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The Brutal Ageism of Tech

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Re: The Brutal Ageism of Tech

#131

Post by lukeholder »

kevinalexbrown wrote: post #107

Perhaps the question we should be asking is why talent doesn't seem to increase with age as much as we'd like. Let's assume for a minute that the age bias is important and useful. Why is that? More importantly, what could we do to facilitate an increase in creativity or productivity or 'talent' over time? The fact that we don't has a huge impact on the kinds of things society achieve. I don't think it's correct to ju…

In my opinion I think it's just the free time to be able to put in the number of hours of deliberate practice. When you are younger you have far more time and flexibility to learn and experiment. In addition that time is spent on things that are seen to be new/better/modern and also come with a certain distain for doing things the way your predecessors did it. This mix gives the young person the flexibility of cutting corners and inventing/reinventing and by all appearance look 'smarter'.

I am now 30 with a wife 2 kids - I simply cannot put in the same number of hours of simply playing and practicing I did when I was 15-25. As much as I try to put in the hours, I need to face the fact I need to focus my time on them now. I also need to continue to earn a good living to give them everything I want for them (education, freedom). This means I am going to keep my 150k job doing things which may not be so innovative but I get to leave work at 5pm.

Whether that is a incorrect assumption I don't know, but from my perspective it feels true.

Re: The Brutal Ageism of Tech

#132

Post by kasey_junk »

specialk wrote: post #93

Is a twenty-something founder going to hire people twice their age in the early days of their company? Unlikely.Twenty-something founders hire people they know, who are usually their own age. Friends from college, or the other twenty-somethings from their last company. As a early-twenty-something I only know a relatively small number of engineers 30+, and have only worked with a handful. Compare that to the dozens of…

This is spot on, and as an experienced dev I can tell you the other side. It's not just the culture problem, it's what can you possibly offer me to come work with you in your early stage startup?

I demand a very high premium for the work I do for others, and if I were going to start my own business, I wouldn't hire inexperienced people to do it with. I know the people I need to know to get financing/sales/engineering/etc. and they all have proven successful track records. At best you could bring passion and new ideas, at worst your college culture would creep in.

Don't get me wrong. I enjoy working in environments with younger developers. Mentoring new developers is one of the most rewarding things I do. But my employers have me do it because hiring young folks is a cost of doing business.

That said, I don't think anybody is worried about ageism creeping into 3 person ramen startups. The issue is 2 fold A) if your startup becomes successful enough to need my expertise, and you don't hire me because you don't see the value of experience, that is bad for both of us. B) There currently seems to be severe bias in SV investors against older founders and/or startups that employ early stage experienced folks. Paul Graham has this bias and is proud of it. That is the ageism that gets me upset.

Finally, I will say, writing good software is a craft. Like all crafts, learning from experienced craftsmen is central to getting good at it. If writing good software is something that is important to you (it needn't be, and might even be detrimental) you need to go meet and work with older developers.

Re: The Brutal Ageism of Tech

#133

Post by codeonfire »

Can you really expect VC's not to be assholes? I think maybe the article is a little quick to play the age card in regards to the example give. Just because someone acts like an asshole and acts disinterested doesn't mean they're not interested. And, there are other ways to start a business. If someone doesn't like older people, people with kids and families, fuck 'em. Find something else.

Re: The Brutal Ageism of Tech

#134

Post by tiler »

It could just be the case that we are at a point on the programming timeline where much of the work done by the deeply technical grey-bearded wizards from the past few decades has been abstracted away into APIs, programming languages, and design methodologies. These tools give people who have programming skills the oppourtunity to sacrifice a few months learning them to gain the creative power that not too long ago may have taken years. So this is not a period of time where the older programmers can rest on their laurels.

What we consider very basic geometry calculations today, so trivial we teach them in elementary school, would be beyond the capabilities of even some of the fabeled Ancient Greek Geometers. Again, this is only because many generations of mathematicians have refined and abstracted away much of the detail that at one point was necessary to perform these now trivial computations.

Re: The Brutal Ageism of Tech

#135

Post by tacoman »

mwfunk wrote: post #108

I dunno. I can think of three ways in which an older developer might have a hard time finding a job: (1) If someone doesn't keep up with currently relevant technology, they will find themselves without the job skills that employers are looking for, regardless of whatever other qualities they may have. This isn't ageism. (2) If someone works at the same place for 10+ years, getting raises every year and becoming more…

What you describe in (2) doesn't just apply to software developers. It can also apply to sysadmin/SRE-type roles. I'm what passes for an "expert" at operating a very complicated yet unremarkable piece of software used by maybe 100 companies world wide. My salary has gone up rapidly over the last 5 years mostly because of my knowledge of this niche (and near EOL) software.

My next job likely will not be using this software so I'm doing my best to keep up with what's changing in IT generally. I even schedule a time once per week to work on a side project just to make sure my development skills stay sharp-ish. Despite the effort I put in, I expect that I'll likely have to take a pay cut if (when) I go to another job at a different company.

If it sounds like I'm complaining, I'm actually not. This is just how it works I guess.

Re: The Brutal Ageism of Tech

#136

Post by awt »

After a certain point, if you've made enough friends, you will likely never have to interview for a position again unless you want to. Interviewing is where ageism is probably most pernicious, and that process can be avoided.

Re: The Brutal Ageism of Tech

#137

Post by _greim_ »

kevinalexbrown wrote: post #107

Perhaps the question we should be asking is why talent doesn't seem to increase with age as much as we'd like. Let's assume for a minute that the age bias is important and useful. Why is that? More importantly, what could we do to facilitate an increase in creativity or productivity or 'talent' over time? The fact that we don't has a huge impact on the kinds of things society achieve. I don't think it's correct to ju…

I have a theory. Competence increases with age. However, there's a fine line between older people not doing as many stupid things, versus older people not taking as many risks.

The perceived "talent" or "smartness" of younger people in the valley is simply the result of them taking more risks, which inevitably sometimes pay off. And risk-payoffs in the valley are disproportionately large at the high end, which skews the balance toward taking more risks.

For my theory to be true, silicon valley startups would be riddled by god-awful, marginally working code in the average case.

Re: The Brutal Ageism of Tech

#138

Post by bandushrew »

MacsHeadroom wrote: post #101
CountingCode wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

It's a problem if you want to be on a team, especially one that does rapid development-- which is most/increasingly more of them from what I can tell. Freelancing might suite someone like you very well though. The best freelancers write solid software at the pace that works for them.

" team, especially one that does rapid development-"

sorry, what? any team that thinks "rapid development" actually means writing code more quickly is a team composed of idiots - I think I must be misunderstanding you?

Re: The Brutal Ageism of Tech

#139

Post by aortega »

Retric wrote: post #8

The odd thing is hiring older workers is generally a great idea. From an organisational perspective programming teams don't scale vary well so hiring less skilled people is generally a terrible long term strategy. Personally, I have worked with a few hundred programmers and I can only name 3 that where competent before 30. Outside the valley you find a plenty of really competent programmers mostly in there late 40's…

Not so much. I'm 35, started programming at about 10 in my TI99-4A, typing games from magazines, etc. the usual stuff.

No way a 40 year old guy have more experience than me in general programming, unless he was working at Microsoft or IBM at that date, and surely they are about less than 10000 of those guys in the world. Of course there are 40 year olds that may have way more experience than me in a specific language or technology.

My point is that if computer tech is only 30 year old, then you won't find programmers with more than 30 years of experience, no matter their age.

Re: The Brutal Ageism of Tech

#140

Post by aceperry »

gamegoblin wrote: post #19
daveqr wrote: post #7

Guess what, there's a lot of software being written by people not in their 20s in places like Kansas City, Boston and Nashville. The world doesn't revolve around Silicon Valley.

Yyyyep. Step into one of Walmart's cubicle farms in Bentonville, Arkansas and it's mostly middle aged folks hacking away in C# and VB.

Interestingly, the Walmart Lab in the bay area is a big promoter of html5, javascript, and all of the latest web tech.
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