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As a late-40's engineer/programmer/admin, I've been fortunate to stay technical for my 25 years or so, but I've seen the other side of this argument. We had a g

As a late-40's engineer/programmer/admin, I've been fortunate to stay technical for my 25 years or so, but I've seen the other side of this argument. We had a guy who was in his later 50's, as a top-level "tech" pay grade, who wrote some Perl twenty-something years ago. He was given 3 simple tasks in Visual Basic, and couldn't complete a single one. The company did an RIF, and he just barely made the cut to get an early retirement. He took it, knowing he'd be let go if he didn't. So, yeah, as a middle-aged guy, these stories scare my pants off. However, I think this other guy's story is pretty common. I suspect that there are a lot of people who, thanks to some early success at being technical in a large company, rise through the pay scale, and then never update their skill set. These people NEED to go. They're a drag on an already-cripplingly-overencumbered organization. You have to keep learning. Forever. After over a decade happily coding with Rails, I'm now learning Java for web applications. Yikes. I can't say I'm enjoying the experience, but I AM learning a lot. Just throwing out a counterpoint. I'm not sure that taking the money saved, and hiring a small army of Indian college grads is the answer, but that's a whole different discussion.

forinti 9y ago
I find this funny because I've used Java most of my career and am just tired of having to write so much code for even the simplest stuff. I just wish I could use Perl always. The latest task was a simple web service for a poc. Java was a pom file, various classes, web.xml, etc. All that could be written as a Perl dancer app and a yml database config file.
swozey 9y ago
> You have to keep learning. This is where people either fail or succeed. Want to spend the weekends with your kids riding horses and not working on your skills? That's fine, but it will affect your ability to be hired. It's not "we're not hiring you because you're old" it's "we're not hiring you because you don't keep your skills modern." Find a happy median. I'm 34 and started in this field when I was 12. I've seen it for most of my life. I have zero fears of being 40 and not getting work unless I get detached from it and start focusing on other things. I was a sysadmin for a long time, I was a network engineer for a long time. Now I work on kubernetes. I've had to change my "field" multiple times to stay current and employable. And please don't send me a resume with 20 years of random-old-tech-stuff on it unless it relates to what we're doing.

forinti 9y ago

I find this funny because I've used Java most of my career and am just tired of having to write so much code for even the simplest stuff. I just wish I could use Perl always. The latest task was a simple web service for a poc. Java was a pom file, various classes, web.xml, etc. All that could be written as a Perl dancer app and a yml database config file.

swozey 9y ago

> You have to keep learning. This is where people either fail or succeed. Want to spend the weekends with your kids riding horses and not working on your skills? That's fine, but it will affect your ability to be hired. It's not "we're not hiring you because you're old" it's "we're not hiring you because you don't keep your skills modern." Find a happy median. I'm 34 and started in this field when I was 12. I've seen it for most of my life. I have zero fears of being 40 and not getting work unless I get detached from it and start focusing on other things. I was a sysadmin for a long time, I was a network engineer for a long time. Now I work on kubernetes. I've had to change my "field" multiple times to stay current and employable. And please don't send me a resume with 20 years of random-old-tech-stuff on it unless it relates to what we're doing.