Now Hiring If You're Young (1998)
nytimes.com
Now Hiring If You're Young (1998)
1–10 of 35 posts
Re: Now Hiring If You're Young (1998)
#2> 57 percent of computer science graduates are working as programmers; at 15 years the figure drops to 34 percent, and at 20 years -- when most are still only in their early 40's -- it is down to 19 percent.
That data is compatible with lots of things besides age discrimination:
* a job description that mostly appeals to the young
* a young and rapidly growing field where most of the 1988 CS grads are promoted to management, so that they can manage the 10x larger 1998 CS grads
* etc.
Re: Now Hiring If You're Young (1998)
#3NY Times is pretty in touch with what's cool w/ the kids these days. Ie. "the new Java language".
Re: Now Hiring If You're Young (1998)
#4"Employers justify shunting aside midcareer programmers on the ground that they lack skills in the latest software languages."
I don't see what's wrong with that. Clearly, to command a higher salary, an employee has to offer more than someone who gets paid less. And if in fact that employee has less to offer than a more junior person, because their skills are obsolete, it's even more of a reason to let them go.
I guess it's not a very comfortable position to be in- having to always prove your worth to an employer- but I think it's unavoidable, especially in an industry that changes quickly.
Re: Now Hiring If You're Young (1998)
#5NY Times is pretty in touch with what's cool w/ the kids these days. Ie. "the new Java language".
The article is from 1998, Java was 3 years old.
Re: Now Hiring If You're Young (1998)
#6Does the report also analyze pure programming jobs, and not team lead, or management roles which previous programmers 'graduated' into, not necessarily became 'unemployed programmers'?
Re: Now Hiring If You're Young (1998)
#7NY Times is pretty in touch with what's cool w/ the kids these days. Ie. "the new Java language".
The article is from 1998, Java was 3 years old.
Does that also mean the statistics provided by the author are meaningless since they are 10 years old and closely tied to the dot-com boom?
Re: Now Hiring If You're Young (1998)
#8Re: Now Hiring If You're Young (1998)
#9"Employers justify shunting aside midcareer programmers on the ground that they lack skills in the latest software languages." I don't see what's wrong with that. Clearly, to command a higher salary, an employee has to offer more than someone who gets paid less. And if in fact that employee has less to offer than a more junior person, because their skills are obsolete, it's even more of a reason to let them go. I gue…
True but on the flipside just because someone is young doesn't mean they will provide more value.
One thing that is interesting about this article is that it was written just as the internet/web boom was happening. It is important to note that a whole slew of industries and job tracks have been created since then. It is also very important to note that software development really wasn't a field until the 70's. So what we have is a young industry, thus younger people in it.
The age of someone that started development young in the early days of the web (mid-90s), let's say 1995, would be approx 32-33. Anyone older than that had to come into web from pre-web industries, thus lacking in ability to change and learn to someone coming in clean. But nowadays an industry really was born around the late 1990s that will get older and more skilled, as well as seeing young come in, at least in terms of web based development, game development and other recent web industries.
It would be like when radio started where people getting into it were young, as time went on it wasn't about age but skill and value. Same will happen with software or web development. Young will always be a key factor in software and web development but the position of the industry in time gives it a skew that appears ageism is more rampant. This article was even more lodged into a time where hardly anyone knew the web would change the world and grow fields and industry as much as it did. At this point the people that were going to go into marketing, radio, tv are now all going to the web.
So really, I agree it will be up to providing value and innovating but we will see the industry, especially the web industry, mature to where it isn't just the young running it.
I would say a prime is after someone went to school, and programmed for at least 8-10 years. This is when programmers start becoming efficient and product developers. The earliest that could happen for most people is late 20's early 30's.
Also, the best programmers are efficient and have a business and marketing edge. If you have that you won't need to work as long because you will be creating the companies and providing the programming jobs to old and young, or rather just skilled workers in the newest industry that is transforming all other industries.
Re: Now Hiring If You're Young (1998)
#10Does the report also analyze pure programming jobs, and not team lead, or management roles which previous programmers 'graduated' into, not necessarily became 'unemployed programmers'?
Or, because programming is a meta skill, did these engineers start companies, products and are no longer programming because they are owners? Or did they pick up skills in other industries that they wanted to get into which was made easier because programming allowed them to peer into it from a unique meta perspective?
Also, sure if you are just working for a big company making desktop applications before the web as this article is from, then I can see there would be limited opportunity. How does the web change that?