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Why Companies Should Hire Older Developers
Nerval's Lobster writes: Despite legislation making it overtly illegal, ageism persists in the IT industry. If you're 40 or older, you've probably seen cases where younger developers were picked over older ones. At times we're told there's a staffing crisis, that companies need to import more developers via H-1B, but the truth is that outsourcing and downsizing eliminated a subset of viable developers from the market. Those developers, in turn, had to figure out if they wanted to land another job, freelance, or leave the technology industry entirely. But older developers still have a lot to offer, developer David Bolton writes in a new column: They have decades of experience (and specialist knowledge), they have a healthy disregard for office politics (but can still manage, when necessary), they're available, and they're (generally) stable.
causes a lot of bad
Here's why I advocate for hiring older developers. I'm in my mid-30s now and I've seen it happen so many times. Some kid comes in fresh out of college thinking he or she knows all the answers. They don't. I don't. They are so trigger happy to re-invent the wheel and over engineer everything.
You know what I've learned after all these years. I may not know "what works", but I sure do know what won't.
The problem with older developers is that they have too much experience. Or at least, that is what I was told by the HR persons who did not want to interview me when they saw my resume.
Hiring older developers is the fastest way to put hundreds of security holes in your software. That's reality, people. They just simply don't keep up and don't have modern college training in the latest security threats and program hacking methods.
In the age of "screw everybody to get another quarter point from the stock", the ones in charge will never pay the older developers what they are worth. It doesn't matter that the inexperienced developers will make the huge mistakes the older people could have warned them away from. It doesn't matter that the degradation in product quality will likely have long term negative effects on the company. All that matters is short term financial gain by the executive staff in this country.
How much better a coder are you now compared to when you were 20?
Will you be a better or worse coder 5 years from now?
First, the reason to not discriminate is because it damages the labor market which in turn damages the industries that rely on that labor.
Second, the reason older developers are not hired is because they are perceived to not be willing to put in the hours that younger developers will. If you need your employees to knock their brains out for a project, an older set of employees are less likely to do that.
There are other reasons but most of them are rational.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
I love story after story about how old, male, native-US-born computer programmers are entitled to their engineering jobs.
Slashdot: providing anti-social weirdos a soapbox, since 1997.
if(candidate.isFemale && candidate.isAttractive) { candidate.hire(); } else if(candidate.isDude && candidate.isCool) { candidate.hire(); } else { actuallyReadResume(candidate.resume); }
I've been in the technology business for almost 20 years now. In my personal experience, older engineers are much more productive than younger engineers. Younger engineers are much more likely to partake of the "free" dinner offered by the company and work 80 hour weeks. They are also significantly cheaper.
To HR we (engineers) are a fungible commodity anyway. Of course they go for the younger people. Given that they command lower wages AND work more hours their effective hourly rate is much lower. So it's a no brainer.
Of course, I would guess from experience (although I have no specific evidence) that older engineers are cheaper in a productivity/dollar sense, but that doesn't even enter the argument in a modern corporation.
Unless we get into management, we older folks (Lord, is pushing 40 really older now?) are better off in .gov/defense jobs or working for small companies where individual people (may) value our contributions.
In a lot of sports there are salary caps. Players develop, get more experience, and the good ones get a really big raise when their entry level contract ends. Eventually teams have to trade off players to stay under the cap and they rely on the draft to supply them with serviceable players on entry level contracts to fill the holes. The cycle repeats.
I see companies do the same thing. They aren't just going to continue to give out raises until every person in a department earns a much higher than average salary. Companies have a few people with experience and skill that they keep and compensate well, and they let a lot of people walk and then hire younger cheaper people to back fill. Eventually those people develop and deserve a higher salary and they are either retained or enter free agency and go somewhere else.
There is a reason most young people can get huge raises by job hopping every few years where if you stay at a company you most likely wont see as much of a salary increase. Companies don't want to pay people what they are worth, they want to pay people what is required for the company to continue to make profit. Most companies don't need a team of super experienced and skilled devs. They get by with a core team of talent and a bunch of cheap supporting players. Just like a lot of sports teams.
Just my observations. YMMV
I technically qualify as an 'older developer,' though not old enough to embrace the title personally. On several occasions, I've worked with teams (as a contractor) made entirely of 'age-challenged' developers, and I'm always amazed to get kudos for saying things I consider obvious. Obvious, I suppose, because I have the experience the young'un do not, and experience does help.
While I'm sure that I have all sorts of limitations I'm not aware of, like I probably smell funny or maybe don't know why Euphoria is the most awesome programming language _ever_, or simply can't hold my own on the foosball table, I think that toddler teams should have at least one elder mentor onboard--someone whose been through the ringer a few times--because we do know stuff that you'll only realize you didn't know after we say it, and we tend to be pretty grounded, which helps if you're trying to do things like, I don't know, make money.
Just don't let us pick the music for the office hi-fi.
Do you want your corporate culture to be like that? Then by all means only hire kids. Any healthy human society needs an age/gender/personality diversity of contributors to thrive. There are certainly brilliant 20 year old programmers, but they don't have practical experience keeping a project or a team alive and working well for a decade. And once they acquire such experience, they will leave your company because it'a not friendly to their needs.
But not as fast as younger ones, and also if they got the habit of pissing on your favorite couch it will take ages to teach them not to
I know older developers and they are always eager to learn a new language, but they usually carry on with their old habits and programs in the same way, with the same workflow he's used to. They just won't adapt to new methodologies (TDD, BDD or even some newer Design Patterns). So you've got a guy that programs in Haskell the same way he programmed in C++, PHP or Perl.
I've got told by an older developer that I shouldn't bother testing my code because "you can also program it right"
Sorry for my poor english.
Older people have families, experience and have been around the circus before.
Young programmers are much better. Firstly they often have nothing better to do. Their living expense tend to be lower and they often cannot tell when they are being screwed over for pay until they are are feeling the shaft for a couple of years.
They have no family commitments and when the big boss man smiles and asks if you can do this one extra thing for the team you say "sure boss!" and not "My boy has this thing at school..."
Why hire old programmers? they question the logic, they see through the corporate bullshit, they won't work for peanuts and often cannot do overtime. Forget that they actually know what their contract means and exactly what you can and cannot get them to do. They are not cool. They don't any Justin Bieber songs and they don't play COD.
Why bother with those old people when you can have fizzy drinking kids willing to bend over backwards? -code quality? -efficiency? -less re-work? most managers have very little grasp of how those looks like & those people make "suggestions for the business".
Old developers...as old as 40...they are practically dying already, why hire their kind? -makes no sense I tell you.
A 'singular oddity' is an event that cannot be explained and only happens when you are alone.
A friend of mine was managing a programming team. They interviewed a really good developer in his early 40s, and one of her team members said he was too old. He thought the guy couldn't possibly be up to date on recent technology. She hired him anyway, and he did really good work.
That was well over ten years ago. The guy who raised the objection is now older than the candidate he wanted to reject. I wonder if he's gone on any interviews lately (or found newfangled technology impossible to keep up with).
Building Better Software
Its competence.
If you have a 50+ developer who's published several titles and has a history of work they can show, there in, or else the company is stupid and will fail soon anyway.
Showing a body of work is everything, demo or die.
Do they have a history of on-time and on budget relatively bug free product or not? If yes, they will make me $ and they are hired.
I'm a pretty young (31 years old) Java EE developer doing mainly Groovy and Grails. I've worked with plenty of older developers in this space and found that they're either up to date with Java or think experience is "I've done the same JavaEE since 2002 and by God it still works so it must be good."
I worked as a contractor at IBM a few years back. They had just changed their hiring policies to basically three types for engineering positions:
1. Foreign workers in areas with low cost of living that are paid location-adjusted wages
2. New hires fresh out of college (preferred if they interned with IBM previously) for about 30% below market cost
3. Individuals who were known in their field of study - acknowledged experts, basically, obviously a rarity.
Everyone else was being pushed out or required to do the work of the experienced engineers who were pushed out on top of their own work, while training their own replacements. As in, "You can still work for us, but you have to move to brazil and accept a location-adjusted $27k/yr equivalent".
This resulted in the majority of incoming employees being extremely young, low 20's, zero experience, with the older individuals being skipped not because of age, but because they were not willing to pay real market value for them, when they can get cheap labor that can be trained up to the same point for 1/3'd of the cost. Especially when the young kids are willing to put in 60 hour weeks because they don't have competing obligations.
This wasn't a case of IBM being evil; they were just following the industry trends. I've seen other companies do the same thing.
It's not that they aren't hiring people because of their age. If anything, they'd love to hire those experienced professionals. They just want them to work for below average starting pay for a zero-experience, fresh college grad. Someone with 20 years of experience is expensive, after all, and budgets are quarter to quarter - not 5 years down the road. Hard to justify long term ROI in just a single level of management. Got 20 years of experience and you're willing to work for 40k in San Jose? You'll have no problems finding a job. Want a more reasonable 150-200k? Well, there's 5 guys in vietnam that will do your job for 20k a pop, and that makes up for the loss in efficiency - on paper, at least.
You know you're a redneck.
When I hired people I would try to balance the team.
1) Younger people for fresh ideas and perspectives as well as energy.
2) Older people for experience and stability. Mentoring was expected.
3) Men as they tend to rate higher in analytical skills than women (though this may be wrong as tech women can be very analytical)
4) Women because they understand that much of software is social and involves modeling human relationships.
Of course the usual stereotyping disclaimers apply.
I often used women in roles which involved more requirements gathering due to verbal and social skills. Higher level functions. Men more churn out code 'grunt work'.
How not to be hired by me?
1) Think you are some sort of 'Master of the Universe'.
2) Not be a team player, e.g. 'do it my way'.
3) Be deficient in an important area, years of experience.
4) Show a callous disregard for other team members or customers.
FYI, HTH your job search.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
Older workers actually use the vacation time, we also are not happy to be treated as a slave. Managers dont like employees that fight back when abused.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
I think you're confusing two very different things.
Asking to be judged based upon your actual skills, and asking to have your experience valued, is not the same thing as being entitled.
I had an ex-coworker who was interviewing, and when the interviewer looked over his publication and patents, all they could say was "Gee, some of these were a long time ago."
IMHO (seeing a number of laid off friends job hunt), two things work against you as an older developer. One, if you haven't kept your skills up - that's on you. We call it "Resume-Driven Design." You need to learn and use new languages and libraries (i.e. javascript libraries). Most of us (I'm mid-50's) started in an age when companies hired talent and developed skills. Now it's about hiring skills (a more ADHD hiring process given the accelerating pace of change). Two, companies want to be fast and agile. Experience and perspective ("I've got a life" or "I've got a family") work against you in that environment. They perceive (rightly or wrongly) that older employees won't have the "run through walls" mentality that they're looking for. ... and don't discount the cultural differences. The Wall Street Journal had an article yesterday about a company that segregates its Millennials in a "Kids Table" area, because of tensions over work styles and maturity/immaturity.
I'm 40 this year, and therefore washed up, useless and unemployable. :-) Not really -- but I do have to choose my opportunities carefully.
I've posted about this before, but software development and IT have the same skillset regardless of age:
- Attention to detail
- Intelligent troubleshooting skills
- Creative problem solving skills
The things that differentiate the older people are:
- Experience with technology cycles, and the ability to see what is a fad, what's a rehash and what will stick around
- Experience with doing things -- leading to less rework because we've already tried a lot of the ways that don't work
- Most of us know how to play the working game now and aren't willing to kill ourselves for deadlines/projects that don't go anywhere
- Most of us have responsibilities outside of work (kids, family, etc.) that a younger worker doesn't
In my personal case, my employers get a solid, committed employee who does great work and is able to go home on time. Younger employees tend to like startup culture or employers like Google because they continue the dorm atmosphere from college. Google provides free meals and other services to employees for the sole reason that many don't have a family or other out-of-work commitments yet. My employer doesn't provide free meals - I work for a professional services company. They pay me pretty well, keep feeding me interesting work, and I generally have a healthy balance of work and life. I haven't had to work any outside-of-hours time that hasn't been comped in some form -- after-hours conference call == late arrival/early leaving next day, for example. They do reserve the right to send me to a customer location on short notice in case of a real disaster -- but that's happened once in the 10 years I've worked here.
I guess my question is this -- would older workers even be happy working at EA or Google or similar? Not to say they should be denied the opportunity, but most 40-somethings and above have families or at least something going on outside of work to occupy their time. I think the best strategy for "old" people is to try getting hired onto a consulting firm (where your experience is an asset they can bill out) or something like local/state government work with a guaranteed retirement and benefits.
It's not ageism per se. Devs over 40, like myself, haven't embraced the latest greatest technology. We haven't drunk the kool aide because it's probably another passing fad.
This appears to be missing skills or an enthusiasm gap during the interview.
Take puppet for example. It's the current craze in devops -- automated software deployment. It's also a piece of trash. It implements a lot of novel concepts that will probably evolve into something good over the next decade, but along the way puppet's young developers threw out nearly all the hard lessons learned by the folks who built package managers such as dpkg and rpm. Lessons like "uninstall." Puppet has no concept of "undo" or "revert." It's all the badness that was "make install" back before package managers existed.
But God forbid you should want a job in devops without puppet experience.
Moderating "-1, Disagree" is simple censorship. Have the guts to post your opinion.
I'm showing my age here, 38, but no talk is complete without mentioning the Dunning-Kruger Effect. I have witnessed this first hand, even with myself. When you are young and full of vigor, you charge forth into the great unknown t eagerly writing lots of code. As you gain experience the code decreases but is of higher quality. I've now taken to assign a valuation to each line of code as liability vs added value. because in a few years some kid will come behind me other the other side of Dunning-Kruger and change this without really knowing what it is doing. I also spend more time doing research on what I am doing so my execution is flawless. Experimentation is rare. In the Art of war, the battle is only the last step and the preparation is really what determines the outcome. Similarly, code is only written when the planning is complete. This is the difference between code monkeys and engineers.
But older engineers often get complacent. I too went through this phase. Many get comfortable with one technology, (Java, .Net) and no longer keep up with new efforts. But in the past 2 years alone, I've taken to learning Machine Learning, Node.JS, mobile platforms, Big Data.
My advice is if you're old, don't get complacent, keep learning. If you're interviewing one of us veterans, keep an open mind. We might not be as cheap on paper, or outwardly enthusiastic. But if we're still in it after 20 years, we love what we do just as much as a new guy, and we will pay dividends in the long run.
Slashdot's rate-of-post filter: Preventing you from posting too many great ideas at once.
I am a 67 yo software engineer who has been responsible for the design and development of many significant systems, some of which build the chips your computer uses to run today. I am healthy, of sound mind, and can out-code most millennials without thinking about it, in more programming languages than most of them have heard of. A couple of years ago, I was asked to write a cell-phone emulator for my company (a tier-one cell phone manufacturer) in PHP so we could exercise our performance testing software in a web browser without a real phone. WIth zero PHP experience, I delivered this tool in 2 months. That required reverse-engineering the communication protocols (a lot of wireshark sessions), and emulating the phone behaviors, as well as firmware. Yeah. Like a wet-behind-the-ears new graduate could do that! Well honestly, I've known (and mentored) a couple, but they are now top engineers at fortune 5 companies.
I'm currently hiring new developers at my company and I don't give a hoot what age they are. I'm going to hire the best person for the job that I can find. "Best" means they have sufficient skill, an approachable personality and a reasonable wage. If you're older, refuse to learn new technologies and expect to be paid big bucks, you can go elsewhere. Same applies to any youngsters.
+1 IDisagreeSoHeMustBeATrollOrAnAstroturferOrAShill
If I have the choice between three developers, and can only take one:
a) a 50 year old C/C++ programmer with scripting experience on Unix and some main frame back ground with Cobol and Fortran
b) a 30 year old with 5 year experience in Java or C#
c) a university freshling, with no real work experience and very likely mediocre programming abilities, regardless what language
Guess whom I take if I need someone who does real work?
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Seniors can always learn new toolchains and ideas.
But expert knowledge of fundamentals and experience cannot be magically implanted into novices--it has to be earned.
So any time you see a company firing off lot's of old people and hiring young people (it's cheaper!), you can be rest assured they're taking tons of knowledge with them out the door.
I'm over 50 and know developers my age that I would not hire.
First, you have to verify their ability to utilize newer technologies and processes. Older developers spent decades programming without coding unit or integration testing. Those that have transitioned are worth bringing in.
Second, you have to measure their desire to code. Are they coming in because they were laid off by another company and need another gig until they retire? I've known many people who have circled their retirement date in the calendar years in advance.
Pass those two tests, they are worth the job.
Here's the fact of the matter: There are MANY, MANY older folks now, and they're already hurting for work. Guess what? There's going to be MANY, MANY MORE, sooner than anyone wants to believe. Turning us into Soylent Green isn't an option, kids, and despite what some of the edgier of you post online, we're not just going to 'kill ourselves' to make way for YOU. I don't know about the rest of you guys, but I'm actually getting stronger, quicker, and overall healthier as I get older, not fat, decrepit, and addled-brained. There won't BE any 'retirement' for someone like me, I'm going to WORK until I drop dead., most likely. You think there's a homelessness problem now? How about it being multiples of ten times worse, except it's all people who had professional careers at one point, and have been kicked to the curb for the 'new hotness' that will accept a fraction of the salary and twice the abuse with a smile? Meanwhile even Social Security means nothing, it's all going to collapse into dust long before someone like me and my contemporaries will ever be eligible to collect on it, despite paying a nice sized chunk of our earnings into it our entire lives. To make matters worse I see people getting stupider and lazier instead of smarter, more skilled, and more active; I see a recipe for disaster in the making, all so some dickhead CEOs can improve this quarter's bottom line, and get a bigger bonus. You want to see the U.S. get back on top with regards to innovation and tech in general? Stop pushing out the experienced people so you can hire know-nothing twenty-somethings for less pay.
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
...that I'm aware of that corporate likes younger developers is because they're green and can be pushed around. On the face of it you would think this strategy somewhat limiting (i.e. what about talent, ability, etc.?), but that seems to be what feeds the captain's cat! :)
Bukowski said it. I believe it. That settles it.
single player healthcare or the end of job based health insurance.
Old people cost the health plans alot of cash.
I was hired last year right after I turned 50. I am on contract with AT&T and am probably the oldest person on my team. I work 100% remote, all interaction is via phone, text, and email. I do Javascript UI stuff. I rate myself is an average programmer with lots of experience and a varied background. I am not superstar or a slacker. None of the people that I work with sound/act/perform like fossilized old farts or inexperienced young hotshots. We all just do our jobs and get the work done. I don't socialize with these people beyond witty IM banter and sarcasm over the phone - sometimes I get laughs. There is no office politics or managerial BS. Ideal world for me.
It's a great idea in the abstract. So far the implementations have been unimpressive.
If it were all about money, they'd hire all women and only have to pay them 78c on the dollar. Amiright?
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Some people (shareholders) need to be told what to do, by their parents, the government or their religion.
As far as I know, Finland doesn't execute people for not paying their very high taxes. They have a very health and large middle class and have managed to avoid the huge wealth gap that America has, and the problems associated with such a gap.
Note - these are all illegal reasons to discriminate but if employers are going to use illegal reasons to favor hiring under-40s they should realize there are many "illegal to ask" reasons why over-40s should be favored:
* Workers over 40 are very less likely to file insurance claims for child-birth and neonatal intensive care than younger workers. This is even more true for workers over 50.
* Workers over 50 are less likely to have minor children as dependents and therefore they are less likely to have them on the company's medical insurance. They are also less likely to say "no, I need to spend that time with my kids" if asked to work evenings or weekends. If they do have minor dependents those dependents will likely leave the nest and their parent's insurance a lot sooner than the children of a 20- or 30-something.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Posting AC for obvious reasons...
The people who make the hiring decisions are NOT the same people responsible for the quality of the work.
Look up "moral hazard" if you're unfamiliar with the concept.
These guys are imported & hired with the most profound sense of unearned arrogance I've ever seen.
BUT they get $15.00/hr, a programmer is a programmer and each of them has a piece of paper (provided by his contract house) saying he's a programmer.
Looks good on paper; if it's wrong HR's butt is covered.
When start the job, they ask everyone else to solve their problems for them. When something finally works they run proudly to the mgr and report "I did it!". And spend the rest of their stint (they're on 6month contract gigs) running regressions on the same code and copypasting the results. Lather, rinse, repeat.
Yep, I said they're all on 6mo contract gigs. So it's *impossible* for any of them even if they're geniuses to accumulate any experience with the work. Mgt and HR do NOT care about experience. Just document everything and the next guy has the docs; they don't need experience. Anything else voids the premise "a programmer is a programmer". "Experience has value" is is beyond Mgt & HR comprehension due to willful ignorance.
So, by all means, hire incompetent and inexperienced folks to do all your work.
If you don't care about the quality of the work (hey, maybe you're just passing it off to your customer...), then you're golden.
In the rare cases where the stink of failure rises to the level of the decision maker they call the old guy for $10,000/wk (includes T&E).
I'm 36, so I worry about this. But I think younger developers really are better because technology changes so quickly and they've had more free time recently. When I was in college, I'd stay up until 3 AM "hacking". I got really good at all the latest stuff. Now I work 40+ a week on what is now older technology (because if it's working, don't "fix" it). I have a family and house and all sorts of other time sucks that mean I simply can't "hack" until 3 AM on a regular basis. Some of my experience means I'll make better decisions than the wet-behind-the-ears crowd. And it also means I can probably learn new technology faster, despite my less-squishy grey matter. But even at a faster clip, the huge advantage in time a college kid smart enough to not need to study much has means he or she will simply be better at the latest technology than I can possibly hope to be. And the quick turnover in technology means the value of my knowledge is falling quickly while the value of the young guys knowledge is on the rise. He or she will get a job and a family and be in the same boat soon enough. But the claim that my "experience" is somehow universal and timeless is simply a load of crap. In technology, experience is an ever-fleeting thing.
That's why the guys who jump ship every few years do so well. They jump not just for higher salaries, but for the opportunity to learn the latest technology on the job before their existing knowledge becomes so completely useless that they can't get a new job.
To an employer, they have their best employees jumping ship frequently and see the just-out-of-school kids with a working knowledge of the technology they're moving towards. You can almost not blame them for crying about a broken labor market. Almost.
But employers know all this. Since technology changes quickly, they HAVE to train someone -- either their existing (read "expensive") employees have to learn new technology or some new hire (read "cheap") who knows the new technology has to learn the deeper engineering things that one gains only through experience. Since they're going to have to pay someone to learn something either way, who can blame them for choosing the cheaper option. Sometimes us old dogs would have done it better and cheaper, but its a risk and we all usually take the less risky option.
I'm not sure I have a solution to all this, but we need some system that encourages those of us with experience to help the young guys learn the timeless things and also gives us free time to learn the ever-changing things. Maybe an apprentice system like they have in Germany or something.
What's NOT the solution is importing cheap, disposable labor from overseas and then shipping them back home when their expertise is no longer the latest and greatest. That does nothing but help the rich get richer at the expense of both US and foreign workers.
Company I'm at now consistently promotes young 20-somethings right out of college over more experienced colleagues. Almost without exception the reason is because they don't know any better than to say yes to whatever upper-management wants.
I recently left a university research corporation at a mid-sized university. The institution was systematically laying off developers and researchers over 40 years old and replacing them with 22 year old business school graduates - nearly all female - so that they could better manage their projects, relationships and focus on grant writing. Think about it. What will they do if they actually receive any new research grants? The managing engineers and staff are gone. It's a short-sited strategy to save money at best and a clear case of ageism and sexism at worst.
When I saw the handwriting on the wall, I started looking for other jobs in similar agencies and schools. I've been working in IT for 30 years and have a terminal degree. Surely I could land a gig teaching or working in the IT department at some university? Nope. They're all looking for "digital natives", the new code word for young and cheap. Even for professorships the drive to save money in academia is forcing older more experienced people away at the door. So we expect "digital natives" to have some trove of practical experience that they have gained neither from personal experience nor from their inexperienced professors. This is an equation for failure.
I don't begrudge the young folks who are the short-term benefactors of this foolishness. Nor do I blame the government structure or unrepentant capitalism for being myopic and greedy. The blame lays with voters and shareholders who take no interest in how their government or corporation function and how decisions made today affect the long-term survivability and viability of the enterprise. People are only interested in immediate gratification and getting their money-fix. This course leads American youth to steer away from STEM jobs which become disposable after age 35 or 40. It leads universities to teach only courses that lead to a near-term career without thinking about what graduates will do when their diploma isn't so new. It has led America to import *everything* and produce nearly nothing because of the expense in maintaining aging factories and retraining older workers. This change from being a net-producer to being a net-consumer nation has put us trillions of dollars in debt and will ultimately turn America into a third-world debtor nation not capable of defending itself.
"They have decades of experience (and specialist knowledge), they have a healthy disregard for office politics (but can still manage, when necessary), they're available, and they're (generally) stable."
And they know exactly where the switches and routers are behind the drywall and above the false ceiling since the nineties.
David Bolton is an older developer. 'nough said.
Here's why I advocate for hiring older developers. I'm in my mid-30s now and I've seen it happen so many times. Some kid comes in fresh out of college thinking he or she knows all the answers. They don't. I don't. They are so trigger happy to re-invent the wheel and over engineer everything.
You know what I've learned after all these years. I may not know "what works", but I sure do know what won't.
On the opposite side of the coin, I've seen quite a few developers who claim 20 years experience but really just have 1 year of experience, 20 times. Unsurprisingly, these people have quite a bit of difficulty finding jobs.
That is not to say all of the people who fall into that category are intrinsically poor at their profession (though there are certainly enough of those as well). It is frighteningly easy for a person to get into a rut and fall out of touch with current technology if s/he stays in the same organization in the same role, doing the same thing, for many, many years. (It's even worse for senior managers who have not been hands-on with technology for a long time.)
the ones in charge will never pay the older developers what they are worth.
"What I'm worth" to an employer is pretty much defined by "what is the lowest that a person they really want to hire [NOT "the person they think they want to hire"] will accept."
If there is a person out there who will give the employer everything I will give them that in retrospect years from now my employer will realize was worth paying for for less than I am willing to accept and more than minimum wage, then I'm setting my expectations too high.
The wisdom and experience I bring to the table that is not directly relate to the job at hand may really have a near-zero value to a responsible, fair employer. I have to accept that. The higher "mold-ability" of someone who has never worked in industry that a "younger" person (and some people my age) brings to the table which I know that I don't have may have a high value to a responsible, fair employer and if I don't have something of equal value to bring to the table I should expect to not get the job unless the "younger" candidate isn't qualified or turns down the job offer.
One problem with the hiring process is that employers/managers/HR-policy-makers may think they know what they want and need but they don't always know what is best for the project, the work-group, and the company in the long run, so they hire for what they think they want/need not what they actually need.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Java was touted as the solution to all our ills
Java is the cure for a bad cup of plain black coffee.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
In addition to your good point about experience, stability is also a key factor. I have been with my company nearly 25 years. In the past five years, I've seen some amazing kids come along who could do 2-4 times the work I do (and probably at half the price)... but as soon as they've buffed up their experience points and leveled up, they're gone.
My skillset may be largely obsolete, but I know the product inside and out from a user/business perspective, and although it takes me a bit longer to learn all this newfangled dot-net-this and agile-that, I'm willing to do whatever it takes to stay relevant and stay for the long haul.
Now if you'll excuse me I need to get back to studying up on this new language called HTML. <flash>Hello, world!</flash>
My former company had hired, at varying times, people who were around when that Mexican gardener guy was killed by the Romans. We ran the gamut from fresh-off-the-college-boat-and-knowing-fuck-all to some guy who really should have been retired.
Every large (re: literal household name) corporation we worked with had no shortage of people in their late thirties to late fifties.
I'm sure somewhere out there is some HR lackey busy age discriminating, but frankly, from what I've seen over the past decade and a half is this is another Slashdot tempest in a teacup, like H1Bs taking err jerbs. Where the hell do you people live? Where are you applying? Where is this an actual, real problem?
Is it because you can't hold the complete lack of responsibility of a 24 year old junior developer when you're pushing fifty while making an ever-exponentially-increasing salary?
Yeah, no shit. Welcome to every career ever.
And age discrimination in general (well, up to a point, I can see why you wouldn't want to hire an 80+ year old, or might want to "encourage" him/her to retire).
If these idiots would stop laying off their most experienced (and often most productive, even if they may not put in the excessive number of hours that younger folks sometimes do) employees, who have the most institutional knowledge and the best ability to mentor new hires, everyone would be better off.
If the problem is that older workers drive up health insurance costs then you're solving the wrong problem by just laying them off, and likely creating a bigger one.
If the problem is that they don't believe your idiotic short-term profit, "must always go with the new hotness over the tried and true," "get it out the door with or without major flaws and missing features" mindset, then once again, you're solving the wrong problem by just laying them off, and likely creating a bigger one.
If the problem is that older workers have been around longer and collected more raises due to their extensive experience... you guessed it, you're solving the wrong problem by just laying them off, and likely creating a bigger one.
The combination of just a couple of well-known superstars plus numerous inexperienced college hires, H1Bs, and underpaid mediocre performers will NOT create a great company, nor great products. Have fun with your short term profits and golden parachute because your company is likely headed for major trouble if that's all you care about. You need dedicated, experienced people who you trust and who trust you in return, which means if you miss a quarter, they can all pull together to improve things. If you instead lay them off, you'll get nothing more from them, you'll give your _competitors_ an advantage (if they're smart enough to hire your outcasts), and the people who are still left will say "FU, the company doesn't care about me so I'll slack off and start looking for other jobs instead of really pushing hard."
It made me feel like a cog in the machine. That you are just an interchangeable cog with some other guy - irrespective of whatever experience you might have or what actually interests you.
True story. During one sprint we got assigned a bunch of problems with sort of a side product. It was a tool that none of us had ever heard of before - we didn't really know what it did, or how it was used. The people who did know couldn't be bothered. So they assigned it to us. It took a while but we did handle at least some of the work they gave us, and when it was done we never looked at it again.
The young people don't have all that much experience, so from that perspective they are far more interchangeable.
Re-inventing the wheel tends to come with two big issues
a) You didn't need to do it, somebody already did but you lacked the knowledge of existing methods/utilities. Time wasted
b) You decided to invent your own wheel anyways, because in your opinion it's "better". You then miss a bunch of bugs that have been fixed since the invention of the original wheel. Your wheel turns faster, but falls off the wagon on the first pothole.
Younger with little experience and eager to please will always say "Yes!" Managers like this, particularly bad ones, they like to think they know more than anyone else and that their vision and ideas are better than anyone else.
I would consider it my job to point out a bad idea, the flaws, and suggest better ones based on experience. I might flower it up a bit and not say that is the most horrid stupid idea I have seen in 10 years, I'm surprised you have the automotive skill necessary to continue drawing breath... I might rather say something like that is a great idea, however it might work even better structured this way, because of these reasons etc...
However for some, the only acceptable answer is Yes we'll do whatever you want however you want it. I won't argue mind you, I'll state my opinion, and if they choose to go another way, I'll do my best to make that happen, even if cumbersome or ill advised. A good manager while maybe providing some direction or vision to work, should really just "manage" staff to do their jobs properly, which is knowing that they probably know more than you on a given topic and listening to them is usually in your best interest.
Anyway I never worry about these sorts of things, because from my experience without fail the absolute result is something that fails, is never completed, is "completed" but either doesn't function as it should, or doesn't meet the requirements (if they bothered to even collect them properly). In addition, whatever money they thought they were saving by doing it on the cheap is spent anyway, and more, due to delays, fixes, patches, scope creep, etc... and then that whole pile of steaming non-functional buggy application garbage is given to someone with experience, who is then paid well to fix the mess (or to start over), and make sure that it is properly supported, usually over a period of years... so whatever. They generate job security.
All I can tell you is stay away from ice cream stands, and prep for the apocalypse.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
At least older workers know about the basics ... like how to use a unix prompt. Seriously, I just had a student worker dispatched to our lab to install some scientific software (because the IT administrator doesn't want to let us have the root password). This student did not know how to install a relatively simple scientific software package properly and to be able to get it working in our PATH variables. They also left a lot of executable files out of the install so that the software didn't work right, and didn't understand how to set the permissions of the files until I told them about the chmod command. When looking at the files, they preferred to use the GUI and graphical-based methods to change permissions instead of the unix prompt. Their preferred text editor was gedit instead of vi. We eventually had to send them back and study up on how to install software in a unix environment before attempting to install it. How someone entrusts them with a root password is a complete mystery,. . .
A typical manager will spend the absolute minimum to get the job to production stages, collects his bonus and moves to another company for twice the pay. He won't care an iota that the project will have to be just about rebuild. That's someone elses problem.
Any project that's worth something will have three managers: one to start it up and make initial progress, the second to undo that because it's all wrong and carve out a partial solution, and the third to toss half of it and finish the project with necessary functionality missing. Every manager blames the one before them. All collect bonuses and promotions.
Cynical, me? Meh, just an old fart that has seen things you wouldn't believe. C-Beams, etcetera...
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Pretty much the same from my experience, though mine was only 15 years ago. CS back then was an elegant weapon for a more civilized age...
About the only security I ever did was for my first job where they gave me a lot of latitude... Made an application and installer (in C) that installed off of CD-ROM (or boy...). I didn't really have to, but I had the time, so I also wrote a username/password script to install the thing... However all the passwords were stored in a text file (which you could hide, or obscure), but again I had some time, so within it I set up an encryption routine that would decrypt and encrypt the text file as required for verification. I borrowed the actual encryption algorithm, I didn't have that much time! Anyway, all of it totally unnecessary, but it was interesting so I did it.
Why Companies Should Hire Older Developers.. Because I'm getting old!
I've seen young programmers do stupid things, I've seen old programmers do stupid things. You have to judge everyone as an individual.
For those who are lost in the debate, take a moment to toast a success story.
Old + new partnership is best.
Selflessly donate 1000% of your time and give the maximum guidance for the young puppies and turn them
to become extended versions of yourself and let them achieve superhuman tasks and take the credit.
Through that process, our R&D team is strong and management can't but sit up and take notice,
and when this feat is often repeated with more new recruits, EVERYONE knows where the real credit is due.
Hire older developers, or even competent developers? That's a problem for the help. They're told to buy the cheapest labor by clueless MBAs and do their best.
Why? MBAs are idiots with degrees and high salaries. The worst kind. If it doesn't exist on a spreadsheet, and doesn't look like it'll get them next quarter's bonus, they simply don't care. Actual product development and sales mean nothing to these guys. They're looking to do something that *looks* impressive, wait for the inevitable every 18 month re-org, collect their money and leave the mess for the next guy to clean up. The next MBA fool makes it look like he's cleaning up and becomes a hero, and then gets his bonus. Win-win, from a management standpoint.
Welcome to America!
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
I code in longhand! and where's the punch for the paper tape?
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
As a 40+ developer getting job offers has (as of yet) not been a problem for me. Getting offers that equal my current salary (much less result in even a minor raise) is much, much harder.
Waltz, nymph, for quick jigs vex Bud.
The issue with older workers in the view of employers who are quick to cut costs and corners everywhere they think they can get away with it, and then sing praises about how much money they "Saved the company" are quick to pass the blame for the consequences of bad decision making made in the heat of bean counting performed with a careless disregard for established "Best Practices" but the rabbit hole goes much deeper.
They worry that older more experienced workers cost more, but those with MBA as the highlight of their education should be well versed in economics and be aware of the age old rule, that all things being equal you get what you pay for. But that is not all either.
probably the deepest root of the issue that I have seen again and again is that the MBA's of the world tend to think that because they bean count, that they understand everything, and they are more guilty of the "Know it all" and "Greenhorn syndrome" than the STEM workers fresh out of college. Older workers realize that the "Age Discrimination" thing is illegal and they cannot rely on that , they may get away with it for a while but as some government drone bleated uselessly recently, "If you play with matches, eventually you are going to get burned". Older workers such as myself realize that when you are offered low pay, high hours with abusive bosses who have issues respecting personal boundaries, if you accept that behavior like it is just ok, then you are essentially saying that type of treatment is ok and it will escalate until it becomes unbearable. Older workers know they have both education and experience to offer as well as a more complete understanding of what works in a particular environment versus what common sense or good personal ethics tells you and how to have a good moral compass that balances the respect for all five assets that an experienced worker has to offer in terms of meeting job expectations and duties effectively, efficiently and in a way that gets a job done in such a way that it stays completed without a lot of back peddling. In a lot of cases the jobs where they prefer a kid or a H1b over someone who has education, experience, people skills, work ethic and good intuition about the environment , they are basically running up to an older worker they interview with a huge RGB LED sign on their forehead that is advertising that this job is not worth the effort!
Move along!
In the early days of the dot com boom it made sense to hire young workers because they brought a lot of energy and motivation to building new systems. The turnover rate on tech at the time was extremely high as well. The problem is now that we don't need young people who are ready to learn new things as much. The technology has changed little between each new version and it makes more sense to hire tech people with business experience so they can play a larger role in the staff. If you take into account how much of a support role plays in IT hiring young people is quickly becoming a obvious tactic to pay people less and keep workers at work longer (older workers like to go home and see there family at some point whereas younger workers don't have people waiting for them at their apartments). The view of older workers is quickly changing and it's definitely for the better.
Maybe 1 year experience in 20 different things... which is not a bad thing. Show you can LEARN over and over and over again and don't only know one thing like C++, Java, etc.
Why would global markets favour US?
Just think about it. It's a big rebalancing going on and money get less and less nationalistic and loyal.
At the same time you have major shifts in technology (virtualization, graph databases and AI), processes (lean and agile + ITIL) and organizations (huge monstercorporations that suck the lifeblood of everyone and buy laws).
For those who have the skills and stomach for it, startups or doing own business would be the best place to be, not depending on hand-outs.
For all the worry about age discrimination, H1B abuses, labor violations I've seen here and in other places. There is only one known solution to these issues. Unionization. Until software engineers gain collective bargaining rights, this is all just theory.
It's funny that a group of people that are more than comfortable with changing how people do their work and creating new products. don't think they can make a union work. Sure, they have flaws, but they have advantages as well.
The reason we talk about the 40 hour work week being ignored is because of unions demanding a reasonable amount of time off. Not because some companies that realized it was a good idea. The list goes on. Sure, there's been some really good attempts at rewrite history, but the truth is still there. Unions are an important counterbalance to corporate overreach and abuse.
"They have decades of experience (and specialist knowledge), they have a healthy disregard for office politics (but can still manage, when necessary), they're available, and they're (generally) stable."
but they have lives outside of work, are too highly paid, and refuse to work 80 hours per week any more. New grads, on the other hand, have no life outside work, can be easily manipulated into 80 hour weeks, and will work for 1/2 the pay and bennies that the 40 YO wants. The HR and accounting people do the math: two new grads will work 80 hours for the same pay one 40 YO will accept for working a 40 hour week. That 40 YO guy may be more productive than either of those grads but he can't keep up with two of them working twice as long as he does. See ya! I wouldn't want to be ya!
I've seen recently on LinkedIn that two of my ex-colleagues got promoted to "senior" positions in their new companies. The trouble is that neither of them has three years of experience. I've looked at the open positions at those companies, and indeed, they both advertize "senior" software developer positions and require only two years of experience. So I certainly could not get a job there - with my 15 years of experience, what would I be in their company? A jedi master?
What is worrying me is that in "regulated" industries, like electrical engineering, after two years of experience you would be happy if they would allow you to take the "state exam" to get the license. And what is especially worrying is that you need to pass a serious exam just to be licensed to design house electrical installations, which is actually not too complicate. But that also explains why house installations don't kill people every minute and why is typical software so buggy.
No sig today.
Older developers are expensive, they have homes, mortgages, kids, etc. It's not that they don't want to hire older developers its that they want some "kid" who will work for less money 16 hrs a day because he shares an apartment with a bunch of other kids and would rather not go home. So they complain about not being able to find developers and push the H1B meme which anyone in the industry knows that they are rarely used for rare talent and all too often are used to bring in bodies. It's short sided and it is sad, there is room for the older developers and most attempts at cost containment usually result in just the opposite. having experienced people who can work independently and generally have just seen more and thus may come to a solution faster will save you in the long run. But I've seen it all too often where perfectly good if not a little bit old timey C/Unix developers stop developing because they are deemed over the hill. I used to work with a guy who is no longer developing but he was prolific I'm pretty sure he wrote an OS in awk. It's a sad statement the the people who actually create the value are often treated like garbage by the paper pushers.
Here is how the H1B program works:
- Company desires to hire a cheaper employee
- Company finds an H1B candidate that fits their needs.
- Company crafts a job ad for the position that matches the candidate's qualifications precisely.
- Company posts ad for required time period.
- Company doesn't find any Americans who matches their qualifications precisely (regardless of them fitting their actual *need*)
- Company then legally hires H1B
Now I've known some great H1B employees and consider some of them good friends. Most of them are on the path to US citizenship, and I'm all for that--well-educated, hard-working, and great all-around human beings.
That said, the very idea that there are "no qualified workers" is total bullshit. H1B employees are cheaper, and once hired are effectively indentured servants. They are highly restricted in terms of being able to travel, move to another job, etc, so they are basically locked in with that employer, who can then screw them over all they want. If there are any issues they simply toss them overboard, leaving the employee stranded in the US without work and without any ability to get new work without going back home first (most of the time, there are some small exceptions).
Everyone is assuming that all "older" workers are experienced, have more family obligations, and are unwilling to learn new things.
What about all the people who are getting into development as a second or third career? I STARTED my CS degree at 45. Before that I had 12 years of experience as a network manager supporting hundreds of users. I was top in almost all of my classes and was often asked to tutor other students. Yes, the 22 year-olds asked me to tutor them, both because I knew it better AND because I could explain it better.
I have mature attitudes about writing clean code while still being creative in what I think can be done. One can be creative without being chaotic. I also have twelve years of experience helping users figure out how to use crappy user interfaces, so I also know what not do do UI-wise. My son is 34 years old and I am not in a relationship. I would love to just be able to hang out at the office all day working on code, eating catered meals, and talking with other developers. I am even willing to work cheap because it beats doing any other job for even less pay. So, I don't fit hardly any of the stereotypes.
There are going to be a lot more people like me coming into the development workforce. Hopefully, companies will be able to figure out what to do with us.
this is one of those articles where what the article says, and what people think, have a discrepancy. It reminds me of articles with titles like:
"Java developers claim uses no more memory than C++"
"C++ developers claim no more bugs than python"
"Python developers claim runs as fast as C"
I don't code that much these days, but the question is familiar. Why do you still code? Yet no one asks an architect, surgeon or lawyer that question.
Only some people go into software development because they have an inherent interest. Others go into it as a career path.
The former are usually the better developers. The former usually don't ask that question because they already know the answer, the work interests you. Admittedly some of the former have also moved on to management out of necessity.
I get this and would like to hire an older developer. The problem is that they are hard to find. Once upon a time one might have had success on alt.sysadmin.recovery. Today? How does one find older developers with web and *nix skills?
As one who turns the "double-nickle" this year, I just started a new job 11/14. There are companies willing to hire "older" developers, it's experience stupid. Problems we face today are same as 20+ years ago, just now inside the chip, rather than on the board. I'm speaking of a more "engineering" environment, vs. just an "IT" world. Maybe the younging's are what the IT shops hunger for. But in the "engineering" world, it's become more complicated and one needs to keep up on skills. If you're not paying attention to trends, here is your wake up call. This "IoT" - going back to the "old days" where "real" Embedded Systems exist, using bare metal or RTOS setups. Here is where you need a little bit of HW, little bit of SW - which is a hard combination to come by these days. Thankfully, I'm a RIT Grad (Go Tigers) with a BS in Computer Engineering, grew up during this embedded revolution. Yea, lots of changes. As someone already said, you may not know everything, you may not know the solution, but you probably know what NOT to do - experience. . . .
Time will tell. Hang on for the wild ride. I got plenty more kick left. . . .
"Maybe 1 year experience in 20 different things... which is not a bad thing. Show you can LEARN over and over and over again "
But then, you can't offer 5 years of experience in any of those buzzwords, so you can only opt to entry positions... just to be discarded as soon as they realize your age.
It seems that nowadays basically nobody values the jack-of-all-trades approach.
The post-2008-meltdown "reforms" shoveled gigantic piles of "free" and "printed" money from Treasury to the banks, while ordering the banks not to lend it to people who could not repay it. The bankers therefore could only profitably lend much of it to their wealthy customers who in-turn would only borrow it if they could make a bigger profit on it than they would spend in interest on it - the bast way to do that was to stuff it into the markets buying stocks. This money has been sloshing around on Wall St for about 7 years and you can see it hopping from start-up to start-up, and next big thing to next big thing, as short-term investments in IPOs and such. This is why Wall St. slumps every time the Fed makes noises about tightening, and seems to perversely go up on bad economic news and down on good news. This is a super-bubble that likely will make to 2000 dot com burst look mild when the music eventually stops and everybody scrambles to find a chair.
Once the era of Wall St investors looking only for short-term value gains (so they can sell and hop to the next stock) ends and investors are forced to go back to looking at fundamentals and thinking about whether a company will still be there and have a valid business model in a decade, this model of super-bad management will similarly burst.
It's a fundamental law of reality at least as severe as gravity: Things that cannot be sustained, will not be sustained.
Says the old guy that let this situation metastasize in the first place.
One has already landed - she's in her forties. Strong, diverse skillset, Already proving herself to be the right choice after only a couple of weeks. I'm also offering to a specific contractor a conversion to employee. He's also in his forties, and has proven himself over and over in a very long project with us. These people aren't cheap, by any means. My budget is straining, but was able to make the case to my leadership.
I just interviewed three people for my last posting, A junior developer. Looking at three years in the industry with some operational support background. I had a huge number of resumes from people far further along in their careers, but I'm not considering them. Mine is a small team - just six people, soon to be 7. I need a less... developed... developer.
I like to think we're on the right track.
I could turn around and create a post with identical vitriol describing every last developer as cowboys trying in vain to defend their commoditized skillsets and high salaries, and who know nothing of how to run a business.
It would be as dismissive as yours and equally wrong. I've been a developer 17 years, and I do not have an MBA. But I know plenty of talented business types who move the wheels of organizations to make it possible for development to happen.
In order for there to be a union, you need specific job descriptions that are uniform across an industry. You need to define performance in a way that makes it very clear if somebody is fulfilling their job .Remember, performance analysis must be agreed on by all parties. The business, the employees, the unions... and there's no way in hell they would ever all get on board. As long as there's some "art" involved in judging that, it will never fly - and there's loads of art.
For instance, you have one guy who wrote a highly elegant, important application component in 5000 lines of code while somebody else created 50 thousand lines, most of it fragile auto-generated xml he neither understands, nor can troubleshoot. Assuming their profiles are essentially identical, who is performing, and who is not? If you just state that both are performing, and they are compensated in a close known band, it will eventually drive the talented one out the door. The exodus of the gifted will leave an ocean of mediocrity.
Software development as a profession just isn't in a state of maturation where unions could operate. Everything is just too damn fuzzy.
Posting AC since I've been modding this thread.
We should find out where OP works. Someone should inquire as to where he's the CTO, being as sure as he is of his abilities and how he's the smartest guy in the room and such, it should be no problem for him to prove to the board what a valuable asset he is by giving a real world example of his impeccable security. I mean, you know, it's one thing to run your mouth but quite another to actually back it up. Seems to me there's a really easy way to put this whole issue to rest.
My snide remarks aside, this kid is putting a proverbial target on everything he touches which is unfortunate because I'm sure he works with some fine people that wouldn't appreciate having to clean up a security incident because someone up the chain bragged a bit too loud, too often, in the wrong places. Unless he's fired them all for being arrogant before they could leave of their own accord. On the off chance that the OP would like to back up all that talk, let us know where you work.
<tongueFirmlyInCheek>Also, we'd love to hear about this large organization where one goes from "head programmer" (technical title on your business card, no doubt) straight to CIO because you know, and I quote, "networking and hardware support" and how you handled the politics of rising several layers in the org chart and how your team handled the transition seeing how valuable you must have been in your role. I mean, I can't even imagine how savvy your CTO must be since that's the C level position for someone with a broad range of technical knowledge whereas CIO is for someone with an in depth understanding of security. They must do some straight up awesome level 3 networking and hardware support in addition to being former "head programmers".</tongueFirmlyInCheek>
BTW, drkstr1, props for being a Slackware fanboy, that's where I learned Linux and I've still got a slackware box sitting a few feet from me right now over a decade later. It's still the most pure UNIX experience one can have these days in a Linux environment and BSD init hasn't given me half the problems SystemD does every time I have to interface with it.
In the last decade of the century that just ended, a large company in the United States was considering adding domestic partners to their insurance policies as a way of attracting and retaining talent.
One of the arguments against adding them was the cost of HIV treatment and for those who could not be treated, end-of-life care (this was back in the day when treatment was frequently unsuccessful and end-of-life care was comparable to that of cancer hospice).
Someone made the counter-argument that maternity costs are generally lower among homosexual couples.
The company ran the numbers and the counter-argument trumped the original argument.
In any case, they were back to the original reason for doing it, which was to attract and retain employees.
Decades later, the company still exists and it's still in the Fortune 500.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Where is the Dunning-Kruger effect linked to age or discussed as age related or as an age-corelated effect?
How were you showing your age, 38, other than by means of showing us your age, 38?
You just got Dunning-Krugerred on Dunning-Kruger.
BOOM! AND YOU JUST GOT LIT UP!