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

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.

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...)

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*

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...

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...

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.