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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)

#71

Post by NoCulturalFit »

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'm 30 and I feel "unhirable". Pretty much up to speed on most platforms and languages.

I guess it's for the better. Flipping burgers is probably in my future, and I am pretty happy with it.

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

#72

Post by jpatokal »

cjg wrote: post #66
jordanb wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

You said: "And who wants to hire a 45 year old junior web developer?" That smacks of pure ageism to me. Just recast it to a racial context to see: "And who wants to hire a black junior web developer?"

Not so: the word "junior" implies that they're new to web development and need close supervision. If they're 45 and still a junior web dev, they're either incapable of moving forward in their career (bad), or have just done a radical mid-life career shift (not necessarily bad, but probably warrants some extra scrutiny).

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

#73

Post by dwarman »

Don't know where I sit in this bell curve. Probaby far to the right. The question is - what moral to the story can be gained from my case.

I turn 68 next month. 7 years ago I was cold-call recruited (they called, not me) and offered by three companies all wanting embedded systems expertise. All at the same time. Never rains but it pours, eh?

Two were boring embedded Linux. One was fun gaming console OS. Audio SDK and DSP, specifically (although I was not pointed there for a good year after hiring). I'm still there. And the interesting bit is - I had never coded Audio or DSP before. They liked my technology surfing history, that wide 'T' shaped profile on LI. And, clearly, age had nothing to do with it. Experience, proven adaptability, and quick at learning new stuff did. Is my theory, anyway. But that is not something one can decide to add to the CV in a panic after the fact of layoffs. It starts in ones' teens and never stops.

But then, this is an established Japanese company in Seattle. Two major differences to SV start-ups.

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

#74

Post by meir_yanovich »

Isamu wrote: post #14
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 year…

You have nothing to be a shame , On the contrary c++ is still the most flexible + powerful programming ecosystem and UNIX's Linux's are the same. there is less and less real cross platform c++ developers.

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

#75

Post by IndianAstronaut »

danieltillett wrote: post #25
lqdc13 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Biotech also pays a lot less. If you look at current jobs such as "bioinformatics programmer", the salaries are somewhere between a biologist and a software engineer even though it requires more knowledge than either. Remember, biologists start off at around 35-50k/yr on jr. level, while SEs start at ~100k+. Basically, it is better to be a junior level SE than a super senior bioinformatician.

This is certainly true. The reason why is most of the "bioinformatics programmers” come from a biology background and switch over to development. It is far quicker to go from biology -> cs than cs -> biology. The real problem with biology is the salaries don’t rise as fast you become more more senior. Biotech is certainly not the easy way to wealth.

The time to market difference is huge in regular software than research. Also, the risks of failure are very high. So incomes are cut, except with blockbusters where the rewards flow to the top.

One reason I am glad I got out of biotech.

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

#76

Post by rollthehard6 »

Although it's obviously more of a problem for hardware people judging by this article, this makes me glad, as a sysadmin, that my career has been almost exclusively contract based.

This wasn't much of a conscious choice, it was just the way it panned out for me early on but after 21 years in IT and only 1.5 years of that in 'permanent' employment, I feel glad that this way of working has forced me to chop and change roles, technologies and sectors so that I have done UNIX/Linux SA, DBA and storage work and have had some recent AWS/ansible experience too.

If I had stayed at my first 'enterprise' role, I could probably be in some management role now or be in a technical role that would have made me hard to employ elsewhere too. I'm much happier that I think I now have a record of varied experience showing I can pick up new stuff.

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

#77

Post by dsfsdfd »

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…

Not everyone has the luxury of "considering another line of work".

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

#78

Post by pjc50 »

kspaans wrote: post #36
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…

Have you found that your salary followed a trend of increasing ~10%/year? (I read that somewhere as the target amount you should receive as a raise annually.) Give-or-take fluctuations due to lay-offs, taking opportunities over salary, etc.

When inflation is 1%? You'll get salary increases early on as you go up the job title ladder, but it's a short ladder.

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

#79

Post by kspaans »

pjc50 wrote: post #78
kspaans wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you found that your salary followed a trend of increasing ~10%/year? (I read that somewhere as the target amount you should receive as a raise annually.) Give-or-take fluctuations due to lay-offs, taking opportunities over salary, etc.

When inflation is 1%? You'll get salary increases early on as you go up the job title ladder, but it's a short ladder.

Yeah the number I found must have been from back when we actually had inflation. ;)

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

#80

Post by br3w5 »

dwarman wrote: post #73

Don't know where I sit in this bell curve. Probaby far to the right. The question is - what moral to the story can be gained from my case. I turn 68 next month. 7 years ago I was cold-call recruited (they called, not me) and offered by three companies all wanting embedded systems expertise. All at the same time. Never rains but it pours, eh? Two were boring embedded Linux. One was fun gaming console OS. Audio SDK and…

The media likes to imply that the only tech companies are start-ups or Google, FB, Amazon and Apple but in reality there are plenty more established companies looking to implement new (and well-established) technologies.
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