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Old Techies Never Die; They Just Can’t Get Hired as an Industry Moves On (2012)

nytimes.com

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Re: Old Techies Never Die; They Just Can’t Get Hired as an Industry Moves On (2012)

#11

Post by danieltillett »

acconrad wrote: post #2

From what I'm gathering as a developer moving into 30, you have two options: 1. Market yourself so that when you hit the pay ceiling, you can move into consulting/freelancing with enough of a name for yourself that you can justify your rates to businesses. 2. Move into management. If you hate marketing, start looking for management/mentoring opportunities now so that your next promotion/job has some sort of manager t…

There is the third option which is start your own business and don’t work for anyone. Not the easiest option, but you don’t need to worry about ageism.

Re: Old Techies Never Die; They Just Can’t Get Hired as an Industry Moves On (2012)

#12

Post by spc476 »

markbnj wrote: post #7

So I turned 55 years old last Monday, am employed as a senior software engineer for a startup in the voter education and civic engagement space, and I guess I'm qualified to comment on this. I read this same refrain over and over, and if I peer just a little bit between the lines I think I perceive a common pattern. A lot of these people are just not up to keeping up. Learning the next thing is a wearisome burden for…

I'll agree. In the office I work in (Florida) I would say half the employees are 40+ (I'm one of them) and we're doing Android development. On my own team, I'm the youngest at 46 (and ironically, the one with the most seniority on my team). I work with people who have 30 to 40 years of experience in the computer industry but only a few with Android. And it's worked out just fine for us.

Re: Old Techies Never Die; They Just Can’t Get Hired as an Industry Moves On (2012)

#13

Post by jordanb »

markbnj wrote: post #7

So I turned 55 years old last Monday, am employed as a senior software engineer for a startup in the voter education and civic engagement space, and I guess I'm qualified to comment on this. I read this same refrain over and over, and if I peer just a little bit between the lines I think I perceive a common pattern. A lot of these people are just not up to keeping up. Learning the next thing is a wearisome burden for…

As a 34 year old I always like hearing of people who actually manage to pull off a long career, it gives me hope.

If you notice, a lot of these people in that article are in hardware design: electrical engineering, probably Verilog and the like. A lot of that work has successfully been outsourced which I think is the real cause of the decline. I suspect it didn't look like it was a particularly bad field to be in until it suddenly wasn't.

It's a long way from webdev though. And yeah these are presumably smart guys who could pick up webdev, but could they make the career transition without getting bumped back down to Junior by the hiring manager? And who wants to hire a 45 year old junior web developer?

There was an article recently about YCombinator shifting its investments to biotech. Suppose webdev dried up and all the funding started flowing to biotech. I'm sure I could learn what I'd need to know and I bet you could too, but could we head over to the biotech companies and sell ourselves as "middle aged web guys, self taught biotech engineers (no experience)?"

Re: Old Techies Never Die; They Just Can’t Get Hired as an Industry Moves On (2012)

#14

Post by Isamu »

markbnj wrote: post #7

So I turned 55 years old last Monday, am employed as a senior software engineer for a startup in the voter education and civic engagement space, and I guess I'm qualified to comment on this. I read this same refrain over and over, and if I peer just a little bit between the lines I think I perceive a common pattern. A lot of these people are just not up to keeping up. Learning the next thing is a wearisome burden for…

Cheers! I turned 54 this year, still programming, still having fun. That's the key I suppose, being interested in learning more which for me right now is computational vision. There really are too many fascinating things in the world than I have time to learn properly.

On the other hand I often feel like the bar for keeping up can be extremely low ... at work I am back to using Unix-derived systems after some 30 years. And emacs, again 30+ years. And C++, over 20 years. You get the picture.

I usually have to resort to my own projects to learn something really different.

Re: Old Techies Never Die; They Just Can’t Get Hired as an Industry Moves On (2012)

#16

Post by [deleted] »

spc476 wrote: post #12
markbnj wrote: post #7

So I turned 55 years old last Monday, am employed as a senior software engineer for a startup in the voter education and civic engagement space, and I guess I'm qualified to comment on this. I read this same refrain over and over, and if I peer just a little bit between the lines I think I perceive a common pattern. A lot of these people are just not up to keeping up. Learning the next thing is a wearisome burden for…

I'll agree. In the office I work in (Florida) I would say half the employees are 40+ (I'm one of them) and we're doing Android development. On my own team, I'm the youngest at 46 (and ironically, the one with the most seniority on my team). I work with people who have 30 to 40 years of experience in the computer industry but only a few with Android. And it's worked out just fine for us.

[deleted]

Re: Old Techies Never Die; They Just Can’t Get Hired as an Industry Moves On (2012)

#17

Post by pinaceae »

danieltillett wrote: post #11
acconrad wrote: post #2

From what I'm gathering as a developer moving into 30, you have two options: 1. Market yourself so that when you hit the pay ceiling, you can move into consulting/freelancing with enough of a name for yourself that you can justify your rates to businesses. 2. Move into management. If you hate marketing, start looking for management/mentoring opportunities now so that your next promotion/job has some sort of manager t…

There is the third option which is start your own business and don’t work for anyone. Not the easiest option, but you don’t need to worry about ageism.

oh boy.

if you run your own biz, you work for someone - your customers. and you need a steady supply of those, which looks easy at the beginning, but a couple years in can get really, really hard as they retire and you suck at sales.

seen this so often not even funny, forced early retirement on shitty terms due to a tanking self-employement biz.

Re: Old Techies Never Die; They Just Can’t Get Hired as an Industry Moves On (2012)

#18

Post by danieltillett »

pinaceae wrote: post #17
danieltillett wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is the third option which is start your own business and don’t work for anyone. Not the easiest option, but you don’t need to worry about ageism.

oh boy. if you run your own biz, you work for someone - your customers. and you need a steady supply of those, which looks easy at the beginning, but a couple years in can get really, really hard as they retire and you suck at sales. seen this so often not even funny, forced early retirement on shitty terms due to a tanking self-employement biz.

Well I didn’t say it was easy :)

You do have a little more control over the situation than you do if you get laid off for turning 40.

Re: Old Techies Never Die; They Just Can’t Get Hired as an Industry Moves On (2012)

#20

Post by danieltillett »

jordanb wrote: post #13
markbnj wrote: post #7

So I turned 55 years old last Monday, am employed as a senior software engineer for a startup in the voter education and civic engagement space, and I guess I'm qualified to comment on this. I read this same refrain over and over, and if I peer just a little bit between the lines I think I perceive a common pattern. A lot of these people are just not up to keeping up. Learning the next thing is a wearisome burden for…

As a 34 year old I always like hearing of people who actually manage to pull off a long career, it gives me hope. If you notice, a lot of these people in that article are in hardware design: electrical engineering, probably Verilog and the like. A lot of that work has successfully been outsourced which I think is the real cause of the decline. I suspect it didn't look like it was a particularly bad field to be in unt…

As someone who has gone the other way I would say no. Getting to the forefront in biotech is a 10 year full time journey. I have met a few developers who have tried to learn, but they have all struggled.

Having said this don’t worry, if you think the job prospects are bad for old developers they are far worse for old scientists.

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