Silicon Valley In 2013 Resembles Logan's Run In 2274

theodp writes "The 1976 science fiction film Logan's Run depicts a dystopian future society where life must end at the age of 30. So, it's a world that kind of resembles today's Silicon Valley, where the NY Times reports that the median age of workers is 29 years old at Google and 28 years old at Facebook. The report that technology workers are young — really young — comes on the heels of other presumably-unrelated stories that Silicon Valley execs can't find enough skilled workers and no one would fund Doug Engelbart in the last four decades of his life. On the bright side, at least old techies don't die in Silicon Valley — they just can't get hired."

Comments

29 years old

[A Huge Loud Fart]

29 years old is young now?

Re:29 years old

[gestalt_n_pepper]

At 55, it sure *looks* that way.

Re:29 years old

[imunfair]

I'm not sure if you're a silly troll or just too young to realize that most people don't retire until 60-65. vThat makes 29 less than a quarter of the time someone will work if they went to college.

Re:29 years old

[gl4ss]

29 years old is young now?

well.. .com reporters are hitting forty and fifty now. so of course 29 is young, straight outta school and whatever.
but imagine that, being in the middle, first being too young to hit the .com boom of '00 and then "old". I'd just reckon that the job market sucks no matter what the age even in SF. and fb and google medians... aren't most of their a lot of their workers technically just phone answer droids working low wage customer support, with high turnaround? that explains how average fb guy is just 1.1years at the company.

"Younger companies tend to have workers with less time at the firm, according to Payscale." am I stupid but does this sentence just mean that young companies don't have guys who have worked at there for decades? how the fuck could they have???

the article is pretty much just total tripe though if you finish reading it - fuck it. "One reason for this, she said, was a function of skills. “Baby Boomers and Gen Xers tend to know C# and SQL,” she said. C# is a software language, while SQL is a database technology. She added, “Gen Y knows Python, social media, and Hadoop,” which are newer versions of those things."

it's just so fucking stupid.

Re:29 years old

[A Huge Loud Fart]

and fb and google medians... aren't most of their a lot of their workers technically just phone answer droids working low wage customer support

Neither Google or Facebook have no phone support whatsoever.

Re:29 years old

[Anonymous Coward]

I've been drunk for more than that. And I only drink on weekends.

Re:29 years old

[Rakishi]

I'd just reckon that the job market sucks no matter what the age even in SF

Hahaha, keep thinking that if it makes you happy. Everyone I know who actually is there or NYC thinks it's about as close to the dot com boom as you can get. Maybe better because the giants have a lot more money to throw around this time. Everyone I know who was looking for jobs had better offers than their old jobs within a few weeks and usually were booked solid with interviews. Usually people have interviews at decent companies the next day if they put themselves on the job market.

aren't most of their a lot of their workers technically just phone answer droids working low wage customer support, with high turnaround?

Neither one has much in the sense of tech support or call centers from what I understand.

that explains how average fb guy is just 1.1years at the company.

Are you even in tech? Promotion in tech means you find a better job somewhere else and everyone wants to hire ex-fb people. The shorter people stay in a tech position the better the job market.

Re: 29 years old

[Anonymous Coward]

Remind me not to hire you with your attitude.

Re: 29 years old

[jasenj1]

So both have telephone support then?

Re: 29 years old

[Rakishi]

My attitude of not being a miserable wage slave and actually wanting to be paid my market value? Or my attitude of understanding how the economies of my own industry?

I do find it amusing how people on one hand complain about companies exploiting workers but on the other hand bitch about workers not being team players if they don't let themselves be exploited.

Re:29 years old

[gl4ss]

good people get jobs anyways, that's not a sign that the job market is good or in .com shape.

and fb has plenty of people working on app support, going through requests from nsa&whoever, working with people to get them back to their accounts, sorting out if the apps are scams, sorting out spam, selling adverts.. you name it, plenty of stuff that is essentially email or call support - if you think about it, it's only natural for these positions to out-weight every other department.

yeah, sure, I am in tech. in Helsinki and employed and could probably get an interview for another job in days or instantly, I'm hitting nearly 10 years doing mobile development. I know a bunch of people who can't though - and a lot of people who work in tech but don't code who could use a job. what, you think everyone at facebook codes? fuck no, most of them do the menial crap that's associated with having hundreds of millions of users...

Re:29 years old

[Dcnjoe60]

Are you even in tech? Promotion in tech means you find a better job somewhere else and everyone wants to hire ex-fb people. The shorter people stay in a tech position the better the job market.

Ummmm, that's not called promotion. Promotion means you move up in the same company. Jumping ship to another company only works for so long. For instance, before too long, you find that you are 30 in Silicon Valley and evidently nobody wants to hire you. Hopefully in all of those jumps you develop some management skills along the way because by 40 you'll need them to keep your job from going to some kid.

Just saying...

Re:29 years old

[Anonymous Coward]

29 years old is young now?

With the rest of society's median age getting older:

In general, the U.S. population continues to grow older with a median age over 40 years old in many states.

and the trend is continuing, 29 years old is quite young compared to the general population.

Re:29 years old

[mcgrew]

You're a kid, kid. You're my kids' age, and I was five years older than you when I had kids. I'm twice as old as you; compared to you I've lived two whole lifetimes so far. Having served 4 years in the USAF before school I was just getting my Bachelor's at your age.

My daughter's your age, and in college.

You're just getting started.

I do understand your thinking, however -- I was your age once. When I got out of the service, having gone to Thailand, I thought I'd lived more than most 70 year olds.

I was wrong. So are you.

Re:29 years old

[Kjella]

In the sense that you have a long way to go to retirement, yes. I'd worked what, six years back then? With 38 more to go until public pension kicks in here. On the other hand, you'd already be on the "old boys" team in snowboarding. It's all about context.

Re: 29 years old

[aurispector]

Gosh darn that silly market for determining wages.

It's not just the IT market, it's ANY market - if you're over 40 and don't have very specific technical skills you're unemployable.

No company wants the increased wage and insurance costs, not to mention having to deal with employees who actually know how to negotiate instead of being fearfully compliant.

Of course, walmart is hiring. There is that.

Re: 29 years old

[mcgrew]

I think he said the opposite of what he thought he said. I think what he thought he said was "Neither Google nor Facebook have any phone support whatsoever".

He may not be a native speaker.

Re:29 years old

[SirGarlon]

It's young enough to not be protected under California's Fair Employment and Housing Act. Interesting loophole there -- it's illegal to discriminate against people 40 and over based on age, but the 35-year-olds are, apparently, out in the cold. IANAL and I am definitely not a lawyer licensed in California.

Re:29 years old

[Anonymous Coward]

At 35 it looks that way too. I regularly refer to people in their twenties as "kids", much as someone your age might refer to me.

On topic, no wonder Google's services are going to shit. Every single change that has been made to those services in the past five years has been annoying and unnecessary. It's indicative of the youth mentality of change for change sake rather than actually improving upon the old. Google Search, Gmail, Google Talk and YouTube have become utter jokes compared to what they once were.

Re:29 years old

[Rakishi]

Ummmm, that's not called promotion. Promotion means you move up in the same company.

*Woosh*

For instance, before too long, you find that you are 30 in Silicon Valley and evidently nobody wants to hire you.

The people who can't find jobs at 30 are those who spent 8 years working at one company on dead end technology only to get laid off with no current skills or connections. I've had friends hit that wall and it's not pretty to be playing catch up while burning through savings. You know those co-workers I mentioned in my previous post? They're not 20 year olds and yet they find jobs without difficulty.

Hopefully in all of those jumps you develop some management skills along the way because by 40 you'll need them to keep your job from going to some kid.

Hopefully? I plan for my future, I try to not rely on luck and good fortune.

You think you're more likely to be promoted to management or to find a new job in management (or a lead of some kind) at a different company? I've found the former an utter crap shoot to pull off (and most who I've seen do it were ass kissers foremost) and personally I prefer not to gamble on my future.

Re:29 years old

[thetoadwarrior]

It's not even half way through you life so yes it is.

Re:29 years old

[Dcnjoe60]

Ummmm, that's not called promotion. Promotion means you move up in the same company.

*Woosh*

For instance, before too long, you find that you are 30 in Silicon Valley and evidently nobody wants to hire you.

The people who can't find jobs at 30 are those who spent 8 years working at one company on dead end technology only to get laid off with no current skills or connections. I've had friends hit that wall and it's not pretty to be playing catch up while burning through savings. You know those co-workers I mentioned in my previous post? They're not 20 year olds and yet they find jobs without difficulty.

Hopefully in all of those jumps you develop some management skills along the way because by 40 you'll need them to keep your job from going to some kid.

Hopefully? I plan for my future, I try to not rely on luck and good fortune.

You think you're more likely to be promoted to management or to find a new job in management (or a lead of some kind) at a different company? I've found the former an utter crap shoot to pull off (and most who I've seen do it were ass kissers foremost) and personally I prefer not to gamble on my future.

No, I don't think I'm more likely to be promoted to management. I already am in management and do the IT hiring for a very large entity. Here is what we look for in our employees: the ability to work as part of a team; the ability to communicate well with customers (internal/external) and others; the ability to eventually lead a team; knowledge of the business/industry; overall attitude; stability; project management and eventually the IT skills in question.

Why are the IT skills so far down the list, particularly behind the soft skills? Because we can train the right people to give them the skill set needed for the task at hand. It's a lot more difficult to train for the soft skills.

We work with several local colleges and tech schools and encourage them to add non-tech courses to their IT curriculum. Why? Because we aren't hiring just programmers or network administrators or whatever. We are hiring people that represent our company. Many of our IT personnel do not even have CS degrees but come from a varied background of degree programs. Why? Because, diversified backgrounds lead to better solutions.

Just like most people get their impression of their bank from the tellers, our customers get their impression of us, by the people we send to them. Technical skills are easy to obtain and at the rate that technology changes, we have to keep retraining anyway. People and soft skills, that is what we value most.

BTW, if you are interested, we have very low turnover, we are good to our employees. We have found that if you treat your employees like the valued resource they are, then they stay. It's good for them and it's good for our customers and good for us.

Then again, we are not a Silicon Valley company, so maybe that's the difference.

Re:29 years old

[AngryNick]

I think a twenty-something media age is pretty normal in any large company, tech or not. I work for a large non-tech firm and our average is closer to 28 and the average lifespan of a new hire is around 4 years. Those who stay (i.e. make the 4th year cut) tend to stick around for 25+ years and gobs of money.

Most people start their careers in places that can hire in bulk, train in bulk, manage in bulk, and promote in bulk. You do your time, decide what you want in life, and move "up or out." Assuming you move out, then there will be plenty of smaller companies waiting to hire you for your prior company's investment in your experience and training. Circle of life stuff, really.

Re: 29 years old

[Anonymous Coward]

"Neither Google or Facebook have any phone support whatsoever."

Happy now grammar Nazi?

Re:29 years old

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes. And, hopefully, as we increase our lifespan it will look even younger. You are of course welcome to throw away all the lifespan gains we've made so far. You can die much earlier if this satisfies some kind of bizarre romantic notion you have about aging being good?

Re: 29 years old

[interval1066]

He may not be a native speaker.

Or one of those young workers.

Re:29 years old

[expatriot]

At the coal face programmers are often young, we have a lot of graduates or people with only a few years experience.

I am near retirement (at 65) but my companies wants me to stay on as long as I want to. I manage a small team and focus on documentation.

We do have some designers over 50, and they are brilliant, but most younger coders either need to get very good at architecture and high-level design or extend sideways into other skills.

Re: 29 years old

[interval1066]

Happy now grammar Nazi?

Knowing that the language is in constant decline and today's young IT workers won't be happy until it devolves into a series of gutteral sounds and nonsenical crayon marks, no.

Re: 29 years old

[Anonymous Coward]

He may not be a native speaker.

I think that native speakers are MORE likely to make these kinds of mistakes than foreigners. This mistake comes from combining every day idioms of the language without thinking. That's how a native speaker speaks - unthinking/naturally and idiomatically. A foreigner is not as deeply set in the idioms of the language and a foreigner has to think more about speaking.

Re: 29 years old

[Anonymous Coward]

An MIT linguistics professor was lecturing his class the other day. "In English," he said, "a double negative forms a positive. However, in some languages, such as Russian, a double negative remains a negative. But there isn't a single language, not one, in which a double positive can express a negative."

A voice from the back of the room piped up, "Yeah, right."

I didn't feel like typing it, so I grabbed it from here.

Re:29 years old

[jedidiah]

> Because we can train the right people to give them the skill set needed for the task at hand. It's a lot more difficult to train for the soft skills.

Sounds entirely too good to be true. Corporations gave up on that kind of thinking a long time ago.

Re: 29 years old

[Anonymous Coward]

I do find it amusing how people on one hand complain about companies exploiting workers but on the other hand bitch about workers not being team players if they don't let themselves be exploited.

That's because the moneyed classes have convinced the working classes that that workers not letting them selves be exploited is communism, and communism (defined as anything to the left of the Tea Party) is the spawn of Lucifer. This is alo how they managed to convince the American worker that tort reform requiring him to waive basic rights such the right to a trial by jury in order to qualify for employment is a good idea.

Re:29 years old

[Anonymous Coward]

"C# is a software language, while SQL is a database technology"

Last I checked, SQL was Structured Query Language .

> SELECT * FROM article_writers WHERE clue >0

0 rows returned

Re:29 years old

[Anonymous Coward]

+5 Insightful? What would you do if a 120-year old told you that you were a kid? You clearly don't think of yourself as a kid, so agreeing with the 120-year old in some attempt to relativize "kid" would be disingenuous. What's really going on is that people of all ages have tremendous creativity in finding ways to elevate their own status above others and calling other people kids is one of the ways to do that ("You're a kid, kid"). Your whole post is about comparing yourself to the OP. Your experience of yourself relative to the OP has no bearing on whether the OP is a kid or not. It only becomes relevant because the post is really about you and your status. Which of course it has to be, because you don't know anything about the OP - he could be 12 or 112 for all you know.

One thing I've learned, having only traveled a modest part of the way towards the decrepitude of old age, is this: don't ever let anyone put you down or say that you are not ready because you are too young or too old. The worst thing that can happen is that you fail, which usually is not a big deal, not in the grand scheme of things. Much worse to stay on the sidelines because someone told you that you were too immature or too wizened. Most of all, don't let people teach you to put yourself down. Calling people kids is exactly the kind of thing that holds people back in that way. As it elevates you, it deflates them.

Re:29 years old

[mjwalshe]

I was doing map reduce back in the early 80's :-)

Re: 29 years old

[JWSmythe]

    I like it.

    It doesn't address the language of sarcasm, where even positives are negatives. Really. I wouldn't lie to you. :)

    Unfortunately, it's an art lost on many. I find that to my advantage, where I can insult people to their face, and they believe it was a complement.

Re:29 years old

[JWSmythe]

    You're lucky.

    I've seen a lot of people edged out of jobs. With age and seniority comes a larger paycheck. It's easier to bring in someone young, who's less business savvy, and willing to work for much less money. Many places haven't made the relationship that it takes a fresh face twice as long (or longer) to do the job of an experienced person.

    I've seen plenty of people make lateral moves to other companies, trying to learn new skills along the way. That simply makes them chronologically older, but with the same skill set as the young. Since they have to hop between companies to stay employed, they also end up getting paid the same. Unfortunately, everything suffers.

Re:29 years old

[Sarius64]

Really it's like politicians who think they need to change something, or make a new law or no one will vote for them. It's unfortunate that these people are trained to murder their own talent instead of leveraging it.

Re: 29 years old

[MaskedSlacker]

"In English," he said, "a double negative forms a positive...

This statement is wrong, and impressively so for a linguistics professor. It is filled with presumptions that are almost universally rejected by linguists (the idea of a uniform/correct standard of a language being the primary offense here). In SOME dialects of English a double negative forms a positive (and even in Standard American English this is not universal). In many (probably most, but I'm too lazy to do anything resembling an exhausting review of the literature right now) dialects of English a double negative is either the same as a simple negative or an intensifier of a negative. AAVE is the obvious example.

Re: 29 years old

[Space cowboy]

Just started a new job in Apple R&D. I'm 44.

No company will hire you if you don't have the skills they want, but I'm hardly the oldest person in my (fairly small) group; likewise in general on the floor around me. That's not to say there aren't younger people around - of course there are, it's just that age doesn't appear to be any sort of criteria.

Re:29 years old

[Sarius64]

Yes. And, hopefully, as we increase our lifespan it will look even younger. You are of course welcome to throw away all the lifespan gains we've made so far. You can die much earlier if this satisfies some kind of bizarre romantic notion you have about aging being good?

*Insightful!*

Re:29 years old

[Dcnjoe60]

    You're lucky.

    I've seen a lot of people edged out of jobs. With age and seniority comes a larger paycheck. It's easier to bring in someone young, who's less business savvy, and willing to work for much less money. Many places haven't made the relationship that it takes a fresh face twice as long (or longer) to do the job of an experienced person.

    I've seen plenty of people make lateral moves to other companies, trying to learn new skills along the way. That simply makes them chronologically older, but with the same skill set as the young. Since they have to hop between companies to stay employed, they also end up getting paid the same. Unfortunately, everything suffers.

Replacing experienced workers with inexperienced and lower paid workers has been shown time and time again to be more costly in the long run. We call it the MBA effect, where beginning the 1960s with the emphasis on MBAs focus shifted to maximizing short term profits. Often, though this is at the expense of long term growth and stability. Since at the time MBAs were in high demand, like IT is now, there was a lot of job hopping, so the "experts" pushing this approach in the organization weren't there to suffer the consequences. They had moved on.

Often, when decisions are made along those lines, nobody is looking at the total cost involved, including the cost of hiring and training or the lost productivity as the less experienced worker needs to be brought up to speed and become part of the team. (Obviously, if the experienced worker left by their own choosing, these costs have to be borne, but that is not usually the case).

One of the real problems is that today's IT managers often are highly educated and trained in computer sciences but not business, and are totally project focused. That works out fine for the company as the bubble is expanding, but on the downside, many of those companies cannot survive because they have the wrong people, not just in management but on their teams.

Currently IT is in the midst of another bubble. Unlike the bubble in the 1990s with the .coms, this one is fuelled by federal monetary policy holding interest rates abnormally low, which means there is excess money coming in from venture capitalists. Once interest rates return, which the Fed keeps saying will happen, so that investors can get a better, safer return elsewhere, that money will flow out again. Companies focused on only short term profits will be in a world of hurt because the money wasted on the continual retraining and hiring caused by high turnover and the loss in productivity cannot be made up. That money is already gone.

Smart companies realize that their employees are not an expense, but a resource. After investing money in shaping that resource to best add to the company's value, why would you want to throw that all away and start over?

Re:29 years old

[theshowmecanuck]

Yeah... always was wasn't it. Except if you're a teenager. Or a freshly graduated hotshot from college who thinks his bit of knowledge and few years experience are all the world needs. The trouble with getting rid of this attitude in young people is that they have to get old to understand why it's wrong.

Re:29 years old

[Anonymous Coward]

Your tech sounds like simple shit otherwise you wouldn't be able to throw shit people at it,

Re:29 years old

[ebno-10db]

That doesn't surprise me. Many of these "new" technologies aren't that new, but many people (especially younger ones quite frankly) are ignorant of that and think the latest thing must be new. I read an article not that long ago where someone justified hiring people who were no more than a few years out of school because the oldies (30) learned their trade before smartphones were popular. Therefore they didn't know about the "new" requirements like working with limited computing power and memory, and worrying about battery life. Yeah, that's real new - I was doing it in the 80's.

Re:29 years old

[Dcnjoe60]

> Because we can train the right people to give them the skill set needed for the task at hand. It's a lot more difficult to train for the soft skills.

Sounds entirely too good to be true. Corporations gave up on that kind of thinking a long time ago.

Actually there are quite a few corporations that still believe and practice that. They just aren't the Googles and FB of the world. But the corporate culture in the US does make it harder for that kind of thinking to persist with the demand being short term profits to keep shareholders (which really mean board members) happy.

However, most corporations in the US aren't the major conglomerates, but are actually family businesses that have grown in size over the years. These corporations are no different than any other family owned business. The values of those at the top are what set the tone for the rest of the company. If those at the top value the employees who work for them, then the company culture will mirror that. If those at the top value profits above all else, then the company culture will mirror that.

Unfortunately, what has happened in many of these family corporations, the parents have not instilled the same value system in the kids or the kids aren't really interested in the business and hire others to run it for them. In doing so, however, a whole new company set of values is put in place.

I also do consulting for companies all over the globe, specifically on the topic of hiring and there are reams of data to show CEOs and CFOs that in the long run, it is in their company's best interest to minimize employee turnover. It is simply pouring money down the drain. I also work with companies to turn their company culture around, because the two are inter-related (see, our firm does much more than just IT).

Look back to when import vehicles first started coming to America from Japan. Nobody paid much attention, particularly the major American auto makers. The cars were small, they weren't reliable, they were uncomfortable and a whole slew of other negative things. But Japan was in it for the long haul and had a different corporate culture than the US makers did so that today, they are the number one selling vehicles in the US.

Likewise, in the IT business, or pretty much any business. The company that will be here tomorrow needs to have a culture that ensures it's existence for tomorrow. Just like young people today need/want instant gratification, too many companies and their board do the same.

Here is one last tidbit. Often, we hear from managers about having employees that are dead wood, just taking up space. So we ask them why they hired them if they were that bad. They always, and I do mean always, say they weren't that way when we hired them. To which we respond, well, if they weren't dead wood when you hired them, what did you do to turn them into it?

The companies that will be the leaders of the 21st century are the ones that realize that their employees are their most valuable assets and treat them accordingly.

Re:29 years old

[phantomfive]

Silicon Valley is fine, the overall unemployment rate is lower than the national average, and for programmers, starting pay, right out of college, is typically $100k. For a programmer with the right skills, $160k is within reach, and $200k is not impossible. Getting a job is as easy as putting a well-written resume on Linked-In, you don't have to apply. There aren't many industries like that. Most people actually have to look for a job.

The people who complain about the job market in Silicon Valley, or working long hours or whatever, are the people who haven't figured out how to look for a job, or the people who have no skills whatsoever. If all you can do is write ASP.NET, it's a little harder to find a job (but not much harder).

Re:29 years old

[phantomfive]

The people who can't find jobs at 30 are those who spent 8 years working at one company on dead end technology only to get laid off with no current skills or connections. I've had friends hit that wall and it's not pretty to be playing catch up while burning through savings. You know those co-workers I mentioned in my previous post? They're not 20 year olds and yet they find jobs without difficulty.

This. It's amazing how easy it is to find a job these days, even for people with poor skills. The only skill you really need is the skill of finding a job......

Re:29 years old

[hedwards]

I've noticed that. They skip necessary, but boring, features to add something more interesting.

For instance, Google Tasks still doesn't have any method for adding recurring tasks, they expect you to add an event for that, but the problem is that these aren't events, I might have it on my to do list for a week sometimes, and want it there until it's been finished. And, it doesn't require me to do it at a specific time either, just sometime during the day.

And then there's the features on my Nexus One that are in the phone physically, but that they never felt like enabling in software. Or at least they hadn't as of the time when I switched to CyanogenMod. Did they ever choose to enable the colored scroll ball for user customization or enable the FM tuner?

Re:29 years old

[hedwards]

Perhaps in the past, but I'm not counting on getting to retire that early. Between the wages being stagnant, the complete lack of defined benefits pensions and Social Security being in a state where the politicians are more interested in pandering to the people on it now, than concerning themselves with what happens when those paying in now get old enough to learn that they're getting less than they paid into it by design.

Re:29 years old

[ebno-10db]

+5 Insightful? What would you do if a 120-year old told you that you were a kid? You clearly don't think of yourself as a kid, so agreeing with the 120-year old in some attempt to relativize "kid" would be disingenuous. What's really going on is that people of all ages have tremendous creativity in finding ways to elevate their own status above others and calling other people kids is one of the ways to do that ("You're a kid, kid"). Your whole post is about comparing yourself to the OP. Your experience of yourself relative to the OP has no bearing on whether the OP is a kid or not. It only becomes relevant because the post is really about you and your status. Which of course it has to be, because you don't know anything about the OP - he could be 12 or 112 for all you know.

One thing I've learned, having only traveled a modest part of the way towards the decrepitude of old age, is this: don't ever let anyone put you down or say that you are not ready because you are too young or too old. The worst thing that can happen is that you fail, which usually is not a big deal, not in the grand scheme of things. Much worse to stay on the sidelines because someone told you that you were too immature or too wizened. Most of all, don't let people teach you to put yourself down. Calling people kids is exactly the kind of thing that holds people back in that way. As it elevates you, it deflates them.

Quoting in full because most of your comment is good (coincidentally I happen to agree with it). I'm only a few years younger that the GP, and as for "what would you do if a 120-year old told you that you were a kid?", I'd either laugh, or feel flattered. Stop being so sensitive. When I was in my 20's older guys at work called me "kid" all the time. I took no offense because it wasn't meant offensively, and didn't indicate a lack of respect.

Re: 29 years old

[hedwards]

That's an idiomatic use of the double negative. Double negatives in English typically mean the same as a positive, but can also serve to emphasize the point, in some dialects of English it's considered grammatically acceptable to use double negatives in that idiomatic fashion.

But, it's not a feature of English, it's a feature of some dialects of English.

Or, to put it another way, how long do you think you'd be able to keep a job writing business memos or reports if you were using double negatives for emphasis? I'm guessing you'd very quickly be made to either change the language, or change your job.

Re: 29 years old

[hedwards]

Sigh, it's interesting to me how this process has been going on for literally thousands of years without any hint that it will change. Seems to me, that if it were possible for the language to devolve in that fashion, we'd already be there by now. More likely, that stick up your ass will cause society to devolve much more quickly.

Personally, I'm in favor of teaching people like you some manners and respect for the coming generation, as we're the ones you're going to be counting on in old age, not to just dump you in the middle of the woods to fend for yourself.

Re: 29 years old

[Anonymous Coward]

In Spanish is the same, double negations remains negative.

Re:29 years old

[hedwards]

You said it yourself "long run."

The point of MBAs is to get things going as well as possible in the short term so the executives can get their golden parachute just before the business goes under, and it becomes somebody else's problem.

Which is the same reason why they require people to have all the experience they'll need for an entry level position and don't want to pay people who know what they're doing to stay.

Re: 29 years old

[MaskedSlacker]

But, it's not a feature of English, it's a feature of some dialects of English.

This is a meaningless sentence. There is no such thing as "English." There is only a collection of mutually intelligible dialects that is referred to as English. Saying that something is not a feature of the collection, but only a feature of a subset is redundant. There are very few features that are universal across all dialects of English.

Or, to put it another way, how long do you think you'd be able to keep a job writing business memos or reports if you were using double negatives for emphasis? I'm guessing you'd very quickly be made to either change the language, or change your job.

This is a stupid point and it has nothing to do with linguistics. The fact that some dialects are considered low status and others carry social prestige does not make either correct or wrong. There is no such thing as "correct" English. There are two major dialects which are treated as educational standards (which is what you are referring to), but that is an arbitrary social status, and neither of them is "correct" (and they differ from each other in several substantial ways such that they certainly couldn't both be correct even if such a thing existed as a "correct" language).

Re:29 years old

[plopez]

That's just barely enough time for someone to graduate and then really understand what they are doing. They have just started to get trained up.

Re:29 years old

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you even in tech? Promotion in tech means you find a better job somewhere else and everyone wants to hire ex-fb people. The shorter people stay in a tech position the better the job market.

Ummmm, that's not called promotion. Promotion means you move up in the same company. Jumping ship to another company only works for so long. For instance, before too long, you find that you are 30 in Silicon Valley and evidently nobody wants to hire you. Hopefully in all of those jumps you develop some management skills along the way because by 40 you'll need them to keep your job from going to some kid.

Just saying...

I'm over 60 and went the other way. I'm happy now developing software instead of spending all my time managing schedules and doing hiring. For a 20% pay cut I went to a company where I don't work weekends, and I feel way more valuable than what I was doing in middle management. It's not too hard to keep skills current. I spent time on StackOverflow researching and solving C++ problems so I could go in with something more current than FORTRAN, PL/1, APL, and Lisp.

Re: 29 years old

[NotSanguine]

Personally, I'm in favor of teaching people like you some manners and respect for the coming generation, as we're the ones you're going to be counting on in old age, not to just dump you in the middle of the woods to fend for yourself.

Personally, I'm in favor of teaching people like you that those with more experience often have a great deal to share and that if you weren't such a douchebag you might actually learn something. Manners and respect go both ways, my young apprentice.

Re:29 years old

[spire3661]

At 40 I still run circles around most people, younger and older. I never understand the 'young tech' thing.

Re:29 years old

[Anonymous Coward]

On topic, no wonder Google's services are going to shit.

You call that on topic? I'd call it obligatory Google bashing and utterly irrelevant.

Re: 29 years old

[Anonymous Coward]

If using one gets you fired and another gets you hired, then there are indeed "correct" and "incorrect" versions, practically speaking.

Re: 29 years old

[Anonymous Coward]

Is it your position that a job in Apple R&D does not require "very specific technical skills"?

Re:29 years old

[tepples]

The only skill you really need is the skill of finding a job

And this is the one skill that a lot of schools tend to fail at.

Re:29 years old

[Brandybuck]

At 29 you've barely learned how to shave.

Re:29 years old

[Rakishi]

If companies are willing have a bidding war for my employment why would I not let them? Sure if you're a manager doing hiring you'd dislike it since salary expectations just went up but as an employee why is that bad?

There's very few companies that provide raises as high as you'd get by switching jobs and as many "promotion" opportunities. I can spend 10 years hoping a management position opens up that I'm considered for or I can accept a management position after 5 years or 2 years. Again, why is it worse for me to do the latter?

All I'm hearing from you is that as a hiring manager you'd like to make sure your employees are kept just content enough to never peek out and see if they're undervalued. I'm guessing most of that training is applicable only within the company so you've got a nice sunk cost hold on them as well. Probably their backgrounds are odd so again they'd be less employable at other companies that didn't spend time vetting them. In the end it's all about how you can pay the least for your employees. Which is good for the companies bottom line but my perspective is from the other side. I want the company to pay as much for my time as possible and not as little.

Re: 29 years old

[Anonymous Coward]

Now that you work at Apple R&D and you're old enough to remember when batteries used to be user-replaceable, can you try to do the planet a favour?

Re:29 years old

[phantomfive]

the article is pretty much just total tripe though if you finish reading it - fuck it. "One reason for this, she said, was a function of skills. “Baby Boomers and Gen Xers tend to know C# and SQL,” she said. C# is a software language, while SQL is a database technology. She added, “Gen Y knows Python, social media, and Hadoop,” which are newer versions of those things."

Yeah, you're right, that's the stupidest thing I've read all month.

Re:29 years old

[andy1307]

Currently IT is in the midst of another bubble. Unlike the bubble in the 1990s with the .coms, this one is fuelled by federal monetary policy holding interest rates abnormally low, which means there is excess money coming in from venture capitalists.

Can someone please explain to me why the Fed's QE means there is excess money coming in from venture capitalists/

Re:29 years old

[Jane Q. Public]

"At 40 I still run circles around most people, younger and older. I never understand the 'young tech' thing."

It's nothing but club mentality. They think that young people are the ones who have fresh ideas. When in reality, it tends to be the people with experience who see new, better ways to do things. (Which makes a lot of sense, if you think about it.)

Study after study have shown that older programmers are on average more productive.

Re: 29 years old

[hedwards]

Well, then perhaps your generation should have done a better job of teaching us manners. Or generally not cut back on funding education, worker's rights, and generally making things shitty for us, because you got yours, the hell to anybody that comes after.

We're going to be spending a shit ton of money and effort clearing up the messes that the elderly caused.

Respect does go both ways, but you guys should demonstrate it first, because all we know is the douchebaggery that you've shown us.

Re:29 years old

[Anonymous Coward]

It's got everything to do with the fact that the majority of young people don't realize what they're worth, so they'll take substandard pay, work longer hours, take fewer benefits, and are much less likely to complain or fight for their rights. They're the perfect human resources in the corporate eye. Even better if they're foreign H1B holders who can be threatened with deportation.

Re:29 years old

[greg_barton]

What would you do if a 120-year old told you that you were a kid?

He'd be right and I'd listen to him.

Re:29 years old

[Smallpond]

Social Security was never intended to be a retirement plan. Its just to keep old people from starving to death. If you haven't saved enough to not need SS when you retire then you are in big trouble.

Re:29 years old

[Anonymous Coward]

Hahaha, you sound just like those wankers that bend over and grab their ankles for corporate America, because "it's better than those commies!"

Enjoy being a shill and a sellout, you muppet. Let us know when you rejoin the real world and learn how things really work.

Re:29 years old

[Anonymous Coward]

Only a fanboy would consider stating facts as bashing.

Re:29 years old

[Dcnjoe60]

Our employees are just as sought after as anybody else's Ours tend to stay because we a) treat them better, b) pay them as well or better and c) they all get profit sharing in the company. When the economy went bust in 2009, we did not lay a single person off. At some point job security and quality of life are more important to an individual than wages.

Wages are just one piece of the puzzle, but in many organizations, they are viewed as the most important piece. For instance, we had a very good programmer whose performance started to drop. In discussing the situation with him, his manager found out that he was frustrated because his daughter received a college scholarship to play softball (which was good) but he and his wife were very active in her sports life through high school would not be able to attend her games anymore. While we couldn't do much about the away games, we allowed him to adjust his schedule more than the normal flex time during the softball season so that he could make the games. His productivity improved far beyond what it was before.

That was 10 years ago. Since that time, he was instrumental on two large projects. He'll be retiring in a few more years and one of his main tasks now is to head up a mentoring program for new programmers. If we had taken the route of assuming that he was just old, burned out or otherwise a non-performer, he would have suffered, the customers would have suffered ,the projects he worked on would have suffered and so would the bottom line, which impacts all the employees.

If somebody wants to leave, they are free to do so. The fact that they don't very often is indicative that money isn't the primary motivator many believe it is, but in reality, it simply makes up for all of the abuses a company thrusts on its employees. The problem is that those abuses are still there and eventually take their toll.

Maybe the difference between you and us is your believe that in the end it is all about how you can pay the least for your employees. That is not a concern of ours at all. Our concern is how we can let our employees reach their fullest potential. Our manager's jobs aren't to keep employees in line, they are to help remove the obstacles that keep our employees from being successful. That's not to say that profits aren't important. However, when the entire staff shares in those profits, everybody's fortunes rise and sink together. If we pay our employees less, so there is greater profit, the employees just get it back in their share of those profits.

Not everybody believes a free market is about charging the most you can for a product. A free market also means you are free to charge a fair price for your goods and services. Maybe we would make more money if we acted like everybody else, but then again money isn't our primary motivator. It's just one piece of the puzzle.

Re:29 years old

[techhead79]

Productive != creative.

At least the places I've worked older workers are more interested in keeping the status quo. When you consider that the hot new thing all the startups want to write in changes every 5-6 years it's no surprise that older workers don't hold as much value. They certainly have value in system design and higher level work. Throwing them at coding in a language that has only been around for a few years doesn't make lot of sense. Certainly language of choice is the only reason for the age difference. Those with a family and mortgage simply by definintion are less likely to take risks or are even at an income level where they are pushed to impress the boss / start their own company. Their motivation went out the door a while ago. Studies have been done on this (citation needed). So I fail to see why it's a surprise that startups focus on cheaper labor (younger) that are more likely to be motivated in ways someone with a family and mortgage simply are not. Ask a man with 3 kids, a demanding wife, and a mortgage to stay working a 14 hour shift to meet that next agile milestone...see how long he sticks around before changing jobs.

Re:29 years old

[Dcnjoe60]

Currently IT is in the midst of another bubble. Unlike the bubble in the 1990s with the .coms, this one is fuelled by federal monetary policy holding interest rates abnormally low, which means there is excess money coming in from venture capitalists.

Can someone please explain to me why the Fed's QE means there is excess money coming in from venture capitalists/

It's all about ROI. QE means low interest rates which lowers the overall ROI required to take on an investment. Bond yields are too low because of QE, so money isn't going there and stocks are too volatile, plus they will plummet once interest rates rise. The only market left is the venture market and money has been flooding into it just like before.

Even established companies aren't using the low rates to expand production, which was the intent, but instead to buyout other companies. And why not? The can borrow for 2%, which adjusted for inflation is basically borrowing for free. QE is basically giving free money to banks and businesses. If they aren't going to expand, they have to do something with it and there are only three types of investments: equity, fixed income, venture.

Re:29 years old

[datavirtue]

Google recently acknowledged that their hiring practices were not yielding any significant advantage. Specifically referring to hiring only people from Ivy League schools with 3.5+ GPAs. This had been my guess for some time and I often thought it was the root of their stagnation or lack of innovation recently--hiring only people who are proven conformists. Working in education I don't have anything really good to say about those with advanced degrees. My overall conclusion is that it rots innovative areas of the mind and turns those people off to engaging further education, resulting in intellectual laziness and low self-esteem.

Re: 29 years old

[Anonymous Coward]

Young != creative

Creativity is a skill. Being young does not suddenly grant you that skill and aging does not diminish it

Re: 29 years old

[jc42]

A funny aspect to this is that, according to lots of linguistic studies, pretty much all language changes can be summarized as "simplifications", usually removing something from speech, but this never actually results in a simpler language. Typically it introduces irregularities.

A simple example in English: 1000 years ago, Old English had pretty much all the complex plurals that you find in German. In Early Modern English, this was "simplified" by settling on the "-s" plural as the default. However, most common nouns retained their original plural forms. So rather than having a short list of plurals, depending on word class, we now have a single regular plural, plus hundreds of "irregular" plurals for the common nouns that must simply be memorized by someone trying to learn English.

There are many similar examples in all documented languages. Some part of the language is "simplified", but this causes problems because that part of the language no longer interfaces to its surroundings in the same way, and common utterances may survive the change unaltered.

But this all means we don't have to worry about our language "devolving into a series of gutteral sounds". The descendants of English will be just as complex as modern English. They'll just be different from our speech in more and more ways, as time passes.

A fun example is the recent spreading of the "uptalk" syntax, which is documented to have originated in my native dialect (the Pacific Northwest), and is slowly infecting the speech of young people all over North America. The textbooks have failed to come to terms with it, because the have traditionally ignored the tonal component of spoken English, and the textbook writers have no terminology to explain it. But it may be a a semi-permanent part of spoken American English now, adding to the syntactic complexity and invalidating part of the language's written form (the question mark). It'll be interesting to see how the "grammar Nazis" and instructional writers come to terms with such changes over time.

(Of course, their usual approach is to ignore the actual language, and publish bogus "rules" that have little if any relation to the actual language. ;-)

Re:29 years old

[scatteredthoughts]

>>“Baby Boomers and Gen Xers tend to know C# and SQL,” she said. C# is a software language, while SQL is a database technology. She added, “Gen Y knows >>Python, social media, and Hadoop,” which are newer versions of those things." Formally C# is newer than Python....

Re:29 years old

[Anonymous Coward]

I view it like the ocean tides - on each side, there are a set of technologies. The tide sways over about a 10 year, maybe 15 year period. LISP was old in the 1980s, and everyone was thankful for more linear programming languages. Now many programmers see LISP-like languages and drool for short code. In the end, it is just the tides.

Re:29 years old

[Anonymous Coward]

I find it exactly the opposite, younger people run circles around me. Circles circle circle like a hyperactive puppy. One notices often they aren't getting anywhere faster. What I find often frustrating about older workers is they tend to to stick to inefficient workflows, I totally understand it's hard to keep up over time, but you need to keep your productivity aligned with your pay scale.

Re: 29 years old

[riondluz]

"Or my attitude of understanding how the economies of my own industry?"

This.Says.It.All

Re:29 years old

[Anonymous Coward]

Anyone under 30 here listen up. When you're over 30 you don't get jobs by applying to random job openings, you get jobs because you know people. It's vitally important to maintain your network of work contacts and be seen as generally productive and useful. So that when someone you know needs someone they go, well how about Robert? I know he's not real happy at international data miners... That's how most of my friends in their late 30-40s get gigs.

Re:29 years old

[riondluz]

I'm a bit envious of your working environment and admiring of the prevaling attitudes you've expressed.
So many corporate entities today seem managed by the "I'll be gone, you'll be gone" mentality of short-term ambition/goals that
result in HR inadvertently undermining its own interests and long-term viability to stand on its own merits AOT being swallowd whole by some conglomerate, failing massively and being parted out wholesale.

I've been around long enough to see score of people like Rakishi, in IT, in finance etc.., who while young think they are masters of their universe; only to find out later in life how self-deluded they were in believing they had a handle on anything.

Watching them float from company to company, rising into management as tools of exec's whose only interest is in looting as much of the wealth as they can before moving on themselves (IBG-YBG), is insanely sad on so many levels and has become a trend thats impossible to buck.

Lead by example should not teach jumping ship at every bigger, better deal.

Re:29 years old

[riondluz]

What I find interesting in this conversation between you and Rakishi is that your company, from his POV, represents more the exception than the rule. I can totally get where he is comming from when taking current corporate behaviors as what drives his attitude.

From shifting retirement burdens onto the employee via IRA's to outsourcing, to overworking and under-paying, to focusing on temp-working. The actions of much of corporate america (fortune 1000 at least) speaks volumes to the attitudes of those new in the workforce (10yrs) and saddled with debt.

Your responses reflect more what should be than what is, in this new world order. Sad but true.
Your insights remind me of what I've heard spoken by
Ray Anderson, a name I suspect you are familiar with.

Re:29 years old

[riondluz]

or being a really, really good bull-shitter.
These days, it's a lot of 'all hat - no cattle"
At least in programming the proof is in the coding and there's little room for CYA; too bad same can't be said for CIO,CTO,
and those damn sysadmins!

Re:29 years old

[Austerity Empowers]

As far as I can tell this is it. In software it's 'round the clock coding. In hardware it's "people willing to travel and basically live in China". I know some design engineers in Apple, while they may "design in Cupertino", they live 1/4-1/2 of their lives in Shanghai. People in their 30s and 40s with children young aren't going to be very willing to do that, particularly in two-income households (which in California, is virtually a requirement).

It's better to flee the valley and find a more traditional job elsewhere. The paycheck may LOOK lower, but probably goes a lot farther.

Re:29 years old

[pwizard2]

That, plus the new Gmail interface looks like it was beaten with an ugly stick. Useful text labels are gone, everything is represented with an icon. Are people illiterate these days or something? Some changes are downright impractical. For instance, what's with the tiny editor pop-up window when composing a new message? I have all this screen space, so why not use it? I really don't need to look at the contents of my inbox while I'm writing. Replies use the full-size interface, so what gives? They even manage to get that wrong since essential features like Forward are hidden in menus that are not immediately obvious. It's been over a year since they rolled that UI out and I still want the classic interface back.

Re: 29 years old

[interval1066]

Respect does go both ways, but you guys should demonstrate it first, because all we know is the douchebaggery that you've shown us.

Was in a bridal dress shop once; don't ask why. As I enter a 17 year old girl is dressing down her mother for the dress she is wearing, acting very "douchie" & snotty. Seems she didn't like the dress. I felt very badly for the mother. You, young sir, are the 17 year old girl.

Re: 29 years old

[Space cowboy]

My position is that the qualification is meaningless. I can think of no job which does not have a specific skill-set requirement, from cleaning windows to CPU design. Different skills, for sure, but skills nonetheless.

My comment was therefore aimed at the age-related aspect of the conversation.

Re: 29 years old

[pxc]

A foreigner gets caught up in their own idioms and sometimes erroneously imports them into their understanding of English (and we do the same in other languages). My girlfriend is from Mexico City, and she's likely to occasionally say ‘of X’ rather than ‘X's’. She also sometimes confuses gendered possessive pronouns, because in Spanish the gender is determined by the gender of the object, whereas in English it's determined by the one who possesses it.

A lot of Latinate languages (Spanish and French are the only ones I know well enough to speak for) use two-part negations, which might sometimes seem like double negation to an English speaker. As it happens, we use a two part negation for disjunctive lists as well: neither/nor; neither/or is wrong. It looks like the writer here just didn't know to attach the negation to the word or rather than placing the negation after it.

I would also argue that your position is wrong generally: native speakers can happily pick up idiomatic irregularities by habit, but second-language learners are more likely to presume regularity and just run with it because they haven't had a chance to pick up the irregularities of our idioms by experience.

Re: 29 years old

[pxc]

Technically it should be ‘Neither Google nor Facebook...'.

Re:29 years old

[Darinbob]

And Google and Facebook are "Silicon Valley"? Seems some people are reading too many marketing magazines and not actually looking at reality.

Re:29 years old

[Darinbob]

Also if you look around at Google, there are plenty of older workers there. Someone 29 is basically barely out of entry-level in terms of experience. No company the size of Google could survive with only 29 and younger workers.

Re:29 years old

[Anonymous Coward]

LOL, if you're still chasing that "I'm a tech whiz on my way to the next startup superstardom, just 6 mos away!111!" after about 23 years old, you'll NEVER make it, and you'll have to keep chasing after goofy codemonkey jobs untill your about 30. LOL what a goofball

Re:29 years old

[gmhowell]

Do you bruise easily with that thin skin of yours?

Lighten up, Frances...

Re:29 years old

[Anonymous Coward]

That's safe for you to say because you are not going to run into any 120 year olds. If you lived in a world of only 120 year olds, all of whom called you a kid and discounted your thoughts and opinions because of it, you would quickly come to resent it. You know it's true. You are just pretending otherwise because it now benefits your status to value age, since you are older than the median of people.

Re:29 years old

[pwizard2]

Of course, all the 20-somethings who can't find jobs these days are fucked because that's time lost they can never get back.They will have to delay retirement if they can afford to retire at all (or live way below their means).

Re: 29 years old

[NotSanguine]

Well, then perhaps your generation should have done a better job of teaching us manners. Or generally not cut back on funding education, worker's rights, and generally making things shitty for us, because you got yours, the hell to anybody that comes after.

We're going to be spending a shit ton of money and effort clearing up the messes that the elderly caused.

Respect does go both ways, but you guys should demonstrate it first, because all we know is the douchebaggery that you've shown us.

I can't speak for anyone else, but I am polite and kind almost to a fault. Well, except that I don't suffer fools gladly. My generation? Yeah, sure. My generation will be the ones that are the first to get the shaft with Social Security. My generation is the one that made those shiny phones and created the network infrastructure that makes your job possible, boy.

And I do emphasize the word "boy." Because you clearly aren't acting like an adult. Hence the term "douchebag" in reference to you. Perhaps I should have said whiny child, but douchebag seems to flow quite naturally in this case, don't you think?

In any case, since no one seems to read Santayana any more I'll remind you that if you don't learn the lessons of history, you're doomed to repeat them. I'll break it down into small words so you'll be sure to understand. Yes. There are assholes of every stripe, including older folks. However, look around you -- some of those who came before you clearly knew what they were doing or you would still be up to your knees in pig shit on the farm.

It would behoove you to seek out those who have more experience and try to gain from it, rather than denigrating those who have lived longer than you have. Soon enough, you'll be the old one and there will be young people who might benefit from the experience you've had. It seems clear that you're (at least at the moment) too immature to get that, but perhaps that will change in the future.

Re:29 years old

[Jane Q. Public]

"Productive != creative"

Repeat: "When in reality, it tends to be the people with experience who see new, better ways to do things. (Which makes a lot of sense, if you think about it.) "

"At least the places I've worked older workers are more interested in keeping the status quo."

Anecdotes do not statistics make. I've worked in places where most of the management turned out to be assholes. I do not then conclude that all (or even most) managers are assholes.

"When you consider that the hot new thing all the startups want to write in changes every 5-6 years it's no surprise that older workers don't hold as much value. "

This is directly contrary to study results, which was the whole point of my comment. Your assumptions are not in line with what the statistics actually say. Hell, some of those studies were discussed right here recently on Slashdot.

Re:29 years old

[Jason Levine]

Many places haven't made the relationship that it takes a fresh face twice as long (or longer) to do the job of an experienced person.

Plus, having a new team of young people mucking around with your code every few years will result in a mish-mash of code that nobody will understand. There will be the bits that remain from "team #1" (who originally wrote it), bits from "team #4" and the recently added segments of "team #9." Why does it crash during conditions X, Y, and Z? Who knows. To find out, you'll need to wade through revision after revision with nobody on staff who remembers just WHY some pieces of code were written some ways.

Bringing a young new hire on staff to inject new ideas into a situation can be a good thing. But "Logan's Run"-ing your staff just for the sake of keeping your workers under an artificial maximum age is idiotic.

Re:29 years old

[Jason Levine]

I read it a different way. "Median age is 29"... "Old techies don't die, they just can't get hired." Are they saying that over 30 is old? As someone who will soon celebrate his 38th birthday, I beg to disagree. Yes, there are some grey hairs on my head, but I've earned every one! I may not be as young as a college graduate who is packed with "fresh, new ideas", but I have the experience of being able to tell which ideas will succeed, which will fail, and I know how to properly implement said ideas.

Now get off my lawn you kids!

Re:29 years old

[Jason Levine]

As someone just a few years ahead of you (37), I've noticed the creeping signs of "old age" (as I'd have defined it in my 20's): The music I grew up listening to is being played on the Oldies station (Billy Joel is NOT Oldies!!!!), I refer to college students as "those kids", and the hairs on my head now include some grey members. 20-something me would refer to me as "old", but 30-something me knows I'm not nearly old yet. (I'm sure 50-something me would laugh about 30-something me's ideas of what constitutes "old" so I won't make a new list.)

Re:29 years old

[jrumney]

Billy Joel is NOT Oldies!!!!

Sorry to burst your bubble, but as a 41 year old, I consider Billy Joel to be music my Mum would listen to.

Re: 29 years old

[jameshofo]

yes, yes a thousand times yes! I'm so tired of the apps I use on my phone changing in extreme and sometimes anoying ways one day I updated and the trash button disappeared, it went from easy to access to pull up a menu and hit delete afer you go into an e-mail. this type of change is starting to sound a lot like the zombie version of south park. Change!

Re:29 years old

[BryanL]

From your user name you are apparently a 13 year old boy. But relatively speaking 29 is young. (I kid about your user name)

Re:29 years old

[Macgrrl]

As a 45 year old I remember going to Billy Joel concerts in my late teens, early 20s. IT was an awesome show.

On that front I also saw Eurythmics, Dire Straits, Peter Gabriel and INXS around this time - give or take a few years.

Re:29 years old

[techhead79]

"Productive != creative"

Repeat: "When in reality, it tends to be the people with experience who see new, better ways to do things. (Which makes a lot of sense, if you think about it.) "

Repeating something over and over again doesn't make it true either. You said a study showed workers with more experience are more productive. Being productive has nothing to do with being creative. I completely agree with you that someone that knows a problem area best are the most likely to solve a problem...this doesn't mean the person has to live with the problem for 40 years before they decide to fix it though. However someone that is just being introduced to a new area are also more likely to identify the problems better because all the old folks have learned to just live with the same problems. Again, being productive has nothing to do with being creative.

Your assumptions are not in line with what the statistics actually say.

My assumption that you quoted was "When you consider that the hot new thing all the startups want to write in changes every 5-6 years it's no surprise that older workers don't hold as much value. " This is not an assumption. It's basically a stated fact. Older workers do not hold as much value and when you're comparing resumes between older workers and new workers with newer technology the newer workers are actually more likely to have the correct skillset. To someone in HR they are not going to see a guy with a decade plus of experience in J2EE as something better than a guy with 2 years experience in the language the job is actually for..when you're looking for coding grunts or a group of guys that might spit out a few good ideas once or twice in their career. I don't see why you're failing to connect those same dots. You basically seem to hold no value to a younger developer. Kids in grade school can code...kids in high school can come up with better ideas than some of us will in our entire careers. The truth is someone that has been doing the same thing for 40 years honest truly probably...isn't going to be the next best thing since sliced bread. Their ideas are spent, they've had a thousand chances to shine through the ranks. Their value to most in HR is in stability, training, and high level system design. Not in coming up with the next best thing since sliced bread. To be honest if they had such a great idea they're probably making enough money and have enough experience under their belt to market and sell it themselves instead of working for another asshat boss.

So please explain to me again why older workers are just perfect and exactly what every company should be hiring instead of a young whipper snapper? They aren't going to work late nights, they aren't going to try and impress the boss, and they are more likely to want to stick with what they know works than to try new things. Show me anyone over 35 that works 12 hour days coding non stop and I'll probably shoot the guy myself for not having an self respect by that age.

Re:29 years old

[jrumney]

Billy Joel, Dire Straits and mid eighties Peter Gabriel (as opposed to his more edgy late seventies solo work) were very much adult oriented pop of their day, which makes them oldies today, 25-30 years later. I would start to feel old if the oldies station started to play INXS and Eurythmics though.

Re:29 years old

[mjwx]

At 40 I still run circles around most people, younger and older. I never understand the 'young tech' thing.

Some people can. Others weren't very bright to begin with.

The idea that only young people understand new things is only reality for those who were never able to think for themselves in the first place. In their youth they simply aped their more capable peers, in mid life their more capable peers have eclipsed them.

Re:29 years old

[mjwx]

"At 40 I still run circles around most people, younger and older. I never understand the 'young tech' thing."

It's nothing but club mentality. They think that young people are the ones who have fresh ideas. When in reality, it tends to be the people with experience who see new, better ways to do things. (Which makes a lot of sense, if you think about it.)

Study after study have shown that older programmers are on average more productive.

I dont think it's about age. You get a lot of young people that cant come up with a new idea to save their lives. I think it has more to do with the way that a person thinks, if a person looks at problems with a problem solving mindset (be it abstract or concrete) and works to develop new solutions from a young age, they'll continue to do that well into the senior years. Of course, as will all skills this will get better with practice/experience.

OTOH, you get the people who have learned things by rote memorisation, eventually even the slowest moving systems change and find themselves unable (or unwilling) to go through the whole rote memorisation thing again.

Re:29 years old

[Kazoo the Clown]

It's quite simple, younger workers are easier to mold into the latest fad development management methodologies (agile, etc.). Older workers have been through those attempts before, fell for it at one time, but don't anymore..

Re:29 years old

[Kazoo the Clown]

Both C# and SQL are languages. What do you,think the L stands for? While SQL is not designed as a complete stand-alone programming language, C# vs SQL is not exactly apples and oranges.

Re: 29 years old

[Kazoo the Clown]

That pretty much explains it, doesn't it? If you don't bother to listen to users complaints, no wonder the products just keep getting worse.

Re: 29 years old

[Anonymous Coward]

I dunno... I am thirty six and that is middle aged. Have of life is over, at best. That qualifies as objectively old.

Re: 29 years old

[mcgrew]

There is no such thing as "correct" English.

You be writin' in Ebonics in a college English class an' see what da mofuggin teacha say about it, foo.

Spoken English is not written English. Double negatives always parse as positives when written.

Re: 29 years old

[Anonymous Coward]

Twenty nine is hardly straight out of school... That's maybe ten or more years out of school.

Re:29 years old

[julesh]

Productive != creative.

At least the places I've worked older workers are more interested in keeping the status quo. When you consider that the hot new thing all the startups want to write in changes every 5-6 years it's no surprise that older workers don't hold as much value.

Creative != using the latest buzzword-compliant language/framework.

The older workers just realize that switching to a new framework will usually end up wasting time that could be spent actually coming up with some interesting ideas for novel features that customers might actually care about. The productivity gains of new environments are marginal if you spend most of your time learning how to use it effectively. You're not going to hit your 10,000 hours to master a skill (per Gladwell's suggestion) if you switch to a new one every 5 years. Or at the very least, you're not going to have chance to do very much with that knowledge once you've obtained it.

Re: 29 years old

[julesh]

There is no such thing as "correct" English.

You be writin' in Ebonics in a college English class an' see what da mofuggin teacha say about it, foo.

Spoken English is not written English. Double negatives always parse as positives when written.

The point remains, though, that going by current most-widely accepted theories of linguistics as an academic subject, there is no such thing as a universal "correct" version of English. Grammars and dictionaries are descriptions of the way people speak, not prescriptions for how they should speak. Identifying one variant of language as correct and another as incorrect is a cultural bias, and not an appropriate thing to do while studying the language in question from an academic perspective. Therefore, to make any definitive statement about English grammar, particularly one as controversial as "double negatives always form a positive", is clearly not the kind of thing you would expect an academic in the field of linguistics to say.[1]

This does not mean, however, that they wouldn't prescribe a particular dialect and set of grammatical rules that they expect their students to use. To require a particular variant of a language in a particular context is a matter of practicality, and is somewhat orthogonal to the study of the language from an academic perspective. (Consider that the students could be studying French and writing their essays in English, for example.)

[1] All of which kind-of detracts from the joke. Change the MIT professor to a high-school English teacher and it works much better.

Re:29 years old

[RabidReindeer]

Billy Joel, Dire Straits and mid eighties Peter Gabriel (as opposed to his more edgy late seventies solo work) were very much adult oriented pop of their day, which makes them oldies today, 25-30 years later. I would start to feel old if the oldies station started to play INXS and Eurythmics though.

Er.... I hate to be the bearer of bad tidings, but...

Re:29 years old

[TWiTfan]

I've noticed that. They skip necessary, but boring, features to add something more interesting.

They also don't want to deal with boring long-term tasks like maintenance, incremental improvements, etc. Google is notorious for that. Make a big splash with the debut of some new project, then slowly let it become abandonware as you move on to newer, sexier projects.

Re:29 years old

[hackula]

Could not agree more. I am in a midsize US city and work could not be easier to find. I could walk out right now and have a new gig lined up by 5 with no problem.

To the issue with older workers,I work with a guy right now who is 74. I am in my mid 20s so he has about 50 years more experience than me. We are pretty much a 2 man team, so I think we represent the dynamic pretty well. He deals with most of the desktop stuff and legacy stuff that I can barely make heads or tails of without some serious research time. I deal with our new web programming work. He helps me with a lot of the back end algorithms which are pretty complex (we write big data analytics software). With any team, you want diversity of skills and experiences. I think a reason most of us young people are drawn to the web is because there was a lack of experience in many of the shops we started out in, so it was a gap we could fill. Also keep in mind that most shops are not valley startups. Most programmers work in finance, insurance, business, etc. IME, the median age has got to be 35+ in those types of environments. Those types of places catch a lot of shit from valleyites, but I have noticed far more age and gender diversity there than in startup places. I think this is because they care less about cultivating the perfect monoculture and more about getting shit done. (Note, I now work in startup so I am not saying it is all bad, but simply that parts of the culture are problematic)

Re: 29 years old

[hackula]

Apple hiring older workers... Apple hiring workers from the turn of the century... Apple looking for new design inspiration... Apple uncovers lost diary of Steve Jobs in which he explains why his favorite movie is Wild Wild West... Apple's next device to be steam punk inspired.

...Let the rumors begin!

Re:29 years old

[hackula]

..Or even go out on your own. With companies providing less and less benefits and the need for automation increasing, freelancing is a safer and safer bet everyday. Hell, it may have always been since you diversify your risk across many clients.

Re:29 years old

[hackula]

Also, as a Python dev, I can say without a doubt that Python has a pretty neck-beardy community.

Re: 29 years old

[Myopic]

I would like that story a lot more with a follow-up by the linguist. What did the prof think of that?

Re: 29 years old

[Myopic]

you done forgot emoticons ;-)

Re:29 years old

[Reapy]

You are basically talking out of my mouth about gmail... I wonder if this is something that is making me 'old' because the tiny ass compose window and bullshit down the left side doesn't concern me.

As for the icons I think it is a stupid ass UI design fad that I hope passes soon. As a designer though I can see how I can think my icon is super obvious as to what it does, and I don't have to translate it and worry that the "Fwd" takes up more or less space in another language.

Still, I always have to hover for tooltips now a days, I just can't remember which stupid button means what. But yeah google is taking a falling dive for a while now, they sold the gold company for riches and more generalization as they opened up the door. I probably would have done the same thing honestly.

Re:29 years old

[Reapy]

I knew I was fucked when I started bobbing my head in time to shit playing in the grocery store.

Re:29 years old

[PurplePhase]

Apologies, but: hiring? 40yo dev looking for the corporate environment you're describing...

Re:29 years old

[Jane Q. Public]

"This is not an assumption. It's basically a stated fact."

NO, it is not. It is an assumption, and a false one, according to the studies I previously mentioned.

NO, I am not going to spend an hour going back to look for them to prove it to you. You can find them youself if you want. It's not worth my time. But that doesn't mean they don't exist, or that you are right. You are not.

Your long stories and justifications mean nothing to me. I have read the statistics, and they disagree with you. Period. End of discussion. I shall not reply again.

Re: 29 years old

[Anonymous Coward]

No wonder their stock is plummeting...

Re:29 years old

[kaatochacha]

I like Billie Joel, and Billy Joel is oldies.

Re:29 years old

[HeckRuler]

As long as that doesn't mean that kids lose the right to vote, smoke, watch porn, comment on the right way to code things, and get a job.

Kids are generally immature, inexperienced, and dumb. They do not have the rights that adults have. To say that someone is a kid dismisses their input. It's an insult. It's agism. And it's just as bad as the line "you can't teach an old dog new tricks".

But yeah, the voice of experience is often valuable. No one is saying we should dismiss the input of old people. And in the exact same way, you shouldn't dismiss the input of young people.

Now go play with your blocks child, the adults are talking.

Re:29 years old

[GargamelSpaceman]

It's not even molding. Anyone can assess the merits of the latest fad and take the good leaving the bad. But most of any fad is just stuff we've seen before re-hashed. The young are seeing it for the first time and think they will be able to move mountains with their shiny new hammer.
The main thing those with the money to pay you want is the ability to throw dollars at the problem and get linear increases in performance. If there's a project that will take 6 months for one person, they want to be able to hire 6 people and get it in one month. They want this more even than the ability to complete similar projects in 6 weeks, or even 6 days, or 6 hours.
They want no learning curve. Make it simple enough for any skillset. Use crayons. If the code has any coherent archetecture, that's a learning curve. If you've used anything but crayons, then you've made hiring extra programmers more difficult. The only codeset that fits their bill is spaghetti code. With spaghetti code, nobody ever understands what's going on. Everyone just shits up the codebase to get their bit done, because it's impossible to understand what's going on enough to try anything clever, and generating anything more understandable than spaghetti code makes other people's lives who have to read your code easier while you spend your precious time cleaning up the spaghetti around you. And adding more people indeed produces a linear increase in output. The seasoned folks have no advantage over newbies.
If someone cares about throughput, it's because they don't have the money to pay you properly. And the spaghetti factories won't let you be worth paying properly.

Re: 29 years old

[Hognoxious]

Even if there's more than one correct version that doesn't imply there are no wrong ones.

Re: 29 years old

[Hognoxious]

Knowing that the language is in constant decline and today's young IT workers won't be happy until it devolves into a series of gutteral sounds

Him wot ain't never done nuthing wrong gets first chuck. (John 8:7)

Re:29 years old

[glowend]

I'm not sure youth is solely responsible for that. Instead, when you hire a bunch of folks through a super-competitive hiring process, everyone thinks it's beneath them to do the boring work that comprises the bulk of most software. This Quora lends a little insight: http://www.quora.com/Working-at-Google-1/Whats-the-worst-part-about-working-at-Google

Re:29 years old

[techhead79]

I agree with everything you just said. The point I was trying to make though is that all these new start-ups that are looking for just the young blood don't see it that way. These new start-ups already decided on their hot new buzzword compliant tech that's going to help them get that VC money. So regardless of what is a more realistic approach to a problem...things are the way they are for a reason. But I can see a lot of people are really upset about that.

Re: 29 years old

[Branciforte]

I way hired by Google as a 45 year old with a 2.2 GPA. And there are plenty of people here in their 40's. There may be age discrimination in SV, but I haven't seen it here at Google.

Re:29 years old

[tedgyz]

We had the same problem at HP in the 90's. I was part of an acquisition and realized I would never meet the hiring requirements, even though I was the one doing the interviewing. They liked to hire Phd's, which meant a lot of lofty thinkers and writers of papers. In terms of doing practical programming, that was left to us lowly minions. We called ourselves the "rowers".

Obligatory Primer Quote:

[lobiusmoop]

"You know what they do with engineers when they turn 40? They take them out and shoot them."

Re:Obligatory Primer Quote:

[MrBandersnatch]

As a 41 year old (software) engineer...I sort of wish that were true.

Re:Obligatory Primer Quote:

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe if by "engineer" you mean software engineer or some sort of IT position. But I'm a 50 year old Civil Engineer. I'm just getting started.

Re:Obligatory Primer Quote:

[TuringCheck]

We didn't hire even one engineer under 30 - they simply don't have the skills and the patience.

Re:Obligatory Primer Quote:

[Anonymous Coward]

It's usually all you can do with them when they have gone mad having to deal with impetuous 29 year olds who have little experience and think they know it all...

Re:Obligatory Primer Quote:

[Anonymous Coward]

I drive a train, you insensitive clod!

Re:Obligatory Primer Quote:

[Darinbob]

Most of these new companies don't want engineers, they want IT techs. Ie, they keep the systems running but they don't build them. It's a race to the bottom against outsourced companies, which is why they want younger workers.

Re:Obligatory Primer Quote:

[hackula]

For somebody doing entry level IT work, I really fail to see why someone would need 20 years of experience. Devs are a whole different story, and I have seen much less age monoculture there. Honestly, I am about 5 years in and have always been the youngest dev by at least 10 years anywhere I have been so far. Fine by me, but I think it is a bit scary that we lost about 5 years of college grads since the recession. The tech industry should be grateful they were still able to keep the gears moving at all with new hires during the recession. Other fields will have 10 solid years of rookies clawing over the scraps and screwing up systems. Having a flow of talent at all skill levels is important to any technical field.

It's not age discrimination

[stevez67]

It's just that they only hire young people to keep salaries down so the exec's can buy themselves another island or fund spaceflights.

Re:It's not age discrimination

[SirGarlon]

Only hiring young people to keep salaries down *is* age discrimination.

Re:It's not age discrimination

[thetoadwarrior]

That would be age discrimination.

Re:It's not age discrimination

[Anonymous Coward]

That would be age discrimination.

No, because what they're discriminating on is not age like the parent claims, but rather work experience. Some kid fresh out of college will settle for a wage he could get working fast-food, but the guy 2 years out from retirement is going to be asking a lot more.

Re:It's not age discrimination

[slew]

The moment a group gets a special entitlement is the moment I don't want to have to deal with that group at all, they become too expensive for me to do business with, they are dangerous and costly with no benefit to me at all.

Since the group of "over-40" get some special entitlement of protection against job discrimination, eventually you won't want to have to deal with yourself anymore because you will be too dangerous and provide no benefit to yourself at all.

I suspect it would probably suck to not want to deal with yourself...

Re:It's not age discrimination

[Anonymous Coward]

No, it is not. Though I am all FOR people having the right to discriminate against each other based on whatever the hell they choose, actually hiring only young people in order to get best price on labour is the same exact activity that you engage in when you shop for bargains, it is just bargaining.

If an older guy comes with a good price and experience, then I would hire him also. I don't need just to hire young people if an older guy gives me a better value (better price per experience ratio) or just a better price!

Re:It's not age discrimination

[Anonymous Coward]

The idea that the lowest price is always the best value is deeply flawed.

Re:It's not age discrimination

[Anonymous Coward]

Speaking as someone younger, I've always thought that argument that being older automatically means they should get paid more as monumentally self-entitled. Plus there is a matter of what is needed. If you're doing the same work as a younger person for comparable quality (or within the caps of the expectation) except comparable pay. If you need to call a plumber to clear your drains quickly since water now refuses to go down whether someone has two or twenty years experience doesn't matter, it is the same task and experience isn't called for. "Overqualification" however your point holds since they don't let you do the same job for the same rate as someone younger.

Re:It's not age discrimination

[sethstorm]

You shouldn't be treated differently just because you hire people, if you hire people, you shouldn't lose rights and people you hire shouldn't get any special privileges.

The problem is that the employer can do more damage to more people versus the people that seek and perform work. You act as if owning a business should be worthy of divine status while workers are a problem.

Or have you not understood the idea of monospony power(and no, not through any Randian interpretations of such)? Then again, your ideals combine the worst of Rand (all of it), and combine them with Taylorism. Expecting someone with those ideals is hardly able to consider that, much less the idea that working for someone as an equal peer is no less noble than being someone that people seek for work.

There is a market to solve all of these issues, be it pay or whatever

The problem with your statement is that it leaves too much in the employers' favor.
Cases in point, the abuse of temporary labor as a second-class form of work as well as the catch-22 situation of employment status which would break easily if one were to grant protected hiring status to the unemployed (say, for 10 years contiguous employment with the same direct-hire/non-temp company - and resets/stops in the favor of the worker). To handle the temp abuse, just apply RTW laws to staffing agencies, temporary work, and every non-secure form of employment - to where it has to be a conscious and competitive choice to give up security.

Re: It's not age discrimination

[Anonymous Coward]

That's a huge assumption made based on a single trait. The definition of discrimination.

Re:It's not age discrimination

[Anonymous Coward]

Only hiring young people to keep salaries down *is* age discrimination.

So according to you, what should be the reason to hire someone, if not cost?

Young people are cheaper, more energetic, work more overtime, less health issues, more positive, learns better, remembers more, more adaptable, more malleable, more flexible, more creative, smarter, prettier, ... did I say cheaper?

Really.

Re:It's not age discrimination

[hackula]

Not if they phrase it "Seeking Development Lead; Salary: 45k". Of course, no one in their 40s is going to take that job, but I do not think it qualifies as active discrimination.

Re: It's not age discrimination

[thetoadwarrior]

But the guy 2 years from retirement might say screw it and take the lower pay. If he's not sorted his life out yet 2 years won't make a difference so why be fussy?

Didn't RTFA

[Anonymous Coward]

They can't find enough skilled workers, or they can't find enough skilled workers who still need diapers and thus don't ask for a lot of dough?

Re:Didn't RTFA

[Rakishi]

The starting salaries for college grads at large SV companies are I think around $100k now and probably rising. It goes up from there mind you and goes up rather quickly if you switch to a competitor at the right time. As the fun facebook and google salary war has shown money isn't the problem.

Re:Didn't RTFA

[rally2xs]

They can't find enough skilled workers that want to compete with H1B people that are willing to work for "less." These guys aren't dumb, so when they choose to study something in college, do they want to study something that is getting salaries hammered by cheap foreign competition, has rampant age discrimination, and is famous for 80 hour weeks? Naw, better to study law, or medicine. There's at least some money there, and you can do either by marketing directly to the public, without having to worry about being hired by someone else after you're 40 years old. Sure, just keep raising that H1B quota until there isn't a comp sci course available in the USA, or if there is, it is populated only by foreigners.

Re:Didn't RTFA

[geoskd]

The starting salaries for college grads at large SV companies are I think around $100k now and probably rising. It goes up from there mind you and goes up rather quickly if you switch to a competitor at the right time. As the fun facebook and google salary war has shown money isn't the problem.

100k might or might not be a lot of money depending on where you have to live to make that kind of money. If a studio apartment an hour from work each way is the cheapest you can get and runs you $2,000 per month, that 100k just isn't going got go all that far. OTOH if you make half that, but can get an entire 2000 sf house 15 minutes from work (maybe within biking distance) for $800 / month including MITs, you will have a better standard of living. I knew a guy who got a co-op job as a masters student. He was making 70k per year annualized, but had to drive almost three hours a day commute because it was the only housing available, and it still cost him 60% of his paycheck in rent. I'll grant you that was an exceptional case, but raw income numbers don't mean much without context.

Re:Didn't RTFA

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm pretty sure you're full of shit.

I've interviewed, and been offered, several software engineer jobs over the past year at companies in SV. I make $110k in a small suburb of Boston. I have 15 years of industry experience - and if you want to talk buzzword bingo, my work is, essentially, "DevOps / Continuous Delivery Engineer," and I'm involved in building an internal cloud platform for a very large financial services firm - chef, vagrant, xen & vsphere hypervisors, ruby, python, restful apis, rabbitmq, jenkins, blah blah blah blah blah. I'm not an unemployable dinosaur, I have a skill set that is very much in demand these days, and I'm *good* at what I do.

I was offered $120-125k by the 4 SV companies who offered me jobs. I turned them all down, because a 10-15k pay bump for vague promises of "we're gonna be the most amazing billion dollar startup evar!" is not enough to make me leave my nice cushy 12 minute commute and my charming little New England town to relocate all the way across the country to crowded, overpriced SV, to work 80 hours a week and spend 20 hours a week commuting, and never see my family in friends.

I'm pretty sure the "new college grad" is making a fair bit less than 100k with zero experience, on average.

Re:Didn't RTFA

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm making twice that and I'm still having difficulty buying a house in any good school district. $100k is no money in Silicon Valley. Money starts at $1M.

Re:Didn't RTFA

[Anonymous Coward]

If you are making $200K and cannot afford a house in the SF Bay Area, you are looking in the wrong places. I bought a house for $585K in Santa Clara on a salary of $175K.

Re:Didn't RTFA

[HockeyPuck]

That's the problem. You are living in Santa Clara. It's not about affording a house it's affording a house in a quality location.

Sure you can live in East San Jose along King Street.. but you'd probably much rather live in Sunnyvale/Cupertino/PaloAlto with good school districts.

As they say, "It's all about location." and in the SV location can take your $500k home in SC and make it a $1.3m home.

Re:Didn't RTFA

[Anonymous Coward]

The cheapest house I see for sale in a cursory check of Santa Clara's listings on Trulia show me that the cheapest house there is $499,888 - for a 3br condo, which curiously lists itself as a "single family home" -- last I checked, single family homes are typically considered free-standing structures, not condos.

Cheapest of the actual free-standing single family homes? $549k, for a 2br/1ba 770 sqft home - and to be fair, it looks like a really cute little place, old school craftsman bungalow in good repair, with a small lawn next to it. Your $585k home in Santa Clara might be *great* for a single person, or even a young couple with no kids - but when you've got a family, and your 2 kids are looking at going to school in Santa Clara, suddenly that 585k house doesn't look like such a great deal. And this is the problem with california real estate - you have to make "fuck you" money to barely afford a postage stamp with 2 brs.

My wife and I are looking for a new place these days (2nd baby on the way), and for $585k, I can afford a hell of a lot more house than you're getting in Santa Clara (or anywhere else in the bay area), and I can also afford that in a place with a good school system, a little privacy (nearest neighbor > 1 uninsulated interior wall away), and easy access to mass transit & the city. Maybe this is the reason Google & Facebook think privacy is a thing of the past: they've grown up in an area where everything you do is in sight of a host of neighbors, and you have to shoehorn yourself into a thimble with 30 other assholes.

Re:Didn't RTFA

[tjb]

I bought a house in Willow Glen last September for $550K - the schools in this area are fine (great, even) and so is the neighborhood. If you're focused on a perfect house in Cupertino or Shallow Alto, yeah, its gonna be pricey, but there are plenty of perfectly fine areas in San Jose and Santa Clara with older, smaller homes that sell in the $500-$600K range, which should be easily affordable on a $200K salary (or lower, even). Heck, our mortgage+taxes are less than we were paying in rent on a downtown SJ condo and that's before taking into account tax benefits...

Re:Didn't RTFA

[Anonymous Coward]

Santa Clara is a quality location.

Re:Didn't RTFA

[Anonymous Coward]

Santa Clara does have a good school system, but it does not matter to me because I home school due to the zero tolerance policies and the stupidity of NCLB.

I have no problem with the size of the house I bought in Santa Clara. If you want to go live in a larger home with a water sucking lawn, go right ahead. Clearly this place does not suite your desires, but it does for many people.

I will agree that if you are on the lower end of the middle class segment it is close to impossible to own a home here. The answer is more housing, but the type of housing will end up being high density. If you cannout build out, you have to build up. This is not unqiue to this region, there are other highly urbanized metropolitan areas thoughout the world that suffer the same problem.

Yes!!!

[EzInKy]

In some cases it means you haven't lived half your life yet, in others it means you haven't lived a third of it. Which is closer to the truth for you depends quite a bit on the society in which you live. Either way, 29 is a quite a tender age in the overall grand view of things.

It goes both ways

[DukeLinux]

I work at a technology company on the opposite side of the Country and we joke that we will not even interview anybody under 35 years old. We have the opposite problem except a lot of us old timers have skills in system administration, programming and project management so with a very small staff and some long hours we implement some pretty cool stuff. Our biggest impediment is our CEO.

Re:It goes both ways

[idji]

I employ sales engineers. People under 35 are GENERALLY too naive, too quick to jump to conclusions, too easy to push around, waste their time in the wrong directions, and too technology-focused to listen to a customer and help them solve their real problems. I want older people, who hold themselves with dignity and show deep respect to their customers. My best guys are over 50 and command the most respect and have depth of knowledge, experience and wisdom. They aren't fazed by rejection, negativity and politicking, and can easily build trust and confidence, while using the coolest tech to solve real-world problems.

Re:It goes both ways

[16K Ram Pack]

IMO (and I'm older so may be biased) I want older programmers. I was talking to a young guy where I work and he had his own ORM that generated code. "Why don't you use entity framework or nHibernate". "Because I wanted to build one".

And that's a young programmer's attitude, and to some extent, in the days of mainframes, building cool stuff in a company was a good thing because you had no other option. But in the days when you can just download something open source that someone has built, and wire it in and test it or maybe buy something for £100, it makes no sense. We know about things like technical debt, that young guys don't, that you want to write as little code as you can to solve the problem.

This has drawbacks.

[obarthelemy]

I'm a IT dinosaur at 44, but I still remember when I was young and working for tech companies with an average age in the high, sometimes even the low, 20s. It creates a very specific mindset and atmosphere:
- office drama, both romantic and tragic. I've seen a lot of love affairs, even more flings, and some suicides. All those do have an impact on business.
- general lack of empathy (people at that age are still very self-centered), especially so towards the older generations to which many customers do belong. Apart from relational issues with customers (50 yo don't empathize with/trust 20 yo that much), it creates specific problems such as: YOU can understand / would use this, could/would your mom ? your grandma ? We have tech-aware hipsters building tech-hipster stuff for tech-aware hipsters, and a huge lack of stuff for the mature and senior markets.

Re:This has drawbacks.

[A Huge Loud Fart]

Juat why you have to use a different font than everyone else?

Re: This has drawbacks.

[Anonymous Coward]

You don't expect a dinosaur to use a normal font do you?

Re:This has drawbacks.

[erroneus]

old school

Re:This has drawbacks.

[Dcnjoe60]

You speak with wisdom, unfortunately, the people that need to hear it are the same 20 year olds who won't really give a damn until it is too late. They will have a rude awakening when they find out that the world really doesn't revolve around them.

Re:This has drawbacks.

[Anonymous Coward]

Older people are more comfortable with a fixed space font such as Courier. Younger people are more used to proportional fonts and find the fixed space fonts almost unreadable. Hence the well known fact that : in Courier, email is only for old people.

Re:This has drawbacks.

[Anonymous Coward]

That's what you get from an IBM Selectric typewriter. The standard for business, you know.

Re:This has drawbacks.

[evilviper]

(people at that age are still very self-centered),

Now who's being ageist here?

Re:This has drawbacks.

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm a IT dinosaur at 44, but I still remember when I was young and working for tech companies with an average age in the high, sometimes even the low, 20s. It creates a very specific mindset and atmosphere:
- office drama, both romantic and tragic. I've seen a lot of love affairs, even more flings, and some suicides. All those do have an impact on business.
- general lack of empathy (people at that age are still very self-centered), especially so towards the older generations to which many customers do belong. Apart from relational issues with customers (50 yo don't empathize with/trust 20 yo that much), it creates specific problems such as: YOU can understand / would use this, could/would your mom ? your grandma ? We have tech-aware hipsters building tech-hipster stuff for tech-aware hipsters, and a huge lack of stuff for the mature and senior markets.

You've got your self-important-douchebag font setting stuck.

Re:This has drawbacks.

[Anonymous Coward]

He hasn't been reading the trades, and doesn't yet realize they've invented proportional width fonts.

Re:This has drawbacks.

[Anonymous Coward]

No one. There's a huge difference between generalizing a group and discriminating against individuals due to that generalization.

Re:This has drawbacks.

[cjjjer]

Just like your hyphen key keeps getting stuck.

Re:This has drawbacks.

[plopez]

Frontal lobes often don't kick in, on average, until about the mid 20's. That very fact means that many people in their 20's lack good judgement. Not ageism, facts.

Re:This has drawbacks.

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, there's no unicode support, you gotta express yourself somehow.

Re:This has drawbacks.

[Belial6]

The bumps on their skulls confirm those findings.

Re:This has drawbacks.

[Darinbob]

Everyone older than you also used to be your age. Ie, when I was 29 I was self centered and thought I knew it all. When I was 30 I looked back and laughed at myself for being naive. I do that every year actually.

Re:This has drawbacks.

[Anonymous Coward]

Frontal lobes often don't kick in, on average, until about the mid 20's. That very fact means that many people in their 20's lack good judgement. Not ageism, facts.

Uhh, no, that is exactly ageism. "There are some dumb/underdeveloped young people, therefore all young people are dumb."

Guess what, there are plenty of dumb old people too. And that is speaking as a dumb old person.

Re:This has drawbacks.

[evilviper]

Perhaps you shouldn't project your own shortcomings onto others...

Re:This has drawbacks.

[smellotron]

Perhaps you shouldn't project your own shortcomings onto others...

Do you plan on becoming less wise as you age? If not, then you will at some point probably realize mistakes you have made in your youth. This isn't a knock against the younger generations, it is the natural outcome of learning.

Re:This has drawbacks.

[hackula]

As a mid 20s dev who writes software for C-level execs, I write everything with 60 year olds in mind, and use them almost exclusively for testing. They cannot see small text, they cannot use precise sliders, they use iPads for all sorts of tasks that you would not expect, they cannot click small buttons, they do not recognize UI idioms in the same ways that we do, if you put a button on a screen they will click it when it says "delete all records" because they were curious what it did and were surprised when it deleted all their records.

Some of us 20 year olds still have some common sense, and code/test for markets where there is money to be made.

Re:This has drawbacks.

[hackula]

They are fully mature by ~25. The age we are talking about here is 29, so this does not really apply. Most people in their early twenties are either in school or in an internship. A 29 yo dev typically has 10+ years of programming experience as well, and are well on their way to 10,000 hours of professional experience. They are not exactly complete noobs. Also, a 60 yo probably would not want to have a biological show down on raw brain function. They have their own degradation to deal with. Of course, raw brain function is not what makes a good developer in the least, so it hardly matters.

Re:This has drawbacks.

[micahraleigh]

I hate it when people try to excuse their bad behavior with the label of objectivity.

Own your opinion as such.

Re:This has drawbacks.

[Anonymous Coward]

dinosaur, indeed. you even wrote your post using an old ibm selectric.

29 years old ?

[Anonymous Coward]

Kinda explains why Chrome (among other apps) SUCK... Seriously buggy beyond belief, as if it's coded by a bunch of amateurs. Maybe they should focus more on hiring talent, regardless of age.

Signed: An "old" employee above the age of 29.

Re:29 years old ?

[Anonymous Coward]

But it has a comic book and the press releases use words like awesomesauce...

Re:29 years old ?

[ObsessiveMathsFreak]

Amen. It's obvious that most "modern" interfaces and "apps" are being designed by people who have no real idea of what they are doing, delivering, and are simply winging it on bluff.

Engelbart's tradgedy is the same tradgedy that is giving us substandard tablet interfaces, less usable UI's like Unity, and which is walling us off in restricted private gardens like Facebook instead of offerring us the wider potential of the web.

Re:29 years old ?

[hackula]

As Winston Churchill once said, "Chrome is the shittiest of all the browsers, except for all of the others I have tried."

It's a trap!

[onyxruby]

Those three words describe Silicon Valley. Really they do, I've seen that and heard that description for decades from people working there, and more to the point from people no longer working there. Silicon Valley is a trap for the young, once you hit 30 you are no longer employable and either have to move out or scrape by on temp job to temp job.

Silicon Valley is a great place to be from. Ageism is getting so bad in technology that were rapidly reaching parity with strippers. Combine that with H1B and how can anyone in good faith ever recommend a career in technology in the United States?

Re:It's a trap!

[Dcnjoe60]

Those three words describe Silicon Valley. Really they do, I've seen that and heard that description for decades from people working there, and more to the point from people no longer working there. Silicon Valley is a trap for the young, once you hit 30 you are no longer employable and either have to move out or scrape by on temp job to temp job.

Silicon Valley is a great place to be from. Ageism is getting so bad in technology that were rapidly reaching parity with strippers. Combine that with H1B and how can anyone in good faith ever recommend a career in technology in the United States?

There are very good tech careers in the US, just not glamours ones like in Silicon Valley. However, if you want a stable tech career, banking is a good option, the large consulting firms (IBM, Rose, etc.) are another. You don't make the astronomical salaries like those in Silicon Valley, but you do make a good living that you can raise a family.

The Silicon Valley type jobs are like being a professional athlete. There is good money to be made, but only for a short time and then your career is over. If you go that route, you better invest wisely or have a backup plan.

Re:It's a trap!

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm 30. I did exactly one interview for a Silicon Valley company and they hired me right away at a ~170k salary (salary+stock+bonus) plus very generous benefits. It's a financially solid company and I've done my due diligence to ensure that it's a good place to work. They contacted me to get me there in the first place - I didn't contact them. They are paying for the relocation. They are not hiring me based on any specific technical skill I've got except that I'm well educated and smart. I haven't even had a pure full-time software developer job before (I used to do research, though that did involve a lot of programming). Ageism may be very real, but it's certainly not true that there are no jobs for people aged 30.

This company is willing to go to as much trouble as they did to get me and pay me a salary like that. They even intend to train me on their technology and they didn't get me for my preexisting technological skills. That clearly shows that there's some kind of need that's being woefully underserved in Silicon Valley. If you fall into that area then age won't be a problem. At least not if you're 30. I guess I'll have to see how things go when I'm 40!

Re:It's a trap!

[ebno-10db]

if you want a stable tech career ... good option ... the large consulting firms (IBM ...

What about a stable career in the US? IBM stands for India Business Machines.

Re:It's a trap!

[Dcnjoe60]

Well, to be fair, IBM is an International company, but they also do a tremendous amount of US hiring and consulting. They just aren't flashy about it like other companies.

Re:It's a trap!

[plopez]

I don't. I recommend Civil Engineering since it can't be offshored.

Re:It's a trap!

[ebno-10db]

to be fair, IBM is an International company

What company of over 100 employees isn't international these days? Not that there is necessarily anything wrong with that. However the 'I' for international was simply the trendy way to name companies 102 years ago when IBM was founded. It meant international sales. They had foreign offices for foreign sales, support and customization (e.g. helping the Nazis keep track of death camp inmates), but it was still very much an American company. Moving things offshore for cheap labor and then re-importing the product is very different from how they traditionally did business though, and has nothing to do with the 'I'.

they also do a tremendous amount of US hiring and consulting

Consulting? Yes (although a lot of customers are catching on that the name IBM means little anymore and they peddle overpriced crap). US hiring, of Americans? You're really living in the past.

Re:It's a trap!

[hb253]

It's only a matter of time. When I was still working as an ME back in the last century, the company I was at was already talking about (and testing the use of) cheaper offshore enginerring labor.

The outsourcing madness won't slow down until top-level executives and CEO's are outsourced. It won't stop completely until corporate boards are outsourced.

Re:It's a trap!

[Anonymous Coward]

There seems to be a culling effect in the Silicon Valley for engineers in their 30's. Out of college and early in their careers, most people are not expected to have much experience in any particular area and are considered to be generalists that can be applied anywhere. Later in life (mid 40's and later), engineers tend to have guru-status, where they are experienced in certain areas. In the middle is the transition between people who got jobs in technology to those who will be the future gurus. That means that a lot of people who are never got good at anything are not going to make it. People hit this wall in their 30's and if they can't make the case that they are better than a new college graduate, they're in for a surprise. So, new hires, you have 10 years to get good at something.

Having said that, there is a wild streak of ageism in the valley, particularly in startups. Companies being run by 24 year olds tend not to hire people older and more experienced than their founders. Sometimes this is due to the assumption that they are doing something new and revolutionary that old people just don't get. More often they develop a culture of nonstop work, and people that have families and aren't willing to stay until 2am and code every night are not the type of people they want (which tends to be the case with older workers). These companies end up missing much of the experience gained by the older employees and make many basic mistakes that could easily be avoided by someone that has seen them before. Of course, they don't know this and the only way they find out is in hindsight after making all of the mistakes of their predecessors.

Re:It's a trap!

[Darinbob]

Not true. If you have experience, you can leave the social website jobs and get an engineering job instead.

Re:It's a trap!

[akeeneye]

I suppose it's just a matter of time before IBM kills off this facility in Vermont, my home state, and sends the whole works to India. http://www.burlingtonfreepress.com/article/20130614/NEWS02/306140038/Vermont-Labor-Department-responds-to-laid-off-IBM-workers

Re:It's a trap!

[Anonymous Coward]

Just need more H1bs, that will fix it.

Re:It's a trap!

[Anonymous Coward]

Jerk, so what if the guy is living in the past, in the past we could make a living. It people like you who let this happen because you just bend over and take it from big business and evil bankers.

Re:It's a trap!

[hackula]

how can anyone in good faith ever recommend a career in technology in the United States?

job rate at the school I went to 6 months out:
CS - 100%
MBA - 43%


average pay:
CS - 81k
MBA 37k

This is not even a fair comparison, since an MBA takes 2-3 years longer and 10s of thousands more dollars. Going into tech when I graduated at the height of the recession is one of the best decisions I have ever made. The demand for Philosophers is still not back up yet. Maybe I'll switch back to what I studied when it is. Also, CS majors currently clobber Engineering, lawyers, and nurses as far as employment rates for new grads. If the gigs dry up in ten years, I will have made a million dollars in that time frame: plenty to comfortably switch careers to something that is doing better.

Re:It's a trap!

[hackula]

The Civil Engineering job market has been pretty brutal over the past few years.

le sigh

[buddyglass]

The issue of age discrimination in the tech sector comes up a lot on Slashdot. Maybe it's just a Silicon Valley thing? I've worked in Austin my entire career, since leaving school, and finding jobs has gotten no more difficult as I've aged. In my current position and the couple that immediately precede it there's been someone in his late 40s or early 50s. And not in an architect level or managerial role, either.

In general, my experience is that employers will go with whoever presents the best value proposition regardless of that person's age. If you're only as valuable as a recent college graduate but cost 1.5x as much then, yeah, you're going to have trouble getting hired.

Re:le sigh

[thetoadwarrior]

It is for the most part but Silicon Valley wants you to think no one else does programming or hardware.

Apparently they're the best but they can't afford to pay people good wages or get their work on in an 8 hour day. Despite their awesome intelligence even poor white boys are getting too expensive and they're begging the government to let them import more indentured servants.

I think generally people outside of Silicon Valley do a better job. Silicon Valley just has all the hype which means they have more money.

Re: le sigh

[Anonymous Coward]

Another Austinite here. I work for a small but fairly old tech company doing some cutting edge stuff that gets recognized here occasionally, and yet we still can't fill a few reqs for experienced hardware engineers. Our median age is likely 45, we have a fair number of employees on their 30th anniversary with the company, and all but one of our offices is in a relatively low cost of living area.

Meanwhile I regularly have to tell recruiters to f off looking to fill positions on the west coast where the cost of living bump would suck 1/4 of my salary.

Re: le sigh

[ebno-10db]

Another Austinite here. I work for a small but fairly old tech company doing some cutting edge stuff that gets recognized here occasionally, and yet we still can't fill a few reqs for experienced hardware engineers. Our median age is likely 45, we have a fair number of employees on their 30th anniversary with the company, and all but one of our offices is in a relatively low cost of living area.

Meanwhile I regularly have to tell recruiters to f off looking to fill positions on the west coast where the cost of living bump would suck 1/4 of my salary.

Are you free to say what company that is, what specific type of hardware work, and/or what locations? Sounds like you'll get some job applications.

Re:le sigh

[drinkypoo]

Austin has the Blue Suit influence. Also, Austin still has many tech jobs.

Re:le sigh

[ebno-10db]

What's "Blue Suit" influence?

Re:le sigh

[Anonymous Coward]

I know that what happened to me was that when the economy got hit back around 2007, I lost a long-term position with a company I'd been with for over a decade and had no intention of ever leaving. This put me into a genuinely bad job market with somewhat outdated skills since the company wasn't using bleeding-edge tech. That combined with the unemployment itself to create a sort of self-fulfilling prophecy. It isn't necessarily that I can't land the job; the vast majority of the time, I can't even get interviewed. A recruiter suggested that age was a problem (I was just shy of my 38th birthday when this all began) and I don't know whether there is any truth to that at all, but it does seem to make sense; why else would people not even be contacting me in the first place? I've never had problems looking for work before now.

As a bonus, it makes this horrible experience not entirely my own fault, which has obvious appeal.

Re:le sigh

[buddyglass]

I'm guessing its a reference to IBM having a sizable presence in the area?

Re:le sigh

[DerekLyons]

The issue of age discrimination in the tech sector comes up a lot on Slashdot. Maybe it's just a Silicon Valley thing?

It's partly because there is a certain level of age discrimination. It's partly because the average Slashdotter doesn't seem to be comfortable unless he's found a reason to feel persecuted.

Re:le sigh

[buddyglass]

Northern California also has many tech jobs (obviously), so in that sense they're similar.

Re:le sigh

[buddyglass]

Might pay to make your resume as age-oblique as possible. Don't list what year you got your degree(s). Maybe leave off the dates of your work experience if your last 3-4 positions span a wide enough period to suggest your age. This is more disruptive, obviously, but if the market for tech jobs in your area was especially bad, maybe make your job search a nationwide one. The startup I was working for when the recession happened went kaput in March 2010, when national unemployment was 9.9%.. I spoke to a recruiter at the time, and his claim was that the local tech job market (Austin) was as good as its ever been over the various periods I've been between jobs. All that to say, that the national numbers are bad doesn't mean there isn't a market somewhere with jobs to be had.

Re:le sigh

[drinkypoo]

Give the man a cigar. Which is something IBM would have done back when they actually all wore blue suits.

Re:le sigh

[buddyglass]

I worked for IBM for five years. Tivoli, actually, but same difference. Fwiw I wore cargo shorts, Birkenstocks and t-shirts the whole time. :)

Re: le sigh

[Anonymous Coward]

Not that I should feel bad about slashvertising, but I'll be minimally cryptic. If you know high speed PCB design and layout, or are a test engineer who excels at hw bring up and isn't afraid of a bash prompt, apply at the supercomputer manufacturer famous for liquid cooled C-shaped machines.

Re:le sigh

[drinkypoo]

Me too, when I wore shoes.

Let's see. James? Mike? Jim? Bruce? And then I'm out of guesses.

Re:le sigh

[buddyglass]

Jay. I worked on the "Inventory" product from 99-04. It was part of "Configuration Manager". I miss the foosball.

Re:le sigh

[drinkypoo]

Aha. I supported Inventory while I was there. I miss the management style before the regular managers were replaced with Folger's crystals.

Re:le sigh

[Anonymous Coward]

If you think a recent college graduate is as valuable as someone with 15-20 years experience, you should really do some code reviews.

Re:le sigh

[hackula]

I live in a coastal area on the east coast. Every time a hurricane rolls through, it makes a lot of people very wealthy. Construction companies, glass manufacturers, insurance companies (they pay out in this instance, but sales go through the roof when a hurricane reminds everyone to increase their coverage). The tech industry has these pockets too if you know where to look. If a company lays off a huge percentage of their staff, it is pretty much guaranteed to cause a shitstorm and they will be forced to bring in consultants to keep things operational. Consultants can justify charging based on value instead of time, which in this situation allows for the "F you price". Being the guy who can go in an rescue an essential, but failing, product can be extremely profitable.

At 48, I got an offer from FB, but...

[tutufan]

Last year I was 48. As part of something like a mid-life crisis, I interviewed at several of the Bay Area majors. In some ways, it was kind of a Logan's Run sort of experience, with me in the role of Old Man (Peter Ustinov). (Maybe next time I should bring some cats with me to the interview.) I was turned down by several, but received a good offer from Facebook. After a lot of careful number-crunching and soul-searching, though, I felt that I couldn't accept it. The primary reason is that I have a wife and kids. Though the offer would have been fabulous for a single guy, it probably would have been ruinous with my financial responsibilities. I guess what I'm saying here is when discussing ageism and the Valley, one needs to be careful to pick apart reluctance to hire older people (which I don't doubt is a bias sometimes) versus the personal economics of the Valley, which makes it a marginal place to consider living for many people (and probably tends to hit families the hardest). As an aside, I think many younger managers are nervous about hiring older workers. For what it's worth, I recently worked for several years for a guy that's at least ten years younger. Best boss I ever had. We got along and got things done.

Re:At 48, I got an offer from FB, but...

[Anonymous Coward]

Very, very good point about the Valley being a lousy place if you have a family. Truly lousy - unless you have a bucketload of money, of course. We moved away when we were looking to start a family and haven't regretted it for a microsecond. It was a simply awesome place before kids though.

Ageism exists, zero doubt about it, and I think that it is particularly important to note given the looming changes to immigration. If you want more H1Bs, prove that you are not discriminating against older workers (or anyone for that matter.)

By the way, If you think that companies are bad, try a VC. I'm in mid forties, have done several successful startups (as either a founder or employee number one) and have had VCs tell me, straight to my face, that I was too old. You kind of respect those VCs. At least they are honest.

That said, there is also no shortage of older engineers who are simply unable or unwilling (my bet: mostly the latter) to update their skillsets. Yeah, great, so you've been doing it that way forever. The world has changed. Stay current.

And, if you are young, pay heed. If you're lucky, you'll be old someday too. Chances are you won't make that pile of cash and chances are you, too, will face age discrimination. Might want to work against it now.

Re:At 48, I got an offer from FB, but...

[Dcnjoe60]

Last year I was 48. As part of something like a mid-life crisis, I interviewed at several of the Bay Area majors. In some ways, it was kind of a Logan's Run sort of experience, with me in the role of Old Man (Peter Ustinov). (Maybe next time I should bring some cats with me to the interview.) I was turned down by several, but received a good offer from Facebook. After a lot of careful number-crunching and soul-searching, though, I felt that I couldn't accept it. The primary reason is that I have a wife and kids. Though the offer would have been fabulous for a single guy, it probably would have been ruinous with my financial responsibilities.

I guess what I'm saying here is when discussing ageism and the Valley, one needs to be careful to pick apart reluctance to hire older people (which I don't doubt is a bias sometimes) versus the personal economics of the Valley, which makes it a marginal place to consider living for many people (and probably tends to hit families the hardest).

As an aside, I think many younger managers are nervous about hiring older workers. For what it's worth, I recently worked for several years for a guy that's at least ten years younger. Best boss I ever had. We got along and got things done.

I was all in favor of your post until you became an apologist for those who discriminate based on age (ageism is a nice way to say age discrimination). Whether the lifestyle in Silicon Valley is condusive to an older person with or without a family is a decision to be made by the person, not the company. You made that decision, to turn down FB, that was your personal decision and it sounds like you had very good reasons. But, FB must be the exception, because most tech companies won't make an offer to an older person, particularly one approaching 50. (If their culture is a bunch of 20 year olds running around like its a frat party, some 50 year old that actually fits in with that send up a bunch of red flags).

If younger managers are nervous about hiring older workers, they should be fired. Just as if male managers have a problem with hiring female workers or white managers have a problem hiring black workers. Discrimination does not belong in any workplace, plain and simple.

Re:At 48, I got an offer from FB, but...

[the eric conspiracy]

I think 45-55 is the worst age. It's when money demands because of kids in school and getting married are the highest, and technical jobs are precarious. The combination is horribly stressful.

I'm 63 now, working in software development after a career change at 50 from a traditional engineering field. Thank God I don't live in a dysfunctional place like Silicon Valley. I've had no problem finding decent and even fun jobs, although the names are nothing you would recognize and there are no useful stock perks.

Once I hit 55 or so things got much easier. The kids are out on their own and the house is paid off. With the recent run up in the stock market I'm sitting on a 7 figure nest egg - if I got laid off now I'd probably retire.

The idea that life is over at 30 seems to be specific to a particular type of manager who mostly lives in one small part of the country. It just isn't the case when I've been out looking for jobs. In fact some of the managers I've worked with have told me that dealing with the sub-30s is a giant pain. Giant egos and can't relate to coworkers, customers or managers.

Re:At 48, I got an offer from FB, but...

[Anonymous Coward]

Not really discrimination if there are reasons. Old people are in physical and mental decline. Old people also aren't a minority: just like it's OK for a female manager to prefer to hire women, or a black manager to prefer blacks, the young can prefer their own kind. Sorry, time to die.

Re:At 48, I got an offer from FB, but...

[jedidiah]

It's not discrimination if you reject people for being feeble.

There's just a higher likelihood of some old person being feeble.

I younger person is just not going to try and cry age discrimination if they are rejected for the same reasons.

The real problem with the Valley and coastal California in general is that the economics doesn't make much sense. It's just too expensive to live there and the seemingly better salaries don't make up for it.

Re:At 48, I got an offer from FB, but...

[Anonymous Coward]

Kill yourself

Re:At 48, I got an offer from FB, but...

[hey!]

Not really discrimination if there are reasons. Old people are in physical and mental decline. Old people also aren't a minority: just like it's OK for a female manager to prefer to hire women, or a black manager to prefer blacks, the young can prefer their own kind. Sorry, time to die.

I've got news for you sonny -- we're *all* in physical and mental decline. If you think you are going to live forever, think again.

But the decline goes at different rates for each of us, it starts from different points, and is offset (in most cases) by gains in maturity, experience, and wisdom. So the bottom line is you can't make any useful generalization whatsoever about the ability of a fifty year-old to do programming vs the ability of a 25 year-old. It depends on all the things that add up to that unique person.

This is what's broken about bigoted thinking. It reduces people to some kind of ill-conceived average for their "group", when it ought to be evaluating them as individuals. Back in the 90s there was a controversial book called "The Bell Curve" which pointed out that there was a racial difference in IQs between blacks and whites, and made a number of (stupid) policy recommendations based on that difference. The inevitable shit-storm followed, in which the validity of IQ tests was questioned (in some cases with good reason), but lost in the shuffle was a simple mathematical fact: even if we assume that IQ tests are a perfect, unbiased measure of mental capability, and accept the racial differences in scores as measuring something real, those aggregate differences give almost no useful guidance in making decisions about *individuals*. That's because under those assumptions, something like 40% of blacks are smarter than 50% of whites. When you're looking for very high scoring individuals, they occur as statistical flukes in both groups.

Where that leaves you is that when intelligence is an important factor in judging a candidate for something, *especially* if you're looking for high scoring individuals, you have to judge individuals on their own merits. Skin color is at best statistically useless as a selection filter, at worst self-defeating.

The analogy holds for age differences. Even if we grant that 25 year-olds are on average more capable programmers than 50 year-olds (which is doubtful), it nonetheless remains that the vast majority of 25 year-old programmers are mediocre. It may be true that mental decay has shifted some fifty year-olds from the high performer category to the mediocre category, but it remains true that high performers are statistical flukes in either group. So gray hair has no value as a filter if you are looking for *good* programmers. They're a fluke in any category.

By the way, about older people being "minorities" -- they are effectively so *for purposes of anti-discrimination laws*. The term of art you are looking for is "protected class". So the good news for all you young, white American males who resent the legal protections minorities get is that all you have to do is survive until you are forty and you'll be protected by the Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1967.

Re:At 48, I got an offer from FB, but...

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not in Silicon Valley, but I develop S/W for a company that does S/W and H/W development. All of the managers are in their forties or maybe late thirties. The recent engineering hires have been in their twenties and fifties. Many of the engineers in their fifties have been in lead and management positions in the past.

Re:At 48, I got an offer from FB, but...

[jrumney]

I've got news for you sonny -- we're *all* in physical and mental decline.

I'm pretty sure I was in faster physical and mental decline in my 20's with the shit I put my body through every weekend.

Re:At 48, I got an offer from FB, but...

[hackula]

Us 20 somethings are just trying to make things fair. jk, obviously.

Re:At 48, I got an offer from FB, but...

[tutufan]

Re "apologist", you're reading an awful lot into something I tapped out in a few seconds...

Re:At 48, I got an offer from FB, but...

[tutufan]

Re "7 figures": Must be nice. :-)

I have no doubt that discrimination exists, and I've probably run into it a couple of times, though of course there's usually no way to know. But what are you going to do? As far as I can tell, my play is to relentlessly work on polishing my skills, and try to remain in the vanguard. More often than not, I'm the guy dragging my Gen Y colleagues into the future. What's not to like?

Ok, lets talk about what Silicon Valley REALLY IS!

[SerpentMage]

Silicon Valley used to be an awesome place, but now it sucks...

Silicon Valley's business model used to be creating jobs, and environments. Now it is about selling businesses that have no real business value. Look at Google, Facebook, and so on. They rely on free products with advertisements. With privacy and the new addon's like the one where it screws with your cookies that business model is going to go down the crapper like SPAM. Yes Oracle, and Apple do create real jobs, but they are the "dinosaurs" and how many jobs does Apple have outside of Silicon Valley?

My point is that I actually don't look at Silicon Valley anymore as the creme de la creme of talent and ideas. I look at Open Source! Case in point NoSQL. Who had it first? Open Source! NodeJS, who had it first? Open Source! Technologies like PHP, Ruby, etc all open source. Open Source is where it is at folks! Even if you have all of the nay sayers that ask, "so where is the money?" Not in software, but in business's created by that software. Silicon Valley is IMO not a driver of Open Source, they are a consumer of Open Source.

Sure some shops in Silicon Valley add open source to their "portfolio", but let's be real, is Google opensourcing the stuff that is runs their busines? Eff NO! Facebook is a bit better, but again I go back that Silicon Valley is a consumer of Open source, not producer.

The Carousel

[Anonymous Coward]

There is even the appropriately tall carousel at California's Great America.

Good thing there are other employers

[SirGarlon]

It's a good thing Google and Facebook aren't the only employers, then. I was at a local conference lately where I met techies who work for organizations like the state police and fraternal societies (the Freemasons, Shriners, etc.). At another talk, a bank VP told the crowd "when we looked at how dependent we are on software and how much of it we develop in-house, we realized we're a software company."

I don't mean to understate the problems age discrimination causes for tech workers. I do want to point out that IT has penetrated very deeply into the economy, creating a need for programmers and sys admins and whatnot in places you might not expect them. Look around. I don't know how salaries compare, but you can probably find a company whose culture is a better fit for people over 40.

Re:Good thing there are other employers

[Anonymous Coward]

Exactly. I tell anyone under 30 in the IT field that, if they want to stay on the tech end and not move up through the management ranks, to get a government job. (Not that many folks under 30 bother to ask an old fogey like me; I'm 48 after all.)

In Austin a few months before the dot-com crash, I noticed that the short term contract gigs I'd been getting were drying up. Remembering that the exact same thing happened before lots of layoffs took place in the recession of the early 90s, I decided to try to find a permanent job with a government agency -- "any port in a storm" and all that. Managed to get a VB job with a state agency because no one else applied for the job. Three months later, after Dell had their massive layoffs, VB programmers were swarming the streets like deranged pigeons.

Now I've been there over 12 years, and long since moved on from programming in VB. And when I got cancer and was out for three months with the treatment and recovery, they didn't get rid of me like a lot of companies would do.

There are plenty of downsides to working for the government, of course. But it is stable employment, and these days that is almost priceless.

My lifeclock is black . . .

[Anonymous Coward]

guess I have to either report to carousel or run.

Re:Ok, lets talk about what Silicon Valley REALLY

[gestalt_n_pepper]

Open source may be where "it" is at, but you'll notice that the dinosaurs like Apple, Google and Facebook are shuffling around a wee bit more money than even the most successfull "open source" anything.

Yes, Silicon valley is a consumer of open source. Why not? "Never give a sucker an even break," is an adage businesspeople still take to heart.

So, feel free. Go do some work for free on your latest "open source" project. Someone will be along to collect it and sell it, by and by.

They're still doing this?

[erroneus]

I would have thought that by now, "new ideas" are great, but without long-term vision which is all but impossible with wisdom, we end up with... pretty much what we are seeing today. It's also a push for a lot of things people don't want. Of course they aren't seeing it because they have already lost long-term vision.

But this is all great for those who are "at the top" ... for now.

But that's okay... the last remaining industries will be banking and legal and I'd say those two are prevailing at the moment.

The article about no-one would hire DE

[Anonymous Coward]

The article about how no-one would hire DE sounds kinda whiney, if I'm being frank.

I love my keyboard, my mouse, my workstation, and collaborative work environments have their uses. However, i'm not going to mourn the fact that I own my own computer and it's perfectly capable of performing near any computation I would require without any outside assistance.

Thanks for the tech and the software, but I don't think I missed out on much by throwing any money at exploring the collaborative model of computing. Not communication or instantaneous structured information exchange, but computing.

(He said, posting on Slashdot. The puck on the Test Your Irony Strength meter rockets up the scale, peaks at a heady 9.2, but doesn't quite hit the bell.)

A science fiction film?

[cwarrior]

It was a book that was adapted into a film ...

Re:A science fiction film?

[Livius]

It was a book that was adapted into a film ...

In other words, a film.

Re:A science fiction film?

[Anonymous Coward]

What is it with Slashdot and the useless pedants?

Re:Ok, lets talk about what Silicon Valley REALLY

[andy1307]

but let's be real, is Google opensourcing the stuff that is runs their busines?

Open Source Projects Released By Google

Before you wer eobrn, kid....

[Antique Geekmeister]

I, and many of my technical colleagues, are quite senior. We'd find work there, but would almost be forced into management, because by "lines per day" metrics and "tickets closed" we're not as fast as the average youngster. However, our abilities to deal with problems the youngsters have never even _heard_ of, and to do things cleanly so the problems don't occur, and the mastery of older and stable technologies, certainly keeps us busy.

You can see the difference in our software, and our hardware. If we buy a pair of switches for high availability, we make sure that the computers connected to them are correctly connected to both switches, with pair-bonding or other failover software. When we get involved with backup systems we actually test restoring the data. When we write new web applicatons, we sanitize the inputs before feeding them to the database. (Obligatory XKCD: http://xkcd.com/327/) And when we deal with "object oriented programming", we use different functions for different classes of input, despite the protests of the Java and C++ youngsters, because we have learned the harsh and bitter lesson: distinct functions get distinct names..

My colleagues and I are also a bit odd in that when someone shows up with a new technology, we don't just demean it. Replacing racks of expensive hardware with commodity disk drives was a real rethink of how we did things, and we oldsters had to get them to slow down and invest in bandwidth to allow offsite replicaton instead of sending tapes. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sneakernet for an example) We also had to bring in the experience that if you triple people's space, they will fill it _very quickly_: But it worked out really well, and it's a replicatable technology suite.

NoSQL

[toby]

"Case in point NoSQL. Who had it first? Open Source"

Depends how you define NoSQL. DynamoDB paper was published circa 2007 but the product is not open source. What open source product did you have in mind that defines NoSQL? BerkeleyDB?

NodeJS, PHP, Ruby are the village idiots... not really worth bragging about :) But beyond these, yes, some very impressive platforms are open source.

Re:NoSQL

[Anonymous Coward]

MUMPS came out in 1966. There are open source implementations, which started showing up in the late 1990s. It is still in use and sold by many companies around the world. Very few people pushing (or criticizing) NoSQL have heard of it. I guess time starts for these kids when they become aware of technology during their lifetime, ignoring everything that came before.

Re:NoSQL

[Anonymous Coward]

I went to school with the guy who invented PHP (Ras L.). He isn't an open source promoter, or at least he wasn't back then. I'm pretty sure he was a corporate lackey when he did most versions of PHP.

Re:NoSQL

[hackula]

NodeJS, PHP, Ruby

Sarcasm? All three are perfectly capable tools with strong tract records of success for their intended use cases (especially PHP and Ruby; node is still in the process of proving itself). Also, what sort of alternatives are there in the proprietary world for web development? ASP.Net? Cold Fusion? Sorry if this is a "whoosh".

Re:NoSQL

[hackula]

Can you blame us? When I went to google it (I happen to have heard of it from an older coworker the other day, but wanted to learn more and try it out), the only reference I get is "Mumps (epidemic parotitis) is a viral disease of the human species, caused by the mumps virus." Documentation is often the differentiating factor for me when choosing a new technology. Also, Ruby, PHP, or Python are hot in the startup world, but are not exactly brand new either.

Companies that respect experience

[toby]

you can probably find a company whose culture is a better fit for people over 40.

Amazon.

Re:Companies that respect experience

[plopez]

HP, IBM from what I hear.

Re:Companies that respect experience

[Anonymous Coward]

ex-Amazon here - experience is respected but work/life balance is not.

Job market is worse if you're young.

[Geoffrey.landis]

I'd just reckon that the job market sucks no matter what the age even in SF

Outside the little bubble of Silicon Valley, it's a lot worse if you're young than if you're old.

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/businessdesk/2013/07/jobless-rate-for-poor-black-te.html

Re:Job market is worse if you're young.

[Sarius64]

This is a poor correlation. The jobs you are referencing are not IT, and generally have been replaced by illegal labor practices; which our government continues to turn a blind eye toward. Thank you President Obama.

Lessons learned.

[Anonymous Coward]

I got my first job out of college for a small firm in NJ developing Unix business applications. I was the young kid surrounded by guys 20 years older than I was at the time. I left for during the dotcom boom to make more money. After I left, I realized that I learned so many invaluable lessons from them, like design specs, code structure, readability, usability, and efficiency. Since then, users like to use what I produce, and other programmers (and myself) can read and maintain my code. After the dotcom bubble burst, I went to work in finance, and now I work with guys as young as I was when I first started. Most are eager and well meaning, but still have a lot to learn.

29 year olds with 15 years experience

[gelfling]

In a 2 year old technology, willing to work for $9/hr 100 hrs a week.

Re:29 year olds with 15 years experience

[thetoadwarrior]

That sounds like very junior role.

Re:29 year olds with 15 years experience

[hackula]

Not in the US. A 29 yo dev should be 60-120k pretty much anywhere in the country.

Meh

[Anonymous Coward]

My 20 years of experience is exactly why I pull $0.25million. If I weren't so damn lazy, I could pull down more. In flyover country.

SV and the Bay Area today are just meatgrinders for the young and stupid.

Idiots

[Dunbal]

What does median mean. Well, it's the number where 50% of your sample is above, and 50% is below. So half the workers are over 29, and half are younger than 29. That's it. That's all it means.

Re:Idiots

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow, you are brilliant. Have you thought about running for Congress?

Re:Idiots

[iggymanz]

so the bell-ish shaped curve goes from about 18 and peaks at 29 ten years later, and then tapers off around 40? that's a young workforce, the median age at my employer is over 40

Re:Idiots

[Anonymous Coward]

Correct, basically. If the only number someone gives you is a median, and you have no other information, the best assumption you can typically make is that the distribution is Gaussian (a symmetrical bell curve.) If assume the low-end age is 18, then the far end would be 40. We now know the area under the curves, but still nothing about the width.

Re:Idiots

[Anonymous Coward]

The median age of the population in the US is ~37 years.

When the median age of your company skews that far from the median age of the population you're hiring from, it's not incorrect to note that the company seems to skew towards younger workers, and it is noteworthy.

The explanation may be entirely reasonable, but the discrepancy *is* noteworthy.

Re:Idiots

[foniksonik]

And yet if you assume that the youngest are 22 (4 year degree completed in 4 years), 50% are between 22 and 29 while the rest are 30 to ??? Probably not 37. It's still an uneven distribution bias to the younger set.

Re:Idiots

[ebno-10db]

Wow, you are brilliant. Have you thought about running for Congress?

Be serious. If there ever was anyone in Congress who understood the definition of median, they had to unlearn it in order to stay in office. How else could they keep a straight face when voting for an H-1B increase because the "evidence" says it's necessary. Looking at objective statistics and actually understanding them would make that impossible.

Re:Idiots

[MAXOMENOS]

Do you have hard data to back up that distribution?

Re:Idiots

[iggymanz]

that was posted as a guess, based on three things:
1. median
2. known start age of SV workforce
3. approximate bell distribution of such stats.

Re:Idiots

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not a normal curve, it's more like a Weibull distribution.

Look at when PCs were invented

[Prehensile Interacti]

This claim of ageism is highly skewed. I was 10 in 1981, when the first home computer came out in the UK (ZX81). In other words, still in school - there would have been 8 years ahead of me in the school system still. This defines "The Computer Generation" - people who had computers at home while they were growing up.

Now sure, some adult engineers made the cross-over, or came from a mainframe background, however surely their numbers have to be far fewer than the generation that grew up on computers?

Now I'm 42, and continue to do my best work each year - and my compensation reflects that.

Re:Look at when PCs were invented

[Anonymous Coward]

This claim of ageism is highly skewed. I was 10 in 1981, when the first home computer came out in the UK (ZX81).

The ZX80 sold 50000 home computers a year earlier than that. http://oldcomputers.net/zx80.html

Who says FB and GOOG aren't trying to hire older

[hsmith]

Folk?

I am 31 and FB tried hard to recruit me. I have friends that have passed up Google, etc.

None of us have interest in working for them. They do nothing that interests us (well, I think Google does some cool stuff, but nothing they'd hire me for).

I think it is easier for younger people to get spun up working for "Facebook" or "Google" than it is to work elsewhere. Other jobs may not be resume builders like those two, but they may be of more value.

Conversely, most of the people I know starting their own businesses are 35+, but then again I may have selection bias due to my own age.

time for unions as be for long it will be

[Joe_Dragon]

Need masters degree as a min for a level 1 job and or that + 1-2 years at an tech or trade school and then after working a few years you get replaced but are still loaded with all the student loans (hope you get income based ones) as then they get next to 0 out of the min wage job you get next (after hiding the degrees to even get that)

We need unions to stand up for workers rights and to have real training / apprenticeship that don't take 2-4+ years of pure class room.

Re:time for unions as be for long it will be

[hawguy]

Need masters degree as a min for a level 1 job and or that + 1-2 years at an tech or trade school and then after working a few years you get replaced but are still loaded with all the student loans (hope you get income based ones) as then they get next to 0 out of the min wage job you get next (after hiding the degrees to even get that)

We need unions to stand up for workers rights and to have real training / apprenticeship that don't take 2-4+ years of pure class room.

Don't you mean you need Unions to facilitate outsourcing the IT jobs overseas? Unions may work for service employees where they can't easily be outsourced, but if unions started making the same demands in IT fields, there's not much friction to prevent the jobs from ending up overseas.

Re:time for unions as be for long it will be

[Sarius64]

Yes, worked so well for the car industries.

Re:time for unions as be for long it will be

[Anonymous Coward]

Unions won't solve your problem when your job is too easy to outsource.

Re:time for unions as be for long it will be

[hackula]

Need masters degree as a min for a level 1 job

Hardly. I just hired someone an hour ago who had a BA in Religious Studies and Russian. Why? Because he is a competent coder who can demonstrate his competence through actual code. A CS Masters is practically a code smell for me at this point.

Re:Ok, lets talk about what Silicon Valley REALLY

[Anonymous Coward]

NoSQL is not something to be proud of.

Node.js is not something to be proud of.

PHP and Ruby are not things to be proud of.

Like it or not, they are all pure shit, and every self-respecting software developer who has any talent knows this.

NoSQL is what happens when dipshits who don't know the slightest thing about databases try to create one. You look at their work, and you can just hear them saying thing like, "ACID? What's that?", and "Referential integrity? What's that?", and even "Indexes? What are those?"

Node.js shares a similar level of stupidity with NoSQL. It's what happens when dipshits who only know JavaScript hear the big boys talking about Erlang, and then they try to build something similar on their own. What they do manage to build is a steaming pile of horseshit. It would all be quite funny, but then they actually try to use Node.js seriously, creating one disaster after another.

And PHP and Ruby are much the same. PHP, as a language, is fucked up beyond repair. PHP's standard library is diarrhea. Ruby is rife with "best practices" that are moronic in reality. And Ruby has the worst community that has ever existed around a programming language. It's like a sewage pit full of very vocal floating turds.

The things you mentioned are literally the worst things to have happened to the software development industry in decades, if not ever. Even Visual Basic isn't as bad as PHP and Ruby are. At least its standard library wasn't fucked to high heaven, and its community wasn't made up of smug hipsters.

Not in Boston it's not

[Anonymous Coward]

I've been looking for a year now and haven't found the right job yet as a developer. Admittedly I've had 2 interviews that turned up bupkis plus I've turned down a couple of interviews.(Admittedly one of those I turned down once I found out it wasn't a development job but tech support with some coding on the side.) Of course maybe I could be a little less picky but I currently have a job and don't want to jump to something that's actually worse.

It was 21 in the book

[rossdee]

While they killed them off at 30 in the movie (Michael York) of Logans Run it was 21 in the book.

I remember going to that film in Napier, and there was a power failure half way through. We were sitting outside for at least half an hour. (I was chatting to my chemistry 101 lexcturer about Sci_Fi

Still the movie wasn't as bad as the TV series that was made a couple years later which included a solar powered hovercraft, and an android called Rem (Donald Moffat)

Nostalgic wool

[Alomex]

From TFA:

Today's computer systems are essentially what we had with time-sharing mainframes in the 1960s and 70s: personal workstations connected to a large central computer system (server farm), able to communicate with each other and run spreadsheets, word processors, and apps.

Oh please he has no idea what he was talking about. Mainframes had as much freedom as a Stalinist gulag. Usually you could run a single application as decided by the IT department.

Sure, PCs are connected to the cloud which acts as a server of sorts, but I can run any application I want, connect to any server I wish. These are key differences with the centralized world of the 70s. How soon do they forget...

Re:Nostalgic wool

[akeeneye]

Seems to me, in the mid-80s, running CMS in a VM on IBM iron, I could modify, recompile, and reload parts of the network stack as an ordinary user. In my idle hours I believe I poured through some of the spooling code and found where delivery priorities were set. Tweak!

Re:Nostalgic wool

[Alomex]

This would be relevant if CMS on a VM had been the dominant mode of interaction with mainframes. It wasn't. The standard big iron operating system had all applications under ACL with the default state being *not* enabled (including basic CLI commands such as ls/dir or chdir/cd).

This made eminent sense at the time. Do you really want a regular user of the bank mainframe being able to do anything more than start the standard bank teller application?

Once you have your own personal computer you can do a lot more, because if you screw it up, your computer goes down, not the entire mainframe.

Re:Nostalgic wool

[Animats]

Sure, PCs are connected to the cloud which acts as a server of sorts, but I can run any application I want, connect to any server I wish.

Phones and tablets, though...

Who's in charge here? The cloud!

Old people have kids

[alen]

And don't want to work 80 hour weeks including weekends. You can take newly graduated college kids and work them like slaves. They even like it and think its cool. If you give them food at work they will live at the office for you

Meanwhile old people want to leave the office towards late afternoon to spend time with their sex mates and kids. They don't want to come in on the weekends so they can spend time with their families

Re:Old people have kids

[gnasher719]

And don't want to work 80 hour weeks including weekends. You can take newly graduated college kids and work them like slaves. They even like it and think its cool. If you give them food at work they will live at the office for you

You can do that, but you would be an idiot. First, a quote from a top Microsoft developer: "You can make people stay at the office for 80 hrs/week, but you can't make them work for 80 hrs". Second, it has been shown that a developer working 60 hours a week for six week, and a developer working 40 hours a week for six week, have exactly the same productivity - not productivity per hour, but per week. But after six weeks you have one developer who is exhausted and one who is fresh, so guess who beats the other one over the next six weeks?

Not for everyone

[Anonymous Coward]

Eric Schmidtt with his face that looks like it was butt fucked by a Rhino is still pulling in enough money to be able to afford to cheat on his wife.

Larry Page is still around despite being physically defective and can't even provide decent communication to hs employees because of it.

Imo, neither of the really provided anything of use to society anyway unless you count being tracked by the NSA as a good thing so when is Silicon Valley going to put them down?

No harm no foul.

[ElitistWhiner]

There's a perspective that comes with failing (thank you dot.com bust) that frames your judgements with the preciousness of time, not to waste it and never lose an opportunity because in the next moment it may be someone else's. The advantage with age is knowing from experience that timing matters, paradigms shift and culture belongs to youth.

Carry on Silicon Valley.

Why does SV exist anymore?

[sjames]

I'm really not sure why 'The Valley' even exists anymore. It's hyper expensive and congested. Sure, the various managers and VCs like to get together face to face and synergize or whatever they call it these days, but why should the people whose names the VCs will never remember be there? Why should the servers be there?

The kind of money they have to pay a single 20 something so he can have a decent lifestyle there is enough to allow a 40 or 50something to have a decent lifestyle with a family in other parts of the country. Poof! No more hiring problem.

For internet companies, they're sure bad at using the internet internally.

Re:Why does SV exist anymore?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm really not sure why 'The Valley' even exists anymore. It's hyper expensive and congested. Sure, the various managers and VCs like to get together face to face and synergize or whatever they call it these days, but why should the people whose names the VCs will never remember be there?

Those people already are in SV. They don't want to move. If you want to hire people with that skill set, you can:

1) Pay the market rate in SV.
2) Locate somewhere cheap and try to get people to move.

This is true in many industries. Banks would save a lot of money if they located somewhere other than NYC or London. Some of them move their back-office work to cheeper locations. But the real work stays in NYC, because thats where the employees they want are. If they could save money by moving somewhere cheep, they would.

Re:Why does SV exist anymore?

[sjames]

That seems unlikely at best. Apparently SV is desperate for more people and there are people who would work for them if it didn't have to be in SV. The banks don't share that problem (not a lot of H1-Bs at banks).

Re:Why does SV exist anymore?

[Anonymous Coward]

But the real work stays in NYC, because thats where the employees they want are. If they could save money by moving somewhere cheep, they would.

No, the "real work" happens in those back-office data centers & call centers, the glitzy offices in NYC, London, Chicago, Boston, Toronto, Rome, etc? Those are for show. In keeping with the principle of "dress for the job you want, not the job you have," banks that don't have a publicly visible, affluent, successful, and *solid* appearance will not earn trust, and without trust, banks will cease to exist. Banks have already figured this out.

The people who locate their main workforce in the expensive cities are the small startups who are seeking ridiculous valuations and buyout offers, not the ones looking to build a sustainable, and reasonable business model and succeed in the long term as an independent entity. If you haven't shipped anything yet, and are just hoping for a 500 million dollar buyout, it's a lot better to have flashy offices in DUMBO or Mountain View than it is to have a small warehouse space in an industrial park outside of Albany.

Re:Why does SV exist anymore?

[ebno-10db]

For internet companies, they're sure bad at using the internet internally.

It's ironic how people who brag about the technology that eradicates distance, think that anything outside of their little valley is too far away to do business with. Exception: India. Apparently there's a wormhole between SV and India, so that in practice they're closer than say, SV and Pittsburgh (lot of serious software talent near Carnegie-Mellon). I think Google Maps should be updated to reflect that wormhole.

The kind of money they have to pay a single 20 something so he can have a decent lifestyle there is enough to allow a 40 or 50something to have a decent lifestyle with a family in other parts of the country. Poof! No more hiring problem.

The only way to get the SV companies to do that, or end tech industry age discrimination in general, is to shut off the H-1B cheap labor spigot (exactly the opposite of what Congress is planning on, of course). Companies will whine and moan for nanny government to make special exceptions for their ever so special needs, but if that door is slammed in their face (a guy can dream, can't he?) then they'll find other ways, even if it means overcoming their prejudices.

Nothing ends discrimination like a tight labor market. Then it's either get over your prejudices, or have your business suffer. The best examples of that are the world wars. In both cases lots of industrial labor was needed at the same time that many young men were being shipped off. In WWI companies suddenly found that people with dark skins can do good work too! Whudda thunk? In WWII they even found that people without a Y chromosome could do a good job!

Re:Why does SV exist anymore?

[sjames]

Agreed 100%.

Re:Why does SV exist anymore?

[Anonymous Coward]

Concentration, and to go with the cliche, because time is money. Talent is concentrated down there so they can get sufficiently talented people quick. Companies are concentrated there so workers can find work quickly or sideways promote all they want without having to move every time they change a job.

Re:Why does SV exist anymore?

[sjames]

Concentration, and to go with the cliche, because time is money. Talent is concentrated down there so they can get sufficiently talented people quick.

How do you reconcile that with the continuous complaints that they can't find employees?

Re:Why does SV exist anymore?

[HeckRuler]

Because silicon valley is for the suits.

Geeks, the technical side of the things, can be decentralized. Yay future. But a large swath of what suits do, the business side of things, is all about interpersonal relationships, body language, shmoozing, and bullshitting. Things that don't get serialized over wires very well. That said the Internet does a fantastic job of filtering out all that crap.

Even the geeks in silicon valley are doing a lot of business work. Selling their idea, getting people interested, and providing a veneer of competence to an otherwise bullshit business model.

Also, the money that gets a 40-50something a decent lifestyle in "other parts of the country" will let you live like a lord with a fiefdom out in the equally connected 3rd-world nations. And if you think the suits with all the money in Silicon Valley would give equal pay between people working in-town, vs out-of-state, vs out-of-country, you're delusional.

Re:Why does SV exist anymore?

[sjames]

If it's just for the suits, why are the engineers there?

Re:Why does SV exist anymore?

[hackula]

You can find anything if you pay the market price.

Re:Why does SV exist anymore?

[HeckRuler]

They're wearing suits. Some of them wear it well. Others are sheep in wolf-pelts.

They are there to help the suits bullshit other suits into giving them money.

One aspect of that, as an aside, is actually making something. That part could be done just as easily be done by engineers across the globe, but they already have the engineers in suits right there. And they already told everyone that he'd be making it anyway. But no, primarily the engineers are there to wear suits.

Re:Why does SV exist anymore?

[sjames]

In other words, middle school games played by so-called adults.

Real adults would put practicality first. They're not supposed to be there for a fashion show.

Re:Why does SV exist anymore?

[HeckRuler]

. . . I think you're letting your agism show.

I mean, you're right, the point of silicon valley is to innovate, make new businesses, and change the world. Oh, and make a fuck-ton of money. But the business side of that involves a lot of... well.... bullshit. You're a VC with the job of finding people with an idea worth investing in. That is naturally going to attract a lot of fakers. Pure scam artists. It's your job to filter those out. And by and far you do. But it's a wide spectrum with a sliding scale from pure lies, to honest people with lousy ideas, to genuine game-changers that just need a buck to get off the ground. It's the bullshit gradient. And everyone has a little. It's an arms race of bullshitters against bull-shit-callers (whose real motive is to make money for themselves rather then make money for investors).

It's impractical, yes, but it's not a matter of maturity. It's business culture. The game, so to speak, is specifically made with rules to encourage competition and attracts those with economically aggressive tendencies. You know, sociopaths. You get the same thing on Wall street. And the BUSINESS of tech start-ups, is totally a fashion show drenched in bullshit, sprinkled with fraud, and big fat check of a cherry on top. And the political world is in a similar but not exactly the same scenario. They play all sorts of games with who does what and what other people think of them. It's literally their job to care about that stuff. It's politics.

And you're a geek. We epically and truly don't care about all that. We just want to get shit done and make awesome things, right? Well, go out and be involved in the politics of a language standard, or a hackerspace, and you'll find that a lot of the bullshit that politicians do to placate people, and steer people towards the goal they want is actually pretty useful. And try starting a business and you'll find that it's not as much of a meritocracy as one would hope and it has more to do with who you know, who will scratch your back, and who you can convince to buy in.

And there are a lot of perfectly mature professionals working in the fashion industry.

Re:Why does SV exist anymore?

[sjames]

What ageism? Is it ageism to suggest that people who are emotionally middle school ages shouldn't have adult responsibilities?

Just because it is sufficiently pervasive that most don't see it anymore doesn't mean it' not a real issue.

nevertheless, if that's what the VCs and management need, fine. That still doesn't suggest why the actual adults that get things done should participate. They should be in a more practical place that is conducive to getting things done. If the VCs were emotionally adults they would appreciate evidence that the company they're investing in knows the value of a dollar and won't blow the whole wad on nonsense rather than using it to make money.

Re:Ok, lets talk about what Silicon Valley REALLY

[ideonexus]

I've never been to Silicon Valley, but I met a programmer who was happy to get out of there as soon as he could escape. I'll never forget the mental image he painted of the place, "On Friday nights everyone takes their expensive cars out cruising, but there are no women in Silicon Valley, so it's just a bunch of guys trying to impress other guys."

Really sounds like Sartre's description of hell as "other people" to me.

Everyone you know ....

[Anonymous Coward]

Everyone I know who was looking for jobs had better offers than their old jobs within a few weeks and usually were booked solid with interviews....

Everyone I know has a multi-million dollar trust fund, has a yacht and private jet, and doesn't have to work, so I don't understand your post - what's this 'job" you talk about and why are people so upset about it?

Yours,

John Rockefeller-Jagger

Re:Ok, lets talk about what Silicon Valley REALLY

[cheesybagel]

Does it really matter how much income those companies have if you get the same salary you would have in an open source development company?

Goes for many other jobs as well

[houghi]

When we hire, we do not look at age. However what we notice is that if people are too young, they are not take it serious enough. They moan that they want to have time off on moments that it is not possible. They want to go out with their friends.

When they are too old, it is very time consuming (and often impossible) to learn them new things. And yes, we DO look for the exception. We will not rule out anybody on age. They often just do not fit the profile.

This not just for IT people, but for all staff.

Re:Goes for many other jobs as well

[Anonymous Coward]

When they are too old, it is very time consuming (and often impossible) to learn them new things.

Unless you're talking about so old that their brains are breaking down, you're making a terrible generalization here. The thing about good old developers is that they've already seen pretty much everything, they just may not know the current fad to which it's attached. It's amusing to me how, for instance, closures have become this huge fad lately when even at 35 they're very old hat to me.

Re:Goes for many other jobs as well

[ebno-10db]

When they are too old, it is very time consuming (and often impossible) to learn them new things. And yes, we DO look for the exception. We will not rule out anybody on age. They often just do not fit the profile.

"Learn them new things"? Is that a line from the Beverly Hillbillies?

You don't have to learn them new things because if they're any good they can learn by themselves. Formal courses may help, but I think that even those are overrated except in cases where there is a lot of formal mathematical theory behind a "new" technology (which, especially in software, is pretty rare). I've being doing hardware and software for 30 years and I've almost always learned new things by myself, without formal training. I'm good at what I do, but it's hardly that unusual.

As for "we DO look for the exception", how do you determine who is an exception? Furthermore, what does "often just do not fit the profile" mean? What profile are you looking for?

Re:Goes for many other jobs as well

[ebno-10db]

When they are too old, it is very time consuming (and often impossible) to learn them new things.

Unless you're talking about so old that their brains are breaking down, you're making a terrible generalization here. The thing about good old developers is that they've already seen pretty much everything, they just may not know the current fad to which it's attached. It's amusing to me how, for instance, closures have become this huge fad lately when even at 35 they're very old hat to me.

Closures are considered a hot new thing? They're old hat to me, and I'm a hardware guy!

Re:Goes for many other jobs as well

[Anonymous Coward]

When they are too old, it is very time consuming (and often impossible) to learn them new things.

Unless you're talking about so old that their brains are breaking down, you're making a terrible generalization here. The thing about good old developers is that they've already seen pretty much everything, they just may not know the current fad to which it's attached. It's amusing to me how, for instance, closures have become this huge fad lately when even at 35 they're very old hat to me.

Closures are considered a hot new thing? They're old hat to me, and I'm a hardware guy!

LISP had closures likely from before you were born. The thing is that pre-C languages were, generally, designed for rich expression within the language itself whereas post-C languages generally try to keep the language simple while relying on library frameworks. Much like the people we've been talking about today, any programming language that hasn't been changed for more than five years is considered to be a stuffy old fogey that no one wants around ... so the languages are continually being modified and grafting in features from older, richer languages is an intellectually simple modification. Even old languages which would still serve their purpose well if left as-is are not immune: most OO language features are available in the latest FORTRAN versions!

Re:Goes for many other jobs as well

[Anonymous Coward]

Had to add an exceptionally relevant quote from the Java language designer about initially leaving closures out of Java "But as is normal in so many design issues, the simplifications didn't really solve any problems, they just moved them."

Which goes to show that age is no guarantee of wisdom.

Re:Ok, lets talk about what Silicon Valley REALLY

[Anonymous Coward]

Pretty underwhelming. Android and Chromium OS are Linux-based OS's so Google is legally required to release source under the GPL. And Android was developed by someone else. Go is open source, but that is practically a requirement for a new programming language to gain wide acceptance. GP's comment seems correct.

Re:Ok, lets talk about what Silicon Valley REALLY

[Anonymous Coward]

Now please tell us what you think about PERL. I'd really like to know.

Maybe they should move out of Silicon Valley

[Nova Express]

One reason there aren't many jobs for older people there is that there aren't many new jobs in California, period. Companies are moving out of high tax, high cost states like California to low tax, low cost states like Texas.

Texas is still hiring people of all ages for high tech jobs. Austin has startups, giants, and government jobs (though you won't get the ridiculous, bankruptcy inducing pensions unionized California's state employees get), and Houston and Dallas have high tech and oil and gas (lots of hardware and software engineering jobs that pay very well). And the cost of living here is radically lower; someone who makes $50,000 a year here can easily afford a house.

If things suck where you are now, maybe you should move someplace things don't suck.

Re:Maybe they should move out of Silicon Valley

[Anonymous Coward]

Texas is a fucking shit hole! It does not matter how great the local place is when it is located in Texas, a state that is one thread away from theocracy. Jesus, do even bother to know what is happening in the state? And I actually lived there for a year. I would take the blizzards of Minneapolis before Austin.

Re:Maybe they should move out of Silicon Valley

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry, the old "jobs are moving out of California" trope has been debunked over and over again. I realize you conservatives like to throw it out again and again, especially when all your media outlets say it often. Silicon Valley has been booming for the last 2 years, where wages are inflated again like the last bubble. I would rather live in a state that actually cares for its folks than a place like Texas that is openly hostile to its residents, unless they are rich conservatives that wear the christian label.

Re:Maybe they should move out of Silicon Valley

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, but then you'd be living in Texas, where the governor is Rick Perry and people have to fight for basic social freedoms. Austin is a great place, but it's surrounded by Texas.

Re:Ok, lets talk about what Silicon Valley REALLY

[hawguy]

Now please tell us what you think about PERL. I'd really like to know.

http://learn.perl.org/faq/perlfaq1.html#Whats-the-difference-between-perl-and-Perl-

"Perl" is the name of the language. Only the "P" is capitalized. The name of the interpreter (the program which runs the Perl script) is "perl" with a lowercase "p".
You may or may not choose to follow this usage. But never write "PERL", because perl is not an acronym.

Sonds like one of those word-number problems

[Hognoxious]

You're my kids' age, and I was five years older than you when I had kids. I'm twice as old as you; compared to you I've lived two whole lifetimes so far. Having served 4 years in the USAF before school I was just getting my Bachelor's at your age.

So if Aunt Ethel is twice as old as mcgrew's daughter and weighs fifteen pounds more than his son, how many of the people seated at the third table arrived in the silver taxi?

Re:Sonds like one of those word-number problems

[ebno-10db]

And you have to figure it out with pencil and paper - none of those new-fangled calculators.

Re:Sonds like one of those word-number problems

[Anonymous Coward]

Trick question! There are only 2 tables!

They've moved--can't raise a family in the Valley.

[Arakageeta]

I wonder if it's not so much a function of age, but rather that "older" programmers want to live in a place where they can own a home and raise a family. That is exceedingly hard in the Silicon Valley, even for someone with a well-paid tech job. The cost of a rundown three bedroom bungalow in Cupertino is in excess of one million dollars (Zillow link: http://tinyurl.com/lq2wpcq). A four or five bedroom home is closer to two million. Purchasing such a home is a challenge for even a family with two tech incomes, harder for a family with one tech income and one "normal" income, and damned near impossible for a family with a single breadwinner. Even if you manage to pull off purchasing a home, you've still got a rundown bungalow. Why not go somewhere where you can better enjoy the fruits of your labor?

As a tech worker in his early 30s in the Valley, guys my age talk constantly of moving to Austin, Raleigh, or some other non-Valley tech hub---some place where the idea of raising a family doesn't boggle the mind. I suggest that while age discrimination may be very real, we must also consider that "the old guys" are merely moving out of the Valley. Thus, the average employee age of any company that has the bulk of their operations in the Valley will skew towards the young side. I don't believe it's a coincidence that the average age is less than 30, since 30 is about the age many educated men start a family.

Re:Ok, lets talk about what Silicon Valley REALLY

[instagib]

Finally a well worded insightful post, a rare occurrence on this site. The link to the newsletter subscription is missing though.

Re:Ok, lets talk about what Silicon Valley REALLY

[Anonymous Coward]

NoSQL is 40+ years ago, it is old technology in the computer era. And NoSQL is not accurate since you can have a relational database and not use SQL, and you can also have a non-relational database and use SQL. I guess your too young to remember MUMPS.

Logan's Run?

[Bieeanda]

I'd make a LifeLock joke, but apparently they're based out of Arizona.

Beyond unions to a basic income

[Paul Fernhout]

From (me): http://www.beyondajoblessrecovery.org/2009/11/16/can-unions-and-strikes-still-make-a-difference/index.html
--- ... In general, this is part of the ongoing downward spiral for labor that is just getting started. As automation increases, like through better robots or 3D printers, and as improved designs come along that take less effort to put together or last longer, there will be even less need for paid labor. So, the people who still have jobs will be afraid to strike or in other ways rock the boat. So, they will let themselves be exploited more and more just to keep food on the table. ...

So, it would seem that strikes will be less and less likely in the future as a general trend, although it is possible that one big national or global strike might happen at some point when people realize that major positive social change is going to be now or never.

Any strike will be pointless in the long term unless it is about structural reform in our economy and society. Just striking to get slightly higher pay (or just to keep what one has) or to get slightly better benefits, which has been useful to many groups in the past, is not going to be very effective in the long term if these other trends continue towards decreasing the value of labor relative to automation and improved design.

What good is it to get more money and more benefits for fewer and fewer remaining workers while they wait for their own jobs to be lost to automation and improved design? Yet, this has been the strategy of most unions for many years. The failure of the US American automakers in Detroit shows how, in the long run, unions creating private welfare states within individual corporations does not work well anymore for union members or anyone else in society these days. The companies become less competitive relative to other companies that pay less and embrace automation and better design, and so they fail, taking all the union jobs with them.

We are possibly past the point where union actions related to single companies make much sense. If unions are to have any major role in the future, it may likely be as part of larger efforts to rethink the underlying basis of our economy and society, like by somehow being part of a national effort for a basic income, or comprehensive single-payer health care reform, or reforming education, or things like that.

Re:Beyond unions to a basic income

[drinkypoo]

Union proponents will tell you that they are part of a national effort for __________. For example, the minimum wage. Many unions have some kind of position statement saying that it should be raised. But they're not actually doing anything about it, because none of their members are paid that little.

Re:Ok, lets talk about what Silicon Valley REALLY

[Anonymous Coward]

Sounds like every other place in America with teenage and young adult males. There are plenty of women of here, I see them all the time. I love living here. I guess if all you have is a job and no other interests other than getting laid, it can seem like a boring place. Lots of outdoor events, museums, and food variety thanks to the great ethnic mix. I think this programmer just did not like living here.

So, I work for one of the Big Ones.

[Anonymous Coward]

I work for one of the Big Names in Silicon Valley (Although while I'm not in the Valley, HQ is there). Not as a software developer, but more of a sysadmin position.

We hire as fast as we can, and one thing is certain - we don't discriminate on age but on knowledge, analytical abilities and experience.

While the average age might be below 30 company-wide, I get very surprised every time someone below the age of 30 gets hired into the (rather vast) sysadmin ranks. If I were to take a guess at the average age, I would guess ~35-40.

Wages are good. Converting to USD, it's >160K/year

I hear a lot about 'age discrimination', but the only thing I see is a very high bar for knowledge, experience and the ability to analyze deep technical problems. It doesn't matter what age you are if you cannot go into the nitty gritty details of the network stack, if you cannot go into details about various kernels and if you cannot troubleshoot your way out of a wet paper bag.

Why does slashdot seem so depressing?

[Anonymous Coward]

I always feel like the end of the world is coming when I come here and read any story about the job market.

Re:Why does slashdot seem so depressing?

[sydneyfong]

Successful people with fulfilling lives generally don't like to whine on Slashdot.

The sample is necessarily screwed. The people unhappy about their jobs will whine, and the people happy generally don't write a passionate post on how happy they are at being a corporate drone.

Re:They've moved--can't raise a family in the Vall

[Anonymous Coward]

Cupertino housing has been wildly inflated for over 10 years and I have never understood why. You can pick up a nice home in Sunnyvale or Santa Clara for $500-600K. The problem is the price of houses are on the rise again, with some sellers preferring cash offers. It is getting into crazy territory like before the housing crash. This is mainly being fueled by the boom in Silicon Valley, the social media bubble.

Re:Ok, lets talk about what Silicon Valley REALLY

[ebno-10db]

Silicon Valley's business model used to be creating jobs, and environments. Now it is about selling businesses that have no real business value. Look at Google, Facebook, and so on.

You can't compare Google and Facebook. Facebook is at 24.37 and has a P/E of 529.78! That's a scam. Google is at 893.49 and has a P/E of 26.73. That's a seriously successful business. I'm of the old-fashioned school that loves the idea of products, but advertising can fund a real business. That's what Google does. It's no different from how broadcasting was/is supported by advertising, and how newspapers used to be (that was their biggest revenue source, not the news stand price). As my examples show, there isn't even anything new about a business model where revenue comes from advertising.

Re:They've moved--can't raise a family in the Vall

[Anonymous Coward]

That's why Silicon Valley is destined to failure. Overpriced homes, tech jobs that you may or may not get, salary that may not meet your needs. It's a bubble that's going to burst when shit hits the fan. And if some realtor tells you the prices are because of location, just remind them of Detroit. Investing and planning in some long term future in Silicon Valley is a seriously bad idea (Especially with a family). Already a lot of tech businesses are moving out of the state, to more business friendly states, or even out of the country.

Re:Ok, lets talk about what Silicon Valley REALLY

[Anonymous Coward]

They rely on free products with advertisements. With privacy and the new addon's like the one where it screws with your cookies that business model is going to go down the crapper like SPAM.

How do you propose to hide your search term from Google when you are asking Google to search on that search term? You can hide your online identity as much as you want, Google will still be able to match your search term to ads. The real problem would be ad blockers. Lots of tech-savvy people will use those (I don't understand how Slashdot makes money), most normal people won't. In any case, ad blockers don't block text ads.

FB & Google != Silicon Valley

[HockeyPuck]

I've got a great job, put in solid hours, manage a amazing team (I'm not a HR manager, more of a team lead) and have a great salary. Compare that to when I was in my 20s:

Carried a duty pager.
Worked 90 plus hours a week, which in reality decreases your quality of living and your overall compensation (do most companies actually pay extra for hours over 40? Doubt it).

When one gets older they realize that there are more important things to life than working. Like friends, family and exploring more than the insides of a corporate campus. Free dry cleaning? If that meant in exchange for seeing my wife and kids, no thank you. There's plenty of jobs in the silicon valley (or high tech landscape) that don't require indentured servitude at Google/Facebook.

After reading your post,

[Anonymous Coward]

I realized that the career "advice" I've been reading on Slashdot all these years was worthless.

For years, I thought it was my tech skills and I kept pounding away at them - but still no job after several years. Yes, I've been out of work that long and from the feedback that I (rarely) get, I am unemployable - in any field, now.

I've tried changing careers but when folks see that I was a software engineer, they look at me funny and wonder why I want to do what they do. Folks in 2013 still think it's 1999 and all of us are getting a new job offer everyday with a $10,000 pay raise.

Try explaining that somewhere somehow you screwed up and made yourself unemployable. No one gives you feedback. And fellow techies just keep pounding the same drum "It's your tech skills! That's all that matters!"

And then there are the ad hominems - "You're out of work because you are no good." or "There must something wrong with you."

Maybe. I've been doing everything I can to fix whatever problem(s) I may have.

But once you're out - you're out. There's no getting back in.

Then there's the snarky comments from people "What!? You don't wanna work?!" or "What are you?! An alcoholic?!"

And then there's the lame advice of "Keep your chin up!" and "Have a positive attitude!"

How? When I'm basically called a screw-up?

Getting into software was the worst thing I ever did.

It's too bad I have too much student debt - I'd go back to school and get a nursing degree. The nursing job market still kinda sucks but nursing has a long history of career changers and they have the crap we do in IT/Software Development hiring.

Re:After reading your post,

[hackula]

My brother graduated with a nursing degree last year... no jobs. Most of the job ads actually say "Looking for nurses.. new grads need not a apply". No thanks. I, OTOH saw what was hiring most in my area. It happened to be .Net programming. I bought a book on C# and learned the basics over a few months. I then worked at an insurance company as a .Net dev for a couple years. Anyone could do this. Towards the end I took over the interview process. We were so desperate for programmers, that there were basically 2 requirements 1) don't actively creep anyone out during the interview (I had one guy say that his favorite hobby was "drinking alone") and 2) be able to program in any way (I used the FizzBuzz test and people failed 9/10 times with their language of choice and encouragement to use google in any way, including looking up the actual answer to the problem).

Seriously though, forget what the hip slashdotters are telling you. I am convinced that most of them are in high school anyway. If you can use C# to go to a SQL table, pull out a join, put the data into a Crystal Report, and run the report, then you can easily find a job in any US city with a populating greater than 150k. Is it sexy work? Nope, not at all. But do it for a couple years, then you can go out and hunt down something else from a position of strength.

Trust me, I know it sucks. I was in your same spot. A friend of mine who is in the same spot is about to be out of it as of tomorrow, after doing what I described. You can do it. Seriously, forget about fancy web stuff or compilers for now. Learn how to write and automate reports and the work is endless.

Re:Ok, lets talk about what Silicon Valley REALLY

[MAXOMENOS]

Now please tell us what you think about PERL. I'd really like to know.

This. CGI and Mason had its uses but sweet Jesus am I glad not to have any of that code running our web systems.

Re:They've moved--can't raise a family in the Vall

[ebno-10db]

I wonder if it's not so much a function of age, but rather that "older" programmers want to live in a place where they can own a home and raise a family. That is exceedingly hard in the Silicon Valley, even for someone with a well-paid tech job. The cost of a rundown three bedroom bungalow in Cupertino is in excess of one million dollars

I'm sure that's part of the reason in SV, but the survey looked at tech companies all over the country. FTA:

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the overall median age of American workers is 42.3 years old. The company with the oldest workers on the PayScale list, Hewlett – Packard, came in at 41 years.

The other five companies with older workers, in descending order of median age, were I.B.M. Global Services (38 years old), Oracle (38), Nokia (36), Dell (37) and Sony (36).

AFAIK IBM, Nokia, Dell and Sony may have SV operations, but they're not based there. Even HP has a lot of facilities and people outside of SV.

Median Age Correlates with Complexity

[Colonel Korn]

If you want an idea of how complex and worthwhile your industry is, look at the average age of your coworkers and whether the more experienced ones tend to have more to contribute. If that's the case, you're probably doing something interesting, creative, and innovative. If it's not the case, you're probably doing something menial like picking radishes or coding.

Royalty discount for disabling HW features in SW

[tepples]

And then there's the features on my Nexus One that are in the phone physically, but that they never felt like enabling in software.

Sometimes device manufacturers work out a deal with component makers that the device manufacturer will get a discount on a particular component if certain features of the component are disabled. This is especially common with royalty-bearing technology such as circuits that perform MPEG video encoding and decoding.

EEOC Lawsuit

[Anonymous Coward]

Looks like it's time for an EEOC lawsuit on age discrimination in the hiring process at these businesses.

"You don't deserve to know"

[tepples]

people who haven't figured out how to look for a job

But there seems to be a mentality in certain circles that "if you don't already know how to find a job, you don't deserve to learn."

Re:"You don't deserve to know"

[phantomfive]

It's more like, "this is so easy, why has it taken you so long?" Usually when people have trouble, it's just one or two things that are holding them back, and if they fix those two things, they'll be fine. There are books discussing in detail how to do this, "What Color is Your Parachute" is a good one. If a person can't be bothered to read a book to figure out how to find a job, then yeah, they don't deserve to learn.

Re:"You don't deserve to know"

[tepples]

Usually when people have trouble, it's just one or two things that are holding them back, and if they fix those two things, they'll be fine.

My two things are Asperger-type autism and having grown up in northeast Indiana. Does What Color is Your Parachute address how to succeed despite a learning disability or how much savings one should have before moving to another state to find a job? If so, I'll buy it tonight.

Re:"You don't deserve to know"

[phantomfive]

You have a learning disability? Programming requires a lot of learning. Can you actually do the job?

That silly market....ie, your GOD

[Anonymous Coward]

You seem to imply the silly market is always right and you don't believe in market failures (yes, 'failure' depends on your criteria, obviously). If you aren't religious conventionally, one wonders why you decided to worship the market as infallible. If you are religious conventionally...won't your other God get jealous of you having another God before him? God or the Teh Market...pick one.

Re:That silly market....ie, your GOD

[Anonymous Coward]

You seem to think there are "correct" or "incorrect" outcomes - so when the Market doesnt result in what you think to be the "correct" outcome, you see it as a "failure". This is so fucking ridiculous its absurd.

Ultimately, at the end of the day, a free market represents what people value or not. Thats what a free market is - people free to decide for themselves.

For you, or anyone, to claim that the result of people freely making their own choices has resulted in a "wrong" or "failed" outcome is hubris on your part to such an extent that you are for all intents and purposes fucking delusional.

Re:That silly market....ie, your GOD

[Anonymous Coward]

No, you are an idiot. A majority of people did not decide to make purchasing/investment decisions that would lead to long term unemployment above 7%. There are UNINTENDED consequences for actions in a system like the economy because it is so complex, so the effects are sometimes removed from individual motives. We don't simply linearly average what people 'want' or 'do' when we have a modern economy.

Given that, then, since most people would consider high unemployment to be undesirable, we can say 'teh market' has failed to give us what we want, therefore that is a market failure by that definition.

So yes, pretty straightforward...getting a result most people do not want is a failure, using a very reasonable definition of 'failure.'

Texas

[Anonymous Coward]

Move where things don't suck? Well, besides the low taxes, you did NOT just describe Texas.

On another note, low taxes might be sucking jobs into Texas, but not necessarily creating that many new jobs overall. It's a "job creation" strategy that requires some states to have higher taxes (everyone can't have lower taxes than everyone else). If all states had Texas taxes...you might have to burst your little bubble that low taxes leads to great job creation...maybe a small percentage increase...but not as much as you might fantasize.

When I say 'fantasize,' I mean you literally ejaculate about libertarianism.

Re:Texas

[ebno-10db]

low taxes might be sucking jobs into Texas

They're not. Success has a thousand fathers and failure is an orphan, so low tax politicians crow about how they've created the Great Texas Job Machine. Oops, most of those new Texas jobs in recent years have been government jobs.

Re:Texas

[AaronW]

Also, most of those new jobs are low-wage jobs, often minimum wage. I wouldn't crow so much about creating lots of minimum wage jobs.

Re:Texas

[TheCaptain]

Yeah...that's the thing with Austin. It sounds pretty great on the surface.

Sure...Apple is building/expanding a huge campus here in Austin. (Sounds great.) It's really only operations stuff, like finance, accounting, human resources, etc. (Not great.) All of the interesting design and development work is in California, and it's there to stay. (And for some very good reasons, IMHO.) I hear they'll do some manufacturing here though, so if you fancy the idea of working in a factory, this is the right state to be in.

It's a low tax, low service state. Don't expect them to do much for you, because you're getting what you pay for. They also won't regulate many things in the state...so you'll occasionally have things like the fertilizer plant explosion up in West Texas. 15 dead, 150+ injured, and about 150 buildings damaged or destroyed. But at least they didn't have those dreaded regulations to contend with.

Oh, but if you're a woman, they WILL regulate the hell out of what you can do with your own body. Good luck with that.

Anyways...I've vented about this stuff before. I'm headed back to the one of the coasts sometime next year. There are some great things here too, and I'll miss a handful of them...but the bad things here aren't outweighing the good anymore.

Bannished To Testing

[Anonymous Coward]

It isn't just Silicon Valley; the entire West Coast is bad for people over 40 unless you don't mind getting slotted into QA.

I'm 45 and up front about not wanting to do the testing chores, but companies have a hard time filling those jobs so they aren't always honest in the interviews. I walked out of my last job in Seattle after two months when the senior developer position I interviewed for slowly morphed into a junior test engineer job reporting to a clueless "manager".

If you *need* a West Coast IT job to pay the mortgage, they're available, but the cost may be your long-term career ... unless you like to test.

Resembles Logan's Run... how?

[rhazz]

Nerd rage - that's a terrible Logan's Run reference. In Logan's Run society people are are killed when they hit 30. The median age certainly wouldn't be anywhere near 28/29.

Re:Royalty discount for disabling HW features in S

[hedwards]

That's interesting, so we pay for a chip we're not going to be able to use, because of a licensing deal. That had never occurred to me.

Re:Ok, lets talk about what Silicon Valley REALLY

[ebno-10db]

never write "PERL", because perl is not an acronym

It most certainly is, according to Larry Wall no less. PERL = Pathologically Eclectic Rubbish Lister.

Surviving in valley at 44

[Anonymous Coward]

Have pushed myself to learn new skills in fear of being "too old." It also helps that I hide my age with smooth skin, removing the grey hairs and listening to the same kind of music the 20 year olds do.

obvious

[Anonymous Coward]

20 somethings think living at work and doing 80 hrs a week is fun. older workers realize what a scam it is and want to have a life.

Valley demographics are challenging for caucasians

[Magnus Pym]

There is a `white' elephant in the room as far as Silicon Valley is concerned. Whites are a minority in most areas. Most of the decent schools are overwhelmingly Asian and the school cultures have transformed to reflect this fact. The over-whelming focus is on academics to the detriment of extra-curricular activities like sports or art. This does not affect a twenty-something who has moved over from some other part of the country; he is too busy enjoying the fantastic weather and rubbing shoulders with the tech elite. It does matter to a 40-something whose two kids are the only whites in their class. Even if he does not care, his partner may not see it the same way.

There are already areas of the bay area that whites people avoid if they can help it... Sunnyvale, Fremont, Milpitas, most of San Jose, Santa Clara, Cupertino.

I'm neither defending nor criticizing these attitudes or considerations. Just pointing out that they exist.

I call BS

[AaronW]

I know numerous older SV engineers that have no problem finding work. For example, my father is now 70 years old. He was hired by Amazon in his 60s to design the hardware for the first Kindle and still works there to this day designing new products. I'm over 40 and am contstantly contacted by recruiters and various companies. It all depends. As long as you learn new skills and keep up with technology there is demand for experienced engineers.

Re:I call BS

[Anonymous Coward]

I call AE (anecdotal evidence).

programmers use fixed-space fonts

[Chirs]

Ever tried to write nice-looking code in a proportional font? It's pretty much impossible to line anything up properly.

On a related note, I think programmers also have a tendency towards more deeply-nested grammar.

One programmer's perspective

[DHM]

I'm 43 and have been a programmer in Silicon Valley since 1995. From my personal perspective, the job market is red hot. However, having experienced countless interviews, from both sides of the table, I know how arbitrary and capricious hiring decisions are. I've worked at a lot of places and always kept my skill-set relevant, but if, for example, I had spent the last 12 years doing nothing but C++ for one employer, and suddenly found myself looking for work, I'm sure my age would be a liability.
One thing I've noticed from recent experience interviewing candidates: mediocre interviewees with only a few years experience often get the benefit of the doubt, where people with 10 or more years experience who give an equally mediocre interview performance will get rejected outright. The rationale is that the junior person is likely to improve, whereas with the senior person, "what you see is what you get". Is this unfair? I don't know, I guess it depends on the situation, but it certainly illustrates the fact that as an interviewee, you are judged according to significantly varying standards depending on your age. This, by definition, is "discrimination".

Egos

[broward]

You can't legislate egos.
Young guys always know more than old guys.

I remember two years ago young guys telling me about Mongo
and how they were "beyond Codd's rules and integrity contraints".

Of course, now there's a movement to "structure" Mongo.
Yuk yuk yuk.

Why, just on this board somebody replied that they were now "beyond design patterns".
Yeah, let me know that one works out, kid.

I mean, really, a for loop is a for loop.
How hard is that to figure out?
Apparently quite hard for younger people who think they invented a new for loop
because it's in javascript or erlang.

Re:Egos

[hackula]

Of course, now there's a movement to "structure" Mongo. Yuk yuk yuk

As a mongo user, this trend had me scratching my head as well.

First impressions count

[tepples]

Once I get the job, I can program just fine. I just have a bit of trouble learning certain kinds of social skills, especially how not to make a bad first impression in an in-person interview. My disability sometimes keeps me from detecting when I have made or am about to make a faux pas until it is too late.

Re:First impressions count

[phantomfive]

ok, then just do a lot of interviews. That's a problem for everyone, because sometimes interviewers are idiots. It's sometimes impossible to know if you've made a faux pas (like, maybe the guy is in love with SOLID principles, and you don't realize that, since they're kind of niche, so you say something that violates the open-close principle).

Relocation is not a problem.

Re:First impressions count

[hackula]

No big deal. Remember, interviewers are like wild animals: sometimes they bite, but usually they are more scared of you than you are of them. Seriously, I have seen very few people interview new employees that were not sweating bullets. As far as avoiding faux pas, just mind your manners. I assume you are not threatening the interviewer, hitting on the interviewer, or talking to yourself in front of the interviewer. If you are not doing those 3 things, then you should be fine. Do those examples sound too crazy to be possible? Trust me, they are not. You will do fine, mostly because lots your competition is so horrible they do not even stand a chance.

Re:First impressions count

[tepples]

ok, then just do a lot of interviews.

If it is a matter of try, try again, that brings me back to savings. How much should one save up before leaving the proverbial relative's basement so that he has enough money to live on while doing these interviews?

Re:First impressions count

[phantomfive]

Why should you pay money to do interviews? Do them from your 'basement', or wherever you are. No one can see you on the phone.

Too old?

[Anonymous Coward]

I had a discussion with a military electronic equipment scientist who was in his late 40s or early 50s. He was apparently having problems with nobody wanting him, but was being passed over because companies wanted to only hire new college grads. The companies were under the impression that the new college grads were more up to date on the latest technologies. He said that these newbies were actually quite ignorant and reprobate when it came to knowledge in scientific matters. I made this scientist day when I told him that his experience was far greater than anything these new graduates might have to offer. I am sure that he had probably read hundreds more scientific papers and articles than any of these newbies had or would ever read in their life time. Experience is a huge asset in any field and probably even more so in the scientific fields. Not a lot of people with the brains, wisdom, and business experience to see this in companies today.
One other interesting thing I ran across in life. The Santa Barbara, CA transit system had a new manager. One of their long time drivers got too many traffic tickets for this manager's liking, so he approached his boss saying that he was going to fire him. His boss told him that that decision was a mistake. His boss said that he knew what he had in this driver, but could not know what he might end up with in a newly hired driver. So the ticketed driver was given a warning and admonished to be more careful and wasn't dispatched.
Two cases of the benefits of experienced people.

Sign of the times

[yusing]

One aspect: Kids are a lot cheaper. Ask any school hiring teachers. When they're only worrying about the short term (because we're all gonna die soon, I guess), they'll chase out real talent and settle for cheap.

Old as Rome: It takes talent to build the roads and bridges and catch the horses. When that's all done, get rid of the expensive talent and hire roadsweepers and gate-lifters. Again, because we're all gonna die tomorrow.

Basically I'm saying the US is living through a sick period in which profit is the measure of all. I can say that because I've been around long enough to see the sea-change. Nobody will pay me to say it, because it's not the fashion. But the phones and the databanks will all go away eventually, as sanity returns, and the world will return to a place where everyday know-how like Ben Franklin had, will once again count for more than fancy wigs and penis-extenders.

Too old, my ass.

[jcr]

I'm 49, and not having any trouble at all finding work to do, because I keep my skills up to date. I've got several decades of programming experience, and right now I'm pretty well situated since I'm a Mac developer with more Obj-C experience than most people will ever get. But, if some better platform comes along, then I'll switch to it.

-jcr

Re:Royalty discount for disabling HW features in S

[Austerity Empowers]

But is very real, particularly when dealing with sound and video. Many chips have Dolby capabilities for example, but it's frequently not included in the part because with Dolby comes licensing and compliance that costs money. So it's disabled...

Re:Ok, lets talk about what Silicon Valley REALLY

[hawguy]

never write "PERL", because perl is not an acronym

It most certainly is, according to Larry Wall no less. PERL = Pathologically Eclectic Rubbish Lister.

http://docstore.mik.ua/orelly/perl3/lperl/ch01_02.htm

It's actually a retronym, not an acronym. That is, Larry came up with the name first, and the expansion later. That's why "Perl" isn't in all caps.

Pushing 50, over educated, no, im under employed

[Anonymous Coward]

Pushing 50, over educated, no, im under employed

Re:Ok, lets talk about what Silicon Valley REALLY

[Anonymous Coward]

Ad-blockers can and do block (most) text ads because they are generally loaded from external Javascript files and are easily identified by their attributes. Until recently, Ad Block Plus blocked Google text ads by default. However it now allows "non-intrusive" advertising and allows most Google text ads.

To head off the problem...

[sethstorm]

Perhaps age discrimination laws(never mind employment status discrimination or even discriminating against US citizens!) need to gain some teeth and be applied a lot lower than 40.

While there might be "a great deal of employers", they operate something like monopsony power and a lot of them need to have their entitlement mentality smacked right out of them to change that.

Re:Ok, lets talk about what Silicon Valley REALLY

[ebno-10db]

Since TIMTOWTDI, there should also be TIMTOWTCI.

TPS reports

[Anonymous Coward]

But I talked to the 'Bobs' and they said I could have up to 4 people working under me and a stock sharing option?

perhaps you're in the wrong field

[Anonymous Coward]

Average at my (Silicon Valley) company is well above 40, but we build systems (you know, things that require hardware, electronics and software working together). We can't get by with a room full of kids writing code, at some point we do need a few people with experience.

It's deserved in most cases

[slashmydots]

Almost everyone over 30 at my company, just on typing speed alone, is about as productive as one half of a 23 year old. Overall, I'd say they're about as productive on a computer in general by about 1:10 ratio to a 23 year old. I'm 26 and I'm head IT manager. I replaced a 45 year old who had no idea what he was doing despite being in the IT business full time for 25 years. Every decision he made was wrong (like buying XP Pro machines just 2 years ago which we now have to replace) because he's too sick of keeping up with technology and tech news. He didn't even know it was being discontinued.
Don't even bother with IT. Go over to HR. A 25 year old would know how to use all sorts of job listing sites, find HR laws online in seconds, type close ot 100 WPM, use social media, etc. A 50 year old, no way in hell. There's nothing to do with the age itself, it's just that older people have no interest in time-saving IT or learning or computers really. So it's their own fault, not a stereotype.

Re:Who says FB and GOOG aren't trying to hire olde

[Anonymous Coward]

Been there, done that, occasionally have to tell the FB recruiter that "now is not the right time".

At the end of the day, is the reward for any of these fad companies to someone with significant experience worth the risk of a position that might not be around long enough to see a title change or get any recognizable projects in their portfolio? It doesn't help that Facebook and Google have built reputations for enforcing mandatory employee groupthink and 16 hour workdays.

Older IT people start their own businesses

[Anonymous Coward]

They get tired of working for idiots who know nothing about how to program - and open boutique businesses, or are the guy that comes into places like Facebook and Google and get their projects back on track for a small fortune. Of course, the smart ones all have off-shore companies that are making money away from the prying eyes of the US Government through various front-companies. With age, comes knowledge, experience, and treachery. :)

does NOT resemble (slight Math problem)

[the agent man]

The Loga's Run world, with a maximum age of 30, would represent of median age of 15. Compared to Silicon Valley, with a median age of about 30, this would be half. Does not compute. Conclusion: Silicon Valley in 2013 DOES NOT Resemble Logan's Run In 2274

Re:does NOT resemble (slight Math problem)

[Anonymous Coward]

It's entirely obvious to anyone with more than two braincells that the reference is to the *principle* or weeding out the old, not the specific ages involved.

Re:does NOT resemble (slight Math problem)

[Anonymous Coward]

That's a logic fail. Just because the max. age is 30, doesn't imply that the average age is half that.

Nothing new in SC

[ALeader71]

This is nothing new. SC has had a young bent to it since the 60s and the counter culture that spawned it. The latest iteration of the SC start up is the IPO bubble: get hired, work insane hours. Get preferred pre-IPO stock. If the hype is matched with money on IPO day, cash out and get rich.
Anyone who didn't hitch a ride one of these IPO bubbles, stayed on to keep things running. They aren't the math and comp sci majors who will work hundreds of hours on a project with a language they never truly mastered. They ARE the masters who can whip out the same code in a fraction of the time, get raked over the coals by some ex-techie who things he's still technical manager because the code isn't elegant or something. These are the left behind. Those you rarely hear about because they're too busy trying to stay employed and raise a family. They aren't "leaning in." They don't have the paycheck to hire a round the clock nanny or hire someone to take care of Dad while he's recovering from chemo or a stroke. They don't fit into the idealized, simplified world of the mythical SC Tech God who never interacts with reality.

I run into this all the time and I don't work in SC. I'm in DC. What do I see? I see a desire for "plug and play." I see a desire to keep people cheap by only paying for the most basic training or offering to reimburse you for the test, provided you pay for it out of pocket first. I don't see companies who want to keep you around, nor do they care if you stick around. After nearly 30 years of job hopping, no one expect you to stay anyway. So maybe SC hires the young. It's California and they've had an age bias since the youth quake of the 60s. If I was in a similar situation, I'd sell that over priced home to a kid with more paycheck than sense, move somewhere I can buy a house outright, and find any job to pay the monthly bills.

Why? Because eventually you miss a step on that great treadmill of a career and you get clobbered. So save up and make your move fellow old guys. Let the kids sacrifice their minds and bodies. Then laugh at them as you go home to your paid for house, in your paid for car. After you put in your 40 at your new stress free job.

Re:They've moved--can't raise a family in the Vall

[rreyelts]

They should consider Atlanta. Several of the folks who work for me moved back to Atlanta from SF with their families. Square is a great place to work, and Atlanta is a great place to live.

This is what "mature" public software companies do

[PeeAitchPee]

Once they can no longer innovate, as slaves to Wall Street they must they grow revenues and user bases through rent-seeking behavior. Microsoft: Windows and Office. Adobe: Creative Suite. Intuit: QuickBooks. Look at how they all add absolutely nothing in terms of new features while forcing their users to buy into a new SaaS "subscription" model so they can keep selling them the same thing forever.

Re:Ok, lets talk about what Silicon Valley REALLY

[Anonymous Coward]

I checked the list of the projects. All of them. Not a big deal, sorry, It is very unimpressive. You might be fooled by the number itself, but not much meat there.

Re:Ok, lets talk about what Silicon Valley REALLY

[hackula]

And here class is a fine specimen of a C++ hipster. They exhibit all of the hipster traits in the purest of forms. Note the perfect disdain for the new. Only "vintage" languages will suffice. Hand writing binary trees in assembly is a job requirement for their secretaries, and "Web Sites" are for nothing but listing plain text pages of endangered plants in the state of New Mexico.

Seriously though, I would rather code CRUD apps in Brainf**k all day than to be involved in a community with this sort of attitude. Say what you will about the utility of the tools above, but they have made unprecedented gains in the diversity of the programming community. They make an effort at teaching new people how to build things. I do not like or use PHP, but I am not about to go bashing someone else's tool, especially when it helped build the majority of the modern web. I find it especially interesting that the AC (astoundingly modded informative) does not list his own stack. No stack is perfect.

Python ...

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm 48yo and can't get a job (was made redundant 7 months ago - offered a choice of my job back at half the pay or a redundancy package after they did some nasty things, like telling me to get rid of my 'brown' fiancee and get a 'white' GF - I'm in Australia BTW - and similar racist crap, as well as HR telling me when I complained about management that it was 'perhaps a wake up call' and I should 'go do something else'). I have python under my belt. So having python isn't a reason these younger people are getting jobs over older people. It is all about the pay rates. I've applied for hundreds of jobs over the last 7 months and I've had zero replies. It's not just silicon valley, it's the IT industry everywhere. They're not afraid to break the law to get rid of older people, and once you're out the door it's near impossible to get a foot back in the door. It makes getting a CS degree and years of certifications (paid for by the worker, not the employer) totally worthless. My advice to young people, get a law or medical degree. CS degrees come with expiry dates.

I've met many who seem less wise with age

[Phil Urich]

Some people learn from their mistakes, but others refuse to learn when things have changed. The "lessons" they've learned are no longer appropriate---or were bogus to begin with, re: racism, gender discrimination, homophobia---but they cling to them anyways.

So yeah, people can become less wise with age, certainly at least in a relative measure.

Re:They've moved--can't raise a family in the Vall

[micahraleigh]

Thought about Texas myself. I moved to Raleigh with my kids (1, 3 yrs resp) at 31 yrs. Increased my home living space by 2.5x (from a place very similar in price to Silicon Valley) and dropped my mortgage by $50k. It was a great move! The only downside was I couldn't get a C++ job since it is on the decline, but within a year of learning C# I had a C# job that was 20% less than my C++ salary. After 2 years my salary is what it once was.

The Chinese version

[guinea pig C]

If you think that Silicon Valley looks like Logan's Run, then you should take a close look at Shenzhen. No end of the government follies look as though they could be the carousel (the stadiums especially have often been used for similar purposes) and most businesses have a very open policy about hiring youngsters only. Terry Gou would look especially good in a Sandman suit.

east bay

[Anonymous Coward]

The east bay is still affordable. I'm 38 with a wife and three kids, sole breadwinner and homeowner. There are plenty of good paying unsexy jobs around for experienced java developers. I work 5 miles from home and ride my bike when not dropping the kids off. 40 hour weeks. I could commute to anywhere in the city or peninsula easily. LIving in Cupertino would be ridiculous and unneccesary.

Re:Ok, lets talk about what Silicon Valley REALLY

[Anonymous Coward]

Each of those techs have their place. You are spot on the mentality. He *will* be one of the ones no one wants to talk to when he is older. As all he talks about is frameworks (except php). I can pick one of those up in a month or so. Each one of those frameworks is working around limitations of the sub language javascript (for nodejs) or sql (the nosql one).

For example nosql is brilliant when you want ACID but it is ok if the rules take a bit to kick in and you can break those rules during that time. Such as in large meta reporting (things like facebook or huge peta scale data report sets). However it stinks when you need those rules to be in the sub millisecond range and need it to be correct RIGHT now.

These sorts of guys are the same ones who say 'hey facebook used it its good enough for me'. When they have 200 rows and need something way different.

I still will not touch VB6. Not because it is a 'bad' language. It is because of the monstrosities people make with it. There is much easier money out there :) You can abuse any language but for some reason VB6 really got picked on for that. I think I have at this point seen pretty much every single one abused. In fact its not terribly hard to do so. Have even seen simple DOS command script abused.

Java looked like it was a decent lang for awhile. Until you realize it can be rather obtuse to do some things that are 1-2 lines in other languages. It can also be brilliant the other way around sometimes. Its importing structure is pretty cool (and one emulated by .net langs) as opposed to C/C++ header define/lib hell.

Usually you do not get to pick your framework/language. Usually the disaster hipster before you did that.