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The Brutal Ageism of Tech

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Re: The Brutal Ageism of Tech

#311

Post by csixty4 »

Gormo wrote: post #148
aortega wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Computer technology is about 60 years old, though. There were people doing some pioneering work in the 50s and 60s, and the modern hacker culture really has its roots in the 1970s, just prior to the rise of personal computing. There was lots of stuff going on with the DEC minicomputers, LISP machines, early UNIX systems, and big-iron mainframes long before most of us were even born, let alone getting our starts on TI…

The work in the late 40s was interesting, too. First, you had specialized systems, then Eckert, Mauchly, and von Neumann started working on stored program computers. They had to figure out what opcodes were needed and how they were going to be implemented. Jean Jennings Bartik's book (http://www.amazon.com/Pioneer-Programmer-Jennings-Computer-C...) is a great first-hand account of all the work (and drama) from back then.

(Not trying to short-change Bartik here either -- she did a lot of the work on the ENIAC instruction set when they converted it to a stored-program computer)

Re: The Brutal Ageism of Tech

#312

Post by 5teev »

bsder wrote: post #200
late2part wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the issues that is unpopular to discuss in inertia in constraints. Experienced people have learned a set of platonic causations that they apply to pattern matched situations. When they come into a new situation, if they match patterns that don't quite fit, they'll apply old solutions to situations that are not appropriate. Enders Game is a good allegory for this. It's good to have diversity and meritocratic pr…

> One of the issues that is unpopular to discuss in inertia in constraints. Prove it with some research. The current research shows that people really don't make their best contributions to their field before 35-45. And, to be fair, I see more young people who attempt to hit the screw with a hammer because a hammer is the only tool they have.

But what if it's an awesome shiny new hammer based on the latest impulse-delivery fads? Plus, screwdrivers are boring.

Re: The Brutal Ageism of Tech

#314

Post by microcolonel »

Is this even really such a specific issue? Good businesspeople will not throw away enormous potential value, regardless of its origins, less competent businesspeople will make the less competent judgements of ageism, racism, sexism etc. at the cost of their business.

There are a lot of crappy businesspeople willing to toss the plasticity of young employees, and the experience of older employees away; these are the people we hopefully aren't giving venture funds until they figure things out.

Re: The Brutal Ageism of Tech

#315

Post by TheCoelacanth »

pvdm wrote: post #158
Taek wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 h…

How old are the creators of Golang and Haskell ?

Haskell was designed by a committee, so it's going to be difficult to find ages for all of them, but Simon Peyton Jones, the best known of the creators, is 56.

Re: The Brutal Ageism of Tech

#316

Post by mhewett »

Having been a "young developer" and now an "old developer" (mid-50s) here is how I see the pros and cons of older developers:

Pros of being older: 1. Wisdom from having written a million lines of code and having run into all the bugs before. 2. Can more capably see the pros and cons of the latest fads. 3. Not as distracted by the need to play. 4. Don't drink as much (the younger generation drinks a LOT! 5. Capable of providing adult leadership.

Cons: 1. Even those of us in excellent shape just don't have the energy we used to. 2. Family distractions lead to lack of free time to keep up with new developments. 3. Family distractions lead to more errors. 4. We are sure we've seen everything already. (And boy are we wrong!).

All in all, my next startup is definitely going to have a mixture of wise, seasoned hands and energetic young devs.

Re: The Brutal Ageism of Tech

#318

Post by erichmond »

Shivetya wrote: post #306
toomuchtodo wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

31 year old here. I already have ~13 years of experience, and I feel like I still have my best work ahead of me.

48 here, I hope I never reach the point where I do not think the same.

35 years old and 18 years experience. Same boat. :)

Re: The Brutal Ageism of Tech

#319

Post by Thrymr »

mgkimsal wrote: post #110

How much overlap is there between the types of companies in this article and the typical "we can't find anyone qualified to hire!" company? I suspect it's not total, but there's probably some overlap. I can't wait until these 22 year olds of today hit their 40s and they reap what they've sown. Zuckerburg said "younger people are just smarter"? Certainly there's a degree of hubris in youth that you don't lose without…

It has happened before. A 60s trope was "Don't trust anyone over 30" [1]. The Who sang "Hope I die before I get old" in 1965 (Pete Townsend is now 70, Roger Daltry 68).

[1] http://www.berkeleydailyplanet.com/issue/2000-04-06/article/...

Re: The Brutal Ageism of Tech

#320

Post by craigyk »

skrebbel wrote: post #219

Anecdotal: I'm a part-time CTO (long story) of a startup. I'm 30 myself. We hired 6 engineers in total up until now: three interns in their twenties, who're very smart and motivated but also inexperienced; two programmers with a few years of professional experience who can get to real decent (well written, unit tested, etc) code on the first go; and 1 guy of over 40. When hiring, I was very skeptical of the guy over…

The more I think about it, ageism is mostly about reducing perceived costs: Older people have families, more experience (in general), demand higher salaries, and are less likely to put in crazy hours. They can still totally be worth it.
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