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The Brutal Ageism of Tech

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Re: The Brutal Ageism of Tech

#81

Post by nostromo »

zomgbbq wrote: post #55

I'm a 40+ engineer in the NYC metro area and I've never felt more in-demand in my life! I think it boils down to a simple idea: computer-science is a dynamic field and THE FUN PART is that you need to always be learning. There are still some colleagues my age who still wax about the days of writing JCL for their mainframe jobs and never evolved past the 80's and perhaps they gave a bad name for others who built on th…

That's reassuring, but... What's the average retirement age in the US? 60? And here we are consoling ourselves about still being in-demand at the ripe old age of 40.

Re: The Brutal Ageism of Tech

#82

Post by kasey_junk »

yukichan wrote: post #12

Experience is a liability. You learn all kinds of things as an engineer that quickly become obsolete. Even in the web environment. If you're still worried about hasLayout or rounding corners with images, or god forbid using tables for layout, or even setting explicit widths on your web pages instead of responsive media queries, you're adhering to obsolete ways of doing things that are hurting you more than helping. E…

My favorite part of your comment is that most of the things you are complaining about were considered bad practice the last time I was a professional web developer and that was going on 15 years ago.

If you are routinely running into these issues, the problem isn't with the experience of your peer group, it's with their quality.

Re: The Brutal Ageism of Tech

#83

Post by CountingCode »

zomgbbq wrote: post #55

I'm a 40+ engineer in the NYC metro area and I've never felt more in-demand in my life! I think it boils down to a simple idea: computer-science is a dynamic field and THE FUN PART is that you need to always be learning. There are still some colleagues my age who still wax about the days of writing JCL for their mainframe jobs and never evolved past the 80's and perhaps they gave a bad name for others who built on th…

I'm curious about the "high throughput" part of your comment. Does that mean rapid development? Lots of lines written? or what?

I find the older I get, the slower I produce code. I spend more time thinking about the solution than coding the solution. This tends to frustrate my employers, who follow the "move fast and break things" philosophy. They think I shouldn't have to think about it, just do it.

So, I guess what I'm asking is, in your opinion, is my slowing down a problem? Or an advantage?

Re: The Brutal Ageism of Tech

#84

Post by allochthon »

ascendantlogic wrote: post #2

Here's the thing, the software-is-eating-the-world explosion really took off in the early 90's (or at least that's when myself and a bunch of friends I knew got into it). All the people that got into writing software back then are aging and most that I know aren't planning to stop. I myself am on the doorstep of my 36th birthday. For those of us that have slogged it out for multiple decades now aren't simply going to…

Hopefully this is where things are going. I like this future much better than one in which engineers are disposable.

Re: The Brutal Ageism of Tech

#85

Post by Taek »

Zenst wrote: post #48
jowiar wrote: post #11

One of the biggest indirect causes of ageism I've seen is the traditional career path forced many engineers out of engineering - there is/was an attitude at places like IBM of: "If you want to make bank, you need to go into management or sales". Years later, an engineering crunch makes engineering into "where the money is", but you largely lost a generation of technical experience that took a break of a decade or two…

You mention IBM, one aspect that always bugged me was upto the mid 80's they had a thing about people with beards and was some sort of unwitten policey (never worked for them) that nobody could have a beard and any intervewing with them entailed making sure you had a good shave. I worked with a chap at RAND who went onto work for IBM porting AIX onto the mainframe (least that was the initial project he was joing for)…

I worked as an intern at IBM last summer. It seemed like my entire team was a stagnant pool from the 70's. The languages were C and HLASM, 'high level assembler.' None of my managers knew anything about newer languages like Golang or Haskell. We built hash tables by converting strings to integers and then using modulus. They laughed at the idea of a Linux machine being useful as a server.

That said, most of the new hires were under 25, and most of the older people had been employees since the age of 25. But definitely the older people got all the respect.

IBM's full time offer to me was a solid 1/2 of Google's offer after stock and bonuses (over 2 years), with no room for negotiation.

Re: The Brutal Ageism of Tech

#87

Post by jowiar »

Zenst wrote: post #48
jowiar wrote: post #11

One of the biggest indirect causes of ageism I've seen is the traditional career path forced many engineers out of engineering - there is/was an attitude at places like IBM of: "If you want to make bank, you need to go into management or sales". Years later, an engineering crunch makes engineering into "where the money is", but you largely lost a generation of technical experience that took a break of a decade or two…

You mention IBM, one aspect that always bugged me was upto the mid 80's they had a thing about people with beards and was some sort of unwitten policey (never worked for them) that nobody could have a beard and any intervewing with them entailed making sure you had a good shave. I worked with a chap at RAND who went onto work for IBM porting AIX onto the mainframe (least that was the initial project he was joing for)…

My parents worked a long time at IBM - Dad from about '70-'00, give or take a couple years, and Mom from '77-'86, then again in the late '90s for a few years. I don't think it was an ageism culture per se in terms of older people being less valued, but from both of them, the career advancement was in either sales or management. I don't think the vision for either was to stay technical and advance on the basis of technical ability.

There was a cultural shift internally when Gerstner was brought in - before then, there was a culture of "join us, and IBM will take care of you". Saving the company in the '80s required giving that mentality up, and it destroyed much of what, in my parents' eyes, made IBM a special place to work.

Re: The Brutal Ageism of Tech

#88

Post by hibikir »

guiomie wrote: post #32

Would you guys say this is more of a west coast issue then east cost ?

Well, I can tell you that in the midwest, if anything, the difficult part is to find young developers. Back when I started, it was not uncommon to have 22 year-old dev leads. a 30 year-old was a dinosaur, or in management. Today, most companies around here are pretty much ignoring kids out of school, and hiring 30 somethings. Last year, I worked in a team where the youngest dev had been programming professionally for 15 years, and we weren't working with any old legacy stuff.

What has happened is that most of the bad developers that I worked with 20 years ago are working in banks or outside of development, because it's much easier to hide your incompetence in our 20s than in your 40s.

Now, Silicon Valley is full of fresh meat, and of companies whose best asset is having a guy that is fluent in venturespeak, so I am sure the experience is very different. Just like it's harder to find a .NET job in Seattle if you haven't worked at Microsoft before, given how many former Microsoft employees are available to compete with you.

Re: The Brutal Ageism of Tech

#89

Post by TinyBig »

mattgreenrocks wrote: post #59
xupybd wrote: post #49

What we need is a movement of `experienced` devs to get out there and form some companies that employ mainly older devs. I'm sure the quality from such a company would be incredible.

They exist, but they don't emit quite as much noise as SV companies do. :)

Do you have any recommendations on where to look for these companies? I figure they must be out there but I am not sure where to look.
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