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Software Engineering Is a Dead-End Career, Says Bloomberg

Posted by Soulskill on from the commiserate-with-middle-age-actresses dept.

An anonymous reader sends this quote from an opinion piece at Bloomberg: "Many programmers find that their employability starts to decline at about age 35. Employers dismiss them as either lacking in up-to-date technical skills — such as the latest programming-language fad — or 'not suitable for entry level.' In other words, either underqualified or overqualified. That doesn’t leave much, does it? Statistics show that most software developers are out of the field by age 40. Employers have admitted this in unguarded moments. Craig Barrett, a former chief executive officer of Intel Corp., famously remarked that 'the half-life of an engineer, software or hardware, is only a few years,' while Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook has blurted out that young programmers are superior."

39 of 738 comments (clear)

  1. Nothing new? by marcovje · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I did a Masters Chemical Engineer (didn't finish), and a bachelor in CS. In both older students and alumni warned that you should get out of tech jobs and move into management within 10 years after graduation.

    The first time I heard that must have been in the 1992-1994 timeframe

    1. Re:Nothing new? by mickwd · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Strange, isn't it?

      If it was surgery, you'd probably pick the surgeon with 20 years experience over the one with a couple of years experience to operate on you.

      If is was a builder you were employing, you'd probably prefer the one with 20 years experience over the younger one to build your house.

      And whatever Zuckerberg says can probably be ignored, because you just know he's the type that, when he's getting on a bit, will be saying that age and experience are what counts.

    2. Re:Nothing new? by cayenne8 · · Score: 5, Funny

      Software engineers have ridiculously high starting salaries compared to normal people--why do you need it to keep going up?

      Because all the cool toys get more and more expensive.

      And, if you like to keep banging younger chicks....it doesn't hurt to have a bit more disposable income than the next guy....

      Remember, he who dies with the most stuff....wins.

      :)

      --
      Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
    3. Re:Nothing new? by kmoorman · · Score: 5, Insightful

      "And whatever Zuckerberg says can probably be ignored ..."

      You could have stopped right there.

    4. Re:Nothing new? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      It's actually quite simple, think about the only other major activity in which a total lack of experience is considered a plus...

      Virgins.

      And for the exact same reason, because they are too inexperienced to know how badly you are fucking them.

    5. Re:Nothing new? by Hatta · · Score: 5, Insightful

      That's how it works in our society. There are exploiters and the exploited. If you are doing real work, you're not exploiting people. Therefore you are being exploited. IOW, it's a dead end career. If you want to have a good career, start exploiting people as soon as possible.

      The best and the brightest have always been taken advantage of by the ruthless.

      --
      Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
    6. Re:Nothing new? by statusbar · · Score: 5, Insightful

      An old man once told me that age and treachery will always trump youth and skill...

      --
      ipv6 is my vpn
    7. Re:Nothing new? by sirlark · · Score: 5, Insightful

      This works against older engineers because they are competing against younger engineers who can adapt to new tools faster.

      Really? Platforms and tools? Rephrasing without the business speak, you seem to be talking about four things: languages, standard/common libraries, techniques, or actual programming tools, i.e. computerised assistence in the actual effort of programming. Languages only get easier to learn; The more you know, the more wierd something has to be to have not 'seen that syntax before'. Same with libraries. Techniques of getting things done? I'm pretty sure it's harder for a fresh out of school programmer to pick up a book on advanced AI techniques and implement them from scratch, than a programmer with 20 years of experience who has probably used similar techniques at some time, possibly even independently developed (Hey we ALL reinvent the wheel on weekends). And learning a new IDE, or tool like make or ant ... Sure the 20 something might be able to read through the manual slightly faster, because of better eyesight...

      Recent graduates might graduate with knowledge of current tools, but that doesn't make them able to learn faster. It's just that they don't have to learn at all.

    8. Re:Nothing new? by pixelpusher220 · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Xerox. My dad was laid off by them in his upper 50s and he fully qualified as a 'middle manager'. In fact Xerox laid off so many people and outsourced so many others that within 5 years had to hire my dad and many others back because the people who actually knew anything were gone in the wave of cuts.

      And it has cost them dearly both financially and in reputation.

      I specifically of one team that was downsized from 35 to literally 1 person with a few 'off shore' techs to handle support. That didn't end up being very successful.

      Long story short, when a CEO/Board who have no long term vested interest (i.e. golden parachutes that kick in after only a few years) their decisions are going to be *very* suspect when it comes to long term knowledge of who to keep and who to get rid of. Because if it kicks you in the ass a year after your parachute opened...what the hell do you really care?

      I'm a 42 yr old software engineer/programmer and I know the drill. I'm expensive compared to fresh out of college kid. But I have years of experience they don't have and my employer knows this. Will it save me completely? No, but in no other field can you self teach yourself into the skills you need to have tomorrow. It's that simple. those who go out and learn on their own to keep themselves current will continue to be worth the extra money, those that don't will simply make it easier for those of us who do.

      On top of that, did you read today that the University of Florida just killed their ENTIRE Computer Science department? Seriously, it boggles the mind that a school could be so completely clueless. Yet as a programmer, I call it job security, there will be fewer people for an every increasing amount of my jobs. I think the trend recently ticked up but for almost a decade the number of programmers graduating in the US went down every year. You can't fire people when you don't have anyone to hire to fill their spot.

      --
      People in cars cause accidents....accidents in cars cause people :-D
    9. Re:Nothing new? by Bucky24 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      You can't fire people when you don't have anyone to hire to fill their spot.

      I'm pretty sure companies do this anyway... They just expect under-qualified people to pick up the slack.

      --
      All the world's a CPU, and all the men and women merely AI agents
    10. Re:Nothing new? by Wraithlyn · · Score: 5, Insightful

      "If you think it's expensive to hire a professional, wait until you hire an amateur."

      --
      "Mind, as manifested by the capacity to make choices, is to some extent present in every electron." -Freeman Dyson
    11. Re:Nothing new? by badpool · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I'm a less-than 30 year old developer. I've worked in organizations with 1:10 manager:dev ratio, sometimes higher. These managers did no coding whatsoever (some barely understood what we were doing), and spent their time inventing metrics, discussing/presenting these metrics, and making sure devs did the absolute minimum required to satisfy the customer because all they ever looked at were those metrics. While this may not apply to you, I can see where he's coming from. I now work for a company that has roughly a 1:70 ratio of manager:dev, and it's great. Devs participate in all levels of decision making, including the assignment of features/projects to younger devs, and oversight of their proteges. You could say that the managerial-level decision making is informally shared among the senior engineers. But they code just as much as I do. Coders are given independence and have ownership, and quality is their mandate. I hear Valve operates in a similar manner and their success mirrors our own. Ok maybe they are a bit more successful ;).

      Good devs shouldn't stop coding unless they are bored with it. They should continue to work and be compensated according to their skill and experience. I feel a lot of firms have devalued experienced engineers to their peril. They dangle the $$ carrot in front of engineers who are at the top of their game, drawing them into an occupation where they no longer add demonstrable value to the company's products (again, not necessarily you), and then hire a newbie to fill the hole at the bottom rung. Worse, they farm out the work. The end result is invariably a crappier product.

  2. Explains Software Quality by clonehappy · · Score: 5, Interesting
    So, by the time you really know what you're doing, you cost too much and don't "think outside the box" anymore (read: write sloppy ^W innovative code), so they can you.

    Really explains a lot about Facebook as well, actually!

    1. Re:Explains Software Quality by jedidiah · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Of course someone like Zuckerberg prefers kids that don't have a life, will put up with any crap their fed by the boss, and won't contradict management.

      The same goes for your other bean counters.

      --
      A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
  3. Not bloody likely by Grelfer · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Got my first software-development gig at 25. Been doing it full-time since then, and now I'm 58. Still going strong.

    What are those Bloomberg assholes smoking?

    1. Re:Not bloody likely by Anonymous+Codger · · Score: 5, Informative

      OK, I'm 62 and still going strong. I'm up to date on my skills and respected by my (much younger) colleagues.

      But I have known people in their 40's with good backgrounds who couldn't find work in the field.

      --
      No sig? Sigh...
    2. Re:Not bloody likely by RetiredMidn · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Agreed.

      I started software development at 22 and I'm turning 58 next month; I've spent a grand total of about 12 months out of work due to layoffs. I haven't been back to school since I got my master's in CS in '87; everything I've learned since has been on the job or on my own time. It's not that hard.

      Frankly, it is more difficult to land a new position when competing with younger workers who are freshly trained in current technologies, and who don't have family obligations eroding their work days, but I still bring something to the table, most especially experience that helps prevent making old mistakes new again. At least twice in the last few years, my past experience with assembly helped me resolve issues that had my co-workers scratching their heads even after I explained it to them.

      Current expertise: Objective-C (OS X and iOS), C++, and picking up Qt and Ruby. Java is getting a little rusty now. My skills and the language. ;-)

      It does help that I love what I do.

  4. i know you are but what am i by zlives · · Score: 5, Insightful

    you could say that about any professional career... I am sure doctors are pretty dead end too...
    I guess unless you can hedge fund your way to making billions by exploiting millions... you are in a dead end career.

  5. If it's false, it's false. If it's true... by He+Who+Has+No+Name · · Score: 5, Insightful

    ...it won't end well, now, will it?

    People don't just magically stop having bills after 35, individuals are getting married and starting families later in life, and software / tech careers are becoming the linchpin of what's left of the American middle class.

    Effectively cut them off from their career fields at such a pivotal point in their lives, en masse... see what you reap. You may not be doing much hiring of any kind when they're done shoving your dumb, pathologically stock-price-obsessed ass effectively out of society.

  6. Um, I think some important facts are being ignored by bodangly · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Software engineering as a private sector job is fairly new in the grand scheme of things. Programmers that are 40+ years old probably aren't even all that common, certainly nowhere near as common as programmers younger than that. I am not so sure programmers starting today will face quite the same challenges having grown up in the midst of the technology revolution. Furthermore, in ANY job you probably will see the older workers doing much more management compared to younger workers. I don't get how this is supposed to be news. Sounds like pointless fear-mongering to me.

  7. I'll bet it's hours. by Beardo+the+Bearded · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I think what they're really saying here is:

    "Programmers in their 40s have wives, kids, and hobbies, and that means they won't put up with the 50-60 hour week bullshit we can get the 20-year-olds to eat." Also, they expect raises and vacation, and we just can't have that.

    Work isn't your life. Work is what you do to pay for your life.

    --

    ---
    ECHELON is a government program to find words like bomb, jihad, plutonium, assassinate, and anarchy.
    1. Re:I'll bet it's hours. by dkleinsc · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Actually, what they're saying is that Facebook and other major software development firms engage in illegal age discrimination, but that rather than complain about it or get the EEOC or other agencies to do something about it, we should just roll over and accept it.

      --
      I am officially gone from /. Long live http://www.soylentnews.com/
  8. schizophrenic industry by sl4shd0rk · · Score: 5, Informative

    First, the jobs move overseas and we get told it's a "good thing":
    http://blog.douweosinga.com/2003/10/why-jobs-moving-overseas-isn-so-bad.html

    Then, there is complaining that the industry can't find any programmers:
    http://www.xconomy.com/seattle/2011/05/23/tech-talent-shortage-one-of-this-years-major-storylines-illustrated-in-national-study-by-job-search-site-dice/

    Next, the industry tries to figure out where all the programmers went:
    http://www.google.com/search?q=shortage+of+programmers

    Finally, they realize they've castrated themselves and simply claim it's a dead-end career. Nice.

    --
    Join the Slashcott! Feb 10 thru Feb 17!
  9. Re:Um, I think some important facts are being igno by t4ng* · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Say what? I started programming in the mid '70's. There were already "software engineers" and "computer scientists" back then. Computers were around long before "personal computers" and needed programming.

    The only way I get work as a programmer now is as an consultant. It is not because I haven't kept up with tech, languages and tools. Around 10 years old head hunters started telling me it would be easier to find work for for me if I rewrote my resume to hide my true age and years of experience.

    The majority of my clients are through referrals, they've never seen me in person and have no idea how old I am.

  10. Mod parent up! by khasim · · Score: 5, Insightful

    This is going to sound "ageist" but ... the only advantage young programmers have is that they're willing to work 20 hour days and 7 day weeks for months at a time. And do it for less money.

    http://norvig.com/21-days.html

    So you need about 10,000 hours of working in a field to become an "expert". If you believe that article (and I do). And someone who is an "expert" has, hopefully, seen enough mistakes and errors over those 10,000 hours to be able to head them off when they show up again.

    That's what you're paying for when you hire the experienced programmers. The knowledge of what errors people usually make and why they make them.

    So you get code with fewer errors and fewer re-writes to take out the errors that never got in in the first place.

    1. Re:Mod parent up! by Altus · · Score: 5, Insightful

      yea, and working those hours only exacerbates their lack of experience with stupid mistakes as they slowly burn out.

      Thanks, but I'll take a well rested experience programmer at 8-9 hours a day over some kid working 20 hours days and fucking up for 18 of them.

      --

      "In America, first you get the sugar, then you get the power, then you get the women..." -H. Simpson

    2. Re:Mod parent up! by cayenne8 · · Score: 5, Interesting

      But wages progression also in mid and small companies wages progression for technical (not just IT) staff stalls.

      That's why you work long enough to get experience, and skills (and hopefully contacts and some people skills along the way)....incorporate yourself, and go contracting.

      In that field, experience is EVERYTHING...and you can make a very healthy bill rate.

      It is amazing really...how often, how companies will grind their W2's (young ones) into the ground, for nothing, willingly lose them, but pay a major premium for a contractor to come in and do the same thing or fix things, etc.

      It isn't just IT, work has changed. The days of getting a long term job for life, especially at ONE company are long, long, long gone.

      You have to be adaptable, willing to risk, willing to move/travel to where the jobs are.

      There are plenty of jobs out there paying plenty of money if you are good. You just have to be willing to do what it takes to get to them and have them.

      People skills and connections will get you a LONG way....if you can back those up with extreme tech skills, you will go even further. It isn't too bad when you can work your bill rate up high enough to work 6-8mos a year, and be able to easily afford to take the rest of the year off....it can be done,and they're plenty of IT folks out there doing it.

      You just have to drop out of that old mindset of what a job is...

      --
      Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
    3. Re:Mod parent up! by CaptainLugnuts · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Or better yet: Why do you try to make more money now at the expense of even more longer term?

    4. Re:Mod parent up! by autocannon · · Score: 5, Insightful

      This. The pursuit of ever growing profits has got to be curbed. They can't be increased indefinitely, but those fucking MBA grads know all and want their bonuses, so they do everything and anything. Despite record profits at my company, they have cut the pension, cut the vacation caps, reduced medical coverage, increased medical premiums. And then blamed it on being competitive. All the while touting the company's "excellent" benefit package. They had profits (not revenue, profit) in the BILLIONs of dollars this year, and turned around and on top of all the benefit cuts they also gave no raises to many people.

      They do this to increase profit, but it's also a way of giving a big fat middle finger to anyone worth a damn. Ultimately, IMO they have just cut all the reasons for anyone to remain at the company. In this way, the most expensive move on, and if any are replaced they're done so with cheap new talent.

      But hey, it's more important to get that stock price an extra 1 cent higher so the corporate managers can earn that extra million dollar bonus.

      That's my rant, but watching senior CS people leaving this company, and my last company, has been very disappointing. Some left for better opportunities, most left due to threats of furlough or layoff. Guess billion dollar profits isn't enough to keep people though...

    5. Re:Mod parent up! by broken_chaos · · Score: 5, Insightful

      So you have to run your entire life around your work.

      Something seems wrong, when that's how life is supposed to be lived.

    6. Re:Mod parent up! by bzipitidoo · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Companies used to operate that way. Immediate short term gain was not the only motive. They would consider the impact their policies had on their host cities because they were wise enough to understand that affected their own future. They even agreed to a 40 hour work week because both their own and independent research showed that got the most productivity out of people. Surely no one thought the 40 hour week was born out of some silly concern over the welfare of the workers! But now in many places, it's strip mining. Plunder and pillage until the accumulated capital is all played out, then move on to new territory. It's management by locusts.

      You said shareholders? The money is being made for the workers-- some of the workers. They just all happen to be at the executive level.

      --
      Intellectual Property is a monopolistic, selfish, and defective concept. It is "tyranny over the mind of man"
  11. Statistics Don't Support That BS by Jane+Q.+Public · · Score: 5, Insightful

    As a study that was linked to right here on Slashdot not long ago shows, ageism in software development is nothing more than arrogant bullshit.

    And Zuckerberg is nothing more than a PHP script kiddie who both got lucky and cheated others to achieve his success. His word is hardly to be taken seriously.

  12. Re:Um, I think some important facts are being igno by Dcnjoe60 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    TFA points out that it takes *longer* for the older programmer to find the job. This has nothing to do with how many older guys are out there.

    It takes longer for most older people to find jobs. It has nothing to do with being a programmer or not.

  13. Re:Cool, so where do you go next? by zullnero · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Hold on there. People skills are important if you're ever going to be a successful manager. I've worked with plenty of developers over the years who've been promoted to management positions, and they have development skills that are out of date to go with bad people skills. That's basically the worst of all worlds. Every project I've been on with guys like that has been an uphill battle.

    You have to be the sort of engineer who genuinely cares about the success of others on your team above your own personal success. (I've seen one too many technical managers who covered their own tails by tossing one of their employees under the bus...only to discover that employee had critical knowledge about a project that sets the whole team back in the long run.) You have to be the sort of engineer that is interested in time management, personnel skills, putting people in the right place to succeed, and getting the right people to work together to achieve the best results for both of them. Yeah, I know it sounds corny, but it's the truth. You have some of those concepts pounded into your head when you do an MBA with a focus on management because you're stuck doing a pile of Industrial Psych courses (depending on where you go) and you have to take them seriously. If you're coming into a team without a lot of technical background, those are the concepts that your employers will grill you on in your interviews...not whether or not you know what a regular expression is or what SOAP stands for. You have to be able to see personal friction between your team members and deal with it before it gets out of control...not just wait for it to become a problem then fire someone. You have to be enthusiastic about process improvements, and not cling to doing things the way you personally feel comfortable with. A whole lot of managers with technical backgrounds have that problem, and it never turns out well.

    If you, as a developer, don't really embrace those traits as well, I'd think your best bet is to go back to school. Start a coffee shop. Start your own business. Marry a doctor. One of those things. Don't be a manager, it won't end well for you.

  14. re: ageist by spatley · · Score: 5, Insightful

    If they want a newbie that knows a lot of abstract book-learnin and bangs his head against the wall for a week on a problem that I can solve in 10 minutes let them continue the illusion that they are saving money.
    I will be over here doing great work, advocating the high value practices of the industry, and getting higher and higher salaries from smart employers.
    For that matter, forget even thinking about those longer hours and just pay your coders by the line. That will get you ahead.

  15. Re:Zuckerberg == rich idiot by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Nope. Facebook is doing the exact same thing as every other large tech company: Microsoft, Google, Oracle, etc. (Facebook also has a lot of silicon valley vets, Zuckerberg isn't just making this stuff up as he goes.)

    The idea is that you hire "raw material" (CS grads) who really don't know any engineering. Then you train them in the Company Way. Because they don't know any better, they're now bound to the company's internal processes and it makes it that much harder for them to jump-ship or work on someone else's ecosystem. They also don't get uppity and say "Let's write this in Java" or "Oracle DB does this, why are we recreating it?"

    Facebook uses PHP as their internal language and the majority of CS-wonk new hires have never even used it. This is 100% by-design.

  16. Re:Cool, so where do you go next? by gstoddart · · Score: 5, Insightful

    It's not like we make as much money as atheletes, so where do programmers go when they are 40?

    Consulting or professional services. No, really.

    As much as product-oriented software houses may prefer to have younger programmers for whatever reason, people who have been in the industry for a while have a lot of breadth and depth in terms of domain expertise and the like.

    In terms of actually helping to implement the things in the real world, companies tend to find themselves needing a broader context for these things. With the added benefit you can roll up your sleeves and write code as needed.

    Sometimes a developer only sees things from a given perspective, which doesn't always translate into the ability to help businesses actually do things. Not all developers have yet learned how to interact with non-technical people.

    Having 'graduated' from a software development company several years ago, there's a market for people with a good general grounding in computers who also have some domain expertise in one or more areas.

    The 'grown up' skills like being able to conduct yourself nicely in meetings, work with actual end users and not be a condescending prat, and be able to see the big picture of why someone is doing something are quite marketable.

    There is life after code. It can be quite rewarding. That good, solid technical grounding is still a valuable skill as long as you have some of the soft skills to back it up.

    --
    Lost at C:>. Found at C.
  17. Re:Zuckerberg == rich idiot by Colonel+Korn · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Nope. Facebook is doing the exact same thing as every other large tech company: Microsoft, Google, Oracle, etc. (Facebook also has a lot of silicon valley vets, Zuckerberg isn't just making this stuff up as he goes.)

    The idea is that you hire "raw material" (CS grads) who really don't know any engineering. Then you train them in the Company Way. Because they don't know any better, they're now bound to the company's internal processes and it makes it that much harder for them to jump-ship or work on someone else's ecosystem. They also don't get uppity and say "Let's write this in Java" or "Oracle DB does this, why are we recreating it?"

    Facebook uses PHP as their internal language and the majority of CS-wonk new hires have never even used it. This is 100% by-design.

    And Facebook, which is based around a successful idea and very simple code, has been plagued by poor programming since it went live.

    --
    "I zero-index my hamsters" - Willtor (147206)
  18. Re: ageist by jmcvetta · · Score: 5, Insightful

    forget even thinking about those longer hours and just pay your coders by the line. That will get you ahead.

    It will certainly get you ahead in the contest for needlessly long, verbose code....