6 ms·

I've seen and heard of age discrimination in non-tech industries, but in the tech industry I believe that age discrimination is often mistaken for skills obsole

I've seen and heard of age discrimination in non-tech industries, but in the tech industry I believe that age discrimination is often mistaken for skills obsolescence. As a software developer for as long as I can remember, I'm actually at the top of my game now in my 40s - I can software engineer (plan) off the top of my head, and my tenacity is balanced with a sense of direction I never had as a younger developer. I spend half the time developing and produce 10 times the results (there's still crunch time every so often though). The trick is to keep your mind active - I have a job that allows me to do a lot of side development projects outside of working hours, and I always take on a new project at least once a year that is out of my comfort zone (if it looks impossible, it's perfect).

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
resoluteteeth 7y ago
Whenever topics like this come up on HN, there are always tons of people in their 30s and 40s posting comments like this, which boil down to something like: "I'm not old enough to experience age discrimination yet, and I'm scared but I'm going to keep up with the latest languages/frameworks so I will be special and not be discriminated against like all the other developers, who allowed their skills to deteriorate when they got older." On the other hand, when people who are already in their 50s post about this topic, they are saying things like, "My phone interview went really great and they were impressed by my skills, but when I went in their attitude changed the second they saw how old I am."
- bilbo0s 7y ago
  My take is a bit different, and it may explain the phenomenon you've noticed on HN. TLDR; I believe a lot of people mistake price discrimination as age discrimination. Long version: Let's say you need some code monkey to slap together go or rust services. Well, sure, you get a lot of people applying with 25 years experience, you also get a lot of people applying with 5 years experience. Now here's the rub, it's highly unlikely that anyone's been coding go or rust services for 20 years in any case. (To be honest, it's even unlikely that anyone's been coding go or rust services for 5.) So any of those applicants, as long as their references check out, will do. Which salary do I want to pay? If I have a low level, quasi hardware layer service that I need coded in C or C++? Fine, yes, experience matters. It matters a lot in those instances, and I'd be foolish to hire some kid to do that. But there is less and less of that kind of work. (Flip side being that such work is more and more critical.) The dirty secret of the tech industry however, is that most work is just CRUD equivalent stuff that could be satisfactorily accomplished by any warm bodied techie. So it just makes no sense to pay more for those warm bodies.
  - rfrey 7y ago
    Isn’t that solved by specifying “junior developer” or “intermediate developer”? Or by including the salary range?
    - bilbo0s 7y ago
      Well, as a rule, I never included salary range. I ask for salary requirements. Then only proceed down the evaluation and hiring path with applicants where the salary matches what is available in the budget. Better chance you get an employee who's happy with the pay that way. I always specified entry level, intermediate, etc, but as times get harder, what you start to realize out here in flyover country is that everyone is applying for all positions. They don't really care about the title or labels. (At least, I suspect it's because times are getting harder? I don't know of any other reason highly experienced people would be applying for some of these kinds of positions.)
    - commandlinefan 7y ago
      It should be - but I’m positive that everybody with over 10 years experience is calling themselves a “senior developer” by now. There’s no level after that, so most everybody over 35 is a senior developer.
      - scarface74 7y ago
        There are “principal developers” and architects, but just like with products and the “Innovator’s Dilemma” at some point, your skillset overserves the market. After a certain level of competence, experience doesn’t add value if you’re applying to be a developer for yet another software as a service crud app. Either be happy with salary stagnation and cost of living raises (if that) or move on to greener pastures.
        commandlinefan 7y ago
        Well, I’d be way happy if I could spend the next 20 years making what I’m making now (adjusted for inflation) doing what I’m doing now, but it seems like there’s a certain age where your salary expectation is $0 - IF you’re in software. I don’t get why this doesn’t happen to doctors, lawyers, accountants, etc.
- 68020 7y ago
  I'm 54. Have been in sw dev for 40 years. I have kept my skills (aws api / node.js / css / html5 / etc) up to the point were I am over qualified for many of the positions (laid off 3 years back from IBM) I apply for. Before I updated my LinkedIn profile pic I received many interview invites. Now I get none. Recently I started looking at the people that these sw dev companies _actually_ hire. They ask for 3/5/10 years experience but I found that in almost every case (95%) the devs they hired were under 25, straight out of collage with 0 experience. Last year I applied for 300 positions, now I don't even bother looking to dev work anymore. I have 3 kids at home and we are close to bankruptcy. Let me be very clear here: The _only_ thing that matters in gaining employment in sw dev (in my city at least) is your age. Edit: Also should mention that I often offered (have no choice) to work for much less $ then what junior would be making.
  - lapnitnelav 7y ago
    Sorry if what I'm about to say is rude, please file that under me being ignorant rather malicious. Given your struggles to get a job and your very valuable experience, what's holding you back from going as a contractor / setting up your own shop?
    - 68020 7y ago
      That is the route I am now going. Until my last breath I'm going to build a sw company and hire 100's of people. Like all companies I'll have a page on my site that says how moral and inclusive we are except that we won't be hypocrites like most (all?) other sw companies. This is my delusional dream.
      - ilaksh 7y ago
        What I have found is that it can be much easier to find remote work that pays fairly poorly. Usually startups and the like. There is a lot of it. Can't afford to live in the US anymore but Mexico is working out pretty well.
      - PorterDuff 7y ago
        I've always liked the idea of a consulting firm that specialized in hiring old people. I wonder if there's enough work to keep something like that fed if one were to specialize in 'obsolete' tech and market at a national level. Heck, to the right client, that one i860 or C80 programmer might be worth gold. Either that, or just do a highly competent job at embedded programming generally.
- lacampbell 7y ago
  Yeap. I'm in my 30s and I've seen enough writing on the wall to know that there is no way in hell I should be relying on being a software developer to feed me in my 50s or beyond. We can talk about how it shouldn't happen or it's illegal for it to happen all we want - but clearly it happens.
- mech422 7y ago
  51 here - 40+ years coding - haven't had any issues with my age yet...
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
lr4444lr 7y ago
As someone who's starting to "get up there", can you share what critical elements helped you get to that higher productivity? I am definitely much better than when I first started (9 years ago), but I think I've largely leveled off in terms of speed of delivery after about 6.
- bluesnowmonkey 7y ago
  Some niches reward deep exploration. For instance in adversarial domains like security, you do have to outrun the bear, not just be faster than the slowest guy. And the bear is moving pretty fast these days. Some black hats have been thinking about it for years. You have to know everything they know and then have one more trick up your sleeve. So you're not competing so much with new grads for jobs.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

resoluteteeth 7y ago

Whenever topics like this come up on HN, there are always tons of people in their 30s and 40s posting comments like this, which boil down to something like: "I'm not old enough to experience age discrimination yet, and I'm scared but I'm going to keep up with the latest languages/frameworks so I will be special and not be discriminated against like all the other developers, who allowed their skills to deteriorate when they got older." On the other hand, when people who are already in their 50s post about this topic, they are saying things like, "My phone interview went really great and they were impressed by my skills, but when I went in their attitude changed the second they saw how old I am."

bilbo0s 7y ago
My take is a bit different, and it may explain the phenomenon you've noticed on HN. TLDR; I believe a lot of people mistake price discrimination as age discrimination. Long version: Let's say you need some code monkey to slap together go or rust services. Well, sure, you get a lot of people applying with 25 years experience, you also get a lot of people applying with 5 years experience. Now here's the rub, it's highly unlikely that anyone's been coding go or rust services for 20 years in any case. (To be honest, it's even unlikely that anyone's been coding go or rust services for 5.) So any of those applicants, as long as their references check out, will do. Which salary do I want to pay? If I have a low level, quasi hardware layer service that I need coded in C or C++? Fine, yes, experience matters. It matters a lot in those instances, and I'd be foolish to hire some kid to do that. But there is less and less of that kind of work. (Flip side being that such work is more and more critical.) The dirty secret of the tech industry however, is that most work is just CRUD equivalent stuff that could be satisfactorily accomplished by any warm bodied techie. So it just makes no sense to pay more for those warm bodies.
- rfrey 7y ago
  Isn’t that solved by specifying “junior developer” or “intermediate developer”? Or by including the salary range?
  - bilbo0s 7y ago
    Well, as a rule, I never included salary range. I ask for salary requirements. Then only proceed down the evaluation and hiring path with applicants where the salary matches what is available in the budget. Better chance you get an employee who's happy with the pay that way. I always specified entry level, intermediate, etc, but as times get harder, what you start to realize out here in flyover country is that everyone is applying for all positions. They don't really care about the title or labels. (At least, I suspect it's because times are getting harder? I don't know of any other reason highly experienced people would be applying for some of these kinds of positions.)
  - commandlinefan 7y ago
    It should be - but I’m positive that everybody with over 10 years experience is calling themselves a “senior developer” by now. There’s no level after that, so most everybody over 35 is a senior developer.
    - scarface74 7y ago
      There are “principal developers” and architects, but just like with products and the “Innovator’s Dilemma” at some point, your skillset overserves the market. After a certain level of competence, experience doesn’t add value if you’re applying to be a developer for yet another software as a service crud app. Either be happy with salary stagnation and cost of living raises (if that) or move on to greener pastures.
      - commandlinefan 7y ago
        Well, I’d be way happy if I could spend the next 20 years making what I’m making now (adjusted for inflation) doing what I’m doing now, but it seems like there’s a certain age where your salary expectation is $0 - IF you’re in software. I don’t get why this doesn’t happen to doctors, lawyers, accountants, etc.
68020 7y ago
I'm 54. Have been in sw dev for 40 years. I have kept my skills (aws api / node.js / css / html5 / etc) up to the point were I am over qualified for many of the positions (laid off 3 years back from IBM) I apply for. Before I updated my LinkedIn profile pic I received many interview invites. Now I get none. Recently I started looking at the people that these sw dev companies _actually_ hire. They ask for 3/5/10 years experience but I found that in almost every case (95%) the devs they hired were under 25, straight out of collage with 0 experience. Last year I applied for 300 positions, now I don't even bother looking to dev work anymore. I have 3 kids at home and we are close to bankruptcy. Let me be very clear here: The _only_ thing that matters in gaining employment in sw dev (in my city at least) is your age. Edit: Also should mention that I often offered (have no choice) to work for much less $ then what junior would be making.
- lapnitnelav 7y ago
  Sorry if what I'm about to say is rude, please file that under me being ignorant rather malicious. Given your struggles to get a job and your very valuable experience, what's holding you back from going as a contractor / setting up your own shop?
  - 68020 7y ago
    That is the route I am now going. Until my last breath I'm going to build a sw company and hire 100's of people. Like all companies I'll have a page on my site that says how moral and inclusive we are except that we won't be hypocrites like most (all?) other sw companies. This is my delusional dream.
    - ilaksh 7y ago
      What I have found is that it can be much easier to find remote work that pays fairly poorly. Usually startups and the like. There is a lot of it. Can't afford to live in the US anymore but Mexico is working out pretty well.
    - PorterDuff 7y ago
      I've always liked the idea of a consulting firm that specialized in hiring old people. I wonder if there's enough work to keep something like that fed if one were to specialize in 'obsolete' tech and market at a national level. Heck, to the right client, that one i860 or C80 programmer might be worth gold. Either that, or just do a highly competent job at embedded programming generally.
lacampbell 7y ago
Yeap. I'm in my 30s and I've seen enough writing on the wall to know that there is no way in hell I should be relying on being a software developer to feed me in my 50s or beyond. We can talk about how it shouldn't happen or it's illegal for it to happen all we want - but clearly it happens.
mech422 7y ago
51 here - 40+ years coding - haven't had any issues with my age yet...

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

lr4444lr 7y ago

As someone who's starting to "get up there", can you share what critical elements helped you get to that higher productivity? I am definitely much better than when I first started (9 years ago), but I think I've largely leveled off in terms of speed of delivery after about 6.

bluesnowmonkey 7y ago
Some niches reward deep exploration. For instance in adversarial domains like security, you do have to outrun the bear, not just be faster than the slowest guy. And the bear is moving pretty fast these days. Some black hats have been thinking about it for years. You have to know everything they know and then have one more trick up your sleeve. So you're not competing so much with new grads for jobs.