7 ms·

Save/invest your $. Tech is Logan's Run....age is red flag. If you dont have your own profitable startup in the next 5-10 years, you may want to start investing

Save/invest your $. Tech is Logan's Run....age is red flag. If you dont have your own profitable startup in the next 5-10 years, you may want to start investing in another career path that values older people more.

biohax2015 8y ago
Yeah, thinking about MD school. It doesn't seem like tech is a long-term sustainable career.
- aswanson 8y ago
  Good call. I've given it serious thought also.
- eunoia 8y ago
  I feel like this might be the valley monoculture in play. Counter example: I lead a software team doing new product development for a multi billion company NOT in the valley. Plenty of my engineering coworkers are grandparents. They are very much comfortably employed. My boss is 50ish, young at heart and a brilliant software architect. He still gets actively recruited and has no end of companies approaching him for contracting gigs outside of work. Find a niche and stay effective. You'll probably be employable forever.
  - deadmetheny 8y ago
    I live in the Midwest - it's absolutely Valley people convinced the tech world outside the Valley is either the same, or cavemen banging on C64s. Age isn't a detriment here, but you do have to be willing to work for established companies that don't operate on hipster frameworks.
    - WalterSear 8y ago
      > you do have to be willing to work for established companies that don't operate on hipster frameworks. Well, one man's established company and non-hipster framework is another man's cave and commodore 64. I've personally experienced a glaring cultural and technical difference between work environments in the SF/Seattle areas and ones in other technology hotspots - even within the same company.
      - konradb 8y ago
        > I've personally experienced a glaring cultural and technical difference between work environments in the SF/Seattle areas and ones in other technology hotspots I'd be interested to hear about these if you had the time.
    - sidlls 8y ago
      On the other hand those jobs generally pay poorly and come with extremely diminished job opportunities, room to learn and apply new things, and are in areas that are more conservative and frequently actively hostile to differences. Outside the valley isn't a wasteland but it's also not really comparable.
      - mlevental 8y ago
        how much advancement do you think you'll want in your 50s? also I think it's funny that you mention intolerancia to differences in a thread about svs ageism
  - mywittyname 8y ago
    How many of these people do you think would self-identify as 'mediocre'? One of the most important words in the OP's sentence is 'mediocre.' Of course great engineers will be in demand, regardless of age. But the big push towards CS education today is going to bear fruit in 10 years, at which point, wages and opportunities for older, less talented workers will decline. I'm seeing this already among my older peer group. Even in a what is seen to be a tight job market, they are having to interview much, much more often to get even one offer.
    - bluntfang 8y ago
      The only reason wages for software developers are going to decline in the next 10 years is the move towards vocational schools (bootcamps) and increased popularity of university CS schools flooding the job market. Software engineers are in this really sweet spot. They are a scarce high-skill asset and if you aren't pulling in above industry average wages you should be hopping to the next job that will pay you more.
- WalterSear 8y ago
  By the time you are the age that it's a problem, the social environment will be too different to be predictable.
- rootusrootus 8y ago
  I know so many 60-something engineers. Maybe they're not valued in the bay area, but out in the real world there are lots of 'em. Yes it may get harder to find a job at a hip new startup. Lots of boring but well-paying companies, however, are more open-minded.
ryandrake 8y ago
But wait a minute... Everyone here on HN and the technology press tells me there is this Shortage of Engineers™, and that employers are struggling to find software developers! Yet we also throw them away after 40? Something doesn’t add up...
- existencebox 8y ago
  There's a shortage of Lamborghinis that I can afford. (I couldn't bring up the courage to click reply with just a quippy one liner, so let me assure you that I do actually think this is the truth behind things; plain and simple expectation mismatch. Companies want the best skills at the lowest prices. Candidates want the best offer they think can manage. Incentives will always put these actors to opposite ends of the spectrum.) Edit: I would at least like to understand the downvotes, since I say the above _as an engineer_ who knows I'll run up against companies saying they have a shortage while I'm banging on the door. (In fact that has literally happened, rejection the same week as an article from a firm that posted a "shortage" article)
  - mywittyname 8y ago
    We pass on qualified candidates for pretty silly reasons. Our process is basically, any one person in the interview process can veto an application. The problem is, the interviewers all seem to evaluate people for their current role, rather than the position the candidate is applying for. For example, one candidate interviewed for an engineering position that involved a lot of writing SQL/data wrangling. He listed machine learning on his resume and got interviewed by one of our researchers who lives and breaths ML and was torn apart. I didn't care that he didn't know how to do ML, even it if was listed on his resume, I was confident the candidate could do the job I needed him to. The candidate got the veto. I'm sure other companies pull the same crap. Interviewing is just all-around awful.
    - InitialLastName 8y ago
      I'm usually skeptical of somebody who puts something on their resume that they can't back up. If you've claimed to know something, you'd better have studied up enough to have a conversation about it. One way I like candidates to get around this issue is to separate skills into categories like (for example) "very familiar with", "comfortable with", and "experience with". It's refreshing to see honest evaluations of skill levels, rather than people who say they know C/C++ but aren't capable of coding up a basic class in C++.
benburleson 8y ago
Jesus, this is going to freak a lot of developers out.
- aswanson 8y ago
  Think of it as a "heads up", and prepare accordingly.
- opportune 8y ago
  It shouldn’t as long as you keep up with skills such that you can actually command a 20+ years of experience salary based on those skills. I see this with data teams where older developers can be less productive than people who are much younger that have a few years experience working in the Hadoop ecosystem. There is no reason to pay people 50-100% more if they aren’t nearly that much more productive
  - aswanson 8y ago
    Hadoop was released in 2011. No one has more than 8 years of experience in it but the initial developers. So even if the older devs had the median level of experience with that particular tool, there's likely a much more inexperienced as good with that particular framework, hence, a rapidly devaluing skillset against the environment with respect to time. There is probably no framework or set of tools from 20 years ago in software that is as valuable to an employer as more recent technology.
    - opportune 8y ago
      Yes and there are plenty of people with 4+ years of experience with Hadoop who are working with (or worse, under) people with more total experience but no experience with Hadoop who are not as productive. That is all I’m saying. I’m having trouble parsing your second sentence
      - aswanson 8y ago
        Yeah, sorry. That was badly worded; it was meant as a retort to your initial assertion that 20 years of experience matters only with the right experience with tools. The tools have such a short half-life that none of them matter over that time frame and you are always pushing uphill every few years against newer people that can have almost as much experience with the latest tool de jure.
rch 8y ago
I don't think age is a red flag. Over time potential employers start to value accomplishments more than potential, that's all.
- sjg007 8y ago
  We are eating ourselves.
Latteland 8y ago
How old do you have to be to reach the red line? The key is to keep doing technical stuff, avoid being management overhead. Why couldn't he say he was a cobol developer and learn how to do that for free over the internet? I'm still at least moderately technical. a couple of years ago went to switch jobs and got 4 offers. I'm 50+ in Seattle, so there is some good tech going on here. I'm not the ceo, I'm not a distinguished engineer, but I can do some stuff. Don't give up - find something technical. Avoid being just a a manager. It's easy to fall into that trap of no tech because it happens to a lot of us, that technical fire runs out after a while.
- dleslie 8y ago
  Depends on where. In Vancouver, I twice put my own job on the line to vouch for the desirability of hiring older men. One was 56, the other in his mid-fourties. If I hadn't then neither would have got the job; and their ability to do the work was never in question.
  - Aeolun 8y ago
    If we get any older people (e.g. fuckton of years of experience) that want to work for what we are offering, you better believe I’ll jump at the chance. I’ve come to firmly believe that the fastest way to solving a problem is having solved it before.
    - hvidgaard 8y ago
      Experience brings value to the company. If the skill set matches what is needed, the added experience will manifest itself compared to software developers with only 5 years of experience. That experience cost money. I'm not saying you don't give reasonable offers.
      - Aeolun 8y ago
        Fortunately (or unfortunately?) I don’t make the offers, I just decide if they’re technically competent enough. At least in Japan I believe the offers to be fairly competetive as well (top 30% ish).
tasty_freeze 8y ago
> If you dont have your own profitable startup in the next 5-10 years I lived in the south SF Bay area for 20 years, and left 15 years ago. The culture was pretty insular then, but boy, that comment just drives how how much it worse it has gotten. The thought that everybody needs to create a startup, much less a profitable one, seems laughable. It is also a surer way to economic loss than toughing it out as a worker bee. I'm in my mid 50s and still happily employed as a drone. Every opportunity to move "up" into management I've rejected. I'm experienced, work well with others, and work hard; my career is doing fine and feel no job insecurity. There are plenty of other people at work who are as old or older than me who are highly respected. If you work some place where age is a disqualifier, it is a red flag.
- madengr 8y ago
  Sounds similar to me, slugging it out at the same, boring company in flyover country. That has allowed me to build up >$1M in retirement savings in mid 40’s. Classic tortoise vs. the hare.
  - aswanson 8y ago
    Nice work. Most of us, even those in technical fields, usually graduate financially illiterate and 30 seems 1000 years away. We usually catch up, just later.
    - madengr 8y ago
      It can’t be stressed enough to put in early. Fortunately I maxed my 401k contributions for several years when young and single. Had to cut back to 8% with small kids and stay-at-home mom, but then back to max with dual income. Best thing you can do for kids is open up an IRA when 16 for their first job, and put in $3k year while employee as teenagers. See what it turns into 50 years later.
- mark-r 8y ago
  Enjoy it while you can. At some point a beancounter will look at you and decide your salary is too high or your healthcare costs are upsetting the average, and you'll find yourself on a layoff list. I have a friend who has the same qualities you describe: experienced, works well with others, and works hard; he hasn't had a job in 2 years after his layoff at age 59. As for startups, I'd suggest buying a lottery ticket - it has similar odds but involves much less work.
madengr 8y ago
The problem is that “tech” has been hijacked to mean software. Do you want a 25 YO or 55 YO civil engineer signing off on a bridge. Not all engineering fields are Logan’s Run. We hire EEs in their 50+.
markbnj 8y ago
>> age is red flag It's funny how often I have occasion to say this on HN: I'm a 57 year-old working software engineer. I've never been out of work for a significant time since I started doing this professionally in the late 80's. If you want to keep working as an engineer there is plenty of demand. You simply have to stay interested enough to know the things people are looking for. If you have an active and recent resume of relevant work, you think someone is going to turn you down because of some gray hair? I'm sure it happens but I believe it is the exception, not the rule. There are lots of ways to flame out in your 50's. Remaining engaged and actively interested in pursuing your trade is not one of them.
- Frondo 8y ago
  Given how widespread and acknowledged ageism is, from such a wide variety of sources, I'm struggling to understand why anyone should listen to your belief. Everyone gets the story wrong, and your belief is the right one, based on...your personal experience?
  - markbnj 8y ago
    You can believe whatever you wish. My experience is just a point to consider, ranked alongside the thousands of people in the Internet echo chamber repeating what they've heard said before.
TeMPOraL 8y ago
> Tech is Logan's Run....age is red flag. Oh my. This is doubly accurate since if you're working in software, your job is most likely to unemploy other people.
- cheez 8y ago
  I've been working in software for more than 10 years now and only once could any of my products have been thought to unemploy other people, and even in that case, every single person involved was pushed to other work. The key difference here could be that these were highly skilled, educated people and worth keeping on.
  - TeMPOraL 8y ago
    The rule of thumb seems to be this: if your product is allowing some genuinely new activity to happen, it's probably not unemploying people. If it allows for existing activity to be more efficient, or replaces an existing activity with a more efficient alternative, then it's likely unemploying people.

biohax2015 8y ago

Yeah, thinking about MD school. It doesn't seem like tech is a long-term sustainable career.

aswanson 8y ago
Good call. I've given it serious thought also.
eunoia 8y ago
I feel like this might be the valley monoculture in play. Counter example: I lead a software team doing new product development for a multi billion company NOT in the valley. Plenty of my engineering coworkers are grandparents. They are very much comfortably employed. My boss is 50ish, young at heart and a brilliant software architect. He still gets actively recruited and has no end of companies approaching him for contracting gigs outside of work. Find a niche and stay effective. You'll probably be employable forever.
- deadmetheny 8y ago
  I live in the Midwest - it's absolutely Valley people convinced the tech world outside the Valley is either the same, or cavemen banging on C64s. Age isn't a detriment here, but you do have to be willing to work for established companies that don't operate on hipster frameworks.
  - WalterSear 8y ago
    > you do have to be willing to work for established companies that don't operate on hipster frameworks. Well, one man's established company and non-hipster framework is another man's cave and commodore 64. I've personally experienced a glaring cultural and technical difference between work environments in the SF/Seattle areas and ones in other technology hotspots - even within the same company.
    - konradb 8y ago
      > I've personally experienced a glaring cultural and technical difference between work environments in the SF/Seattle areas and ones in other technology hotspots I'd be interested to hear about these if you had the time.
  - sidlls 8y ago
    On the other hand those jobs generally pay poorly and come with extremely diminished job opportunities, room to learn and apply new things, and are in areas that are more conservative and frequently actively hostile to differences. Outside the valley isn't a wasteland but it's also not really comparable.
    - mlevental 8y ago
      how much advancement do you think you'll want in your 50s? also I think it's funny that you mention intolerancia to differences in a thread about svs ageism
- mywittyname 8y ago
  How many of these people do you think would self-identify as 'mediocre'? One of the most important words in the OP's sentence is 'mediocre.' Of course great engineers will be in demand, regardless of age. But the big push towards CS education today is going to bear fruit in 10 years, at which point, wages and opportunities for older, less talented workers will decline. I'm seeing this already among my older peer group. Even in a what is seen to be a tight job market, they are having to interview much, much more often to get even one offer.
  - bluntfang 8y ago
    The only reason wages for software developers are going to decline in the next 10 years is the move towards vocational schools (bootcamps) and increased popularity of university CS schools flooding the job market. Software engineers are in this really sweet spot. They are a scarce high-skill asset and if you aren't pulling in above industry average wages you should be hopping to the next job that will pay you more.
WalterSear 8y ago
By the time you are the age that it's a problem, the social environment will be too different to be predictable.
rootusrootus 8y ago
I know so many 60-something engineers. Maybe they're not valued in the bay area, but out in the real world there are lots of 'em. Yes it may get harder to find a job at a hip new startup. Lots of boring but well-paying companies, however, are more open-minded.

ryandrake 8y ago

But wait a minute... Everyone here on HN and the technology press tells me there is this Shortage of Engineers™, and that employers are struggling to find software developers! Yet we also throw them away after 40? Something doesn’t add up...

existencebox 8y ago
There's a shortage of Lamborghinis that I can afford. (I couldn't bring up the courage to click reply with just a quippy one liner, so let me assure you that I do actually think this is the truth behind things; plain and simple expectation mismatch. Companies want the best skills at the lowest prices. Candidates want the best offer they think can manage. Incentives will always put these actors to opposite ends of the spectrum.) Edit: I would at least like to understand the downvotes, since I say the above _as an engineer_ who knows I'll run up against companies saying they have a shortage while I'm banging on the door. (In fact that has literally happened, rejection the same week as an article from a firm that posted a "shortage" article)
- mywittyname 8y ago
  We pass on qualified candidates for pretty silly reasons. Our process is basically, any one person in the interview process can veto an application. The problem is, the interviewers all seem to evaluate people for their current role, rather than the position the candidate is applying for. For example, one candidate interviewed for an engineering position that involved a lot of writing SQL/data wrangling. He listed machine learning on his resume and got interviewed by one of our researchers who lives and breaths ML and was torn apart. I didn't care that he didn't know how to do ML, even it if was listed on his resume, I was confident the candidate could do the job I needed him to. The candidate got the veto. I'm sure other companies pull the same crap. Interviewing is just all-around awful.
  - InitialLastName 8y ago
    I'm usually skeptical of somebody who puts something on their resume that they can't back up. If you've claimed to know something, you'd better have studied up enough to have a conversation about it. One way I like candidates to get around this issue is to separate skills into categories like (for example) "very familiar with", "comfortable with", and "experience with". It's refreshing to see honest evaluations of skill levels, rather than people who say they know C/C++ but aren't capable of coding up a basic class in C++.

benburleson 8y ago

Jesus, this is going to freak a lot of developers out.

aswanson 8y ago
Think of it as a "heads up", and prepare accordingly.
opportune 8y ago
It shouldn’t as long as you keep up with skills such that you can actually command a 20+ years of experience salary based on those skills. I see this with data teams where older developers can be less productive than people who are much younger that have a few years experience working in the Hadoop ecosystem. There is no reason to pay people 50-100% more if they aren’t nearly that much more productive
- aswanson 8y ago
  Hadoop was released in 2011. No one has more than 8 years of experience in it but the initial developers. So even if the older devs had the median level of experience with that particular tool, there's likely a much more inexperienced as good with that particular framework, hence, a rapidly devaluing skillset against the environment with respect to time. There is probably no framework or set of tools from 20 years ago in software that is as valuable to an employer as more recent technology.
  - opportune 8y ago
    Yes and there are plenty of people with 4+ years of experience with Hadoop who are working with (or worse, under) people with more total experience but no experience with Hadoop who are not as productive. That is all I’m saying. I’m having trouble parsing your second sentence
    - aswanson 8y ago
      Yeah, sorry. That was badly worded; it was meant as a retort to your initial assertion that 20 years of experience matters only with the right experience with tools. The tools have such a short half-life that none of them matter over that time frame and you are always pushing uphill every few years against newer people that can have almost as much experience with the latest tool de jure.

rch 8y ago

I don't think age is a red flag. Over time potential employers start to value accomplishments more than potential, that's all.

sjg007 8y ago
We are eating ourselves.

Latteland 8y ago

How old do you have to be to reach the red line? The key is to keep doing technical stuff, avoid being management overhead. Why couldn't he say he was a cobol developer and learn how to do that for free over the internet? I'm still at least moderately technical. a couple of years ago went to switch jobs and got 4 offers. I'm 50+ in Seattle, so there is some good tech going on here. I'm not the ceo, I'm not a distinguished engineer, but I can do some stuff. Don't give up - find something technical. Avoid being just a a manager. It's easy to fall into that trap of no tech because it happens to a lot of us, that technical fire runs out after a while.

dleslie 8y ago
Depends on where. In Vancouver, I twice put my own job on the line to vouch for the desirability of hiring older men. One was 56, the other in his mid-fourties. If I hadn't then neither would have got the job; and their ability to do the work was never in question.
- Aeolun 8y ago
  If we get any older people (e.g. fuckton of years of experience) that want to work for what we are offering, you better believe I’ll jump at the chance. I’ve come to firmly believe that the fastest way to solving a problem is having solved it before.
  - hvidgaard 8y ago
    Experience brings value to the company. If the skill set matches what is needed, the added experience will manifest itself compared to software developers with only 5 years of experience. That experience cost money. I'm not saying you don't give reasonable offers.
    - Aeolun 8y ago
      Fortunately (or unfortunately?) I don’t make the offers, I just decide if they’re technically competent enough. At least in Japan I believe the offers to be fairly competetive as well (top 30% ish).

tasty_freeze 8y ago

> If you dont have your own profitable startup in the next 5-10 years I lived in the south SF Bay area for 20 years, and left 15 years ago. The culture was pretty insular then, but boy, that comment just drives how how much it worse it has gotten. The thought that everybody needs to create a startup, much less a profitable one, seems laughable. It is also a surer way to economic loss than toughing it out as a worker bee. I'm in my mid 50s and still happily employed as a drone. Every opportunity to move "up" into management I've rejected. I'm experienced, work well with others, and work hard; my career is doing fine and feel no job insecurity. There are plenty of other people at work who are as old or older than me who are highly respected. If you work some place where age is a disqualifier, it is a red flag.

madengr 8y ago
Sounds similar to me, slugging it out at the same, boring company in flyover country. That has allowed me to build up >$1M in retirement savings in mid 40’s. Classic tortoise vs. the hare.
- aswanson 8y ago
  Nice work. Most of us, even those in technical fields, usually graduate financially illiterate and 30 seems 1000 years away. We usually catch up, just later.
  - madengr 8y ago
    It can’t be stressed enough to put in early. Fortunately I maxed my 401k contributions for several years when young and single. Had to cut back to 8% with small kids and stay-at-home mom, but then back to max with dual income. Best thing you can do for kids is open up an IRA when 16 for their first job, and put in $3k year while employee as teenagers. See what it turns into 50 years later.
mark-r 8y ago
Enjoy it while you can. At some point a beancounter will look at you and decide your salary is too high or your healthcare costs are upsetting the average, and you'll find yourself on a layoff list. I have a friend who has the same qualities you describe: experienced, works well with others, and works hard; he hasn't had a job in 2 years after his layoff at age 59. As for startups, I'd suggest buying a lottery ticket - it has similar odds but involves much less work.

madengr 8y ago

The problem is that “tech” has been hijacked to mean software. Do you want a 25 YO or 55 YO civil engineer signing off on a bridge. Not all engineering fields are Logan’s Run. We hire EEs in their 50+.

markbnj 8y ago

>> age is red flag It's funny how often I have occasion to say this on HN: I'm a 57 year-old working software engineer. I've never been out of work for a significant time since I started doing this professionally in the late 80's. If you want to keep working as an engineer there is plenty of demand. You simply have to stay interested enough to know the things people are looking for. If you have an active and recent resume of relevant work, you think someone is going to turn you down because of some gray hair? I'm sure it happens but I believe it is the exception, not the rule. There are lots of ways to flame out in your 50's. Remaining engaged and actively interested in pursuing your trade is not one of them.

Frondo 8y ago
Given how widespread and acknowledged ageism is, from such a wide variety of sources, I'm struggling to understand why anyone should listen to your belief. Everyone gets the story wrong, and your belief is the right one, based on...your personal experience?
- markbnj 8y ago
  You can believe whatever you wish. My experience is just a point to consider, ranked alongside the thousands of people in the Internet echo chamber repeating what they've heard said before.

TeMPOraL 8y ago

> Tech is Logan's Run....age is red flag. Oh my. This is doubly accurate since if you're working in software, your job is most likely to unemploy other people.

cheez 8y ago
I've been working in software for more than 10 years now and only once could any of my products have been thought to unemploy other people, and even in that case, every single person involved was pushed to other work. The key difference here could be that these were highly skilled, educated people and worth keeping on.
- TeMPOraL 8y ago
  The rule of thumb seems to be this: if your product is allowing some genuinely new activity to happen, it's probably not unemploying people. If it allows for existing activity to be more efficient, or replaces an existing activity with a more efficient alternative, then it's likely unemploying people.