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Ask HN: Developers aged 50, how have you gotten around age discrimination?

• newlikeice 8y ago
  Side questions if anybody answers this. How did you get your first job industry? I imagine corporation weren’t like there are now and thought of code as black magic.
  • nhebb 8y ago
    This made me laugh. It wasn't the Dark Ages. They thought of code as code. I'm in my 50's, and I took my first programming class in high school in 1980. When I entered college a few years later, most of my engineering classmates had prior experience programming. It really wasn't considered anything mysterious or magical.
  • ryandrake 8y ago
    Late ‘90s, and it was just as hard as today. Applied to dozens of companies as a Senior in undergrad. Similar 1 on 20 response rate as today. I remember the interview—typical “solve this trivial thing in a language of your choice.” Most college kids picked java. I picked x86 assembly and nailed it. In think that impressed someone.
    • ghaff 8y ago
      Heh. The main shareware program I sold for a number of years was written in x86 assembler. The horror. The horror. :-) I was just reminded this afternoon when someone sent me a message on company chat asking if I was the person who wrote said program. When I code these days, I'll take Python.
      • acutesoftware 8y ago
        Well, what was the program you wrote? We wont judge you
        • ghaff 8y ago
          Directory Freedom. DOS directory utility.
    • james_s_tayler 8y ago
      I'd be impressed by that. Like who does that? Especially if it was these days. That'd be inspirational.
    • elektro_nik 8y ago
      That's awesome. Did you submit it in HEX? :)
• zepolen 8y ago
  Value. Are you valuable. You can be 20, 30, 40, 50, 60 it doesn't matter. If you are valuable, you will find a job no problem. The 50 year olds who complain are the ones that offer no value and have essentially 1 year of experience doing the same thing (badly) for 30 years.
  • jlarocco 8y ago
    That's a pretty condescending answer and pretending age discrimination isn't real doesn't help anything.
  • president 8y ago
    You're probably a young'n. This is what everybody thinks until they hit the point in their life where they realize there is more to life than just work (family, friends, hobbies, etc). You'll be complaining soon enough.
    • zepolen 8y ago
      And you have demonstrated your attention to detail by not bothering to check that my hn account is older than yours.
      • ValleyOfTheMtns 8y ago
        Wow, account age dick measuring... didn't think I'd see this on HN. Also, what does account age have to do with actual age (which is what we're talking about here)?
      • ivalm 8y ago
        Are you implying that the age of your HN account relates in any way to your age? Someone who is sub-30 could have a 2008 account.
    • Someone 8y ago
      In some sense, that isn’t age discrimination by the employer, but you no longer being willing to be exploited. It would be age discrimination if employers wouldn’t even invite you for an interview, thinking “(s)he’s 50, so (s)he must be wise enough not to fall for the crap story we tell the gullible”. As long as there are employers where work-life balance is a better match with what you want out of life, I wouldn’t worry about it. And I think there are, certainly in Europe.
• uptownfunk 8y ago
  There is a technology called hair coloring, stack it with a hoodie and some well fitted slacks, roll up one of the ankle cuffs a bit. Talk like you've exited a startup and are just working for fun, or something to keep you interested, but not like you actually have to.
  • sigfubar 8y ago
    Solid advice regardless of decade.
  • simonsarris 8y ago
    Agree 100%, it has blown me away my whole life how engineers downplay marketing and [product|personal] presentation in spite of the reams of data suggesting it has some of the best ROI possible of anything you can spend your time improving. Do you want to make more money, get more connections, have everyone like you more and treat you better? It's as simple as buying some nicer shirts, getting regular haircuts, and eating better (which has its own host of plusses). Some programmers are 55 and really good. They also have stains on their t-shirts, are overweight, and act morose all the time. In a perfect world this wouldn't matter for a job interview, but you are not interviewing or operating for a job in a perfect world.
    • mhd 8y ago
      In my experience, the opposite of the aforementioned 50-something hoodie wearer would be someone with a Oxford shirt and jacket, ie well-dressed, but not hip. And they might dress up similarly in their free time, when they're not with their co-workers. So the "Han Shot First" tee might be as much an unwanted disguise as the "business casual" dress code the startup bros avoid. I'm not saying that one shouldn't adapt a bit, but dyed hair and "How do you do, fellow kids" clothes overshoot the goal by a good bit.
    • ams6110 8y ago
      > They also have stains on their t-shirts, are overweight, and act morose all the time. Describes more than one 20-something developer I know. Being a sloven does not correlate with age.
• tickthokk 8y ago
  Not me, but my father in law, located in the midwest, is a sql dev. He's about to retire in a few years, switched jobs a few years back. From what he tells me, they didn't care that he was going to retire soon, they needed his skillset. Location probably matters. My (also midwest) company was foaming at the mouth for a competent Java/SAP developer (which, forgive me for being catty, seems like a technology only a 40+ yr old would fill) a few years ago, never found anybody, position was never filled.
  • styfle 8y ago
    The Midwest has a lot of age 50+ devs. Java and ASP.NET rule the land and it’s almost all B2B like hospitals and other large orgs that don’t want bleeding edge tech. For example, trying to find React devs in the Midwest proved difficult.
• LarsHackerNews 8y ago
  I'm almost 66. Still working on active fun projects, and love what I do. Tips? 1. Be of value. 2. Always learn new things. 3. Seek opportunities in the code base (there are wins in there) 4. Keep learning. A repeat (see #2), and important. 5. Embrace new. We work in an adapt or die industry; keep that in mind. And, if a shop discriminates about age, find a better shop.
  • jjakque 8y ago
    Can you kindly elaborate what you meant by "3. Seek opportunities in the code base"? Are you possibly refers to improves existing code base, shall it be Open source projects or in-house developments?
• fredgrott 8y ago
  okay I am in this now... My funnel is targeted for specific startup cofounders having trouble finding expert android devs...expert in the sense that they as either the tech cofounder or the creative cofounder already know that their android app should be on kotlin and using redux not MVI or MVVM. Basically building the demo apps show them and start the discussion.
• rgrieselhuber 8y ago
  I hire a lot of engineers and it’s always a breath of fresh air to interview someone with 20-30+ years of experience, as long as they stay up to date.
  • deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  • thekingofh 8y ago
    What do you mean stay up to date? From my experience I've noticed that if they dig deep and understand the underlying fundamental concepts of the trade, there's not many programming problems, platforms, or languages, that couldn't be learned in the span of a few days. The longer I go, the more I realize that everything that seems new and fresh was most likely already invented in some capacity before I even wrote my first line of code. I completely understand if they are non flexible and still choosing out of date frameworks or libraries that aren't necessarily used any more, however the ability to compare and contrast frameworks and languages and choose the one based on a deep understanding of the underlying implications seems to me more important than being fluent in the latest platforms.
    • scarface74 8y ago
      Why would I hire someone who didn’t keep their skills up to date and didn’t show any desire to do so when I can hire someone who can hit the ground running from day one? I’m 45 and have religiously kept my resume “buzzword” compliant. You can’t learn best practices, frameworks, etc in a few days. Yes things were already invented, but if you don’t know the ecosystem you’ll end up reinventing the wheel badly.
• buserror 8y ago
  I'm 49! I've been working since I'm 17 as a developer -- I think the KEY thing is to be valuable, and be able to change quickly BUT not as quickly as the snowflakes. Ignore the fad tech, get a good, serious, bulletproof base in actual computer science -- I mean, LOW LEVEL stuff--, that will help you learn ANYTHING computer related quickly, and continue surfing that wave with whatever tech you fancy might actually be useful to make you sellable in the future... And don't hesitate to drop stuff you invested a lot in. If it's no longer trendy/selling, just drop it like an old sock and spend time updating yourself. I'm a frigging EXPERT in dozens of stuff that would make people smile now (those who are old enough ;-)) And, if you're that old, you should be GOOD. Not just nerdy and opinionated, you should be able to demonstrate being curious, capacity to change, to work with younger guys as a 1:1 basis -- and use that tons of experience of yours in new fields. I'm lucky, I manage to 'channel' that stuff because I'm probably still more passionate about my job most people will ever be, despite the pile of years, but I've never been 'age discriminated' before. Apart from when I was 18 and winging it a bit ;-)
  • WilliamLP 8y ago
    > I'm a frigging EXPERT in dozens of stuff that would make people smile now (those who are old enough ;-)) I'd love to read your list. :)
    • buserror 8y ago
      I'll just tell you now I've got a T-shirt with "Copland Driver Kitchen" :-)
      • Chopsah2 8y ago
        I've got an "OpenDoc Kamp Kodabunch" sweatshirt.
        • buserror 8y ago
          Phoew that's cool! I have to say Opendoc always smelled wrong to me, so I stayed clear -- But I did implement the 'whose' descriptors in Applescript once, and I still have the scars to prove it :-) I wrote a lot of "Apple Telecom 3.0" that ran on most "powerbooks" back in 1995+ or so, you know, modems, faxes, voice mails and all these very high tech stuff :-)
• neolefty 8y ago
  I'm 47, but my kids are reminding me 50 is coming soon! I'm working as a web engineer — not a manager or even team lead — working remotely from the Midwest for a coastal company, and I'm pretty happy with it. All I can say is keep learning, be friendly, and delight in the energy of all you young people. I am not entirely sure why I have been hired, or even whether it was a good idea for my employer. So maybe stay humble too? Maybe being remote prevents me from pinching the cheeks of adorable devs 25 years my junior. My advice: Don't pinch cheeks. Turns out Millennials don't like it. No matter how adorable those little non-grey-haired hackers are. Anecdotally, the older I get, the less ambitious I get about my own career and the more interested in just helping out and doing things that make a difference. My self-discipline has become marginally better over the years, and my coding ability marginally worse. Definitely trending towards grandparent. Things I especially like: interviewing, having a real-world impact, learning things, using cool new tools, helping out, justice. Things I dislike: politics, jockeying for position. Also, the whole "I've forgotten more than you've ever known about this field" feels true. But honestly thank goodness you didn't have to learn it, because a lot of it is irrelevant now.
  • effie 8y ago
    Could you share some examples of the things you learned but then became irrelevant? I wonder if we could find some pattern to help people avoid learning modern stuff that will have the same fate.
    • neolefty 8y ago
      Off the top of my head, things I never implement or use anymore: * socket listeners * line drawing * explicit memory management * old APIs and libraries * Perl * Assembly And things I rarely use: * Semaphores & other threading primitives * XML * C/C++ Now, knowing these sometimes helps, but the amount of time I spent on them probably doesn't justify the benefit aside from the fact that it was necessary at the time. And somebody is doing these now — I just find I don't need to, as it's always handled somewhere below the abstraction layers where I work. An equally interesting list would be the things I use now that didn't exist when I graduated from college in 1996.
• paulrpotts 8y ago
  I'm 51 and I have found that doing embedded and low-level programming seems to insulate me somewhat from age discrimination. I think in part that is because people expect programmers who work very close to the hardware, like me, to be geezers. Breadth of experience seems to help as well. By comparison, trying to get a job in web or app development was a nightmare of interviewing with twenty-somethings in open plan offices, who gave me programming puzzles to solve on the spot, then turned on loud techno while I struggled to concentrate. Which honestly told me all I needed to know about what it would be like to work in their trendy consulting office. But my opinion on all this might very well change if I lose this job... maybe there is an age "brick wall" at some point I won't be able to scale. I'm hoping not.
  • mreome 8y ago
    I see something similar in my industry. I work on embedded systems for industrial automation and in my mid 30's I still tend to be one of the younger ones in any group of coworkers/clients. In my case don't think this is issue of "insulation" but rather a difference between technical fields. Industrial automation is a long-game. Development projects can last a year or more, and client support can stretch into the 10s of years. Also, there is a lot of value in deep domain knowledge that takes years to develop. I think age of the companies themselves comes into play. If a company is only a year old, nobody has had time to age with the company, almost nobody is going to have had a kid, been through major medical issues, ect, while working there. Even if an individual may have that kind of life experience, the company itself doesn't. I think it shows in the kind of environments they create and the type of people they tend to attract/want.
    • vips7L 8y ago
      How did you get into embedded? Web work doesn't really interest me and I've been studying kernel programming for a few months.
      • mreome 8y ago
        My academic background was Computer and Systems Engineering, with a focus on computer science and machine vision. I started with project/application-level work at a company that specializes in industrial machine vision then moved into embedded Linux development on the devices I had been doing project-level work with.
• stblack 8y ago
  Always deliver superlative value, and your customers take care of you.
• ultimoo 8y ago
  Not one myself but over the years I have seen older engineers who have published a book on a popular technical subject or have had open source contributions in widely used projects are seldom discriminated against!
• fidel23 8y ago
  56 here and still pounding away. Number one piece of advice: stay technical, contribute well, be part of the team, and enjoying coding!
• RickJWagner 8y ago
  I've just worked hard and tried to find opportunities to keep my skills current. So far, I haven't noticed any problems. Less than a decade to go!
• theabsurdman 8y ago
  Don't be afraid to learn new things. I started my IT career almost 20 years ago doing Struts and later Spring MVC. I felt a bit stuck in the enterprise java realm, but I branched out to Pylons and then Spring Boot. Now I'm doing Laravel/Vue.js and I have to say it's a breeze having worked with MVC frameworks for all these years. If you have a hot skill, which reactive/SPA apps seems to be these days, you'll always be in demand.
• billwear 8y ago
  I'm 60, and going strong. Most important is bring not only depth and breadth of knowledge but also wisdom to the work. As a graybeard, you're expected to add value because of your years. For example, when my office was going nuts about Kubernetes, devops, etc., it got me a raise to compare this new tech to the original Unix philosophy and point out some lessons learned in Unix design that would help with our containers. Everybody reinvents everything, every 5 or 10 years; use your history to add value, and you have a unique selling point that can't be duplicated.
  • fredbo22 8y ago
    Care to share this wisdom? I'm wrassling with these kontainers now and I'm wondering why people think they're so wonderful.
    • lenticular 8y ago
      I personally think that in 10 years, people will look back on kubernetes and shake their heads.
      • diminoten 8y ago
        Comments like these are so infuriating! You get to shit on a huge community with zero reasoning, and zero consequences for being wrong. Your negativity is only rewarded if somehow you're right (which is more a result of broken clock syndrome than anything else), so you and people like you are incentivized to keep sniping from afar.
        • james_s_tayler 8y ago
          Is there not some part of you deep down that looks back at the last decade of technology and feels "well I'm glad we're not doing things that way anymore, it was totally wrong for our situation"? It just seems that that is constantly the case. We might well be another 3 or 4 decades away from software development technology hitting real maturity in terms of really streamlined tooling, frameworks, languages that help us work at the right level of abstraction at the fastest speed. I don't think it's an entirely unwarranted comment. I think it's wise to constantly be thinking about and looking for "what awfulness are we accepting as a trade-off to get the great benefits of this particular way of configuring our process?" By all means get into the hype, dive in, be excited. But don't forget to shit on yourself because you know the shit is coming at some point. If not in 5 years then in 10. It'll help you see it coming.
• cflat 8y ago
  Teaching.
• gumby 8y ago
  Started my own company with a bunch of other geezers. Helped that all of us had previously started companies and three of us had good exits. But then again we'd each had 30+ years to get that experience.
• dejaime 8y ago
  being good
• noiv 8y ago
  55 years here. Fight complexity and sell it. Avoid head counters like hell. Go fast and steep. There is a market...
• wessorh 8y ago
  51 here I'm the CEO, still write code.
• ams6110 8y ago
  I'm over 50. I haven't encountered any age discrimination. Then again I don't go looking for it. I'm sure people make judgements about me based on my age and appearance. That's just life.
• kangnkodos 8y ago
  Late 50's. React/Redux developer. Always learn new things. Simply ask other developers if a company has a reputation to hire people my age. Most have a reputation to only hire people out of college or a few years older. I just don't waste my time with those companies. Look for small companies which have several people who look like me.
• tamuee85 8y ago
  I'm 57. I've seen plenty of age discrimination, but primarily at large companies. Smaller companies don't seem to be nearly as prone to cutting people purely by age. Regardless of company stay current and maintain new skills. After 35 years of only software development, went back to my Electrical Engineering roots and doing hardware development and have developed 3 different boards and wrote the software stack for the boards. Companies that cut solely on age deserve the loss of good experience; their mistake.
• moosey 8y ago
  Everyone here is talking about their skillset, and I'm going to take another direction: appearance and interpersonal skills. There is ageism, yes, but I think a deeper problem is reaction to peoples appearance. If you are late twenties concerned about age, then hide it, starting now. * Always wear sunscreen when you are outside, regardless of race. It prevents skin aging, and you'll still tan and get Vitamin D regardless. * Work out: lifting weights and doing cardio have differing goals and match up in interesting ways. Learn them. I do almost 100% pure heavy weight lifting, and I'm actually very thin, despite what I toss around. * Make sure your clothes fit and look good. Go to a tailor and get one outfit made nice a year for interviews/on-sites (if working remotely) etc. Taking care of yourself physically might not seem related to a lot of this, but people discriminate in a number of ways, and the more you take away, the better you might do. In addition, two of the above are general health things that you should be doing anyhow. I forgot about interpersonal skills when I first finished writing this: * Practice getting people talking about themselves. It's the best way to get people to think that you are interesting. I would argue it's the most important tool in my interpersonal skillset and I've met a ton of interesting people using it.
  • technofiend 8y ago
    Professionalism both in terms of appearance and interaction are definitely helpful. And despite my ripping on SV stereotypes in other posts I actually adore IT. I'm delighted to come to the office every day because it's an opportunity to apply something I know, solve a problem or learn something new. I recently changed roles after going back to my UNIX SA roots and working for the last few years in a front-line customer-facing support group; what people would call the ops side of devops. My boss was gutted to lose me as their last line of defense before escalating to Red Hat but what he and his boss miss the most (so they say) is my ability to remain cool under pressure and solve technical issues while managing bridges with MDs and EDs on the line. Partially it was organizational authority (oh, they escalated to that guy) but it was also technical authority (oh, they escalated to the guy who solved the last major problem we had, and put in a SIP to make it never happen again) and partially it was managing the message and keeping it appropriate to the audience. I realize this is an absurdly self-aggrandizing post but it's an honest assessment of beyond strictly technical ability how some people add value and my way of agreeing with the post above mine that interpersonal skills are paramount. And to echo what others have said - keeping current is IMHO the key to keeping employable. I ran down the Red Hat Certified Architect track because my employer paid for it and it was a way to get my guys motivated to get it done too to better their skills. We have several more RHCAs as a result. But I also spent the last year building k8s clusters and figuring out how to integrate kubernetes into my employer's systems and now I'm off extending terraform providers in go to the same end. It's fun as hell to think every day I shave off getting systems to my peers sooner is one more day they're productive that much faster. At the scale we work that's a huge lever. How can anyone not be excited about that regardless of age?
• rolph 8y ago
  im older than dirt_ specialty is assembler, firmware and hardware prototyping. I usually work on contract. The thing with high level stuff is that it is always changing face but never goes past the fact that it all boils down to low level operation of digital devices. If you can work at the level that allows high level language to operate then you have real power and controll, but not the convenience of ready made assembler routines, you have to roll your own firmware, and your own assembler macros. If you are a bonafide OS engineer, firmware engineer, and chip engineer, everyone else is riding your coattails, and you have direct knowledge of how a computer or any other sort of object code device functions. {adde} after skimming through the comments it helps if you already have a code library of your own. You should be equivalent to a tradesperson with a full set of tools appropriate to the job demands. if you are re-writing code to implement a UART for example thats like an electrician constantly manufacturing a screwdriver on the job. If you can write a piece of code from memory thats good, but proper preparation before hand is a mark of experience.
• tamuee85 8y ago
  I'm 57 and seen plenty of age discrimination, almost exclusively in big companies. Smaller companies don't seem as prone to the practice. Stay current, change as needed. After 35 years of software only, spent the last two years going back to Electrical Engineering roots and developed 3 circuit boards from scratch and developed software for the boards. Large companies that cut solely on age deserve the loss of wisdom and experience.
• 0000011111 8y ago
  I am 31, my plan for the next 19 years until 50 is to Max out my Roth 401k and Roth IRA each year. Yep tax advantaged savings is key part of my plan.
  • jimbokun 8y ago
    This is the best advice I've seen here. (Although you have to make it to 59 1/2 to withdraw without penalties!)
    • oicu812 8y ago
      Except that you don't have to wait until 59 1/2 to withdraw it without penalties. You can start at 55 or earlier using the "Rule of 55" or SEPP exception depending on the retirement plan that you want to withdraw from. https://www.thebalance.com/what-is-the-rule-of-55-2894280 https://www.thebalance.com/what-is-the-rule-of-55-2894280
• randcraw 8y ago
  I'm 61. My solution: keep up technically and choose a mainstream topic valued/needed by your company and stay near cutting edge in it (at least relative to the others working there). And develop other skills that are in short supply. Choose subject areas that leverage experience over inexperience: like regulatory compliance, subject matter domain knowledge, knowing what tactics are best with difficult clients or problematic target areas. Some general skills that I've found help... Excel at speaking (be concise, organized, prioritized, relevant, insightful). Excel at writing and editing (tech-related communication seems notoriously poor at most companies). Excel at presenting (again, too often there's lots of vagaries and hand waving). If you come across as sharp and tuned in, I've found that it's almost impossible for others to dismiss you. That is, unless they're idiots. So make sure you're not surrounded by idiots. That's rule #1.
  • jpindar 8y ago
    Excel at Excel. :) (OK, maybe not for software companies but certainly for engineering and manufacturing companies.)
• velaru_ 8y ago
  I am 41 and work with a 68-year-old dev and a 51-year-old. Love coding and be apart of the team. Young guys will forget your age after a bit.
• evo_9 8y ago
  I don't really think the tech stack matters. I'm a dotnet guy for the most part and have been gainfully employed from it for 20 years, hell going back to vb-6, com etc before dotnet. I get around age discrimination by looking a lot younger than I am. I achieve this by dressing current which doesn't mean trendy, just don't wear that same old sweater to work you've had for 10 years, keep it for family time. New clothes go a long way in this situation. Also don't over dress, that's a huge give-away so no suits. I also shave my head, but if you aren't losing your locks, good for you though you'll want to consider dying it. I also workout a ton, eat well/little (restricted calories, etc),take a ton of vits and sups including metformin, NMN and resveratrol to name a few of the more useful and/or exotic items. I thinking being lean, fit and strong also goes a long way toward conveying both youth and confidence that employers are naturally drawn toward. I mean look when you've been coding for 30 years the problem isn't your abilities, it's how you are perceived by a potential employer. I'm 51 but most guess my age around 38ish.
  • cgh 8y ago
    > I thinking being lean, fit and strong also goes a long way toward conveying both youth and confidence that employers are naturally drawn toward. This is my experience as well. I'm a lifelong amateur athlete and I don't wear sloppy clothing. I've seen the difference in treatment with other guys my age (49) firsthand. It's not about looking younger necessarily, just looking like you aren't falling apart. For whatever reason, some people correlate physical appearance with ability.
• kingaillas 8y ago
  10 years ago I was laid off. I had just turned 40, and was living in an area that didn't have the most robust job market (plus at the time the hiring outlook was terrible in general due to the financial crisis). After looking locally to no avail... I added a new strategy: apply to various federal government jobs. Benefits include stability (although with the recent furlough maybe that isn't 100% rock solid) and no possibility of the job being outsourced/offshored, etc. I'm 50 now, been a software developer for 25 years, still working for the government, and still enjoying it. Projects are varied, I have reasonable latitude in the programming I do (job is ~50% coding, ~50% other stuff), managers understand work/life balance. Yes I don't get stock options out the wazoo and other Silicon Valley style perks but I also have other hobbies and time to enjoy them. There are tradeoffs but overall I'm glad I did it.
  • lenticular 8y ago
    Unfortunately a larger and larger part of federal staff are contractors, including most younger people I know who work for the Feds. Due to the misguided attempts of Congress to reduce spending, it's much easier to hire a contractor with 50% (at least) overhead rather than just hire them directly. Heck, a guy I know used to be a federal hydrogeologist. Worked in a gov't office on a permanent basis, was supervised by government employees, etc. He literally just received his paychecks and talked to his de jure boss twice a year. For that, the contracting company actually charged more than his salary in overhead.
• russh 8y ago
  I've kept the same job for over 22 years. Hopefully it will last another 22...
• squirrelicus 8y ago
  I'm only in my early 30s but I have loved having old timers on my teams. They tend to have abandoned their illusory superiority (and super low estimates) that young devs exhibit so frequently, which really grounds a team. And talking tech with them is always an adventure instead of a sports team argument about which framework is best.
• jaysonelliot 8y ago
  I'm lucky enough to look young for my age, so I leave my early jobs off my resume, and don't put my graduation year on there. While I don't exactly hide the fact that I'm in my late 40s, I do find myself avoiding some discussions at work that would show my age, like talking about my older experiences or making pop culture references from the '80s or '90s. Yes, you can talk about making yourself so useful that age doesn't matter, etc., but the truth is that age discrimination is often an unconscious bias, and I just find it easier to "pass" as younger than to spend my energy trying to overcome it. Of course I focus mostly on just being good at what I do. There are benefits to age. Experience and knowledge, of course, but hopefully also wisdom and temperament. If there's one thing I'd like people to take away from this thread, particularly people in their 20s, it's to re-examine your unconscious biases about age. How often have you assumed something about a person because they were older than you, and what can you do to overcome that and judge them on their merits instead?
  • robertAngst 8y ago
    >How often have you assumed something about a person because they were older than you, and what can you do to overcome that and judge them on their merits instead? I pretty much always think they are 'smarter' than me. The only issue I've had with older folks is that they often say 'not my job'.
    • canuseeme 8y ago
      > The only issue I've had with older folks is that they often say 'not my job'. Which, from my experience, is not a bad thing. It's often a sign of someone who recognizes that meeting everyones else's expectations at the cost of their job expectations is short sighted and the equivalent of shooting yourself in the foot. And rarely does anyone have enough time to even meet their personal job expectations. There are those whom are just lazy and only want to contribute the least amount possible, but I think you'll find that's not limited to older folks.
      • sethammons 8y ago
        There are two sides of "not my job." There is the Art of Saying No where you protect your deliverables, and there is the non-team player who wont help others.
• wedowhatwedo 8y ago
  Age 53. At my last job, I was doing React front end work. When I argued against Redux, Coffeescript and Typescript because our app didn't need them, I was told I wasn't a team player and that I wouldn't succeed in that company. I now have a new job at much much less salary.
  • deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  • segmondy 8y ago
    Don't swim against the river. If you're the only older person and not the leader or person being looked up to for direction. Don't buck the trend and go against the river, you will only make yourself visible.
  • adamredwoods 8y ago
    Valid point. Ageism can also include people thinking your advice is an unwillingness to change because of age ("old dogs don't learn new tricks" mentality), versus a young "opinionated" or "emotional" worker.
• usawco 8y ago
  To the folks posting comments suggesting they are 50+ and still going strong or started coding when they were children: kudos to you. However, I think you represent the minority. Development shouldn't be a 'King of the Mountain' contest, but it is. Here's my story: I have commercial experience in C, Java, Visual Basic, MUMPS/M/Cache and Node.js. I've worked in Healthcare ( A/R, Laboratory reporting & instrument data acquisition ), Integration Space (e.g. webMethods), US defense space. I've worked in a 'tools' team delivering components used by application development teams. On the side, I've written an open source project on Github, I've attended many meetups in recent years - and user group meetings before the Internet was a thing. My point, is that I am very experienced. I've never had a bad review, I've worked for at least 15 different managers, I've worked at a few companies multiple times. Yet, I still struggle daily to hang on to the thing I love which is to write code. From my perspective, this is a real problem. It seems impossible to simply be a developer for your career because the pressure from the industry is to cut developer labor costs. Btw, I am currently an Senior Architect. I've held many titles since 1988 including Princial Architect and Junior Programmer Trainee. ( I got into software after starting off as a lab technician in healthcare. ) The only people I know who are my age are those folks who truly are kings of their mountain. This is not what I envisioned. I helped raise a large family ( 5 children ), but I am constantly working in my head - regardless of whether I am at the keyboard or not.) This is not what I expected; however, I've been paid very well, so I've been lucky - or my family has.
  • usawco 8y ago
    Sorry, I forgot to say I'm 54.
• TheMagicHorsey 8y ago
  To have longevity in a technical discipline you need to do one of two things: 1) choose a field that changes very slowly, or not at all, and become an expert in it; or 2) work in a quick changing field, but be prepared to learn quickly and compete with younger workers (means no wage premium just for seniority) When it comes to 1), the best fields are ones where either hardware or regulatory issues slow evolution. Examples: embedded systems programming, working on highly regulated systems for the aviation, medical, or automobile industry. Finally, and its not really in my list, but you could always create your own product or service. That's a sure way to protect your income against age prejudice. Nobody cares what age the developer of their software is ... they just want to know it works.
• JohnFen 8y ago
  I'm in my mid-50s and it has not caused a career problem for me. I don't do anything special about my age. What I do is what I've done from the very start of my career over 30 years ago: I am constantly learning and keeping my skills current. That's not something I do to ensure employability, it's because I am genuinely into this stuff. I produce software for a living, and I also produce software as one of my hobbies. There's always something new and fascinating to tackle, whether it's in the workplace or not. My professional focus has become networking and security, but my skillset is far broader than that, so I don't call myself a "specialist" at all. I'm just an experienced engineer. I don't know how to answer the tech stack question, because I use a very wide variety of tech stacks, operating systems, and platforms both in the workplace and at home. Have I been discriminated against because of age? I honestly don't know, but I have no problem getting excellent jobs, so if it's happened, it doesn't matter. I determine if a company is right for me in two steps --- first, before I decide to apply, I research the company to learn its history, what prior employees think of it, what technologies it uses, etc. If I feel good about or am still interested in the company after that, I'll apply. When I interview, I don't look at it as them interviewing me. It's exactly the other way around -- I'm interviewing them. I pay close attention to what they say (not their sales pitch, but what sorts of questions they ask), the physical environment, and I pay attention to all the employees that I can spot who aren't on the team that is interviewing me. Do they look happy, angry, etc? My experience is that whatever they're feeling is likely to be what I'll be feeling if I take the job.
• sunstone 8y ago
  There are myriad ways to pull this off but more than a few them require luck of some kind. A particular technology, a particular company even a particular manager. However a recent study shows that, in the US at least, 55% of all workers are laid off before they reach their "natural retirement age". So you need to plan ahead. Over the past twenty years the demand for technical talent has changed a lot. In particular, the demand has increased a lot at small and medium sized companies due to their use of the internet. So a useful outline of a career now is, start at a large company and learn the ropes, then move away from niche technologies to more generally in demand technologies like LAMP for example. By the time you hit 35 years old you should be starting to angle for more senior jobs at smaller companies. Software development now for smaller firms is starting to look more like law and accounting practices. Your experience there is now an advantage since you will understand more of the complete corporate needs in addtion to your tech chops. Whereas if you stay and a larger company (cough IBM) you're now just too expensive for you niche skill set. (*source - still doing lamp stack dev at over 60)
• BerislavLopac 8y ago
  51 here. To be completely honest, I personally haven't (yet) really felt any effects of ageism when it comes to work. Both in the past two years as a contractor, and before that as a perm, I have had more job opportunities than I could handle.
• rmrm 8y ago
  42 year old manager, with most of my team 50+, being its a specialty embedded environment full of dinosaurs. You better be technically very good. And not have too shitty of an attitude. Because you probably make a lot more than the youngsters.
• charliebrownau 8y ago
  It happens a lot in the TECH and IT field in Australia They seem to not want to hire any qualifed male over 35 years old Yet they expect and demand a 18-21 year old with 10-15 years of experience Its been the case for the last 20+ years Its one of the reasons so many Western Males in Australia are leading Computers and IT and looking :- * Trades * Courier Driving * Truck Driving * Wharehouse * Retail often in these 5 sectors you can get the same or MORE per hour in AUSTRALIA for less tasks, less stress, less responsibility IT wages in Australia is a fucking joke , considering the amount of stuff we go thou
• zenexer 8y ago
  I'm relatively young, but it baffles me that there's age discrimination is an issue. Do companies think I won't like working with someone who's significantly older than me? What's the issue? This is a bit of rhetorical question--I get that there are stereotypes and companies want to build young, hip teams, but personally I find it short-sighted and naive. I'd rather be on a diverse team, age included. If I go for an interview and see that everyone is a white male in the late twenties/early thirties, I'm going to be pretty disappointed no matter how many hipster toys they've got in the lobby. It's a sign that corporate politics and HR are going to be problematic.
  • geomark 8y ago
    There's another issue that I noticed when I was a hiring manager. Some people find it difficult to interview and manage people who are older and more experienced than them. Some feel uncomfortable giving orders to people who are their parents' age. Others feel uncomfortable with people who are much more experienced, maybe smarter than them. A young company with young founders and managers will tend to hire younger people more like themselves.
  • youhavenoidea 8y ago
    Hi zenexer - I'm youngish, fit, and present well. Unfortunately, my hair is greying AND thinning. For years, interviewers have heard my responses while viewing my bare crown. (Barbers told me for many years, "You'll never be bald," as they used thinning shears). Last week a hiring manager said, before introductions, before shaking hands, "This job is for 22 year olds just out of college." He shut the door, literally, seconds after. Consider viewing your HR contacts on LinkedIn then view the "also viewed" profiles. Notice any similarities? These decision makers determine whom you will see when you interview. Thank you for wanting to see different when you visit a company.
• projectramo 8y ago
  It’s obvious: act young. Die your hair and adopt the “lingo” of the cool dudes. Like double barrel your boss with your fingers and wink and say “I like your style” no matter what he says. Or if you agree with a colleague you say “fo shizzle” to gain their respect. Refuse to program in anything old. All code has to be Haskell or whatever and throw in a neural network. If you can do that in a container you’re home free.
  • lurkertroll 8y ago
    This is some jive advice
  • cmonfeat 8y ago
    Liberal use of the word "lit" when describing the latest and greatest framework always works for me.
• charliebrownau 8y ago
  I would like to point out that "Diversity Quoats" should be out right ILLEGAL and they are DISCRIMINATION You are removing hiring staff on:- * Equal Opportunity * Merit * Qualification * Skill * Experience Replacing that with hiring a person because they are * a certain gender * a certain ethic group * a certain sexuality
• gesman 8y ago
  55. I moved to management position but still do development when no one is looking :) My Co just published a worldwide press release over system I built over last Xmas break. So it's fun from all sides.
• DoctorBit 8y ago
  Nice try, IBM!
• planocoder 8y ago
  Be better than the competition. If a company looks at age the probably are losing good people anyway. I don't sorry about it.
• planocoder 8y ago
  Be better than the competition. If a company looks at age they probably are losing good people anyway. I don't worry about it. I do Scala/Spark. I ask if they respect personal time. If they don't they are probably poorly managed.
• hullsean 8y ago
  The same way i did at 25. Be better!
• PopeDotNinja 8y ago
  There is no replacement for knowing your shit and being valuable.
• Arjuna 8y ago
  Regarding the topic of career longevity as a software engineer: Focus on combining your software engineering skills with delivering value in a specific, core competency. That is to say: Good software engineers tend to focus on being good at programming, and all of the details that venture entails (e.g., mastery of specific languages, knowledge of specific ways of operating in a given framework, IDE, or tool, etc.). Better software engineers are capable of all of the preceding, plus the ability to apply a deeper level of problem-solving ability that has been laser-focused by their experience in the art. Superlative software engineers are capable of all of the preceding, plus the ability to leverage those skills to deliver value as a Subject Matter Expert (SME) in a specific domain. I believe that you have to be more than just a programmer if you want to maximize your career's longevity, and its associated compensation package.
• OSS542 8y ago
  I haven't
• tungwaiyip 8y ago
  Not really. I get a lot of spam from recruiters. I also get feeler from people I have worked with before. Last time I look for work, I got multiple job offers after one week. San Francisco's tech job market is hot.
• purplezooey 8y ago
  Quit and work at Starbucks. I do like the coffee, though.
• karmakaze 8y ago
  I'm in the Toronto tech startup scene and I haven't really exexperienced age discrimination at a company level. Maybe at an individual level but not that I've noticed. I specialize in backent, SRE, and devops.
• sexyrouter 8y ago
  Sure but it's not the only descrimination my friend who is also 50 faced. She's been working in tech companies for long and it's sad that some 20 somethings call her MILF when she's not around. Age descrimination is a very small thing in the grand scheme of things, so she said she doesn't feel much descriminated as age is a proxy for experience if you are good with what you do.
• koosnel 8y ago
  I am in ny early 30s and working on post graduate research at night. I do it because it is interesting but also to be employable in a academic context later in my life.
• ja27 8y ago
  Started my own mobile app company. B2C is a rough market but I love not dealing with customers, sales people, etc. I do hope to shift into some B2B webapps instead. Also now working on another startup with friends roughly my age and have a couple other startups as options there if I wanted to take on more. My specialty is pretty much being a jack of all trades and being able to learn new ones quickly. In some ways it sucks because there isn't any one stack that I eat, sleep, and breathe, but on a typical day I do some golang backend, js/html/webgl frontend, obj-c iOS, maybe some python, linux sysadmin, and some graphic design. The benefit is that it means not needing to go find and hire/contract another resource. Keep learning new things. I know many people my age that spend 10+ years on a single tech stack and never really learned anything new. Then suddenly they're out of work and realize the demand for C99 on Solaris isn't that high. Go to Meetups, conferences, webinars. Take on side projects. Mentor students. It helps that I look a bit younger than my age. I honestly probably get more discrimination due to my weight. Working on that, but if you can maintain your fitness and the appearance of boundless energy, it overcomes a good bit of age.
• grumpy-cowboy 8y ago
  Start your own freelancer/consultant business. Businesses will pay you a lot of money for your knowledge and wisdom. This is what I did 9 years ago (I'm 43 now) and I never looked back. My ex-employer said that if I want to have a better pay, I'll had to have a management job. I'm not interested AT ALL about having a management job. I LOVE programming, system engineering, ... This is why I started my own "one-man" freelancer business : I do what I want (and not what my boss want), when I want, ... Now, I work for MY dreams and not the dreams of another person ;)
• Iolympian 8y ago
  Here's the thing, it's about your value proposition (what are you offering). All things equal, how many days can you work without sleep? How much do you need to get paid to do the job? Age is just a coincidental number that correlates (doesn't cause) to number being able to program for days on end without suffering increasing consequences, and getting a programming job for $15 / hr not being suitable to handle a mortgage, truck payment, kids braces, and the things that come with the higher age number. So, if you are starting out at 40 and someone is competing for a beginner job at 18, they are going to be the obvious choice because 1) they are typically more of an open book, and 2) you can pay them $15 / hr to get the same work that you would need to charge $40/hr to do. That being said. The other side of it is if you have been programming since you were 7 and are now 42 with 20 solid years of professional experience competing with Joe Youngster who wrote his first line of code last year and has been to a programming boot camp. Part of the issues are that you still have the stigma of 1) not being able to sacrifice time/sleep for code, 2) are more expensive. Both of which are accurate. However, if you are competing for a job that an 18 year old qualifies for after 20 years of experience, something is amiss. I've seen this MANY times and am guilty of it myself, where a person will spend years spinning their wheels and not actually increasing their skills. It happens to a lot of people. You could get the same year of experience 20 times over (there was a good article written about that, good read, don't have the link handy). So "20 years of experience" boils down to 1 year of experience that you have practiced 20 times over. After 20 years, younger programmers should not be able to compete with you. Not because they can't write code as well as you. It has nothing to do with that. But the experience should have taught you and made second-nature all the design patterns, all the best practices, all the security tricks, all the devops. An 18 yo can code, but they can't build a palace out of code yet (and if they can, they are typically swept up quickly). It takes years to go from knowing how to lay a brick to how to design a brick building to never crumble even if someone is beating it with a fallen tree. While age descrimination exists (the concept of a senior developer is iffy sometimes), and I experienced it for the first time last year when someone said "no thanks" and hung up when they asked how any years experience I have; it doesn't exist when you are actually shooting for jobs that require 20 legitimate years of experience. Some programmers settle back knowing they could code the world, but don't actually do it. Or code something twice as fast. Or 5 times as solid. Or with 567% less bugs. What makes the 20 year experience you better than the 19 year experience you? If you cannot sell that one year of difference, then it's not age discrimination, it's skill discrimination. And to answer your actual questions.... :-D What is your stack: After 21 years, I've work in .Net/Java/Node.js/LAMP(erl&HP) stacks plus tinkered with others. Now I do application security. How have you gotten around age discrimination: When I've been discriminated against, I feel like I dodged a bullet, because who would want to work with / for someone that judges the content of a book by the wear of the spine? How do you suss out whether a company is right for you? I focus on team and personal questions when I interview a company. What's the team culture, do they support members teaching each other, do they foster speaking at conferences, etc. The more information flow between developers and the industry the better, generally. That indicates a supportive culture rather than a competitive culture. Ask to speak to people you will be working with. "Their references". I ask personal questions of interviewers. What is their next skill they are going to work on? What was the last issue they tackled that really taught them something new? Do they seem themselves with this company in 10 years? What was the last conference they attended? Was that on their own time? When was the last time they had an opportunity to speak at a conference? Don't worry about getting into personal questions relating to their job. I've found that tells me more (not necessarily their answers, but also how they answer) about the culture than the standard shpiels. It's ALL about culture. A crap boss and crap co-workers will never be made for with good pay or high-skills in the long run.
• runjake 8y ago
  Lots of good advice here. Just to add my two cents: - Stay (get?) fit. - Dress well. - Avoid public displays of curmudgeonliness. - Mentor the young, high-speed people.
• peterhi 8y ago
  I'm 57. A self taught generalist who's been paid to do this since the early 80's What keeps me going? There is just so much interesting stuff going on with computers - how can you ever get bored :) There are a lot of people better than me, also younger than me, but I can still knock out solid code. I think not thinking I have mastered something keeps me going. There is massive churn in languages and technologies, all my COBOL / FCS / IBM Mainframes skills are consigned to the dumpster but they help me learn new things like C / CP/M / MSDOS / Assembler. Which got dumped for Unix (not Linux) / Macintosh (pre OSX) / Prolog / Lisp / C++ I'm now doing Python and Ruby on Rails and learning Nim and Virtual Reality What a time to be alive! Age discrimination - can't say I've noticed it but I've always expected to be judged by my abilities not may age. Perhaps I've been lucky
• desertedisland 8y ago
  I work at a high (senior) level as a (Javascript) developer and I'm 48. I'm not aware of being discriminated against - I never have trouble finding work (and I'm a contractor so I change jobs frequently). Perhaps that is part of it: it doesn't cross my mind that I might be discriminated against; it doesn't cross my mind to treat anyone younger than me different from anyone else. So my attitude to people is open: I am not defensive or resentful. I'm in the UK which has, as far as I can tell, less of an ageism problem than the US. If I'm honest I'm probably a little bit slower mentally with very challenging, complex problems than I was 15 years ago. But, I work with some of the highest paid people in the industry and I have never once thought to myself that I was out of my depth or slow technically compared to my colleagues - regardless of their age. And there are real, big advantages to age / experience: - Technically I have great breadth of experience: I'm (mainly) a front end developer but I've worked commercially in Node, C++, Java and PHP; I'm confident with server + database administration and dev-ops, complex application architecture and scaling. I'm the one that the senior managers turn to when they have problems / doubts / questions because I solve problems / answer questions for them - regardless of the tech stack. - I'm more mature emotionally and have far better interpersonal skills and experience, meaning I am far more effective and pleasant to be with in a team. This is a huge (way more important than technical skills) thing - particularly in today's work climate where it is not acceptable to be 'toxic'. I am experienced about getting my ideas across and giving feedback without being an asshole; I am unfazed if people are stressing out / blaming / ignoring / not listening to me. I am not egotistical, insecure or emotional and I have enough experience with office politics to know what is happening and what people are about.
• mankypro 8y ago
  There are few teams that recognize you purely for what you bring to the table, you could be the baddest ass dev on the planet, but as a gray hair you may not be accepted, or a "culture fit" as is the universal excuse nowadays for "I don't like her/him". Truth be told most Millenials don't want to go have beers with someone that reminds them of their parent's whose basement that might still be living in, and we know that life in tech is immersive, your friends are your co-workers in many of these tech gulches. The there is the idea that your new boss may be threatened by your skillet, which opens yet a whole other can o' worms. Age discrimination in the SF Bay Area is rampant, no one will ever admit it, but it's here. It's like gravity, one denies its existence at one's own peril. So get your botox, your skinny red jeans and your converse or whatever they're wearing these days - don't forget to ink up - even if they're temporaries :) Oh and impossibly colored hair might help too. p.s. laugh while you can monkey people.