No Country for Old Developers • Hacker News Board

Re: No Country for Old Developers

#91

Post by ryandrake » Tue, Dec 29, 2020, 4:27 AM UTC

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.

There's definitely a salary ceiling in software. My first few years in the industry, I made double digit percentage increases by changing jobs. The next few years were more like 5-6% to change jobs. Nowadays, I don't expect any increase at all--you max out and every company you look at coincidentally offers about the same amount. Unless you go into management or are lucky enough to get one of those one-in-a-thousand nosebleed FAANG offers, you're plateaued around 10-15 years into your career.

Re: No Country for Old Developers

#92

Post by amitport » Wed, Dec 30, 2020, 7:11 AM UTC

meowzero wrote: post #81

mzz80 wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 pos…

No, that's not ageism - Also that's almost never how the story goes.

The last paragraph is more commonly:

He/she applies to a position relevant to his/her skills, and makes the mistake of listing all is previous experience in the resume - No response. After a while, he downplays his resume - gets responses. In the interview he/she answers every question with great accuracy, but something just doesn't "click" to the interviewer (the interviewer is sure he/she is filtering on skill alone, but is very wrong about that)

The fact is, recruiters and interviewers hire people they like, people that are similar to them. If you're from the same place look similar and from a similar age it generally has a lot more weight than anything skill-related.

Re: No Country for Old Developers

#93

Post by Centuriprime » Wed, Dec 30, 2020, 2:11 PM UTC

Thanks everyone for a good open discussion on this subject. Much appreciated, and I hope you don't suffer ageism. There should be enough opportunities for all of us.

Re: No Country for Old Developers

#94

Post by m_v_p » Mon, Jan 04, 2021, 2:13 AM UTC

Aren't we all forgetting the elaphant in the room? Older workers usually make more and therefore have higher salary demands when seeking new opportunities. With the advent of each new software language, component library/package and WYSIWYG development environment younger software developers actually require less training & expertise to be productive sooner. Companies know this and would rather hire 2-3 younger engineers for the same price as one senior resource.

This looks like ageism on the surface but in reality it's the economics of plain old capitalism at work with Moore's Law accelerated the pace of automation.