The Brutal Ageism of Tech

This is a very depressing read. I can understand in industries like modeling, acting etc but in tech?

What about 10 similar shallow experiences vs. 1 really varied experience? That is exactly the false dilemma I was talking about earlier. Changing companies does not automatically mean changing roles, and staying with one company does not automatically rule it out.

They won't necessarily know what the solution is. But that's okay.

You will see the following in experienced, good consultants as well. A lot will go wrong on a gig that is not anticipated during the initial scoping of the project. The inexperienced (often but not always correlated with youth) will "freak out". Whether it is a passive flip out like analysis paralysis or a more overt one, the end effect upon management/clients is still unpleasant for them.

Even when I was much younger in the field, I observed some of the older staff tended to have an imperturbability and unflappability about them even when presented with unexpected and unwelcome challenges (read: emergencies). They often didn't know what the solution was, but had enough taste and experience to know where to start and to start Getting Shit Done. This meant picking a likely direction of troubleshooting and just start walking a breadth-first search of causes, then a depth-first on anything turning up from the breadth-first that looked promising. Easy to describe in these antiseptic terms and comfort of your keyboard, hard for many younger developers in the heat of the moment when there is a frantic manager beating them about the ears that the company is about to go under if they don't fix this "right this damned second!".

This points out another observation I've made about managing younger developers. Do not mistake their energy level and enthusiasm for the degree of emotional and verbal abuse it requires to engage them. It might be different for other industries and positions (I doubt it), but too many times I've seen people take the easy way out and subscribe to the Management by Berating school. Also called the Management by Complaining/Screaming/Browbeating school. You can mention the dire effects some emergency has to the younger crowd to establish context, but move on from it and don't use it as a way to urge them on to fix something faster. Most younger developers simply do not possess the life experience to easily tamp down the anxieties they feel and set them aside long enough to dispassionately fix the problem at hand if there is management at their desk anxiously wanting blow-by-blow updates.

This doesn't mean you simply dump the problem in the younger developers' laps and walk away, either. Neither extreme is good for your team or organization. Lead by example with a calm approach to working the problem, either make decisions on where to start or support your senior leads with their educated guesses with where to start (and if you don't know where to start and don't have senior leads to turn to, you've got bigger problems), triage the effects with mitigation tasks, assign bite-sized tasks to the less experienced developers as your judgement advises, create a big picture view for yourself with the best information available of where your team stands with the problem, clarify the picture as you go along, and run interference from the rest of the organization's managers who Manage by Dysfunction.

A side note for younger developers. The only partial shortcut to that unflappability I've had experience with is to secure yourself 2-3 years of living expenses as soon as you can. It helps you achieve perspective, especially when a manager yells you'll lose your job over something. It isn't a replacement for experience, taste, judgement, whatever you want to call it, but it does help a lot with compartmentalizing the emotional component of facing down stressful situations at work, which takes most employees a decade or two to learn, and some don't learn it at all.

As a person going through a career change, ageism is something I am sort of concerned with. If it takes me a few years to become "good" at what I am doing, I am really pushing being considered "old" in the tech industry.

However, I really think it is a money issue that is subconsciously present in how the tech industry hires or funds people. It's much cheaper to hire/fund a 23 year old than it is a 33 year old.

23 year olds negotiate a lot worse. They are easier to manipulate and take advantage of. You can convince a 23 year old to take a cut in salary for "huge potential". A 33 year old with 10 years of experience will have been fooled a few times and be much less willing to take a bad deal.

Also, there is a misconception that the 23 year old has comparable skills to the 33 year old.

If the 23 year old has been coding since he was 15, then he has 8 years "experience". We all know that is sort of bullshit. While some teenagers take coding seriously, it's a lot different than working on a real project with deadlines, customers, and "It has to work" attitude.

So, the hirer/funder convinces himself that the younger person has similar skills AND will be easier to guide or manipulate.

It's not just in tech that this happens, but it is more prevalent because tech is such a fasting changing and relatively young industry.

I mean, at one point, railroads were the latest thing and people starting railroad companies were young guys full of piss and vinegar.

I think as time goes on, you will see a gradual changing of attitudes, but it has surprised me how long this prejudice has stayed.