Slashdot Mirror
Almost Half of Tech Workers Worry About Losing Their Jobs Because of Ageism, Says Survey (siliconbeat.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from SiliconBeat: More than 40 percent of tech workers worry about losing their jobs because of age, a new survey shows. Jobs site Indeed also found that 18 percent of those who work in the tech industry worry "all the time" about losing their jobs because of ageism. The release of the survey Thursday comes amid other news about diversity -- or lack thereof -- in tech workplaces. Often when we report about diversity issues, readers wonder about older workers. The Indeed survey offers insight into the age of the tech workforce: It's young. Indeed concluded from surveying more than 1,000 respondents in September that the tech workforce is composed of about 46 percent millennials, with 36 percent of respondents saying the average employee age at their company is 31 to 35, and 17 percent saying that the average worker age at their company is 20 to 30. What about Generation X and baby boomers? Twenty-seven percent of respondents said the average age of employees at their company is 36 to 40, while 26 percent of respondents said the workers at their companies are 40 and older.
What do you expect when you came in in the 90s and 00s and shunned the older workforce, that you would be able to be an older worker later on?
"Enjoy what you're doing! If it becomes drudgery, you're doing it wrong!" - Jim Butterfield
Save as much as you can while you're young, when eating ramen and living in squalor is still cool. Then when you're older, worst case scenario is you lose your job and you're like, meh, didn't need it anyway. Best case scenario is you keep your job and glide into retirement driving expensive foreign cars and Teslas.
The other half is planning on leaving and hope they get severance pay.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Posting anon,.....
Living in Australia with over 250 to 300k per year immigration, we're seeing an incredible drop / stagnation in wages. If you're not a seriously skilled professional (admitedly, a reasonable percentage of /. posters but certainly in no way, all nerds and geeks) then you're in potential trouble.
We've got more and more and more people, willing to work for significantly less money. These people are accustomed to a poorer quality of life back home, so when they come here and share a house with 5 other people, they think it's a palace, but sounds like torture to us.
Plus you've got people who simply made a couple of bad choices skills wise or job wise, wound up in a role and found themselves simply with antiquated skills. I'm one of these myself. Yeah it my fault but my government is NOT making it easy. Wage stagnation is going on seriously for the middle class across the world.
We're getting boned.
I've always worried about age discrimination as well. But that's because I don't often see any software engineers in their 50's and 60's. Is the issue that companies aren't keeping or hiring older people or is it because there are fewer people of that age grew up around computers? When I was a kid I was monkeying around with a Commodore but few people even my age were doing that. What about people 10, 20 years older? It wasn't even an option for many of them.
Plus, most companies I know are so desperate for a competent software engineer that they can't be choosy. Much like the argument about why there aren't many women software engineers I think it may be more a problem of availability rather then discrimination. (Just my opinion)
Google is losing access to older talent they might recruit. Even if their hypothesis that on average younger is better was true their is older talent out their and they won't get that.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
we need to lower the Medicare age
... I've some experience with this.
Competition for IT jobs being what it is, I sometimes had to make a persuasive argument for hiring/keeping me as opposed to a young'n.
In brief, it went like this:
While recent grads know HOW to do stuff that I don't, I know WHY we shouldn't be doing it.
Business is not a good place to be experimenting by being an early adopter.
In skill comparisons, I got my first computer (TRS-80) in 1978. I speak DOS, lived the digital revolution, saw Windows 3.0 fail -- to be fixed by 3.1 -- helped bring in the first network for Mobil Oil, and grew up with the Internet and social media.
I had the experience that entry-level peeps would get later, at the company's expense.
It worked for 30 years.
I've been retired for 3 years, so I don't know if that approach would work today.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
Get ready to change. There's lots of roles in IT that tend to prefer more experienced folks, the type of role where "Ya, I've seen that 5 times before, here's what we're going to do about it..." is the order of the day. Architectural roles of all stripes, infosec in general, etc. I've moved roles a few times in the last 25 years, (network monkey -> Mgmnt -> infosec -> infosec architecture) and I always find a new fun challenge every time I have.
You're probably in technology because you can adapt to change, not because you're scared of it. Embrace that.
Min
On the whole, I find that I prefer Slashdot posts to twitter ones because I don't get limited to 140 chars before
But not because of age. Mostly because of cost. Younger folk are willing to work longer & harder for less money. My experience is that although there are a lot of young coders that can legitimately code better than I can at this point due to the fact that they are more familiar with all the new tools, they really do not know enough about what makes software succeed. Sure, they can put together nodejs microservices up quickly. They can whip up microservices in docker containers in a jiffy but their stuff always requires multiple refactorings before they become useful as they do not understand the big picture of what they are building. The see the grass, not the trees and definitely not the forest.
Give it a few more years... you will definitely start.
#DeleteChrome
I spent years working at a university rearch center. When I got there, they had no direction or plan regarding technology. One system at a time, I built the technology that they used for everything from directory services, storage servers, database, phone system, and even a security camera system. I used tons of open source systems - Linux, BSD, Postgres/PostGIS, Asterisk - and saved the institute hundreds of thousands of dollars. My reward? Shortly after my 50th birthday, and a few months before I finished my doctorate, they eliminated my position. As a bonus, it was also Christmas time too. Just lovely people. Two car payments, a mortgage, and a kid in college. While my wife and I were taking Christmas presents back and cancelling every possible optional expense we could, my former employer was hiring twenty-something business school types to fill seats and firing nearly everyone over 40.
Filth. And doing this on the governments nickel down!
I am nearly 50 and still in high demand. Most people my age just want to work 9 to 5 and go home. Unlike them I push myself to keep up with the latest tech and aggressively manage my career. The guys in their 20s wish they could do half of what I can accomplish. When hunting for jobs if some place rejects me due to age it probably was a lousy place to work in the first place. I only take jobs from firms that need someone who can just handle it all from Manager down to dev work.
You open up a different can of worm with population sets. Of course by skewing their employees younger, software companies can often make their employees more gender diverse faster than if they did not do that...
Older engineers are going to be more likely male. If you want to fix a "gender-diversity" problem in tech simply with new hires, you will likely find it to be pipeline limited. Interestingly, if you wanted to make faster progress than being pipeline limited, you can simply reduce the fraction of older engineers (who are more male dominated compared with the younger pool).
Sadly, that's two strikes against companies keeping older engineers, generally more expensive and generally more male.
Want to know the real reason older workers get canned? Because they're experienced, knowledgable -- and they know what they're really worth, expect to be paid that, and aren't going to knuckle under to bosses that try to bully them into accepting less. Younger workers? Not so much on all counts. They might have good book-learning, but not as much real-world experience, and they'll accept less pay because they're easily convinced -- or pressured -- to take less money and benefits. It's an inversion of the way things used to be, when a college education was nice and all, but experience ruled. The needle is starting to swing back the other way, though, but slowly, as the bean-counters and paper-shufflers (you know, the jackasses who only see numbers and have no clue about the actual work?) hold on for dear life to the mistaken idea of 'cheaper is better'. Sure, you can get some wet-behind-the-ears H1-B engineers from India, but more than half of them couldn't figure out how to design an AM crystal radio without consulting the Internet.
Quit spamming the damn site. We get it, you don't like creimer. No one cares. He's eccentric, but your spam is more disruptive because I have to scroll past all of it on mobile pages. You're far more disruptive than creimer ever was. Of course, your typical response is to reply and accuse me of being creimer. I'm not. Take a hint. Your presence here is not desired. We neither need nor want multiple spam replies to each creimer post. Go away.
I just joined a team of people almost half my age after my physical shop closed for good after 20 solid years of me being there at least and mabe another 15 before that.
I love it, but what amazes me is how much time young lads and ladies waste trying to reinvent the wheel. I came in to an advanced organization providing advanced technology serviced by people younger than 30, and they still use spreadsheets to track their work! They have no concept of the criticality of backups for instance, and were migrating data all around without restore tests! No one knows how to follow up or resolve issues on mass. Basically a bunch of chickens with their heads cut off?
I was brought in to teach them how to be effective, and write better quality code than they are capable of. Experience is worth something in the cloud still. I worry about ageism when Im 60 and everyone assumes I only know how to use my ipad.
Let's table this real issue in favor of focusing on getting kids and women in tech. Plus we need to help all dozen transgenders in the military first too. Then maybe we can discuss California's 3rd gender and other pointless topics with no economics attached. Real issues like mass immigration, H1B abuse, and anything that might help a white male like ageism might impact the bottom line or threaten the 1% and is thus verboten.
Yea- life goes about as well as the decisions one makes. If one makes wise decisions in ones youth one ends up down a path of pronominal wealth. If one makes poor decisions in ones youth and does nothing to correct it one generally is going to be in a sinking ship as times change.
I made the wrong choices after graduating high school. I went on to college and got a computer science degree. When I graduated I started making wise choices. Instead of taking the best opportunity imaginable I turned it down and went to work part time for $9 / hr. This was in 2008. Why o why would anybody do this one asks. Why turn down a good salary out of college when its the very company that one wanted to work for. Well, sometime in life one realizes that one must take risks in life to get ahead. I knew I was worth more than anybody would pay no matter how good the salary so I turned em down (and yea- I negotiated up before turning them down). You can make all the 'right' decisions like I did by going to college and doing what everybody else tells you is a good idea or you can make the wise decisions and become fabulously wealthy. I chose the later.
Why was taking $9 an hour for 30 hours a week a wise move? Simple. If your even half intelligent you can make more money running a computer repair business than working for someone else. Now I didn't have any money after I graduated so I took a $9 / hr job working for someone else doing computer repair and then I simultaneously started two businesses. One was a computer repair business. The other was a tech startup that had the potential to do really really well as the years progressed. Within six months I quit the $9 / hr job and was making more than I had been offered in an area that was cheaper to live. Then within 3 years the other startup I formed was doing well. Today I'm very wealthy living in a much more cost effective area than had I taken a job for any major tech company. My salary alone is twice that of other tech workers in some of the most expensive places to live and work. I also am not including other compensation nor my total worth. In fact the only reason my salary is what it is is because the IRS mandates it. You are better off taking less of a salary because other forms of compensation are taxed at a lower rate. Ultimately I'm unfirable, have no competition, and a bright future. If I want to retire tomorrow I can. I'm only now coming up on my 10 year anniversary since I started the company. hmm I'm 33 and I can retire. How many people can say that?
Make the right decisions in life and stop blaming other people for your problems.
* I've had multiple successful businesses since my youth and didn't graduate from any ivy league school. I'm not the brightest tool in the shed either. Basically stop listening to other people and start looking at the numbers. Take some level of risk. Don't go impregnate some chick out of high school or college. Don't throw your money at a useless education when you can educate yourself. Invest in yourself rather than letting others take advantage of you.
We keep hearing about this big bubble of women who went into computer science in the 80's, in far greater numbers than have been seen in recent years. This makes me wonder... where are these people? They'd all fall into the "older engineers" category now.
I'm that good, I don't worry about it. I'll retire at 67, and come back in 2-3 times a week to continue working. I'm a problem solver and know how to think OUTSIDE the box.
So I've been around for awhile. I've bounced into several different roles. Now I've seen outright agism. Where the boss just won't hire anyone over 35 and once you're pass that point, you're sent to support and then eventually shown the door.
Now, not 100% of the time, but a lot of the time, would say 60%, they're doing projects that are one offs and the customer is maybe a five year account or something. Basically, everyone goes into this, knowing that whatever is built, isn't sticking around for a long time. Microwave software so to say. A team of three or four folks get together write some software in six months, support it for about three years, and then they're all sent packing after the year it takes for the customer to leave the company. You want to talk about reinventing the wheel. But in these shops, they use platforms that allow things like this to happen. Something where you type a couple of XML files or JSON files, write some business logic, and the platform handles the boiler plate. Are they secure? Meh, sort of, they're typically no around long enough for anyone to penetrate. Are they robust? Again meh, about as robust as a system that will be used for all of five years will ever be.
Now that's not all the time though. That 40% I've seen of agism where they're not popping software out left and right of meh quality. I'd say there is about two categories there. One, the most common, where they let go of talent and taint their rep in circles and basically they resort to buying third party stuff because zero people want to work for them, even fresh grads get wind that they'll get underpaid and in ten or so years they'll be sent unceremoniously packing. The rarer kind I've seen, maybe two out of the companies I've worked for, they are just insane. One placed I worked, the IT boss mandated his secretary wear a dress to work (since that's about all of the dress code he controlled). At an xmas party he fessed up that it was because he liked looking at her legs and imagined that one day he'd get a quick upskirt before she got "too wifey". I left that place pretty damn quick, but not before seeing him part ways with a 37 year programmer who single handedly wrote the API for a lot of business logic to the database. He pulled in a 23-year old Indian visa student to intern and poor guy was in over his head as he tried to support business logic that had existed for upteen years. I honestly felt sorry for guy, because boss man continually drilled him and had guy second guessing every single thing he did.
Now all that said, I've also seen stubborn. Where the older guys don't see any reason to leave a platform. Now if they've got a good argument, I'll give them that. But I'd say that it's pretty break even with what people I've seen, where they don't want to leave a platform because they don't want to learn a new one. One company I worked for had RPG III and COBOL. Okay no problem there. However, we were getting requests from customers to update this business logic or that business logic and it wasn't so much the language, RPG ILE is a treat and highly flexible, as the way they programmed. They were just stuck in a method of coding that didn't produce flexible code. It was always highly brittle and every deploy was a hold your breathe moment. I'm not saying they needed to leave AS400, but their I cannot help think that their blunt refusal to change brought about some of their dismissal. That place eventually fold because we got buried under legacy code that was just not supportable unless the big customer was willing to have a hard freeze for a year while we got back on track. They pulled their contract and the company literally had all eggs in a single basket, the basket that just left.
So I've seen agism, but I've seen stubborn more often than I've seen agism. And maybe that's because I'm not very silver in the hair enough or something. I think if you're flexible enough, you'll find something. I'd recommend to anyone getting into the IT field, get a savings ac
I'm 61, writing code, and having fun. My advice:
First, find a company that lets you do what you want. In particular, find one that doesn't push you into management (unless that's what you really want). Many companies will push you in that direction, but unless you're really good at it, it's a dead end.
Second, don't get stuck on the same project forever. Being the old fogey who knows everything about that important legacy system isn't a good place to be when the old system is finally retired. It isn't enough to "keep up with new technology". Knowing it and doing at are different things and are judged differently.
Third, don't expect that your superior wisdom is enough. Be wise, but be productive, and help other people be productive.
I was the first one hired to start the "internet" dept of a printing/advertising company.
After several years, I was replaced with six guys in their early twenties.
I started my own software company so I never have to worry about getting fired or downsized. I just have to worry about finding customers so there is revenue to pay myself something for my efforts. Not the easiest thing either.
Haven't even been able to get an interview since then. I've played all the tricks like shaving off the first 20 years experience from your resume, whatever. But when it comes to "when did you get a college degree" you can't lie, cuz the college is going to give the real year.
Keep in mind, I'm not saying I interviewed and didn't get hired. I can't even get a fucking interview nowdays.
You're not the only one, and you're right. I was earning a liveable wage three years ago, but then I was unemployed for 12 months and now earning an entry level salary after 15 years experience - simply out of desperation.
The major parties simply don't care. It's quite happy to throw it's own citizens under the wheels to keep it's economy going, just as easily as it has thrown it's own citizens under the wheel during wars in times past. Then we have a bought and paid for media telling us that immigration is good for the economy... yes, but for WHO'S economy? Certainly not my household economy....
Mid 50s here, and I work in C and embedded systems. So it's hard to find qualified candidates for the jobs, plus I'm good at it, and get a lot of recruiter spam. So I'm not worried about ageism for me. There are people that definitely are dismissive of older workers but I haven't bumped into any for some time.
People say old people don't keep up on the skills, but that will apply to everyone. The problem is not about age or skills, it's about cost. If you're 30 you're NOT old, but even if you know 50 programming language you're still going to be compared to the cheaper worker who only knows the one language that the company wants. Those are dumb companies to be sure, they value quantity over quality, so maybe you're better off not getting a job at those places.
An even bigger concern than ageism, especially for those with moderate skills, is outsourced. No matter what your age in the US, they can find someone that costs less overseas. Not good workers mind you, but if they can hire 5 incompetent people for the price of one qualified person then many companies will do that. And there are countries where it is routine for the manager to lie our their asses about how awesome their workers are and how they can do anything you can possibly ask. Being young won't protect you there.
It's a very valid worry! Especially when most Americans are a paycheck away from losing everything they own.
I'm 51. This is not young in tech. And I'm right now earning really good money as a top-notch Linux/cloud guy. So long as I don't sit on my laurels, and continue learning and being relevant, I see no reason to worry about ageism, at all. Indeed, the longer I work, the more people I know, and the more who have enjoyed working with me, the less worried I am about what would happen were I to lose my job.
Note that there *is* a different kind of older worker: the one who's found a niche in a company, hasn't expanded their skillset, and isn't advancing. Especially if they've continued to get annual increases in salary. Because at some point, they are likely to be introduced to reality in some manner -- the company has layoffs; management changes; the direction of their technology changes. And suddenly, they're out of a job, with skills no longer relevant to the job market, and a house they can't make payments on. DON'T BE THAT GUY.
To be honest? I spent my WHOLE working career worrying about losing job X, Y or Z -- and have lost a few jobs due to the company I worked for filing bankruptcy and shutting down, as well as a layoff and a huge pay cut and threatened layoff at another one. I finally believe I found employment with a company that's not only successful, but makes smart investments in buying other successful small businesses and merging with them. (That, in turn, increases their need for the I.T. support I provide them along with the small, close-knit group of co-workers in my department.)
I don't earn the kind of pay that some of my peers keep telling me I'm "worth", given my number of years of experience. BUT, they do give regular raises as well as annual bonuses and they're flexible with such things as allowing me to work from home on days when I can see that's the most efficient option. I really feel like some of my friends jumped on jobs because of the fat paychecks offered, only to find out that pay rate was only offered because management wasn't very realistic about what they could really afford long-term. As soon as the economy had a down-turn, they were in the unemployment line. No interest in trying to find ways to keep them employed with a few cut hours or other options.
As I've gotten older, I've gotten better about appreciating the "slow and steady wins the race" adage. If I don't at least have the option to stay employed where I'm at through retirement, I believe it will most likely be my own fault (getting bored or burnt out and slacking off too much, maybe?). Anything's possible, but for once, I'm not constantly worried about losing this job.
By high-tech standards I'm ancient (56). I have a pretty good gig going at the moment, but if (when) it ends, I will change careers because I know I'll be unemployable.
Technologically, I've kept an eye on newer tech and have been active in deploying it in the company. We've replaced a major part of our company, a legacy communication system that ran on custom no-longer-available hardware, with Linux and VoIP running on COTS servers. We like it because it works better. The bean counters like it because it costs less and the new boxes come with warrantees.
My boss and I agree to disagree on scripting languages. He likes perl. I like python. :-)
...laura
How very Calvinist of you. Work will set you free...
I'm worried less about ageism and the cargo-cult programmers who latch on to the newest shiny constantly. They tend to shun engineers who are more reserved about their technology choices. "You're not a good programmer unless you used at least 15 different frameworks for your project..."
without the constant influx of cheap labor from overseas they couldn't indulge in ageism.
Something else I notice that bothers me too though, the old guys at my place are usually fervently right wing, anti-government regulation and anti-Union except for this one thing. In this one thing they want the government to step on and protect workers rights. As someone that got screwed over a lot when he was young (right two work state and all that) that hypocrisy really pisses me off.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
... and had little to do with age. Unless you're a geezer that is.
As for career changes due to age:
I notice me getting more nimble and less worried about age, at least in terms of income. If I can't score a job I'll simply go Freelance. With grey hairs and wrinkles coming, I'll have to up my stock of business trousers and shirts and lose the t-shirts, but that involves upping my rates aswell and doing a little more writing and management and less all-nighters seeing up some machine, because next morning an important suit meeting is due. Currently I'm turning down a few jobs here and there that are too cheap (read: demanding my money's worth and not backing down). I'm to expensive for web hacking. But I also wouldn't want to do it anymore.
Bottom line: Adjust for age and social exhortations and you'll be just fine.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
What is the alternative though? The birth rate among the non-immigrant population isn't very high, so you are headed towards serious problems as the population ages. You have plenty of space, those immigrants obviously want to improve their 5-in-a-house situation and seem willing to work towards that goal, creating new economic activity so it's not just "stealing your jobs".
There were several major studies done in the UK into the effect of immigration on wages. It concluded that there was only a very small effect for those in the lowest paid jobs, for everyone else it had no negative effect and likely created extra jobs for them.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Here the other side. We had difficulty finding people. We did not want people who just left school, but where a bit more mature.
So we looked for older people from 55 and up. The fact that we would get extra money fro; the government in Belgium was a nice plus, but not the deciding factor.
Worst. Decision. Evar. It was almost impossible to get them to do anything they already knew. Let alone learn them anything new. Just not flexible enough and easily double the time to be somewhat productive (a year, instead of standard 6 months). And we really tried over several years. At a certain moment you just give up. They where just too expensive, even if they got the same pay as others.
The plus side? They are less sick on Monday and Friday. Less moaning about stuff. Much less drama. Yet the thing that remained was that learning new things was hard. Be it procedures or skills.
I now also see it with myself. I know that if I got fired now, getting a new job would be near to impossible. Too set in my ways, even if I WANT to be flexible and WANT to learn, it will be extremely hard if not impossible. Because I would feel as if they do not want to use my expertise.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
Fortunately you're not American, so you won't be tarred as a racist just for expressing that sentiment.
It seems like we get lots of stories about social and political issues at the expense of stories about hardware, software, programming, and DIY projects to hack stuff to do interesting things. Maybe not as many people read or comment on those stories, but that's because they've been driven off by the changes in Slashdot over the past several years.
Worked for Scientific American, didn't it?
You bring up an interesting point. Are all those older women as vulnerable as the doddering 50-year-old men in this thread, or can they just slide over into HR?
It's not really a secret that you can 'be in demand' if you're willing to work your life away.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
For example, Leidos, a large government IT contracting firm, recently announced it's 2018 benefits package. It was noted that those employees with 10+ and 20+ years of service will now be losing 3-4 vacation/sick/PTO days and a few even more.
Essentially, corporations view older longer term employees not as notable for their loyalty, but as a burden. Why pay more, and give more vacation time to senior employees when we can hire someone fresh out of college or import an H1B Visa holder and pay them much less and give them half the vacation time.
Meanwhile, Leidos executive compensation went from $2 mil, $2mil, $4 mil, $7 mil, $14 mil, and now $35 mil. The CEO went from like $2 million to $7 million, to $14 million in compensation. Essentially, what we have is a group of elite who simply game the system to move the wealth and benefits of the laborers to their own pockets.
It's disgusting... but I doubt we'll see any change until we bring back the proverbial guillotine - granted it may be molecular disruption chambers in 2140.
Over 60 and in tech pre-sales. I show up in a room of 20 something IT folks and they act surprised when I not only know what they're doing in dev/ops but can tell them how they got where they are and how to get where they need to go. Occasionally, I have to remind them I've seen many of the wrong turns and stupid (failed) projects first-hand and can add some perspective to their own plans. Sadly, I'm acutely aware of the view of age and experience in the industry at large and have experienced firsthand HR moves where companies carefully carve out the over-50 crowd for "HR actions" while preemptively claiming no age bias by tossing in a few younger folks in the mix. I personally know *many* folks in my same age bracket that simply can't find any work in the field, despite having all relevant certifications and experience. Companies are hurting themselves by their blind HR policies that target age as a negative attribute. "The cure for a fallacious argument is a better argument, not the suppression of ideas." -- Carl Sagan
YUP
The other half of older workers in America would GTFO if health care wasn't so f'd up.
And, all of the older workers would love for the youngers to age up so that rediculous low-contrast web page text would go out-of-style.
Well, apparently, you only have to fool the majority of people for a little while.
That was me, above. I forgot to log in. Silly early-onset Alzheimer's!
After submitting several sample HOWTO pieces, I got a gig at MaximumLinux magazine as a Contributing Editor. I successfully submitted articles after that and was eventually authoring a monthly column. What my employers didn't know was that I was in my late 40s at the time. I didn't meet my editor, Bryan, until a Linux convention in NYC. When I approached him, I could see the surprise on his face when he realized that I was much older than he had assumed.
That was the only experience that involved my age. I contributed to the magazine until it ceased publication and then moved to LinuxFormat for a long run. In the meantime, I was a co-author with the awesome Bill Ball on the RedHat Unleashed and Fedora Unleashed series.
The takeaway here is that the quality of the produced work and the enthusiasm for the task at hand are what counts and that employers who use age as a screening technique (and ignoring older candidates out-of-hand) are missing out on valuable talent.
I appreciate the opportunity that those publishers and editors gave me that might have been lost to us both had I been ignored because of my age.
"I believe in Karma. That means I can do bad things to people all day long and I assume they deserve it." : Dogbert
If you're burning the candle at both ends at age 54 might that be problematic? Maybe some learning about the finite nature of life would serve you better than tech skills. Maybe you're one of those rarities for whom obsessive work is truly better - it's possible. I have 11 years on you, and I promise that you won't get that overtime back, and I'd urge you to examine your decision on how to use your time.
Just the washing instructions on life's rich tapestry
I think the whole 'into management' thing is backwards. If I am in a long meeting my mind wanders. I just don't care to put time or energy into interpersonal games. When I talk to people especially with bad connection or broken English my ears play tricks on me. But when I am programming 4 hours seems like a half hour and I can burn through stuff with a steady hum, better than I ever could when I was younger. It doesn't even feel like work.
love is just extroverted narcissism
I'm 42, and although I haven't knowingly experienced ageism, I foresee a day in the future when I draw the short straw, get laid off and become another statistic in this "can't get hired past 45" environment. Every other real profession values experience, and in IT and development it seems like it's being actively ignored lately in the pursuit of new and shiny. Doctors don't have this problem...they can practice as long as they're able. Professors can do the same, but when you suggest that IT people have a similar career they look at you like you have 2 heads.
I admit that there are _plenty_ of older workers who feel that they don't need to keep current in IT, or that their knowledge as it is today will continue to be relevant throughout their career. I know that's not the case and spend a large amount of time both inside and outside work keeping up to date. The problem is that potential employers paint all older workers with the same brush: "They can't learn, they're too expensive, they want too much time off, ..."
I guess the problem is that IT and development are fields where things are constantly changing, and you need to keep learning at the same pace you were when you started, throughout your career. Yes, we have lives outside of work, we can't work 100 hour weeks, we don't want to live in the office, and we have more obligations than the average 25 year old. But, some of us have valuable experience that will prevent the younger workers from going down a dead end and redoing all that work. Personally, I still really enjoy the technical aspect of my job. Management isn't for everyone, and companies should recognize that...that's usually where they stuff the older burnt-out IT workers.
I have no idea how to solve this either. Silicon Valley worships youth and cheap labor. I would love to go work for AWS or Microsoft doing cloudy stuff, but I'm not going to abandon my family for a job. I know way too many IT folks who are on their second or third marriage or are just perpetually alone because they're constantly trying to impress their employer. I think my advice would be to be a generalist who's willing to change direction as needed, learn constantly, live within your means so you're not the guy begging for raises every year, and find an employer that has figured out that a healthy mix of youth and experience works best.
You don't say. (Eye's the H1B workers across the hall).
It's not just "you're soooo old...", it's also, um, er, we can hire someone right out of school, or foreign, and pay them a *lot* less than you. Well, yes, you do have a ton of experience, and what you produce will work better, and it will be developed sooner, and easier to maintain, but ROI THIS QUARTER!!!!!
Which is why I stayed at my last job way too long. Then, after surviving many rounds of layoffs, they finally did it to me. I thought I was doomed at 59 years old. Then I got a job at a big defense contractor that not only talks diversity, but really takes it very seriously. I'm surrounded by brilliant men and women ranging in age from fresh out of college to older than I am. The workforce at my site is almost 40% female. Where else do you see that in tech today? It's a wonderful, positive work environment. The people are great, the work is exciting, and the pay is awesome. It's the best job I've ever held, and I wished I had known about it years earlier.
If you're burning the candle at both ends at age 54 might that be problematic? Maybe some learning about the finite nature of life would serve you better than tech skills. Maybe you're one of those rarities for whom obsessive work is truly better - it's possible. I have 11 years on you, and I promise that you won't get that overtime back, and I'd urge you to examine your decision on how to use your time.
Thanks for the advice, but I'm already with you on that. While I *can* burn that candle, it's usually limited to those times when that extra effort is needed. I was merely commenting on the myth that youngsters can work harder/longer than us more seasoned folks. I also have a lot of experience and skill that I could transfer to newer workers. I've always tried to be professional and do the best work that can be done, but it's just work and I'm far from obsessive about it, now more than ever, and I'll tell you why.
I'm very aware of the finite nature of life. After 20 years together, almost half my life at the time, my wife Sue died of a brain tumor in January 2006, just six weeks after diagnosis. Remember Sue... I've been alone, and haven't dated anyone since. I continued to work and save as we always had, she being 19 years older than me we knew she would retire much sooner than I did. I got laid off last June, but because of our fugal lifestyle I'm debt-free and financially independent w/o a job on my current budget for the rest of my life. Of course, I'd much rather have Sue back. Now I'm trying to figure out what to do with myself next...
Thanks again.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
I use MATLAB if it is available. Don't always get to pick my tools. If it is just excel I use excel. If they have numpy and excel... I still use excel, vba is 10x faster and has all the blas and iterative stuff I usually need.
Matlab is better when I have it, for sure though, until it isn't fast enough then I go to c++ and eigen. Preferably c++11 or better, but solving the problem with whatever is at hand on a short schedule appeals to me in an Apollo 13 sort of way.
refactor the law, its bloated, confusing and unmaintainable.
I've worked with two kinds of older workers in IT and they are very different. One kind is the kind who like the way they do things and they want to keep doing it that way. "New programming language? Why? That means starting all over. Too busy. Too hard. Let's just do it in the language I know Really well." You may have met these people. They end up making themselves obselete. They just happen to be older. More of a coincidence. The other sort of older worker is always looking for the next cool thing. Always reaching into the future for new opportunities and new possibilities. These people tend to stay relevant. In my experience, the first sort also tend to drink booze. I don't know what it is, but I've seen the pattern. Over time - 15- 20 years - a couple of beers every night seems to undermine the ability to learn new things. Dulls the curiosity. Some people attribute this to age, but I've known people who don't drink and they seem to retain the curiosity and learning capacity much better than the other sort as time goes on. So ageism isn't just about age. It can also be about the cumulative affect of all those little choices we make every day about how much effort we put in to keeping up with new stuff.
Only boring people are ever bored.
Frankly millennials can't hack it a lot of the time. When you find one that can you horde them like gold.
If you have the skills you get paid. Lot of aging IT whiners don't keep up on the latest technology.
Nice not telling me my subject was too long slashdot. ... the average age is over 40...
I also live in Australia and work in tech and respectfully disagree. Just this week I had 69 applications for a Level 2 role. I phone interviewed five and only 1 had English skills passable enough to formally in person interview. The influx of cheap labour into Australia IS an issue, but I don't see it as one in tech. If you are good at what you do, keep your skills up to date and are passionate about the work and type of company you work for, you will always have a job. The 300-400K influx of Indian/Middle Eastern/Chinese immigrants with poor English language skills, degrees from "strange" Universities and problem-solving skills that would sink a ship are not a threat to skilled IT workers. Sure they might be a problem if your driving Uber, work in retail or manufacturing, but I don't see the relationship between immigrants and threat to skilled work - IT or any other industry. Lastly, we have a minimum wage ( I think its ~$24p/hour ) and that isn't going anyway. It's not like Australia is full of poor people who can't work or beggers. We have 5.5% unemployment and a very high standard of living. We can afford as a country to allow more immigrants in, where we have enough work for them to do (and they integrate).
A strange slashdot phenomenon ... Creimer gets involved and people start writing obscene things.
Talked to a lot of people about this, although I can't say much at 36 from personal experience.
Seems like the niche guys can still get work, but it isn't as easy to find cobol, force.com, or quail once the contract is up or you get laid off. Cisco certs seem to pay off if you are up for travel.
I hear some older folks have some success with flavors of iOS programming if they're really good but they get the door slammed in their face a lot and you have to kind of make it look like you have a competing offer so hurry make a decision quick !
Seems like what they teach in school is incredibly far behind the curve / market.
Do clients discriminate by age?
I'm asking bc I have no clue.