Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Where do all the old programmers go?

infoworld.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 103 posts

Re: Where do all the old programmers go?

#61

Post by kafkaesq »

stray wrote: post #54
fecak wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you are willing to share, I'd be curious to hear more about your situation. I've seen salary plateau at certain career levels and ages (40s usually), but saying salary goes down at all (let alone sharply) is something that I expect is not a general truth about the market at large. My anecdotal data comes from ~20 years in recruiting engineers. There are several reasons you could see a salary drop (stagnating skill…

Would a significant gap in employment be that damaging? I was severely burned in an automobile accident (60%, 3rd degree) on June 6, 2006 -- and was completely unable to work for a couple years. It took a little over 4 years total from the date of the accident till I got another job. Every job since then has been with a startup.

If you can explain it -- like you obviously can -- then no, not "that damaging". You've definitely gotten over the hump already (both in terms of recovering from such a disaster physically -- and in finding work afterwards).

So at this point, while a 4-year gap will still be a downward multiplier to some, the effect will be relatively mild.

Better to focus on the the sheer inner strength it must take (which I, and almost all these people summarily rejecting you, can only begin to imagine) to pull off a recovery like that, and how that makes a much more solid person overall -- and hence, a way better hire.

Re: Where do all the old programmers go?

#62

Post by Roboprog »

stuff4ben wrote: post #50

GTFO of "the valley" and you can have a very productive career past your 40's. Seriously, I know this is HN, but the world doesn't revolve around SJ and SF.

Irony: I work with a group of about a half dozen devs for ... UC Davis (same uni as the prof mentioned in the article). We are all 50-ish, and work with minimal hand holding.

We do grant work for the state, and to some extent, the federal government. We are not doing "super scalable" stuff, but we still have thousands of users, many daily, and some of the entry forms for things are huge, with much complicated logic to be legally compliant.

I have set myself up as the resident Javascript guy (Angular), but I have to admit, it feels odd when I go to the local JS user group - it's a much younger crowd, overall. The funny thing, though, is that Angular/JS feels quite a bit like the interpreted language, proto-MVC, stuff I did on PCs back in the 80s :-)

Re: Where do all the old programmers go?

#63

Post by markbnj »

coldcode wrote: post #8

To work is where I go (59). You won't meet a lot of people like me because when I started (1981) there were way fewer programmers than today plus some became obsolete, some became managers, and some got burned out. So the chances of meeting someone like me if you started in the past decade is not high. This of course makes it hard to decide how much age discrimination there is as it's hard to quantify, unlike gender…

Yep, agreed. I'm 56 and an SRE at a YC alumni company where I work on platform and tools. I have very few peers my age and I agree dilution is responsible for a lot of that. I started in '87 and didn't really know anyone locally. All my professional relationships were formed on Compuserve and there were really very few of us compared to today.

Re: Where do all the old programmers go?

#64

Post by Roboprog »

Isamu wrote: post #30

I'm 55 this year, still programming. And I still love it ... well, I love trying new things. One of my friends that I started my first job with is now at the CTO level, while I keep turning down opportunities to "advance" into management. Another friend of mine quit after the Senior Director level because he started hating his life, and went back to programming/embedded engineering for the fun of it. Age does make yo…

Once in a while, I get to help my college age daughter learn "R" programming. That's a pretty interesting language, which she probably knows better than I do now. (at least operational knowledge of the library, but not all the Computer Science aspects)

Conversely, it's interesting that my adult child is now having to deal with a bout of "imposter syndrome" :-)

Re: Where do all the old programmers go?

#65

Post by coldcode »

jhauris wrote: post #41
coldcode wrote: post #8

To work is where I go (59). You won't meet a lot of people like me because when I started (1981) there were way fewer programmers than today plus some became obsolete, some became managers, and some got burned out. So the chances of meeting someone like me if you started in the past decade is not high. This of course makes it hard to decide how much age discrimination there is as it's hard to quantify, unlike gender…

The vast growth of the programmer population as a reason for why there aren't as many older programmers is a very compelling reason. I'm surprised I haven't seen it before.

I think there are 20 million or so programmers (not sure how you count this) today. I bet there were less than 1% of that back 35 years ago though of course no clue how to measure that either.

Re: Where do all the old programmers go?

#66

Post by npiazza83 »

Yetanfou wrote: post #25

They take up farming, of course. Having explored the most 'modern' parts of society they're ready for a new challenge. Also, having dealt with virtuality for so long it is time for a dose of reality. Me, I bought a farm in Sweden. Harvest is in, manure has been spread, looking to grow my first 'beer crop' (barley and hops) within a few years. The forest needs some attention but that is what winter is for. What comes…

While not ready for retirement I'm getting up there and I am buying a house soon with between 1/4-1/2 acre piece of land attached. Its a reward and opportunity for me to experiment with a large "garden" for myself and my family and maybe enough for friends or to can/jar.

I get this impulse but I'm still plugged in enough to want to automate things. I'm looking at farmbot on kickstarter and thinking how I could build my own, program or automate various systems and sensors. I'm extremely excited about having one foot in both worlds.

Re: Where do all the old programmers go?

#67

Post by VLM »

fecak wrote: post #38
stray wrote: post #18

At about 40, it does start to get more difficult to get hired. And by 50, it is all but hopeless. And the salary offered begins to go down at 40 too. Sharply after 44 or so. Where I am now, at 51, I have had to learn to get by on what I was making as a SysAdmin 20 mumble years ago. But at least I have a job. Before getting my current job I was having to learn to get by without a place to live too.

If you are willing to share, I'd be curious to hear more about your situation. I've seen salary plateau at certain career levels and ages (40s usually), but saying salary goes down at all (let alone sharply) is something that I expect is not a general truth about the market at large. My anecdotal data comes from ~20 years in recruiting engineers. There are several reasons you could see a salary drop (stagnating skill…

If ageism is the direct cause of the move to less green pastures that kind of circularizes the argument.

Re: Where do all the old programmers go?

#68

Post by fecak »

VLM wrote: post #67
fecak wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you are willing to share, I'd be curious to hear more about your situation. I've seen salary plateau at certain career levels and ages (40s usually), but saying salary goes down at all (let alone sharply) is something that I expect is not a general truth about the market at large. My anecdotal data comes from ~20 years in recruiting engineers. There are several reasons you could see a salary drop (stagnating skill…

If ageism is the direct cause of the move to less green pastures that kind of circularizes the argument.

I'm not quite sure I follow - how is ageism leading someone to leave?

Re: Where do all the old programmers go?

#70

Post by retro64 »

empath75 wrote: post #34

I'm 40, and I'm just getting started as a software developer after years doing other sorts of IT things (networking, tech support, sysadmin, etc).

Exactly. I'm older than you by a few years and I don't even waste my time considering my age.

Too much to do to worry about this nonsense. This constant rumination about age discrimination in the industry is the only thing getting old from my perspective.

Post reply on HN