If you think being an old engineer is tough, try being a new one.
Sucks to be an old engineer
81–90 of 242 posts
Re: Sucks to be an old engineer
#82I've never understood why for many professions age/experience is coveted but engineers are assumed to have such a short shelf life. Nobody prefers a 30 year old lawyer or doctor over a more experienced one but an engineer of the same age needs to start planning a career transition...where is the logic in this?
Another practice is that in most professions, leaders are also very capable in their own areas. Think about a law firm, a hospital, an accounting firm, a construction company. But often in programming you have managers that are ignorant, outdated and sometimes even complete idiots. Why do we put up with that? Why do accept that our managers are not more capable than we are?
IC's in all professions think their managers are idiots. I've heard it from lawyers, police officers, teachers, and sales people.
I think its just human nature that your boss (or management in general) is out of touch and an idiot. It's why politicians are clueless -- until you get elected and then you suddenly are viewed as clueless too.
Re: Sucks to be an old engineer
#83I've never understood why for many professions age/experience is coveted but engineers are assumed to have such a short shelf life. Nobody prefers a 30 year old lawyer or doctor over a more experienced one but an engineer of the same age needs to start planning a career transition...where is the logic in this?
Actually don't know if that's true. As a former physician myself, in many circumstances, I would prefer a younger (to a degree) physician to a much older one. Medical knowledge does change relatively quickly and standards of care change a lot. For the same reason as engineers, it comes down to keeping up with the field. I don't know for a fact that an old physician hasn't kept up with the field, but I do know a young…
As the human body hasn't changed much over time, I would expect an older doctor to be able to draw from experience and diagnose the underlying problem quicker. Ideally, for non-trivial issues, the older doctor would then refer the patient to a specialist in the field who keeps up-to-date.
Re: Sucks to be an old engineer
#84So here's what the article says:
"I know two or more engineers around the age of 60 that graduated from MIT or Stanford 35 years ago. Of those two or more, at least one has lost his job, and at least one is afraid of losing his job."
Here's what the article doesn't say: what field these engineers are in, whether or not they're good at their job, what company they work(ed) for, what they work on, how up-to-date their knowledge is, etc.
Maybe there is age discrimination in the engineering field, but you certainly can't infer that from this anecdote.
Re: Sucks to be an old engineer
#85Earlier quoted context omitted.
One of the sharpest developers I have ever worked with -- was 63. He did only mobile development and only would agree to work 30 hours a week. When I pressed him on it, he explained that he liked to constantly be working on both Android and iOS projects, 30 hours a week each, and that kept his backlog of waiting clients happy. EDIT: He completed the iOS application under budget with wonderful tests.
I really wonder at what rates one might work at these ages.
At that age the rates are irrelevant compared to the health insurance compensation. Most people at that age would be willing to take a pay cut in exchange for generous health benefits and flexible hours.
Re: Sucks to be an old engineer
#86Earlier quoted context omitted.
You should write a counter-post expanding on what you've said, because this, especially the ending "choose yourself a new profession", is super out-of-whack. All the power to people like you, Ma'am!
I'm guessing MaggieL is not a Sir? All the more interesting if so.
I didn't even assume to look at the alias, since in my mind there was no doubt a man was behind that statement... Fixed my comment :) and this made me want to read a blog post from MaggieL even more so!
Re: Sucks to be an old engineer
#87Earlier quoted context omitted.
In an industry like O&G or energy experience is highly valued. When you have you have potentially billions of dollars on the line and many peoples lives with an oil platform you want someone who has done it before. In tech you are trying to make something no one has done before so you want the young hungry engineer.
> In tech you are trying to make something no one has done before so you want the young hungry engineer. Alternatively, choose the older engineer with the experience to know: "You know what? Fundamentally, what we're building here is the same as this thing from 10 years ago".
Yes everything seems to go full circle from mainframe to PC to the cloud (Mainframes). It may be the same problem but someone younger might know how to tailor that solution to the younger generation.
The other thing is all these founders are so young they may lack the experience or maturity to hire an older person.
Re: Sucks to be an old engineer
#88This article starts from a personal experience (with a really small social circle) and generalize to everyone. Worse, it generalizes to "engineering" which has wild and quite different fields.
If you have worked on Cobol or Fortran when you were 25 year-old, these things don't exist anymore (or enough to employ these old developers).
Otherwise, just put yourself in the place of the recruiter. I guess, except for special fields like Medicine, Law...; in most of the fields this ageism is the same.
If you want to have a builder, would you prefer a 65, 20 or 30? Certainly, you'll pick 30. He has more experience than 20 and way more energy than 65.
Re: Sucks to be an old engineer
#89This isn't really new, nor is it specific to software engineering. "Line engineers" have always had a very hard time with employment as they age (not that it doesn't happen). The usual ways to avoid this are (in order of risk): 1) Get your MBA and go into management; 2) Start or join a consultancy; 3) Start a company. My buddies in more traditional engineering fields (aerospace, chemical, etc) are all in the process…
Much of my family are in chemical engineering, petroleum engineering, and similar engineering fields, and from what I can tell just about the opposite is true. The companies would much rather hire someone back out of retirement as a consultant at 3x their previous salary, than train up someone younger. They'll hire someone younger, but seemingly as a last resort. This seems most true in a few specific fields (e.g. metallurgy specialists), but also true for more common things like process engineers.
Re: Sucks to be an old engineer
#90"""When not even a Stanford or MIT engineering degree is good enough to keep an engineer employed at 60, there is genuinely no market for engineers that age. Plan accordingly.""" Wait, what I did 40 years ago won't guarantee my employment now?!? What is this insanity, I thought once I got my degree in 1973 I was done with all this "learning" nonsense. How can I be expected to just keep updating my skills?
Why does Google still care about people's undergraduate GPAs from 25 years ago? When my friend interviewed at Google (they did hire him), the recruiter wanted to know how many hours per week he worked (to pay his tuition) at university 25 years ago to account for his "low" undergraduate GPA (3.0 - 3.5).
Google doesn't care about GPAs from 25 years ago.
1) No one cares what the recruiters think. If you mean interviewer that might be different.
2) My GPA was worse than that, and it was only 5 years after the fact, when Google totally-ignored-my-GPA. Anecdote stalemate.