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As a slightly older person (I am 46) and employer the issue I have found with older employees is they don’t cope well with frequent change. I have always hired

As a slightly older person (I am 46) and employer the issue I have found with older employees is they don’t cope well with frequent change. I have always hired the person I thought was most qualified for the position and so have hired quite a few older people over the years. What I have observed first hand is that if the job requirements are relatively stable then older people are fantastic, but if the requirements change from month to month (or week to week) then they struggle. As I know from personal experience fluid intelligence declines with age and as you get older rapid change gets increasing difficult to deal with. I wish it were otherwise :( There are of course exceptions, the problem is that it is really hard to know who can adapt to rapid change in an interview or from a CV. A service that could test the fluid intelligence of job candidates would be very valuable, but it would almost certainly be sued out of existence for discriminating against older employees.

DougWebb 10y ago
Are you detecting an inability to shift gears quickly, or is it a reluctance to shift gears quickly based on hard-won experience where management-driven frequently-changing requirements led to project failures that were then blamed on the development team? As much as we'd like our job to be engineering, it's usually more like craftsmanship. Craftsmanship goes back a LONG ways, and the traditional approach for learning a craft is for apprentices to learn from experienced masters. Those masters can teach you what to do, and what not to do, in the traditional ways that they've learned over many years. What they can't teach you is new techniques that they've developed, unless they're among the few masters that are advancing the craft. I suspect that works for our craft as well. Most experienced developers can do the work very well, and can also help you to avoid bad practices that they've seen before and can predict the likely outcomes. But only a subset of those experienced developers are able to advance the craft. They have a mixture of the drive and creativity of the younger inexperienced developers, along with the experience to quickly weed out bad ideas and see the potential of the good ideas.
- danieltillett 10y ago
  Are you detecting an inability to shift gears quickly, or is it a reluctance to shift gears quickly based on hard-won experience where management-driven frequently-changing requirements led to project failures that were then blamed on the development team? That is rather an impossible question to answer as the two causes ultimately have the same end outcome. I certainly never introduce change for changes sake - 95% of management change I have been responsible for have been due to outside factors out of my control. When the market tells you that you need to change you must change. I can say on average I get more direct pushback on change from younger employees than older purely because many younger employees have not learned that arguing with your boss about something when you don’t have a full understanding of the situation is not that wise. I have found that my older employees have understood the need for change, they just find it hard. I am certainly not immune to this effect myself - the thought of learning React or Angular (or the next JS framework de jour) does not fill me with joy.
  - mreiland 10y ago
    > When the market tells you that you need to change you must change. That doesn't explain why you're pulling the rug out from under employees on a monthly basis. What market really needs that over a long period of time?
tshadley 10y ago
A fluid intelligence decline is not necessarily age-related, see for example "The effect of age on fluid intelligence is fully mediated by physical health." 2013, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23540273 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23540273 : "Our findings imply that improving health by acting against the common age-related circulatory- and nervous system diseases and risk factors will oppose the decline in fluid intelligence with age."
- danieltillett 10y ago
  I know this this is why I said there are exceptions - the problem is identifying the exceptions at the recruitment stage.
  - tshadley 10y ago
    > I know this this is why I said there are exceptions If indeed it is physical health that is the crucial factor in preventing the decline in fluid intelligence, and older workers are becoming more healthy (relative to the older workers of the past), you might say, rather, that the exceptions are those that experience a decline in fluid intelligence.

DougWebb 10y ago

Are you detecting an inability to shift gears quickly, or is it a reluctance to shift gears quickly based on hard-won experience where management-driven frequently-changing requirements led to project failures that were then blamed on the development team? As much as we'd like our job to be engineering, it's usually more like craftsmanship. Craftsmanship goes back a LONG ways, and the traditional approach for learning a craft is for apprentices to learn from experienced masters. Those masters can teach you what to do, and what not to do, in the traditional ways that they've learned over many years. What they can't teach you is new techniques that they've developed, unless they're among the few masters that are advancing the craft. I suspect that works for our craft as well. Most experienced developers can do the work very well, and can also help you to avoid bad practices that they've seen before and can predict the likely outcomes. But only a subset of those experienced developers are able to advance the craft. They have a mixture of the drive and creativity of the younger inexperienced developers, along with the experience to quickly weed out bad ideas and see the potential of the good ideas.

danieltillett 10y ago
Are you detecting an inability to shift gears quickly, or is it a reluctance to shift gears quickly based on hard-won experience where management-driven frequently-changing requirements led to project failures that were then blamed on the development team? That is rather an impossible question to answer as the two causes ultimately have the same end outcome. I certainly never introduce change for changes sake - 95% of management change I have been responsible for have been due to outside factors out of my control. When the market tells you that you need to change you must change. I can say on average I get more direct pushback on change from younger employees than older purely because many younger employees have not learned that arguing with your boss about something when you don’t have a full understanding of the situation is not that wise. I have found that my older employees have understood the need for change, they just find it hard. I am certainly not immune to this effect myself - the thought of learning React or Angular (or the next JS framework de jour) does not fill me with joy.
- mreiland 10y ago
  > When the market tells you that you need to change you must change. That doesn't explain why you're pulling the rug out from under employees on a monthly basis. What market really needs that over a long period of time?

tshadley 10y ago

A fluid intelligence decline is not necessarily age-related, see for example "The effect of age on fluid intelligence is fully mediated by physical health." 2013, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23540273 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23540273 : "Our findings imply that improving health by acting against the common age-related circulatory- and nervous system diseases and risk factors will oppose the decline in fluid intelligence with age."

danieltillett 10y ago
I know this this is why I said there are exceptions - the problem is identifying the exceptions at the recruitment stage.
- tshadley 10y ago
  > I know this this is why I said there are exceptions If indeed it is physical health that is the crucial factor in preventing the decline in fluid intelligence, and older workers are becoming more healthy (relative to the older workers of the past), you might say, rather, that the exceptions are those that experience a decline in fluid intelligence.