11 ms·

Why You Should Hire an Old Programmer

217 points by joshmarinacci 9y ago

davidhbolton 9y ago
I'm 58, live in the country (UK) and found a programming job almost exactly suited to my skill set (Pascal mainly-i.e. Delphi along with C# plus a few years of C, C++). Add in 5 years of 6502/Z80 assembly (games in the 80s), two years of Ada. The last three years was creating a mobile app in C#/Xamarin. Plus lots of php, html, SQL. To stand out from other candidates I prepared a 7 minute screen cast (using Camtasia which I bought a couple of years back) showing off programs I'd written and briefly mentioning programming aspects that made each program different. I uploaded it to Dropbox, emailed the link to the recruitment agent who forwarded it on. I got the job after two interviews and have just completed my first week. I was lucky, round here there aren't that many programmers and most jobs are for C#/ASP.NET MVC websites. It's just a 30 minute drive away. The job interviews included an online IQ test (not a problem), a logic test which was not my finest hour (4PM on a Friday is the worst time for me!) and a 10 minute stand up presentation on the subject of my choice. "A trip to an Arctic Isle."
thehardsphere 9y ago
I don't disagree with anything stated here, but how much of this actually is a function of age? I feel like a young programmer could aquire all of these traits also, because they're less about age and more about being able to learn from experiences. You can choose to have more experiences to become the kind of person the article talks about. Or is this a survivorship bias thing? The old programmers are more likely to be this way because the people who would be old programmers who are not this way aren't programmers anymore?
- marcus_holmes 9y ago
  For most programmers in their 40's, at least in my experience, we've been working in the industry since at least our mid-20's, if not earlier. Very few older programmers I know started learning to code in their 30's. Most started in their teens. So, yeah, a talented young programmer could have accumulated enough experience to acquire these traits. But it's more likely to be found in us old farts. Agree with your survivorship idea too. There's been a few that have changed course along the way.
- moron4hire 9y ago
  Uh, isn't that rather much the point? Once a young person learns all this stuff from experience, they've become an old person.
  - thehardsphere 9y ago
    But you can gain experience without necessarily becoming old at the same time. They're correlated, but not causal.
    - grive 9y ago
      Experience takes time. More or less, depending on several factors (willingness to learn and improve, complexity of the subject, ...). But by definition, if you gain experience, you just got older than before. You cannot magically learn everything out of sheer willpower. Additionally, a few things are impossible to learn without time: the "Judgement" section in the article. You can certainly theoretically understand the meaning of it, but to experience it and have a deep, intimate understanding of it you have to go through the process of writing something and supporting it. So it's not a matter of correlation / causation, it's a matter of the two concepts being two sides of the same coin.
      - thehardsphere 9y ago
        Ok, let me be more explicit. You are absolutely correct that experience takes time and that the type of experience that the author speaks of comes from writing something and supporting it. What I am saying, is that you can choose to write different types of things and support them, without having to become 40+ years old. Not out of "sheer willpower" either; you just have to choose to write different types of things and support them. Yes, you will be older than you were before you started. But... to get that experience you do not need to reach age 40. If anything, simply getting older is not a guarantee that you will get that experience. Suppose you only program CRUD apps for 20 years with the exact same stack every time. There's only so many times you can write the same sort of app over and over again before you get diminishing returns on that kind of experience. The author knows this implicitly, but assumes from his own experience that other 40+ year old programmers will have as wide a range of experience as he does. That's really the specific premise of his that I'm questioning: that being an old programmer automatically means you have a wide range of useful experience that makes you better.
- chrisan 9y ago
  > because they're less about age and more about being able to learn from experiences Typically after you learn from experiences and gain knowledge you age. I'd question someone that is young and thinks they know the world. If being able to acquire all he knowledge/experience while young were true, everyone would peak at 25 and not get any better. There is a certain point some people get where they _refuse_ to learn more and are "set in their ways" and that becomes detrimental to a younger/fresh idea. I doubt anyone would advocate age quotas for hiring but having a mix of experience/knowledge with fresh ideas is probably ideal. At least, it feels ideal in our team which has ranged from high 40s to low 20s.
- chefandy 9y ago
  Well I'm not sure if you're young or just playing devil's advocate, but a young person often feels that way. The whole knowledge * intellect idea that someone else here mentioned is far too reductive. You can be a ridiculously smart person who has read white papers and coding books, learned all about discrete math and project management, worked on as many projects as you could, and still not touch the maturity of an older software developer. Why? Experience doesn't begin and end with topics directly surrounding your vocation; your whole life contributes to it. As you age, you get to know yourself better. Old people have made far more decisions in their life than a young person has: lots of good ones, and lots of bad ones. You know your decision making process and its flaws. You remember what it feels like to reap the rewards of a good decision, and even more intensely, you remember the sting of a bad decision. You know, from experience, what decisions you should make, what ones you shouldn't make, and any confounding variables. You also start to understand those same patterns in the human and organizational behavior of people you live and work with. You start to get an intuitive understanding of the kinds of mistakes various kinds of people make in various kinds of situations. There's a reason that older people– often ones without a ton of domain knowledge– are generally the ones making big decisions in a mature company, while the younger people are working out the details. For example, the couple decades that I spent as a bouncer in clubs might not help me see if I'm making a bad coding choice per se, but it vastly increased my understanding of group dynamics, ego, negotiation, how to mitigate the damage of having to make snap decisions with a whole lot of consequences, how to respond when someone tries to intimidate me or make me feel uncomfortable, deescalating pointless arguments, and even starting a fight when one really needs to be started. (the worn-smooth restraint and fighting techniques have much less utility in the office... so far) Before I gained that experience, I'd have no way to have known it would proved useful in a software development career. I'm sure many parents, people who have coached sports teams, people who have experienced the death of an industry, or even people that have gone through messy divorces can all point to things they've taken away from those experiences which have vastly improved their judgement and maturity. And it's not just the soft skills which are improved by this understanding. Being more mature means you write more mature code. I look at code I wrote 15 years ago and shudder. It's not that I have a better understanding of the mechanics of Perl or C now than I did then, but my sense of logic has been refined, I'm more patient, and I have a better sense of where to put in extra effort and where to cut corners. When you're young, you're still mostly figuring out what you're capable of, but you don't have a very good sense of what your limitations are. When you get older, you've got a pretty good sense of what you can do, and a much better sense of how to keep yourself and everybody else out of trouble by avoiding what you can't do. The problem is, lack of experience is generally pretty opaque to the people who lack it. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
- kenbellows 9y ago
  I think the article is arguing that while age may not be necessary for quality, it is sufficient. A young(er) programmer may or may not have these qualities, but in order to survive in the programming industry beyond a certain point, you have to develop these qualities. (Not sure whether I agree, but I think it's a point worth considering.)
bryanrasmussen 9y ago
as an old programmer I think it would be better if the author said 'I know this, because I hired one.'
- 1ba9115454 9y ago
  Even better. 'I tried to hire one but someone else made a more compeitive offer.'
autokad 9y ago
How do older programmers deal with coding interviews from companies like facebook / google? i feel like those advantage people who just finished their algorithms class, or have time to practice specifically for it.
- 1ba9115454 9y ago
  I personally wouldn't target those companies. They tend to employ on a permanant basis and the contract market is a bigger payer. Also after a few years in the game you tend to get targetted by recruiters as you may have specialised into certain areas. i.e. finance. So for example, I don't normally look for work, it normally finds me.
  - hardwaresofton 9y ago
    Could you give some examples of where you first got your contracts (outside of personal connections)? The contract market seems great (I'm in it right now), but finding decent positions seems pretty difficult without a pre-existing large network. Also, a lot of the sites that feature contract work ask for way too many details, and are basically a race to the bottom on price, sometimes at the expense of quality, and I don't feel panicked enough yet to join that race.
    - jensC 9y ago
      Yep, same here too. Worked as a freelancer for 15 years with one company and now trying to find a new contract (with only a small network) is pretty hard (can only do remote jobs due to a handicap).
- tluyben2 9y ago
  Don't want to generalize but as far as I have seen; they don't. As a 6th point in his list could be; connections. I (42 y/o) know people; I can get programmers to follow me if I move company which is a plus. But I also know investors, potential clients, C*O's and hiring managers. People recommend you or know you via their network.
1ba9115454 9y ago
I know more this year than I did a year ago. I will know more next year than I do today. This will never stop.
- sokoloff 9y ago
  My grandmother knows less today than she did ten years ago.
  - kronos29296 9y ago
    Most things in life are like Gaussian distribution. After a peak there is long decline. What matters is how long to the peak and how high it is.
  - david-gpu 9y ago
    We are talking of ordinary folks in their forties and fifties, not senescent folks in nursing homes.
    - adrianN 9y ago
      Then we shouldn't say "never".
RickJWagner 9y ago
I like it. Of course, I'm an older programmer. But still.
- pc86 9y ago
  "I am in favor of discrimination as long as I am not the one discriminated against."
chandler 9y ago
Consider smartness as "what you can do with what you know," while experience is "what you know"--then, what follows is that having more experience makes up for not being as clever. Able to make good choices = Intellect * Experience Moreover, employers can _try_ to assess intelligence with whiteboard interviews...but the easier factor to evaluate is experience. It's right there on the resume!
- superplussed 9y ago
  This is usually delineated by wisdom vs intelligence. Intelligence is raw horsepower, and wisdom is the ability to make good decisions. In the context of older developers, I don't think you can really assume wisdom has been an outcome of all of those years of experience. Wisdom grows with a certain affinity for introspection and self-correction, and not everyone has those traits.
- hardwaresofton 9y ago
  Yeah, except 10 years at certain companies could teach you less than 6months to 1 year at one company that's actually doing it right. I hesitate to try and prescribe an answer for the "how employers should find good employees" question, because it's so difficult, but I imagine the ideal hiring process would: - Allow candidates a choice on how they want to be tested (take home thing, online code test, whiteboard, whatever else) - Ask better questions at the abstraction level that would show experience. For example, if you want to know whether someone has experience, give them an architectural diagram (or process diagram) of your current project/workflow/whatever, and ask them how they would improve it (and if they've ever been through the steps they suggest themselves/how they would roll it out). There was an excellent post on HN a while back detailing what a specific company (whose job is doing interviews, I can't for the life of me remember what company it was), learned from doing thousands and thousands of interviews. Also I'm not super good at math, but in the equation you posted wouldn't the intellect variable be pretty much equal to experience, and you could make up for one with the other? Or maybe you're implying that the scales for each multiplier are different (like intelligence might only go 1 to 10 but experience might go 1-100?)? I agree with what you're getting at, basically that someone who has seen lot but isn't as clever will often make better choices than someone that's very clever, but completely green.
spodek 9y ago
Is this post not promoting age discrimination? Isn't age discrimination illegal? Why would discriminating against younger people be any more fair or legal than against against older? I expect discriminating by amount of relevant experience is fair, but that's not the same as age.
- vixen99 9y ago
  Are employers so dumb that they would hire on the basis you're suggesting without considering the arguments put forward in the piece? Young and old have, perhaps, on average, different characteristics worthy of note if you're hiring someone. Is all!
- calafrax 9y ago
  People under 40 are not a protected group under Federal law. People over 40 are. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Employment_discrimination_law_in_the_United_States#cite_note-ADEA-6 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Employment_discrimination_law_...
- Doradus 9y ago
  > I expect discriminating by amount of relevant experience is fair, but that's not the same as age. As someone who started coding at age 9, I agree. :-) It's not about hiring someone in their 40s per se, but rather about recognizing the value of 20 years' experience. Age alone doesn't impart wisdom.
- pc86 9y ago
  As others have stated, "age discrimination" is a bit of a misnomer. It's completely legal to say that you're not hiring someone (under 40) because they're too young. A more accurate description would be "discrimination based on age of a candidate over the age of 40" but that doesn't roll off the tongue quite as well.
eganist 9y ago
If an attorney were building an age discrimination case against a person (or entity, per jacquesm below) involved in the rejection of a younger candidate, posts like this are among the evidence I suspect would be used to point to a discriminatory mindset. That said, I'm not a lawyer. If someone were to be making hiring decisions, posts like this discovered during the course of casual googling would oblige the person with a robust basis not to hire. Heck, at least one firm on my CV has instructed me to regard discriminatory language involving suspect classification, age included, as grounds to reject.
- jacquesm 9y ago
  (1) You don't make legal cases against people involved in a hiring rejection, you make a case against a company. (2) If you are making hiring decisions the appearance of random blog posts should not and will not give you any legal basis not to hire. Legality is encoded in the law, not in blogposts, especially not in blogposts by random passers by. If you were using this as a reason not to hire the person writing the blog post then you might get some mileage out of it but it could also easily backfire.
  - eganist 9y ago
    > (1) You don't make legal cases against people involved in a hiring rejection, you make a case against a company. Entirely true. In my defense, I'm not a lawyer. Technically also in my defense: the United States has a bad habit of calling corporations people. > (2) If you are making hiring decisions the appearance of random blog posts should not and will not give you any legal basis not to hire. Legality is encoded in the law, not in blogposts, especially not in blogposts by random passers by. If you were using this as a reason not to hire the person writing the blog post then you might get some mileage out of it but it could also easily backfire. This may be true in the Netherlands, but in many states in the US, quite a number of things can be used as grounds to not hire, with the notable exception of anything involving suspect classification (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suspect_classification https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suspect_classification). My understanding is that if someone is likely to cause the firm to be responsible for illegal conduct e.g. age discrimination, for many firms, that's a sufficient basis not to hire. I'd love to be corrected, though.
gcatalfamo 9y ago
Somewhat related: is oldgeekjobs.com still going? I can't tell from looking at the posts if it's really active.
- deleted 9y ago
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evolvedlight 9y ago
I would _never_ hire this candidate, based on seeing this. So - the author says that he has "developed some good communication skills". Great! Moving on, let's look at his linkedin page. Quotes from past jobs: "even after our idiot (now ex) CEO canceled the platform.", "wonky JavaEE stuff.". So, as a hiring manager, from this post + linkedin, I now know that this guy: 1) can reach large audiences, 2) trashes past jobs and colleagues publicly. And thus, I would be terrified of hiring the author, as there seems a 50% chance that this will end with my employers being trashed in the same way. That's just not worth it. OP: Come on, give yourself the chance to be hired by removing that from linkedin.
- stingraycharles 9y ago
  This is indeed basic psychology [1]: talking bad about other people reflects poorly on _you_, not just the people you're talking about. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emotional_contagion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emotional_contagion
  - deleted 9y ago
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- deleted 9y ago
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- eganist 9y ago
  Quoting a previous reply to this thread which was deleted (so I'll omit the commenter's name): > I don't think it's so bad. Sometimes, you work with idiots. Just because a person thinks coworkers are idiots doesn't mean the person should pipe up about it. It's one of those communication skills that a person with a ton of experience is expected to learn.
- joshmarinacci 9y ago
  OP here. I specifically left that part of my CV in because it represents a war story about webOS. Anyone who was a webOS fan knew what I was talking about and agreed with me. It has been a conversation starter with recruiters several times.
pleasecalllater 9y ago
When talking with young programmers I too often think "well, you are doing that wrong, been there, done that". They don't want to listen. A couple of months later they notice that the gray beard ones were right. From a company perspective, that's just too late, as the money loss is not recoverable. There is nothing wrong with being a young one with no experience. There is so much wrong when a company has only a bunch of young programmers and no experienced one who lead them.
- ruffel 9y ago
  Conversely I find that a number of the old(er) programmers I've worked with are incredibly stubborn and bigoted. They refuse to see anything from another persons perspective especially if that person is young. As well refusing to keep up with 'modern' technologies and paradigms because "that's not how I'm used to doing it". It's a lot of the "I've been round the block a few times I know what I'm doing" bullshit attitude. But obviously that's a generalisation. Just like your comment is.
  - arethuza 9y ago
    "that's not how I'm used to doing it" To be fair - I'm not sure how that is age related. e.g. I've had very strong reactions from some inexperienced developers who literally only had knowledge of one way of doing things to the possibility that another option might be possible and better.
    - protomyth 9y ago
      Yep, pattern bias happens to a lot of people in a lot of age groups in a lot of professions. One of the consequences of having a massive pattern matching machine for the human CPU. It's irritating in programmers because we can write prototypes to prove out our theories. It is really irritating in the fuzzy areas (like government and organization grant readers).
    - tonecluster 9y ago
      I hear this much more often from the less-experienced programmers than I do from the seasoned, experienced ones. Once in a while, and usually in a very large shop, I hear it from an experienced veteran. However, usually (not always, but usually) from one who's had 1 year of experience 20 times rather than 20 years of experience.
jacquesm 9y ago
If you're trying to get hired please always include your location in your communications so that you don't get rejected out of hand for not appearing to be 'close' and/or waste peoples time.
lozzo 9y ago
the article is interesting yet based. Most notably, it's clearly written by an old programmer.
- salvar 9y ago
  So clearly that the author explicitly states that he is one: "I know this, because I am one."
DrNuke 9y ago
To be honest, as a middle aged folk I find it impossible to relate with ping pong culture and open space offices. On the other hand, cubicles here are too often signal of brick & mortar ways to intend business, which ultimately means losing value. That's why I think older folks like me should really get into contracting or external consulting. As an alternative, do with finding a job at utilities or other non-cyclic ventures, they always seem eager to listen to juvenile-but-not-disruptive folks to innovate just a bit, not too much, not too fast.
rdtsc 9y ago
Reason to hire a young programmer based on the confession from CTO: we like college grads because we can drive them hard and pay them minimal salaries. The only thing is they burn out pretty quickly. And yes they also lamented the quality of their software and how releases were buggy and delayed. Not sure they saw a connection there... To attract the candidates they optimized non-salary benefits they thought college kids would like such sports tickets, beer nights etc. The bottom line is companies know exactly what they are doing and just officially claim some culture fit thing. Same with hiring women, minorities,etc. Even with open space offices. They say it's because they want people to collaborate but more often than not they want to save money and monitor people to see if the are "working".
- arethuza 9y ago
  Low quality - clearly not driving hard enough and not buying enough beer!
- satysin 9y ago
  I am 33 and have a 4 year old son who will be starting school this September. The biggest benefit for me that any company could offer would be true flexibility with regards to my working hours and location. I have been self-employed for the past ~7 years and it has been great as I have been able to balance work with the first few years of my sons life. Time I will never get back so being able to be there every day has been wonderful. But now I need some consistency so will be looking to find a normal job very soon. I don't care about free coffee/sofa, gym memberships, sports tickets, etc. I just want flexibility so when my son has some school event I can go without having to use up a whole days holiday for a 45 minute show, etc. I am not looking forward to it though. I know I am going to find it hard to adjust!
  - rdtsc 9y ago
    I work from home for example and nobody watches over my shoulder how much I type, just that work gets done and releases ship out and such. I can go to my kids school to see a performance and then make up the work if need be later. If it is a nice day I might start work earlier then to have time to go to the pool in the evening with them. So there are companies that will let you do that just have to find them.
calafrax 9y ago
You might want to add to the list that you are required to by law if they are equally qualified.
bengale 9y ago
If age is not a good indicator of someone being a bad hire, then it can't be a good indicator of someone being a good hire either.
eloycoto 9y ago
Be old dev doesn't mean that you know how to write code. I worked with devs with twenty years of experience, and I love it, and I learnt A LOT from them. On the other hand, I worked with old devs too, and they did a lot of spaghetti code, they didn't make a module and a lot of things are weird for them. Like async/await/yield. I think that it's not an old programmer, it's about the attitude that they had during his professional career and the attitude that they have now. With a lot of experience and the right attitude, I agree, it's a perk in the team!
js8 9y ago
I think programmers should reframe the problem. If cognitive decline is real, why would anyone hire anybody over 40? Yet there are plenty managers, politicians, doctors, lawyers, salespeople, engineers, etc. who are over 40. If you want a culture where people retire at 40, go for it. But please don't pretend that programmers are "special" in that the decline in their skills is worse than decline in skills of anybody else.
- throwawaymanbot 9y ago
  Yea, I feel the cognitive decline is a kind of an excuse, to mask the expense of experienced programmers. Only in the tech industry is this an issue. No one would complain about a 63yo brain surgeon, who according to some IT HR people would have cognitive decline, but has somehow picked up skills to be a master surgeon.
- adrianN 9y ago
  Cognitive decline is real but you have to balance it with the increase in experience.
  - mmmpop 9y ago
    No chance I can do math in my head nearly as well at 30 as I could at even 25, but I can't count the other areas I have improved in that seem to mean so much more as an adult and as a professional. For example, I couldn't learn other languages so well as a teenager (I wasn't such a great grammarist with English either). As an adult I've picked up French rather quickly and grown fascinated by linguistics; hard to understate the positive effects this has had on my career and even social life. Take all of that and the real-world job experience, add it to the calc and CS coursework from university and I'm 100x the developer I was 5 years ago.
  - Thetawaves 9y ago
    And highly variable. I have seen many folks as sharp as a tack well into their 80s, long after they have left the work force...
- timwaagh 9y ago
polote 9y ago
This guy assumes that old programmers are not super enthusiast and hard worker but they have experience, while young ones are enthusiast, hard worker and motivated but they know nothing, that's not a very rigorous way to prove something ... All that is just nonsense !
whalesalad 9y ago
s/old/experienced
throwawaymanbot 9y ago
The problem with Old Programmers, is not their work. Thats solid. Its the fact that they have mortgages, pensions, health issues, etc. This costs employers money. And employers HATE giving money because they feel like since you are getting a meager salary they are already doing you a giant favor. Its a management cultural issue, not an older programmer issue really.
throwawaymanbot 9y ago
I think, outside of Hollywood. The Tech industry in general is one of the most ageist.
andreasgonewild 9y ago
Being sweet-talked into raping the world for other peoples awesome profits comes easier when you're 20. The real problem is the messed up priorities of most companies these days; older coders are more likely to call bullshit and demand a fair share of the cake.
bsvalley 9y ago
2 reasons why you will OR won't be hired as an old programmer: 1- "programmer" is the entry level in a software/hardware company. Rising stars move up in the ranks over the years and take more responsibilities. Manager, sr. manager, director, VP, etc. still a programmer at 40? 2- If you're still programmer at 40, you might really like it! We're looking for programmers and need age/exp diversity in our group. You are rare my friend and valuable.
- pc86 9y ago
  A programmer with 20 years of experience is definitely worth more than a programmer with 2 years of experience. But not that much more. A skilled architect with 8-10 years of experience will beat a programmer with 25 or 30 years experience every day in terms of ongoing business value, and will command a much higher salary (15-20% or more). So yes, you can absolutely have a professionally rewarding, lucrative career as a 40-50 year old programmer, but you'll earn more money by moving over to the business side, simply because you can more easily show a direct line between your actions and business revenue.
  - Clubber 9y ago
    Job titles are meaningless. When I say 20 year programmer, it's what you would call an architect, senior engineer, whatever. The programmer being someone who doesn't do any design is a foreign concept to me and should find another career. Any architect that doesn't write at least the skeleton code is the same. All levels of that career needs to involve design and implementation of that design.
    - pc86 9y ago
      Every company I've worked at with 2 or more developers has acknowledged a difference between a developer responsible for high level architecture and technical ownership of a system(s) who happens to program some of that system as well, and a developer responsible for programming parts of that system who happens to architect smaller self-contained pieces of it. Architecting a class or small single-use library is a subset of the skill required to architect a distributed system, a large multi-tenant application, or some other non-closed system. Whether you want them to have the same job title or not is I think orthogonal to the fact that they are very different jobs.
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cortexio 9y ago
didn't read the article, clearly just self promotion.
Bahamut 9y ago
To add a dissenting view, ideally I want more seasoned developers, so older is better. However, I still want to hire the right developers. I have worked with some older/experienced developers who were deficient in various ways, including one who had no concept of separation of concerns or testing code. I think this goes to the mindset that it is always important to try to prove your skills by example.
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hashkb 9y ago
Time does not translate directly to experience, not all experience is equal, and one thing old programmers should know about more than anything else is their personal biases. I agree with the point- I'm getting older, too- but the reasoning is not strong.
gregjor 9y ago
Thank you. 56 years old, still writing code. I enjoy working with young programmers, they bring energy and ideas to my projects and keep me from getting stale and stuck.
rsoto 9y ago
Hiring is more than the job tasks: there's work culture, politics and external factors. At least here in Mexico, the people usually are very political (we call them 'grillos'): they tend to form groups, brain wash other employees and use the law to their advantage, because in Mexico, the employer has to prove almost everything in case there's a work dispute. And that's another reason to consider: yes, there are young people that has these traits, but mostly it comes from experience (or as we say here, 'colmillo'). The other big factor is the old saying that old dogs don't learn new tricks, so it's difficult to guide them towards the company vision, and it's worse when they have a boss that could be their son. Those are my experiences based on Mexico, I know there are better places in the world with different mindsets, I just wanted to include my thoughts on this topic.
jaclaz 9y ago
I will risk a quote by C.S.Lewis: “Experience: that most brutal of teachers. But you learn, my God do you learn.”
tvaughan 9y ago
For hire: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tvaughan https://www.linkedin.com/in/tvaughan
twii 9y ago
What a ridiculous assumption. It is not about age! I've seen both young and old horrible coders. Of course you can have a slight advantage from experience if your'e older, but the quality of that experience remains relative to the person in question. You might have 10 years of experience doing things the wrong way! Growing older doesn't make you a 10x dev, just as it won't make an average musician a superstar.
theycallhimtom 9y ago
I've worked with old programmers who are great and old programmers who suck. Most of the points in the article are obviously wrong. "Anyone who is still a programmer in their 40s has to have developed some good communication skills." "Old programmers are dabblers." "Old programmers have judgement." "We can pick up any new language because we’ve used so many over the years." I've met old programmers who are counter examples to all these points. A steelmanned version of the article would argue why older coders are more likely to have these skills than young coders. It also needs to talk about the average difference in ability relative to the variance in each group. If old coders are on average 0.1 standard deviations better than young coders you should focus on hiring the good old or young coders. If old coders are on average 1.5 standard deviations better than young coders you should just focus on hiring the good old coders and exceptional young coders.
mmjaa 9y ago
Oh shit, I may have just committed a truly heinous sin, as a "senior developer", by posting this to the company channel. Ah well, lesson learned. Don't do it, youngsters!
gozur88 9y ago
The most frustrating thing about being an older programmer is watching organizations make the same mistakes over and over again. Yeah, sure, you might want to hire an older guy because he has experience with the intangible project stuff. But only if you're planning to listen to him. I feel like Bill Murray's character in Groundhog Day: Me: We need to create our security architecture in the beginning. It's always harder to add when we have a bunch of functionality to work around. Management: But we don't have time. We promised these features by January 1st. Don't worry about security yet - the initial version won't have critical business or customer data. Me: We'll never have time. Once the users get ahold of this we'll be buried under requests for new features and critical bug fixes. Particularly since the only way we have to test it is to have people poke at it in a browser. Management: Adding automated testing would take too much time. Me: ...
- ralusek 9y ago
  I mean the problem is that you're both probably right. You SHOULD add in tests and security, but you also very likely DON'T have time. Good code can be structured in a way that it's not going to be a nightmare to add in considerations of this nature further down the line, but with this sort of environment of "speed > everything" else, they're not likely to let you implement code well either.
  - gozur88 9y ago
    >I mean the problem is that you're both probably right. You SHOULD add in tests and security, but you also very likely DON'T have time. But by doing the things that people can see and skipping the things they can't see you're effectively just lying when you produce a schedule. You don't do automated tests because it's a fun way to kill a Friday afternoon - you do them because they free you up to work on new functionality. So you're not really saving yourself time by not doing them. These kinds of projects are almost always disasters. Invariably the problem is someone in middle management undersold the cost to the people above him. There's not enough time to write the app properly, so they borrow time off the end (with interest) to make it look like things are progressing to the deadline. So you finish the first 90% on schedule and then flail around on the next 90%.
wmu 9y ago
In Polish the title "senior developer" is usually translated into "starszy programista"; the adjective "starszy" means literally "older". So, I ask everybody to call me "old programmer". :)

217 points by joshmarinacci 9y ago

I'm 58, live in the country (UK) and found a programming job almost exactly suited to my skill set (Pascal mainly-i.e. Delphi along with C# plus a few years of C, C++). Add in 5 years of 6502/Z80 assembly (games in the 80s), two years of Ada. The last three years was creating a mobile app in C#/Xamarin. Plus lots of php, html, SQL. To stand out from other candidates I prepared a 7 minute screen cast (using Camtasia which I bought a couple of years back) showing off programs I'd written and briefly mentioning programming aspects that made each program different. I uploaded it to Dropbox, emailed the link to the recruitment agent who forwarded it on. I got the job after two interviews and have just completed my first week. I was lucky, round here there aren't that many programmers and most jobs are for C#/ASP.NET MVC websites. It's just a 30 minute drive away. The job interviews included an online IQ test (not a problem), a logic test which was not my finest hour (4PM on a Friday is the worst time for me!) and a 10 minute stand up presentation on the subject of my choice. "A trip to an Arctic Isle."

thehardsphere 9y ago

I don't disagree with anything stated here, but how much of this actually is a function of age? I feel like a young programmer could aquire all of these traits also, because they're less about age and more about being able to learn from experiences. You can choose to have more experiences to become the kind of person the article talks about. Or is this a survivorship bias thing? The old programmers are more likely to be this way because the people who would be old programmers who are not this way aren't programmers anymore?

marcus_holmes 9y ago
For most programmers in their 40's, at least in my experience, we've been working in the industry since at least our mid-20's, if not earlier. Very few older programmers I know started learning to code in their 30's. Most started in their teens. So, yeah, a talented young programmer could have accumulated enough experience to acquire these traits. But it's more likely to be found in us old farts. Agree with your survivorship idea too. There's been a few that have changed course along the way.
moron4hire 9y ago
Uh, isn't that rather much the point? Once a young person learns all this stuff from experience, they've become an old person.
- thehardsphere 9y ago
  But you can gain experience without necessarily becoming old at the same time. They're correlated, but not causal.
  - grive 9y ago
    Experience takes time. More or less, depending on several factors (willingness to learn and improve, complexity of the subject, ...). But by definition, if you gain experience, you just got older than before. You cannot magically learn everything out of sheer willpower. Additionally, a few things are impossible to learn without time: the "Judgement" section in the article. You can certainly theoretically understand the meaning of it, but to experience it and have a deep, intimate understanding of it you have to go through the process of writing something and supporting it. So it's not a matter of correlation / causation, it's a matter of the two concepts being two sides of the same coin.
    - thehardsphere 9y ago
      Ok, let me be more explicit. You are absolutely correct that experience takes time and that the type of experience that the author speaks of comes from writing something and supporting it. What I am saying, is that you can choose to write different types of things and support them, without having to become 40+ years old. Not out of "sheer willpower" either; you just have to choose to write different types of things and support them. Yes, you will be older than you were before you started. But... to get that experience you do not need to reach age 40. If anything, simply getting older is not a guarantee that you will get that experience. Suppose you only program CRUD apps for 20 years with the exact same stack every time. There's only so many times you can write the same sort of app over and over again before you get diminishing returns on that kind of experience. The author knows this implicitly, but assumes from his own experience that other 40+ year old programmers will have as wide a range of experience as he does. That's really the specific premise of his that I'm questioning: that being an old programmer automatically means you have a wide range of useful experience that makes you better.
chrisan 9y ago
> because they're less about age and more about being able to learn from experiences Typically after you learn from experiences and gain knowledge you age. I'd question someone that is young and thinks they know the world. If being able to acquire all he knowledge/experience while young were true, everyone would peak at 25 and not get any better. There is a certain point some people get where they _refuse_ to learn more and are "set in their ways" and that becomes detrimental to a younger/fresh idea. I doubt anyone would advocate age quotas for hiring but having a mix of experience/knowledge with fresh ideas is probably ideal. At least, it feels ideal in our team which has ranged from high 40s to low 20s.
chefandy 9y ago
Well I'm not sure if you're young or just playing devil's advocate, but a young person often feels that way. The whole knowledge * intellect idea that someone else here mentioned is far too reductive. You can be a ridiculously smart person who has read white papers and coding books, learned all about discrete math and project management, worked on as many projects as you could, and still not touch the maturity of an older software developer. Why? Experience doesn't begin and end with topics directly surrounding your vocation; your whole life contributes to it. As you age, you get to know yourself better. Old people have made far more decisions in their life than a young person has: lots of good ones, and lots of bad ones. You know your decision making process and its flaws. You remember what it feels like to reap the rewards of a good decision, and even more intensely, you remember the sting of a bad decision. You know, from experience, what decisions you should make, what ones you shouldn't make, and any confounding variables. You also start to understand those same patterns in the human and organizational behavior of people you live and work with. You start to get an intuitive understanding of the kinds of mistakes various kinds of people make in various kinds of situations. There's a reason that older people– often ones without a ton of domain knowledge– are generally the ones making big decisions in a mature company, while the younger people are working out the details. For example, the couple decades that I spent as a bouncer in clubs might not help me see if I'm making a bad coding choice per se, but it vastly increased my understanding of group dynamics, ego, negotiation, how to mitigate the damage of having to make snap decisions with a whole lot of consequences, how to respond when someone tries to intimidate me or make me feel uncomfortable, deescalating pointless arguments, and even starting a fight when one really needs to be started. (the worn-smooth restraint and fighting techniques have much less utility in the office... so far) Before I gained that experience, I'd have no way to have known it would proved useful in a software development career. I'm sure many parents, people who have coached sports teams, people who have experienced the death of an industry, or even people that have gone through messy divorces can all point to things they've taken away from those experiences which have vastly improved their judgement and maturity. And it's not just the soft skills which are improved by this understanding. Being more mature means you write more mature code. I look at code I wrote 15 years ago and shudder. It's not that I have a better understanding of the mechanics of Perl or C now than I did then, but my sense of logic has been refined, I'm more patient, and I have a better sense of where to put in extra effort and where to cut corners. When you're young, you're still mostly figuring out what you're capable of, but you don't have a very good sense of what your limitations are. When you get older, you've got a pretty good sense of what you can do, and a much better sense of how to keep yourself and everybody else out of trouble by avoiding what you can't do. The problem is, lack of experience is generally pretty opaque to the people who lack it. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
kenbellows 9y ago
I think the article is arguing that while age may not be necessary for quality, it is sufficient. A young(er) programmer may or may not have these qualities, but in order to survive in the programming industry beyond a certain point, you have to develop these qualities. (Not sure whether I agree, but I think it's a point worth considering.)

bryanrasmussen 9y ago

as an old programmer I think it would be better if the author said 'I know this, because I hired one.'

1ba9115454 9y ago
Even better. 'I tried to hire one but someone else made a more compeitive offer.'

autokad 9y ago

How do older programmers deal with coding interviews from companies like facebook / google? i feel like those advantage people who just finished their algorithms class, or have time to practice specifically for it.

1ba9115454 9y ago
I personally wouldn't target those companies. They tend to employ on a permanant basis and the contract market is a bigger payer. Also after a few years in the game you tend to get targetted by recruiters as you may have specialised into certain areas. i.e. finance. So for example, I don't normally look for work, it normally finds me.
- hardwaresofton 9y ago
  Could you give some examples of where you first got your contracts (outside of personal connections)? The contract market seems great (I'm in it right now), but finding decent positions seems pretty difficult without a pre-existing large network. Also, a lot of the sites that feature contract work ask for way too many details, and are basically a race to the bottom on price, sometimes at the expense of quality, and I don't feel panicked enough yet to join that race.
  - jensC 9y ago
    Yep, same here too. Worked as a freelancer for 15 years with one company and now trying to find a new contract (with only a small network) is pretty hard (can only do remote jobs due to a handicap).
tluyben2 9y ago
Don't want to generalize but as far as I have seen; they don't. As a 6th point in his list could be; connections. I (42 y/o) know people; I can get programmers to follow me if I move company which is a plus. But I also know investors, potential clients, C*O's and hiring managers. People recommend you or know you via their network.

1ba9115454 9y ago

I know more this year than I did a year ago. I will know more next year than I do today. This will never stop.

sokoloff 9y ago
My grandmother knows less today than she did ten years ago.
- kronos29296 9y ago
  Most things in life are like Gaussian distribution. After a peak there is long decline. What matters is how long to the peak and how high it is.
- david-gpu 9y ago
  We are talking of ordinary folks in their forties and fifties, not senescent folks in nursing homes.
  - adrianN 9y ago
    Then we shouldn't say "never".

RickJWagner 9y ago

I like it. Of course, I'm an older programmer. But still.

pc86 9y ago
"I am in favor of discrimination as long as I am not the one discriminated against."

chandler 9y ago

Consider smartness as "what you can do with what you know," while experience is "what you know"--then, what follows is that having more experience makes up for not being as clever. Able to make good choices = Intellect * Experience Moreover, employers can _try_ to assess intelligence with whiteboard interviews...but the easier factor to evaluate is experience. It's right there on the resume!

superplussed 9y ago
This is usually delineated by wisdom vs intelligence. Intelligence is raw horsepower, and wisdom is the ability to make good decisions. In the context of older developers, I don't think you can really assume wisdom has been an outcome of all of those years of experience. Wisdom grows with a certain affinity for introspection and self-correction, and not everyone has those traits.
hardwaresofton 9y ago
Yeah, except 10 years at certain companies could teach you less than 6months to 1 year at one company that's actually doing it right. I hesitate to try and prescribe an answer for the "how employers should find good employees" question, because it's so difficult, but I imagine the ideal hiring process would: - Allow candidates a choice on how they want to be tested (take home thing, online code test, whiteboard, whatever else) - Ask better questions at the abstraction level that would show experience. For example, if you want to know whether someone has experience, give them an architectural diagram (or process diagram) of your current project/workflow/whatever, and ask them how they would improve it (and if they've ever been through the steps they suggest themselves/how they would roll it out). There was an excellent post on HN a while back detailing what a specific company (whose job is doing interviews, I can't for the life of me remember what company it was), learned from doing thousands and thousands of interviews. Also I'm not super good at math, but in the equation you posted wouldn't the intellect variable be pretty much equal to experience, and you could make up for one with the other? Or maybe you're implying that the scales for each multiplier are different (like intelligence might only go 1 to 10 but experience might go 1-100?)? I agree with what you're getting at, basically that someone who has seen lot but isn't as clever will often make better choices than someone that's very clever, but completely green.

spodek 9y ago

Is this post not promoting age discrimination? Isn't age discrimination illegal? Why would discriminating against younger people be any more fair or legal than against against older? I expect discriminating by amount of relevant experience is fair, but that's not the same as age.

vixen99 9y ago
Are employers so dumb that they would hire on the basis you're suggesting without considering the arguments put forward in the piece? Young and old have, perhaps, on average, different characteristics worthy of note if you're hiring someone. Is all!
calafrax 9y ago
People under 40 are not a protected group under Federal law. People over 40 are. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Employment_discrimination_law_in_the_United_States#cite_note-ADEA-6 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Employment_discrimination_law_...
Doradus 9y ago
> I expect discriminating by amount of relevant experience is fair, but that's not the same as age. As someone who started coding at age 9, I agree. :-) It's not about hiring someone in their 40s per se, but rather about recognizing the value of 20 years' experience. Age alone doesn't impart wisdom.
pc86 9y ago
As others have stated, "age discrimination" is a bit of a misnomer. It's completely legal to say that you're not hiring someone (under 40) because they're too young. A more accurate description would be "discrimination based on age of a candidate over the age of 40" but that doesn't roll off the tongue quite as well.

eganist 9y ago

If an attorney were building an age discrimination case against a person (or entity, per jacquesm below) involved in the rejection of a younger candidate, posts like this are among the evidence I suspect would be used to point to a discriminatory mindset. That said, I'm not a lawyer. If someone were to be making hiring decisions, posts like this discovered during the course of casual googling would oblige the person with a robust basis not to hire. Heck, at least one firm on my CV has instructed me to regard discriminatory language involving suspect classification, age included, as grounds to reject.

jacquesm 9y ago
(1) You don't make legal cases against people involved in a hiring rejection, you make a case against a company. (2) If you are making hiring decisions the appearance of random blog posts should not and will not give you any legal basis not to hire. Legality is encoded in the law, not in blogposts, especially not in blogposts by random passers by. If you were using this as a reason not to hire the person writing the blog post then you might get some mileage out of it but it could also easily backfire.
- eganist 9y ago
  > (1) You don't make legal cases against people involved in a hiring rejection, you make a case against a company. Entirely true. In my defense, I'm not a lawyer. Technically also in my defense: the United States has a bad habit of calling corporations people. > (2) If you are making hiring decisions the appearance of random blog posts should not and will not give you any legal basis not to hire. Legality is encoded in the law, not in blogposts, especially not in blogposts by random passers by. If you were using this as a reason not to hire the person writing the blog post then you might get some mileage out of it but it could also easily backfire. This may be true in the Netherlands, but in many states in the US, quite a number of things can be used as grounds to not hire, with the notable exception of anything involving suspect classification (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suspect_classification https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suspect_classification). My understanding is that if someone is likely to cause the firm to be responsible for illegal conduct e.g. age discrimination, for many firms, that's a sufficient basis not to hire. I'd love to be corrected, though.

gcatalfamo 9y ago

Somewhat related: is oldgeekjobs.com still going? I can't tell from looking at the posts if it's really active.

deleted 9y ago
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evolvedlight 9y ago

I would _never_ hire this candidate, based on seeing this. So - the author says that he has "developed some good communication skills". Great! Moving on, let's look at his linkedin page. Quotes from past jobs: "even after our idiot (now ex) CEO canceled the platform.", "wonky JavaEE stuff.". So, as a hiring manager, from this post + linkedin, I now know that this guy: 1) can reach large audiences, 2) trashes past jobs and colleagues publicly. And thus, I would be terrified of hiring the author, as there seems a 50% chance that this will end with my employers being trashed in the same way. That's just not worth it. OP: Come on, give yourself the chance to be hired by removing that from linkedin.

stingraycharles 9y ago
This is indeed basic psychology [1]: talking bad about other people reflects poorly on _you_, not just the people you're talking about. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emotional_contagion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emotional_contagion
- deleted 9y ago
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deleted 9y ago
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eganist 9y ago
Quoting a previous reply to this thread which was deleted (so I'll omit the commenter's name): > I don't think it's so bad. Sometimes, you work with idiots. Just because a person thinks coworkers are idiots doesn't mean the person should pipe up about it. It's one of those communication skills that a person with a ton of experience is expected to learn.
joshmarinacci 9y ago
OP here. I specifically left that part of my CV in because it represents a war story about webOS. Anyone who was a webOS fan knew what I was talking about and agreed with me. It has been a conversation starter with recruiters several times.

pleasecalllater 9y ago

When talking with young programmers I too often think "well, you are doing that wrong, been there, done that". They don't want to listen. A couple of months later they notice that the gray beard ones were right. From a company perspective, that's just too late, as the money loss is not recoverable. There is nothing wrong with being a young one with no experience. There is so much wrong when a company has only a bunch of young programmers and no experienced one who lead them.

ruffel 9y ago
Conversely I find that a number of the old(er) programmers I've worked with are incredibly stubborn and bigoted. They refuse to see anything from another persons perspective especially if that person is young. As well refusing to keep up with 'modern' technologies and paradigms because "that's not how I'm used to doing it". It's a lot of the "I've been round the block a few times I know what I'm doing" bullshit attitude. But obviously that's a generalisation. Just like your comment is.
- arethuza 9y ago
  "that's not how I'm used to doing it" To be fair - I'm not sure how that is age related. e.g. I've had very strong reactions from some inexperienced developers who literally only had knowledge of one way of doing things to the possibility that another option might be possible and better.
  - protomyth 9y ago
    Yep, pattern bias happens to a lot of people in a lot of age groups in a lot of professions. One of the consequences of having a massive pattern matching machine for the human CPU. It's irritating in programmers because we can write prototypes to prove out our theories. It is really irritating in the fuzzy areas (like government and organization grant readers).
  - tonecluster 9y ago
    I hear this much more often from the less-experienced programmers than I do from the seasoned, experienced ones. Once in a while, and usually in a very large shop, I hear it from an experienced veteran. However, usually (not always, but usually) from one who's had 1 year of experience 20 times rather than 20 years of experience.

jacquesm 9y ago

If you're trying to get hired please always include your location in your communications so that you don't get rejected out of hand for not appearing to be 'close' and/or waste peoples time.

lozzo 9y ago

the article is interesting yet based. Most notably, it's clearly written by an old programmer.

salvar 9y ago
So clearly that the author explicitly states that he is one: "I know this, because I am one."

DrNuke 9y ago

To be honest, as a middle aged folk I find it impossible to relate with ping pong culture and open space offices. On the other hand, cubicles here are too often signal of brick & mortar ways to intend business, which ultimately means losing value. That's why I think older folks like me should really get into contracting or external consulting. As an alternative, do with finding a job at utilities or other non-cyclic ventures, they always seem eager to listen to juvenile-but-not-disruptive folks to innovate just a bit, not too much, not too fast.

rdtsc 9y ago

Reason to hire a young programmer based on the confession from CTO: we like college grads because we can drive them hard and pay them minimal salaries. The only thing is they burn out pretty quickly. And yes they also lamented the quality of their software and how releases were buggy and delayed. Not sure they saw a connection there... To attract the candidates they optimized non-salary benefits they thought college kids would like such sports tickets, beer nights etc. The bottom line is companies know exactly what they are doing and just officially claim some culture fit thing. Same with hiring women, minorities,etc. Even with open space offices. They say it's because they want people to collaborate but more often than not they want to save money and monitor people to see if the are "working".

arethuza 9y ago
Low quality - clearly not driving hard enough and not buying enough beer!
satysin 9y ago
I am 33 and have a 4 year old son who will be starting school this September. The biggest benefit for me that any company could offer would be true flexibility with regards to my working hours and location. I have been self-employed for the past ~7 years and it has been great as I have been able to balance work with the first few years of my sons life. Time I will never get back so being able to be there every day has been wonderful. But now I need some consistency so will be looking to find a normal job very soon. I don't care about free coffee/sofa, gym memberships, sports tickets, etc. I just want flexibility so when my son has some school event I can go without having to use up a whole days holiday for a 45 minute show, etc. I am not looking forward to it though. I know I am going to find it hard to adjust!
- rdtsc 9y ago
  I work from home for example and nobody watches over my shoulder how much I type, just that work gets done and releases ship out and such. I can go to my kids school to see a performance and then make up the work if need be later. If it is a nice day I might start work earlier then to have time to go to the pool in the evening with them. So there are companies that will let you do that just have to find them.

calafrax 9y ago

You might want to add to the list that you are required to by law if they are equally qualified.

bengale 9y ago

If age is not a good indicator of someone being a bad hire, then it can't be a good indicator of someone being a good hire either.

eloycoto 9y ago

Be old dev doesn't mean that you know how to write code. I worked with devs with twenty years of experience, and I love it, and I learnt A LOT from them. On the other hand, I worked with old devs too, and they did a lot of spaghetti code, they didn't make a module and a lot of things are weird for them. Like async/await/yield. I think that it's not an old programmer, it's about the attitude that they had during his professional career and the attitude that they have now. With a lot of experience and the right attitude, I agree, it's a perk in the team!

js8 9y ago

I think programmers should reframe the problem. If cognitive decline is real, why would anyone hire anybody over 40? Yet there are plenty managers, politicians, doctors, lawyers, salespeople, engineers, etc. who are over 40. If you want a culture where people retire at 40, go for it. But please don't pretend that programmers are "special" in that the decline in their skills is worse than decline in skills of anybody else.

throwawaymanbot 9y ago
Yea, I feel the cognitive decline is a kind of an excuse, to mask the expense of experienced programmers. Only in the tech industry is this an issue. No one would complain about a 63yo brain surgeon, who according to some IT HR people would have cognitive decline, but has somehow picked up skills to be a master surgeon.
adrianN 9y ago
Cognitive decline is real but you have to balance it with the increase in experience.
- mmmpop 9y ago
  No chance I can do math in my head nearly as well at 30 as I could at even 25, but I can't count the other areas I have improved in that seem to mean so much more as an adult and as a professional. For example, I couldn't learn other languages so well as a teenager (I wasn't such a great grammarist with English either). As an adult I've picked up French rather quickly and grown fascinated by linguistics; hard to understate the positive effects this has had on my career and even social life. Take all of that and the real-world job experience, add it to the calc and CS coursework from university and I'm 100x the developer I was 5 years ago.
- Thetawaves 9y ago
  And highly variable. I have seen many folks as sharp as a tack well into their 80s, long after they have left the work force...
timwaagh 9y ago

polote 9y ago

This guy assumes that old programmers are not super enthusiast and hard worker but they have experience, while young ones are enthusiast, hard worker and motivated but they know nothing, that's not a very rigorous way to prove something ... All that is just nonsense !

whalesalad 9y ago

s/old/experienced

throwawaymanbot 9y ago

The problem with Old Programmers, is not their work. Thats solid. Its the fact that they have mortgages, pensions, health issues, etc. This costs employers money. And employers HATE giving money because they feel like since you are getting a meager salary they are already doing you a giant favor. Its a management cultural issue, not an older programmer issue really.

throwawaymanbot 9y ago

I think, outside of Hollywood. The Tech industry in general is one of the most ageist.

andreasgonewild 9y ago

Being sweet-talked into raping the world for other peoples awesome profits comes easier when you're 20. The real problem is the messed up priorities of most companies these days; older coders are more likely to call bullshit and demand a fair share of the cake.

bsvalley 9y ago

2 reasons why you will OR won't be hired as an old programmer: 1- "programmer" is the entry level in a software/hardware company. Rising stars move up in the ranks over the years and take more responsibilities. Manager, sr. manager, director, VP, etc. still a programmer at 40? 2- If you're still programmer at 40, you might really like it! We're looking for programmers and need age/exp diversity in our group. You are rare my friend and valuable.

pc86 9y ago
A programmer with 20 years of experience is definitely worth more than a programmer with 2 years of experience. But not that much more. A skilled architect with 8-10 years of experience will beat a programmer with 25 or 30 years experience every day in terms of ongoing business value, and will command a much higher salary (15-20% or more). So yes, you can absolutely have a professionally rewarding, lucrative career as a 40-50 year old programmer, but you'll earn more money by moving over to the business side, simply because you can more easily show a direct line between your actions and business revenue.
- Clubber 9y ago
  Job titles are meaningless. When I say 20 year programmer, it's what you would call an architect, senior engineer, whatever. The programmer being someone who doesn't do any design is a foreign concept to me and should find another career. Any architect that doesn't write at least the skeleton code is the same. All levels of that career needs to involve design and implementation of that design.
  - pc86 9y ago
    Every company I've worked at with 2 or more developers has acknowledged a difference between a developer responsible for high level architecture and technical ownership of a system(s) who happens to program some of that system as well, and a developer responsible for programming parts of that system who happens to architect smaller self-contained pieces of it. Architecting a class or small single-use library is a subset of the skill required to architect a distributed system, a large multi-tenant application, or some other non-closed system. Whether you want them to have the same job title or not is I think orthogonal to the fact that they are very different jobs.

deleted 9y ago

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cortexio 9y ago

didn't read the article, clearly just self promotion.

Bahamut 9y ago

To add a dissenting view, ideally I want more seasoned developers, so older is better. However, I still want to hire the right developers. I have worked with some older/experienced developers who were deficient in various ways, including one who had no concept of separation of concerns or testing code. I think this goes to the mindset that it is always important to try to prove your skills by example.

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hashkb 9y ago

Time does not translate directly to experience, not all experience is equal, and one thing old programmers should know about more than anything else is their personal biases. I agree with the point- I'm getting older, too- but the reasoning is not strong.

gregjor 9y ago

Thank you. 56 years old, still writing code. I enjoy working with young programmers, they bring energy and ideas to my projects and keep me from getting stale and stuck.

rsoto 9y ago

Hiring is more than the job tasks: there's work culture, politics and external factors. At least here in Mexico, the people usually are very political (we call them 'grillos'): they tend to form groups, brain wash other employees and use the law to their advantage, because in Mexico, the employer has to prove almost everything in case there's a work dispute. And that's another reason to consider: yes, there are young people that has these traits, but mostly it comes from experience (or as we say here, 'colmillo'). The other big factor is the old saying that old dogs don't learn new tricks, so it's difficult to guide them towards the company vision, and it's worse when they have a boss that could be their son. Those are my experiences based on Mexico, I know there are better places in the world with different mindsets, I just wanted to include my thoughts on this topic.

jaclaz 9y ago

I will risk a quote by C.S.Lewis: “Experience: that most brutal of teachers. But you learn, my God do you learn.”

tvaughan 9y ago

For hire: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tvaughan https://www.linkedin.com/in/tvaughan

twii 9y ago

What a ridiculous assumption. It is not about age! I've seen both young and old horrible coders. Of course you can have a slight advantage from experience if your'e older, but the quality of that experience remains relative to the person in question. You might have 10 years of experience doing things the wrong way! Growing older doesn't make you a 10x dev, just as it won't make an average musician a superstar.

theycallhimtom 9y ago

I've worked with old programmers who are great and old programmers who suck. Most of the points in the article are obviously wrong. "Anyone who is still a programmer in their 40s has to have developed some good communication skills." "Old programmers are dabblers." "Old programmers have judgement." "We can pick up any new language because we’ve used so many over the years." I've met old programmers who are counter examples to all these points. A steelmanned version of the article would argue why older coders are more likely to have these skills than young coders. It also needs to talk about the average difference in ability relative to the variance in each group. If old coders are on average 0.1 standard deviations better than young coders you should focus on hiring the good old or young coders. If old coders are on average 1.5 standard deviations better than young coders you should just focus on hiring the good old coders and exceptional young coders.

mmjaa 9y ago

Oh shit, I may have just committed a truly heinous sin, as a "senior developer", by posting this to the company channel. Ah well, lesson learned. Don't do it, youngsters!

gozur88 9y ago

The most frustrating thing about being an older programmer is watching organizations make the same mistakes over and over again. Yeah, sure, you might want to hire an older guy because he has experience with the intangible project stuff. But only if you're planning to listen to him. I feel like Bill Murray's character in Groundhog Day: Me: We need to create our security architecture in the beginning. It's always harder to add when we have a bunch of functionality to work around. Management: But we don't have time. We promised these features by January 1st. Don't worry about security yet - the initial version won't have critical business or customer data. Me: We'll never have time. Once the users get ahold of this we'll be buried under requests for new features and critical bug fixes. Particularly since the only way we have to test it is to have people poke at it in a browser. Management: Adding automated testing would take too much time. Me: ...

ralusek 9y ago
I mean the problem is that you're both probably right. You SHOULD add in tests and security, but you also very likely DON'T have time. Good code can be structured in a way that it's not going to be a nightmare to add in considerations of this nature further down the line, but with this sort of environment of "speed > everything" else, they're not likely to let you implement code well either.
- gozur88 9y ago
  >I mean the problem is that you're both probably right. You SHOULD add in tests and security, but you also very likely DON'T have time. But by doing the things that people can see and skipping the things they can't see you're effectively just lying when you produce a schedule. You don't do automated tests because it's a fun way to kill a Friday afternoon - you do them because they free you up to work on new functionality. So you're not really saving yourself time by not doing them. These kinds of projects are almost always disasters. Invariably the problem is someone in middle management undersold the cost to the people above him. There's not enough time to write the app properly, so they borrow time off the end (with interest) to make it look like things are progressing to the deadline. So you finish the first 90% on schedule and then flail around on the next 90%.

wmu 9y ago

In Polish the title "senior developer" is usually translated into "starszy programista"; the adjective "starszy" means literally "older". So, I ask everybody to call me "old programmer". :)