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On Getting Older in Tech

corgibytes.com

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Re: On Getting Older in Tech

#261

Post by epalmer »

butterfi wrote: post #259
epalmer wrote: post #161

I'm going to apologize ahead of time. this might be a ramble. 63 year old white guy with little hair and a lifelong beard that is now white. A tad overweight as well. I feel for so many people expressing angst about ageism. I've seen it elsewhere but not where I work now. I suspect that at the faster growing companies and companies in tech centers, mostly on the coasts, see more pronounced ageism. My last job was at…

Thanks buddy! 50+ here and optimistic I can remained gainfully employed, but nervous about it. It's been my experience as well that the kind of companies you might see parodied on "Silicon Valley" have a more pronounced age bias, but there are lots of other places that need IT/web and have no such issues. I was in a room full of developers when I read aloud the story about the guy who started oldgeekjobs.com, who def…

Yup. I was like no Fing way when I read that one. Keep up the optimism.

Re: On Getting Older in Tech

#262

Post by saiya-jin »

djedipus wrote: post #220

I think it’s more about not appreciating experience enough as opposed to discriminating against age. I’m 31 with 13 years professional experience. I’ve worked as an employee, contractor and as a single person start-up. Last year I interviewed for ~10 jobs in SV and I was rejected for all of them. None of the jobs valued my experience enough to consider my asking salary to be worth it. I make ~$300K USD contracting an…

this is not specific to SV, or US for that matter. 10x developers don't get 10x salaries of they work for bigger companies that have sort of rigid pay structures for given positions. You have to work on your own ('in your own company') to have that in 99% of the cases, rest are tiny companies with heaps of cash (how many are those?).

If you would be having same salary (apart from bonuses) as say some senior executive/CEO, well that won't fly, no matter of your added value or semi-magical skills. It doesn't matter how rational that might be.

Re: On Getting Older in Tech

#263

Post by gaius »

amyjess wrote: post #239
gaius wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm old, I'm scared ... some monolithic non-tech company Wait, your solution to the problem of ageism in tech is "get out of tech, old fogey"??

Not so much "get out of tech" as it is "stay in tech, but not at a company that specializes in tech". Non-tech companies need specialized software, too. When I was in college, I knew multiple people who had internships working on internal tools for a major bank. I imagine those banks also employ senior people to work on their internal tools, customer-facing web portals, etc. And it's not just banks. I once interviewe…

Not so much "get out of tech" as it is "stay in tech, but not at a company that specializes in tech".

That's not exactly a solution tho' is it? Why go to a company where you are a cost centre, just because you reach a certain age?

Re: On Getting Older in Tech

#264

Post by riprowan »

48 yo here, started coding when I was 14, so that's 34 years of building things.

Here's where I'm at.

I look back at my career and I can tell you about great projects that I got to be part of, awards and plaudits that I won, big paybacks from projects that went well and literally saved the company. That's all nice to have war stories.

But I can't point to any of it and say, "I made that" because - and here's the kicker - it's all gone.

Software is ephemeral. One day your client does an upgrade, and then the thing that you spent years building and curating like a baby disappears. It isn't mothballed and put in the basement where visitors can walk by and see it. There's no photo of you standing by the thing that you can hang in the hallway and see every day. Your creation just completely vanishes without a trace.

All those years I've also been a musician and recording engineer. I've made a few dozen records none of which amount to anything that anyone else would care about. And all told I'm sure that I earned more money in one year of my IT work than my entire music career.

However, here is a collection of my work that I can point to and say, "I made that." It's a creation that I can reflect on years and years down the road.

I take much more satisfaction in my musical creations than from my software creations, even though I was much more famous and valued as a software architect.

Re: On Getting Older in Tech

#266

Post by GFK_of_xmaspast »

smokestack wrote: post #147
wobbleblob wrote: post #142

Oh cool, he made a webshop with an RPG backend. I last did that about 15 years ago, it looked just as awful, and just like him, I was so proud of my achievement at the time, that I couldn't see what an abomination it really was. It's a pity, that customer deserved better. I totally believe age discrimination is real, and the Corgibytes author hits the nail on the head with: > Only as Good as Your Last Two Years of Ac…

I doubt that a lawyer, doctor, or (especially) investor could survive more than a year without constantly investing time in learning about their field.

Doctors now have to do 'continuing education' and many of them got pretty upset about that and / or were grandfathered out of the requirements.

Re: On Getting Older in Tech

#267

Post by Zelphyr »

epalmer wrote: post #161

I'm going to apologize ahead of time. this might be a ramble. 63 year old white guy with little hair and a lifelong beard that is now white. A tad overweight as well. I feel for so many people expressing angst about ageism. I've seen it elsewhere but not where I work now. I suspect that at the faster growing companies and companies in tech centers, mostly on the coasts, see more pronounced ageism. My last job was at…

I find these days I spend less time coding and I end up with better applications because I think through the design before coding.

At the risk of going off-topic; every new/kinda-new/wish they were new engineer can learn volumes from that single statement.

Re: On Getting Older in Tech

#269

Post by Lambdanaut »

riprowan wrote: post #264

48 yo here, started coding when I was 14, so that's 34 years of building things. Here's where I'm at. I look back at my career and I can tell you about great projects that I got to be part of, awards and plaudits that I won, big paybacks from projects that went well and literally saved the company. That's all nice to have war stories. But I can't point to any of it and say, "I made that" because - and here's the kick…

Dude. Open source software.

Re: On Getting Older in Tech

#270

Post by treehau5 »

che_shirecat wrote: post #231
gaius wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm old, I'm scared ... some monolithic non-tech company Wait, your solution to the problem of ageism in tech is "get out of tech, old fogey"??

I think he's trying to say that ageism isn't as much of a big deal as people make it to be (outside of SV's alternate reality) - everyone in the industry deals with the constantly shifting landscape that engenders feelings of job insecurity for programmers young or old. It's just tougher on older techies that haven't carved out their niche. If you're trying to fit in and compete with fresh bootcamp grads working new…

I really dislike this constant caveat that people keep placing against SV. "Well it isn't a problem outside of SV!" I keep seeing this appear in comment after comment on this article
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