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Ask Slashdot: IT Career Path After 35?
An anonymous reader writes "All my friends seem to be moving towards a managerial role, and I'm concerned about my increasing age in a business where, according to some, 30 might as well be 50. But I still feel young, and feel like I have so much to learn. So many interesting technical challenges cross my path, as I manage to move towards larger and more complex projects. I am in higher demand than ever, often with multiple headhunters contacting me in the same day. But will it last? Is age discrimination a myth? Are there statistics on how many IT people move into management? I know some older programmers who got bored with management and successfully resumed a tech-only career. Others started their own small business. What has been your experience? Do you/have you assumed a managerial role? Did you enjoy it? Have you managed to stay current and marketable long after 35?"
...and you'll never work another day in your life.
- Confucius
The reality of the situation is that you'll always find yourself doing something you hate, be it financial recordkeeping, slopping out the latrine or prepping the coffee machine for a hard day's thinking. Sometimes a drastic career change means starting at the bottom of the ladder again, bringing back memories of your first job at 16 fetching and carrying for the fat cunt in his leather chair, for minimum wage and zero gratitude. Deal with it.
Speaking for myself, I was never one to be sticking it to "The Man", I have always been "The Man", and will be "The Man" until the day I die.
Political debates have me rolling my eyes so much I think I got optical whiplash. I should sue. - Foamy The Squirrel
I work with someone who started an IT career in their mid 30s in an entry level (help desk) position. I've seen people retire from IT from the same help desk, the same as I've seen people advance to other parts of the company and other government agencies. At 28 I'm actually the second youngest on our team. When I say help desk that's just the beginning too. We do production monitoring as well as being system operators.
You are NOT too old to start in IT!
sudo mod me up
Work for a medium sized/large, established company, not a startup run by kids. The only place I've ever seen agism is at startups where everyone is in their early 20s. They all think that they're the bees knees, and that no one could possible know better than them, and because they never hire anyone older, they never find out that they're wrong. At larger shops, you'll find a lot more experienced people who know that age is a benefit, not a detriment.
It should be your goal in life to become as financially independent as possible as early in life as you can. Being prudent about your mortgages, cars, investments, education etc. can enable you to be fully debt free early on. After you are debt free, most of your questions become easier to answer. If you owe nothing to nobody than it is easy for you to move on, start a business or look for a new possibility. A lot of people are in precarious positions where they are humiliated daily but cannot leave due to high debt loads and wanting the lifestyle they cannot afford without the bank's input. With the bank involved, you become a wage slave and are no better than the common surf of yesteryear.
Carefully cultivate your perceived value and age is far less of a concern.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
I'm beginning to think the "eventualy move into management" when you get to your mid to late 30's is just the normal development path in IT. I'm desperately trying to avoid it, myself, but as I get older I constantly find management jobs being thrust in my direction.
That's working the private sector, of course. In the public sector, there was nothing to worry about, since nobody ever seemed to retire -- I could've stayed a programmer well into my 50's.
The alternative is to learn some skill that never seems to be fall out of use -- I see tons of graybeards in my company that do nothing but maintain aging AS400 and larger mainframe systems all day.
Honestly, they seem to be the happiest of the bunch...
It is by my will alone my thoughts acquire motion; it is by the juice of the coffee bean that the thoughts acquire speed
The companies that discriminate on age are not the ones you want to work for.
There are plenty of companies out there that appreciate the older worker has more experience and is willing to pay for that. Probably not startups but who cares?
Myself, I'm in my early 40s and run my own little consultancy and life is pretty good with no end of decent clients in sight just yet.
--- "We've always been at war with Eastasia."
You make this sound simple. You are glossing over a lot of detail that requires non-programming skill. Especially given he is clearly trying to avoid a management role, why eould you even suggest this? At a minimum, he needs to understand the business and managerial and risk mitigation functions he will need to play, in order to determine whether he has the skills required and desire to play those roles.
I'm 52, and still programming. Not planning on stopping any time soon.
...
Keeping up with current trends is a must. My strengths are knowledge of C++, system programming, and the ability to work in large complex systems.
There are a lot of things I've learned, that are valuable, and not taught anymore.
A be reason for the age issue is younger workers in general tend to be cheaper. But then again, sometimes you get what you pay for
If so, pursue it. Don't do it because all your friends are becoming managers.
...the coffee almost shot thru my nose!
i'm 49, and still love solving technical challenges and learning new shit, so I still code...I must admit its getting harder and harder these days to be on a "team" of 20-somethings. It's very possible these folk I infrequently work with consider me a "loser" for still being in the trenches.
fuck 'em if they can't take a joke.
maybe you will enjoy management, maybe not...perhaps give it a try for awhile and see how it fits you...you can always easily go back.
imfuo, the hardest part of *not* going into management is the social aspect of it.
never bring a twinkie to a food fight.
And still technical. 100% technical. There have been a few cases where I felt like I was denied a job because I was too old ... "not a good fit with company culture" and that sort of thing... but as others have said, those companies just disqualified themselves.
The reality is that I'm a better programmer now than when I was 25. I havre a much better understanding of "craftsmanship" -- things like testing, documentation, making sure my code is not "brittle" -- even though my ability to devour new technologies has slacked a bit.
"He who would learn astronomy, and other recondite arts, let him go elsewhere. " -- John Calvin, commenting on Genesis 1
As somebody that does code reviews (for security) and some development besides doing security consulting, I can state with conviction that most young coders do not know what they are doing. At least some of them get better with age. But the point is, hiring based on age is counterproductive for code development jobs. Of course, many managers think that young coders are "fresher" and they do cost less. Well, they are "fresher" as in "more clueless" and they do cost less for a good reason: They are less productive by sane metrics. They also talk back less, as they have far less of a clue.
So my advice is stick with what you love doing and search for an employer that has not succumbed to the stupid "young is better" fad.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
My IT career didn't even *start* until I was 32 or 33, it's 20 years later now... and I'm doing just fine, thanks.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
I started out coding, then went into systems engineering, mostly server farms and LAN/WAN design, in my mid/late 20s. Then around age 30 I did go into management, operations and projects, for a number of years. Now, in my late 40s I am a senior network security engineer for a consulting firm. I make the same money I made in management (quite a bit) and have a lot more fun. You certainly can stay in or move back into technical roles past the age of 35.
He doesn't necessarily have to take a managerial role, but he does have to understand he will probably reach a relatively low ceiling of pay / responsibilities if he doesn't. One man can only be so valuable with only his own labor. Taking on managerial roles allows skilled people to become a force multiplier, which increases their value.
But if someone is willing to cap out at around $125k (Chicagoland salary) then they can continue being a purely technical resource until retirement if they are really good and keep learning.
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
My advice would be not to go into management unless there is a way to keep your technical skills up. You won't find the headhunters as eager to place managers, except the highly technically adept ones. If you let your technical skills rot, it may become more difficult to stay employed.
I've worked as a developer, architect, project leader and "director of development" (whoa) and I prefer the technical contributor roles -- but that's just me.
As far as the companies that appear to be "age-ist" -- run away! A lot of that is done because the younger developers can be had for less money, they can and will work longer hours (usually because they don't have a family or really any life outside work) and they just don't know better. I can tell you from the times I have done "leadership" that I would rather have two skilled old-timers than four fresh-outs working on my team. The two old timers will almost always out-produce the four fresh-uts in terms of actual delivery and quality. So you get what you pay for.
there are 3 kinds of people:
* those who can count
* those who can't
But it can happen.
I'm 43, and managing a group of software engineers at a streaming company; my peers range from early 30s to early 50s, but there are other managers and directors here who are (at least somewhat) older than that.
More importantly, though, there are engineers here who are older than me, and who you could argue are as senior as I am, or more senior (in either the "more people listen to them" sense or the "they get paid more than I do" sense). This company also has a strong belief that you shouldn't go into management because you want a promotion or more money, so people who enjoy being engineers are encouraged to continue being engineers. There's no salary cap on being an engineer, and for pretty much as long as I've been a manager here, I've had engineers reporting to me who made more money (sometimes, significantly more money) than I do.
Having demonstrated pretty decent Individual Contributor (IC) skills, my last two bosses have always said that if I ever got tired of management and wanted to do the IC thing again for a while, they'd be delighted to find a slot for me.
But that's us. And we aren't representative of the business, I suspect. We're not QUITE the outlier -- high tech company, Silicon Valley, ~16 years in operation -- but we're definitely not your 20-person SOMA startup running on Red Bull and testosterone.
I'll tell you one life lesson my parents taught me, though, that has served me well: Figure out what you love doing, and do that. You'll occasionally be buffeted off-course. That's OK -- get back on-course.
I've been married for about 7 years now; early in our relationship, when I was an IC in another company, making a lot less money, my wife argued I should be thinking about maximizing my family's income and financial stability and go into management just because of that; she persuaded me, and I went into management at that company, and was profoundly unhappy. Finally, luckily, got laid off in 2009. We both learned our lesson, and these days my wife's only rule is "pick a job that will make you happy; if we need more money I'll go out and make it." Works well.
Shit's only changed for people that are constantly jumping from job to job. Sounds like subby is one of them (you sound like one too).
For those of us "older" IT professionals that actually stay at one company this isn't an issue at all.
Find a good company that exposes you to the challenges you want, pays well, and has benefits and then stick your ass in the chair and stay there. You'll soon come to realize that yes job security actually does exist.
Yes, you're right. For example, 20 years ago there weren't little shits going around calling people fucktard in public forum back then. If you're having trouble in the market place, perhaps you should try a little introspection.
I'm nearly 44 and I migrated away from COBOL 10 years ago. I don't know where all these mythical COBOL jobs are - I get an email every few months from a recruiter but I get several emails a day for jobs requiring my current skills.
Absolutely.
You'd have to pry the keyboard and mouse from my cold, dead hands. ;)
A catastrophic health problem can change your plans overnight, at any age. Throw in that the older you get, the more likely it is to happen ... and employers can do the math too.
I thought I'd be coding until the week I die. After a couple of years not coding (couldn't use a computer because my retinas were messed up) I'm actually kind of glad that I can't get back into it. The allure of the "high" from "getting into the zone" and doing awesome stuff in marathon coding sessions isn't as attractive as it used to be anyway.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
We don't all do that you insensitive fucktard!
It might seem enticing to move into a management job but it's not for everyone. The skills that have made you an excellent programmer might not necessarily make you a good manager. I often use sports analogies to illustrate this. Look at all of the former outstanding athletes that have been utter failures as coaches and/or general managers.
The other thing to consider is this: if you are a good programmer it is probably because you really enjoy it and have worked hard at it to improve. Are you going to enjoy being a manager? Because if you don't really enjoy it then those 2 hour meetings are going to seem like they last all day long.
I have tried my hand at management and it's not for me. Most of the meetings seemed like, for me, a waste of time. I liked fixing code that didn't work. I didn't like fixing other peoples petty personnel squabbles. Lower and middle management can be a real wasteland. I looked around the room and I saw a lot of people that were not very good at what they did. Many of them seemed resigned to the fact that they were never going to get promoted into upper management. Many of them exhibited poor leadership and decision making skills. The worst part of it was all the politics and back stabbing. I just couldn't stomach it.
So I decided to stick with what I enjoy and what I'm good at.
Having said all of that, it was a valuable experience. I admire good managers. It's a tough job. If you are fortunate enough to have a good manager then count yourself lucky. Being a manager gave me valuable insight into the "other" side of business - the non technical side of it.
If you want to stay with programming you can. I know a lot of people in their 60's that are working at it and doing well. Unfortunately, all of them are consultants. Age discrimination is real. But as a contractor, employers see you differently. Instead of being a medical liability you are praised for your experience.
Do what you love and are good at doing. A lot of people in management are definitely not cut out to be managers. (At least where I work) people tend to get promoted into roles of supervision and management because they're good problem solvers, but being a manager involves a completely different skill set. If you enjoy supporting people and teams, making it easier for them to do their work, getting them the information that they need, ensuring they have the professional development and work environment to thrive... then yeah, work on becoming a manager. If you like what you're doing and you're in high demand... then keep doing that. Don't fix what isn't broken.
> he does have to understand he will probably reach a relatively low ceiling of pay
Yes, the Peter Principle applies to programmers and systems administrators as well. It can be resisted: some of us would much rather continue to do our best work in the best field for our skills rather than move "up" to higher authority fields.
I write software as a career. I don't do marathon coding sessions or any of the ridiculous self sacrificing stuff that some seem to think is the norm (and seems to be the cause of people burning out within a few years and switching career paths).
Maybe I have been fortunate finding a work that values optimal performance for the time worked over just tons of time, but I certainly feel you can have it both ways (software and work-life balance).
while(1) attack(People.Sandy);
I am a 48 year old senior network engineer at the top of my game. VMs, SANs, BGP routing, all that stuff. I am in high demand for onsite project implementation. If you are worried about losing marketability in your 30's, far from seasoned or having depth of experience IMO, you are not keeping your skills sharp and should look for an alternate career path.
I became a video game tester and a lead tester at Accolade/Infogrames/Atari (same company, different owners, multiple personality disorder) when I was 28-years-old. Most kids entering the business don't believe that video game existed before they were born. I used to freak them out by introducing them to a tester who worked on arcade video games in the 1980's and another tester who worked on pen-and-paper games in the 1970's.
After three years of testing video games and three years of being a lead tester, I went into help desk support at the tender young age of 34. That was 11 years ago. These days I'm doing security remediation by consoling into hurt computers and fixing broken users. Most of my coworkers are in their 50's. The nice thing about info security is that you really need to have 10+ years in I.T. experience. A high hurdle for kids coming out of school and H1B candidates from India. This field is expected to grow in the years to come.
I'm 50 and still an "in the trenches" programmer. I have no fear about getting a job anywhere I want because I'm good at what I do, and I'm betting I'll be doing this for another 20 or so years. I was in a supervisory (kind of pre-manager) role once and frankly hated that little bit of managing. It's very much like herding cats and that's not what I want to do.
Age doesn't matter - I've had multiple rather old people on my team of software engineers. Age really doesn't matter.
However, as you get older and your knowledge and experience grows, you will get parasites. Instead of applying your knowledge and experience developing software like you used to, you will be answering all kinds of questions, performing little chores etc. because you happen to know how to because of your experience... to the point that you can no longer just be a software engineer. Research has shown that after each interruption it takes about 17 minutes to get back to the job. On average. For complex coding jobs, this time may be much longer and just a single question about something important but not directly related to your job may get you out of the flow for the rest of the day.
You may need to switch jobs to avoid this; once you start getting more than a handful of such requests that are not part of your coding job, run.
Also, consistently being an asshole may prevent this. But that's probably similarly detrimental to you career...
0x or or snor perron?!
I'll be turning 50 soon and I am starting a new job tomorrow as a Senior Sys Admin. I find that as I get older, I get better. I can do thing in a few minutes that others take a week to do ( if they can even do it). I learn new languages in a couple of weeks. I have coded in over 30 now.
People who think IT careers end by 35 shouldn't have been in IT to begin with.
I don't do marathon coding sessions or any of the ridiculous self sacrificing stuff that some seem to think is the norm
This. That's how you stay in the business for more than a few years: do something well and keep doing it and getting better and learning new techniques rather than burn brightly and briefly. I started around age 25; now I'm 52 and in my second decade with the same company. Hotshots who can code circles around me come and go, but I'm dependable and I can maintain 20-year-old code as well as develop new code, and I won't disappear when it gets boring or a headhunter dangles something shiny in front of me.
Best of all, because I balanced work life and personal life, I still love what I do and had time to raise a family while I was doing it.
Just hit 57 and working on node/express + html5 + jquery + couchdb on top of legacy PHP/MySQL backend. Planning to start rewriting the backend in grails, hopefully soon.
What I've learned: solve the immediate problems at hand, deliver early and often, and don't worry about potential issues that may not manifest themselves or might be lower priority by the time you confront them.
The biggest problem I've seen is that projects kill themselves through overengineering by ambitious young folks with big dreams. The fact is, boring old analysis and dreaded working with the customer are the keys to success. Solving the day-to-day problems of a business is essential, not transformative solutions that take years to develop and are a crapshoot at best.
Also, there are a lot of small, established companies that have interesting problems to solve, and if you're good, you can help choose the technologies that will be used to tackle them. There's a lot of satisfaction in that.
If you post it, they will read.
You're one of the few. Age discrimination and outsourcing are huge. Migrating to management will get twice the pay for half the work given an MBA and a decade of engineering experience.
Half of STEM workers don't find work in their field after graduating.
3/4 of STEM workers leave the field for better areas.
The flood of STEM visas and outsourcing in IT has reduced wages by 1/3.
Still want to stay in the field? You better enjoy what you do and live on a strict budget.
As a middle aged coder with many years of experience under his belt, I can make the following generalizations based on my experiences:
The first five years after college are the hardest, many people only want to hire coders with experience. If this is where you are now, stick to it if you love it and things will work out. If you are a 'casual coder' who got into the field because you think that its easy money, quit now.
As the years pass, I am finding no end of people who want to hire senior coders that can work 'full stack' and can manage projects and small teams independently. The money is quite good, and the work almost comes to find you. You have to be willing to work to keep up with tech and keep your skills sharp. The only managers that are making twice what I make are going to be c-level, so I if you want to jump ship to management for better money you had better be really good at it. I can promise you these people are not doing half the work I do though. Pay is usually equitable to responsibility, and they have their fair share of that.
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
Old coders don't die - they just migrate to Cobol.
Is there a difference?
I developed for years, moved into software architecture / lead engineer roles, and then, some years ago, noticed that - although my experience increased and increased - I got "stuck" at a certain employment and salary level. I did not want to make the jump into management for the life of me, so I established myself as an independent software architect. msobkow, above, points out that willingness to travel is of paramount importance to stay in the business, and I absolutely second that. I have gigs all over Europe ( am writing this post right now from a Berlin hotel, on a Sunday evening, in order to be at my customer's tomorrow morning ) - and I never, ever enjoyed work as much as since I became independent. It even does not feel like work anymore: I have made my hobby out of my work, so to say. I simply advertise myself as the "programming and software architecture guy who deals with the hard problems the young guys are afraid of". It works. Yes, I stay informed of new developments in my field, learned a new language ( Julia ), am learning a new language right now ( K ). For sure, there is a future in non-managerial IT. You just need to set a sensible course, be flexisble enough to seize opportunities, and off you go. I plan to work way beyond 65, for sheer pleasure, and you'll have to pry the keyboard from my cold, dead hands.
Religous speak to God. Insane are spoken to by God. When all shut up, one can finally hear Shostakovich in peace
My point was that a catastrophic health event can take it all away, and that has NOTHING to do with participation in marathon coding sessions by "getting into the zone" or work/life balance.
Unpredictable things happen. You can lose it all in one day, or find out you're soon going to in one doctor's visit, without doing anything "wrong" to contribute to it. It could be from bad genes ("You should have chosen better parents!") or just random chance ("You should have known that car was going to burn the yellow light!"). The thing is, it's not always your fault. As programmers, we live in a world that's predictable and replicable. Set of instructions A produces effect B. Life isn't nearly as neat.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
US Department of Defense. Before everyone tosses the healthcare.gov example as typical government failure, my experience as a DoD IT worker for the past 27+ years does not support that example. I currently work with a top tier group of virtualization engineers, any of which a corporation or startup would be fortunate to have on their payroll.
55 here, our 25 strong department has only one person under 30, most are 40+ with 10+yrs experience in the industry. I was a cat heared for a few years in my late 30's, don't want to do it again. I'm content managing source control and hacking at code. Good pay, reasonable hours, and the only way I would lose my job is if the entire department went belly up. Having said that I work for a Japanese multinational, their overall attitude to older workers is very different to the US multinationals I've worked for here in Oz. US companies tend to think that not making project manager by age 40 is a sign of failure. However a few extra bucks for a lot more hours just didn't feel like "success" to me.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
On the other hand, younger people are more likely to have a baby, develop a debilitating mental illness, develop a debilitating substance addiction, commit suicide, or die in a violent accident. All of which will drastically impact their ability to contribute professionally.
Employers take that into account too.
But what does all that have to do with my main points, which is that a sudden catastrophic change in your health can take it all away, and that becomes more and more likely as you age, and that employers can do the math?
Reminds me of a meeting with a client discussing business continuity. I was in a sling with a broken arm 6 weeks after a motorcycle wreck. Shit happens. Some people plan for it. Some believe it will never happen to them. I do have better insurance than I did at 20...
That's old school. I heard of several guys who saved money, retired to Mexico, Central America or the Philippines, built a mansion and married an 18-year-old young thing from the nearby village. Live it large, bang it young.