Age Discrimination at Work

Move to a market where your skills are in high demand and focus on middle/business and back end development. Or better yet, embedded systems development.

I've been at this for 25 years and IMO, the further down the call stack you go the more your cumulative years of experience are an asset.

This doesn't mean you can stop learning new tech, it just means the trends in those lower layers seem to be more sustained and of a longer duration.

1) Is regular, ordinary age discrimination. This is why tech companies won't hire people starting second careers into entry level programming roles.

2) The widespread notion that more than about 5 years programming experience is not valuable, maybe even counterproductive. (Firm specific knowledge is a different story, tech companies do value that.) Hence all the "senior" programmers with 3 years experience.

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The first one is illegal and in my opinion immoral. The second one to my mind an empirical question--it doesn't seem to be true based on my experiences and observations, but I'd be willing to have my mind changed by evidence.

Granted they tend to be more expensive, but older people have numerous advantages that deliver value which more than offsets the direct costs of salary and benefits:

- More experience (obviously!): not just in terms of work, but in terms of life

- This often means better social skills, and also greater resilience

- Experience means they're often just better at what they do than less experienced staff

- They tend to have family commitments, which means they want to work sane hours, which to me helps set a healthy cultural precedent

- They tend to know themselves well, and are often more settled/content; this can mean less political game playing and jockeying for position/trying to prove themselves. This isn't to suggest they lack ambition, although their priorities are often different, but they tend to be more graceful in trying to achieve their ambitions

- They seem less likely to burdened by an overdeveloped sense of entitlement

All of these are generalisations and there will, of course, be exceptions, but I think it's hard to argue against these characteristics as being more prevalent amongst older workers.

When it comes to tricky pastoral and technical situations, I often find myself leaning quite heavily on the wisdom of my older team members. I really wouldn't be without them[1].

[1] N.B., at 43 I'm no spring chicken myself.

An employee is a seller of labor, and an employer is a buyer. To make the sale, the job seeker must demonstrate the strongest possible value. A lot of outside obligations or time otherwise required to be away from work, all else being equal, makes competitors look relatively more attractive.

Put yourself in the employer’s shoes. Say your toilet is backed up. I’ll assume you’re a homeowner responsible for getting it fixed and not a renter. The first thing you’d likely do is ask your friends to recommend a good plumber. Then you’ll start making phone calls. You probably don’t want someone still in trade school. The best plumber in town may be very expensive or unavailable for a couple of weeks. You have an urgent problem! You talk to another plumber with a reasonable rate but may have to pop in and out of the job on short notice. You need your toilet unstopped today, which means good rate, good reputation, can get there today, and who will stay until the job is done.