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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 ob

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.
kls 10y ago
42 here, started just before the Internet took off, when it hit, I jumped on full bore. Most of my peers that where a little older stuck with desktop and mainframe development. Most people don't realize how few of us where in the trade back then and even less made the jump to developing Internet technologies. So there is also a dividing like or epoch in programming where the entire discipline of development changed. In many ways the early days of Internet development was archaic if you where used to desktop development. It felt like a step backwards and development in handcuffs, so a lot of developers that had time in the industry just ignored it as there was still money to be made on the other side. So if we look at 40 it really is a dividing line where of the few people that where doing development a small fragment of that group actually started developing in what would be somewhat relevant technologies today. Of that group, possibly only in the thousands, attrition has taken it's toll (the .com bust took a lot of them, which gets missed a lot in these discussions). Now we have all had that bad interview, with a bad company that puts some kid fresh out of school in a lead role and he grills all new applicants on theory that is in no way relevant to what we actually do and anyone in the industry for a meaningful amount of time, has long purged that info from immediate recollection. But I don't see that as an age discrimination problem, I see it as a bad management problem, and a willful lack of understanding about technology and technologist on the part of business people (for those reading, first technical hire can make or break your company). Fortunately it has been my experience that most of those companies don't stick around for too long.

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.

kls 10y ago

42 here, started just before the Internet took off, when it hit, I jumped on full bore. Most of my peers that where a little older stuck with desktop and mainframe development. Most people don't realize how few of us where in the trade back then and even less made the jump to developing Internet technologies. So there is also a dividing like or epoch in programming where the entire discipline of development changed. In many ways the early days of Internet development was archaic if you where used to desktop development. It felt like a step backwards and development in handcuffs, so a lot of developers that had time in the industry just ignored it as there was still money to be made on the other side. So if we look at 40 it really is a dividing line where of the few people that where doing development a small fragment of that group actually started developing in what would be somewhat relevant technologies today. Of that group, possibly only in the thousands, attrition has taken it's toll (the .com bust took a lot of them, which gets missed a lot in these discussions). Now we have all had that bad interview, with a bad company that puts some kid fresh out of school in a lead role and he grills all new applicants on theory that is in no way relevant to what we actually do and anyone in the industry for a meaningful amount of time, has long purged that info from immediate recollection. But I don't see that as an age discrimination problem, I see it as a bad management problem, and a willful lack of understanding about technology and technologist on the part of business people (for those reading, first technical hire can make or break your company). Fortunately it has been my experience that most of those companies don't stick around for too long.