9 ms·

Where do all the old programmers go?

103 points by FuNe 10y ago

dredmorbius 10y ago
Other than anecdotes, is there any actual longitudinal data which tracks programmers and technical types across their careers?
rubidium 10y ago
An article that contains a bunch of anedotes to refute another article that contains a bunch of anecdotes. Hmm... I want to see the data of where they go and determine from that.
- FuNe 10y ago
  Yes - the article is not very good but I couldn't find anything decent (didn't search long though). Put this up mostly interested in what actual people might have to say. Data point - in my 40s (doing DevOps atm). Truth is in my company (one of the big ones) I do not see a lot of older folks doing technical work (I might be the oldest in a team of about 40 people). So I'm wondering - where is everyone (and why am I not there too)?
TeMPOraL 10y ago
They get cast into void.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- lfowles 10y ago
  Many of them stick around as a memory leak.
Apreche 10y ago
If anyone knows where, let me know. I'm gonna need to head there pretty soon.
- stray 10y ago
  /dev/null
hockeybias 10y ago
58 and coding for a living in Minneapolis... I was a consultant dev for most of the last 16 years and just started as an FTE with my most recent client.
jnaour 10y ago
/dev/null probably.
coldcode 10y ago
To work is where I go (59). You won't meet a lot of people like me because when I started (1981) there were way fewer programmers than today plus some became obsolete, some became managers, and some got burned out. So the chances of meeting someone like me if you started in the past decade is not high. This of course makes it hard to decide how much age discrimination there is as it's hard to quantify, unlike gender for example. For me I got this job based on a manager from a previous job needing here what he already knew I could do.
- jhauris 10y ago
  The vast growth of the programmer population as a reason for why there aren't as many older programmers is a very compelling reason. I'm surprised I haven't seen it before.
  - coldcode 10y ago
    I think there are 20 million or so programmers (not sure how you count this) today. I bet there were less than 1% of that back 35 years ago though of course no clue how to measure that either.
    - aws_ls 10y ago
      One way is to look at total revenue of IT/Software Industry at present and compare it with 1981. My guess is that even after adjusting for inflation it would be more than 100 times growth. Many of the present great companies were not even formed and some had just formed. I started working in the mid 90s. Joined a company which had few 100 employees, when I left it had around 300 times more.
- markbnj 10y ago
  Yep, agreed. I'm 56 and an SRE at a YC alumni company where I work on platform and tools. I have very few peers my age and I agree dilution is responsible for a lot of that. I started in '87 and didn't really know anyone locally. All my professional relationships were formed on Compuserve and there were really very few of us compared to today.
henrik_w 10y ago
Data point: I just turned 50, and I am happily coding away as a developer. Couldn't be happier - I still love to code.
- swah 10y ago
  Glad to hear - do you take special care of your wrists? I'm 32 and with some problems already...
  - henrik_w 10y ago
    Yes, I do! I actually had pretty bad RSI almost 11 years ago (not in my wrists, but in my arms), which have made me use a break program, a split keyboard and a pen-mouse. These changes, especially the break program (using MacBreakZ now) have cured my RSI. More details here: https://henrikwarne.com/2012/02/18/how-i-beat-rsi/ https://henrikwarne.com/2012/02/18/how-i-beat-rsi/
  - lfowles 10y ago
    After starting to feel twinges in my wrist I switched to an Alphagrip[0] keyboard so that I wouldn't be tempted to rest my wrists on the desk or a pad. Haven't felt that twinge since... Alphagrips might be hard to find now, but definitely explore alternative keyboards. [0]: http://www.alphagrips.com/ http://www.alphagrips.com/
  - drather19 10y ago
    The biggest difference maker for me in terms of alleviating repetitive strain was switching from a mouse to a trackball. Something about not having to tense my arm up and move the mouse all over anymore...
    - swah 10y ago
      I never had pain on my right hand which I use for mousing. My mild pain is the left hand - two hypotheses: this hand is weaker, and too much alt-tabbing. I suspect lifting weights already improves this generally, as I have periods of much less pain which coincide with being more active.
tremon 10y ago
They gosub without return.
oblio 10y ago
An old joke about this: They go to the elephant graveyards of IT, banks.
ctordtor 10y ago
I turned 40 this year, most of the developers I work with are older than I am. The answer is in Federal contracting.
eranation 10y ago
They become architects / development managers / product managers / pre-sales engineers / professional services consultants / founders of startups / project managers / security advisors / dev ops managers / tech recruiters / biz dev managers / even sales...
- hbcondo714 10y ago
  Some of the best product managers I have worked with are former programmers...they just get it. When I hire people in these roles, I often specify "technical" in the job title to attract these former programmers.
  - henrik_w 10y ago
    I have the same experience.
  - mywittyname 10y ago
    Programming develops the skills found in good program managers. I think it's because so many of us build things that don't exist constantly. So we build a natural intuition about what are valuable problems to solve and can do it in ways that people would never consider, even "domain experts". A domain expert might try a naive or brute force approach to a very specific problem, while a programmer would see a graphing problem and instantly think of several different techniques to apply and be able to tell what outcome they'd produce.
stray 10y ago
At about 40, it does start to get more difficult to get hired. And by 50, it is all but hopeless. And the salary offered begins to go down at 40 too. Sharply after 44 or so. Where I am now, at 51, I have had to learn to get by on what I was making as a SysAdmin 20 mumble years ago. But at least I have a job. Before getting my current job I was having to learn to get by without a place to live too.
- FuNe 10y ago
  I'm curious. Where are you based? i.e. which job market?
  - stray 10y ago
    Right now I'm in Omaha but came here from Colorado, for the current job.
- fecak 10y ago
  If you are willing to share, I'd be curious to hear more about your situation. I've seen salary plateau at certain career levels and ages (40s usually), but saying salary goes down at all (let alone sharply) is something that I expect is not a general truth about the market at large. My anecdotal data comes from ~20 years in recruiting engineers. There are several reasons you could see a salary drop (stagnating skill set no longer in demand, move to company that pays less, move to industry that values programmers less, etc.), but age alone isn't likely to be one of them.
  - stray 10y ago
    Would a significant gap in employment be that damaging? I was severely burned in an automobile accident (60%, 3rd degree) on June 6, 2006 -- and was completely unable to work for a couple years. It took a little over 4 years total from the date of the accident till I got another job. Every job since then has been with a startup.
    - fecak 10y ago
ChemicalWarfare 10y ago
Mid 40s here. architecting/engineering Java monstrosities by day (although it's not too bad lately - fat jars/docker etc), hacking on some personal pet projects with newer tech (been getting into Elm and some Haskell lately) by night.
Yetanfou 10y ago
They take up farming, of course. Having explored the most 'modern' parts of society they're ready for a new challenge. Also, having dealt with virtuality for so long it is time for a dose of reality. Me, I bought a farm in Sweden. Harvest is in, manure has been spread, looking to grow my first 'beer crop' (barley and hops) within a few years. The forest needs some attention but that is what winter is for. What comes around, goes around. Programmers (and developers and architects and others of similar ilk) turn to the land while farmers are surrounding themselves with technology. GPS-controlled tractors, milk robots, ID-based cow feeders, etc. Horticulture is being robotised. Forestry will go that route soon enough, with clear-cut harvest being replaced by individual tree harvesting.
- npiazza83 10y ago
  While not ready for retirement I'm getting up there and I am buying a house soon with between 1/4-1/2 acre piece of land attached. Its a reward and opportunity for me to experiment with a large "garden" for myself and my family and maybe enough for friends or to can/jar. I get this impulse but I'm still plugged in enough to want to automate things. I'm looking at farmbot on kickstarter and thinking how I could build my own, program or automate various systems and sensors. I'm extremely excited about having one foot in both worlds.
  - Yetanfou 10y ago
    I'm not retired, by no means - I'm 51. I'll keep on hacking for as long as I feel the urge and find some need. I do concentrate on trying to make our (way of) life less dependent on a steady income stream - in other words, I use time and some money to make us less dependent on future money. A farm with enough land to support a family is a good start, especially one which has both arable land as well as productive forest. Hence my choice, although the fact that I studied forestry at an agricultural university might have something to do with it as well.
- dejv 10y ago
  Funny enough, I also went farming route: bought vineyards four years ago. I am curently thinking about getting into aeroponics herbs/lettuce production with all the automation.
landmark3 10y ago
they die
zanethomas 10y ago
I'm 66, started programming 40 years ago, and I'm not going anywhere! Seriously, I love what I do and will continue programming as long as possible. I'm addicted to learning and the satisfaction of good, clean, simple code that gets the job done.
notacoward 10y ago
The part of the article that really rings true for me is the part about specialization. Certainly a lot move into management of one sort of another (line, product, project). Some move into "architect" roles or CTO offices where they apply their wisdom (and biases) to affecting technical direction other than by actually coding. However, many still remain in coding roles, but the coding tends to be more specialized: * Outside of tech companies, in other orgs with their own specific tech needs (e.g. financial or scientific). * More infrastructure, less user-facing. * More "old school" like embedded/OS work. I'm 51, and I specialize in storage. Consistent with this pattern, I've had many colleagues and collaborators in their 40s and 50s (after that it really does get pretty thin). We might be less visible than people doing the mobile/VR/ML kinds of stuff that are en vogue in the Silicon Valley VC/YC ecosystem, but many of us are still in high demand. There are even headhunters who specialize in facilitating such hires. They don't focus explicitly on age, but their focus on specific domains often results in a greyer-than-average contact list. You just have to know where to look.
Isamu 10y ago
I'm 55 this year, still programming. And I still love it ... well, I love trying new things. One of my friends that I started my first job with is now at the CTO level, while I keep turning down opportunities to "advance" into management. Another friend of mine quit after the Senior Director level because he started hating his life, and went back to programming/embedded engineering for the fun of it. Age does make you wonder if you were turned down for an offer because of subconscious ageism, but I am not aware of rampant problems with it. You do have to be careful to give everybody's proposals a chance, instead of just pattern-matching to something awful in your past. Keeping an open mind is a discipline. Having kids helps you rediscover what you once loved, helps you recover from jaded oldsterism.
- Roboprog 10y ago
  Once in a while, I get to help my college age daughter learn "R" programming. That's a pretty interesting language, which she probably knows better than I do now. (at least operational knowledge of the library, but not all the Computer Science aspects) Conversely, it's interesting that my adult child is now having to deal with a bout of "imposter syndrome" :-)
mark_l_watson 10y ago
Many of us still work. I am in my 60s and I still work about 20 hours a week. I love designing and writing code, and I also do software maintenance and devops, and I write about one computer science book a year (working on two right now: one on Haskell and one on Cognitive Science). I don't earn the very high salary that I used to earn, but that is OK because I am doing what I want to do.
tgamba 10y ago
At 49 I am still coding and still learning. I architected and implemented node.js services this year and have done lots of interesting modern web development. I am well respected within my organization and in fact have been poached from one team for another. Ageist hiring practices are a reality, but not all companies are so biased. And you could not pay me enough to go into management. I want to make things. Perhaps that is why I am still viable.
- hashkb 10y ago
  You could definitely pay me enough. Great managers help more things get built than great engineers. They do it in a different way, but as long as they don't suck, they are critical. Good managers are much harder to find than competent engineers.
  - saiya-jin 10y ago
    I think he meant he doesn't want to do the management job. Ie moving from abstractly creative work to endless series of meetings, conf calls, creating powerpoints excels and whatnot. Yes they are necessary, but it doesn't make it a cool job that brings fulfillment and happiness. Most devs move there over time, and then complain how cool coding actually was, but they are already in money/debt trap
    - tgamba 10y ago
      Yes-- that is exactly what I mean. If I found myself in an organization where management looked appealing I would make the switch. It has never happened.
  - Grishnakh 10y ago
    No thanks. Management requires too many things I'm just not good at, or would be miserable spending my time doing: talking to people all day long, sitting in meetings, doing powerpoint stuff, attempting to mentor people, playing politics with upper management, doing performance reviews, etc. There's nothing there I derive any enjoyment from. What I do wish I could do is find a job where I travel around a lot and debug problems for customers on-site. I like traveling and don't mind spending time in hotels (as long as they're nice ones), and like being able to do different things instead of the same thing day after day, month after month. I also like problem-solving and debugging (esp. when I'm not the one to blame for the bug!), and have been very good at this kind of work in past jobs.
empath75 10y ago
I'm 40, and I'm just getting started as a software developer after years doing other sorts of IT things (networking, tech support, sysadmin, etc).
- retro64 10y ago
  Exactly. I'm older than you by a few years and I don't even waste my time considering my age. Too much to do to worry about this nonsense. This constant rumination about age discrimination in the industry is the only thing getting old from my perspective.
philk10 10y ago
Michigan!! Worked in the SE of England as a programmer for 20 years, moved to being a tester ( had 20 years experience of how things could go wrong) then moved away from the rat race commute of London to low-cost of living Michigan and couldn't be happier. Currently learning how to program mobile apps so that I can test them better
fecak 10y ago
They find companies that value their experience and don't just hire those who already know how to use all the shiny things. They do independent consulting after spending years building their reputation as someone who delivered for past co-workers and managers. They go to mature mid-market or large companies where those in management and hiring are perhaps a few years older as well. Sometimes they need to retool Anyone thrust into the job market for the first time in several years (say 10+) might find it somewhat unrecognizable. Job search has changed significantly in the ~20 years I've been in recruiting. I've developed a bit of a niche business in helping older programmers (I'm 44) "rehabilitate" themselves and prepare to enter a job search (writing/reviewing resumes, consult on job search strategy, etc.). It's mostly people who don't want to go into management and still want to stay in the code. I can only think of a few people that left the industry entirely, out of thousands (I also ran a Java Users Group for 15 years, which has a large contingent of older programmers).
nkassis 10y ago
I work in a place where I'm in the low end of the age spectrum at 30. The company is in the Financial industry and was founded in the 70s. It has a long history of using technology so many engineers started 10-20+ years ago. The company offers great benefits and salary are above average which is what I think many of the engineers here optimized for when coming to work here. That's also what I felt led a lot of the engineers I worked with in my previous job for one of the big tech companies to leave after 5 years or so. Most of them ended up taking jobs with companies which seemed to offer better work life balance and benefits. A lot of them also ended up in management. Some because it was the only path available for advancement. Many orgs just don't have (or make) space for distinguished engineers and the career path for SE ends at the senior level to which most can attend in less then 5-10 years. After that there is nowhere to go for them but management. Another issue is the demand for distinguished engineers is lower since you need less of them then junior and senior devs so it's a limited pool of jobs.
diyseguy 10y ago
into the soylent of course!
akavi 10y ago
Does anyone have hard numbers on what the cohorted attrition is for programmers? Ie, of the individuals employed as programmers 10 years ago, what percent are still employed in programming? 20 years ago? 30 years ago? I've tried to search for this, but I think my google-fu's not up to snuff.
kazinator 10y ago
There aren't that many older programmers because they are diluted by the large numbers of younger programmers in a growing field. Even if everyone who was employed in a software dev role in 1975 or even 1985 were still employed in a software dev role today, they would be so outnumbered by younger people as to be a statistical blip. (Whoa, age discrimination!) Also, older people will tend not to suddenly switch to software development. The major entry path is through young people becoming developers. Most people over 50 in development are people who were 20-something in development, possibly younger. So how many 50-somethings there are in dev has mostly to do with how many 20-somethings were in dev thirty years ago. It could be different if large numbers of non-dev 50-somethings suddenly retrained as devs, but they don't.
mcv 10y ago
To me, it has become easier to find work when I approached 40. I'm 42 now, and I've had plenty of co-workers who were older than that. Any company that refuses more experienced programmers is foolish. My dad retired as a professional programmer a few years ago. He started in the 1970s, and had been doing a lot of Java before his retirement. He's occasionally doing some work on an open source project now.
stuff4ben 10y ago
GTFO of "the valley" and you can have a very productive career past your 40's. Seriously, I know this is HN, but the world doesn't revolve around SJ and SF.
- Roboprog 10y ago
  Irony: I work with a group of about a half dozen devs for ... UC Davis (same uni as the prof mentioned in the article). We are all 50-ish, and work with minimal hand holding. We do grant work for the state, and to some extent, the federal government. We are not doing "super scalable" stuff, but we still have thousands of users, many daily, and some of the entry forms for things are huge, with much complicated logic to be legally compliant. I have set myself up as the resident Javascript guy (Angular), but I have to admit, it feels odd when I go to the local JS user group - it's a much younger crowd, overall. The funny thing, though, is that Angular/JS feels quite a bit like the interpreted language, proto-MVC, stuff I did on PCs back in the 80s :-)
  - anaheim_ducks 10y ago
    Or VB classic in the '90s.
childintime 10y ago
A related phenomenon is that programmers have no collective identity to rely on (or uphold). The struggle of the classes and the topic of the bigger social good is relatively meaningless to them. They can't put a finger on these issues, they belong to other classes. Programmers are by nature but also by nurture very much individuals, and as individuals, without nurturing collectivity, they are easily manipulated and put against each other. So programmers don't work on socially relevant or desirable problems, but on some relatively obscure scalability issue that exists only inside a few internet behemoths. They need soldiers, not wisdom. With these employers dominating the marketplace, socially relevant innovations take a back seat. Society doesn't help either, as open source sadly isn't tax funded (because tax-fundedness is a pivotal privilige of the disfunctional political class). So being a programmer often is (cor)related to the strength of youth, and youth ends at 40. However, no craftsman worth his salt loses his abilities, instead he has experience about what works and what doesn't, and becomes more effective at what he does. He doesn't run trying to catch his own tail. For example this guy here, at https://millcomputing.com/docs/execution/ https://millcomputing.com/docs/execution/. What he and his team have done is a work of beauty and is the fruit of experience and intuition. The young and the old work together.
dacm 10y ago
Should be noted in the title that this post is from 2012
inestyne 10y ago
I have yet to meet a recruiter that wasn't desperate for demonstrated talent. Every corporate shop i've seen has older programmers doing the real work and younger programmers paying the tech debt and building UI. I think most of these articles are focused on startup culture and marque companies. (ie. 1% of the market)
ThomaszKrueger 10y ago
54 yr old here, 32 of experience in programming. Working on a startup, learning something new every day. Never short of offers, grateful for that and for having a rewarding profession.
jstelly 10y ago
There are lots of developers in their forties and some in their fifties at our company. We would be happy to hire more.
- blacksmythe 10y ago
  >> lots of developers in their forties and some in their fifties at our company. We would be happy to hire more. You can try oldgeekjobs.com
skookum 10y ago
These articles are getting old. Pardon the pun. The main reason older programmers are so under-represented is that the field has grown exponentially over the past 2 decades. With ever larger influxes of college grads the previous smaller cohorts get more and more diluted across the industry. > "Many programmers find that their employability starts to decline at about age 35," Matloff writes. ... "Statistics show that most software developers are out of the field by age 40," Matloff continues ... (Matloff declines to mention which statistics he's reading.) So basically he's spouting BS to match his talking point. IMO, older programmers who have done good work in the past are at a major advantage: we have a network of former co-workers who can speak to our abilities better than any whiteboard interview can and who can alert their managers/recruiters that we are someone worth going after. I realize my experience is anecdotal, however having made two job changes in my 40s, my experience could not be more different from what Matloff implies: - When chatting with former co-workers, if I even remotely hint at considering a switch, I have their recruiters kicking down my door the next day. - I have employers skip phone screens to get me into a loop faster in the hopes of getting a jump on other potential employers. - I've had some offers without interviewing both times I was looking for my next gig. Other offers' interviews felt like formalities because they had to have a loop in the big company HR system. - I have a constant stream of "would you consider this great opportunity?" on LinkedIn despite the fact that one can easily reverse-engineer my approximate age from my profile. - etc., etc. It doesn't feel like "employability starts to decline at about age 35" from where I'm sitting. And lest I be labelled some special outlier, I have a good number of friends & former co-workers in the mid-40s age bracket who are having similar experiences. The fact that a handful of SV startup bros only want to hire their long-lost twins doesn't make the bulk of the industry old-programmer-averse.
- kafkaesq 10y ago
  I have a constant stream of "would you consider this great opportunity?" on LinkedIn despite the fact that one can easily reverse-engineer my approximate age from my profile. I'm sure they could, if they bothered to actually read it (which basically no one ever does). In general, "feeler emails" are a poor measure of serious interest in one's overall profile. Basically they're just trying to ping you to see if (1) you're in the market and (2) remotely interested. Then they'll actually look at your profile -- and make the kind of assessment you would have thought they made before reaching out to you.
clifanatic 10y ago
> you'll probably check the box next to "project manager" instead of "software developer" Actually that's a demotion as far as I can tell.
- cheriot 10y ago
  Right?! Engineers reporting to non-engineers is a bit of an anti pattern. A front line manager needs to manage the work being done and not just the schedule.
JamesBarney 10y ago
I have a question for all the veteran devs out there. How do you keep from getting burned out on the mismanagement that plagues our industry? Is it personal perseverance? Are you just super selective with what jobs you take? Is the love of building something stronger than any feelings of frustration with poor management?
- cableshaft 10y ago
  I'd be interested in this too. I'm still in my 30's and I'm already feeling this from time to time.
- aws_ls 10y ago
  Not sure if I qualify as old. But have coded for 20+ years. And have always loved it. The other aspects of work (sending email, meetings, making presentations, documents, etc) may feel like work based on the situation, but coding rarely(if not never). TBH, one does procrastinate, even for coding. But once you start it, and soon you tend to enjoy it. Being selective helps, so if you can afford to say 'no' to projects you don't like, you should. Another more important thing about being selective is IMHO, what you choose to believe and what path you choose for yourself. We will find all kinds of examples in others(people we know or people we read about). But perhaps taking inspiration from the likes of say Nikola Tesla, who were working in their 80s until they died. A lot of other people also work in management roles late into their life. But I think, programming is more like being a Scientist, in the way that the kind of brain muscles which get exercised. Can't speak about perseverance, as its easier to keep doing something you like. But yes, it does help to keep abreast of latest technology. I started doing C++ coding, then did Java about a decade. Now mostly program in Go, but fairly competent in C++/Java as well. And I also try to be a full stack engineer - coded Android app, and also UI in JS/Dart(This aspect of being a full stack engineer, of course may not be necessary for every one). Taking breaks to learn some new tech, also helps, I am taking an 'Intro to AI' course on a MOOC. And also spent time learning about Bitcoin and how it works. Sometimes, if my work does not offer me strong enough programming challenge, I do programming challenges on sites like Hacker Rank (and earlier Topcoder) just for fun. On burnout: Yes, that can happen. I think, it happens when you are working in an unhappy position for too long. Sometimes, it may happen when you keep doing a project for too long, even though it was your own baby. No easy answers. So, I think, its mainly love of programming for me. I hope to keep doing it, till late in life. PS: I see the question was posed few days ago. But its still not answered. So answering, just in case you check for replies.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
anon1253 10y ago
They take up farming, coffee brewing, bagle cooking, photography, anything that doesn't involve a computer screen directly streaming nightmares into your brain 18 hours a day.
memracom 10y ago
Just how many new programmers were produced between the years 1975 to 1985? Not a whole lot. That's why you don't see too many old programmers around, because they were pioneers in a new field. They are still around but they get lost in the crowd of new younger and less-experienced programmers.
adultSwim 10y ago
They're taken out back and shot

103 points by FuNe 10y ago

Other than anecdotes, is there any actual longitudinal data which tracks programmers and technical types across their careers?

rubidium 10y ago

An article that contains a bunch of anedotes to refute another article that contains a bunch of anecdotes. Hmm... I want to see the data of where they go and determine from that.

FuNe 10y ago
Yes - the article is not very good but I couldn't find anything decent (didn't search long though). Put this up mostly interested in what actual people might have to say. Data point - in my 40s (doing DevOps atm). Truth is in my company (one of the big ones) I do not see a lot of older folks doing technical work (I might be the oldest in a team of about 40 people). So I'm wondering - where is everyone (and why am I not there too)?

TeMPOraL 10y ago

They get cast into void.

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
lfowles 10y ago
Many of them stick around as a memory leak.

Apreche 10y ago

If anyone knows where, let me know. I'm gonna need to head there pretty soon.

stray 10y ago
/dev/null

hockeybias 10y ago

58 and coding for a living in Minneapolis... I was a consultant dev for most of the last 16 years and just started as an FTE with my most recent client.

jnaour 10y ago

/dev/null probably.

coldcode 10y ago

To work is where I go (59). You won't meet a lot of people like me because when I started (1981) there were way fewer programmers than today plus some became obsolete, some became managers, and some got burned out. So the chances of meeting someone like me if you started in the past decade is not high. This of course makes it hard to decide how much age discrimination there is as it's hard to quantify, unlike gender for example. For me I got this job based on a manager from a previous job needing here what he already knew I could do.

jhauris 10y ago
The vast growth of the programmer population as a reason for why there aren't as many older programmers is a very compelling reason. I'm surprised I haven't seen it before.
- coldcode 10y ago
  I think there are 20 million or so programmers (not sure how you count this) today. I bet there were less than 1% of that back 35 years ago though of course no clue how to measure that either.
  - aws_ls 10y ago
    One way is to look at total revenue of IT/Software Industry at present and compare it with 1981. My guess is that even after adjusting for inflation it would be more than 100 times growth. Many of the present great companies were not even formed and some had just formed. I started working in the mid 90s. Joined a company which had few 100 employees, when I left it had around 300 times more.
markbnj 10y ago
Yep, agreed. I'm 56 and an SRE at a YC alumni company where I work on platform and tools. I have very few peers my age and I agree dilution is responsible for a lot of that. I started in '87 and didn't really know anyone locally. All my professional relationships were formed on Compuserve and there were really very few of us compared to today.

henrik_w 10y ago

Data point: I just turned 50, and I am happily coding away as a developer. Couldn't be happier - I still love to code.

swah 10y ago
Glad to hear - do you take special care of your wrists? I'm 32 and with some problems already...
- henrik_w 10y ago
  Yes, I do! I actually had pretty bad RSI almost 11 years ago (not in my wrists, but in my arms), which have made me use a break program, a split keyboard and a pen-mouse. These changes, especially the break program (using MacBreakZ now) have cured my RSI. More details here: https://henrikwarne.com/2012/02/18/how-i-beat-rsi/ https://henrikwarne.com/2012/02/18/how-i-beat-rsi/
- lfowles 10y ago
  After starting to feel twinges in my wrist I switched to an Alphagrip[0] keyboard so that I wouldn't be tempted to rest my wrists on the desk or a pad. Haven't felt that twinge since... Alphagrips might be hard to find now, but definitely explore alternative keyboards. [0]: http://www.alphagrips.com/ http://www.alphagrips.com/
- drather19 10y ago
  The biggest difference maker for me in terms of alleviating repetitive strain was switching from a mouse to a trackball. Something about not having to tense my arm up and move the mouse all over anymore...
  - swah 10y ago
    I never had pain on my right hand which I use for mousing. My mild pain is the left hand - two hypotheses: this hand is weaker, and too much alt-tabbing. I suspect lifting weights already improves this generally, as I have periods of much less pain which coincide with being more active.

tremon 10y ago

They gosub without return.

oblio 10y ago

An old joke about this: They go to the elephant graveyards of IT, banks.

ctordtor 10y ago

I turned 40 this year, most of the developers I work with are older than I am. The answer is in Federal contracting.

eranation 10y ago

They become architects / development managers / product managers / pre-sales engineers / professional services consultants / founders of startups / project managers / security advisors / dev ops managers / tech recruiters / biz dev managers / even sales...

hbcondo714 10y ago
Some of the best product managers I have worked with are former programmers...they just get it. When I hire people in these roles, I often specify "technical" in the job title to attract these former programmers.
- henrik_w 10y ago
  I have the same experience.
- mywittyname 10y ago
  Programming develops the skills found in good program managers. I think it's because so many of us build things that don't exist constantly. So we build a natural intuition about what are valuable problems to solve and can do it in ways that people would never consider, even "domain experts". A domain expert might try a naive or brute force approach to a very specific problem, while a programmer would see a graphing problem and instantly think of several different techniques to apply and be able to tell what outcome they'd produce.

stray 10y ago

At about 40, it does start to get more difficult to get hired. And by 50, it is all but hopeless. And the salary offered begins to go down at 40 too. Sharply after 44 or so. Where I am now, at 51, I have had to learn to get by on what I was making as a SysAdmin 20 mumble years ago. But at least I have a job. Before getting my current job I was having to learn to get by without a place to live too.

FuNe 10y ago
I'm curious. Where are you based? i.e. which job market?
- stray 10y ago
  Right now I'm in Omaha but came here from Colorado, for the current job.
fecak 10y ago
If you are willing to share, I'd be curious to hear more about your situation. I've seen salary plateau at certain career levels and ages (40s usually), but saying salary goes down at all (let alone sharply) is something that I expect is not a general truth about the market at large. My anecdotal data comes from ~20 years in recruiting engineers. There are several reasons you could see a salary drop (stagnating skill set no longer in demand, move to company that pays less, move to industry that values programmers less, etc.), but age alone isn't likely to be one of them.
- stray 10y ago
  Would a significant gap in employment be that damaging? I was severely burned in an automobile accident (60%, 3rd degree) on June 6, 2006 -- and was completely unable to work for a couple years. It took a little over 4 years total from the date of the accident till I got another job. Every job since then has been with a startup.
  - fecak 10y ago

ChemicalWarfare 10y ago

Mid 40s here. architecting/engineering Java monstrosities by day (although it's not too bad lately - fat jars/docker etc), hacking on some personal pet projects with newer tech (been getting into Elm and some Haskell lately) by night.

Yetanfou 10y ago

They take up farming, of course. Having explored the most 'modern' parts of society they're ready for a new challenge. Also, having dealt with virtuality for so long it is time for a dose of reality. Me, I bought a farm in Sweden. Harvest is in, manure has been spread, looking to grow my first 'beer crop' (barley and hops) within a few years. The forest needs some attention but that is what winter is for. What comes around, goes around. Programmers (and developers and architects and others of similar ilk) turn to the land while farmers are surrounding themselves with technology. GPS-controlled tractors, milk robots, ID-based cow feeders, etc. Horticulture is being robotised. Forestry will go that route soon enough, with clear-cut harvest being replaced by individual tree harvesting.

npiazza83 10y ago
While not ready for retirement I'm getting up there and I am buying a house soon with between 1/4-1/2 acre piece of land attached. Its a reward and opportunity for me to experiment with a large "garden" for myself and my family and maybe enough for friends or to can/jar. I get this impulse but I'm still plugged in enough to want to automate things. I'm looking at farmbot on kickstarter and thinking how I could build my own, program or automate various systems and sensors. I'm extremely excited about having one foot in both worlds.
- Yetanfou 10y ago
  I'm not retired, by no means - I'm 51. I'll keep on hacking for as long as I feel the urge and find some need. I do concentrate on trying to make our (way of) life less dependent on a steady income stream - in other words, I use time and some money to make us less dependent on future money. A farm with enough land to support a family is a good start, especially one which has both arable land as well as productive forest. Hence my choice, although the fact that I studied forestry at an agricultural university might have something to do with it as well.
dejv 10y ago
Funny enough, I also went farming route: bought vineyards four years ago. I am curently thinking about getting into aeroponics herbs/lettuce production with all the automation.

landmark3 10y ago

they die

zanethomas 10y ago

I'm 66, started programming 40 years ago, and I'm not going anywhere! Seriously, I love what I do and will continue programming as long as possible. I'm addicted to learning and the satisfaction of good, clean, simple code that gets the job done.

notacoward 10y ago

The part of the article that really rings true for me is the part about specialization. Certainly a lot move into management of one sort of another (line, product, project). Some move into "architect" roles or CTO offices where they apply their wisdom (and biases) to affecting technical direction other than by actually coding. However, many still remain in coding roles, but the coding tends to be more specialized: * Outside of tech companies, in other orgs with their own specific tech needs (e.g. financial or scientific). * More infrastructure, less user-facing. * More "old school" like embedded/OS work. I'm 51, and I specialize in storage. Consistent with this pattern, I've had many colleagues and collaborators in their 40s and 50s (after that it really does get pretty thin). We might be less visible than people doing the mobile/VR/ML kinds of stuff that are en vogue in the Silicon Valley VC/YC ecosystem, but many of us are still in high demand. There are even headhunters who specialize in facilitating such hires. They don't focus explicitly on age, but their focus on specific domains often results in a greyer-than-average contact list. You just have to know where to look.

Isamu 10y ago

I'm 55 this year, still programming. And I still love it ... well, I love trying new things. One of my friends that I started my first job with is now at the CTO level, while I keep turning down opportunities to "advance" into management. Another friend of mine quit after the Senior Director level because he started hating his life, and went back to programming/embedded engineering for the fun of it. Age does make you wonder if you were turned down for an offer because of subconscious ageism, but I am not aware of rampant problems with it. You do have to be careful to give everybody's proposals a chance, instead of just pattern-matching to something awful in your past. Keeping an open mind is a discipline. Having kids helps you rediscover what you once loved, helps you recover from jaded oldsterism.

Roboprog 10y ago
Once in a while, I get to help my college age daughter learn "R" programming. That's a pretty interesting language, which she probably knows better than I do now. (at least operational knowledge of the library, but not all the Computer Science aspects) Conversely, it's interesting that my adult child is now having to deal with a bout of "imposter syndrome" :-)

mark_l_watson 10y ago

Many of us still work. I am in my 60s and I still work about 20 hours a week. I love designing and writing code, and I also do software maintenance and devops, and I write about one computer science book a year (working on two right now: one on Haskell and one on Cognitive Science). I don't earn the very high salary that I used to earn, but that is OK because I am doing what I want to do.

tgamba 10y ago

At 49 I am still coding and still learning. I architected and implemented node.js services this year and have done lots of interesting modern web development. I am well respected within my organization and in fact have been poached from one team for another. Ageist hiring practices are a reality, but not all companies are so biased. And you could not pay me enough to go into management. I want to make things. Perhaps that is why I am still viable.

hashkb 10y ago
You could definitely pay me enough. Great managers help more things get built than great engineers. They do it in a different way, but as long as they don't suck, they are critical. Good managers are much harder to find than competent engineers.
- saiya-jin 10y ago
  I think he meant he doesn't want to do the management job. Ie moving from abstractly creative work to endless series of meetings, conf calls, creating powerpoints excels and whatnot. Yes they are necessary, but it doesn't make it a cool job that brings fulfillment and happiness. Most devs move there over time, and then complain how cool coding actually was, but they are already in money/debt trap
  - tgamba 10y ago
    Yes-- that is exactly what I mean. If I found myself in an organization where management looked appealing I would make the switch. It has never happened.
- Grishnakh 10y ago
  No thanks. Management requires too many things I'm just not good at, or would be miserable spending my time doing: talking to people all day long, sitting in meetings, doing powerpoint stuff, attempting to mentor people, playing politics with upper management, doing performance reviews, etc. There's nothing there I derive any enjoyment from. What I do wish I could do is find a job where I travel around a lot and debug problems for customers on-site. I like traveling and don't mind spending time in hotels (as long as they're nice ones), and like being able to do different things instead of the same thing day after day, month after month. I also like problem-solving and debugging (esp. when I'm not the one to blame for the bug!), and have been very good at this kind of work in past jobs.

empath75 10y ago

I'm 40, and I'm just getting started as a software developer after years doing other sorts of IT things (networking, tech support, sysadmin, etc).

retro64 10y ago
Exactly. I'm older than you by a few years and I don't even waste my time considering my age. Too much to do to worry about this nonsense. This constant rumination about age discrimination in the industry is the only thing getting old from my perspective.

philk10 10y ago

Michigan!! Worked in the SE of England as a programmer for 20 years, moved to being a tester ( had 20 years experience of how things could go wrong) then moved away from the rat race commute of London to low-cost of living Michigan and couldn't be happier. Currently learning how to program mobile apps so that I can test them better

fecak 10y ago

They find companies that value their experience and don't just hire those who already know how to use all the shiny things. They do independent consulting after spending years building their reputation as someone who delivered for past co-workers and managers. They go to mature mid-market or large companies where those in management and hiring are perhaps a few years older as well. Sometimes they need to retool Anyone thrust into the job market for the first time in several years (say 10+) might find it somewhat unrecognizable. Job search has changed significantly in the ~20 years I've been in recruiting. I've developed a bit of a niche business in helping older programmers (I'm 44) "rehabilitate" themselves and prepare to enter a job search (writing/reviewing resumes, consult on job search strategy, etc.). It's mostly people who don't want to go into management and still want to stay in the code. I can only think of a few people that left the industry entirely, out of thousands (I also ran a Java Users Group for 15 years, which has a large contingent of older programmers).

nkassis 10y ago

I work in a place where I'm in the low end of the age spectrum at 30. The company is in the Financial industry and was founded in the 70s. It has a long history of using technology so many engineers started 10-20+ years ago. The company offers great benefits and salary are above average which is what I think many of the engineers here optimized for when coming to work here. That's also what I felt led a lot of the engineers I worked with in my previous job for one of the big tech companies to leave after 5 years or so. Most of them ended up taking jobs with companies which seemed to offer better work life balance and benefits. A lot of them also ended up in management. Some because it was the only path available for advancement. Many orgs just don't have (or make) space for distinguished engineers and the career path for SE ends at the senior level to which most can attend in less then 5-10 years. After that there is nowhere to go for them but management. Another issue is the demand for distinguished engineers is lower since you need less of them then junior and senior devs so it's a limited pool of jobs.

diyseguy 10y ago

into the soylent of course!

akavi 10y ago

Does anyone have hard numbers on what the cohorted attrition is for programmers? Ie, of the individuals employed as programmers 10 years ago, what percent are still employed in programming? 20 years ago? 30 years ago? I've tried to search for this, but I think my google-fu's not up to snuff.

kazinator 10y ago

There aren't that many older programmers because they are diluted by the large numbers of younger programmers in a growing field. Even if everyone who was employed in a software dev role in 1975 or even 1985 were still employed in a software dev role today, they would be so outnumbered by younger people as to be a statistical blip. (Whoa, age discrimination!) Also, older people will tend not to suddenly switch to software development. The major entry path is through young people becoming developers. Most people over 50 in development are people who were 20-something in development, possibly younger. So how many 50-somethings there are in dev has mostly to do with how many 20-somethings were in dev thirty years ago. It could be different if large numbers of non-dev 50-somethings suddenly retrained as devs, but they don't.

mcv 10y ago

To me, it has become easier to find work when I approached 40. I'm 42 now, and I've had plenty of co-workers who were older than that. Any company that refuses more experienced programmers is foolish. My dad retired as a professional programmer a few years ago. He started in the 1970s, and had been doing a lot of Java before his retirement. He's occasionally doing some work on an open source project now.

stuff4ben 10y ago

GTFO of "the valley" and you can have a very productive career past your 40's. Seriously, I know this is HN, but the world doesn't revolve around SJ and SF.

Roboprog 10y ago
Irony: I work with a group of about a half dozen devs for ... UC Davis (same uni as the prof mentioned in the article). We are all 50-ish, and work with minimal hand holding. We do grant work for the state, and to some extent, the federal government. We are not doing "super scalable" stuff, but we still have thousands of users, many daily, and some of the entry forms for things are huge, with much complicated logic to be legally compliant. I have set myself up as the resident Javascript guy (Angular), but I have to admit, it feels odd when I go to the local JS user group - it's a much younger crowd, overall. The funny thing, though, is that Angular/JS feels quite a bit like the interpreted language, proto-MVC, stuff I did on PCs back in the 80s :-)
- anaheim_ducks 10y ago
  Or VB classic in the '90s.

childintime 10y ago

A related phenomenon is that programmers have no collective identity to rely on (or uphold). The struggle of the classes and the topic of the bigger social good is relatively meaningless to them. They can't put a finger on these issues, they belong to other classes. Programmers are by nature but also by nurture very much individuals, and as individuals, without nurturing collectivity, they are easily manipulated and put against each other. So programmers don't work on socially relevant or desirable problems, but on some relatively obscure scalability issue that exists only inside a few internet behemoths. They need soldiers, not wisdom. With these employers dominating the marketplace, socially relevant innovations take a back seat. Society doesn't help either, as open source sadly isn't tax funded (because tax-fundedness is a pivotal privilige of the disfunctional political class). So being a programmer often is (cor)related to the strength of youth, and youth ends at 40. However, no craftsman worth his salt loses his abilities, instead he has experience about what works and what doesn't, and becomes more effective at what he does. He doesn't run trying to catch his own tail. For example this guy here, at https://millcomputing.com/docs/execution/ https://millcomputing.com/docs/execution/. What he and his team have done is a work of beauty and is the fruit of experience and intuition. The young and the old work together.

dacm 10y ago

Should be noted in the title that this post is from 2012

inestyne 10y ago

I have yet to meet a recruiter that wasn't desperate for demonstrated talent. Every corporate shop i've seen has older programmers doing the real work and younger programmers paying the tech debt and building UI. I think most of these articles are focused on startup culture and marque companies. (ie. 1% of the market)

ThomaszKrueger 10y ago

54 yr old here, 32 of experience in programming. Working on a startup, learning something new every day. Never short of offers, grateful for that and for having a rewarding profession.

jstelly 10y ago

There are lots of developers in their forties and some in their fifties at our company. We would be happy to hire more.

blacksmythe 10y ago
>> lots of developers in their forties and some in their fifties at our company. We would be happy to hire more. You can try oldgeekjobs.com

skookum 10y ago

These articles are getting old. Pardon the pun. The main reason older programmers are so under-represented is that the field has grown exponentially over the past 2 decades. With ever larger influxes of college grads the previous smaller cohorts get more and more diluted across the industry. > "Many programmers find that their employability starts to decline at about age 35," Matloff writes. ... "Statistics show that most software developers are out of the field by age 40," Matloff continues ... (Matloff declines to mention which statistics he's reading.) So basically he's spouting BS to match his talking point. IMO, older programmers who have done good work in the past are at a major advantage: we have a network of former co-workers who can speak to our abilities better than any whiteboard interview can and who can alert their managers/recruiters that we are someone worth going after. I realize my experience is anecdotal, however having made two job changes in my 40s, my experience could not be more different from what Matloff implies: - When chatting with former co-workers, if I even remotely hint at considering a switch, I have their recruiters kicking down my door the next day. - I have employers skip phone screens to get me into a loop faster in the hopes of getting a jump on other potential employers. - I've had some offers without interviewing both times I was looking for my next gig. Other offers' interviews felt like formalities because they had to have a loop in the big company HR system. - I have a constant stream of "would you consider this great opportunity?" on LinkedIn despite the fact that one can easily reverse-engineer my approximate age from my profile. - etc., etc. It doesn't feel like "employability starts to decline at about age 35" from where I'm sitting. And lest I be labelled some special outlier, I have a good number of friends & former co-workers in the mid-40s age bracket who are having similar experiences. The fact that a handful of SV startup bros only want to hire their long-lost twins doesn't make the bulk of the industry old-programmer-averse.

kafkaesq 10y ago
I have a constant stream of "would you consider this great opportunity?" on LinkedIn despite the fact that one can easily reverse-engineer my approximate age from my profile. I'm sure they could, if they bothered to actually read it (which basically no one ever does). In general, "feeler emails" are a poor measure of serious interest in one's overall profile. Basically they're just trying to ping you to see if (1) you're in the market and (2) remotely interested. Then they'll actually look at your profile -- and make the kind of assessment you would have thought they made before reaching out to you.

clifanatic 10y ago

> you'll probably check the box next to "project manager" instead of "software developer" Actually that's a demotion as far as I can tell.

cheriot 10y ago
Right?! Engineers reporting to non-engineers is a bit of an anti pattern. A front line manager needs to manage the work being done and not just the schedule.

JamesBarney 10y ago

I have a question for all the veteran devs out there. How do you keep from getting burned out on the mismanagement that plagues our industry? Is it personal perseverance? Are you just super selective with what jobs you take? Is the love of building something stronger than any feelings of frustration with poor management?

cableshaft 10y ago
I'd be interested in this too. I'm still in my 30's and I'm already feeling this from time to time.
aws_ls 10y ago
Not sure if I qualify as old. But have coded for 20+ years. And have always loved it. The other aspects of work (sending email, meetings, making presentations, documents, etc) may feel like work based on the situation, but coding rarely(if not never). TBH, one does procrastinate, even for coding. But once you start it, and soon you tend to enjoy it. Being selective helps, so if you can afford to say 'no' to projects you don't like, you should. Another more important thing about being selective is IMHO, what you choose to believe and what path you choose for yourself. We will find all kinds of examples in others(people we know or people we read about). But perhaps taking inspiration from the likes of say Nikola Tesla, who were working in their 80s until they died. A lot of other people also work in management roles late into their life. But I think, programming is more like being a Scientist, in the way that the kind of brain muscles which get exercised. Can't speak about perseverance, as its easier to keep doing something you like. But yes, it does help to keep abreast of latest technology. I started doing C++ coding, then did Java about a decade. Now mostly program in Go, but fairly competent in C++/Java as well. And I also try to be a full stack engineer - coded Android app, and also UI in JS/Dart(This aspect of being a full stack engineer, of course may not be necessary for every one). Taking breaks to learn some new tech, also helps, I am taking an 'Intro to AI' course on a MOOC. And also spent time learning about Bitcoin and how it works. Sometimes, if my work does not offer me strong enough programming challenge, I do programming challenges on sites like Hacker Rank (and earlier Topcoder) just for fun. On burnout: Yes, that can happen. I think, it happens when you are working in an unhappy position for too long. Sometimes, it may happen when you keep doing a project for too long, even though it was your own baby. No easy answers. So, I think, its mainly love of programming for me. I hope to keep doing it, till late in life. PS: I see the question was posed few days ago. But its still not answered. So answering, just in case you check for replies.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

anon1253 10y ago

They take up farming, coffee brewing, bagle cooking, photography, anything that doesn't involve a computer screen directly streaming nightmares into your brain 18 hours a day.

memracom 10y ago

Just how many new programmers were produced between the years 1975 to 1985? Not a whole lot. That's why you don't see too many old programmers around, because they were pioneers in a new field. They are still around but they get lost in the crowd of new younger and less-experienced programmers.

adultSwim 10y ago

They're taken out back and shot