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It’s Tough Being Over 40 in Silicon Valley

bloomberg.com

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Re: It’s Tough Being Over 40 in Silicon Valley

#31

Post by anexprogrammer »

tn13 wrote: post #3

Well it might change a lot as suddenly number of coders in their 40s goes up.

That should have happened long ago. I did CS and programming as high school subjects and am past 50. The tens of thousands of extra people trained up to solve the millenium bug crisis (that mostly didn't happen) are probably around 40 now.

Of my tech friends around my age a lot have drifted into other things - often dramatically different.

Some because they were sick of IT (often for similar reasons), and some because it was time for a change. Quite a few ran into ageism (agencies and HR rather than the actual techie people as a rule) and staying programming past 40 is somehow seen as failing your career rather than going into management.

Re: It’s Tough Being Over 40 in Silicon Valley

#32

Post by virmundi »

SubiculumCode wrote: post #24
jwr wrote: post #12

This is idiotic. People over 40 trade one set of skills for another (source: I'm over 40). You lose short-term memory, can't juggle too many things simultaneously, and aren't always up to date on every latest fad. But what you gain is fantastically valuable: intuition, abstract thinking, systems thinking, ability to detect patterns in large systems, ability to notice that certain problems have been solved in a differ…

im sure its all about 40 year olds not wanting to work 70+ hour weeks all the time.

Don't forget that they will probably command a higher wage too. And they will probably take time off for family since they have one.

Re: It’s Tough Being Over 40 in Silicon Valley

#33

Post by 0xdeadbeefbabe »

anexprogrammer wrote: post #7

It’s Tough Being Over 40 in tech, anywhere. I understand only some of why ageism is more rife in tech than other fields. But even in young app companies, with young founders, some experience of software engineering or complementary fields gained through experience can be useful. Personally I prefer a relatively young environment - I don't like large company formality and I enjoy the atmosphere of startups and app com…

> It’s Tough Being Over 40 in tech, anywhere.

I think it was more tech in 70s when they wore lab coats and did new things. Now it's more of a popularity thing or a way to extract gold.

Re: It’s Tough Being Over 40 in Silicon Valley

#34

Post by matt_wulfeck »

jwr wrote: post #12

This is idiotic. People over 40 trade one set of skills for another (source: I'm over 40). You lose short-term memory, can't juggle too many things simultaneously, and aren't always up to date on every latest fad. But what you gain is fantastically valuable: intuition, abstract thinking, systems thinking, ability to detect patterns in large systems, ability to notice that certain problems have been solved in a differ…

All of those things are great, but you're assuming your manager and peers will value them like you do.

I see this type of thinking applied to an issue in a way that results in people becoming increasingly irritated. Silicon Valley wants to hear "yes yes yes", not reason why you think XYZ solution won't work.

Re: It’s Tough Being Over 40 in Silicon Valley

#35

Post by djb_hackernews »

jwr wrote: post #12

This is idiotic. People over 40 trade one set of skills for another (source: I'm over 40). You lose short-term memory, can't juggle too many things simultaneously, and aren't always up to date on every latest fad. But what you gain is fantastically valuable: intuition, abstract thinking, systems thinking, ability to detect patterns in large systems, ability to notice that certain problems have been solved in a differ…

Did you read the article? One of the points was employers don't value those skills and traits. They value youth and naivete.

Re: It’s Tough Being Over 40 in Silicon Valley

#36

Post by aetherson »

jganetsk wrote: post #23
linkregister wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed! The primary reason for the median age in Google and Facebook being so low is that the median age for programmers is low [1]. The reason for this low median age? There are more young programmers than old because it's an expanding field! Though I must admit that the evidence points to current significant age biases in the hiring of these companies. The most successful older software developers I've come across…

The primary reason for the median age in Google and Facebook being so low is that the median age for programmers is low Are you sure you have the cause and effect going in the right direction? It could be that the median age for programmers is low precisely because of ageism.

So I'm staring down the bore of my 40th birthday.

That means that I graduated college in 1999. When I was looking at colleges (in 1995), many of the colleges that I looked at didn't have a computer science department. Many of the ones that did, had had that CS department for less than five years.

My class ('99, again) had twice as many CS majors as did '98. '00 had twice as many CS majors as '99 -- because this was the first dot-com boom, of course.

At my college, my freshman year was the first year that every dorm room was wired for ethernet (obviously, wifi was not a thing).

I suspect that the arrow of causality goes two ways, and that part of the reason for the low median age of programmers is indeed age discrimination. But it also true that 40 is an age which means that you were college-age during the first dot-com boom, and the occupation "programmer" suddenly was looking a lot more attractive and absolutely no doubt was pulling in a bunch of young people who ten years earlier would not have been interested in being programmers.

Re: It’s Tough Being Over 40 in Silicon Valley

#37

Post by refractiveco »

boto3 wrote: post #16
oldmanjay wrote: post #5

I'm over 40 and I've been continuing to get more work than I can handle by staying up to date on my tech skills. Maybe that professional headshot I never got would help, though.

amen to that, older engineers would require higher salaries (due to the need to support family, to pay mortgage, etc.), and would not be able to put in the same number of hours. So if you can't demonstrate that you provide more values than the younger guns, why would an employer want to hire older engineers?

In theory the more experience you have the fewer hours you would need to put in. You've solved all the common problems engineers face 10 times before.

Re: It’s Tough Being Over 40 in Silicon Valley

#38

Post by paulddraper »

kuhzaam wrote: post #30
JeremyMorgan wrote: post #13

I don't know about the Silicon Valley, but I'm in the Silicon Forest (Hillsboro/Portland Oregon) and this market seems to be very merit driven. You can be 80 years old and get a job if you can do work. Maybe you can't get a job at fart.IO building an API for some craft beer BS but at many mid to large companies 40 is still an average. The last 4-5 companies I've been at value bullet points over anything else (for wha…

Dammit.... fart.IO is unavailable.

It's just parked too :( What a waste.

Could have make some nice parody material.

Re: It’s Tough Being Over 40 in Silicon Valley

#39

Post by seanmcdirmid »

matt_wulfeck wrote: post #34
jwr wrote: post #12

This is idiotic. People over 40 trade one set of skills for another (source: I'm over 40). You lose short-term memory, can't juggle too many things simultaneously, and aren't always up to date on every latest fad. But what you gain is fantastically valuable: intuition, abstract thinking, systems thinking, ability to detect patterns in large systems, ability to notice that certain problems have been solved in a differ…

All of those things are great, but you're assuming your manager and peers will value them like you do. I see this type of thinking applied to an issue in a way that results in people becoming increasingly irritated. Silicon Valley wants to hear "yes yes yes", not reason why you think XYZ solution won't work.

Exactly: the ability to detect bullshit more quickly is unfortunately an ability not appreciated by many companies. It isn't just SV that has this problem. Those that tend to thrive in these environments past 40 are those who have instead learned play the imperfect system aggressively for their own benefit.
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