On Getting Older in Tech

Generally what marklgr said. By tactics, I mean being up to date with the latest lib for -foo- and being on top of what the cool kids are doing, chasing down the rabbit-hole to find that one setting to improve db performance. Individual, almost atomic tasks, especially those in a changing landscape.

Strategy is more about planning, forethought, and knowing ahead of time which avenues are worth pursuing and which aren't. As a very simplistic example, a tactician might spend a day down a rabbit-hole and improve a db's performance by a small but significant amount, and a strategist would not have spent that day, knowing that that db is going to be turned off in two weeks. Not the best example, really (and it implies that you're only one or the other, which isn't true at all). There is also overlap between the two.

Perhaps a military analogue - tactics is about how to take the forts (shorter timeframes, clearer objectives, obvious goals), and strategy is about determining which forts are worth taking (long-term timeframes, murkier objectives, sometimes unclear goals, concern for secondary effects). The difference is also in scope, I guess. Being a good tactician benefits from energy and focused interest, something which the young'uns tend to have more of (caveat, caveat), and strategy benefits from forethought and experience, something which the old'uns tend to have more of (caveat, caveat, &c)

Well, if the author is almost 60, it probably won't matter which career he's in, he would likely suffer from some sort of ageism. It doesn't matter if you're a programmer, or in finance, or working at Costco, if you're getting close to 60, most people will be skeptical as to whether you can really work as well as a 25 year old.

Ageism is real in the Vally but it can cut both ways. In my current company we did a SWOT analysis and one of our advantages was "many old farts, and many former colleagues friends".

Yes, if you haven't been using AWS and GPGPUs you will be of minimal use to us but it's really valuable if you have already made a bunch of mistakes on someone else's dime. And in your 50s you're probably an empty nester, and can easily put in a 50+ hour week when necessary (which it often is, but not all the time, in a startup) and get more done in 40 hours than the squirts do in 60+.

You need a mix of ages and backgrounds. A bias to youth is as bad as a bias towards time-in-grade, or any other such bias.

Great post; You should focus more on Consulting jobs;

Also Atlassian says the same. They said last week that they just can't get senior people in Sydney. Personally I feel older people are not as good at the little puzzles they set as an entry test.