some age discrimination going on, but also... it's complicated.
The sickness of American companies. Middle management composed mostly of feather merchants. If you do not fit into their feathery kingdom, out you go.
Who rights great code that does not have to be rewritten and debuged 5 times when
you can hire 3 employees who write sloppy crappy code that needs a quite few
rewrites and 30 hours to debug to be usable? Managers and HR people have their
heads up their asses.
This is so much horse hockey. I’m a 44 year old software architect and have no trouble make a 6 figure salary. As a consultant I change the company I’m working for regularly and don’t see any age bias. What I do see is a work environment that many over 40 workers do not like.
1) It is a learning business. The day you are not willing to learn the newest technology or language you are going to lose your job. Many over 40 workers get complacent and stop learning.
2) You must earn your salary. You can’t work as a programmer and expect 10% raises every year if you are not adding value. If you have been promoted to senior developer because you’ve been there that long but, can’t really do the job you are likely to be laid off.
3) Most new developers are crap. They might know the language but, they don’t have real world experience building applications that meet requirements, scale, are well documented and engineered for change. Older developers that have learned the hard lessons and can demonstrate that experience are well compensated.
I’ve seen lots of people young and old fired from this business. Mostly because for some reason people believe that just anybody can pick up a book and be a developer in 21 days. If you aren’t adding value commiserate with your salary you should not be making your salary and that is true for the young and old in every job.
No sigs in BETA. Beta SUCKS.
Yes, bad programmers are bad, but let's consider the more numerous average programmers who have no intuitive sense of objects and their code reflects that fact. A good C++ program can be a thing of beauty, but the average C++ code is not - and the complexities of C++ make it darn hard to maintain the large quantity of average C++ code. Average programmers also produce average code in other languages, but at least, with the simpler languages like C, you have more than a snowball's chance in heck of figuring out what the code does. Design patterns are great, but, in my experience are unknown outside a very few of the elite programmers. And then you get average maintenance programmers trying to make sense out of some elite programmer's design-pattern-based code. (Of course, as Lispers like to point out, the common design patterns are used to overcome shortcomings in languages like C++ and Java.)
So in the city I live in, there's a reverse age bias.
Basically, sometime in the 80's most of the companies stopped investing in software development, and instead accepted the party line from IBM and kept increasing the capacity of the SYS-370 systems. The distributed computing age came and went, and many of them totally missed it. Now they're trying to fix the problem, before all those folks who were hired in the 70's and early 80's retire (not much turnover in many of these brick and mortar {read track and dollar} companies).
So what you have is a huge gap, caused by entry level job descriptions that require 5 to 10 years of experience. There's very few Gen-X software developers, and a bunch of Boomers and a handful of Millennials hired as interns. So banking, insurance, railroad and distribution industries here are trying to make the move from monolithic systems to distributed ones, and their experience lies in PHP and SYS-370 assembler.
Makes it kinda tough to push an OO architecture. But, heck they're too hard to understand anyway.
Then you're a good manager.
A good manager finds a way to motivate each worker to do his or her best in a position well suited to that worker's intellect, personality and abilities.
A bad manager blames workers for being incapable of doing work they should never have been assigned, and eventually creates a resentful, unmotivated work force where everyone is "looking out for number one" and nobody is trying to be part of a collective win.
I don't understand why the article keeps quoting Vivek Wadhwa and his demeaning generalizations.
"...if you're 45 years of age and still writing C code or Cobol code and making $150,000 a year, the likelihood is that you won't be employed very long,"
""If you can hire someone fresh out of college for $60,000 who is likely to know the latest technology, or you can hire someone 45 years old who's making $140,000, who are you going to hire? "
In my dreams would I make $60k, never mind $140k. And do I have stale skills? Nah. PHP, javascript, C# (ugh). How many of you have programmed PCL systems with ladder logic? I went into a job where some younger people had gotten a system up and running (nice work guys!), but I was aghast when I saw the code. And I had never even seen ladder code or PLC systems before.
An guess who it was that got laid off?
Best regards.
In the US HQ we have 8 application developers, 5 on the BI team, 10 on the AS/400 and SAP, 3 more in business engagement, a pair on Knowledge Management solutions, and 3 primary managers.
I think 2 of the people in that group are under the age of 30, and close to 50% are over the age of 45.
If agism is a problem in IT, it's not here. And it's not that we hire older people over younger people, a fair number of the folks here have been here since they were in their 20's, and in the last 3 months we hired a guy in his 50's and a 24 year old kid.
-Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
I am hiring people regularly. What I find is that hereabouts (Norway) is that about 20% of people fresh from school want to get out of programming. Once people reach 40, the figure is more on the order of 95%.
I would expect that this is affecting the people who hire, too. If a greybeard comes along, they will be wondering how long he will be content being a programmer.
if you're 45 years of age and still writing C code or Cobol code and making $150,000 a year, the likelihood is that you won't be employed very long,' says Vivek Wadhwa, who currently holds academic positions at several universities, including UC Berkeley, Duke and Harvard.
The fact that this dipshit conflates C and Cobol, pretty much invalidates everything he can say on the subject.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
If you are 45+, been coding all of your professional life and you don't have a personal network of individuals that you have worked with before who would be willing and able to help you get a job at their company, then maybe the universe is trying to tell you something.
Don't get me wrong. Being older and looking for a CS job is something I don't look forward to (I've never been unemployed -- yet). I'm 37 and the kicker is that I also have no degree. How many companies are going to consider me when I'm 45+? How many would consider me today if I were 25? Very, very few, except for the ones that employ (or have employed) individuals who I have worked with in the past that would be willing to vouch for me, push my resume under their manager's doors and stake their reputations on my abilities.
Stupider like a fox! - H.S.
Posting AC since some people I worked for read /.
I'm 55. I've been programming 30 years and think I still have a bunch of good years left in me. I was unemployed for TWO YEARS and only recently found a fantastic company that I hope to stay with for a long time. I don't code in C, but have been around some pretty old programming languages (how many of you have heard of PICK or Universe?). But I also write in Python, Perl, and dabble in Unix/Linux.
During my two years out I had headhunters looking for me, went to lots of interviews and I rarely got to the point of "So tell me about yourself." They probably decided I would not fit in their cubbyhole by the breadth of my resume. As has been mentioned in similar articles on Slashdot, the strength of we "Older Guys" is that we have a lot of experience and are willing to pass it on to others. We are willing to tackle new problems, but have a pretty good idea of what NOT to do. And, those of us who are good, got to be this way by:
1) Liking to solve problems
2) Liking to learn new techniques
One concrete example of age discrimination happened during my two year "forced vacation". I did work for a little over a month for a younger fellow who had his own business. Yes, he was the boss. Yes, I had things to learn about the company. And yes, I am willing to admit when I am wrong about something. But he was a jerk and talked down to his few employees like they were children and would not listen to other people's ideas. I called him on his BS, and his disrespectful attitude of ALL of us. He fired me, fought my unemployment and made defamatory claims to a labor judge who subsequently found in my favor.
I am an older programmer and I like what I do. I like working WITH other people. I do not want to MANAGE other people. I also do not put up with CRAP. I want to solve computer problems and not deal with petty BS.
DO: Die your hair, shave your face, dress in "current" fashion, listen to "modern" music.
DON'T: talk about things that obviously date you, expect those younger than you to "respect" you automatically, think that you can get by on what you've already done.
Keep in mind that things that no longer grow are functionally... if not literally... dead; so don't stop learning and growing your skills base. And finally, quit thinking that society owes you anything. If you aren't willing to offer what they are buying, then don't expect them to buy what your selling.
- Captain Obvious
When those around you are loosing their heads while you are keeping yours, maybe you've misunderstood the situatiuation.
I agree with jaxent
I would look at it like in all those years in IT and 45 years of age have never learned new skills?.. I mean you have to keep up with the times-
if all you can do is write Cobol then I would say WTF??
If you do leave your age off your CV, or "mistype" it down by 10 or 15 years, you'll get interviews but no offers on the basis that you lied on your application. If you put in a tru age of 40+ you won't even get an acknowledgement email - and if you phone up, you'll be fobbed off.
It may different in the UK, but in the US you should absolutely not put your age in your CV (unless you are a baby auditioning for diaper commercials).
Only list positions from the last 15 or so years, not every job you've ever held. If you did relevant work in those older positions, you can have a "skills" section that isn't tied to an employer or time period.
For education, list school and concentration, but not graduating year.
And don't lie. Especially about something like your age. The UK may be different, but in the US at some point you will have give your employer your date of birth, even if it's just on your ID establishing you can legally work in the US.
I'm currently working in the field - in particular with a group of people from India. I have also worked with numerous Indians in the past. I *HAVE* seen Indian groups give preference to other indians. It wasn't uncommon at all with the major recruiting jobs competing for jobs. (Sidenote: that's starting to change - they used to not care which Inidian group got the contract as long as one of them did....but this recession is hitting everyone) I've worked with Indians who, frankly, knew way more than me. I've worked with ones that didn't know how to restart a deamon in RedHat. (And have been lectured about deamons from the same individual - sigh)
If you do leave your age off your CV, or "mistype" it down by 10 or 15 years, you'll get interviews but no offers on the basis that you lied on your application. If you put in a tru age of 40+ you won't even get an acknowledgement email - and if you phone up, you'll be fobbed off.
And I just want to add, Yes! That's the way to fight age discrimination--by portraying yourself as a dottering old fool who doesn't know how to proof read, is too stubborn to have someone else review his CV, and doesn't realize he isn't 29 (or even 39) any more.
Not sure I buy this. Who are the folks earning $150k to write C code? If they're writing, say, a trading platform designed to do microsecond-level financial transactions for a big trading house...then I don't see them getting canned.
As a sysadmin, in most of the places I've worked, particularly in the larger organizations that have been around for a while, the ages of the employees have been about the same: there are some younger ones, some older ones and a bunch in between. The young ones get paid less, while the old ones tend to have a better idea of how the organization works overall. Therefore, management will try to get rid of, or avoid, the older ones when they can simply because they are more expensive, but not that much more valuable. That's one way to look at it.
There's also another way to look at employees. On the one hand there are the dime-a-dozen types who are always needed for mundane tasks, but who are not good at working independently, solving difficult problems, recovering crashed systems, working in an organized fashion, writing coherent reports, etc. These people never constitute the brains of an organization's IT department. On the other hand there are the relatively rare people who actually do have good brains, are interested in the various technical challenges, solve difficult problems all the time, who write all the detailed reports and can be counted on when disaster strikes no matter when it does.
IMO, older IT people of the first type are much more likely to suffer from age-related discrimination than older IT people of the second type. In my experience, upper management always finds out who the really important people are in the IT department -- the people they know can be counted on to get things running again following a major incident.
The main problem for (prospective) employees of the second type is how to get recognized as such. Indeed, for an employer it's the much same: how to find these people and then how to retain their services.
I took a tech job at a University knowing full well I wouldn't be able to go back to corporate life in any capacity I used to have. It comes down to skill set and pay. But there is also the social aspect that plays a lot more into the hiring: if you can't relate to your co-workers what makes them think you can effectively work with them. When layoffs happen, it's the older people that get laid off, they're the ones that make the $$$. And they're the ones that can get the contracting jobs that pay the money with independent tech firms, but those are far and few between. And when you go to replace them, why would you hire an older person who would command a higher salary?
You can get a job as an old fart, but from what I've seen it's usually in operations, 3rd shift. At least you wouldn't be on call any more.
When I was younger, I used to think that my future was very uncertain - after all, I had to re-learn everything every five years.
Now I'm older (41), I've realised in the past six or seven years that I now have *experience*. This counts for a lot, lot more than you'd think. I can fix an NT 4.0 VM that would leave younglings scratching their heads, for instance. I can still call on my DOS years when scripting. And the site migrations I've done with OS's and hardware aren't things you can pick up from the MCSE's (or similar).
This leads to two interviewers - those that have figured this out, and those that haven't. For those that haven't, I would end up doing much more work at the site that one where they have, so I avoid those anyway.
Age also means that you're much more likely to have a permanent residence, and children - two things which mean you're less likely be jumping ship just because the business isn't as excited about (for example) the Cloud as you are.
I'm beginning to resemble the older folks getting in a rut. I'm 41 now, though I can't figure where the time went. But I am trying to learn new stuff as well. I learned Java and have written 211,000 lines of code in it in the last two years.
On the other hand, our company, when it first started, had a 65 year old guy writing VB code and out entire system worked off of it. Then a 60 year old guy came in, declared that the VB was archaic and proceeded to replace it with classic ASP. Now I am fighting to replace this system, which is essentially taxed to the max and being held together by duct tape, baling wire and the grace of God. Unfortunately, the guy who only knows classic ASP (and apparently only knows cut and paste in that) is politically connected and is fighting back every step of the way as we try to modernize the system before it all comes crashing down around us.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
php opens many, MANY doors. proof below.
http://elance.com/
Let's say that the average company employs 1 senior engineer for every 10 fresh outs. By the pigeonhole principle, there is going to be a lot of unemployed senior engineers.
In my set of old college friends, only two of us are senior engineers. The rest, all of whom are great engineers, have found other positions. Some by encouragement, some by changing interests, some by following the path of least resistance and some by means that I am not aware of. It has to be that way.
"I was always the youngest person wherever I went; now I'm one of the oldest," Ayr says.
Ayr must have some wicked telepathic skills, as I've been saying those exact same words since late 2007. I'd gone to work for a rather insular company back in 2000, and when the company moved out of state, re-entering the job market was night and day. In just 8 years, I'd gone from being the youngest in the room by 15-20 years (think reverse age discrimination) to being the oldest by 8-10. What I found interesting was the major shift in average age downwards in just that short time.
I used to work at The Boeing Company in Seattle who's in-house IT (which was partially outsourced to CSC with marginal success) came out with an edict that they would only hire college grads going forward. Well I understand the premise since when one looks around in a cube farm there the vast majority of the workers have grey hair. The current workforce will be retiring en-mass over the next 15 years. This is actually the case company wide not just in IT. So they clearly have a problem and are taking steps to deal with it.
But legally speaking for them to come out and say/document such a thing should be a direct violation of the federal Equal Employment Opportunity laws.
Am I missing something here or not?
Thoughts?
the problem with IT is, for someone 45+, much of your network has deteriorated by attrition--some retire, many leave the industry, some die (7 funerals in 5 years of older colleagues--although one was 46). And it can be difficult to add "younger" people (say 20s-early 30s) to your professional network to keep it growing. Even professionally, people prefer to associate and be associated with people like themselves and within their age-range. Not that it can't be done, but it becomes more difficult.
Most of the people in the IT department where I work are in their 30s-40s-50s. Previous company I worked for - fortune 500 with a large global IT group - hardly seemed biased against older folks. I'd say the good ops people were easily in their 30s, 40s and into their 50s and likewise with managers. Given I'm now 41 and still an in-the-trenches operations/network engineering monkey whereas many/most people my age have slipped into management naturally there's a tendency to wonder where I'll be when I'm 45, 50, 55... etc. You definitely need to start working on a plan where you want to be in 5-10 years because there's natural attrition. To a certain degree I may be pricing myself out of the marketplace, especially by the time I'm 50, where I'll be wanting at least 100-120K annually. As it is it's taken me almost 10 years to get back to the salary I had 10 years ago - laid off, economy tanked, moved into a crappy job in a market where the pay was typically 15-20% less than the Bay Area. I can't afford a slip back into that. On the other hand I don't want to go back to college and get $40-$60K more in debt to finish my degree and get an MBA so I'm "qualified" for management. Personally I'm hoping to write books and maybe start a good little business with some of the good techie ideas I have. Regardless I need to take as many steps to keep my skills current, focus on my future viability in the job marketplace - what will it look like when I'm 50, mostly gray-haired, and am looking for a $120K/year network engineering or Sr. Sys Admin job when I'm competing against 25-30-35 year olds who are technically adept, driven, and willing to work like dogs for $65-75K/year?
He'll be fine.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
So, a number of salary surveys have shown that engineers hit their peak salary around the age of 45-55, but it then declines. This is quite the opposite of very many fields - lawyers, doctors, etc can work until they are 70.
My son is planning to major in math and just take a minor in computer science, then work as a data analyst. What do you think?
So after imitating the Soviet Union and creating a bifurcated consumer-military industry after 9/11 we are now almost down to the Soviet/Eastern Block admonition of mathematicians to their sons/daughters/students: "Find the most arcane branch of mathematics. specialize in it and you'll have some freedom" - which in our case is translated to "job security". Does anyone else see a problem with this? If your son's passion is CS then do CS. And do great things, solve great problems. If his passion is mathematics, there is much more available than being a data analyst. Data mining (which might be what you meant) is of course not arcane and is being tapped more worldwide. Data mining will provide a nice background in statistics and that will be a useful tool for problem solving going forward since even now most people are math phobic.
I don't know how this guy comes up with this crap - let's talk Big Lie, why don't we? How man straight programmers, oh, sorry, "developers", who make $150k/yr, except maybe living in Silicon Valley? I've lived in Philly, Austin, Chicago, the Space Coast of FL, and now DC, and with the highest salary of my career, I can see $100k coming... about the time I retire.
"Old skills" (COBOL, C) - where's the budget, *ANYWHERE* for training at any company? How many times have any of you been handed the chance to learn the newest, latest fad language of the year (never mind no one will be using it in two more years)? It's been 10 or 15 years for me.
Let's also not forget that HR department angle in all this: the 95% of them (it's "only" 45% or so among recruiters) who have no idea of what they're hiring for, and DO NOT CARE to learn (even though they'd be able to do their jobs better, and provide more value to the company), and so only know the acronyms they've been given, or looked up without the hiring manager telling them what's actually needed, and requiring additional degrees, and not accepting equivalent experience.
Oh, and there's always the point that H1-B's and the newly graduated, these days, will work for a *lot* less, in absolute dollars, than we started at decades ago.
I've been the oldest on my team for quite a number of years. I edit my resume to skip the first so-many years, and started resorting to dying my hair years back, right before I got a job where my manager turned 30 while I was there.
To sum it up: salaries, HR, and prejudice.
mark
> If your son's passion is CS then do CS.
That sounds great - but the reality is that engineers have discovered that much of their field has relocated overseas, and that it starts to become difficult to stay employed, competitive and current after 25 years in the field. Of course, it's possible - I've been working in the field for 30 years, continue to love it, and have no problems with employment. But there are 10 people who've dropped out for every person such as myself - and the reality is that CS is only a half-career - something that you can only do for the first half of your life with any certainty. So, it's worth being practical.
> If his passion is mathematics, there is much more available than being a data analyst
Right - I'm using generic terms since I don't know what exactly he might end up doing: machine learning? statistician? data mining?
He's interested in both fields - and feels that he could probably do more programming and math as a mathematician of some sort than as a CS major - who may end up as yet-another application developer doing very little math and constantly racing to stay current.
Vivek Wadhwa is a self-promoter who puts a lot of effort into getting his name in the press, but hasn't actually done much. He once had a company doing Y2K COBOL conversions with semi-automatic tools. It did not do too well. His academic positions are all hanger-on type, like "Senior Research Associate at Harvard Law School's Labor and Worklife Program". That's not being on the Harvard faculty.
This guy is on Slashdot twice today.
I do not understand how older people cannot code but they can be managers.
If the job of a manager is more difficult than the job of a programmer, then why is the older person incapable of being a programmer? if he can be a manager, then he can be a programmer, since management is more difficult then programming.
Or is it not?
Perhaps this situation (you are old, you can't code any more), is an indirect way to admit that programming is, in fact, more difficult than management: you can't do the more difficult job, so we put you in the easier one.
However, the above is not verified by the numbers: managers have bigger salaries than programmers, therefore management is considered more difficult than programming.
So, the question is: how come older people can do the most difficult of the tasks (i.e. management), but cannot do the easiest of the tasks (i.e. development)?
You mean 'not using the new shiny for no other reason than it is the new shiny?'
Seriously. We've been there. Done that. Learned what not to do. And yet that experience is not valued and the PHBs want to drive forward with making the same mistakes with the newest tech that we've already been through and fixed.
Look at things like tapatalk, that was developed to solve the problem of easily viewing forums (mostly phpbb) on phones. I dare say usenet was a much better system. That's just one example.
I'm in my early 40s, and was a kid hacker that grew up with microprocessors and a soldering iron, aced my university exams despite sleeping through most classes, and for the last 20 years have been coding and building systems. I know a small handful of guys like me. Instead of being ostracized, I've found quite the opposite. The years of experience and having had to work on almost any platform imaginable over the years have given us a very big edge over other coders. More often than not the experience with low level code, a wide variety of platforms and having had to learn to optimize processes, means that we're solving complex problems in a fraction of the time of junior coders. This makes us highly in demand. We're the troubleshooters and go to guys for project design, "impossible" problems, and keeping services up under insane load. Experience really does seem to matter in this field, and a 20 year record of knocking over problems like bowling pins keeps us in demand.
Granted, a lot of us end up managing complex projects rather than being grunt coders. I still find that in this field, a solid work history, a portfolio of actual accomplishments, and the long habit of constantly learning new things that has been ingrained into us really does count for something.
Youth gets taken advantage of too often, as junior coders are getting offered less wages for more work than their counterparts 10 years ago, and rarely get put in a position where they can contribute meaningfully to architecture decisions where their skills might shine. I do think that experience and age are a benefit in the industry. Perhaps though, that is more dependent on the person. Maybe my experience is simply anecdotal, and not indicative of the real state of the industry, but it does appear to be more common than this article suggests.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I don't think it's job description, but that culturally, jobs where you are likely to earn more than your boss are very unusual. Pharmacist might be the only well-known job where it's common.
There is no such thing as 'reverse racism'. Racism is Racism, PERIOD. If you're Indian and you're racist to a white person, it's Racism. You imply that white-on-other racism is 'true racism' and anything else is some special case.
I'll admit white-on-other racism is more prevalent in the media & in our exposure to the world but just because blacks/hispanics/indians/etc... have been subjected to racism doesn't mean they get a right to be racist back. You can call someone out for being a biggot, but if you treat all X people as racist, you're just as racist. END OF STORY.
</rant>
Ok, with that point out of the way, It's sad to hear that you're experiencing this kind of blow-back in the IT world. So far I haven't seen a lot of racism in my field (programming), I have seen the distrust in foreign accreditation, but they're usually not ruled out, but more thoroughly tested. The truth of the matter is, you can never judge a programmer by their age/race/education even. Some of the best programmers are not classically educated via post-secondary, they're self-taught. Ultimately it comes down to testing thier ability, this is why I highly support a technical interview with a coding / problem solving focus. Eg: You have one hour to do {INSERT RELEVANT PROGRAMMING TASK COMPLETABLE IN ~1hour}. Go.
I'm 60 and I'm coding, but I don't demand top dollar [pound] because I don't need to. Also I'm a Perl person who is used to big codebases. I've just discussed this with a young [50] colleague. We agreed that a lot of people my age can code but are not used to modern development tools, subversion, continuous builds, test-based and [ugh] agile. Also they often re-invent, pure stupidity for Perl because CPAN is one of the best [and worst] things about it,
I don't want and probably can't get a permanent job either. I agree with the top post in this bit, most agencies are useless, clueless and sometimes fairly unethical. Hey, time for a startup, anyone?
On y va, qui mal y pense!
One aspect hasn't been mentioned so far. Experienced developers are less wanted in a hierarchical structure simply because they know the tricks and dishonesty of management and are harder to command & control.
/M
In the typical software company today management tries to dominate employees. At least in my experience (>10 years as a consultant) they often do not serve/lead employees to do a better job, most times can't understand what that is. It's a tough job to survive as a manager so you wouldn't hire people that threaten your status further, it's simpler to hire someone fresh from university that is fully compliant to whatever you tell them. Why agile/lean programs have a hard time to succeed has probably the same origin, it would require a fundamental shift in mentality and company culture. Don't take my word as granted, look at studies where managers describe what their problems are, mostly short-time financial/political pressure from above and concern about long-term employee/customer satisfaction least. On the other hand I haven't seen a single study that points to experienced people being less suited in development work, design work or collaboration.
Greetings from Europe
They'll figure out your age soon enough when they interview you. Plus if you're interviewing for a senior position they want to see LOTS of work experience, which means amount of time at each job not just number of jobs.
However if interviewing for a junior position then it may be a good idea to leave off the older stuff and don't put in graduating year just to get past the HR filters.
Ridiculous that this is about programming in C. The company I'm working for has 27 current openings for C/C++ programmers in networking, drivers, kernel on Linux. We have tons of other openings (in Seattle if it helps you find us). To be blunt, you can't get a job because you suck, we hire for skill not age. We have new people at all age levels including over 50 and no one cares as long as you can do the job.
"On top of that, I have insight into how to do things well that only come from experience. Not to mention the experience with the business processes that you only learn by being in a company for a few years."
No joke, experience can save an organization money and time. But when you have inexperienced managers, in an organization where there seems to be no accountability, well, I guess they'd rather re-learn the lessons themselves. It's hard not to become apathetic under those conditions.
The good news is that the younger crowd can compensate for bad decisions by working longer and harder. Been there, too. Again, apathy follows.
Best regards.
Like a guy who has no life, no family, and no clue. If you do have a life and a family then you're doubly damned because you ought to have a clue.
First, the programmers you get overseas aren't worth the penny you spend on them. I have managed many projects with overseas coding teams and they're all nightmares. They don't speak the language. They don't share your culture. They don't share your timezone. They don't understand professional standards. The ink isn't dry on their software certificates and it won't dry before they've jumped to another outsourcing company, so any time you spend building up effective communication is wasted.
Second, relocation sounds easy to a college kid who spent a semester abroad in Spain, drinking and picking up girls. It's rather less simple when you're a bona fide adult trying to take a job away from a local. The bureaucratic red tape you have to hack through to even get a work visa is insane. And that's for countries that like us. So speaking the language and having spent 2 weeks at Club Med: Bali does not for an easy transition make.
Third, got a wife and kids? Got brothers, sisters, parents, grandparents, friends you like? Dropping them like a rock to chase an outsourced job overseas is not going to make you popular in your domicile.
Or maybe you're an MBA who thinks he's immune to being hoisted on his own petard. Well, huh, you've got a shock coming to you in the near future, my friend. Remember all those Indian, Chinese, Latino, etc. folks you drank beers with while skipping Corporate Finance 101? They're positioning themselves to get your job outsourced to them in Bangalore where they can live like kings. I have seen the wave of stuff like this happening in New York, and it fills me with a gentle, happy glow.
Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.
I wrote the following Journal entry about 8 years ago (2003): http://slashdot.org/journal/52223/Banish-Programmer-from-your-vocabulary Some of the advice there is dated (specific tools that are no longer interesting), but the overall message, I believe is still valid.
I was 39 then; I had been working in technology for 7 years (since I was 32 - I spent 12 years in the military and some years in college prior to that) - which makes me 47 now. I saw the writing on the wall since I began working, and vowed not to become 'just-a-programmer'. But I have been programming since I was 16, and couldn't see doing a job where making computers jump through hoops was not involved - so I became a jack-of-all-trades who could program instead.
In that time, I saw the whole IT developer team outsourced, and weathered numerous downsizing initiatives. Yet here I am today - still employed. And while coding is not my primary function, I still get to write code and solve interesting problems. Today I'm a technical architect, and valued for what I bring to the table when it comes to design. I've worked in Technical Support, as a System Admin, in the Network Engineering team, and later as a developer analyst for a subsidiary group that needed that function for things IT couldn't or wouldn't do - using all the information I gleaned from those other positions. I continued to grow and learn new things; today I primarily code in Python - and I never stop learning new things about technology.
Today people are surprised when I tell them my age, because everyone thinks I'm in my 30s when they work with me. I can thank my mom and dad - since I don't have grey hair yet, but also I think my attitude had a lot to do with my success - while I'm certainly not untouchable, I've become a valuable asset for those above me, beyond the words in my resume, or the list of my skills. This makes me more valuable than just-a-programmer, and also gives me a deeper well of skills to fall back on if the axe were to fall.
Looking back on the intervening years, I believe I made the right decision. That would be my advice to you as well: don't be just-a-programmer, and expect to have a job when young people fresh out of college and outsourced people in other countries will do the same job for 1/2 the pay. Re-imagine yourself as something more, and go do it. Beg forgiveness later. ;)
Lodragan Draoidh
The more you explain it, the more I don't understand it. - Mark Twain
Job trends for COBOL, C, C++, Java, C# from www.simplyhired.com
http://www.simplyhired.com/a/jobtrends/trend/q-cobol%2C+c%2C+java%2C+c%2B%2B%2C+c%23
If you don't offer a pension, 401k don't count and your benefits package is nil. Why the fuck is it you think someone wants to work for you.
No shut the fuck up you cant count has to work for your nasty ass.
I hope this post lets you know what kind of fucking bottom feeder your god damn company really is.
Most think they are really cooking, when in fact they are just a pile of shit.
I'm a zOS systems programmer with over 32 years experience. I'm in my early 50's with only two jobs under my belt (16 years in both positions). I'm very well paid, and worth every cent.
When system down time is measured in thousands of dollars lost per minute down, and I'm tasked with maintaining our 99.999% availability requirements, you gotta pay the price.
Someone right out of college, or with only a few years of experience, while less expensive than I am, wouldn't be able to do a fraction of the experienced based tasks that I do on a daily basis to achieve this availability.
I'm a 63 year old Project Manager (making $150K) in the Washington DC area working for a government contractor. In the last few months, I have received over 60 calls from all across the US because of my extensive IBM COBOL, DB2, SPUFI, and QMF experience. Money is no object for the recruiters because the need is there with insufficient trained and experience pool of people. Next time you withdraw from an ATM, buy a trail or airline ticket, submit your 1040 to the IRS.... there most probably a mainframe (now called Legacy) system behind the completion of your transaction.
LONG LIVE COBOL AND THE MAINFRAME (LEGACY) SYSTEMS
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The US has virtually eliminated training for replacement workers. Turns out that money is "better" used to hire more accountants or to service the stockholders. But it is shortsighted in the extreme.
Many retirees have been asked to return because they have a skill set that just doesn't exist elsewhere. In addition, that dude that has been in the company for 30 years? He comes in on time, doesn't come in with a hangover, probably isn't going through a nasty divorce, and doesn't spend half the day on Facebook.
An as for young workers these days, I'm seeing a disturbing trend. I think the age of inculcating high self-esteem has overshot it's goal. Recent hires seem to want a promotion for just showing up at work, and have other issues too. We had one young lady that apparently believed that anyone near her parents age or older were supposed to do stuff for her. This appears to be an extension of some of the "Boss Children" I've seen in public, churning out the order to their parents, who amazingly enough, obey their every whim. She didn't last too long, and quit and moved back with her parents. I'd give more examples, but I sense a "Get the hell off my lawn!" reply coming.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Vivek Wadhwa has done more to advance the age discrimination in IT than just about anyone else. His continual promotion of the H-1B visa ensures that age discrimination is advanced in the industry. Professor Norman Matloff's research has consistently shown that the H-1B visa ensures a level of age discrimination, by replacing higher-paid American workers with lower paid, mostly youthful and male, Asian workers .
I do agree that many of those older workers have let the skills lapse. However, American industry has contributed to this trend by reducing the amount of money available for training in new technologies, while promoting the use of detailed, exacting job specifications, with little acceptance for those people that might be able to pick up new skills.
I have been able to avoid this problem into my 50's only by keeping up on all of the latest technologies, keeping hands-on development, while continuing to manage, and by ensuring that I am as savvy about how to apply new technniques as any qualified architect. But to do this, it takes hundreds of hours per year of reading, attending user groups, and talking to other highly skilled technologists.
There is no age bias,only a cost bias. In Canada, a new graduate for Object oriented programming gets around $40k, if he / she is lucky.
As the developer gains seniority, experience and knowledge of applications, and more education, that amount will climb to $80k.
Only a consultant on short term contracts gets more. In fact, for the company, the consultant is not more expensive when you subtract out the benefits, group insurance, government unemployment fees, training fees, etc. etc. etc.
And Canadian companies are not running to the USA for what we consider "overpriced talent".
Bottom line. The USA has priced itself out of the market. Companies go offshore, if they can.
I am a small businessman and my team of two and myself would each love to make $150k per year. Best we can do is around $100k, on long term (2 year) contracts. And we code in Windows, Linux, Mainframe, in C, C++, Python, Perl, Cobol, Pascal and any other language that customers demand.
Leslie Satenstein Montreal Quebec Canada
I wrote autocoder and 1401 code. I programmed patch panels. I wrote fortran and cobol, and couid analyse application dumps when data caused the burp. Sometimes bad data just came from bad tapes. (we used tapes more than disks in those days)
Leslie Satenstein Montreal Quebec Canada
haven't u noticed that every "new technology" is a prophanation?
Given that older people by virtue of more service generally get more pay, it makes sense for companies to hire younger people. (retire 2 oldies and get 3 young hands) As to the supposed quality that comes with experience, it is redundant in today's world given the nature of software tools, ability to throw more hardware at the same price, knowledge base (internet for everything)etc. An example from programming. When I missed a comma in my early programming days, (Autocoder in IBM 1401T), I had to wait one whole day for the compile results to be turned around to me for correction. So I developed a certain precision and table debugging skills. But who cares? Today you can compile a progam 100 times a day if you want to. An example from support. Recently one of our vendor's programmes gave an error saying that the transaction needed to be serialised. My knowledge of serialisation, ACID test etc mattered not a whit to their programming team. I finally got them to accept to change their programmes by pulling some examples from the DBMS provider's knowlwdge base. Fact is, the world has changed. Oldies are competing with younger people in an environment where their old skills dont matter a dman. This is not new. OK
Quinn impersonates his recently deceased double on a world where the young dominate society and middle-aged people are prohibited from working and are subject to curfews.
Yeah - that's IMHO the true face of the "land of equal opportunity" (disclosure: I wasn't born here and thoughout my lifetime Americans have invariably snatched defeat from the jaws of victory on the issue of equality - we finally got rid of segregation (at least legally) in 1964, and now LGBT people have been deemed to be human so there has been some progress but legalized age discrimination based is just as abhorrent [and de facto age discrimination is virtually a legalization]) .
Get a life -- lose a job....
The demands of 100 hour work week
with implied demands for more time and
access are only part of it.
The other problem is that too many IT departments
are run by people with serious lacks of social skills.
No it was a quip, my fortune 100 company laid off every single one of our COBOL programmers, who were all 50+ yo and made >$80K.
They did this DURING a hiring campaign to find COBOL programmers which we were in desperate need of.
It seems the larger the corp, the bipolar they become.