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It’s Tough Being Over 40 in Silicon Valley

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Re: It’s Tough Being Over 40 in Silicon Valley

#161

Post by stcredzero »

api wrote: post #89
oldmanjay wrote: post #5

I'm over 40 and I've been continuing to get more work than I can handle by staying up to date on my tech skills. Maybe that professional headshot I never got would help, though.

In my experience older devs really fall into two categories with a pretty sharp division between them. One group has continued to learn and keep up with their skills. These developers are extremely skilled and experienced and can in many cases be far more productive than younger developers with more shallow knowledge. What they lack in appetite for workaholism they make up for in ability to do more with less work and…

The second group decided at some point that they knew all they needed to know, and they've gotten really rusty and out of date.

How do you know this? Have you been in a good position to evaluate the performance of many older devs? If so, how much diversity in languages/environments is in your sample?

Most of the negative attention I've gotten from younger devs in work settings has been in the form of constant interruptions for me to use keyboard shortcuts. 1) It's very disruptive to the discussion at hand. 2) It's never been an actual problem. 3) It's always couched in impatient and negative emotional tones. 4) It makes it harder for others to follow what you are doing, if you are always concentrating so hard at going fast. 5) It's always seemed like a pointless attempt by young people to seem like fake hackers on TV.

Chris Granger famously observed that programmers who said "I never use the mouse" use it about 50% of the time they're actively programming.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10995235

Re: It’s Tough Being Over 40 in Silicon Valley

#162

Post by ashayh »

new_hackers wrote: post #40

Skills pay the bills. Many of the over-40 crowd I've worked with just plain don't want to learn anything new. They have settled, and are passive in their learning. This is the #1 reason they won't be relevant.

Your statement is both right and wrong.

1> Wrong, because "something new" is often ill-defined and often not _really_ new. For example, in the area of 'DevOps' (itself ill-defined) there are numerous tools and frameworks. But what you really need to deliver as a Sysadmin/SRE/Devops person, is a strong understanding of exactly _3_ skills: Operating Systems, Networking & Programming.

Because people & companies do not understand this, we end up in situations where they reject a candidate because they don't know Ansible, but the candidate knows a lot about Python, Linux, SSH and so on (ie things that Ansible is actually built on).

Many folks don't need to learn "new" things to stay relevant.

2> Right, because its not easy to actually gauge a candidate and determine that a person will _learn_ and deliver on Ansible simply because they have such good Python, Linux & OS skills. They don't even know that if the candidate doesn't know Ansible, I need to quiz them in other ways. That is often because the interviewer is not up to the par either.

This wrongly places the burden on the candidate to reply that "I'm an expert in Ansible", and "learn" something they don't really need to.

Coupled with the fact that many candidates themselves flat out lie and are incompetent etc.. you get the market situation for 'aged' people today.

Re: It’s Tough Being Over 40 in Silicon Valley

#163

Post by 20yrs_no_equity »

dba7dba wrote: post #145
rb808 wrote: post #123

I come from a family with a few generations of engineers of all types. Mechanical/chemical/electrical engineers have a similar problem that 30 years experience isn't much more useful than 10, wages tend to top out early and you're vulnerable to being laid off and never hired again in your 40s/50s. One advantage over software is that the skills change perhaps less frequently but that is offset by lower overall demand.…

So true. The question is, how do you avoid that place. Only so many can become managers. Only so many can start own business and keep it running.

I'm an excellent manager[1]. Alas, what I see is that startups start out with a CTO (the guy who actually built the thing) and there aren't a lot of manager jobs advertised.

The few that were, I got discriminated against because of my age.

Doh!

[1] They tell me. I can't get too far from the code or its no fun, but I prefer to build teams and work at a high level than to be constantly coding all the time.

Re: It’s Tough Being Over 40 in Silicon Valley

#164

Post by taylodl »

rb808 wrote: post #102
oxryly1 wrote: post #46

Is this perhaps because older workers gravitate towards sane hours? Maybe because they develop interests, lives, families, etc outside of work that they commit to (moreso than most 20-somethings)? As a side note: I'm over 40 now, but I do recall being 27 and interviewing someone in their early 40s who was qualified and enthusiastic. I passed on them in part because I felt guilty hiring them; to work on my team the pe…

I've actually found the opposite. The guys in 30's and early 40's have young children which makes it hard to stay away from home. I've worked with people in their 50's who are now empty nesters and happy to work late and/or be on call overnight.

Exactly. Older folks whose kids are self-sufficient are able to focus their time and energy into their work - even more so than twenty-somethings who are still wrapped-up in life's dramas associated with being young. And they have a lot of experience to boot.

Re: It’s Tough Being Over 40 in Silicon Valley

#165

Post by seanmcdirmid »

matt_wulfeck wrote: post #117
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly: the ability to detect bullshit more quickly is unfortunately an ability not appreciated by many companies. It isn't just SV that has this problem. Those that tend to thrive in these environments past 40 are those who have instead learned play the imperfect system aggressively for their own benefit.

Along with that, I think an important value is just not taking wrong ideas personally. So some junior engineer wants to run off and do something that might cause you a head ache. Let them do it and learn from it. Your goal in life can't be to minimize everything that causes pain.

Oh, sure, but I'm not referring to that. It is more likely bullshit from upper management, from even older people...who lost touch with reality long ago.

Re: It’s Tough Being Over 40 in Silicon Valley

#166

Post by friendlygrammar »

angryasian wrote: post #52
new_hackers wrote: post #40

Skills pay the bills. Many of the over-40 crowd I've worked with just plain don't want to learn anything new. They have settled, and are passive in their learning. This is the #1 reason they won't be relevant.

This is the exact attitude that makes tech a shit sector to be in. Its not that people don't want learn anything, its that when you're 40 a lot more time is invested in things outside of work. Kids, wife, house, etc. When you're 20, nomadic, are by yourself, and have a ton of free time.. yes finding time to learn is easy.

So you suggest that we hire old people that haven't kept their skills relevant out of pity?

Re: It’s Tough Being Over 40 in Silicon Valley

#167

Post by anexprogrammer »

aliston wrote: post #44
anexprogrammer wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That should have happened long ago. I did CS and programming as high school subjects and am past 50. The tens of thousands of extra people trained up to solve the millenium bug crisis (that mostly didn't happen) are probably around 40 now. Of my tech friends around my age a lot have drifted into other things - often dramatically different. Some because they were sick of IT (often for similar reasons), and some becaus…

For us younger, but not quite so young folks... what sorts of things have they gone into? Would you say that there is a general trend, or are they all over the map?

Much less time in an office or behind a keyboard and clear emphasis on tangible things and skills. Two became tree surgeons (opposite ends of the country and they don't know each other). Those two probably wreck statistical validity. :)

Of the rest two are in environmental sector that fitted their views well, one in light engineering. So it goes on. Most haven't moved to other intellectual pursuits.

If I paraphrase Feynman, only a little, I think it might nail the underlying:

"It gives somebody, individually, pleasure. You can make something that somebody likes so much that they’re depressed, or they’re happy, on account of that damn thing you made! In IT, it’s sort of general and large" and ephemeral.

He was talking about his art, but it seems to fit.

Re: It’s Tough Being Over 40 in Silicon Valley

#168

Post by [deleted] »

rootbear wrote: post #159
dba7dba wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So true. The question is, how do you avoid that place. Only so many can become managers. Only so many can start own business and keep it running.

Exactly! I would be a terrible manager and I have no entrepreneurial instincts at all. I'm way over 40 and I'm one layoff away from involuntary retirement. I suppose I could hook up with someone who was an entrepreneur, but there's no certainty of that happening.

[deleted]

Re: It’s Tough Being Over 40 in Silicon Valley

#169

Post by brlewis »

ericd wrote: post #132
JeremyMorgan wrote: post #13

I don't know about the Silicon Valley, but I'm in the Silicon Forest (Hillsboro/Portland Oregon) and this market seems to be very merit driven. You can be 80 years old and get a job if you can do work. Maybe you can't get a job at fart.IO building an API for some craft beer BS but at many mid to large companies 40 is still an average. The last 4-5 companies I've been at value bullet points over anything else (for wha…

Is jQuery too low level for people now?

It's too reliant on state changes all over the place, making even medium-complexity web apps really hard to maintain. I find with Mithril (similar to React but smaller) it's a lot easier to understand how my app gets into a particular state.

Re: It’s Tough Being Over 40 in Silicon Valley

#170

Post by kafkaesq »

arenaninja wrote: post #81
JeremyMorgan wrote: post #13

I don't know about the Silicon Valley, but I'm in the Silicon Forest (Hillsboro/Portland Oregon) and this market seems to be very merit driven. You can be 80 years old and get a job if you can do work. Maybe you can't get a job at fart.IO building an API for some craft beer BS but at many mid to large companies 40 is still an average. The last 4-5 companies I've been at value bullet points over anything else (for wha…

Is the potshot on jQuery and PHP really necessary? I know enough people where I live making six figures (low COL city) with PHP, SQL and jQuery that I don't think they're ready to sunset.

The potshot was aimed at Winforms, actually, not SQL.
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