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Why Ageism Never Gets Old

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Re: Why Ageism Never Gets Old

#101

Post by zbentley »

eptcyka wrote: post #88

> With the advent of the cloud and off-the-shelf A.P.I.s—the building blocks of sites and apps—all you really need to launch a startup is a bold idea. With the advent of operating systems and the standard libraries - the building blocks of applications and widgets - all you really need to launch a startup is a bold idea. I'm not entirely sure how I feel about trivialising tech startups - sure there are some which are…

"I'm an 'ideas guy'; all those details like implementation cost and monetization strategy and stuff are best left to others, so people in my position can have more time to think up the next cool thing!"

Re: Why Ageism Never Gets Old

#102

Post by markshead »

jeremyjh wrote: post #3

> In the nineteen-twenties, an engineer’s “half life of knowledge”—the time it took for half of his expertise to become obsolete—was thirty-five years. In the nineteen-sixties, it was a decade. Now it’s five years at most, and, for a software engineer, less than three. This sort of mythology is NOT helping. An experienced Software Engineer has valuable skills that do not age at all. Yes there are new languages and fr…

> and we've stayed current over the years

I think this may be the key.

Re: Why Ageism Never Gets Old

#103

Post by whack »

> "Dan Lyons, a fifty-one-year-old Newsweek reporter, gets his first shock when he’s laid off. “They can take your salary and hire five kids right out of college,” he’s told"

I wonder to what extent, the above is the reason behind senior workers having a harder time finding/maintaining their job. It almost sounds like a Keynesian liquidity trap. People expect their salaries to continually grow over the course of their career, but at some point, the value they bring, relative to a fresh-grad, may not justify that salary level. Other industries may sidestep this problem since work output often depends on connections and reputation, both of which keep growing in your 40s and 50s, but engineering is different in that people's abilities grow exponentially in the first 10-15 years, but not as dramatically afterwards.

If people were willing to continually update their salary expectations, accept pay cuts when necessary, and signaled this to their current/prospective employers, I wonder if this problem would mostly disappear.

As an employee myself, I fully encourage all my colleagues to negotiate hard for every dollar they are worth. But at the same time, I wouldn't begrudge any employer who's trying to get the most bang for his buck.

Re: Why Ageism Never Gets Old

#104

Post by notyourday »

jeremyjh wrote: post #3

> In the nineteen-twenties, an engineer’s “half life of knowledge”—the time it took for half of his expertise to become obsolete—was thirty-five years. In the nineteen-sixties, it was a decade. Now it’s five years at most, and, for a software engineer, less than three. This sort of mythology is NOT helping. An experienced Software Engineer has valuable skills that do not age at all. Yes there are new languages and fr…

If you are 40 and you are still thinking about your skills in terms of "i can code", then I have very bad news for you. There are hundreds of people who can code just as good as you who are younger which means that they are going to replace you because you are just not that good or that irreplaceable.

Is there a way out? Sure:

1. If you actually are that good of a software engineer, start a My Code As Service company - it is the "402 PAY_ME_A_TRUCKLOAD_OF_MONEY" response. There are gobs of companies out there that pay gobs of money for rock star performers because there are just not that many of them.

2. Create - or buy - your own lifestyle business. You will never make millions of dollars but you should be comfortable.

3. Stop pretending that coding matters. Start managing those that produce code. Being a technically competent manager is a great way not to get fired.

Re: Why Ageism Never Gets Old

#105

Post by jerf »

ams6110 wrote: post #78
jonahx wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This sort of mythology is NOT helping. An experienced Software Engineer has valuable skills that do not age at all. Not only is the claim "now it’s five years at most, and, for a software engineer, less than three" an unhelpful mythology, it's laughably incorrect to the point that I can't imagine anyone knowledgable espousing the view with a straight face. It stems from, on the one hand, "software as popular cultur…

> Not only is the claim "now it’s five years at most, and, for a software engineer, less than three" an unhelpful mythology, it's laughably incorrect It's narrowly referring to the "framework fads" that do seem to sweep through our profession on about a three-to-five-year cycle.

Yes, but when Framework B goes sweeping through the world, Framework A doesn't actually go anywhere. People keep working with it.

If software engineers actually burned down all the old code every three years and literally everybody had to learn this new thing in order to do anything at all, this claim would make sense. But it's all additive. Even as we here on HN are shrieking and hooting about Framework B and the way it shines a unique light on the world of programming and how no thinking person could possibly resist its charms, thousands of people keep chugging along on Framework A for years afterwards. In no small part because they've heard it before, and remember that somewhere around the 2 year mark of Framework B's run you can expect well-written and cogent articles about "Framework B Considered Harmful", "Framework B Is Permanently Ruining An Entire Generation Of Programmers", "Why I'm Switching Back To Framework A And Regret Ever Listening To Hacker News" and "Oh Shit, I Bet My Business On Framework B And All My Developers Have Turned Into Feral Wombats And They're Biting Me Ow Ow Ow".

Re: Why Ageism Never Gets Old

#106

Post by icebraining »

ams6110 wrote: post #80
icebraining wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even languages and frameworks don't change that much outside of certain niches. Django and Rails have been around for over a decade. Go, a "new" language, is eight years old. I've been working for 5.5 years with a Python-based platform called Odoo (purely by chance of employment) and I don't see it going away any time soon. A colleague of mine also recently got a very good offer for helping maintain a codebase in Inf…

I think you have that backwards. It's inside certain niches that people are still building stuff in Rails and other decade(s)-old frameworks. Now it's node.js and react, to name a couple of examples. By 2020 something else will probably be the hotness. By 2025, those frameworks will still be around, running established systems, but won't be very interesting to any new developers.

Even Node.js will be nine years old next May, and it's just a runtime for a 22 year old language.

Re: Why Ageism Never Gets Old

#107

Post by mgbmtl »

notyourday wrote: post #104
jeremyjh wrote: post #3

> In the nineteen-twenties, an engineer’s “half life of knowledge”—the time it took for half of his expertise to become obsolete—was thirty-five years. In the nineteen-sixties, it was a decade. Now it’s five years at most, and, for a software engineer, less than three. This sort of mythology is NOT helping. An experienced Software Engineer has valuable skills that do not age at all. Yes there are new languages and fr…

If you are 40 and you are still thinking about your skills in terms of "i can code", then I have very bad news for you. There are hundreds of people who can code just as good as you who are younger which means that they are going to replace you because you are just not that good or that irreplaceable . Is there a way out? Sure: 1. If you actually are that good of a software engineer, start a My Code As Service compan…

Yep, but perhaps to phrase differently: once you get to a certain point, you build a reputation and business network. People usually want to work with you because they know what to expect (in terms of professionalism, code quality, etc). There's also value in that, whether as a programmer, manager and/or consultant.

Re: Why Ageism Never Gets Old

#108

Post by jasode »

humanrebar wrote: post #86
jasode wrote: post #29

First, ageism is not just a SV phenomenon. For example, see the very young White House aides in Clinton, Bush, & Obama administrations.[1] Second, the tech companies that have a reputation for favoring 20-somethings will still hire older workers for certain positions. - Even though Mark Zuckerberg said, "younger people are just smarter" , he hired an "old" person like Sheryl Sandberg to be COO at age ~38. - Bill Gate…

It's worth noting that the median age of an American is 41. That we're discussing people in that age range as counterexamples kind of proves the point.

>median age of an American is 41. That we're discussing people in that age range as counterexamples kind of proves the point.

Don't take my previous post as a complete dataset. It was only coincidence that I happen to list programmers in their 40s off the top of my head. Here are some more in their 60s:

- Google also hired Vint Cerf (TCPIP) at age 62.

- Amazon AWS recently hired James Gosling (Java) age ~62.

- PayPal hired Douglas Crockford (Javascript book author) at age ~57.

My point is that SV companies (and other industries besides tech) will actually discriminate against the young 20-somethings for certain roles.

Re: Why Ageism Never Gets Old

#109

Post by dep_b »

YeeHawGeddyUp wrote: post #13

Well, I am 37 and in my Junior year of a Computer Science degree. I'm not gonna lie, this freaks me out a bit. I do live on the east coast though, hopefully that will help some.

Good move, LinkedIn doesn't show your age but does show the year you graduated. I have a customer where my bosses are 20somethings that were a bit surprised when they met me IRL and saw a guy late in his 30's walking in. Graduating in 2012 really helped I guess.

I'm thinking about getting a master sometimes. Graduating in 2012 makes you look like you're an old person in ten years doesn't it?

Re: Why Ageism Never Gets Old

#110

Post by dennis_jeeves »

balabaster wrote: post #79
moduspol wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think it's ageism if one person is selected based on being willing to work more for less money. That's just a labor market. There's an argument to be made that 20-somethings shouldn't work more than 40 hours a week or should require higher pay. Or that employers should place more value on the work of more experienced developers. Or both. But I don't think experienced developers should be exempt from keeping w…

Never compete on price. Provide something that nobody else can and stick with it, otherwise it's a race to the bottom. Those companies that hire the cheapest labour will get the quality they pay for. Let them, it's not your problem. There are enough who care about doing it right that they will eventually find you and will pay you according to the value you bring.

>There are enough who care about doing it right

If you know any of them, please list them. One real problem is that the ones who want to do it 'right' are few and possibly not easily identifiable so potential job seekers may not know where to search for them.

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