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No Country for Old Developers

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Re: No Country for Old Developers

#81

Post by meowzero »

mzz80 wrote: post #71
meowzero wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a software engineer in my 40's. I also worry about ageism. I don't want to victim blame. There is probably discrimination. But I think the older developers have some responsibility in defeating ageism. I know a few SWEs who are older than me. They are already feeling the burnout of learning the new languages, frameworks, technologies every 3-4 years. Some of them are set in their ways thinking, "why would you nee…

If an engineer with 20 years of experience is intimidated by a new grad then that’s not ageism, and not what this thread is about. If a new grad performs better then there is literally no point in hiring that engineer. They don’t bring anything to the table and there is no room for growth. If you’re in your 50’s then ideally you’d be at least a principal engineer at a big tech company by then.

It's not technically ageism. You're right.

But there's an engineer in his 50's, who worked in his company for many years. He had intimate knowledge of its systems and domain. But his company got bought out, and the new owners decided they don't need that group anymore and lays off the entire group. Suddenly, his domain expertise is near-useless unless he can find another, similar position.

He interviews for other positions, but he is hit with questions he's not familiar with. He drones on about his old systems/architect like an old fogey who not up to date with the new, shiny stuff. He tries to study the new stuff, but he's tired, overwhelmed, burnt out, etc. His interviewers realizes he has a lot of experience and probably highly skilled, but his skills and experience aren't relevant enough to what their company is doing. They offer to hire him at a junior rate, or not hire him at all. Is this ageism, or is he not good enough?

Re: No Country for Old Developers

#82

Post by tosser0001 »

lukeramsden wrote: post #27
tosser0001 wrote: post #12

I’ve only ever experienced salary-ism which is just a side effect of being in the industry for so long. The issue with getting decent reviews and salary bumps is that eventually you’re making more money than many people are willing to take on. I’m 57 and working with a lot of people my age. We’ve hired a lot of older people.

Do you know of anywhere that hires more older people that would also consider hiring some younger, junior candidates as well? I don't know about other younger developers but personally I'd rather work with older, experienced developers, I think that would be of great benefit to my development.

My company has a program specifically designed to bring in new blood probably because there are so many older folks. Part of it involves spending time with different teams to get a feel for the various things that are going on. How well it works in practice I can’t say. Like everything else it depends on the quality of the teams you’re on and the nature of the work they’re doing.

Re: No Country for Old Developers

#83

Post by yodsanklai »

cybwraith wrote: post #78
yodsanklai wrote: post #37

I just got a SWE job offer at a FAANG and I'm in my mid-forties. I took the exact same interviews as anybody else. They've also been contacted me regularly for the last three years. My age isn't written on my resume, but they can easily infer I'm in my forties. My guess is that recruiters don't care as long as they think you have a chance passing the coding interviews. I realize that older developers are slightly unc…

Congrats (seriously)! However, many of the interview tests themselves seem to discriminate for age (or at least, distance from college graduation as a function of time). Like another commenter here noted, its a collection of typically smaller, indirect biases against age that add up on a scale. Also, being mid-forties isn't too bad as long as you aren't applying to a SV startup. I'd be curious what the result would h…

> Congrats (seriously)!

Thanks!

> However, many of the interview tests themselves seem to discriminate for age (or at least, distance from college graduation as a function of time)

This is correct. I would add that it also (and perhaps mostly) discriminates on your ability to find time to prepare for the interviews.

I don't have kids, and my job left me enough time for preparation. But I can see how it's not the case for a lot of people in their 30/40s.

Re: No Country for Old Developers

#84

Post by _qulr »

duxup wrote: post #42
yodsanklai wrote: post #37

I just got a SWE job offer at a FAANG and I'm in my mid-forties. I took the exact same interviews as anybody else. They've also been contacted me regularly for the last three years. My age isn't written on my resume, but they can easily infer I'm in my forties. My guess is that recruiters don't care as long as they think you have a chance passing the coding interviews. I realize that older developers are slightly unc…

>I realize that older developers are slightly uncommon, I wonder if that is really the case or not.

FWIW here's some data from the 2020 Stack Overflow developer survey: https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2020#developer-pro...

To what extent is the survey representative? Hard to say. I'd be interested to see other sources of data.

Re: No Country for Old Developers

#85

Post by drchopchop »

bilbo0s wrote: post #76
drchopchop wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Besides skills, I think it comes down to your attitude and how you relate to your younger co-workers Also an engineer in my mid-40's. This is key. You need to be the "cool" dad in the room, and someone people can go to for hard/difficult problems. You also have to stay relevant and keep your skills up to date. Talk about the great ramen place near your house, not how you had to solve Y2K problems with COBOL 20 years…

I don't know man? Game theoretically speaking, if a tech worker is older it's best to know what younger workers do not. For instance, an older worker is a good deal more likely to be hired if s/he is able to write the firmware for ray tracing video card hardware than s/he is to be hired for knowing how to write web apps in "cool language of the week". In fact, I'd argue that most of the older tech workers in the situ…

Perhaps. But it's rare that an industry just sits around and stagnates to the extent that 20+ year old knowledge is applicable to current day problems. Even in the graphics industry, 20 years ago we were still discovering perspective correction and shaders were but a pipe dream.

The problem set keeps evolving, and the tools we use to solve those problems keep evolving as well. Handwritten HTML -> vanilla JS -> jQuery -> Angular -> React, etc. It's not just the languages, it's major paradigm shifts in solving problems.

If you want to get out of that rat race, then jump on the management track and stay there. Even then, though, you need some familiarity with what your team will be working on.

Re: No Country for Old Developers

#86

Post by yodsanklai »

duxup wrote: post #42
yodsanklai wrote: post #37

I just got a SWE job offer at a FAANG and I'm in my mid-forties. I took the exact same interviews as anybody else. They've also been contacted me regularly for the last three years. My age isn't written on my resume, but they can easily infer I'm in my forties. My guess is that recruiters don't care as long as they think you have a chance passing the coding interviews. I realize that older developers are slightly unc…

>I realize that older developers are slightly uncommon, I wonder if that is really the case or not.

I also wonder what the median age is for different technologies. I'd assume that developers are younger in frontend/mobile apps than in backend or C++ enterprise software.

Re: No Country for Old Developers

#87

Post by bartread »

necheffa wrote: post #39
bartread wrote: post #17

"Young people are just smarter." - Mark Zuckerberg Spoken like a naive individual without much in the way of life experience. Keep taking the pills, Mark. Onto more positive points, whilst I have no doubt that ageism exists in our industry, there are also companies with a more enlightened view of age and experience. I tend to prefer hiring people with more experience, in their 30s, 40s, and 50s, when I can. I particu…

> I tend to prefer hiring people with more experience, in their 30s, 40s, and 50s > I particularly like those who've worked for a variety of different companies during their careers I hope you see how these are two very conflicting ideals. Are you assuming that other companies will train your staff for you?

What are you talking about? Different companies have different cultures and ways of working. I'm talking about experienced staff who bring a wide range of perspectives as opposed to those who have perhaps become institutionalised because they've only worked at one company for the last 20 years. As such I can't see any conflict between the two statements I made above which, by the way, are just that: statements of preference, not ideals.

Re: No Country for Old Developers

#88

Post by Ods25 »

Where the hell are all of these magical companies that hire only young people? I'm 23 with an extensive project list & written tutorials,a completed CompSci degree, and a half completed dual degree in electrical engineering & compEng, yet I can't get hired even when I pass an algorithm test with 30 minutes remaining.

However a mid 30s dev friend of mine this year juggled 3 companies into getting him a nice salary and told me "Yeah, nobody takes you seriously until you're 30".

Re: No Country for Old Developers

#89

Post by flatus »

FTFA: I love this:

"Mark Zuckerberg was quoted as saying: “I want to stress the importance of being young and technical. Young people are just smarter.” "

b/c it crystallizes, for all time and for all to see, how wrong Mark Zuckerberg can be.

Re: No Country for Old Developers

#90

Post by ryandrake »

trevyn wrote: post #48
mojuba wrote: post #44

The most dreadful thing in this industry to me is this: how many years of experience do you have? 1 2 3 4 5+ That's it. Fin. More than 5 doesn't matter. The truth is that the difference between 30 years and 5 years of experience in a particular field can be as big as between 1 and 5. I just want to ask, does anyone in the industry really care about this fact? Does it matter to any company out there? Have you ever see…

If you have more than 5 years of experience, you should know the industry and not be paying much attention to formal job postings. Similarly, companies do not typically hire for those positions through public job postings.

Wow, no bites in 13 hours, so I'll bite: If not job postings, where are these mystical jobs offered? And, don't just say "networking" as if that completely describes the process.

I've been in the business for over 20 years and have always gotten my jobs from public postings or recruiters reaching out, who inevitably point me to the public posting as part of the process. I'm unaware of these other Secret Squirrel channels for getting jobs, despite people always telling me they totally definitely exist!

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