Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Sucks to be an old engineer

lionoftheblogosphere.wordpress.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–130 of 242 posts

Re: Sucks to be an old engineer

#121

Post by virtualwhys »

My stepfather is in this situation, just turned 66 and has told me on several occasions, shit, the writing's on the wall, can't compete with the young guns.

Of course, he's been in the business since the punch card days and has a huge amount of experience to draw on; as such, he's miraculously (to me) been able to land guaranteed 60 hour per week gigs (even though he likely only works 30 hours) at $125+ per hour.

K-rist, that is a skill in itself, landing high paying telecommute gigs and putting in half the hours you're paid for, the f-er ;-)

Re: Sucks to be an old engineer

#122

Post by Turing_Machine »

varjag wrote: post #65
Turing_Machine wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your upper management is playing with fire if the candidates were over forty (at least in the U.S. -- other countries probably vary). That's just as illegal as turning them down because they happened to be female or black.

This happened with two different companies in Europe. Of course the age was never a formal reason. There were also other qualified applicants. One case was borderline as the senior candidate also were asking for a higher salary. However in all cases I heard it mentioned, "isn't he, kind of, old?", and it was pretty clear there'd be no hire.

Okay. I don't know European law, but in the U.S. it's explicitly illegal.

Ever notice how the flight attendants on U.S. airlines are mostly in their late 30s to 50s nowadays? The airlines learned a very expensive lesson there.

Re: Sucks to be an old engineer

#123

Post by [deleted] »

michaelochurch wrote: post #118

I see our age discrimination problem as the fundamental sign of us being a defeated tribe. Ageism is one of those horrible traits of management culture (i.e. if you have a younger boss, you're a loser) that we wouldn't face if we had kept our tribal integrity (because "bosses" would be coordinators and mentors, not hierarchical superiors, making age irrelevant.) Good programmers aren't ageist. We look up to the gray-…

[deleted]

Re: Sucks to be an old engineer

#124

Post by rayiner »

cpeterso wrote: post #53
MetaCosm wrote: post #42

"""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).

Undergraduate GPA is a great measure of how prepared you were for college and how certain you were in your major. And you know what? Maybe some people think its important to hire the kind of people who had everything figured out at 19. I'm not one of those people, and I think its bad as a recruiting tool, but I can see what would lead someone to ask that.

Re: Sucks to be an old engineer

#125

Post by WalterBright »

cletus wrote: post #62

This post is touching on two issues that are somewhat related but different: 1. Finding ANY job when you're 60 is hard; 2. Engineers (who are still engineers) at 40+ will often be passed over in favour of twentysomethings. Engineering is such a young industry that I'm not sure we've really faced (1) yet (since the number of people who started engineering in the 70s is but a drop in the ocean compared to the number in…

> Is it an example of ageism if someone who is 45 can't find a job when what they know is Ada, Cobol and Forth?

Um, I'm 54 and the languages of my 20's were C, C++, etc.

I also fairly regularly get calls from recruiters.

> So yes, you either need to find a job that doesn't change (eg a plumber or a teacher) or you need to constantly battle to maintain relevancy in a fast-changing industry or you need to become master of your own fate.

Or, you can be a driver of this change yourself by developing a modern, advanced programming language.

Re: Sucks to be an old engineer

#126

Post by vertis »

mason55 wrote: post #104
Angostura wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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".

It's funny. One of my friends lost his job in a round of layoffs recently and was lamenting that his skills were based way too much on their internal technology for him to ever find another job. I walked through it with him and explained that you don't realize how much stuff is the same anywhere. Communicating with customers & stakeholders is the same anywhere. Working with your coworkers is the same anywhere. Managi…

Well? Don't leave us hanging, did he get another job?

Re: Sucks to be an old engineer

#127

Post by varjag »

Turing_Machine wrote: post #122
varjag wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This happened with two different companies in Europe. Of course the age was never a formal reason. There were also other qualified applicants. One case was borderline as the senior candidate also were asking for a higher salary. However in all cases I heard it mentioned, "isn't he, kind of, old?", and it was pretty clear there'd be no hire.

Okay. I don't know European law, but in the U.S. it's explicitly illegal. Ever notice how the flight attendants on U.S. airlines are mostly in their late 30s to 50s nowadays? The airlines learned a very expensive lesson there.

I doubt it's legal across Europe either. Then again, turning down applicants with foreign-sounding names is illegal also, yet statistically you'd have at least 10:1 chance of getting called for interview with "native" name.

Re: Sucks to be an old engineer

#128

Post by WalterBright »

pvnick wrote: post #56
DavidAdams wrote: post #43

I think that this article, though terse and generalistic, addresses a valid issue. However, I agree with many posters here in saying that it's not exclusively age that hampers older engineers, but an ossified skillset. Anyone who becomes entrenched in a nichey vocation then strikes out at 50+ to find new employment is going to suffer. The tech world worships youth and forgives hubris and foolishness, so it's especial…

>portly, bearded, late-fifties nudist Unix guy You had me until "nudist." Dare I ask?

Hopefully he works remotely from home.

Re: Sucks to be an old engineer

#129

Post by MetaCosm »

wallflower wrote: post #63
MetaCosm wrote: post #28

Earlier 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.

> EDIT: He completed the iOS application under budget with wonderful tests. If you don't mind me asking, age aside, what tests qualified as wonderful? Coverage? Integration or unit? I am curious. Which framework? Also, was he one of those rare individuals who could make the app UI look beautiful on both iOS and Android?

Tests: Two tier, he used an tool we ended up buying for the UI testing (actual phone automation, cool stuff, trying to remember company name), and full unit test with deep (not 100% coverage).

UI was presetup by a designer, so he didn't have much choice in that, but he implemented it pixel perfect. No idea on Android, he was only doing iOS for us.

Re: Sucks to be an old engineer

#130

Post by michaelochurch »

Turing_Machine wrote: post #117
michaelochurch wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People never talk about age at work. They talk about "graduation date". If you work in recruiting, you have companies asking that question all the time, "What's his graduation date?" I wonder if there could be a boom, especially with the online options, in mid-40s programmers getting graduate degrees so as to jam the signals. That's what I'll do if I end up facing age discrimination, so long as I can solve the money…

'They talk about "graduation date".' Good luck with that if someone files a suit.

Hey, I never said I'm a fan of that behavior. I'm against it.

I feel like being a jerk to older people is just asking karma to kick you in the ass. Except for those who die young, which is a rarity at this point, everyone will get old.

Post reply on HN