Old Folks Can Code, Too

Ethelred Unraed writes "Wired News has a story about how "older" programmers and engineers--over 35--are having difficulties finding work, even though their skill level is as high or higher than the young guns out there. " We've heard this numerous times before, but it's still an interesting, albeit strange, phenomenon. I would say part of it has to do with the lack of lives that many of the younger folks have (I'm including myself). What do you folks think?

Comments

Re:html = no control structures. PHP.

[cblack]

Now there is reason to believe that the last
message was a troll, BUT...
The main reason I do not consider writing HTML
coding is because there are no control structures.
Heck, there aren't really even any data structures.
But I myself would get upset if people saw what I do all day (PHP/perl webapps with financial data) and said, "You call HTML programming?"

Re:You missed the obvious one

[sjames]

Remember that when you're still getting bug reports on a version you shipped three years ago. For that matter, when the code that is due in 6 months gets done in ontl 6.5, and the necessary re-write will only take another 5.

There is a need for more expensive veterans and less expensive entry and jr level in any shop. Ever notice that games companies tend to have the youngest staffs, and are the most likely to release way late and half done?

That's not to say the younger programmers don't have a place, they certainly do. It's just to say that an unbalanced department will always spell trouble in the end.

Re:html IS programming

[Anonymous Coward]

jacob is an asshole.
I'm mainly a java guy and I realize that if it wasn't for these true programmers I wouldn't get my fancy ass little tools that let me do RAD. And without the older folks we wouldn't have shit as easy as Java... not to mention HTML... I've done my share of assembly for both x86 and M68000 chips and I'll say one thing... two different ballparks.
My hat's off to the older folks that paved the way... thanks.
Maybe a good slashdot poll would be if people consider HTML to be REAL programming.

if you're not part of the solution,

[ABEND]

you're part of the problem.

Anyone who feels comfortable in "age discrimintation" now is contributing to an overall acceptance of this practice.

Do not ask for whom the bell tolls ...

Re:Vi and Emacs in the same sentence ?? ;))

[Uart]

I feel soo incompetant.
I must be the only person who actually prefers Pico for basic file editing. Although i do like to fire up a copy of emacs for HTML, ect, i spend most of my file-editing time in Pico, the interface is simple, and in my opinion, quite quick and easy to use.

Now don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to start a flamewar or anthing, but i just wanted to add my favorite editor to the list.

Now I'm off to learn some new stuff.

True but not inescapably so

[Genus Marmota]

Interesting. I'm 41 and looking for a job right now. I live in Seattle, I have a heavy resume (or at least I think so) including financial, hard-core C++/Unix/VMS/whatever development, financial, scientific apps. Now I'm a contractor writing COM objects. I've encountered this phenomenon several times. I get rejections like "everyone who interviewed you was very impressed but we don't have a position where we could leverage your extensive skill set." Translation: you're overqualified and we can do with a younger & cheaper programmer. What I find interesting is that the companies where I get this treatment are the most bullshit in terms of their business plan. In the case of the one above, it's a .com with a brain-dead-on-arrival concept. Which suggests that they don't need heavy skills because all they plan to do is cash out and screw the investors still standing when the music stops.

Of course, that could be sour grapes. But then I have other contacts with companies that are more established, have serious balance sheets, a high degree of professionalism and their attitude is "what can we do to make you want to work here?"

I guess the moral of the story is that a thing is worth what someone will pay for it. If there are a lot of buyers out there refusing the over 40 goods, then it may depress the price a bit. But there are a lot of people who know their business and can pretty accurately judge the value of investing in skill & experience. I try not to let it get to me.

I ain't workin no 70 hour week. And I get paid well too. I'll take the options, but only if they're not an inside joke among the early investors.

Re:True but not inescapably so

[aphrael]

This might be considered flamebait, but
your message brings up a point that I think
is worth considering:

Maybe the problem is lame management,
at least to a certain extent.

As an example of the type of thing I'm talking
about: a former co-worker of mine, with
two to three years of Windows programming
experience, recently interviewed for a job
at an (unnamed) e-commerce business that wanted
to use a windows database backend to run their
site. One of the few technical questions he
was asked was: "how comfortable do you feel
with windows programming?" ... and this by the
'senior architect' on the project.

As soon as I heard the story of his interview,
I was convinced that the company he was
interviewing with was more or less doomed
to have this project fail: if the architect
can't ask intelligent technical questions,
how can he architect?

If there are a lot of companies out there
like this --- as you said, the companies which
don't want to hire you because you are
overqualified usually have lame business plans ---
then it makes sense: companies managed by
people who just rushed into the industry to
cash in on the big cash cow and don't actually
understand it are operating entirely upon
the public image of programmers: if you
aren't a young hacker, you obviously aren't
right for us ...

Re:As long as they don't want to run the team

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm 42 and I've got all the contract work I
can handle. I can bill every waking moment
at $2/minute.

What is this "full time" stuff? I keep hearing
a lot about it. Is it like being a regular
employee? The kind where they pay less for the
same job and I have to become a manager to make
any real money? Where my skill set is primarily
company history and not portable? Where I do
any task they hand over because I'm a "team
player"? Where they will lay me off anyway
because "I cost too much money". Wow. Where
do I (NOT!) sign up?

Re:It's Money.

[sjames]

Some of the bloat I've seen made the code slower AND harder to maintain. Consider: There is a bug in the program. Do you want to look through 5000 lines of code or 10000?

Often, nasty race conditions that are hard to find seem to just go away when the code is made more efficient. It's not magic, it's just that bugs hide easily in bloat.

Keep in mind, it's experiance that tells me that a 10% slowdown here makes no difference, but a 0.10% slowdown here will kill the product.

Risk

[Anonymous Coward]

"Workers produce more than they receive in wages".

That's what the company hopes will happen. What you've
neglected to point out is that there's risk involved. Ever left
a company that was going down the tubes? You'll get paid
for your time, but the investors will be out some MAJOR
money.

What's with the news stories?

[foofish]

I want to know what's up with all the news stories
I've seen recently about "Teenagers with Hot Technology Jobs". They're always about some kid who got hired because of his "advanced coding skills" (HTML). Sheesh, I'm a teenager and I'd like to get a high paying job because of my "advanced coding skills", but all the ISP's, etc. in my area require NT, and MS Office experience (gee, I do have standards, ya know).

Efficient code?

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know how many times I've come across code that was woefully inefficient and only ran because of the fast processors that were thrown at it.

Umm ... and you're suggesting this is a BAD thing? Maybe back when you were writing TSRs. Maybe if you're writing a device driver. Maybe if you're doing embedded work. But in most cases,
I would trade off efficiency for maintainability and a good design any day. Inefficiency only costs the customer. Maintenance costs the company. If the customer has the fast processors to throw at this inefficient code, and doesn't mind doing so, then there's absolutely no reason for the code to be more efficient.

Now obviously ASYMPTOTIC efficiency is critical in any application. But you act like minor efficiency tradeoffs in order to improve maintainability or facilitate a good design are a terrible thing. You remind me of people I've encountered who will look at a perfectly fine piece of code and say "but that's inefficient" because it's not the absolute fastest way of doing something. This is really annoying, but I usually will ask them if they'd suggest rewriting the code in hand-optimized assembly. Usually they understand after that.

I think it's mostly programmers like you who complain about companies not wanting to hire older people. It's not that they don't want to hire older people, it's that they don't want to hire people who are still stuck in the dark ages and don't realize things are done differently now.

Re:Efficient code?

[Anonymous Coward]

Hrm ... you touched a nerve here. I am 28. I am the senior UNIX sysadmin for a Fortune 500 company (POL, at the low end, but still large). I got where I am by working my butt off. I have a lot of people younger than me and older than me under me. One of the things that they all share is a serious dislike of waste. They understand the speed/effiency deal, and why perl makes sense despite being inefficient, but if we have to do something fast on the AIX boxen, we do it in C++ and spend a little time making it work right. If we have an odd application that has (for example) a huge number of tiny files, we willl tune the filesystem. Same with kernel tuning. sar is our friend. And we don't even think twice about this (and this is one of the reasons that we like AIX and Linux -- one has tools, one is very simple). As a result, we do not have problems doing about 4x what our recently acquired competition (we are averaging one major compeditor every 9 months) was doing on the same equipment. What that means is we have been able to do a whole hell of a lot of hard core data mining without needing to buy $30,000,000 of EMC coffins and adding apps servers just for that. What that means is that we have been a lot more cost efficient for the company. What that means is I have had no problem getting 50% higher salaries over the last two years, and bonuses, and better options packages (which I do know more about that the old guys, as I started in financial software). And the "minor improvements in effiency" make big differences in runtime in large environments, where you are moving around and going through 50-60GB of data in one afternoon and 2-3TB over a weekend. So, as far as we are concerned, there aren't too many cases where we feel that we have the luxury of "not thinking" and doing stuff the slow way.

Because we are anal about performance and effiency on the system, app, and program level, we can make more money and are much more valuable to the company. You cannot be careless half the time -- it is a way of life.

Re:Efficient code?

[ucblockhead]

Well, I'm currently working, so...

Anyway, I'm talking about code I cleaned up, written by someone who had no concept of efficiency. It worked fine in a test environment, but in the real world, it became unmanagably slow.

I got paid a lot to clean that up, too.

Virtual memory has made people sloppy. I'm not talking about saving bits and bytes. I am talking about simply knowing that

new char a[100];

and

new char a[100000];

are different, performancewise. A lot of younger programmers have no concept of that, and so produce slower code. I've done the latter when it made sense. The key is knowing that there is a potential issue. It is part of good design to know all the issues.

Re:Efficient code?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, I'm currently working, so...

Me too (ATM). I must admit that on co-op terms I've learned much, much more about software engineering than I have at school. That's not why I attend University though.

Virtual memory has made people sloppy. I'm not talking about saving bits and bytes. I am talking about simply knowing that

new char a[100];

and

new char a[100000];

are different, performancewise. A lot of younger programmers have no concept of that, and so produce slower code. I've done the latter when it made sense. The key is knowing that there is a potential issue. It is part of good design to know all the issues.

I agree here. However (and I know it's a contrived example, but...) the biggest problem here is not that the code is inefficient, but that it uses an array and not a vector.

Re:Efficient code?

[Anonymous Coward]

There are always exceptions, and I was careful not to make it sound as though performance is never an issue. It's all a matter of where you focus. In your case it makes sense to focus more on performance. In the software I develop, it makes more sense to focus on design and maintainability. If performance becomes a serious issue, I can always run my code through a profiler and optimize the bottlenecks. This is much easier than coding for efficiency to start with and messing up the design. Even in your case, I'm sure you pay a lot of attention to design and maintainability issues. If you're writing software that's going to be around longer than a few months, and which will need to change in the future, it's a huge issue. What use are short term gains from good performance if the company is going to lose them in a couple of years when the software needs to be changed and can't because of an inflexible design?

Anyway, I think we're mostly on the same page here. It's just that I've seen old-time programmers (and even younger programmers who don't know better) be way too anal about performance.

Re:Efficient code?

[Anonymous Coward]

string GetName()

is less efficient than

string& GetName()

Too many programmers write the former without thought, see that it works, and declare themselves done and later wonder at the complaints of slowness. Yes, a profiler tells you


Umm... this is a rather poor example, since these two lines do completely different things.

Re:Efficient code?

[rw2]

I understand that there are many issues in programming and that sometimes speed and efficiency are important. Even in business applications.

That said, to build on your example.

new char a[100];
and
new char a[100000];

I guess I would argue that the code bloat and innefficiency of

std::string a;

is probably the appropriate balance. Trading off runtime speed and memory re-allocation with not easily being able to screw things up.

And if you're not in C++. Well, that might be a red flag too.

rw2

Re:Efficient code?

[ucblockhead]

I agree in general, but then, there are times it is better to use the flat array rather than the vector. (Though believe me, having rolled my own dynamic arrays multiple times, I adore std::vector.)

Re:Efficient code?

[ucblockhead]

It is a real life example that I have run into more than once. And yes, they do do different things. However, lots of people throw around string objects when they don't need to, creating bloated programs. Since both calls allow

string str = GetName()

Many programmers think they are the same, and since "string GetName()" works, they use it without thought.

Re:Efficient code?

[ucblockhead]

Barring bit twiddling to save individual bytes, a good design usually is an efficient design. Those two things aren't necessarily trade-offs the way size versus speed is. It doesn't take a lot of effort to say "Hey, this list ought to have a tail pointer" when you first create the code. Probably a lot less then retrofitting the code later. (To take an actual C instance I ran into years ago.) Experience helps you learn to do those kind of things as second nature, without wasting time at all. Experience says that

string GetName()

is less efficient than

string& GetName()

Too many programmers write the former without thought, see that it works, and declare themselves done and later wonder at the complaints of slowness. Yes, a profiler tells you what you did wrong, with a line like "90% string()", but why not learn to head the problem off at the pass?

The real trade-off is efficiency versus initial design time. Far too often, people speed through the beginning phases of a project at the cost of maintainability, flexibility and efficiency. You have to spend an hour or two thinking to save a hundred hours debugging, tuning and reworking in a year.

Hey, thanks for the warning!

[eyeball]

Thanks for the warning -- I only have a few years to cash in my stock options and start my own overvalued .com firm before I'm obsolete!

Re:I'm still picking up steam at 33

[beamin]

Tell me about it; I just got into IT two years ago (I'm now 33 as well) after 7 years in arts administration (an international music festival). I feel like I have so much more to learn and offer an employer, but they probably won't want it.

Thank God I at least can still pass for 26; I may have to start lying about my age soon!

Content counts

[Xchris]

Younger programmers fill the needs of companies in areas where experience and education are not needed to complete the task. If they are used for anything else than the company has no clue. If you are an older programmer that never went to college or learned anything other than coding, then what do you expect would happen to you?. Software design takes much more than just knowing "code". In fact it exsists independant of any specific language or algorithim you will read in a book someplace. Taking problems from the real world and solving them in the virtual, takes education and experience. Those who do not agree are responsible for all the software you ever used that sucked.

Re:FALLING DOWN

[Leapfrog]

"Hey, Everybody! Look at me! I'm NOT ECONOMICALLY VIABLE!"

as I recall, though, it was a machine gun, not a shotgun, in the fast food restaurant. On the golf course, it was a shotgun. I think.

"I'm going home."

Re:Programming is a craft

[Genus Marmota]

Right on. Craft, or even art form. Elegance counts, especially if you're trying to build something really robust that you can get your investment back out of over a few years.

Some companies care about quality more than others.

Re:Girls can't code?? I beg to differ!

[Anonymous Coward]

What? Girls can't code? Someone should have told that to Ada Lovelace.

http://www.aimsedu.org/Math_History/Samples/ADA/ Ada.html

All these anecdotes ignore the average.

[Anonymous Coward]

The anecdotes about the super employable, super competent older programmers are missing the point. Top people can always find work.

Try looking for an entry level programming job with a bald spot. You might get one, but it will be a lot tougher than it would be for 20-something.

Try to apply for a job with a slightly different skill set than what's on your resume. A younger programmer will get considered more often than an "older" one. (This despite the fact that all computer languages are essentially the same.)

Be a fuckup and look for work. (Let's be realistic and cover all the bases. There are a lot of fuckups out there.) "Older" fuckups are less likely to get hired than young ones, despite the fact that many of them are highly talented fuckups. (The talented ones are good at looking useful.)

That's right, it's talent

[Anonymous Coward]

The previous poster seems to think that programming ability
comes from knowing the right things. That's like saying that
I could be a best-selling novelist if only Michael Crichton
would tell me his secrets of writing.

In actuality, writing software is a lot like writing literature, and
some people are just far more talented at it than others.

Re:Where is this the case?

[Anonymous Coward]

I looked high and low for companies in the upper midwest to work for after graduating from a school in Missouri. Nobody was interested. As far as embedded systems, it is rarely taught in school and nobody is willing to train you anymore. At least that was my experience

Re:Young people

[Mindslayer]

Congrats on the success, but let me tell you - in
most cases the workers in the age between 20-25 tend to be a little naive in the business world. Especially if they just graduated college. Me? well Im 29 with no degree and in a top-paying development position. I win out again and again to grads...Experience does it all....If c++ is hot, then you better learn c++, if java is hot you better learn java. To think that in an industry as dynamic as software development that you will only need to learn one set of tools is complete ignorance. The illusion is that your ego==worth.

Mindslayer

I agree

[Anonymous Coward]

My dad's over 40 and is a private contractor... in the last 15 years he's had no trouble at all finding work, and most of the work he does involves programming. He also makes about $200k/year doing his work. (The work is mostly hardware design validation oriented.)

All the people he works with (for the most part) are over the age of 30.

From the sounds of this article, the guy who wrote it had a bad experience getting a job, or had a friend who had a bad experience. The engineering world has such a large lack of talent, that its so easy to get a job these days even if you have barely any skills or if you are over the age of 50.

I'm also an engineer, and where I work I don't think I can even count how many people are over the age of 50...

Re:Workers produce more than they receive in wages

[noom]

Well, Marx's view obviously makes no sense in this field and era considering that so many tech companies are anything but profitable. :)

COBOL/Y2K Backlash ??

[Jude]

My guess is that Y2K fiasco probably has a lot to do with older programmer's problems.

Suppose you're some high level suit who's just had to shell out a lot of money to some consultants to fix some Y2K problems. You've learned it was so expensive because no one in your shop really knew what the code was doing anymore. The consultant shows you some reports that have been being printed out for the past 2 years that got sent from Office A to Office B and Office B just threw the reports in the trash.

Now, what are you going to think of the programmers who built this system, and who have been on your staff maintaining it for the past XX years ? If it was me, I would probably think these guys had no clue what they were doing, and didn't really deserve the money they were getting. I would be looking for new blood, and if it came from younger folks who I can pay with table scraps, so much the better.

For my coding generation, I see the same thing occuring with 4GLs such as PowerBuilder, Visual Basic, and other propriatry development environments. These will be maintained by folks who invested a lot of time and effort learning the systems, and then never bothered learning another thing for the rest of their careers. The apps will have to be replaced once they too become an unbearable burden. A lot of consultants who still know how to develop in these system will get rich.

However, employeers will start looking at people of my coding generation as the evil 4GLs, with their evil propriatary development systems, and their ultra fat clients. I doubt it will make much of a difference that I will have not done a lot work with 4GLs, just as I doubt it makes much of a difference whether older programmers today has ever coded with COBOL.

I think the lesson here is to not only keep your skill set clean, buit to also do your best to make sure the systems you worked on don't come back to haunt you later in your career. This means making sure your code is maintainable, and that it will be able to be moved along to new technologies as they become available. Don't code in closed, propriatary systems, document what you do code, make sure you capture your requirements.

(In the long run, I think tools that will help in the maintenance and transformation of large code bases will be just as important to the Open Source movement as end user GUIs.)

- Jude

I'm 50 and still on the hot list

[Alpha Prime]

I've seen no reduction in job offers or other forms of discrimination and I'm 50. I think the secret has been that I've never tried to expand past the title of "Programmer". I'm not a "C++ Programmer" or a "VB Programmer" or even an "Intel Programmer". I do it all. If its a machine, I talk to it and make it beg. That flexibility has great rewards; no boredom in the job, not locked into one language or one platform. If Intel and MickeySoft both went out of business, I'd have a job tomorrow. I think that's where some of the other "old folks" have gone wrong. They've locked themselves into a language or a platform. Frankly, 5 years experience in one mix is about all I can tolerate. After that, there has to be something new.

More like old worker showing up young PHB

[Anonymous Coward]

Most of these companies hire wet-behind-the-ears MBAs as lower- and middle-managers (of the Pointy-Haired/Pencil-Neck variety) who want someone they can boss around. They can't do that with an engineer or programmer with 20 years experience and who is old enough to be their father. They can do that with a 21-year-old kid who is willing to learn the ropes (i.e. kiss the boss' a$$).

It's not age-discrimination they worry about. It's the seasoned veteran showing the twerp middle-manager's boss all the twerp middle-manager's f$ck-ups.

Re:Workers produce more than they receive in wages

[Captain Teflon]

Marx is deader than Elvis. So is communism.

I work for a boss who is also a friend. We agreed on what I would do and how much I would get paid (cash, benefits, etc., including a laptop and mobile phone, software, etc.) My work is contract software development for clients, and occasionally other things like interim management of IT departments.

I've worked as an independent contractor, member of an IT department for finance and chemical companies, and as an employee of Australia's biggest privately owned computer company.

I despair for you if you think that any arrangement where you employ others for your own profit is inherently evil. You need professional help. Nothing in this world of any size gets done unless people get organised and motivated, and to paraphrase Samuel Johnson (yes, he's dead too) few sensible people work without money in mind.

Another quote for the more rabid communist Linux tree-huggers to consider came from Sam also: "None but a blockhead ever wrote except for money". I'm not saying all or even most open source developers should be tarred with this brush, but I find rabid zealotry of all forms most repellent.

I'm nearly 45. I've been doing development on a variety of platforms, including win16/32, OS/2, HP/UX and Linux for the last five years. Before that I was an IT manager, and I can tell you that programming is a much safer employment proposition than management. I know I could go out tomorrow and have a well-paying development or project management contract within a week. The high profile companies in SV and on NasDaq may have been started by twentysomethings, but there are plenty of companies out there who have been around a lot longer; there is a shortage of IT staff in Australia at present and most are desperate for competent people of any age. Of course, if you started as a COBOL programmer 25 years ago (I did) and havent been prepared to learn modern software and development techniques, you probably deserve to go down with the dinosaurs (and Karl Marx) once the Y2K panic subsides. Of course in Oz, the government are introducing a GST hot on the heels of Y2K which means those developers will then have a whole swag of new legacy updates to take care of.

What am I doing now? Developing a complex web/database application in Perl, XML, Javescript and HTML. The only constant is change.

35 is senior citizen?

[jocknerd]

I'm worried now. I've got 3 years to change the world then I'm washed up?

Re:35 is senior citizen?

[Anonymous Coward]

Thank you. I am in a building in downtown Houston. This has 11 data centers in it. There are a lot of Cobol guys who are at least 70, and many have signed on for at least five years after y2k. And you know what? Some of those old farts are jumping to SAP code (ABAP?) without too much trouble and more are going to follow. And I am working around AS/400 guys making $80 -- 2x more than me, damn it.

Experience is cool, and, at least around here, it pays!

Now I just need more grey hair ...

Re:35 is senior citizen?

[bbcat]

This is no bullshit and you will believe it
when it happens to you. I went thru this 9 years
ago and lost my home in the process. This was
during the recession.

The responses were diverse but it always went
around the fact that I was over qualified.
One person told me that I was too old. I was
40 at the time.

Look at ads, many say 2-5 years of experience.
They mean it, no less than 2 years and no more
than 5 years. The belief is that a young person
is easier to control and can be forced to
do more unpaid overtime than older folks who
have been thru this bullshit before.

Re: 35 is senior citizen?

[Anonymous Coward]

No problem... by the time you're 35 your should be running your own company anyway. (The "Means of Production" is now a $2K computer, and you can start off working from home)

Re: 35 is senior citizen?

[Anonymous Coward]

Agreed, the mean of production is on your desktop. I am doing all I can to bring about an advanced state of capitalism :) I am a contractor but I also have a few pet project that might turn into a business someday. The more horses you have on the track, the better your chances. I am 35 but was lucky to get in on the Unix bandwagon early. It's all about keep up with the market. I think this type of attitude is common in people who have let their skill set fall behind. As for physical endurance, only a abusive startup looks for endurance as a requisite for hiring. If that is the type of work you are looking for, be sure to get those fat stock options up front. Otherwise, it is not worth it.

Re:35 is senior citizen?

[Anonymous Coward]

I am about to turn 35 in three years as well. That is why I encourage young programmers to drink alcohol and use drugs excessively. I believe that if more older programmers encourage our younger competitors to show off their intoxication abilities, we will be in good shape.

So script kiddies, whip out that 40 ounce and shoot up that heroin, I will still need a job once I am 35!

Re:35 is senior citizen?

[jguthrie]

jocknerd wrote:

I'm worried now. I've got 3 years to change the world then I'm washed up?

Feel happy. I've got just about 5 months.

Actually, you've probably already learned about how it's stupid to work 80-hour weeks for months on end. That's a large part of why some companies won't hire older employees. (It's why I didn't get a job I applied for several years ago, anyway.)

One of the engineers that I've worked for and with for most of the last decade (and who graduated from high school the year I was born) tells me that successful companies make sure that their employees have lives outside of the company. It helps bring innovation and creativity to the business. People think better when they have other interests.

Now, I currently work for someone else and also own my own company. And, once again, I'm the youngest person working either place. We used to hire younger people at my business (it's an ISP) but we found that we got a lot more accomplished for a little more money from older (40-50 yo) folks.

Ideally, you have enough of a personnel budget to hire people with a range of ages and experience levels. Failing that, I think I'd rather pay for experience.

Re:35 is senior citizen?

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't even worry about it. I may not be 35 yet, I am 31, but I have alot of friends in their 30's and 40's having no troble finding work. This is the same old BS cooked up by old Cobol programmers that don't know anything else and expect someone to train them. If you update your skills, you will have no problem. When I left college in 1992, I started with Cobol, since then I have switched over to Unix/c/c++/perl. It took a few job hops to switch, but I now I get calls all the time, and so do my friends. Its not how old you are, its what you know. In fact I know a 70 year old guy that is still contracting.

Re:35 is senior citizen?

[AppyPappy]

I'm 40. Guess I should go shopping for a walker.

Re:35 is senior citizen?

[davie]

There were two bulls standing atop a ridge overlooking a lush green valley where their herd were grazing. The young bull, eyes full of fire and a spring in his step, turned to the old bull, who was a little slower than he used to be, and said "I have an idea! Let's run down there and screw a cow!" The old bull turned slowly to look at the youngster and replied with a chuckle, "I have a better idea. Let's walk, and screw 'em all."

An overworked developer with no life, who is constantly "running down the hill," is likely to provide a lot of half-baked solutions and spend most of those forty extra hours each week correcting mistakes made in haste. It is much better to "walk down" and give oneself time to develop a properly crafted solution in the first place.

Having "a life" is important, too. Wasn't it Einstein who remarked that the key to his talents was imagination, not necessarily intelligence? It's difficult to be imaginative, creative, or thorough when you're burned out and sick of your work.

Re:Ditto & tip

[Anonymous Coward]

I always thought that participation in an open source project was a useful way to augment experience. After all, if your name is littered in the Mozilla code tree for Windoze code, they can't say you have no experience in the Windoze environment, or don't know your ass from your elbow.

Re:Efficient code? Yes!

[Anonymous Coward]

In the day where faster and faster processors tend to deem efficient programming unnecessary, it becomes even more important. Now, performance is not about just making code run faster (wait and processors will become faster), but more importantly performance dictates the problem size you can deal with today and in the future.

several issues

[Lumpy]

most older programmers are looked upon as "old weight" by management. I.E. we suck up more resources because we want a pension, insurance, dont want to work 90 hours a week, we actually take those vacation days... etc... It's as hemos said... we have a life and a family. and that isn't in the plan with the "company". at 30-40 you have only 20 more productive years left. then you will retire and become a burden on the company... they dont look at the fact that you gave your LIFE to them and they can give you a nice little reward, they look at it as that the company is doing you a favor by hiring you in the first place (they are not, you are doing them a favor) and that you should worship them...

It's all the new/old corperate management idiocy.. no brains all pocketbook.

Re:several issues

[TheBeard]

I stated programing in the vacuum tube era when a BIG IBM had 2000 words in the primary memory which was a drum (sort of a cylinder shiped disk) Worked 30 years for a big corporation and was downsized out the door when "we don't write software, we buy it."

I work under contract now and have the advantage that techincally I retired from the big corporation and have retiree health insurance and a fairly large retirement account for my eminent future.

No one wants to hire an old man in a traditional salaried job, but I guess they expect me to live long enough to finish a 6 month project.

Re:several issues

[toriver]

dont want to work 90 hours a week

I think you mean "have a life, thus cannot be tricked into working 90-hour weeks". :-)

Anyway, any remote excuse for quoting Dilbert is a good one:

PHB: - Are you a COBOL programmer?
Bob the Dinosaur: - No, but the likeness has been pointed out to me.

Re:several issues

[Grumpy Old Man]

Contractors, however, do have an advantage that no one has mentioned yet.

The fact that they serve for a fixed amount of time means that they can be shown the door after their contract is up and there should be no hard feelings on either side. On the other hand, if a permanent employee is let go, for either good or bad reasons, that termination will resonate with the other permanent employees and may cause problems.

I once managed a technical support department for which we hired a lot of part-time students. I seldom had need to can anybody since most of the students would be gone in a semester or so.

This meant that the full-time employees could breathe a little easier. If the boss came to me and said we needed to cut down on salaries, I did not think about layoffs. I simply hired fewer part-time people.

No matter what you may think of the management of your company, they do not like to fire people. It ain't no fun for anyone.

Oh,just so you know, I'm 56. Pretty soon I need to figure out what I want to do when I grow up.

Grumpy

Re:several issues

[Numeric]

We have to first exam the company...

At my company, the software team is divided about 50%/50% in age (above 35 / below 35) and only two of us "kids" are not married. Of course the two of us don't have any long-term future plans at the company either. The more settled "folks" want to work for the company probably for the rest of their lives and the company will keep them.

If a Internet startup wants a staff, I agree that they would most likely hire "kids" because we really don't have much responsiblities besides playing StarCraft on Battle.net and beta testing Quake3. However they still need some veteran leadership.

A company can benefit by uniting a staff of veterans and rookies like any sports team, both can learn from a symbiotic relationship. Of course, on my software team, one coder is constantly weary of me because I go home, write some code and introduce it at work. She doesn't have the time for that because she's a mother and is raising her children.

Re:several issues

[ucblockhead]

Money's the thing. Companies are always willing to pay contractors more than salaried employees (even counting benefits).

I suspect that a big part of it is that if an older programmer were paid the salaray he was "worth" (given supply and demand) he would make more than his manager. Managers don't like that as it conflicts with the corporate class structure. So instead, they pay a contractor even more, but because this is outside the salary structure, they can pretend they are still more highly paid than their employees.

A company I used to contract for once offered me a salaried position. The salary they were offering me was quite literally 60% of what I was making as contracting full time for them (and my contract house had better benefits.) And they wondered why I laughed at them...

Easy to stay current with Gnu/Linux

[Anonymous Coward]

But it's so easy to learn new skills these days. All the tools
are freely available, and the Internet has several lifetimes'
worth of knowledge.

Want to go into a new field, but nobody will hire you without
experience? Start an open source project in the area, put it
on a web site, and point your resume to it.

I'm still picking up steam at 33

[georgeha]

Gee, I'm still learning everyday, though my employer has lots of older people, so I'm not too worried.

Of course, there's no way in heck I'd take a job involving more than 45+ hours a week either, something that younger folks seem to enjoy.

George

Re:I'm still picking up steam at 33

[Anonymous Coward]

Agreed. I changed jobs and countries with 35, so what. Time to go back now and settle down. I've seen older ones with 25. Age it's just a number.

Almost there and I still have yet to work.

[heroine]

Obviously salary requirements are too high, but I'm almost out off the running and I have yet to find a first job in IT. I would settle for nothing to get a job right now but it still doesn't happen. Maybe the issue isn't age but a sickness of Microsoft that older engineers develop. Let's face it. If you don't have a love for Microsoft, you don't work.

Live to code, code to live

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, I'm waaay past 35, and have no interest in managing
anyone. I just want to write the code, and can sometimes
peak at 1000 lines of C++/day.

It's Money.

[BadlandZ]

I am not suprized at all to hear that younger people are getting more work. And, I think it's in part due to corprate sterotypes, in a way diffrent than your thinking.

It's not the skill, it's the pay. Programmers are in high demand. Young talented programmers will often take thier first few jobs with a "wow, look how much they are going to pay me" attitude. The corporate world sits back and thinks "heh, they don't know how much were _were_ willing to pay to get this job done."

Of course it sounds all screwed up, but I think the older the potential employee is, the less likely a company is to think 1) here is someone we can exploit, 2) here is someone who doesn't know what we actually can offer them to work here.

MAJOR DISCLAIMER: Althought I know a few programmers as friends and/or family, I am not one, I am a chemist, so, what do I know? :P

Re:It's Money.

[rw2]

One the other hand, you young turks have never had the experience of having to fit real functionality in 140k, and that often shows.

The folks I talk with (and I'm unemployed, I mean a contractor, so I talk with a lot) don't seem to think that is such a valuable skill. In fact, they view bragging about it as a red flag.

The important forces in application development change over time. In the days of TSRs and the small machines they ran on a small footprint wasn't just cool, it was a requirement. It cost money, but that was OK because machines cost more. It was never about how cool and efficient it was to write a small program in the abstract. It was about how cool it was to spend 15K in labor to save 150K in machines costs. That is the only reason why folks were 'allowed' to spend some much time tweaking applications.

From that perspective, I agree that "It's Money".

However, times have changed. So have the relevant forces. I've been programming on micros since 82, so I know the constraints associated with underpowered machines trying to do too large a task (insert appropriate Sagan quote here). They simply don't apply in most applications today. The forces have changed. The 15K that was spent optimizing a routine a decade ago is time wasted on a machine that executes the critical path in a blink of an eye anyway. In fact, the forces resolve in the opposite direction.

The 'elegant' solution in todays world is frequently the bloated over architected one that allows for the application to be crystal clear in it's functionality at the expense of cycles used to process the load. This means applying software patterns, having design reviews and implementing code that the dude fresh out of school (you know, the poor goof who is going to be maintaining the code base when you move on to more interesting things) can undestand it and respond quickly in the face of downtime (HELLO EBAY!) or changing requirements (HELLO AMAZON!).

Of course, I'm making a complex subject simple. The main point is that it IS about money as you assert, but the variables used to calculate cost change over time and older programmers sometimes miss the transition.

Finally, let me state, for my own piece of mind and those other over the hillers, that those old timers that DO make the transition are frequently worth their weight in code. They have the experience AND have learned a bit about sorting out when to apply which bits.

rw2

Re:It's Money.

[nevets]

I also agree that you are right.

Also the older you are the more likely you have a family and less likely to work the long hours and travel. I was one of these people who would work the 90 hour week, but once I had some kids, I don't work much more than 45 hours. I'm lucky to have a manager that loves kids and gives me a break when it comes to time with the family. But this is not usually the case with other companies and managers. The one good thing is that, at the moment, the supply of programmers is less than the demand.

Re:It's Money.

[ucblockhead]

One the other hand, you young turks have never had the experience of having to fit real functionality in 140k, and that often shows. About ten years ago, the industry was flooded with extremely competent immigrant Russian programmers. They were so competent because they had to deal with crappy, slow equipment with little memory.

I don't know how many times I've come across code that was woefully inefficient and only ran because of the fast processors that were thrown at it. What both companies and young programmers don't always understand is that talent only takes you so far. You need experience to go the distance.

(Your post did bring back memories, though. When I came out of college, I immediately went to work at the current "hot technology" (TSR programming, for those who still know what that is.) and was screwed, salarywise, but a shady operator for about a year before I got smart.)

Re:99% of programmers suck

[aphrael]

One of the biggest problems i've noticed with
programmers in general is a tendency to decide,
when faced with complex code that they don't
completely understand, that the existing code
is broken in some fashion and needs to be
replaced/rewritten --- which of course wastes
a lot of time and energy, and leads to a new
code base which solved (maybe) problems in the
original code while introducing (always) problems
which weren't there before.

We're a (relatively) young industry, which
seems to encourage impatience --- rather than
spending enough time coming to understand why
things work the way they do, it's preferred to
slash and replace ...

Strange

[schporto]

In my department here there are 5 of us. I'm the youngest at 24, but the others are 27, 45, 51, 55. Me and the 27yr old could leave and there would be a burden on the others, but nothing that dramatic. Any of the older people leave and we're screwed. They know too much about how this place works (its a factory with a lot of automated stuff). My company would never knowingly get rid of them. I on the other hand....
As for hiring - the 51 yr old was hired 2 years ago.
-cpd

Re:Strange

[Zombie_Magick]

Companies are going for a more decentralised system anyway. You have someone who has all the knowledge make demands and you either cave or suffer. Its so much easier to hire a new guy every so often so he doens't have a chance to make himself indispensible. Most of the time you can even get the old guy to train the new one without him knowing that he's training his own replacement. Just wait a couple of months and make up some lame excuse like an industry slow down and bye-bye old guy.

Re:Strange

[GoVegan]

"bye-bye old guy."

Yeah, but say hello to our new friend, Mr. Lawsuit.

Extremely expensive?

[Eric Green]

Heh. Speak for yourself. While I'm more expensive than a puppy just out of college, I don't earn $90K either (or even $50K, for that matter).

Of course, out here in the hinterlands $35K to $45K is real money... as vs. in the Silicon Valley, where that would not pay the yearly rent on a studio apartment in Sunnyvale!

-E

The importance of a degree

[Anonymous Coward]

Nonsense. Any University that you can get through by "sitting through lectures and regurgitating answers" is probably not somewhre a lot of companies are going to go looking for grads anyway.

I'm currently a double major in CS and Mathematics. Let me assure you that there's nothing else you could possibly do that would come close to my degree in terms of demonstrating an ability to learn and think, as well as committment and drive. There is no way you could survive any decent program by regurgitating answers. I've never met anyone who's worse than me at memorizing things. I only attend about 50% of my lectures, and never take notes when I do attend. I've taken many courses where we've been allowed to take a "cheat sheet" into the final exam. No regurgitation here, and I'm in the top 1% of my class.

I do agree that having a degree definitely does not make someone a great programmer, even if they had great marks. Conversely, being an incredible programmer does not mean you're a great thinker or problem solver. Programming has as much to do with skill and experience as intelligence. And if you really want to be successful in the workplace, you'll also need things like communication skills.

A degree shows you have the required intelligence and, but it does not show that you have the required skill. On the other hand, the only thing the absence of a degree degree does is cast both of these qualities in doubt.

Re:The importance of a degree

[tzanger]

I like your arguements that (degree != great programmer) and I also agree wholeheartedly that (great programmer != good thinker/problem solver). I'd never meant to draw that conclusion. I was disagreeing with the original poster implying that the only people worth hiring were the grads or about-to-be grads.

As far as lack of degree casting qualities in doubt -- I don't buy it. I've seen people with degrees that didn't have the people skills or thought capability to social engineer a woman's phone number (incredible as it sounds) -- we had one hired he a while ago in the development group.

He could analyze something in such fine detail and with such exquisite accuracy it made you weep. But not because he could do these things so well, but rather that he couldn't come up with an original thought or procedure to save his soul. And he had his Electrical Engineering degree. I wonder if he'll ever make his P.Eng.

I don't have either, but I work and communicate with them every day. Yes, they are a very bright group but no, the degree didn't get them that. It was inside from the start and the degree perhaps refined it.

(conversely, I know people -- and these are usually the far more interesting ones because they've had to be more resourceful -- who haven't the degree but there isn't a soul alive who could touch them. Again, I work with one of these people and he is my mentor.)

Re:Girls can't code?? I beg to differ!

[noom]

The percentage of guys to girls at CMU is about the same (around 90% male) but I've never noticed any difference in ability (and CMU isn't exactly an easy school for computer science majors -- at least until they graduate).

My coding mum's over 50

[ChrisRijk]

She's been coding most of the time since she was about 20. She gets paid quite a lot and deserves it too - she's very very good.

I've started programming a "mere" 15 years ago.

We used to live in South Africa, and in 1980 the company she worked for had a dedicated line built to our house (to connect a terminal to their mainframe), so she could work from home while raising us kids. First time this happened in the country I believe. That's how much they valued her. (such things are far cheaper these days of course...)

Re:My coding mum's over 50

[Anonymous Coward]

My coding mum's 65. Actually, she does modelling and less code, but she hasn't slowed down. And they love her at work because she frequently brings cookies. No, I am not kidding. And yes, her cookies are very good. She taught me to love tcsh and that the One True Editor is and will always be ed.

My grandpa, on the other hand, is a little odd -- he thinks that sed is cool. He also likes Glenn Miller, so there you go. He is 89. No, I am not kidding here, either. He taught me MH.

I think that a lot of people discount how much a lifetime of being forced to learn, adjust, and think helps the old folks pick up new skills -- the "trick" that they can't learn is how to learn, not the code or perl or something, but if they know how to RTFM, they do fine.

Re:My coding mum's over 50

[YeOldeGnurd]

My coding mum's 65. Actually, she does modelling and less code, but she hasn't slowed down. And they love her at work because she frequently brings cookies. No, I am not kidding. And yes, her cookies are very good.

Most modelling agencies aren't interested in 65 year olds; I'm glad your mom can still find work. But then, I don't think I'd want her cookies; I wouldn't want my computer at work to leave any evidence that I've been browsing models on company time...

-- YeOldeGnurd, age 36, going on 16.

Bravery, Kindness, Clarity, Honesty, Compassion, Generosity

Like the Sunscreen Song says:

[fable2112]

"Respect your elders."

A local friend of mine (via the SCA) is a software test engineer at a large local company. She's also old enough to be my mom.

She can also code the pants off of any of my local contemporaries. And while she is single (giving weight to the argument that she could do this because she has no life), she finds the time to: sing in her church choir, participate quite actively in the SCA, make most of her own clothes ("everything but underwear, jeans, T-shirts, and shoes," she claims -- I think shoes are next on her list), and work a good bit on her woodcutting/furniture-building hobby.

She recently got recognized for 25 years of service at a company that is continually "downsizing" its people out of their jobs. (Anyone from my neck of the woods knows which company, and possibly even the lady in question.)

As you can see, I have a heck of a lot of respect and admiration for this woman. So do most of my friends my age. And she seems to like having us around, since she has no children of her own and likes passing on knowledge about everything from computers to drop-spindles.

Should the fool company she works for be ungrateful enough to downsize her, any place else would be incredibly lucky to have her. But they'd take one look at her (since she does not exactly look young), or see her "25 years of service," and ignore her in favor of new blood.

Indeed, that will be a sad day. *knocks on wood that The Company leaves her job alone*

Re:Like the Sunscreen Song says:

[Anonymous Coward]

she finds the time to [...] make most of her own clothes ("everything but underwear, jeans, T-shirts, and shoes,"

What else is there?

I'm 58 and still coding.....

[Anonymous Coward]

I retired my consulting business a couple of years ago, to spend more time at home with my wife. While I found that many businesses never gave this old codger the time of day, one organization I was temping at asked me to apply for a full-time programming position. This year I won the Tax-Commissioner's Award for developing a project that helps regulate the gaming industry.
Inside, I feel like a tired 28 year old who has lost some hair. But, my wife still loves me so what do I care!

32 and counting

[Anonymous Coward]

I am 32 and have not had any trouble finding work, but then again I am stil under 35. The key is to keep upgrading my skills (going back to school, or just learning the latest stuff). Also, I hope that being a consultant will help. Maybe if I start my own company, I won't have to worry about it!

Re:32 and counting

[Anonymous Coward]

> Also, I hope that being a consultant will help.

I think it helps a lot. The more experience/longer resume you have, the more your company can charge its clients for your time, so the fact that an older employee is more expensive works in your employer's favor. After my last promotion, I got a salary increase, but my bill rate went up even more.

PS: I'm 38 now, started here at 37. Job search took 2 weeks. Nobody mentioned my age.

Re:Recent Batch of CS Grads

[Anonymous Coward]

Yep, noticed that. I'm a mechanical engineer, 41, and the only reason I'm the sysadmin at work is because no one else can do even as much as I can. Now there are hardly any mechanical engineers graduating, and most of those are really CAD operators with a coupla semesters of calculus. There are a few ``real'' engineers graduating, don't get me wrong, but back-of-the-envelope estimates seem to escape them.

Five years ago it started getting hard to find tool and die makers. Now it's machinists and mechanical engineers. Pretty soon we'd better be satisfied with what we've got, because there will be a whole lot of people writing software and there WON'T BE ANY HARDWARE AT ALL.

Code Bloat == High Maintenance Costs

[Eric Green]

The problem with code bloat is that it's that much more code to maintain. Simple, elegant algorithms are much easier to maintain than huge amorphous masses that splash all over the place. The huge algorithm may actually be FASTER -- in fact, to get ultimate speed you often have to use sophisticated but bulky algorithms that make the code extremely hard to debug and maintain -- but it will be that much more "stuff" to maintain.

This isn't rocket science by any means. The number of lines of debugged code that a programmer can write in a day is fairly constant no matter how large the program or what language is used. Thus it makes sense to use simple compact algorithms whenever possible (sometimes, due to performance requirements, it's not possible). But that, alas, appears to be a dying art.


-E

Re:Girls can't code?? I beg to differ!

[chandoni]

I think the poster meant to say:

Girls can't recognize a troll, everyone knows that.

Hope this helps.

JMC

Younger Folks with lives...

[PoppaSmrf]

yeah , i see the trend for older folks with lives, but i think it has more to do with folks with lives as i am 27 and everyone is overly eager to take me onboad, until i tell them i'm married, with children...GO FIGURE....

Stone Knives & Bearskins of Finance.

[bonkydog]

A SAVINGS ACCOUNT? You've got to be joking.

What a young worker wants is a high-yield (read "stock based") IRA or 401k. Don't be scared off by volatility -- this is your *retirement*. You're not planning on taking this money out next week. All the daytrading street hassle and recession/growth cycle is just noise on that that kind of time scale. Compare compounded returns at 4-ish percent to 20-ish percent. Yikes!

This is before the enormous benefit provided by tax defferral.

Savings accounts are only marginally better than stuffing cash in your mattress.

[carreening into full rant mode...]

The thing I don't understand is this "pension" thing. Please correct me if I'm wrong (I've never been offered one), but a traditional "pension" works something thing like this?

You're applying for a job. Your boss tells you "OK, if you're still working here when you're 65, I'll pay you N dollars a month until you die. But if I fire you before then, you get nothing."

Hey wow, what a sweet deal! Thanks boss, I'll get right to work! I'm staying here for LIFE! Gee, I hope I don't get "laid off" when I'm older! Gosh, the economy's so bad, I sure am lucky to have a nice boss like you to take care of me!

Luckily we (in the USA) don't have to rely *solely* on our boss to support us when we're old -- we have the Federal Government to force us to spend our wages on nuclear weapons -- oh, whoops, I meant "invest in a giant Ponzi scheme" -- wait er... it's "save for our retirement"! Ha ha! That's it. Little slip there.

Yes, the government knows how to save money so much better than us mere "individuals". I'm glad it has our best interests at heart.

-bonkydog

Re:Old & Withered? Come to Canada!

[Doomsayer]

Geez, so that's why I got my first programming job at 25 in Montreal, Canada:) Age discrimination is a fact of life, there's just different discrimination in different places.

I agree with laxative. You're best defense against all of this, whatever your age, is to Save, save, sAvE. You'll make more through investing and sheltering your earnings than you will at work. That's why I was able to happily retire at age 29.

Cheers,
Enrique

Nuggets of knowledge

[Eric Green]

Learning the ins and outs of a particular industry is years of work. If I am an expert in, say, factory automation, I can share my knowledge as freely as I like with the youngsters, secure in the knowledge that it will be years before they have the knowledge to threaten my job and by that time I will have moved on (either professionally, or knowledge-wise).

Older folks who have experience in fields outside of the computer industry are especially valuable to many companies. For example, if you spent ten years as an insurance agent, and now are entering the computer field, you will be very valuable to every company that writes software aimed at the insurance industry.

The problem is that these companies are usually in rather boring places like Memphis or Dallas, rather than being in the Silicon Valley. This means that people who have invested their entire career into walking that Silicon Valley treadmill are poorly situated for making the transition to later-life geekhood, especially since they probably know little about business practices in already-established industries, which is the one thing that makes older workers valuable. And especially since they'll have to take a pay cut from the bloated Silicon Valley salaries (a $90K Silicon Valley salary suddenly becomes a $40K Dallas salary), meaning that many who have run up large credit card debts or bought houses that have lost half their value or etc. are in bad position...

-E

Pigeon-holing

[Eric Green]

The problem is that it's not the employees doing the pigeon-holing, it's the employers.

For example, I spent three years programming in a dBase-style environment. I wanted to do SQL because I'd done some prototype demos of a next-generation of our product using MySQL (the production version would probably have used Empress, but the project got cancelled), and it was a ton faster, easier, and NEATER than doing dBase. With the HR mechatroids it was "hmm, you don't have experience with Oracle version X on Solaris version Y? NEXT!".

The point being that the skills were there, but HR stuck me into the "dBase guy" rut and said "nope, sorry, no SQL for you."

Anyhow: I'm currently working at a job where I was hired for one thing, then pressed into service doing another thing entirely (something somewhat new to me but well within my skill level) and having a blast. If we want to keep people in the computer business that's what has to happen -- employers have to look at these expensive people that they're hiring, and realize that hey, just because he's a great C++ programmer doesn't mean he wouldn't appreciate the chance to learn Java. If diversity is the salt of life, too many hackers are on the bland diet, doing the same old same old day after day after day after day ....

-E

Re:36 and don't know what all the hype is about

[videoranger]

I'm 36. I've been at it since I was 15. Didn't learn UNIX until my daughter was born about 6 years ago, and just at the right time.

I find I am in very high demand, and the forecast is that this won't change much for the next 36 years. I make great money, and its only getting better. Personally I think this is an urban myth perpetuated by people who are tired of acquiring new skills.

-da Video Ranger

Younger people are cheaper

[rakshasa]

I'm not the proclaimed expert on the subject, but it seems to me that younger people will work for cheaper than older people. While programmers older than 35 are more likely to have families, kids, nice cars with high insurance, etc, they usually need a bit more money to support this lifestyle, whereas a 20odd year old kid coming straight out of college most likely lives in an apartment and has the car they have been driving since high school, unless they have been lucky to have more money. Also, it is more likely that someone over 35 is more interested in having more benefits and retirement than someone in their twenties, not to mention, if they have a family, they are less likely to be able to work as many hours as they would want to spend some time at home. Then there's the fact that younger people will have less work experience under their belts, which allows companies to have an excuse to pay them less money than they might have to pay someone with 15-20 years of experience. I also notice many companies have been hiring people right out of high school and training them, because it is easier to train them and mold them to work for the company this way.

Re:Strange -- nugget of knowlege

[sterwill]

I think you might have missed a joke or two in there.

Re:36 and don't know what all the hype is about

[Anonymous Coward]

Slightly off-topic, but I've been working for EDS for the past 8 months or so (as a "transition employee" after a "cosourcing" deal) ...

I have come to fear the EDS way. In order to get something meaningful accomplished, people are now planning to show EDS management their own propaganda (don't believe the hype!) from the www.eds.com website.

You know something has gone seriously wrong when a company that size with that many employees charged out at approximately twice of what they're being paid has trouble turning a profit.

Re:Declining skills

[Lando]

I think that this might be in part due to the "pigeonholing" of people based on skills. Once you're known as the C++ guy or the VB guy (no flames please!), IMHO it's hard to bridge over to another language and even harder to move to completely different technology.

Just a brief note. I myself have programmed in over 40 languages, I can say for a fact that once you get the first 6-8 languages down moving on and learning new languages begins to become easier and easier. True, you might not have the expert skill set in that new language, however you have general coding experience and a firm understanding of how the computer works.

Older programmers that pidgeon-hole themselves into just one skill set are asking for trouble with the way technology changes. Being digital of course means there is little security when costs of change are small, especially if you are just starting up and thus there is no change.

I'm building a start-up myself at the moment and looking to hire, but the truth is that I cannot afford full price for a programmer. Most older programmers are going to have family to support and thus need the money more than the stock options. I would prefer older programmers, because as an older programmer myself, I know how limited college students are.

I primarily look for hackers currently, someone who loves to do what they do and try to offer a good wage, but as noted I cannot pay people what they are worth.

Lando

Re:Geek discrimination

[tzanger]

Interesting comments from an anonymous coward. You're the second person today to call me an asshole and a terrible person to work for based on your not liking my opinion. That's your perogative, I suppose.

I hire people because they can work with people. That indicates social skills, as does the ability to function in interpersonal relationships. I have little use for people who have difficulty talking with people or expressing their opinions or ideas, or people who just seem to make enemies where ever they go. They best work alone and therefore usually don't make it into a team environment. If that makes me an asshole, so be it. But before you bring down your mighty gavel of supreme ruling on me, know that I haven't heard much complaint from my coworkers, nor have I heard such complaints from anyone working under me.

Keep the personal stuff personal. I said that interpersonal skills play a part in my hiring and you jump down my throat for that? Perhaps it's wrong of me to ask if they can do analog design or have power electronics experience too. Good thing you aren't applying for a job with the company I work for. You guys usually quit within a couple months, if you make it in at all.

PS - I am a geek. Always have been and probably always have been.

What Nintendo Game?

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow. That's really impressive.
I'd be interested to know what your name is and what the name of the game you wrote is.

Re:My coding mum's over 50 - Girls can't code!

[Anonymous Coward]

You kidder! Girls can't code, everyone knows that

Young vs. Old happens but shouldn't

[soldack]

I am 22 and working at Unisys. They have been through a very bad period of layoffs and forced retirements that only ended about a year and a half ago. The ones who were left had been there for decades. Part of Unisys' recovery plan has been to increase the number of new hires coming right from college to 40%. They still have a long way to go and in my group I am the only one not married and there is only one other programmer without kids and a nice Unisys Ten Year Award.
The main reason for this push has been to invigorate the company with new ideas. There is also the more financial reason that younger programmers are less expensive. The key to survival for older programmers is to prove that you are worth the extra cost, that you have all the things the young guys do and more (and many of them do).
This isn't just the programming field, though. In any field a person is expected to move up the success ladder. People who switch careers, start late, or just didn't go where the rest of the world expected them to suffer. It's a grim reminder of how important your college major is.
It's also a shame becase I have a learned a tremendous amount from my elders at Unisys. These men and women are the hard core programmers. They suffered through the early days of punch cards, baud modems, no GUIs (although to some that is a gift in disguise), no IDEs, and systems that about half as powerful as your watch.
Give some respect to these "old masters" because without them there wouldn't be any of the things we take for granted today.

It's a myth for the young

[Anonymous Coward]

It's a myth to keep the young in line and producing. Society needs to create myths like this now more than ever. The truth is that the baby boomers got all the money in an economic expansion, the likes of which will probably never be seen again in America. The young are left with the scraps. My 401K gains this year will toast any high tech salery paid to a twenty something.

Baby Boomer Programmer
(Still employed, but could retire in style)

Re:Why aren't they burnt-out yet?

[Captain Teflon]

The sentiment around here is that if they aren't burnt-out by age 35-40 then they probably aren't any good.

Hmmm, I asked around here and the sentiment is that if young pups can't last as successful programmers into their 40's and beyond they probably should pick a career that won't stress them so much, like sweeping floors or flipping burgers.

You want to go out in a blaze of glory while you're young? fine, just don't expect anyone to look at you twice after you go nova.

You missed the obvious one

[SpinyNorman]

Not only is an older programmer typically not going to want to work the crazy hours he did when younger, but he's going to want to get paid a lot more too.

Why hire a 15-20yr veteran for $90K, when you can get a 5yr guy for half that?

Of course it's a bargain if you NEED that experience, but there are a lot more coding jock jobs available than ones that really use experience.

Re:You missed the obvious one

[SpinyNorman]

What I meant was that filling a job with an overqualified candidate isn't cost effective, so as you get older you're going to be competing for the smaller number of jobs that need your level of experience, and are willing to pay for it.

BTW, I built my first computer (a NASCOM-1 with a 1MHz Z80) in 1978.... ;-)

Re:You missed the obvious one

[sjames]

OK, that's certainly true. A team usually needs more coders than designers and only one lead. On the bright side (for those approaching or past 35) There are less of us than when we were inexperianced coders. I suppose the question is, which narrowed more, us or the jobs that need us?

It's more about culture than skills

[db@icvp.com]

Disclaimer: My programming skills are minimal, but I work with programmers and figure I have some insight into HR requirements for technical staff.

I think it comes down to the area you're working in, but there's some real cultural change going on as tech stuff gets mainstreamed. Old IT measures of productivity (e.g. lines of code) aren't really relevant for today's development processes.

Any internet developer will tell you that service demands and change orders are increasing as sane development timeframes give way to marketing exigencies. The end result in internet-based development is that the average high-level programmer spends increasing amounts of time in meetings and client management with nutcase marketing people who don't have a clue about what is actually required to make something work, they just want it by tomorrow.

I think an important part of being a programmer in that kind of environment is how well you manage that problem, and how happy you can keep the client. The young folks' solution of working 80hrs a week does the job in the interim, but it's not really sustainable. The most successful jobs come from situations where the techies have been able to communicate to clients how long stuff takes, and that this gets built into an overall development timeline. That takes experience, both at a coding level and a communications/service level.

In my experience, a lot of people brought up in the pre-internet I.T. environment simply don't have the communication and customer service skills to survive in a new development culture which is no longer isolated from other business processes; and in which suddenly all sorts of dumb people have an investment in the development timeline. Old-school (not old) IT people are just not responsive: you don't get any feedback on how feasible something is until it's too late, or they don't bother with issues which they don't see as being relevant to what they're interested in (e.g. how a website looks). That's not always true of course, and I think the older programmers with customer service skills are truly in demand, and will be more in demand as companies realise that you can't replace experience with another graduate.

But I think the bottom line for me is that programmers who can pro-actively communicate about what they do to non-technical people are in demand, no matter what their age.

x.d

Foobar

[dev.null]

I'm 22 and I work as a programmer in a bank's IS department.

While I understand where the article is comming from, I can't accept it as truth in any way. I'm the only "kid" around here, everyone else is at least 13 years older than I am. I consider myself to be fairly good, having been programming since I was 12 years old, and yet I still find myself almost completely reliant on the older guys with 15 plus years of experience in order to get a job done. Why ? Because the older hackers have a much broader understanding of the business, software design, and how things actually work.

While I obsess over where to insert Binary trees in a program, where I can write perl programs to display web content, they think of how this would have value. Many of these guys/gals HAVE stayed on top of technology, many of them use that technology almost as well as I [c|w]ould. But in the same light, a lot of them aren't obsessed with finding new jobs, they are happy where they are, feeding their families, and still get to code without the stress of the punk kid goes through trying to make his reputation, or find his 'ultimate job'.

Respect your elders ! :)

Re:Foobar

[Slur]

Don't sweat too much over the code, if you can help it. It's going to be exactly like that for a long time to come. I have never done a "fresh" programming job without having a pile of language references in my lap, and I am becoming used to the fact that I probably never will.

Every new job has its challenges. If you welcome these, and remain open to them, then you can never be daunted or go out of style.

Re:36 and don't know what all the hype is about

[jflynn]

Thanks Eric, I was starting to wonder if maybe there was something wrong with me after all. :) I'm glad someone else believes in this.

I think that 35 is too young, for me it started when I was about 42 (47 now). We aren't in a recession right now either, I shudder to think what that's going to be like.

I've also learned what I needed to know from manuals as I needed it. I do embedded assembly code for DSP processors as a contractor and the typical situation is that the part is brand new with a new instruction set, and sometimes, new architecture.

I think a large part of the problem is the job shops that have taken over the market. The people running these places don't understand the computer field and are forced to use really unrealistic tools like buzzword resume searches and age to determine suitability. I've never experienced age discrimination interviewing in an engineering department, its just difficult to get that far these days. It's usually someone I've worked for before that calls me.

Jim

Re:Strange -- nugget of knowlege

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah. And the old guys are often very generous with their tricks. Just give everyone dougnuts and let the geek chemistry work. That and lots of manuals for everyone.

Mr. Bitterness

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm over 35, and the good jobs are permanently out of reach. It's a fact.

Sure I could get a dull job in a some large clueless company straight out of Dilbert... but all the cool stuff, Internet stuff, stuff you read about in Slashdot... no chance. There's a party going on and I'm not invited.

I don't work anymore, but this year I'll make more income from Internet porn and domain name speculation than I ever did working as a programmer. My C++ has gotten awful rusty, but Perl sure comes in handy.

Flame away, I just don't give a fuck anymore. Don't cry for me Argentina.

Re:wow i'll miss it.

[Anonymous Coward]

I am 27 and still in school. i guess by the time i finish PHD i will be 36, which place me in the unemployment situation :~(

This is quite literally true. You will be too old and overqualified, and you are wasting your most lucrative and employable years during an economic boom. A PhD will not enhance your earning potential and can only hurt your employability. Drop out and get a job.

Re:Hire Some H1-B *NON* immigrants!

[Anonymous Coward]

H1B holders are not immigrants - they're temporary workers!

Apart from that technical niggle - H1B workers can *easily* quit - one guy I knew quit to go back to the UK to follow alternative areas of work, and I've just quit to work for another US company (although the H1B transfer took about 4 months)...

Emacs AND vi

[Anonymous Coward]

I use emacs AND vi,
Well more specifically, I use Emacs for coding,
and/or basically any editing that requires working on the same file for a long time, (TeX, HTML, etc..)
and vi for quick and dirty in-terminal changes, or editing files on remote shell accounts where in terninal emacs is not available.
I know quite a few people who use both. They are both more or less appropriate given the context of use !!!

Re:How about 45?

[Anonymous Coward]

That is an excellent summary. You are sort of describing how I got into Oracle and SAP. And at 48, I have no trouble keeping a job -- I have trouble turning down work. And if SAP goes away, I can do quite well now with perl and am good with HP-UX, AIX, Solaris, and Linux. And I started with Cobol! No one will retrain you, you have to do it yourself.

Re:Fogie Coders

[coyote-san]

I had a greying geek... come to my NT workstation and have difficulty navigating to the floppy drive.

Hey, I resemble that remark! I remember the condensation from our oh-so-wise NT sysadmins because I had trouble doing several basic tasks under NT.

They thought I was a stale old fogey; I thought it was proof that NT has serious useability flaws when experience with several other OSes is an active hinderance to a newcomer. (Quick, where do put the control to turn off the system?!)

But if I'm so out-of-touch, why were they terrified -- to the point of attempting to get management to stop me -- when I got fed up with their bullshit and picked up a couple O'Reilly NT/MSCE books? To paraphrase Sir Winston Churchhill, the next morning I was no longer ignorant, but they were still incompetent.

More generally, with experience you realize that the same things have to be done by every system. The only differences in how they are done. A lot of us fogeys (I'm 38) strongly dislike MS applications because the heavy emphasis on GUIs and "wizards" (a horrid corruption of hacker term) gets in our way *and* prevents the youngsters from developing the experience necessary to distinguish between the solution to the problem and the tools available to implement that solution.

Re:35 and you're not retired?

[Anonymous Coward]

Ah, grasshopper, you have much to learn about the cost of children!

worshiping GUIs

[lexspoon]

Can we please stop this worshiping of GUIs as being the defining characteristic of modern software? I keep hearing people talk about GUI skills as being skills of the new day, and I keep hearing people complain that some technique or other is useless becuase it doesn't work with GUI code.

The fact is, if the GUI is really a significant part of a program, then either:

1) The program isn't that intellectually challenging, as it's just a bunch of GUI code.

worshiping GUIs

[lexspoon]

Can we please stop this worshiping of GUIs as being the defining characteristic of modern software? I've even heard people complain that some technique or another is useless becuase it won't work on "real" code--ie, code that is all GUI and no substance.

But what about:

Getting wiser is what does you in

[Junks Jerzey]

Most programming work is sweatshop slop. Pick up programming from a high school class, the web, or a few books, fool around on the side for a year or so, and you're perfectly capable of handling the majority of programming jobs that require a college degree. I'm not just talking about web and database glue work either.

Most programming jobs are grunt intensive. Hire enough people and you can do all sorts of goofy things, like writing giant windowed applications in systems-level languages like C, or coding 200K line programs without any up front design. This is the norm.

It takes a few years of working to realize this. Then you start wondering what's gone wrong. Why has "Use the best language for the task" degenerated into "Use C++ for everything"? Why do we continually ignore all the lessons learned ages ago and outlined in books like The Mythical Man Month and The Psychology of Computer Programming? Why do we have to live with horrendous architecture XYZ when better alternatives have been around for twenty years?

Eventually it gets tiring, and you start to view high school-level programming as something for junior employees to do, so you can do cushier work like writing and reviewing specs and organizing projects. The problem is, if you do that for too long--more than three years--you might find it difficult to get hired elsewhere, unless you're in an industry with a lot of big players, like telecom. You're in worse shape if you completely avoid the management track before you start to tire of it all.

It also gets frustrating after a while having to always throw away a huge base of knowledge and start in on the "new" thing. "Too bad, old fart," might be a flippant reply, until you realize that what you're currently into now might be cast aside after you've spent years becoming the expert on it (Linux, Perl, CGI, Apache, whatever). Remember, UNIX was in a major downhill death slide that was only stopped by the Web. ESR and RMS have gotten their second chances.

worshiping GUIs

[lexspoon]

Can we please stop this worshiping of GUIs as being the defining characteristic of modern software? I've even heard people complain that some technique or another is useless because it won't work on "real" code--ie, code that is all GUI and no substance.

But what about:


- satellite control
- Internet search engines
- medical devices


just to quickly name a few? The important parts of these things don't have a GUI involved. Coding GUIs is just one general skill--a relatively easy one when you think about stuff like the above.


Lex

worshiping GUIs

[lexspoon]

Can we please stop this worshiping of GUIs as being the defining characteristic of modern software? I've even heard people complain that some technique or another is useless because it won't work on "real" code--ie, code that is all GUI and no substance.

But what about:

- network infrastructure
- missile guidance
- WWW search engines
- medical devices


just to quickly name a few? The important parts of these things don't have a GUI involved. Coding GUIs is just one general skill.

The really important things aren't changing that fast. In fact, from the little time I do spend with older guys, I'm reminded of just how much of whippersnappers *haven't* caught on to, that *they* knew decades ago.

Lex

The New High Tech Job Market

[Duncan3]

I would paste, but /. doesn't allow

So read this :)
http://www.iit.edu/~beberg/techjobs.html

Re:Here's a different take...

[Slur]

I think you may be misunderstanding them, coming from your youthful point-of-view. Perhaps those who do what is required of them, and are not interested in the "exciting new" technologies, have learned that there is truly nothing new under the sun, and are content with their roles. And maybe they are more interested in their real lives than in the esoteric subjects which fascinate the idealistic young and inexperienced. Who knows what truly goes on in the heart and mind of the humble meditator?

html IS programming

[jacob marley]

assembly, pfff... plz, nobody uses that crap anymore.

html is REAL programming. excuse me but html can do animated gifs and blinking text. c'mon!! lets see some assembly coder do that in 2 lines or less. i think not.

That's the problem with old timers they just don't realize superior technology when they see it: windows, activex, word macros, VB. nope, they get stuck with 30 year old technology: mainframes, unix, assembler, c. they just can't see progress like us teenagers.

jacob

Re:Now I'm worried

[barnaby]

why do people have so many children? There just isn't enough room for them...

Two children equals zero population growth :)

Besides, children are life, everything else is an illusion.

Re:FALLING DOWN

[toriver]

machine gun

Nothing so large: An Uzi, IIRC.

Excellent movie, by the way: Had a very European feel to it, not much "emotifying" music but just a plot spiralling towards the final confrontation, as it should be. Funniest scene: When he fumbles with an anti-tank rocket and a twelve year old kid instructs him how to use it.

Vi and Emacs in the same sentence ?? ;))

[Axe]

Whats Vi? Don't know any vi. Hate it... ;)

Re:Vi and Emacs in the same sentence ?? ;))

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, yes, I hate it too, and have been using Emacs for writing
software for around 15 years. (Hey, anyone remember MINCE?)

But I mentioned vi because I didn't want to start a flame war,
plus I do use it often for sysadmin and getting a quick look at
a file.

Re:Where is this the case?

[Syslevel]

I learned how to program for 'embedded systems' on the job at a previous company. They needed the code for a new device, and I was a tech there. I got the rare opportunity to move into coding, and wrote all or most of the code for three lines of devices while in their employ. Part of it at technician's pay, and part as a software engineer. It was 100% assembly language, in 4 and 8 bit controllers.

It's cool to write code for a 4-bit processor with 8K of program memory and 512 bytes of Data memory. It's not exactly a honcho platform, but then it gets embedded into thousands of devices that you can point to and say your code is governing the operation of.

Girls can't code?? I beg to differ!

[Anonymous Coward]

Excuse me? I take a lot of offense to this reply being that I am a girl and I code. Now, I admit that I am fairly new at coding, but it is something I have begun to love to do. Not only that, but many of my older friends (and these friends ARE male) say that my coding is a lot better and a lot more "mature" than many of their MALE friends' code. As a matter of fact, women were extremely prominent when programming was just starting to take off. (Trust me on this one, I was in a Women in Computing class last semester). I'd like to know what grounds you have for making such a biased statement.

Re:Girls can't code?? I beg to differ!

[Anonymous Coward]

Why aren't there many female programmers? Well, I'll tell you the main theory covered in one of the classes I took. It starts as early as elementary school. Girls are treated differently in math and science classes as well as any computer classes that may be offered. It seems that girls have a different method of discovery when it comes to computers than boys in the classes. They're told that this is wrong and to do it another way. Few girls get past this without developing almost a fear of computers. I was lucky being that I have a father (who is a computer scientist) who brought me to the computer labs to help him with his projects (I typed for him sometimes) when I was younger. I also didn't get interested in computers as a career until I was in high school. Generally, this is the story behind all 7 women in my academic level at the university i attend.

Re:Girls can't code?? I beg to differ!

[Trepidity]

Sure, there are girls who can code, just not a lot of them. Just from my own experience, all my computer science classes have been around 90% male. About half of the males, but all the females, didn't have a clue what was going on. Apparently the girls who can code don't attend my school.

Re:Girls can't code?? I beg to differ!

[Anonymous Coward]

1) university, 400 people in comp sci, 10 girls

2) the companies i have worked at (all game companies) have had less than 1% of their programmers being female. this isn't due to not hiring females, but due to that there aren't many of them.

Now, I realize this doesn't mean that females can't code, but it does make one wonder why there aren't more female programmers? Is it society?
Is it that in the general case most females aren't very ananlytical/logical in their thinking?
Who knows. All I know is that programming (especially certain fields) is very lucrative in salary/perks. Since there dont seem to be a lot of female programmers this points to either that females can't code, or have little motivation and will power to learn programming.

Note: I may or may not be playing devil's advocate :>

Young people

[Andy]

Young people have lots of energy but the majority lack breadth, education, and are rather stupid. Many are highschool drop outs with programming monomania and highly inflated egos. Older programmers tend to be better educated, have a deeper skill set, write technically better code. They make a lot less noise too. I see no problem in our market with experienced people in their 40's and 50's landing senior level programming jobs.

Re:Young people

[Capt_Troy]

I agree. I am 22 and just entering the "real world." Working at IBM for the summer I realize that the "older" programmers know a LOT more than the young coders. I look to them as role models. Those "drop outs" mentioned some posts previous to this one think they know a lot more than they do I'm afraid. If I were management, I wouldn't hire someone without a degree (except for internships etc.)

capt.

Re:Young people

[Jonny Royale]

The young'uns are not stupid, they're just ignorant. There's a difference there.

Re:Young people

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm 25 and have been in the "real world" since I was 19. I initially left college because I was fed up with the inanity of campus life. Thankfully, someone with more thought than you hired me and paid me a rather generous sum of money. 6 years later and I'm making more than anyone I went to high school, I just started at a major teleco, have a family(wife and a daughter) and still don't have my degree.

Sometimes, the self-taught are more adaptive than the spoon-fed.

Steve(who's too lazy to create an account)

Re:Young people

[lf0]

We are all self-taught.

Re:Young people

[Anonymous Coward]

I know quite a few younger people; they're not stupid but they are inexperienced. There's a vast field between knowing that you can do something and knowing whether doing it is a good idea and that's a field that takes time to cross. What I hate to see is the way the younger generation is getting the exploitation shaft. Even when I was 22 and coding furiously (mumble-mumble) years ago I knew that if I was routinely expected to put in 60-80 hour weeks, something was very wrong. How much of this so-called 'crisis' in finding computer professionals is caused by people burning out and taking up a profession where if you have to work 80 hour weeks, at least you'll get paid for it?

BTW, I'm 42 with 21 years experiance and am current with the current 'hot' technology: C, C++, JAVA, SQL, Win/NT, Unix and Linux, etc. as well as with the older stuff (IBM AS/400, RPG, Cobol, etc.) Think I can find a coding job? Think again! Even when I get an interview they openly express astonishment that someone 'with my experience' wants to code and develop software, instead of joining the management ranks. Fools and poltroons... :)

Re:Young people

[ucblockhead]

Talent -> Good programmer
Talent + Experience -> Great programmer

Re:Young people

[tzanger]

If I were management, I wouldn't hire someone without a degree (except for internships etc.)

excuse me.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHA

Why, because YOU went through school to get this job you feel that anyone that gets hired and is young must do as you did? How do you think those old guys got into it to start? I'll bet you dollars to donuts it wasn't through school. Those guys were probably original hackers, people who were born and bred to do what they love doing. Just because someone is young doesn't make them egomaniacal self-apoointed code gods. Your stereotype is as bad as the "you're too old to be useful" one.

Re:Young people

[Anonymous Coward]

You missed the point. This may sound wierd but: "While we're all self-taught, some are more self-taught than others."

What I mean is that some people aren't spoon fed things and learn by doing in real environments, as opposed to being taught theoritcally ways to do things in an artificial environment.

One method is more useful than the other.

Re:Young people

[MarkKomus]

You can laugh all you want now, but I know several people, for good or bad, that are being held up right now in advancing their careers because they lack a degree. Management won't outright say it, but "off the record" they tell them that's the only reason they're not getting the job/promotion.

I'm not saying this is a good thing, I know several people without degrees who are just as talented programmers, but it does exist. And the one thing a degree does tell your employer that you can learn, and they like knowing that.

Mark

Re:Young people

[tzanger]

And the one thing a degree does tell your employer that you can learn, and they like knowing that.

ummm not necessarily. It means you are able to sit through lectures and regurgitate answers. I'm not a hotshot wizard programmer, nor would a degree teach me that. I am a good programmer and studying on my own not only shows that I can learn, but it shows that I have initiative and drive, not a herd mentality, which is what I think managers secretly are looking for.

I don't mean to say that everyone who has a degree can't think, I am saying that is what I'd think given your comment about not hiring anyone without a degree.

Re:Young people

[Capt_Troy]

Congratulations, but while there may be a rare exception (apparently you out of your entire high school) most people who leave college do not have the drive to teach themselves. That's why they dropped out. I know I hardly learned a thing from listening to professors all day, most of what I know came from books and experimentation. So I wouldn't really call that spoon feeding. So congratulations on your ability and your successes but I don't think that fortune is shared by most people who leave college.

-capt.

Re:Young people

[The Fonze]

I think you made a good point. It seems as though most companies want some dude to come in and go 24-7, and spit out code, regradless of quality, as long as it works. And this definitely reflects the s.e. practices across the entire industry..including where im at. Tons and Tons and Tons of SHIT!

Re:Young people

[a2fan]

Or Arrogant. Got plenty of those... I guess it's part of the culture.

Re:Young people

[belgo]

Just because I'm 22 and am currently senior
programmer of a fortune 1000 corporation (after
having started, bought, and sold various ventures,
nevermind the fact that I have a successful
consulting practice), or that I wrote a
bestselling Super Nintendo game, doesn't mean
I think I'm better than you. But the fact that
I'm a high school dropout sure does now.
Enjoy the illusion, old man. :)

Declining skills

[Anonymous Coward]

Something that was mentioned in the Wired article which I found particularly interesting was the mentioned lack of "salient skills" in older programmers. It seems strange to me that a programmer wouldn't continue to upgrade their skills over time. I mean, if you're not interested in the management career track, then you must be coding because you *like* technology, right?

I think that this might be in part due to the "pigeonholing" of people based on skills. Once you're known as the C++ guy or the VB guy (no flames please!), IMHO it's hard to bridge over to another language and even harder to move to completely different technology.

Re:Declining skills

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree with this completely. As a 36-year old software developer, I've been trying for the last four years to get OO analysis/design/programming work, and have only just got my foot in the door.

If you want to stay technical in this industry, and have no interest in escaping up the management ladder, you have to make a constant effort to hone your skills--and be careful not to let yourself get painted into a corner.

Re:Declining skills

[mahlen]

I agree with the notion that once you're known as good at something, it's hard to move on to something new. I had to leave my last company in order to get on with my career. They would have gladly let me keep doing C++ forever, when i wanted to see what was happening in Java and XML (and boy am i glad i did). On the one hand, the company has a large body of C++ code that was running well, so they are reluctant to give it up. On the other hand, the people who stay are in serious danger of getting stuck in a rut. So the only reasonable approach for ambitious employees is to switch companies every few years, sadly.

Favoring young people over older ones has been happening in many industries for quite some time. Young people demand less money, and money is at the root of all decisions in most corporations (as demanded by their shareholders).

mahlen

Never mistake knowledge for wisdom. One helps you make a living; the other helps you make a life.
--Sandra Carey

Re:Declining skills

[Anonymous Coward]

You'd be surprised to see how true the old addage "when you're good with a hammer, everything looks like a nail" really is. Just check out comp.sys.ibm.as400.misc sometime and follow the perpetual "Screw Java, I can do everything anyone could want in RPG" thread. I was astounded when I first became exposed to as400 culture how much resistance there was in the as400 programmer community to new technology. But employers like buzzwords, and if they don't see Java on your resume -- or, worse yet, you tell them in your interview that Java sucks and you can do everything in RPG (regardless of whether or not you're right) -- you'll probably need to go to Kinko's and have a few more copies of your resume printed up.

here's why:

[JoostKooij]

If I were a PHB, I'd much rather employ two kids whom I can bully around easily for the price of some older guy who not only has a lot of (authoritative) knowledge, but also knows it.

And what Real Manager cares if the kids can't get it done? They're easy to blame anyway. Try that with the vintage programmer guy.

Re:FALLING DOWN

[Leapfrog]

Apologies for my inexperience with automatic firearms. Perhaps it was an Uzi. At that point, he was walking around with quite a nice sackful of guns, so presumably he just grabbed whatever was most convenient.

I think the movie could best be described as a bitter sarcastic look at everything thats wrong with American society, focused around the journey of one man "going home" through Los Angeles. The bit with the anti-tank rocket was amusing, but I think the director was trying to bring in one more sting against the state of urban decay; a young child knows more about using weapons of mass destruction than a man who has worked his whole life in the defense industry. I especially liked the bit where he goes nuts in the convenience store, smashing up everything, and then pays for his soda.

"Maybe if you wrote it in f*cking English, I could understand it."

Chemist or not, you're right

[SimonK]

I think you are bang-on. People who are still in programming at the age of thirty-five are either a waste of space or extremely expensive (sometimes both :) compared with young, eager, cheap types a few years out of school.

Young men with no lives (and I'll include myself in this :) make almost ideal employees in programming environments - they don't ask for much money (relatively) and they are prepared to work long(ish) hours.

Re:Chemist or not, you're right

[Eccles]

At 34, I'm a near-geezer. (8 months to go!)

There have been a number of occasions recently where co-workers have come to me ("Mr. C++") with a variety of questions that they have been wrestling with for a while, typically hours. In almost every case, I've been able to solve the problem in less than a minute up to a few minutes. Sometimes you get what you pay for.

Re:Chemist or not, you're right

[AppyPappy]

The young grads generally do not come out of school understanding corporate logic, environment or politics. Us old timers do. Long hours for cheaper wages mean nothing to a corporation. That is just done to entertain a manager and make him feel important. They want applications that arrive on time and work and a staff willing to accept blame and fix whatever messes up....even if they weren't the guilty party. I found out a long time ago that long hours meant nothing in the long run. You need to be tall, have nice hair and act confident.
The reason most young programmers work long hours is because they are learning the systems and real-life coding techniques like standards. In the long run, the company only cares if you have created something. That something you created can be used to blackmail them into keeping and paying you.

Re:Chemist or not, you're right

[Anonymous Coward]

One thing I can guarantee: unless you die young, some day you too will be 40! Better save all that money you are making now, because you will want to have a big enough nest egg to retire when you hit that milestone(~$2,000,000 will do). Unfortunately, unless you happen to get stock options in a hot IPO, retirement at 40 means a meager lifestyle, and forget having a family, kids, etc.

Learning new skills won't help

[Anonymous Coward]

The only thing companies care about is what you've done on your last job.

Been there, done that.

Learned java? No, because it wasn't not part of your last job.

Used to be a developer. No, if you werent' still a developer on your last job.

How about a developer with multi-threading kernel programming experience? Same answer.

The last one's funny because one will run into other developers saying they can't find anyone with that kind of experience. But it's a waste of time to try for these kind of jobs. You'll never make it past HR.

My answer. Learn to lie convincingly on your resume. It seems to me those people tend to do very well.

Well ...

[Anonymous Coward]

I still got a little bit more than half a decade to prepare for that day to come. Hopefully, I could get around that, otherwise, just open a small varity store around the corner ... still what I planned, just 25 years earier ... hmmm ... should I change my profession now?

Hacking Code at 46 at Intel

[IsoQuantic]

Well, I am 46 and I still hack code as well as manage a department of twenty-to-forty-somethings. Age is irrelevant to me. What matters is are you in tune with your profession? Are you current with the goings on in your field? Can you work effectively in a team and with little supervisions? Bottom line- can you execute! And by the way, I am always looking for folks with hardware and software architectural modeling experience. See www.isoquantic.com/IntelJobs.html for more information. - Patrick Reilly, Asst. Director, Intel Computing Enhancement Architecture Lab, Chandler, AZ

Where is this the case?

[Syslevel]

Here in the upper midwest at a Medical Device manufacturer, I am one of the younger people on my team, and I am 39. We're developing critical life-care embedded code (implanted devices.) I guess in more volatile fields where quality doesn't impact safety as much, maybe they can hire people right out of school. There seems to be a shortage of embedded-system techies, and I don't see that being addressed in schools. With the further 'mainstreaming' of Computer Science and programming curriculums, there just aren't as many people coming into the field of programming right down to the wire, on hardware platforms, as there are the more office types. I know there continues to be a real shortage of people who can sling embedded code, and I don't see much draw to get people into it, as opposed to higher level programming.

Re:Where is this the case?

[Xamot]

I live in the Central US and am one of the younger coders where I work and I'm 25. From people I work with and others I've talked to this is probably the region to be in if your an older programmer. I like it because I can actually enjoy my youth working between 40 and 50 hrs a week. No I probably don't get paid as much as some of you but I'm fine with that. And the cost of living here is pretty resonable.

--

Re:Where is this the case?

[Dumont]

Glad to think that you believe that there is a shortage of embedded system coders because that's the area I'm primarily interested in going into.

I'm a 21 year old student about to graduate in December from college with my CS degree and I would like to find a good place to do that sort of development. Hopefully in Minnesota. If by upper-midwest you mean Minnesota I would guess you're working for Medtronic or Guidant.

Anyone able to give me some leads as to where I might consider looking?

Now I'm worried

[hiroaki]

I turn 35 if four years. My wife and I have one kid now, and hopefully two by then. I will truly be set apart from the young guns with no life, and refuse to put in more than 10 hours a day regularly.

But in the 8 productive hours I work a day, I can kick the tail off of anybody I work with, so where's that put me? Will I be wondering about a job then?

I doubt it. In my area (DC), there's a drastic talent shortage. Companies are downright obnoxious with their recruiting practices, and there's no shortage of jobs.

If people are having trouble finding work, maybe they should just move here!

Re:Now I'm worried

[Mechanist]

why have another kid?

In fact, why have any? Who needs 'em? Let someone else deal with the crappy diapers and the screaming, I've got better things to do with my life. Why do people have so many kids? Because most people don't think too much about their choices in life, they just follow the standard script that everyone else follows. You can have a fulfilling life without kids, all you need is the independence to realize that you can live life on your own terms, even if most everyone else acts like a sheep.

Re:Now I'm worried

[Jim Morash]

You make a good point that the job market varies regionally... it seems likely that most of the places where older programmers are being dropped are either in silicon valley, nyc, or boston, where there are plenty of worthless, IPO-inflated companies that (for now) can afford to do such things.

As far as job security and your family goes - this is rather OT, but why have another kid? This is something I've been thinking about a lot lately... why do people have so many children? There just isn't enough room for them...

Newer ain't better

[ratman]

The 1st RFC for FTP is older than I am.

The worst programmers i ever worked with were
game programmers. age matters not; its the paradigm. very hard it is to keep them from tear-assing through code. Old-time DOS hacks tend to be the best. that vintage had to learn the science of being bit-efficient AND the art of managing complexity. Coding without a net, so to speak...

Only the stupid PHBs discriminate

[Anonymous Coward]

As a freelance programmer I'm constantly looking for new work. Only once did I notice my age (33) get in the way: it was with the game division of a large company ran by a particularly idiotic PHB. In that case though it wasn't my age which got in the way, but my experience: I was thoroughly rebuked when I asked for a product specification ("why do you want to hamper our creativity?"), and when I wanted to know what sort of processes would be put in place to help focus our creative energy on the problem, was told "I just want us all to get together and have fun." (This was after the artist invited me over to his house to smoke a few joints so we could "work on the problem more creatively." Bah.)

I don't doubt there are companies run by stupid PHBs who don't understand the value that older, more experienced programmers bring to the table. Sure most older programmers are unwilling to work massive hours--on the other hand, would you rather have working code after 8 hours, or a lousy hack after 14 hours? Most of the older programmers I know bring a lot of discipline to the table born of years of putting up with midnight coding sessions caused by managers who couldn't get their heads out of their arses.

Me; the last two projects I worked on I brought in on time and under budget--something that PHB mentioned at the top of my rant failed to do.

Re:FALLING DOWN

[Codifex Maximus]

Yeah, after hitting the post button, I remembered it was a machinegun.

They just couldn't get the order right!

Re:Strange -- nugget of knowlege

[Lumpy]

Ahhh... there's the key
the older guy knows some things that he will never EVER tell you... you must hold information.. KEY information hostage from other workers and management at all costs! this keeps you valuable and will make management think before laying off the old guy. Never ever show a co-sorker anything in your bag of tricks, and if you have to teach teach only what is needed to get that job done and no more! A programmer is only as good as the inside information and secret mojo that he/she has with them. after that you'er a bag of flesh.

dont trust your boss or any co-worker... they are not looking out for your best interests by any means.

On Being an Older Techie

[HeatherMax]

I'm coming up 40 in six months and have had lots of problems progressing upwards. The most annoying thing has to be that almost inevitable shift into management.

I was very lucky a couple of years ago though when I got together with four other friends and we started our own business (the youngest of us is 34).

Now I get to ply the skills I'm interested in plying. What I can do is whatever the company says I can do. I don't have to wear a suit. We're now flat-out working on bringing more Linux applications to the world to run on our web hosting service. If I had of stayed working for other people I'd be running another COBOL project, late, and with a bunch of useless know-nothings that just sent me home each night frustrated.

Although there's still a certain amount of 'management' it can be many and varied as well since I do 'Financial Controller', 'Account Manager' and 'Sales' as well as the more traditional (for a Programmer/Analyst) 'Team Leader' and 'Project Manager' roles.

It was scary when we first started, and six months in was just about desperation, but we've just had our second anniversary and we're over the hump with things looking better and better.

Economic

[Ripp]

It probably doesn't have as much to do with their actual age...

it probably has more to do with the fact that older, more experienced programmers, because of their experience, will command a higher salary. In this world of a million and one high tech startups who don't want to/can't pay somebody like this what they're worth, that's the way the chips fall.

That doesn't mean it's right, though. If I had a chance I'd hire one of these "old" guys who could probably read a page of assembler and tell you what it was over some MIS/business school, point-n-click trained Windows weenie any day. These are the guys when faced with a command line go "uhhhh....Where's the Start button!!!???"

Kind of like the old guy who you take your car to, he'd listen to it for a second, and tell you exactly what's wrong...as opposed to the kid who has to get out the scan tool and the meters and plug it in and look up all the codes in the book....yadda yadda.

They're *more* likely to have 'hacker-like tendencies' in my opinion. More likely to *not* be marketing controlled droids, and more likely to know more about the 'real world.' Hire 'Em!!!

Re:Economic

[qmrf]

it probably has more to do with the fact that older, more experienced programmers, because of their experience, will command a higher salary

I think that's probably true, and I believe it's true for people other than just coders. Older teachers, for example, have a hard time getting jobs. My mother took about 15 years off of teaching to raise her kids. When she went back and tried to find a job (in her mid-40's), she found that she kept getting passed up for 22-year-old kids fresh out of college. Why? Because with her master's degree and beyond education, she's a lot more expensive than some kid who's barely done with her student teaching.

Of course, once she got hired (teaching computer applications and basic programming, no less), I think she gave the school district a pretty good deal for their money. She works 70-80 hour weeks (during the school year; only about 30-40 hour weeks during the summer), in addition to taking about 4 credits/semester at the local community college to keep her knowledge base up to date (after all, she learned to code on punch cards...), and is completely and totally devoted to her students.

It seems to me that this holds true in most occupations...In general, the older generation is more skilled, if only because of experience, and more devoted to their work, because they've had the time to figure out that this really is what they love. To make broad generalizations, older, more experienced workers tend to be more devoted to the project, while young punks (which I lump myself into, being a 19-year-old college student) tend to be more self-centric. I tell you, most of the people I've interacted with in my engineering classes are not people I'd trust my life to (in the case of bridges or buildings) or my data to (in the case of programmers). Of course, that appearance could just be due to the fact that the weak have been winnowed out of the older batch already. There could be just as much talent, devotion, and potential among the younger generation, but the signal is lost in the noise of, "yeah! computers! I'm gonna get rich! I'm 3133t!"

Okay, I'll quit rambling now...

Seven LEAN Years

[Anonymous Coward]

This is why I wrote "Seven LEAN Years" (available at my website, http://www.os2hq.com/). I have two engineering degrees (one from CalTech!), six years at NASA, and 6 years experience as an entrepreneur. I closed my PC business when margins got too thin. Now nobody will hire me. Age 36, and already on the scrap heap.

I'm not alone, either. I know one lady with 3 engineering degrees who can't find work, either, and her husband committed suicide this Spring because he couldn't find work either. It's feast or famine out there, a "banana republic" of haves and have-nots. Except now, the have-nots often include the smartest, best-trained, and most experienced technical minds in the world.

Skill level high or higher than young guns?

[paulm]

"...even though their skill level is as high or higher than the young guns out there."
This may be true if you attempt to measure skill level by counting technical terms on a resume and multiply by years of experience. However, in my personal experience, most older poeple don't know what the hell they are doing. Maybe this is because younger people are not afraid to admit that they don't know something, so they learn more? What I can say for sure is, given the choice between someone with a college degree who has been working with computers for 30 yrs, and a high school drop out linux hacker, you get way better work, and more of it, from the high school drop out. Just so you know where I am coming from, I do have a college degree (BS in CS) and have been out of school for about 3 yrs. I learned a lot in college and totally enjoyed it (it was hard and I had to pay my own way through it, but I got a lot out of it), but my I would be way better of right now in terms of money and career if I had quit in high school and just stayed home and coded.

99% of programmers suck

[Anonymous Coward]

Most "engineers" are only fit to screw up other people's code. If you're no good by age 35, you're never going to get better, and there isn't any point feeding you just so you can make crap. If you know what you're doing in IT, you can write your own ticket, and it doesn't matter what age you are.

Re:99% of programmers suck

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, and 99% of managers are straight out of Dilbert and couldn't tell a good programmer from a bad one. Therefore, you can't write your own ticket, unless you know someone and they know you.

no way dude...

[DjFilthyRich]

it's because us young.cats got the mojo..

old.cats they just wanna make enuf money to fart at home...

what a generalist.. ;)

What A Load of BS!

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm 35 and when I went looking for a new job I had headhunters bugging me around the clock. I got to pick and choose who would have the honor of hiring me. Nobody gave a rats ass how old I was. Being stable and married was looked on as an asset. Of course I have several years PROGRESS 4GL and QAD MFG/PRO. There tends to be lots more demand than programmers.

Re:What A Load of BS!

[Anonymous Coward]

"PROGRESS 4GL and QAD MFG/PRO?"

never heard of it.

Re:What A Load of BS!

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, they don't tend to get a lot of attention. They are mainly used by Fortune 1000 companies. PROGRESS is a combination 4GL and DB system and MFG/PRO is a manufacturing/financial package that runs on top of it.

www.progress.com
www.qad.com
www.peg.com

I don't buy it.

[Anonymous Coward]

(slinberg@crocker.com, can't remember my password - old age?)

I'm 33 and have been coding for over 20 years, 16 professionally. (strokes long grey beard and leans forward on staff) I learned to code in tight, fast assembly language, and spent years doing assembly/C hybrid work that these kids don't know anything about.

Judging by the slew of onsolicited offers I continually receive, I'm not sweating my job status at all. Department of Labor statistics show nothing but increasing demand for programmers through 2005. The schools aren't turning out enough programmers, and those that are coming out don't have the experience for tough, project-lead jobs.

The demand in the Northeast, at least, is for experienced programmers. And I believe that's nationwide. I'm getting better every day. I'll go up against any mid-20's hacker who thinks that HTML is "programming." I've got the love, baby!

Re:I don't buy it.

[DaBunny]

So what happens in 2006 when you're 40 and the demand for programmers starts to cool down.

And don't kid yourself, it will cool down someday. About 15-20 years ago it was chemical engineers who were red hot. And about 5-10 years ago they couldn't find jobs for anything. Economies move in cycles.

35 and you're not retired?

[Anonymous Coward]

You're a "highly trained and skilled" programmer
and you've made it to 35 without having enough
money to retire?

Re:35 and you're not retired?

[AppyPappy]

No. I blew every dime when I was in my 20's. Had a good time too. Now I spend it on my kids.

The value of experience

[jabber]

Let me start off by saying that I'm 26.

Now... At a previous job (a jr. H.S.), I've worked with people half my age. It was their job to design a web site, and mine to channel them. They were eager, but knew less than necessary to be dangerous. And I was an old fogey to them.

At the current job, as a S.E. I work with people who have been with this company longer then I have been alive. Some have trenchmind and are severely threatened by younger workers who have new and in-demand skills. These folks are scared of being discarded, and rightly so. They've given their lives to a company that would drop them like a bad habit, if they see profit in doing so. After working your whole professional life in a niche, there's no where else to go, and retirement looms real large at 55+... Fortunatelly, the mentally hamstrung are a minority within the set of older developers.

Here's the point of the post, older developers (not 35+ but 45+ in my case) have so much domain knowledge, so much experience, and so much professional common sense that they are effectively priceless to the company. Even if the company doesn't see it that way. These guys (and gals) have decades of experience that can not be replaced with OOP, CASE, RAD or any other buzzword.

They serve as sages, mentors and wells of knowledge to us, the junior developers. They are responsible for system architectures, legacy system migration and evolution guidance and sanity checks for the rest of us.

They do not pull the 60+ hour weeks, nor should they have to. After I beat my head against a problem for a week, and can't account for some old quirk that makes no sense to me, all it often takes is a couple of questions to one of these guys, and the light dawns. They know where we came from, and they're better judges of where we're going then we are.

Older developers are invaluable to those of us who work in legacy and mixed environments. These systems were designed from a different perspective. Their implementations were limited by storage and performance, and we often can not even think in these terms.

Just try to do Y2K work knowing C++ and Java, without the aid of the COBOL guru who nursed the system from punch cards...

Re:The value of experience

[jslag]

Sounds similar to my situation. I'm in my early 20s, working at a site with coders who average mid to late 30s. Some of them only know how to keep legacy mainframe applications wheezing away. Some of them use newer tools but still insist on bad olde coding practices, like littering their code with goto statements (like the guy sitting next to me).

But there are plenty who are really amazing - they've really been thinking about software design for 10-20 years, and they've run into most any problem that I can think of, and they know the needs of the businesses that buy our software.

People in the first category would have trouble finding work if they were laid off tomorrow (well, trouble finding good work). People in the second category should be able to write their own tickets.

Dead wood

[Yama]

I used to work with a couple of 40+ and while you've got to bow to the fact that they've been around for a bit. I did sometimes wonder how they managed to be around for that long. There's no escaping the fact that a guy who's been programming assembler for 35 must know a lot about assembler, but you can help feeling that someone who types with one finger and thinks that edlin is a really good tool is not really gonna aproach GUI development in an inovative way. When you have reviews of window layouts and you get comments like "Can't we make it look more like DOS" you've got to think that these are not people moving with the times.
I'm sure that there a re alot of older programmers who really can jam with the best of them, but I think that there are a lot who are in it not because they are good with computers but because they where around when they we're first taking off and knowone else was programming.

Re:Dead wood

[remande]

I've seen both types of older programmers. On the one hand, I've had to deal with a FORTRAN-66 programmer who couldn't get the hang of either GUIs or the Internet. While I may have sympathy for this sort of fellow, it wouldn't extend to any payroll under my control.

OTOH, I've run into the guru who keeps up with the latest tech, and knows the old stuff. He doesn't have to write a line of code to increase our productivity; he earns his keep just by helping the rest of us with our programming issues. Having somebody who has been there and done that is invaluable.

The smart employer will see the difference, and discriminate accordingly. Having a guru on your team may be worth two or three newbies; the guru makes the newbies more effective.

Re:Dead wood

[Junks Jerzey]

Uh, the article was about 35-40 year old programmers, not 60+ year olds. UNIX had already been kicking for TEN YEARS when someone currently 40 graduated from college.

Oh no, 35 and I am dead (Logans Run?)

[Anonymous Coward]

Hehe,

Wow, 5 years and I am an old fart. heh, eventually the 20 year olds etc will be 35 and be faced with the same thing. Young ones think 35-60 is far far away, but in reality its not that far. Just think 150 years from now none of us reading this will be around -- or million years.

Just live life and enjoy it all you can. Code, party and grab a babe :) . You lady programmers can do the same, but grab a stud.

Just face it life down here is *very* short, some say a blink of an eye (versus a million years).

As long as they don't want to run the team

[dmorin]

My team is looking for senior full timers, and can't find any. One of the issues with looking at the "older" folks is that by the time you hit 35, you're likely to have had a fair amount of management experience. The team I'm on is run by a couple of 30yr olds (old in their own right!). There is sometimes an illusion that a 35yr old with 7 years of management experience will only want the job if he can run the place -- that he will have trouble taking direction from a young'un. Maybe that's not true, but it's a tough risk. We hired a consultant who had about 20 years industry experience, and although in the interview he said "I'll do whatever you need me to do", a few months in he basically demonstrated that he thought we were ridiculous, didn't listen to what we asked of him, and went off and did his own thing.

We're in a tough market right now. 80% of the resumes we get are for contract work. Of those, more than half are outrageously overpriced and underexperienced -- "I've got 2 years out of school! I read a book on servlets once! Pay me $120/hr!" When we find a fulltimer who doesn't look like he'll make a powerplay to take over the team, we usually jump all over that opportunity.

Advantages and disadvantages

[Salamander]

Everything I say here is a generalization. There will be exceptions to every statement, but I hope we all know the difference between anecdotes and trends.

Older workers have several advantages over their younger peers. Foremost among these is that they generally have both a breadth and depth of experience that their younger peers. They're more likely to have seen something similar to the current problem, remember the tradeoffs and pitfalls of various solutions, etc. They often have better communication and interpersonal skills than younger folk. Lastly, there's nothing about coding that favors the young, unlike for example mountain-bike racing. It's a sedentary intellectual activity, and like any such activity people get better at it when they do it more, and older programmers have done it more.

There are also major downsides to older workers. They do tend to be more expensive. Depth of experience is of no (or even negative) value if it's in the wrong area. Single-machine FORTRAN or COBOL skills on an OS that hardly exists any more might not be all that valuable when programming is done in C++ or Java in a distributed environment using CORBA etc. With the rate of change in this industry it is essential for anyone to keep up with the latest technologies, even if it means that sometimes you'll "waste time" learning a technology that drops off everyone's radar screens when the next competing standard comes along. C'est la vie. Contrary to popular belief, old dogs can learn new tricks, but too many people both young and old don't make the effort; the only difference is that the young one's laziness hasn't caught up with them yet.

There's one area where I defy conventional wisdom: amount of work. Yes, younger people - especially single ones - are more likely to work longer hours. They're also more likely to spend half of those hours surfing the web, on IRC/MOO, playing Quake, etc. Older people are likely to work fewer hours because of family commitments and so on, more likely to take sick leave, probably have more vacation time, but in my experience they do have a better work ethic. 40 hours of "work" is 40 hours of work instead of 70 hours of "work" being evenly split between real work and play. Overall, I think the older folks I've worked with got more done on a per-week basis than the younger ones who put in longer hours. YMMV.

Overall, I think we need both. I've long since abandoned the "one size fits all" philosophy, and that applies to personnel too. I think the best projects combine the experience and discipline of a few older workers with the energy and exuberance of a few younger ones. I've worked at companies that were unbalanced in both directions, and both suck.

Re:Advantages and disadvantages

[dillon_rinker]

40 hours of "work" is 40 hours of work instead of 70 hours of "work" being evenly split between real work and play.

I'd also suggest that if you know how to do the job right the first time, you don't have to stay until 2:00 am debugging it. I've been on both sides of this. Of course, the boss sees the guy working when he leaves and still there when he comes back the next morning and thinks "what dedication!" Then he sees the guy who is strictly 9-5 and thinks "Here for the paycheck..." Never mind the fact that the all-nighter barely gets working code in by the deadline while the 9-5er codes, tests, debugs, is done with the days work by noon, and spends the rest of the day telling the all-nighter what he did wrong the night before.

Of course, there are those who know what they're doing, have been doing it since they were nine, and STILL stay until 5:00 am. Double these peoples' salary and make them take off two weeks three times a year. Get them any training they want, and find projects for them that will challenge them. Whatever you do, don't let them get away...

Re:Advantages and disadvantages

[Salamander]

>I'd also suggest that if you know how to do the job right the first time, you don't have to stay until 2:00 am debugging it...

I know we all hate "me too" posts, but...amen, brother! I could not agree more with your post.

It's strange

[melissos]

Hey, I'm 36 years old and have absolutely no problems to find a job as software developer! (even got 4 offers this year)

Have a look at one of the most famous software engineers in europe: Niklaus Wirth, the inventor of the programming language 'Pascal' is still developing complex software systems. He went on 65 years old.

Fogie Coders

[scotpurl]

The problem with most older hackers and geeks is that they have willingly allowed themselves to become stale. Only yesterday, I had a greying geek, who was probably hot stuff in the mainframe days, come to my NT workstation, and have difficulty navigating to the floppy drive. A month before that, it was another senior ex-geek, and she got hung up in why she couldn't rename the CD that was in my drive. (Hey, it's a CD -- it's read only.)

These aren't examples -- they're the norm. They're the median experience and skill level for new technology (meaning there's a mouse involved) for all the grey geeks I've seen.

Me? I'm 32. Old enough to have been killed in "Logan's Run", and fast approaching the artificial geek horizon.

Re:Fogie Coders

[Salamander]

>Only yesterday, I had a greying geek, who was probably hot stuff in the mainframe days, come to my NT workstation, and have difficulty navigating to the floppy drive.

While I generally agree with what you say, you do need to be careful about what evidence you use to conclude that someone else is clueless. Does not knowing a particular technique on a particular OS invalidate 20+ years of design experience? I know that's not what you're saying, but often what people think is based on very little more than that. It helps to remember that this guy might laugh at the way you stumble when you're in his favored environment.

There's a common tendency to assume that things we know are worth knowing, and things we don't know are just junk. It's an especially common tendency among young and technically-inclined people, which is why we see it constantly in the Windows vs. Linux flame-wars. The Windows zealots think you're an idiot if you don't know COM or config.sys, the Linux zealots think you're an idiot if you don't know CORBA or /etc/init.d, and those of us who've lived through a few rounds of such wars just roll our eyes.

The point is that the most valuable skills often turn out to be the ones that we ourselves do not have, that we might have considered obscure and useless until the very moment that we tripped over a situation where they were needed. Maybe someone else's skills really are useless and outdated, maybe that guy is a stuck-in-his-ways old relic, but we should be very hesitant lest we make that determination too quickly and have to eat our hats later.

As if

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not the number of hours that you work, or the amount that you ask for your time that's important, it's the amount that it costs the client to get working code.

It takes time to learn what to write, time on the board (keyboard). Time to know what constitutes a good design that will work before you code it.

If you were born with it, congratulations! If your classes prepared you for the real world, double congratulations!! I'm willing to bet that this is not the case for the majority

Noah

--29 years and counting

Long ramble from an "old" guy

[ucblockhead]

As someone who is rapidily approaching old age (34), perhaps I can give some insight for the youn 'uns.

Maintaining a successful career as a programmer is not an easy thing. It is not like being a plumber, where you learn your trade and then perhaps do a little studying from time to time. You have to be careful and you have to be observant.

I found myself oh so close to trouble recently because while everyone else was moving towards Windows and the internet, I was spending my working time as an OS/2 programmer. Why? Well, they paid me gobs. It almost killed my career, though, as I found when I finally got fed up with that place. Recruiters looked not at my ten years experience, but at my relatively weak Windows experience. Fortunately, I was able to leverage what Windows I had and some application domain knowledge into a new job that, while is lower paying, will give me a killer resume.

The lesson? Money isn't everything. It is really easy to get sucked into high paying jobs that are death to your career. It is also very easy to become complacent, and say to yourself that you'll start looking for a new job in a few months.

Before the anti-Windows flames start, let me say that I am busy practicing my Linux programming at home. Which brings me to another problem. Off-time experience is no experience from the standpoint of most employers. You can be the biggest Linux expert in the world, but if you can't point to a job where your title was "Linux developer" or a test you passed with "Linux" in the title, many prospective employers won't want to hear from you.

(Actually, I suspect most Linux shops are better about this. My experience was with Windows, where I'd written much in my spare time only to be confronted with questions on my lack of Windows experience. However, as Linux grows in popularity, you'll find more "old-school" employers who think exactly like that.)

So even if you think you know technology "X", go take a class in "X". Sure, you'll be bored, but you'll have that all-important piece of paper saying you know it. Get any certifications you can, even if you think that tests are a poor indication of ability. Many employers don't, and that is what is important.

Another big cause of this problem is the way salaries top out for programmers. When I was younger, my salary grew with leaps and bounds. Now, I am pretty much near the top, which means most companies are loath to pay more. That can be hard psychologically if you've gotten used to the hefty raise every year. One way around it is to become a contractor, though that has its own pitfalls. (Biggest one: no one will pay to train you.)

Finally, don't wed yourself to a technology. Don't think of yourself as a linux programmer. Think of yourself as a programmer who is doing linux right now. Believe me, you'll be better off, regardless of how superior linux is, both because superiority is not a guarantee of survival and because something better may well come along. Lots of OS/2 programmers felt the same way. Stick your nose into lots of things, even Windows. (You'll need to hold it, believe me...) Take lots of classes. Try to get your employer to assign you a variety of tasks. And above all, keep a keen eye on those technological currents, even when you've settled down with a wife and a mortgage.

Re:Long ramble from an "old" guy

[ucblockhead]

Heh!

Like any of them would have...

Your lucky to get interviewed by a technical person at most companies, much less have a chance to present code.

(I did help hire a guy after seeing his source once, though.)

Re:Long ramble from an "old" guy

[richieb]

Off-time experience is no experience from the standpoint of most employers. You can be the biggest Linux expert in the world, but if you can't point to a job where your title was "Linux developer" or a test you passed with "Linux" in the title, many prospective employers won't want to hear from you.

That's why you should contribute to Open Source projects. Let the future employer see your code.

...richie "43 and still coding everyday"

Re:Long ramble from an "old" guy

[Smilodon]

Speaking as someone who is "over the hill" (38), I'd have to agree.

The "traditional career" model really doesn't involve as much continual change as software development, and many folks have had a tough time adapting. Look at almost any other profession, and you are unlikely to see the same rate of change as the computer field. You usually only have to look as far as your immediate manager to see that not everyone wants to continually build new job skills. I think some people just get to a point where they're tired of learning new things jobwise, and just want to show up and do the familiar. The familiar is comfortable, and make no mistake, can still be challenging (It's not any easier to write/maintain large mainframe programs!).

I am fortunate that I enjoy learning, and that is what attracted me to programming to begin with. It seemed to be (and so far still is) completely open-ended, always changing.

The key is finding a job where you can keep learning as part of your work. I now have this (for the moment), and am happily walking near or on "the bleeding edge", where I like it! However, getting here has involved more frequent job changes than I would like, which definitely becomes more difficult as you get older.

My "trap" was a high-paying job with a major computer vendor as a "specialist" in one of their operating systems. When sales of the proprietary OS slipped, I was offered a lower-paying tech support job on the other side of the country. I left, and they later closed the tech support center I would have been going to. I can't say "I never looked back", cause I missed being the comfort of being a "guru" in my daily job (not to mention my company car). I had to take some jobs in my speciality until I could find a place that would allow me to expand my skills on the job (as I had always been doing on my own). It involved a pay-cut at the time, but it was worth it.

In closing, age has nothing to do with it, but adaptability, love of learning new things, and undying curiosity do. Unfortunately, stereotypes are rampant, as judged by a number (fortunately small) of posts here. I'm sure it's considerably worse in the hiring field, which is notoriously close-minded.

To date I haven't had a problem getting jobs, and even get unsolicited offers (of jobs, that is ;)). Getting a good job is, as always, difficult.

Resume "un-padding?"

[Maledictus]

Does this mean that us ancient over-35s will have to start lying on our resumes? But lying the "other way..."

Instead of cramming 10 years of IT experience and a degree and continuing education onto paper or into an email, I just need to pare it back to "just graduated" and "worked at Happy Burger last summer between my junior and senior year?"

And there are more and more jobs popping up in the IT biz than weeds in my lawn. Weird.

I have to admit, this is something that has not hit me (Just turned 36. Gettin' false teeth next week!) But that's because I have chosen to stick with a particular type of manufacturing and it's particular IT management needs. I have specialized in one sense, and kept my skills updated and diverse in another. In any industry, change is a constant. And frankly, unlike some of my peers in this particular manufacturing biz, I have kept up with the change.

But I see others who are my age and older who balk at change, even though they are in technology management and implementation positions. It's a study in inconsistencies, I know. But it's one of many reasons why we "older" folks are not hired.

That and yeah, you know what, I got two pre-coders to put through school and a mortgage and car payments and I'm more aware of benefits like retirement plans and health care than your average 25-year old. (Even though at 25, I had been married 5 years and already had aforementioned mortgage!) I don't come cheap and I ask employers harder questions -- hell, the fact that I ask questions at all probably puts off many employers.

Perhaps because I am not umemployed, I can sit on my perch and spout platitudes...but it'll all work out. This reminds me of the 80s when defense contractors laid off engineers by the hundreds, then tried to hire again. Engineers out of college avoided certain contractors like the plague because of the employer's reputation for lay-offs. And the defense industry sat and scratched their collective heads and wondered why they couldn't get new blood. After a few years, the defense industry got on a more even keel (or we all got used to rumors of layoffs and ignored them) and they were able to hire talented people.

Employers will get what they pay for. If they pay for inexperience, they'll get and they'll reap the results. If they're willing to pay for experience and stability, they'll get that as well. It's up to them.

Why aren't they burnt-out yet?

[soybean]

The sentiment around here is that if they aren't burnt-out by age 35-40 then they probably aren't any good.

Suprised?

[Kythe]

Is anyone really suprised about this? While companies have been whining for the government to "do something" about the alleged tech worker shortage, they're ignoring the tech workers they have. As a writer I saw recently put it, "it's like complaining that there's a shortage of Porche's for $14,000, and screaming for the government to do something about it".

Pay what people are worth, treat them like you value them, and you'll have all the workers you could ask for. It constantly amazes me how this simple fact escapes brain-dead (or is it just plain greedy?) employers.

Kythe
(Remove "x"'s from

Re:Strange -- nugget of knowlege

[Syslevel]

That's a rather cynical attitude, and it clearly shows that you've not accumulated much knowledge or skill.

Valuable vocational skills are not little 'factoids' that can be passed around like little packages. It's the depth of experience that counts, and really matters in most workplaces. It's having seen it done before countless times, and knowing what did and didn't work in the past.

35? So what?

[DrDebug]

Just because people exceed 35 doesn't mean they are dead. When I was in my 20's and 30's, I was a shit-hot assembly-language level systems programmer. Now I am just a few months short of 50 (oh gawd) and I make my living by being a corporate programming instructor. There are a LOT of people out there that want to learn, and I don't mind sharing my past experiences with them (for a fee, of course!).

Somehow, I feel that that is what the elders of the tribe need to do-- pass on the lessons of the past (and reasons why things were done that way at the time) so that the new people can learn from those lessons and improve from them.

Smart Companies Hire Old Hands

[SoupIsGood Food]

I used to work for a small company who employed almost exclusively older workers (35 and up; I was by far the youngest person in the company at 23), and paid them commensurate with their experience.

These programmers, technicians and engineers worked reasonable hours, and seemed to work at a relaxed pace. Yet our products were consistently two to three generations ahead of the competition, with a broader range of applications and a warranty twice as long. We also did custom engineering for large accounts, and consistently came in under-time and under-budget.

I talked with the general manager and CTO about this and they admitted that they will hire an older engineer over a younger one. Their edge over the competition was hiring staff who knew what they were doing: every shortcut, dirty trick and brilliant hack was discovered, exploited and perfected by experienced engineers early in their careers. Now, later in life, older engineers could produce more with less effort. The CTO drew a diagram (wish I had copied it down) that showed older engineers were worse than young ones in terms of lines of code produced, hours put in on a project, and turnaround time on prototypes. However, if you used total project time, quality of design and development budget requirements, older engineers consistently out performed younger ones by an order of magnitude.
Also, the General Manager said that the older engineers were less likely to pull up and move on after a couple of years, so hiring and retaining new staff wasn't as much of a problem as it was for their competitors.

Smart companies hire old engineers.
(But young sysadmins. B) )

SoupIsGood Food

Soilent Green

[Anonymous Coward]

... is made of people! People!

pre-coders

[Joseph Vigneau]

I got two pre-coders to put through school

:^)

What a load!

[Anonymous Coward]

Your knowledge is only useful if you share it! This is something that I am frankly surprised to read here, where there is less sympathy for intellectual property in general.

If you know all the answers and will not share them with your co-workers, boss or client, in what way are you more valuable to the company than someone who doesn't know the answers at all? This is precisely the sort of attitude that will make it more desirable to force you out, young or old.

I have seen this attitude exhibited by both young and old programmers, and have always found a way to make these people irrelevant. And it was obvious to everyone around them. And these people were not the ones who received outlandish raises, nor where they the ones who seemed to be having fun.
The overwhelming trend is that employment is dependent on current usefullness, and you are counseling people to be less usefull. This does not seem to be a good recipe for success.

side skills helpful

[Anonymous Coward]

If you only know generic business/web skills
you are going to compete against the hordes of
newbies and immigrants. If you know a side skill
or particular vertical market, e.g. medical,
you won't be in as generic a pool.

Sounds like outright agism to me

[plopez]

I am 36. I believe that I am a better programmer than ever simply because I have made made the rookie mistakes. I know several programmers in my age bracket who I would trust on a bad day before I would trust others on a good day. WE need skilled experienced programmers simply becase we need someone to help the next generation develop their skills. Otherwise, each generation will end up making the same mistakes over and over again (which, when I look at some of the software I have seen, appears to be happening) and having to solve the same problems over and over again. It does not matter if the older programmer is a technical or just on the team, the knowledge will be shared.

Managers want to do things on the cheap, so they hire young and inexperienced programmers. This leads to quality problems which means that the company them spends an inordinate amount of time and money writing fixes and on customer support. So any money they may have saved is wasted in these areas. Inexperienced programmers also cause schedules to slip. And since most managers are trained in the factory model of management (which is inappropriate in a research and development environment like progamming) they flog the coders 60 to 70 or more hours a week to meet deadlines. This too is counter productive as tired programmers make mistakes.

So basically, anybody who tries to get programmers "on the cheap" is hurting the company in the long run. Remember: you *always* get what you pay for....

Old Times and Current Skillsets

[duaner]

30 years old and apparently on the verge of obsolescence, or so WIRED! would have you believe. Didn't WIRED! also say that Push technology was going to kill the web?

Anyway, I've seen some older programmers get hustled out the door at previous jobs, but I don't believe it had anything to do with their age; it had everything to do with their attitude. These individuals seemed to have developed the opinion that the methods and tools that they had been using for the past five, ten, or twenty years were just fine, and that there was no reason for them to expand their skills ("This GUI stuff is a phase," one actually said to me. Two months later, he was gone.)

This is not to say that older programmers are not valuable. To the contrary, there are times when I'd give my left foot for a mentor/team leader who had a grasp of today's tools/methods combined with the wisdom and insight that veteran experience brings. That current knowledge is vital; today's developers (myself included) are not very likely to respect a manager who doesn't have a clue about what we do or how we do it.

I try to keep as current as I can on the technologies that I work with. In addition, whenever an opportunity to learn something new presents itself, I leap on it. I was recently asked if I'd like to serve as a backup administrator for my company's email servers. It's not something I'd want as a career, but why turn down the chance to add another skill to the ol' resume'? If anything, it helps to foster the perception that I'm willing to keep learning.

More Like Money...

[mholve]

Hire two punks out of school for the price of one "old timer" who knows what he's doing? Hmmm, you decide, Moneypenny.

West Coast Thing?

[Eric E. Coe]

I have been working in the New York area my entire professonal life (I am 40) and have never seen any indication of a lack of interest in my skills, which I keep sharp and up-to-date. I have worked for a variety of medium-to-large companies, only one start-up. I have never had any interest in mgmt. work, and I have always made that clear. My bosses don't expect me to work overtime - I do it sometimes because I want to. Maybe this is a west coast thing, in that hyper-start-up environment?
--

Over the hill and still growing

[phil]

I am 35 and my experience is similar to those of you youngsters nearly my age. ;-) I am in great demand, see my salary increase every year, and do leading-edge system development. I do it by simply staying current with technology. As others have stated, I can approach a problem, regardless the domain, and find it similar to something I did 2, 5, or maybe 10 years ago.

Of course, I broke away from the traditional corporate employment to be a member of a small, in-demand consultancy.

People my age and older must keep one eye on what they are doing and one eye on what everyone else is doing. If they feel threatened, then they must take the initiative and learn something else. If they can't rely on their employers to look after their best interest, they must do it themselves.

That's how I freed myself from a dead-end coder job, and how I keep myself valuable today.

Recent Batch of CS Grads

[Switchback]

Has anybody noticed a recent trend in CS graduates lately? When I graduated (almost 4 years ago) most CS students were in that degree program because they truly enjoyed programming, solving problems, and all-round hacking. However, lately I've been seeing CS graduates without that inquisitive nature. A lot of students seem to be taking up the degree now because it is now a more mainstream job and there's 'lot's of money in it' to quote one student that I interviewed. There are still the 'hacker' types who simply love it, but there are more and more 'non-tech' people graduating. I see them all the time.

Also, it seems that students are emphasizing more and more on 'high level' topics and have very little concept and understanding of the lower level stuff. e.g. We're seeing more Java coders and, I love this, 'HTML programmers'. That's great that they are interested in these areas, but we're loosing a vast technical base of people that really understand what's going on under the covers. Very few people know assembler (not that it's used a whole hell of a lot, but if you understand assembler, you can track down compiler problems, JVM problems, etc. and you simply know how things work rather than guess at them.) Very few people can use a debugger proficiently and even more use the debugger as a last resort debugging tool. They would rather litter the code with output statements first because, as one new employee put it 'the debugger is a pain to use.' Hmmmmm. Has anybody else noticed this trend? Sorry for the wind.

Re:Recent Batch of CS Grads

[WasterDave]

Yes. Oh, god yes.

I haven't had to do any recruiting for about a year now, but even then I noticed I was interviewing more those in the industry for "easy" money and less because it's just about the only thing they want to do.

Less people who know assembly? Less people who know any damn compiled language at all more like (and VB doesn't count). There are those, and possibly not a minority, who neither know nor care what the stack is. I once had to interview someone for a C++ job, couldn't tell you what an object was, but was mightilty excited when I told him we'd give him a P2 with 128 meg to develop on.

Jeez. Where will it all end.

Dave :)

Re:Recent Batch of CS Grads

[Rene S. Hollan]

Yup. Too many kids are in it "for the money". Of course, that was true when I got my first degree in 1982 as well, but it seams to be more of a problem today.

Of course, when the going gets tough, such people are the first ones to get going, and I don't mean it in the "let's get to work" sense.

Trouble is, they're now pegged as the mythical interchangable coder, that managers love to load balance. Development practices have shifted toward avoiding the "hard" problems at all costs, and days and days of overhead doing design and code inspections.

While this is a good idea, from my experience, seasoned designers just don't make the kind of mistakes that these techniques are designed to catch. And when a defects slips into integration or even system testing, the seasoned designer can usually track it down quickly. This requires good analytical skills, the ability to get down and dirty with the code (debuggers and logic analyzers). Today, these are rare qualities.

Unfortunately, most inexperienced kids just spin their wheels at such tasks, can't judge when it is worth learning how to use a strange tool so that it can be brought to bear, and so we have processes to avoid them at all costs.

Of course, this doesn't work: the odd defect slips through and then everyone is left scratching their heads. The "process" is followed for a week to track it down. And, nothing. It is such crisis that separate the "men" from the "boys", as it were (substitute women and girls as appropriate). The seasoned hacker grumbles "outta my way", turns off the source-code listing, and looks at the code generated by the compiler. Not being expert with the native instruction set, he sees something funny and checks the instruction manual. Sure enough, the compiler cached the result of reading some hardware. A bug in the compiler? Surely, that was declared volatile. "What's volatile," askes the confused kid. 'Nuff said. An edict is issued: "Code inspections will, henceforth, include checks for things that should be decalred 'volatile'". And the madness continues until the next bug: a linked-list insertion boundary bug. This time, it's in third party code, and no one can understand it. After all, it isn't indented to the coding standard....

When I started out, most could handle such things, and contrary to popular belief, bugs detected at integration time weren't all that costly, because they were found fast. They're costly today because the skill base to bring to bear against them is shrinking and the likelihood of them happening is increasing.

While early inspections help novice programmers, they hurt the seasoned designer, because he or she just doesn't make the kind of mistakes that this is designed to catch. Spreading the code out with liberal blank lines hurts because you can't see the whole function in an editor window at once.

The trouble here is two-fold: most kids can't code, don't exhale designs, and the crutches that help them hurt the seasoned hacker. He or she does not fit into the modern team profile.

I suspect the problem is more than just keeping one's skill set up to date ("Used Perl? Never... give me 30 minutes and some sample code: what you want doesn't sound difficult), though not doing that certainly IS suicide.

Re:Recent Batch of CS Grads

[slashdot-me]

> They would rather litter the code with output
> statements first because, as one new employee
> put it 'the debugger is a pain to use.'

gdb IS a pain to use. I gotta get me a frontend...

Don't listen to the media...

[Anonymous Coward]

I think that this is a debate that has been largely created by the media, and fueled by a small minority of programmers who are arrogant enough to think their way is the only way.

I am 21, and work at an internet startup. I am by far the youngest person there, with the average age being in the 30s and one over 50. We all go out for drinks together and have a good time. I am grateful that these guys are patient when I don't know something, and are willing to teach. The main reason people my age put in such long hours is that we have more to learn-I probably work less than the older guys because more than half my time is on the job education.

Who cares what age you are? It is a symbiotic relationship between the old and young. Any company worth working for is likely to realize that.

It's all just numbers...

[Kreep]

I think a few people have touched on one of the major issues in all this, and what I think is a failing in the article.

You hear all the time about the shortage of programmers in the industry, and how we are nowhere near saturation. Therefore it doesn't make sense that a part of the workforce is under-utilized.

But the difficulty with those numbers is this: They assess the quantity rather than the quantity of the available positions. I have yet to see any full analysis of exactly what kind of jobs are most in demand (and I don't think the article even tried to address that). Then we can understand who is going to be hired for those jobs.

There exist jobs out there, and many of them, which can be done as well by an 18-year-old as a 48-year-old. So people who are over 35 may find themselves over-qualified for many positions.

I am a co-op student in Canada (Americans read: intern) and I never have trouble finding positions with good companies. But I'm not exactly getting thrown into management level jobs here. But for what I'm doing, I can do it just as well as a far more experienced developer, and my salary is considerably lower. This is the premise that allows co-ops/interns to get jobs in the first place.

I would find the article much more informative if it could relate what jobs the older people are failing to get. Giving preference to younger, lower wage people for, say, basic software testing positions is hardly any surprise. Just like you wouldn't hire a veteran sales rep to stand in the street selling newspapers.

Food for thought.....

[fastcard]

Certainly something to think about. All the companies I come into contact with a very keen to hire young programmers and pay them huge amounts of money, precisely for the fact that they are willing to work a 70 hour week.

What the young programmers don't realise is that they're paying a 35 year old programmer the same money for a 40 hour week. My advise to young kids about to jump into the big money job. Check out what someone older at the company with the same skill set is getting for a regular weeks work. Probably the same as what you're getting for those long hours. Don't get caught out.

I learned quickly not to go WOW!! at the money I was being offered and look between the lines.

It took some people by surprise when I said, "Yeah, I'll work a 70 hour week, but you'll damn well pay me properly for it!!".

Still being offered silly money at 19 is kind of nice!!

Bull

[Anonymous Coward]

In this case, I think young people should simply tell management idiots that they are tired of taking it in the ass so that companies can pay for very cheap labor and hire as few techs as possible. I hate management. It is so incredibly typical that the least driven and often least intelligent end up managing everything. What else can they do? If you lack the ability to do other things.. become a manager. I really do not mean to attack anyone who actually cares about managing, and is good at what they do. However, there seems to be a lot of run-off in the management pool. These are exactly the kinds of people that should NOT be running the show. I object to this, and I will NEVER work my ass off just because I am a "TEAM PLAYER" or some other bullcrap. The "business world" with all of it's "oh I am so important, I am a big time manager" people can SUCK it.

Timing...

[Jay Maynard]

Oh, boy. Just the story I needed to read on my 39th birthday.
--

Over the hill at 40

[Anonymous Coward]

I am 42. I am working as a contractor now, by choice. I am designing Internet systems; previously I mainly worked in VB but now I am writing Perl, Javascript, C etc.

It has been my experience that many developers are kinda weird by comparison with mainstream humanity. Old, weird developers are a particular problem as they get bolshie about all kinds of issues like how big their cube area is and the finer points of pension plans. Senior management have learned how disruptive these people can be and choose younger, more politically naive cannon fodder.

Moral of story: 1. Keep your technical skills up to date 2. Stop criticizing management. Either do it (I have been an IS manager, btw) or keep out of the kitchen.

I believe more mature developers will be fine if they just stop pretending they are managers. In interview situations where the hiring manager is younger than they are, they have to learn to let that person establish a position of social dominance. This is not brown-nosing, its social engineering. You chose not to pursue the management path so the downside is that others are gonna tell you what they want done.

You really should aspire to more than a code-generating machine at this age. You should either be good at 'big picture' technology, or you should have good business analysis skills by now. Otherwise people wonder why you'd just grind out code all that time - don't you have any loftier goals.

People with good analytical skills are hard to find so if you are older, but shrewder, than capitalise on that.

FALLING DOWN

[Codifex Maximus]

Michael Douglas... shotgun... fastfood restaurant...

Don't let this happen to you! :)

Here's a different take...

[John Whorfin]

Ok, I'm a 32 year old system admin and web programmer (yet another Perl programmer). In my company, in another (non-internet) department there are IS types in the 40-50 year old range.

No, there no question that some these guys have great experience but most of them have lost that "spark" or excitement that I think is part of this job. They just come, do what ever it is they do for the day, and go home.

They wait for commercial courses to get training while I and my peers, still excited by this stuff, tinker with "new things" until we've learned it.

They are stagnant. I would not hire most of them today.

It's not an age thing, it's a burnout thing. I watch them every day and make promises to myself that that won't be me in 15 years.

It depends on where you live.

[Anonymous Coward]

Here in Phoenix, older engineers/programmers/technicians are plentiful and desired. When I lived in Chicago, it was completely different. You were expected to go into management by 35 or you were considered deadwood.

Chicago is a management-oriented town. That's one reason why I got out of there: I was having trouble finding work as a (then - in 1994) 39-year-old RF Engineering Technician/VB programmer with 20 years experience and no desire to manage.

Phoenix is different. They do look for experience here and are willing to pay for it. Salaries overall are a bit lower here but that's changing. Hardware or software - the employment picture is the same for both.

Over what hill

[bobm]

OK, I'm old (43), problem is I didn't grow up till just a few years ago... I didn't have kids (singular at this point) till 1.5 yrs ago and glad I waited. (But my son is really, really cool, has his own laptop and everything). I know that soon I'll have problems since lots of other programmers my age and younger have given up on pushing the envelope.

Hell, I have somewhere around 10 systems at home, start dabbling on my stuff when the kid goes to sleep (which is thankfully at 8:00pm), read lots, still watch cartoons (Batman Beyond, etc) but have a life. I can crank out code when I have to and enjoy doing that.

It's not easy and I don't expect it to be, I spend a lot of time reading but not just SciFi and Tech stuff. I also have other hobbies that keep the brain going so I don't burnout on one area.

I can see doing this for the next 20yrs since the first 20 were so interesting, but I don't know if I'll find anyone who'll hire me when I'm 62.

I just don't fit into management and that's where people say to go. I can't, they wear shoes.

I guess I'll have to go into marketing.

You don't get what you don't pay for.

[Codifex Maximus]

If you want the experience that comes with age, you will pay for it. If you hire programmers fresh out of class then that is exactly what you will get.

I'm not saying that green programmers are not capable, no; what I'm saying is, those programmers will make mistakes that could be extremely costly in a fast moving technological world. They will learn from thier mistakes - it's called experience - it's something that the 35 year old programmer has got in abundance.

As I said, you don't get what you don't pay for.

Old & in the Way

[robins]

In my company, we ancients are frequently overlooked because of social considerations: the 20 & 30-somethings socialize with each other after work and on weekends. When it comes time to help someone up the ladder, of course they're going to help their friends. It's only natural.

Unfortunately, this creates a work atmosphere which--while perhaps unintended--becomes de facto age discrimination. It gets awfully tiring to see someone with less experience, skill and time on the job get promoted while I've been in the same seat for 3 years.

Several reasons have been brought out...

[coreman]

I'm 43. I'm a well paid consultant, working in the trenches, writing code. I've been ou on my own since 1988 and I've found that if I want to avoid the management game (the fingers are too far from the keyboard), being a technical consultant is a good trade-off. One of the things I've come to realize is that if they're going to pay top dollar, they aren't going to give you a crap project.

When I got started coding, it was very important to know what every byte was being used for. You had to code efficiently and elegantly, simply to fit in the machine. You could debug code and actually see the big picture. lately, with the advent of cheap storage, code has lost the constraint of the hardware. People have lost sight of the fact that layers of abstraction aren't always good. You need to know what's going on at the hardware level if you're in a performance critical application. Lots of people jump on the bloatware bandwagon but very few realize that the talent to avoid it is being lost, slowly but surely. Performance is becoming a big issue in the industry but Moore's Law just says to wait and it will get better. I think that the lack of low level programming skills is starting to erode the programmer base and people are losing touch with the implementation.

The other side of the coin that I'm seeing as a hiring resource is that freshouts are coming into the industry expecting people to fall all over them just because they know how to put the latest compiler on their machine. One of the main questions I ask these kids when the come in is what the largest codebase is that they've worked on. Many of them have never worked on large scale systems. I'm hearing numbers in the "hundreds of lines of code" for the most part. Very few new team members are going to come on board and be given a blank sheet of paper to go write code on. They are going to come into a 2nd or 3rd generation software project to fix bugs or to add minor features. They may have to dive into 100k lines of code to try to figure out what's going on before they even get to write one line of their own. If they can't get their brains around it, they can't be a productive member of the team. I hold the schools responsible for this. I see the Linux movement helping here to a large extent because most up and coming "hackers" (the CORRECT usage) can't resist diving into their favorite distribution and trying to get their name on some patch. As that hiring manager, I'm thrilled to find that kid, but I'm more likely to hire the old hand that's been on several project teams and owned some subsystem. That old "folk" is going to get his brain around the project much faster than some script kiddie, used to dealing with 1-200 lines at a time. He's going to be more expensive to hire (but that gap seems to be closing fast, just ask someone 5 years out of college about freshout salaries) but hes going to contribute. I'm seeing a generally older median age in successful projects.

Hmmm, you seem concerned about a coup ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe you're not a good manager and those you employ know it.

What about experience?

[Anonymous Coward]

Gee, would you go to 21-years-old doctor (do they exist?), would you hire 21-y-o lawyer to defend you in court, would you let 21-y-o 'programmer' to architect your DBMS engine?

Don't Let This Make You Crazy

[The Ancient Geek]

I'm one of those over-the-hill guys, and yes--I have "domain experience" that is particularly useful. I've written for tech magazines for years, and I can spot a "plant" article a mile away.

Go back and read the article--this isn't investigative journalism. The guy with the "registry" of over-35 techies hired a PR firm who pitched the article to Wired. For balance the writer went out and got a couple of additional quotes. What you have is two or three anecdotes and a startup business with something to sell issuing a press release. It isn't the start of a trend.

That said, some older geeks do have trouble finding jobs. Generally, as your career progresses, you can specialize in technology or a specific industry or company. I work with a number of clients who have specialized with a particular company--they have bet their careers and their family's finances that the company will grow, thrive, and not get taken over.

Personally, I feel safer with technology. I may be older than you, but I'm confident that I'm at least as smart, and can learn at least as quickly. I recognize that technology changes, so I have to continually learn. Peers of mine who have not continued to upgrade their skills are the guys with problems finding a job. Back in 1974 COBOL was all you needed to know. In 1997 COBOL was *the* hottest ticket in New York. But now that the Y2K crisis is over you can't even find COBOL maintenance work--the language is just plain dead. Guys who never bothered to progress are now scratching their heads, wondering why they can't get jobs with all their "experience."

It's all about history

[Laxitive]

I think this all has to do with the history of the whole computer science field. When computers really started taking off, it was the young geeks, the stereotypical teenage-hacker(not cracker, hacker), twentysomething coder, who really provided the solutions that business could use. In the past, at least, it was always the young coder, the young computer entrepeneur, who really got things moving. This is pretty much predictable, with any new technology, there needs to be time for it it "phase in" to society. I think computers and programming, now is at a point where even the older generations have a good understanding of the technologies, but the stereotypes still linger, the whole computer programming field cant escape it's history. It's really sad, because I personally beleive that older individuals plainly have a lot more experience, in life and in coding, for businesses to ignore them. Businesses DO need the liveliness and the vigor of young, fresh-out-of-bachelors, coders, but they could also really use the calm, enlightened view of the elders.

I also beleive that this is a symptom of American culture's general lack of respect for old people. They see old people as some sort of blemish on their personal image.. they're wrinkly, not physically attractive, fit only to be relegated to old-folks-homes, but fail to see the lifetime's worth of knowledge just waiting to be gleaned from the old-timers.

Anyway, I love coding, and I'd do it if I was paid a lot, or if I was paid nothing (the latter is the case for me right now), but I'm really disturbed by this rejection of elder individuals by the high-tech industry. I'm 18 right now, just finished my first year, and starting on my second.. and my dad keeps repeating to me with an extreme urgency:
As SOON as you get a job, start putting away money for your PENSION. Think 30 years ahead, 'cause when you're an old man, and have no reserve, you're FUCKED. I think that's really the only option for young individuals going into this field, SAVE. It's amazing how you can accumulate money if you keep to a set savings plan.. with just 2000 dollars a year, deposited into a savings account, every year, non-failing, you'll be able to support yourself in your later years, no retirement problems whatsoever.

-Laxative

Workers produce more than they receive in wages

[Anonymous Coward]

Marx said that All workers produce more than they receive in wages, otherwise, no business would make a profit. Workers are therefore shafted from day one by employers. The only question for the employer is, "To what extent should I shaft my employees". When faced with a decision of not "Should I be good or evil", but rather, "How evil should I be", is it any wonder that we all feel taken advantage of by our employers? When there is no "right" decision, evil will flourish. The only escape is to start your own business, but then, you *become* the evil.

Broaden your focus...

[Anonymous Coward]

Once again, you're (apparently) focusing only on software. I hate to break this to you lot, but the best and leanest program code in the world is just so many gibberish-filled disk files without the HARDware for it to run on.

Good hardware skills are as essential to an engineering background as knowing at least something about the software behind it. Too many dedicated 'hardware' engineers ignore the software side, and too many programmers are ignorant (or uncaring) of how their code will interact with the hardware in real-world situations.

The key is 'balance.' If you've done nothing but write code all your life, get with a local community college about taking some electronics courses. Learn how to wield a soldering station as well as you can type. Build one of the project kits from Ramsy (sp?) Electronics. Do SOMEthing other than bang on keys.

If, on the other wing, you're a hardware type who's never touched a computer outside of replacing a broken board or something, then see about taking some programming courses, even if it's just BASIC or ADA (the latter, FWIW, is widely used in avionics and other real-time control apps). Learn what it means to chase an elusive bug through a good-sized block of code. You'll gain a real appreciation of what the software folk are going through to put this stuff out.

Being multitalented is not only fun, it tends to balance one's perspective. Rather than learning everything you can about one narrow subject, wouldn't it be better (and probably more fun) to learn a little about them all?

Maybe I'm totally whacked...

[casmithva]

...but I'd rather hire a programmer, sysadmin, datbase admin, etc. with some battle scars than someone fresh out of college. Maybe the universities in this area REALLY suck, or maybe our HR department really sucks, but the bulk of the young kids that've come through here in the last couple of years have been undisciplined (can't write efficient code in any language, are very susceptible to hype, etc.), can't read other developers' code, and don't really know, either through experience or at least classroom time, what it takes to build solid systems. So we end up having senior engineers mentor and supervise them closely, and while that might help the young engineers mature, it also takes valuable time away from the senior engineer's other responsibilities. In an organization in which the senior engineers are already overtasked, that can be even more costly. We've had some young kids come in who were mostly self-taught, and they've turned out to be speculator engineers. But they've been rare.

And as for the hyped 60, 70, or 80 hour workweeks... I used to do that, but one day (literally) I realized that it just wasn't worth it anymore. I was salaried -- no overtime -- and underpaid, and I was severely neglecting my personal life and interests. So I changed jobs, cut back to working between 40 and 50 hours a week, and made a real effort to spend more time with others, catch up on neglected interests, etc. And I think it made a real difference, both in my physical health and in my emotional well-being. Being able to step away from work for a while also helps to rejuvenate me; I seem to do some of my best brainstorming on the train home. Nowadays I try to encourage those who work for me to not put in the insane hours unless it's really necessary because friends, family, and health are hard to replace. I'm sure that 60, 70, or 80 hour work weeks will come back to haunt some folks in increased health problems later on. I'm now seeing some younger engineers who're working 60 - 80 hours a week burning out.

We have a lot of mid- to late-20's employees here, but we also have a healthy mixture of folks in their 30s, 40s, 50s, and 60s, and the older ones, even if their skills are a bit out of date, still have a lot to offer from their own experiences.

Notes From Over the Hill

[shaum]

First of all, thanks to Wired for getting my day off to a depressing start. (I'm 36, and unaccustomed to thinking of myself as a "geezer"...)

Really, though, this should be a cautionary tale for anyone who wants to make a life of technology: don't sit still. Keep learning, keep acquiring new skills; don't be afraid to say goodbye to technologies you spent a long time mastering (I wrote some damned good FORTRAN code in the mid-1980s); and when job-hunting, look for employers that use mainstream tech, and avoid technological dead-ends (RPG-III, anyone?) as if they were ebola.

I started out writing FORTRAN on an NEC mainframe and a VAX 11/750; my current job is Web programming in a mix of Perl, HTML, and JavaScript. When it comes time to look for another job, I can prove that I can transition to new technologies because I have already done so several times before.

"I'm not dead yet ... I don't want to go on the cart ... I feel happy ..."

Hire Some H1-B immigrants!

[Anonymous Coward]

They can't quit their jobs and won't complain! Yep, indentured servitude is the answer to high-tech labor problems!

Young or Old, it comes down to good ol' Experiance

[X-Usagi]

Age on the part of the person shouldn't really make any difference. (Albeit a 2 year-old isn't going to know anything, and a 110 year-old probably isn't going to remember anything). However, it seems to me like it's the experiance behind the person. A 35 year-old who just picked up his first C book isn't going to know more than a 19 year yold who mastered C++ at the age of 15.

Also, an 18 year-old who is just entering college to study in "Computing" is going to be puny compared to a 50 year-old who has been software and hardware engineering for nearly 20 years. After all, we all get old, dont we? (Oh yeah, except for me of course, I'm Immortal ;-)

typical

[TedC]

From the article:

The recruiter asked, "Why would you at 39 still want to be a programmer? Shouldn't you be doing something else?"

This sort of thinking is common in IT. A lot of people view programming as something they have to do on their way to becoming a project manager. Needless to say, these people aren't very good programmers themselves, and they tend to view other programmers as "resources" instead of human beings, which means that there are vasts amounts of untapped skill in most IT shops. Anyway, thanks for reading, I'll step off my soapbox now...

BTW, I'm a 39 year old programmer, I don't do anything much other than Unix, C, and relational DBs, and I've never had problems finding work. I'm not sure where all these unemployed "older" programmers come from, but they're not from around here (MN).

TedC

Anecdote.

[Anonymous Coward]

Several years ago, when I was fresh out of the small town and into the city to do some real work, I thought of myself as pretty good. I guess I had a big ego, but I kept it to myself (I'm good at that). There was this older gentleman who once in a while came into the shop and started rambling on about some aspect of the computer industry or about programming. I got the impression he didn't know what he was talking about, and was kind of senile.

I kept getting the feeling that possibly, rather than this guy being stupid, just maybe he was at a level WAY beyond what I was at. I asked him one day, when I thought I knew him well enough that it wouldn't be rude, what kind of education background he had. Boy was I surprised.
PH.D in computing science. PH.D in political science. 4 or 5 masters degrees. 20 years of formal education.
After getting to know this man better, it turned out that the kinds of programming, the types of problems he attacks with software for FUN are things that I can't even come close to understanding.

Cheers.

Programming is a craft

[davidsheckler]

The more you do it the better you get. I'm 31 and I've been coding for 12 years. I work with programmers who average 50 and are much more productive than I am. Not because they're more intelligent but because they've made all the mistakes. Programming is a craft. It wears paths of thinking into your brain. The more you do it the easier it gets.

I understand that companies lay off older programmers because they think they will save money. I've seen them do it. I've seen them pay the price. How could a company possibly lay off 300 programmers in their 50's and expect 170 consultants (who average 25) to pick up where they left off? They ended up hiring another 500 consultants and it ended up costing them 40 million.

The smart companies know better and those are the ones I will work at no matter what my age.

Could it be fear of age-discrimination lawsuits?

[Decibel]

One of my dad's theories on the dearth of jobs for older people is that companies are affraid that if they do hire an older person, they are exposing themselves to a risk of a lawsuit should they need to fire that person. I'm not sure if this is at work in the software industry (where 35 seems to mean you're a dinosaur), perhapse it's more true in other engineering professions, such as electrical (which is what both my dad and I are).

Thoughts?

Late Starter

[BoraBashi]

I started programming at the age of 32, five years ago. I dropped out
of graduate school in mathematics, spent several years as a drug
addict and ne'er do well, eventually got married and picked up a book
by K&R. Since then, over the course of five years, I've developed OS/2
PM applications, Win16, Win32, porting Win16 to Win32, C++ OOA, OOD,
and OOP. After a quick dip into the horrors of DCOM, I discovered
Linux and now work as a C++ and Perl programmer in a UNIX shop.

You've got to keep your skills up, keep reading, find the BEST texts
(not those garbage Learn X 21 days books), the ones that make you
think hard and explore both theoretical and practical sides of the
technology you're interested in, read trade journals so you're
familar with the industry landscape, read newsgroups, and master the
art of schmoozing with other programmers.

When you go on an interview, and are trying to break into a new
technology, you've got to know enough about it not just to pass a
technical quiz, but to be able to explain the use of the technology in
its historical and technological context. Know the pros and cons of
what you're getting into. Tell an old war story that parallels some
pro or con of the technology you're trying to get into. That's the
stuff that will make an interviewer's heart shine for you.

Well, this is my experience. I've got a 10 year gap from my
college degree (math) till my first programming job. I tell them I did
nothing relevant to my technical career during that time and leave it
at that. Lump it or leave it. I've been coding for five years now,
never spent more than 15 months at any job, all of which used
different tecnologies/tools/platforms/languages. So I've got five
years of proof behind me that when I say "Hey, I can learn that
technology and be an asset to your org.", they believe you.

This is what I'm going to take with me into my fourties. Keep reading,
coding, developing my skills and keeping up with industry trends.

It's not that hard.

wow i'll miss it.

[Anonymous Coward]

i am 27 and still in school. i guess by the time i finish PHD i will be 36, which place me in the unemployment situation :~(

As we all know this is really a case-by-case issue. Job maket is not like car insurance. People don't look at your numbers to hire you.

An engineerer used to tell me that she would like to do programming, but she was afraid of job instability. I was surprised and ask her what made her think so. She told me, "if you can't come up with the program you get fired."

A lame person is a lame person, regardless of age, education, etc.

Another thing i wanna point out is that, it seems to me that the 20+ year old are doing desktop VB,C, Java, consumer type programming. specialized talent w/ expirience seems to be sort after.

Lack of non-management career paths

[telly_o]

I'm 34 and work in Israel at a medium-size
embedded systems/datacom shop. 18 months ago
I was promoted to group leader: First I
supervised a Physics Phd-dropout who had done
a 6-month crash-course in programming, then I
supervised a 47-yr. old Russian guy.

Both managing gigs flopped miserably - to a
large extent because the managees were not
selected by me, but also because I prefer
software design and coding to patting people
on the back, messing w/ MS Project, and going
to lots of meetings. My bosses have now
apparently shifted me into a system architecture
type gig - which is fine for now.

When I look at want ads however I see that most
senior positions involve project/group management.
I've heard that there are a few companies, Novell
in particular, that have a non-managerial path
of advancement for techies. But these seem to
be the exception.

I'm concerned that a few years down the line I
will find it more difficult to find full-time
work. Though I think I should have no problem
as a contract programmer.

As an aside, I think that it would be great
if Slashdot had some sort of permanent forum
for discussion of tech careers.

This Chemical Engineer needs advice

[Jon_S]

And don't kid yourself, it will cool down someday. About 15-20 years ago it was chemical engineers who were red hot. And about 5-10 years ago they couldn't find jobs for anything.

Tell me about it (B.S. 1982, Ph.D. 1987, both ChemE, Ph.D. from Berkeley). I actually caught the environmental consulting wave of the late 80's/early 90's, but that is now deader than dead. I am still at the consulting firm, but it's boring as hell. All reports and bureaucracy, and not much technical. I think this technical boredom is what lead me to allow Linux to take over my life three and a half years ago. For my vacation last week, I bought O'Reilly's "Apache, the Definitive Guide" as the best book I could find at Borders for good reading by the lake (and it was great!) (and no, I don't run a web site).

So of course, I wonder all the time whether I should continue to waste away as a consultant, or try to get paid for what I spend a hell of a lot of time on as a hobby: namely Linux (or other computer) stuff. Although my first programming was on a PDP-8 in Junior High, other than acing the CS101 as a freshman, I didn't do much programming (remember, we were still using punch cards as undergrads). But it still fascinates the hell out of me. I currently don't do too much programming even now, since I don't have too many "itches to scratch". But when I do, I can dive right into it. A few years ago (just before I got into Linux), I wrote a fairly complex database frontend/query developer, etc. in Paradox's ObjectPAL without any prior experience (I got a ObjectPAL reference book to help). Maybe this is trivial, I don't know.

But what really ges me more interested is networking issues. I of course have my house networked (just because I could, don't really need it), and the networking O'Reilly books are the ones that I usually end up picking up for light reading.

But I'm going on 39 now, which puts me way over the hill. Should I even consider jumping into the computer field? I realize I'll have to take some classes first, both for the content themselves, as well as for the resume. I know I'll have to take a pay cut. But, given what is said in this thread, does it make sense to even consider this. The arguments in favor of the "older" (35+) coders is their experience, but I'd be coming in a the 20-y.o. experience level. Would going after a networking position make any more sense?

Any advice?

huh?

[xfrosch]

As a consultant about to turn 40 who could bill 80 hours a week if it were consistent with my sanity, I'm always a little mystified by these stories. I don't know any unemployed programmers my age in any of the markets I've worked in lately (which cover most of the Midwest).

I have strong feelings about the competence of people in positions of hiring responsibility who allow age to play any role in their hiring decisions, but if you don't already share them, I'm not going to be able to convince you here. You'll learn, eventually.

It IS true that people who are unemployable as programmers have had a much better opportunity to demonstrate their incompetence by the time they're 40 than they have in their mid-20s, I suppose.

I suspect that this phenomenon may be somewhat geographically localized, possibly more common on the west coast. In any case there's a lesson here for geekpeople of all ages: as I often tell people, my 1981 degree in electrical engineering was mostly obsolete within five years, and I've been making a living from self-taught skills for the subsequent fifteen. Folks whose learning styles aren't autodidactic probably should remember to go back to school periodically.

Basic economics

[kallisti]

You need to learn some economics.

Your conclusion would be true only if there was some definition of value which held equal for everyone. The basis of economics is two people exchanging things for things they want more. For instance, to me a CD is worth more than the 15 dollars it takes to get it. To the store, the money is worth more. No one gets shafted.

In exchange for my time and labor, I get benefits, pay, and some intangible benefits such as meeting people, learning things, and job satifaction. I don't feel in any way shafted (at my current job anyway).

Further, the amount of work you produce isn't linear. Two people working together can create something that neither one seperately could ever do. The combined result could be worth more than individual work. The company can then give the workers what they would've earned seperately and still make profit. So who loses?

It is true that evil companies exist, but I don't agree that it is necessary.

P.S. I realize my buying a CD example ignores MP3, artist rights, monopoly, and other issues where people in fact are shafted, but that is tangent to my main point.

Some of the best programmers I've known were women

[Dirt Road]

Funny how I was telling my mom about this last night.

I suspect that my daughter will be more of a techie than my son. He's good with computers, but his passions lie in other areas.

-- Dirt Road

Old & Withered? Come to Canada!

[decipher_saint]

I'm an "up and comer" living in a province that starts with 'A', I graduated from college with all these great programming skills (from C++ to HTML from Oracle to MS SQL 6.5) and do you think I can find a job? Apparently if you want to work in Canukland you have to be an average age of dead. Canadian industry has some kind of mortal fear of hiring people out of college, the only way to get hired is to have 2-5 years of practical business development / analysis under your belt. This only leads to the old no experiance = no job routine.


In the defence of our elder programming gods, I will say this. I went to college with a guy who was a carpenter until he fell off a roof and couldn't do carpentry any more. Through the Workers Compensation Board he took computer programming with the rest of us 'youngins' and ended up with honors!

paying for quality

[Kyril]

A lot of times, companies will deliberately hire new graduates and hope they don't screw up too much before they get clued in, rather than looking for people who are already competent or even particularly good. While this saves the company money up front, I think the lost of output and quality of output more than makes this a bad strategy.

Admittedly, competent people are harder to find (if you're willing to wait for graduation times)...but I don't ever want to work in a place where I'm the best they've got by a long shot...

homemade eye patches.

[Banana Fred]

How about 45?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm even past that. Fortunately, terminal acne (and general
immaturity) keep me looking young. So far, I've had no
trouble staying employed all these years (>20 writing software).
My general rules are:

1. Learn the latest stuff on your own (seems like C++ is still
it, with maybe Java moving up the ranks).
2. ALWAYS use Unix or Linux for development, even if
targeting MS OS's. With Unix/Emacs/vi/make/gcc/gdb, you
have a really productive environment that you don't have
to relearn every year.
3. AVOID doing Windows programming. Their API's and
tools change all the time, and aren't even compatible
across their current versions.
4. Don't work more than 40 hours/week. Think about your
work while you're relaxing, and you'll likely come up with
a simpler way to do things. Then you can work even less!

This is why we need tech unions

[Anonymous Coward]

The greedy corporations dont care their entire wealth is based upon the collective intellectual works of all their employees.