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Half Life of a Tech Worker: 15 Years
Hugh Pickens writes "Matt Heusser writes that when he went to work for Google all the people he met had a sort of early-twenties look to them. 'Like the characters in Microserfs, these were "firstees," young adults in the middle of the first things like life: First job out of college, first house, first child, first mini-van,' writes Heusser. 'This is what struck me: Where were the old dudes?' and then he realized something very important — you get fifteen years. 'That is to say, your half-life as a worker in corporate America is about age thirty-five. Around that time, interviews get tougher. Your obligations make you less open to relocation, the technologies on your resume seem less-current, and your ability find that next gig begins to decrease.' By thirty-five, half the folks who started in technology have gone on to something else — perhaps management, consulting, on to roles in 'the business' or in operations. 'Yet a few stick it out. Half of the half-life is fifty, and, sure, perhaps 25% of the folks who started as line technologists will still be doing that when they turn fifty,' adds Heusser. 'But by the time you turn thirty-five, you'd better have a plan.'"
be read to improvise and adapt, as at least half of people have had their plans ruined by economy.
If you feel you've become less viable to the nameless corporation you drone for, make the brave choice and work for yourself. Would that I had the courage or inspiration to have made that choice, but I didn't. I regret that every day.
With a not so glamorous 15 year old technology no less. Been at it for almost 3 years now. Guess what? People who know what I know are very hard to find and I get paid accordingly. Much better than my previous 11 years in retail sales I must say.
At 43, I live with the senior software engineer title. I've been at the same company 12 years. While I consider myself well established, nothing is guaranteed - company could be bought, sales could suffer (I've survived 4 layoffs), I might piss off a boss.
Many of us have grown up inside the company (we are a Silicon Valley tech company) so there are a number of 40-something engineers and a couple have crossed 50.
But when I'm in a worrying mood, I do think about what would happen if I had to go into the interviewing machine. There is probably some truth to the tenet that it's harder to stay in development in later years, but I know peers who have done it, and we just hired someone in his mid-40's.
If the employer can get over age and hire the best person for the job and if the 40-something can swallow and maybe be willing to take a pay cut, things can stay in balance. At least I hope so if I'm in that situation.
So, in other words, this is just a long winded way of saying what we've all known-there's a severe problem with age discrimination in tech.
" Your obligations make you less open to relocation, the technologies on your resume seem less-current, and your ability find that next gig begins to decrease."
All irrational assumptions that people just internally accept and contribute to the ridiculous amount of ageism in Silicon Valley.
30 years before IT wasn't big enough for many people to consider working in it, thus there aren't much people from that era.
If you actually RTFA, you'll see that the big barrier is that "workers over 50 may concern corporate hiring managers because they might resist change and generally command higher salaries than younger people"
So, while older workers "might" (or might not) resist change, they definitely are perceived as costing more. And not just in salary, but also in health benefits.
Now, again FTFA, throw in a dose of sexism:
That's pretty blatant misogyny. That it's illegal doesn't make a difference.
Years ago I decided to move sideways into a position doing C systems development instead of Java web development. My thinking was that few people under 30 (as of 2000) knew C, but it didn't seem to be going anywhere. Did that for a while, doing a little Perl and such on the side. I've been making moves sideways and slightly up since then, moving out of the Unix/Linux world into Microsoft .Net most recently. If you go to high in salary too fast, you find your career path played out by 35 (how old I am now).
By moving sideways, I've got a broad resume, with reasonable depth (just find challenging projects). I have a little headroom to move up salary-wise yet, and have a convincing story to tell that I a) am capable and willing to learn new technologies on the job, and b) don't mind making parallel or even slightly backward financial moves to find work, especially if it gives me exposure to new technologies.
There is nothing brilliant or insightful about this, yet people still fail to do it. I work with people who have been in the same job for 25 years. If they get laid off, they are screwed. No one will see them as anything other than set-in-their-ways old people.
The drawback for me is that I'm finding it harder to continue to get energized to learn new technologies. I can still do it, but it's becoming more of a hassle. Not so much the languages, but the specifics of frameworks and technology domains (i.e. web vs. traditional client-server vs. realtime). Probably more a personal limitation, I'm not the smartest guy in the world.
Yes, I've noticed no one is writing operating systems or anything else in C anymore. I better learn the language du jour.
Except that my experience with multi-threaded systems programming is still useful. Even when everything is virtualized, there will be C code running on the bare metal that someone needs to create and maintain. New hardware products will need drivers written in C, or entire embedded systems written in C.
Sure, the next social media website won't be done that way, but for some of us writing that high a level of application wasn't that interesting.
And didn't I just read that Facebook had to highly optimize malloc(3) to support its operations? What's malloc written in? Oh yeah, C.
Terrorist, bomb, al Qaeda, nuclear, yellowcake, kill, assassinate. Carnivore is dead... long live Echelon.
Was all set to blast the article with examples of old people in IT...but realized my own IT career ended when I was 38yo.
Just being good at what you do seems like a good plan. When we are 35 we have more or less reached our natural half life any way. We wont last forever.
Ability to flow with change is critical for knowledge workers. It is not easy, but who said it should be? Given the quality of life we have, I'm thankful that as hard as this job can be, I'm not melting solder off trashed PCBs in China.
So this grand theory is all based on one persons experience, at one company, and some aggregate statistic grouping together age related unemployment over a vast category of people, during the worst economic conditions since the depression? It's some interesting anecdotes, but I sure as hell am not going to make any long term career plans based on this.
AccountKiller
I don't know... tech worker half life sounds like a well defined metric to me.
0 = 1 + e^(Alt something)
I don't understand the fascination with the full time employment.
Contracts and own businesses, that's the way to do it, not to work full time for somebody, that's just throwing yourself at the mercy of the political/economic wind.
You can't handle the truth.
From my experience. I lasted about 17 years. I am currently on a different career track and loving it. My biggest frustration was the inability of people in IT/programming to learn. The same mistakes were made repeatedly. I think that is due to the field not having professional standards or best practices.
I switched over to a field which requires "boots on the ground", preventing the job from being off shored, and gets me outside and getting fresh air and exercise. The last item is important since a network admin spent too many years in a cube, commuting long distances to work, and not getting enough exercise. He died at age 47 of a massive heart attack.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
A more enlightened management would supplement the above wise counsel by taking skin cell samples of their highest performers, freezing the samples and then, around age 35, sending all their workers to another jurisdiction where accidents just happen. Meanwhile, use those same jurisdictions to rent-a-womb, clone the highest performers and then re-import the young fresh meat clones once they hit the age where some of the corporate authorities want to establish a Socratic relationship and Mentor them.
Seastead this.
Not simply with age, but all the commitments these "firstees" take on cost money - extra money. So the salaries they would have accepted as new entrants into the job market are no longer sufficient to support their lifestyles. While they may have gained some skills during those fifteen years (or not, there's not many ways to distinguish 15 years of experience and 1 year of experience repeated 14 times), employers don't necessarily value those skills - especially as the relevance of a skill has a half-live of somewhere round 2 - 5 years, depending on how "sharp-end"/leading edge your employer is.
So what's happened is these 35 y/o's have believed their own CVs (resumes) and think they're actually worth the salaries they're asking for - simply because the company they wish to leave, or have been kicked out of, was prepared to pay at that level.
What they should be doing is asking themselves: what can I do that a 25 year-old couldn't do? What skills do I have that actually make more money for my employer? The answers to those questions are tough and generally not what people want to hear. However there is some good news: at least they're not 50 and in the same situation.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
If so, I haven't seen it. I'm 49, currently working on optimizations for an ARM compiler backend written in C++. I've never had any problems getting jobs, and I've worked for IBM, HP, and about 4 smaller companies doing various things.
You DO have to keep up. If you don't, obviously, your value as an employee will drop rapidly. But I haven't seen any age bias so far, and I've gotten an offer out of every set of interviews I've ever had. I suspect what seems like age bias is that many people stop learning when they hit about 30, and then wonder why nobody wants them when they're 50. I'll be 50 in 4 months, and I don't think I'll have any problems landing another job if my current one disappears.
My (very skilled, very capable, but 8 years younger) lead programmer asked out loud to our team of 4 -- in all sincerity -- "What's the maximum number stored in a byte?"
My fellow programmers -- one the same age as my lead, the other a Java dev, -- didn't have the answer. I said "255!", and they looked at me like I was an alien. "Is that right?"
That's when I knew: "I'm getting old."
I'm only 34!
When you confuse the power of the dollar with the power of the gun, this is what happens.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
How is consulting exclusionary from tech workers? I'm a tech worker and I'm 43. I was a consultant for the previous 12 years, made a lot of money, and just this year finally got enticed back to full-time with a fat offer for a principal position at a large (480 employee) tech company. If anything, consulting is the HEART of the tech world world because consultants are almost hired exclusively for their deep, intimate knowledge in arcane corners of the field.
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
I don't know. I'm entering the second half of my thirties; I just changed jobs. From the time I went "on the market" I applied for four places, got four interviews, and received three offers. Over a period of about one month. I took an offer with a startup and didn't need to relocate - and I'm not the oldest hire they've made. So much for that half-life, reduced options, or inability to get hired because of being "too old" for development. (Yes, it's a development position and not management).
Most companies really do value experience and proven ability over youth. Most of them appreciate that the experience and (sorry to use an HR-approved word) diversity of background and knowledge that experience brings.
Keep your skills up to date. Keep networking. Like any other skilled profession, you'll find work if you're demonstrably good at what you do -- and I think in an economy like this one, us old dogs have an advantage with our experience. Companies are looking for folks to hit the ground running after they're hired, and 15-20 years of experience makes it a lot easier to do that.
Personally, I never even considered applying to a company like google, because I know that they want you to dedicate a significant portion of your life to their company -- something that typically only younger folks [with fewer commitments] are willing or able to do. I'm not going to decide I have an absurd "half-life" -- I just won't apply to places that I know aren't a cultural match for me.
I'm 45 and work at a consulting company. I'm fortunate enough to have a senior position here, but I'm also married, with a 1st grade son, a house and all the trappings that go with it.
I feel a lot of competition with the junior guys -- I was talking to one of them and he was griping about making a 4:30 PM help desk appointment but that once he got home about 7 PM he was going to really dive into whatever it was he was also working on. A couple of days later he was yakking about some work he was doing at 11:30 at night.
I just don't have that kind of free time. For one, there's shit to be done at home in terms of childcare and parenting, the wife doesn't want to work full time and do it all herself.
I think my advantage, though, is that I work a lot smarter -- I don't brute force solutions, take stupid risks or buy into a lot of technology BS that amounts to lots of work and little payoff. My clients tend to be more stable and have fewer glitches. I get grief from time-to-time for not deploying every gee-whiz feature, but not by the clients, by sales people.
If you can't beat 'em, join 'em. I'm 49 and surviving by trading with "techs of color" overseas. There is a huge aftermarket for older / used / lagging edge technology in "emerging" and "converging" markets outside of the OECD. I can't keep up with the newest display technology. But I can buy and sell what I know about. During the past decade, internet access grew fastest among people in nations earning average of $3500 per capita per year. They aren't buying tablets or twittering about Tahir Square on their IPhones.
The biggest threat to this has been American and EU ignorance of the 6 billion people in non-OECD markets - grouping 6 billion people together under a single "non-OECD" label. They are too frequently depicted as wire burning monkeys in the press. http://tinyurl.com/6thbtf5 If you are willing to do your homework and differentiate between the lowest run / price-cutting technology buyers overseas, and the "fair trade" lagging edge and secondary markets, you can find some great partners. Oh, and by the way, they tend to have a lot of respect for seniors in Asia, Africa, and Latin America.
Gently reply
I went from phone jockey to senior database developer in 8 years. At that point, all of the projects were the same architecture, and all of the problems to be solved I'd already solved many times over. In addition to the sheer boredom, there was also the very real fear that staying too long in IT turns you into the red stapler guy in Office Space. I left and started my business. Glad I did.
I don't respond to AC's.
57 and still kicking ass!
I'm 50 and have found few interviews, lately (sf bay area) even though I've been doing C programming since my early 20's. I also design and build my own hardware (most pure software guys can't do this) and so I'm not just a coding guy, I also can do full system bring-up, device drivers, up thru app code. can I find a job? no. not in a year of trying, I can't. its like I'm blacklisted. it really feels like I'm stuck in a 1950's mccarthy era movie and my name is on a list, somewhere. the 'too old, too expensive to hire' list.
suffice to say, getting older and having years of experience 'not matter' (coding is coding, really; years of doing coding *is* experience) sure seems like the social contracts are broken. work hard and you will have a position in our company. ha! and while companies ding you on any short-stays you have in your employment history, what about all the companies who simply decide to downsize to make a faster buck at your expense? where's the 'short stay' at the company side, ding? there isn't one, folks. they get to make the rules and you get to be judged by it.
and while its bad for us in my age bracket now, just WAIT for 30 more years and see what the tech (western employment, I mean) world is going to be like. I shudder to think how much worse it can get. the movie 'logans run' does enter my mind; and like orwell, it was *supposed* to be a story, only, not reality.
my only bit of advice: please be a little compassionate and understanding when 'older guys' show up at interviews. we all know that you young hot-shots have all the classic algorithms stored *recently* and freshly in your minds. for us, well, we have had 30+ years of stuff to save and sort thru; and its harder pulling specifics (during interviews) out on-demand and at seconds and minute-level expectations. to you it may seem a disadvantage that we are not 'walking ROMs' but maybe give us the benefit of the doubt; and if our resume is filled with coding jobs, please don't assume that we can't code *now* because we aren't up to 'live performances' and coding-on-the-spot challenges that are more and more common in interviews.
it used to be that people could get jobs they couldn't do. now, there's a wealth of people who *can* do jobs but can't get past the damned interview process! and you folks in the interview loops don't seem to see or care; as long as YOU have your jobs, you are mostly insensitive to those of us who are not so fortunate.
you will be in this position in 20 or 30 years. karma is a bitch, remember that. be kind now.
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
Welcome to realizing that life is complex. You don't go into a field and then stagnate at the "cool underling" stage forever. You get more responsibility, you understand more than just your little field you studied in school. You have the ability to take in the bigger picture. And you get promoted and coach the younglings, or you shift your career to what you're really good at, or what interests you now. Not surprisingly, it's usually not what you were doing when you left school.
Sure, there are exceptions. But, really, for most of us we are constantly refining who we are, and that rarely is a static job that matches what we were doing when we were 25. Don't worry, if you play your cards right and make careful decisions, you'll end up really liking your new, post thirty-something world.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
I'm 32 years old and I just got my Commercial Driver's License (ACZ) back on Wednesday. I switched to trades because of the possibility of a long term career that I could retire from. Not to mention my rights as an employee being protected through unions and the fact that truck drivers are retiring in droves with no one to replace them. I was born a geek and will continue to be a geek until the day I die, but never again will I work in high tech. Age 15: Was a computer repairman at a small shop part-time. Age 17: Took a spare last period of the day in highschool to work an evening shift doing computer assembly. Age 18: Was a network admin for a public health community center part-time. Age 19: Went to college for Software Engineering Age 21-30: Worked ~17 different jobs / contracts in programming where I was repeatedly laid off or the company went bankrupt. I have never been "Fired" from a job. I am now in my 30's, broke, no plans or stability going forward. This industry is complete garbage. So I switched to truck driving. During school, I was hired by a government department in Ottawa as a test driver. I had not even graduated from my course yet when this opportunity came up. I start next week. If that opportunity doesn't pan out, the Oil Sands in Alberta needs people BADLY! You kids might have aspirations of incredible glory going in to IT, but I assure you that you will not retire from the company you start at. In fact, you will be chewed up and discarded. Plan your career change during your 12-15 years in IT now before it's too late and you're crushed by an earth-shattering revelation like me. ... and yes, I am bitter about my time wasted in high tech. :(
If i wanted to hear bullshit, i'd go to church.
what seems like age bias is that many people stop learning when they hit about 30, and then wonder why nobody wants them when they're 50.
+1
Length in career varies greatly by individual. Tech is no different than any other career -- if you want to continue with it, that means you do what it takes to keep your value high, through continual learning, and self-reflection and improvement. People will either wash out (by choosing not to keep up), or they will choose to drop out, by either migration to management or moving to a different career path. As someone else stated, we're looking at a relatively new industry, so it's hard to judge how many "old" people there are in it. The dot com crash of 2000 sent a LOT of people scrambling away from tech, never to return. That was a draining of the pool from which we'd be seeing a lot of 40-somethings today.
I'm in my mid-30s, and I feel pretty fortunate to remain in demand. However, I also realize it's because I have always striven to stay current with my skills. I spend my free time looking ahead to what is coming, and not just rest on what I have done in the past, and it has continually paid off.
When you confuse the power of the dollar with the power of the gun, this is what happens.
My plan was based on the power of the gun you insensitive clod
Never stop learning. You never know what skill you learn today might be the hottest new thing tomorrow. This week I learned Autodesk Inventor. Will it ever help me get a job? Probably not, but you never knew. Three years before that, I learned to program Android, and now I can't get the recruiters to leave me alone. You just never know.
Dude, what the fuck? You're actually more likely to be getting a job at 35 than 19 because you have the experience. Sure, you have to have a plan and keep your resume current. You ALWAYS have to keep your resume current. You ALWAYS have to stay up on new technologies, and you ALWAYS have to work at getting better. Age has nothing to do with it. If you don't have a plan or stay up on new technology, you're as fucked at 25 as you are at 55.
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I think part of the problem is that people expect that the inertia will just carry on from their first job, or that whatever line of work they started with out of college will simply continue. That's often not true, unless you're lucky enough to get a government job.
I've lost track of all the major career shifts I've gone through since college. I started out in communication hardware design, switched to computers in time to ride the dot com boom, first as a designer and then (because there were more jobs) as an administrator, and then a manager of administrators. When IT started to be massively outsourced, rather than live off the crumbs that were left, I got out. I still do some admin on the side (people always need help) but I'm in the business management side now, and business is good. In fact, this is the first recession since the Carter administration that I didn't have to ride out on unemployment and savings. The magic "35" was over 20 years ago for me, and my last career shift was three years ago. Of course, I'm not doing as well as at the peak of boom.dot.bust, but who is? That was a time that we will never see again.
The point is, you can't assume that your line of work will always be there. IT changes too fast, not only the technology but also the structure and career choices. I would argue that complacency is what limits people's careers.
What has worked for me over the years is to always step up. If there's a new opportunity, be the first to explore it. This puts you head and shoulders, both in perception and skill set, above the people who just want to keep their heads down and manage machine patching schedules, and you're much more likely to be retained when machine patching duty moves to Mumbai.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
50% of your body hasn't wasted away by the time you turn 35. You're lucky if the opposite doesn't happen.
REM Old programmers don't die. They just GOSUB without RETURN.
and made it to 45 YO before the push to management/marketing started in earnest. I had no interest in either so tried to stay in engineering. Layoffs ensued. I went back to school and now I'm a dentist.
I think the half-life of tech workers int he US is going to get even shorter. I'm not suggesting to my son that he study engineering as I did. He doesn't seem to be interested and I don't think it is a secure way to make a living any more. Instead I am advising him to do what my brother did- start up your own business of whatever type interests you. My brother distills Vodka and Gin. I figure he's got about 10 more years at the rate he's going until Seagrams buys him out with private-jet money.
Here's the thing: You must love it.
And I feel a lot of those who "got out" in the mid-30s and later just really didn't love it. And I mean willing to sit there for 12 hours a day to work stuff out.
I remember when I was in university (80s) there were folk who were in the program with me because they thought it would be a high paying career.
I did not understand that at all. The first time I took a programming class, it just ticked. It was the perfect balance of play/reward/solitude/etc that I crave.
Yes, I am very well paid, but the only reason I've stuck it out, and the only reason I was in school in the first place is because I loved it, and I still do.
I just spent all saturday afternoon working on a side-project. I am 45 years old. I just love to write code, what can I say?
And if you don't, it's very easy to get burned out, and just leave. And that's OK. Go do what you love, if you can. If you can't, then do all the things others are suggesting: become a manager, move into marketing. Or stay a programmer.
So I think all the points folk are making are valid.
But we can't forget that programming is something that if you don't really, honestly, love through and through, the hours will eventually kill you. Just destroy you. And when it does, you find yourself at 35 going "where did the last 10 years go?" And I was at 35 still saying "This is great! It never ends!"
So if you are in it for anything else other than the love of it, I don't think you can stay in it for 25 years. Money only motivates so much.
I hope this helps folks just getting in. If you area already thinking the hours are "long" and you often look out the window and wish you were somewhere else... think again about this particular career. If you're doing that at 18, at 35, you'll wish you weren't doing it, even if you have a nice salary.
Many corporations like the twenty and thirty year old engineers/programmers/whatever because they are useful as cogs in a wheel. Here's the job. Get it done. Don't cause trouble. Granted, the first few years out of college, most people are useless. Once they get some OTJ training, you can hand them assignments, which (given the development of a bit of work ethic) they can do.
But one someone has been in an industry or two for a decade or so, they start to process their gained knowledge and apply a bit of inductive reasoning to it. And they try to change and improve things. Now, the culture of the company one works for and the type of job becomes important. Work under hierarchical, top down type management and making changes (particularly from the bottom) isn't going to fly. Some people can manage to sit back and do the same thing the same way for 20, 30 or 40 years. But these aren't highly motivated employees to begin with. At about 35 to 40 y.o. your best producers become your trouble makers. Time to shuffle them aside and hire in some new (naive) blood. OTOH, work in an industry or business that needs to evolve and they'll welcome some process improvements. The people most likely to make such improvements are those that have spent a decade or so gaining experience and insights into their job processes. The 35 to 40 year olds.
Have gnu, will travel.
For those in the sciences, it seems like the trend is more that older people are more productive. Consider the fact that the average age physicists produce their nobel prize winning work is 48, or the average age at which a biomedical researcher receives his/her first R01 grant is 42.
I dont know... I mean I tend to view my IT job like a Doctor would view his. Constantly reading, constantly scanning, constantly updating my knowledge on all things IT.
Much like a doctor who needs to keep up on medicine, we must keep up on technology.
The other thing that both helps and hurts me is that I keep my knowledge general. I like all things IT, programming, database, networking, OS (Linux and Windows), and all the things those entail. I do not keep myself limited to one scope, because that actually prevents one from getting a job, but then so does not specializing when they are looking for specifically that person.
So it is a catch-22, but it may actually work.
If you love what you do you'll keep adapting, evolving, improving. If you care about making a living, you will keep learning. If you're afraid of change, you will fail. I think that's pretty much universal in any field though.
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Google is an aberration. I work with many different companies, and the average age can vary greatly according to culture. Google has a very young average age, heck I think half the males there can't even shave yet. Startups also tend to be very young. But then go take a look at medical technology companies. A much higher average age. Animation studios: very young. Petroleum engineering: higher age. Financial trading: somewhere in between. Military contractors: much older. Other miscellaneous companies I've seen have also ranged from the very young to long in tooth.
I am talking about the SOFTWARE DEVELOPERS in these companies.
I think the two factors that push the average age downwards are: 1) The trendiness and hipness of the company. Kids want to go work for Apple and Google, and not for IBM or Oracle. Older workers shy away from these because they feel uncomfortable. Then there's 2) the cultures at software companies that emphasizes newer languages, technologies and platforms. "Newer" being relative of course.
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
Hey, I have a lot guns, and I feel like you're demeaning them. Guns are people too, man. They have feelings.
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I've seen it first-hand, interviewing for Google. Their interview process just isn't capable of evaluating someone with 10+ years of experience. All of their questions are targeted at kids straight out of school. When they have to evaluate someone with 10 years of experience who will want twice the salary of someone straight out of school, they literally have no way to understand why the experienced person might be the better choice.
There's also definitely a lot of layoffs targeted at aging workers. Lots of firing going on in the 35-39 age block where they don't have to worry about lawsuits. If you've been lucky enough never to be hit by such bad management, congrats.
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
Google's giant R&D operation is starting to look like a huge flop. Google has never originated a successful post-search product in-house. The ad system was acquired from DoubleClick. They had to acquire YouTube because Google Video was a flop. The hard part of Gmail, the smart filtering, came from Postini. The Android software was acquired from Android, Inc. PIcasa was acquired from Picasa, Inc. Google Earth was acquired from Keyhole, Inc. SketchUp was acquired from @Last Software. Google Voice was acquired from Grand Central.
In-house, they produced Google Answers, Base, Lively, Knol, Buzz, Wave, Gears, Page Creator, etc - a collection of cool hacks, all now discontinued.
They're good at improving and scaling up stuff. That's what smart junior people are good for. Google is terrible at developing new technologies. They don't have enough people with experience to do so.
I'm almost 60. I've been writing software for 40years. I've just landed a job that is pretty close to my dream job. Everything on my CV points to this job being 'the one'.
Very few people under 50 would have anywhere near the varied experience needed for this job.
I'd rather be riding my '63 Triumph T120.
Google in particular sucks for more experienced workers - they have the "compressed pay scale" problem that killed Sun. They pay fresh college grads quite well, but pay people with 20 years experience only a bit more - often less than market. They're still a newish company and working through the maturing process they'll need to survive.
There are definitely companies out there though that have a place for the second 20 years of your career. I just screen for that before I go for an in-person interview: what's your career ladder beyond a manager-equivalent paygrade? Do you have drector and VP-equivalent tech paygrades? Do you have a fellowship?
Of course, to reach any of those paygrades you need to be a serious badass, but the fact that a company has them at all means they know how to value older workers. BTW: don't expect to get paid any more just for experience past 10 years or so. Those higher pay grades are going to be for the top 3% then 1% then 1/300 then 1/1000 engineers, you don't age into that.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
This is silly. It's (somewhat) like saying that the half-life of McDonalds workers is 3 years, and you don't see anything but teenagers behind the counter.
First, I have a lot of friends at Google. Guess what? They went to Google in their twenties, and they're now working at Google in their 30s. Think about it. The OP has said nothing; peoiple in their 20s are more likely to go to a startup like what Google was 10-plus years ago.
Second, line tech is line tech. It's somewhat the bottom of the pole. People naturally move on, either to supervisory or management positions, or outside. New blood is, as in the example above, naturally younger-- you don't hire old guys like me, because there are fewer of us applying, and our experience (those "old technologies" on our resume) makes us valuable elsewhere.
(Aside: find me a COBOL guy with experience in medical systems. I'll kill for as many as you can find. I don't give a damn if they know anything "newer"-- every hospital I know, has chosen to preserve its legacy systems and layer them with APIs, and experienced COBOL guys are gold).
Third, if you don't plan, you plan to fail. Nothing profound here.
OP is FUD, bottom line.
Speaking as an oldie: we all did that - it still wont save you! Train up as a plumber now, while you can afford it.
Sent from my ASR33 using ASCII
my knowledge general. I like all things IT, programming, database, networking, OS (Linux and Windows), and all the things those entail
That's way too narrow a focus. You only have one scope. You don't know anything about electronics including analog systems, embedded controllers and their OS, power distribution and backup systems, high performance computing and distributed systems. What about the important OS that move the worlds money, like z/VM, z/OS, OpenVMS, MP, besides the Unix HP/UX, AIX, Solaris? heck, you don't even know BSD? Lazy uninformed git.....
8D
The global economy is an amoral beast incapable of planning beyond the next rip-off of the increasingly hollowed-out nation states.
Seastead this.
This, with spades. At 54 I still love mucking about with computers and I'm extremely valuable in Operations. I'm a mentor for my team. I know lots of esoteric technical stuff in part because I was there when it happened. Because I still love what I do, I spend my own time, and sometimes my own money (I paid for a Symantec class out of my pocket so I could get a preferred position in the company) keeping up on tech as well as time at work. Because I'm a bit on the older side, I help keep the other guys from burning out although I skirt the edge from time to time. My linked in "resume" has recruiters calling me or e-mailing me a couple of times a week. Management values me also because the three younger guys on my team all have young kids and are out sick or handling sick kids several times a month. I'm here, rain, snow, or shine.
While I've taken a few "leadership" classes and have considered moving up to a Supervisor role (half manager/half tech), I'm still not there. The classes have given me an even better edge because I step up to take responsibilities to help my manager. My age seems to let me talk a bit more freely with managers, directors, and even Vice Presidents and they listen.
As to moving, I appear to have pretty itchy feet having moved 45 times in my life so changing location isn't all that much of a hindrance to me other than packing up all my gear when it's time to move again. :)
But mainly it's because I truly love working with computers. And I've been into computers since I opened the Sinclair back in 1980 and started keying in Life.
[John]
Shit better not happen!
Based on my experience...you are giving doctors WAY too much credit.
Not a slam, just curious. How old are you? Because I've experience blatant age discrimination, and that was after being told I had exactly the skills they were looking for, but that I was "too old."
What you said is great, and logical, and would be appropriate if all HR staff thought like that. Unfortunately most aren't interested in placing someone, they're interested in weeding out people that don't fit their perceptions.
By the taping of my glasses, something geeky this way passes
This reminds me of the same arguments to network admins gave me back in the early 00s, when they claimed they were "too valuable" with their companies, and I warned them that their managers really don't view reality they same way rational people do, and would offshore their jobs at the first chance.
Next time I saw them, they were living in a wooded area in Austin, now homeless network admins.
They had both suggested to a fellow named Kevin Flanagan, then a long-time systems programmer with Bank of America, who had brought in an H1-B from India to have him train his replacement for six months, or else they wouldn't give him a reference and severance pay. Kevin did so, while searching for another job. After the end of six months, still having found ZERO position, he went outside in their Oakland parking lot and blew his brains out!
As long as they are offshoring at critical mass, and importing foreign visa workers, labor arbitrage and labor deflation continues unabated......
That's why connections are so important. Completely skip HR and go straight to management, you know, the people that actually put in the hiring requisition.
At my current job I knew several people that worked in the company. They talked to their manager, passed along my resume (no HR required) and the manager arranged for an interview with me. The interview went well and the manager told HR to hire me. If I went through HR I never would have got the job. I could tell HR wasn't even too thrilled with me when they did my orientation. F*ck 'em.
Speaking of HR... Today if we want to hire someone we pretty much have to go out and do it ourselves. HR barely even attends to the needs of the currently employed (question about your 401k? vacation policies? medical insurance coverage? -- we'll get back to you on that), I'm not sure if they even have the ability to interview potential new-hires.
Stupider like a fox! - H.S.
You and I started at the same place but that's about all we have in common.
Being (almost) young and fresh in the 80s and 1/2 the 90s got me pretty far. Unfortunately my inability to control the rolling of my eyes when management announced 60 hour work weeks closed the door on my career, permanently.
I wish you all the luck in the world, but I have come to the conclusion that People Were Not Meant To Live Like This. To me it looks like a mild form of slavery with all the bells and whistles.
In the meantime save your money like your future depends on it because, you know, it does. Live on half your takehome pay - merely maxing out your 401k is just getting started.
BTW, I've been known to outperform teams of 20s wonderkids, when the measurement was debugged features that survived a rigorous QA process. It's so much easier to tapdance through the minefield when you've already stepped on every mine. A team of 20s wonderkids with my guidance, however, is vastly better than either one alone.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Speaking as an oldie: we all did that - it still wont save you! Train up as a plumber now, while you can afford it.
...Because after 20+ years of sitting on your now flabby out of shape ass in front of a computer, with old bones starting to creak, that is the time to consider working in the hot sun digging trenches and wading through human excrement on a daily basis. What the fuck do you think a plumber does exactly? And who mods up such fucking idiotic bullshit?
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
"It is not easy, but who said it should be?"
I say It should be.
You might call me a whiner and complainer. I call myself someone with dignity and self respect.
This is why America is screwed. This country [usa] is filled with simpletons like parent that have no self respect. They say at least its not as bad as the third world shitholes. Well I say it could be a lot better too. We could have a country with universal healthcare, more vacation time, more job security and higher employment rate. This isn't some utopian ideal It happens in the socialist countries of Europe.
For Christ sake we put a man on the moon and the only point of pride you hear is: "[At least] I'm not melting solder off trashed PCBs in China."
The reason that your not melting solder in a shanty town is not because of the grace of the business elites allowed it to be so. It is because in the past labor organized and demanded better working conditions, weekends and an 8 hour work day.
At 59, I'm still going (realatively) strong. I too still like 'mucking about', but I must admit that the sheer number of 'latest things' out there makes it near impossible to keep up with them all. Thankfully, I don't have to, but somehow I doubt having dabbled in Android development to keep my skills up would serve me well should I need to interview again.
In the meantime, I'm still employed based on a ton of knowledge specific to my employer. And you'd think that'd be okay, but they still tried to outsource me. It was a disaster, and now I'm technically a consultant to the outsourcing firm and doing the lion's share of the 'outsourced' work to make that project read as a success. So, in addition to ageism, anyone starting out in IT had better realize that they want you to be expendable. I'm sure that my employers think their big mistake wasn't trying to outsource a small group of long-time employees. No, they think the mistake was keeping those employees around long enough for them to become critical resources. Don't count on the next generation of corporate whizzes making that same 'mistake' twice.
Posted from my Android phone. Oh, I can change this? There, that's better...
Independent IT consulting/programming is a difficult, thankless task with high risk and few rewards. I know what you are thinking: my employer pays independent consultants/programmers $150/hour! I could be making that kind of coin!
A rule of thumb is that even a successful IT consultant (which most aren't) need to charge approx. three times what an employer would pay them for the exact same job to cover overhead, downtime, and benefits. You, and you alone, are responsible for all the stuff your employer handles now: sales, legal, marketing, sales, accounting, benefits, and did I mention sales? You need contacts, superior networking skills (of the people type, not the computing kind), and enough of a financial cushion to prepare yourself to be earning peanuts until you get enough business volume to make it off the ground, if you ever do. And don't forget that ALL vacation is unpaid vacation when you work for yourself.
And entrepreneurs trying to sell a product have it even tougher; most new products fail because the creator over-estimated the market for them and/or didn't know the right way to sell them. The quality of the product itself has very little to do with selling it. You could bust your balls for a year working like a madman to recover the equivalent of half of what you'd get flipping burgers.
When a new business works, it works. But even then, self-employment has a way of taking over the life of the entrepreneur; any of them will tell you that any notion of work-life balance goes out the window when you work for yourself.
If you aren't seriously looking for a new job, don't waste the time of the interviewer. Sure, put your resume out there to see if you get any hits, but interviewing for jobs you don't want and don't intend to take crosses the line.
The $847 is the average TOTAL income of the users, over the entire 12 year lifetime of the site, not the total value of the postings.
I have to disagree. A good initial spec states where you want to go, without specifying how you want to get there. A good spec for a serious project costs WAY more than $800. Good specs more than pay for themselves - bad specs are an invitation to throw money into a pit. Proper specifications, done early, can also be used as a tool to get the project approved and funded in the first place (and get you in on the ground floor :-)
They're also a good first test as to whether the necessary ingredients are in place - which includes a well-defined goal, a realistic budget, a target market and one or more well-defined user groups, and good communications between the client and the developer writing the spec.
How can you even draw up a budget without a specification to work against? How will you be able to say "here is the completed work, moneee pleeze!" without a specification? How will you be able to justify billing extra for feature creep? And just as important, how will your client justify it to THEIR boss without being able to say "Well, boss, you're the one who changed X,Y and Z, so this is why it costs more and is late, broken down by item."
If you don't provide them with the tools to cover their cabooses as well as your own, when push comes to shove, we both know who's going to get the dirty end of the stick.
But stick to elance ... to each their own, and if it's what you want, nobody can say that it's wrong for you. But it's definitely not for me.
Hey, give him a break. Most people who's job is to admin Windows systems don't even understand Windows.
"Sometimes, I think Trent just needs a cup of hot chocolate and a blankie." -Tori Amos on Nine Inch Nails
At 54 (...) As to moving, I appear to have pretty itchy feet having moved 45 times in my life
Seriously? As a 32 year old, I've moved 5 times long-distance and 10 if you include the very short term or in-city, non-job related changes and I consider that above average and is looking to slow down and stay where I'm now. Many of my friends have only significantly moved a couple times in their lives. To me it sounds like a case of being married to the job - or at least the job market - going where it's good and not caring much for friends, family or other relations where you've been. No doubt that makes you an attractive worker, you sound like an unbound 20 year old except with 35 years of experience, but I'm not sure many would swap lives with you.
Now, granted I haven't started a family of my own yet but I'm starting to see what it means to work to live rather than to live to work. That simply time is an important factor in having a social circle and how quickly you get estranged from it when you can never participate. No doubt friendships are very much built on shared experiences, good or bad. You can say what you want about email and phone and video conferences but they don't come close to sharing a beer down at the pub face to face. In that sense I've already taken a big step off the career ladder towards a job that lets me combine work and friends. I don't regret it yet and I doubt I will, the more I understand of the "big picture" the more right it seems.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
You misunderstand. Indispensable to executives means profit making. Any position which merely provides support to the money making arm of the business is an expense and they will go to hell and back to minimize any expense, many times to the detriment of the core business. Unfortunately most executives don't see the true value of their IT staff since they can't pull up a spreadsheet with a metric to show them how much money was saved/made because the IT staff was doing their job.
"A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it." - K
My situation: 59 yrs of age, started in electronics in 1979, migrated from hardware to software, no college degree (but some courses) I have found that working contract (temp) is a great way to open doors that might otherwise be closed. The company gets a good look at you, you get a good look at it. I've interviewed several times for a direct (captive) position at the place where I now work, and was shot down. This last go-round I hired into a temp position, (so the company has a low level of commitment) and I hit the street running. I *proved* I was up to the task even though I don't have the sheepskin (or much of the theory either - I just know how to make things work and get things done (using perl mostly :-)).
An I.T. worker's half life is 15 years because 15 years of I.T. work is already more than enough for any worker.
HR are mostly about covering ass and are fine for checkout/call centre staff. Beyond that, they're a pain in the ass.
I had a manager who had a huge fight because HR wouldn't hire IT guys without degrees. They'd screen out people with 10-15 years experience.
I wouldn't worry too much about it.
Most of the kids I see coming in have a broad scope, but a very shallow knowledge base. Most (and sometimes all) of their troubleshooting involves Google. They know many of the "whats", but very few of the "whys" and "hows". Getting them to come up with their own creative solutions is tough going at best, and there's been more than once where I've seen resulting code, query, or script look like three or four other bits duct-taped together and barely working.
There are exceptions (treasure them, damnit!), but the rule is usually the cocky kid who would make a great power user, but a lousy admin or coder.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
If we allow market forces to dictate all our economic policies there is a race to the bottom where workers earn sustenance wages. Your devotion to free market principles has taken on a religious zeal. If you want to see the end game of capitalism, move to Colombia. The way to fight market forces is protective tariffs, higher minimum wage, government job creation financed by higher top marginal tax rates, and a social safety net.
The social contract we currently enjoy that has been slowly eroded for the past 40 years was a result of the New Deal. The New Deal was spawned by the progressive movement during the 30s. The progressive movement was largely a reaction to prevent the revolution that occurred in Russia from occurring in the US. The revolutions that occurred in Russia was a direct result of labor organizing. Regarding health care, were you aware that per capita health care costs in the US are almost double what they are in any other country. US government spending on health care is also the 2nd highest in the world per capita. So don't tell me that health care is what caused the economic problems of Europe. Yes its true that the cause of the economic problems is funding of social programs with debt. The fact is that providing healthcare does not return a profit. The solution isn't to remove social programs, it is to increase taxes on the rich.
1. None of the employment problems that you mention occurred until Euro-zone trade liberalization moved jobs overseas. In other words the job loss was caused by free market policies not by socialism. 2. You did not account for the real unemployment rate witch under-reports employment in Europe and over-reports it in the us. The massive prison population alone in the us would account for a 2% increase in our unemployment rate if they were counted as unemployed. http://www.csmonitor.com/Business/The-Entrepreneurial-Mind/2011/1109/The-real-unemployment-rate-and-Europe-s-underground-economy 3. You specifically neglected to mention countries where socialist protectionist policies cause unemployment to remain low like Norway. 4. Losing a job in any of those countries you mentioned is not nearly as bad as losing a job here because they have a functioning social contract. When you lose a job here you lose your health insurance. Also your comment specifically neglected to mention any of the other positive effects of socialism that I mentioned in my post. 5. The employment rate here is artificially low due to an excess of shitty part time and/or minimum wage jobs. 6. I think you meant I should stop smoking some elicit substance. When you say I should simply stop smoking that imply you are talking about smoking tobacco products which are usually not considered to impair mental ability.