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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 peo

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.
- stuxnet79 8y ago
  To echo the other commenter. How easy is it to transition to embedded if all the experience you have so far is web related? Is this possible?
  - mreome 8y ago
    Unfortunately I couldn't really offer any useful advice here as it wasn't really a major transition for me. My academic background was Computer and Systems Engineering which includes embedded systems programming.

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.
stuxnet79 8y ago
To echo the other commenter. How easy is it to transition to embedded if all the experience you have so far is web related? Is this possible?
- mreome 8y ago
  Unfortunately I couldn't really offer any useful advice here as it wasn't really a major transition for me. My academic background was Computer and Systems Engineering which includes embedded systems programming.