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Earnings Ceiling for Tech Professionals over 40

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Re: Earnings Ceiling for Tech Professionals over 40

#61

Post by neilv »

ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #52
neilv wrote: post #29

The article's way of using "ageism" in the lede, and their title, both seem odd, and seem to confuse the real issue of what I think what most people mean by "ageism". There seems to be a substantial tech industry aversion to hiring developers in 40s (sometimes 30s) or older. But if you suggest that developers in their 40s expect salary to keep growing without limit, that fuels hairtrigger resentment arguments about h…

>"resumes illegally screened for age" I'm happy this is a thing in the US and wish Europe would copy this since in some Western European countries like Austria, having your birthday and photograph on your resume is mandatory making discrimination a piece of cake.

Photos are another one in the US, with our wealth of diversity, yet ongoing history of biases and marginalizing.

I used to hear in the US that some companies' HR had policies of discarding all resumes with photos or certain other details, to reduce risk of the company appearing to discriminate on basis of ethnicity or family status, for example. Perhaps apocryphal, but I always heard not to include a photo.

And we heard of studies in which resumes with nothing changed but the name, to a "black" one or a female one, were treated differently.

But then the most popular US resume Web sites introduced photos, to appear alongside your resume and your messages.

Re: Earnings Ceiling for Tech Professionals over 40

#62

Post by WalterSear »

badpun wrote: post #44
rpmcmurphy wrote: post #36

The bigger issue for us Olds is that we have serious financial and family responsibilities that make us highly undesirable employees in today's modern "I've got mine! Fuck you!" society. Imagine that you have a close family member with Stage 4 cancer. Who wants to have you on their team? Nobody, that's who. And you better be living in a jurisdiction with solid legal protections, or they will fire you in a hot second.…

Companies in general love people with obligations (kids, high mortgage etc.) because they're much more afraid of being fired, and thus are more obedient.

That hasn't been my experience, in particular when interviewing with managers and team leads younger than myself.

The last one slipped, and as much as admitted that he was concerned that I wouldn't be able to work as hard: he had presumed that I had children to take care of.

It used to piss me off, but now it's just discouraging.

Re: Earnings Ceiling for Tech Professionals over 40

#63

Post by scarface74 »

jshowa3 wrote: post #54
ljm wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On that basis I’d consider the junior to actually be more senior, as understanding the need of the user and building that is vital to the role. A senior engineer who churns out code without taking that step to understand the domain and build the right thing is not, in my estimation, senior at all. Bashing at something until it finally works is, to me, something we do as beginners when we’re still in the mindset of so…

You'd be very surprised then at how fast some people at companies bang out code with very little understanding of the problem, get it done fast, and look like heroes because it works. They then build up an expectation of getting things done fast because "time is money" and end up with a garbled mess of spaghetti code that functions. Most senior developers that I know are so good at the above that very little communic…

You'd be very surprised then at how fast some people at companies bang out code with very little understanding of the problem, get it done fast, and look like heroes because it works. They then build up an expectation of getting things done fast because "time is money" and end up with a garbled mess of spaghetti code that functions.

And honestly, experience tells you when that's okay. If you work for a venture backed company where the owners and founders only goal is to get something up and running to convince investors to give them money or to survive long enough to go public (statistically unlikely) or to get acquired, the goal isn't to make good code that can be maintained long term. They don't care if the whole business is built on a house of cards that will fall as soon as they get acquired.

Too many employees drink the kool-aid and think the owners are interested in anything else except for an exit strategy.

"Great code" rarely gets someone promoted or recognized.

Re: Earnings Ceiling for Tech Professionals over 40

#64

Post by aidenn0 »

malvosenior wrote: post #4

> In Hired’s findings, tech pros were never offered more than $149,000 annually. I don't know where they are getting their data but that's a lot lower than good developers of all ages make. You can see on https://levels.fyi that large tech companies will pay senior developers 200-400k routinely. I don't necessarily doubt the analysis but the data is very incomplete if they didn't see a single offer over $150k.

In context, I read that as "At no age is the mean pay more than $149k" which is much more believable.

Re: Earnings Ceiling for Tech Professionals over 40

#65

Post by JamesBarney »

Nursie wrote: post #22
scarface74 wrote: post #10

No this is not ageism. After a certain point, if you are an individual contributor, your value is not worth more than someone with less experience. A developer with 10 years of varied experience can usually do just as well as someone with 20 years of experience. I also believe that the idea of the 10x developer while not a myth, is so rare it’s not worth trying to find for most companies. I speak as someone in my mid…

> A developer with 10 years of varied experience can usually do just as well as someone with 20 years of experience As a developer with 20 years experience ... I'm a lot better at what I do than I was ten years ago. Better at seeing how it relates to the business I'm working with, more productive in ways that are not just LoC. I'd be OK if I can sustain my current income... but I'd still like to take the step to bein…

How much better? What are you doing now that you weren't doing 10 years ago that is a real game changer in terms of value?

As an architect/tech lead I'm much better than I was 5 years ago. I know how to manage engineering practices and when/how to apply them, better how to design a systems, and how to better manage relationships/politics so that I can leverage my experience into actual implementation and design.

But as an individual contributor I don't think I'm a whole lot more valuable unless it's in a domain I have deep experience in like real-time.

Re: Earnings Ceiling for Tech Professionals over 40

#66

Post by AnimalMuppet »

scarface74 wrote: post #24
Nursie wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A developer with 10 years of varied experience can usually do just as well as someone with 20 years of experience As a developer with 20 years experience ... I'm a lot better at what I do than I was ten years ago. Better at seeing how it relates to the business I'm working with, more productive in ways that are not just LoC. I'd be OK if I can sustain my current income... but I'd still like to take the step to bein…

And that’s another line of reasoning I don’t believe. I have a coworker who is probably 10 years younger than I am but has been working for the company for 7 years to my one, how could I better understand the business of the company than he does? I worked for one company when I was 35 dealing with the complicated rules of the railroad industry. My manager was 28, but he was the founder of the company before it got ac…

There's more to this than understanding the business.

With 20 years of experience, I didn't write the bugs I did 10 years earlier. I produced better architectures. I produced more readable code. I could tackle more complex problems. I could help my coworkers more.

Re: Earnings Ceiling for Tech Professionals over 40

#67

Post by bongobongo »

ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #52
neilv wrote: post #29

The article's way of using "ageism" in the lede, and their title, both seem odd, and seem to confuse the real issue of what I think what most people mean by "ageism". There seems to be a substantial tech industry aversion to hiring developers in 40s (sometimes 30s) or older. But if you suggest that developers in their 40s expect salary to keep growing without limit, that fuels hairtrigger resentment arguments about h…

>"resumes illegally screened for age" I'm happy this is a thing in the US and wish Europe would copy this since in some Western European countries like Austria, having your birthday and photograph on your resume is mandatory making discrimination a piece of cake.

The idea of having to include a headshot with a job application is insane to me. Unless you are in a public-facing role, your appearances are virtually irrelevant, and the information can only be used to discriminate against you for nefarious reasons.

This seems especially bad in places like France where the government explicitly does not collect demographic information on things like race and ethnicity. It allows employers to screen people based on race, but the government cannot prove it.

Re: Earnings Ceiling for Tech Professionals over 40

#68

Post by ch4s3 »

hinkley wrote: post #48
malvosenior wrote: post #4

> In Hired’s findings, tech pros were never offered more than $149,000 annually. I don't know where they are getting their data but that's a lot lower than good developers of all ages make. You can see on https://levels.fyi that large tech companies will pay senior developers 200-400k routinely. I don't necessarily doubt the analysis but the data is very incomplete if they didn't see a single offer over $150k.

Are you seeing over $150k anywhere other than SF?

This is pretty normal in NYC/NJ

Re: Earnings Ceiling for Tech Professionals over 40

#69

Post by bongobongo »

neilv wrote: post #29

The article's way of using "ageism" in the lede, and their title, both seem odd, and seem to confuse the real issue of what I think what most people mean by "ageism". There seems to be a substantial tech industry aversion to hiring developers in 40s (sometimes 30s) or older. But if you suggest that developers in their 40s expect salary to keep growing without limit, that fuels hairtrigger resentment arguments about h…

People expect their salary to go up for a number of reasons, but the major factors are inflation and cost-of-living. If your salary is not going up by at least a certain percent a year, you are likely stagnating or losing income.

Another reason people expect their salary to go up is because it is a basic expectation that has existed for decades, and one upon which the supposed fairness of the current market is predicated. The idea is that you start young, earn little, work your way up, and earn more. Life is _much_ more expensive the older you get.

Re: Earnings Ceiling for Tech Professionals over 40

#70

Post by bsder »

scarface74 wrote: post #10

No this is not ageism. After a certain point, if you are an individual contributor, your value is not worth more than someone with less experience. A developer with 10 years of varied experience can usually do just as well as someone with 20 years of experience. I also believe that the idea of the 10x developer while not a myth, is so rare it’s not worth trying to find for most companies. I speak as someone in my mid…

Don't confuse the current shitshow that is VC flippable social software garbage with actual competence.

I worked with people at IBM and DEC at the point probably just at the peak of their heyday when the average experience was about 15 years.

Oh ... my ... God.

I have never had that kind of interaction again. Being able to just call up and talk to the folks who designed FPU algorithms, x86 emulators that smoked (I think the FX!32 guys knew more about x86 than AMD), BDD analyzers that actually matched circuitry to descriptions (NP-hard problems--solved every day), debugged CPU failures by having 3 old guys light up cigars, put their feet up and think real hard ... I can go on and on.

Yes, those big, sclerotic companies had lots of deadwood. But, there was a 25% that was amazing.

About once every couple of years now I bump into someone genuinely as good. It's really rare now.

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