6 ms·

Ageism in tech is strange to me, like, we think old scientists, doctors and writers as better than their younger counterparts, but for some reason it's differen

Ageism in tech is strange to me, like, we think old scientists, doctors and writers as better than their younger counterparts, but for some reason it's different in programming.

duncan-donuts 4y ago
Fresh young folks work more for less and have less “distractions” outside of work. Less opinions, more likely to fall in line. When you need bodies ageism makes perfect sense.
- prometheus76 4y ago
  We responded along the same lines, but your response was much pithier. Thank you for reminding me to edit my jabbering.
- crustycoder 4y ago
  When you need something done quickly and properly first time, hiring someone who has seen same the same half-assed ideas "reinvented" over and over for the last 30+ years and who won't try to sell them to you as the New Shiny makes much more sense. Unless you are into square wheels, of course. Most of the time experience and healthy cynicism is the cheapest option.
  - duncan-donuts 4y ago
    Absolutely agree. There’s an aspect of technology investments that you can’t really see payoff with less than a decade of experience. I know early in my career I didn’t really understand how technology choices were really investments
  - sjamaan 4y ago
    If you only care to "move fast and break things" with the sole goal of getting acquired, none of that matters.
- pugworthy 4y ago
  > Fresh young folks work more for less I've actually found that not always true. In order to acquire talent, the very large corporation I work for has been hiring younger developers at higher wage levels to compete.
prometheus76 4y ago
Young people are generally more willing to work long hours and long shifts, and generally are less skilled at negotiating their salary. Companies see more value in someone who may be less skilled overall, but is more willing to devote themselves to the cause, so to speak. Older programmers tend to have families and other interesting hobbies, as well as more experience at the salary negotiation stage, so companies would oftentimes rather not bother with them.
- snarfy 4y ago
  I wonder how much ageism in tech would vanish if the overtime exemption was removed.
- lapcat 4y ago
  These are all stereotypes themselves. Many people have children in their 20s. Maybe they even met their spouse in school. And younger people can be quite savvy in negotiating salary, even fresh college grads if they've received advice from more experienced folks. I'm astounded by the offers some of them receive. I personally never had children, and I naturally sleep fewer hours per day now than when I was younger, so I have plenty of time to work. Every individual is different.
  - prometheus76 4y ago
    Exceptions don't invalidate the generalities, and I specifically said "generally".
    - lapcat 4y ago
      Do you have any evidence for these generalities? The average age of first child has been increasing but is still relatively low at 26 for women and 31 for men. How many over 50 people have young children at home? Maybe they had children, but at a certain point those children leave the home. And even while at home, teenagers need much less supervision than babies. https://www.forbes.com/sites/ashleystahl/2020/05/01/new-study-millennial-women-are-delaying-having-children-due-to-their-careers/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/ashleystahl/2020/05/01/new-stud... If children are the reason, it would be really strange and anti-empirical to discriminate against 50+ developers instead of discriminating against 30something developers. Statistically, the 30s are the prime child-having years.
amelius 4y ago
It might be because in tech your knowledge of tools becomes worthless as soon as a new tools and ecosystems become fashionable, which happens quite a lot.
- silon42 4y ago
  Not worthless... you can typically judge when a new tool has useful features, things to verify carefully before using or things that are likely a bad idea. Tool advocates/salesmen may not like you though.
- le-mark 4y ago
  The greybeard reaction to this is to pick a specialty, stack, and domain with less churn than the messier ones. Constantly treading water to stay afloat is exhausting and a waste.
  - FerretFred 4y ago
    Yup! Perl has kept me gainfully employed for 35 years and I'm still working - about to retire though (to spend some time dog and side-projects).
    - evilbob93 4y ago
      Perl is getting to be like COBOL - lots of lines out there still doing useful things but they aren't cranking out new Perl programmers like they used to. Lucrative if you can find the gig. That said, I met a millennial COBOL programmer a couple years ago.
- crustycoder 4y ago
  If you don't expect to be learning new stuff every day throughout your entire career, you are in the wrong line of business.
  - amelius 4y ago
    But it's not new stuff, mostly. It's just the same old stuff in a new package.
jhbadger 4y ago
On the other hand mathematicians are generally thought to peak early with their best work in their 20s and 30s (although like programmers there are certainly many cases that go against this "rule"). I think the idea is that mathematics and programming are supposed to benefit from creative vision uninfluenced by previous works whereas science and medicine are supposed to benefit more from experience.
- thebooktocome 4y ago
  Among mathematicians this is widely regarded as an old wives’ tale, there are ample examples of older mathematicians doing their best work outside that age range.
- weeksie 4y ago
  If you don't see the massive structural difference between the practice of pure mathematics and the practice of software, that means you misunderstand both software development and mathematics.
  - jhbadger 4y ago
    Programming and mathematics are many things. Sure, it might be hard to see how maintaining a web site has has do with mathematics, but if you need to design a novel algorithm it is worth actually working out the proofs to show that it works (and if you want to publish it in a journal that is often essential).
    - weeksie 4y ago
      Computer science is a branch of math, but programming is not. People frequently confuse the two. The difference between using mathematical constructs to inform your engineering and discovering new mathematical constructs is fundamental and the practices do not intersect much at all.
chudi 4y ago
there was an article that stated that almost all software is written by jr professionals because as you improve your skills you just working more with people that writing programs, so I suppose that the reasoning of this is that companies knows this and unless you are in the small set of really tech oriented companies it doesn't really matter whats your skill level is.
Karawebnetwork 4y ago
We also expect these people to wear format outfits, lab coats, etc., while we "expect" techies to show up at the office wearing a graphic t-shirt and khaki shorts while juggling a latte and the latest laptop. I wonder if the uniform might be an important variable in blurring the age-gap. There's also the fact that standards are changing so quickly, new hires often bring useful information to companies while existing employees are often (stereotypically) set in their ways. In fields such as medicine, new hires are almost a liability.
deadlast2 4y ago
Do we, like I don't think so. math you peak at 20 most likely he same in programming and science.
j7ake 4y ago
For scientists there absolutely is ageism. A 40 year old postdoc is going to raise a lot of flags. Old scientists are expected to be in professorship positions, where most of the work is management and big picture rather than boots on the ground. The analogy for ageism in programming is that after a while, one is expected to go beyond writing code and into more high level strategy, design, and mentorship.

Ageism in tech is strange to me, like, we think old scientists, doctors and writers as better than their younger counterparts, but for some reason it's different in programming.

duncan-donuts 4y ago

Fresh young folks work more for less and have less “distractions” outside of work. Less opinions, more likely to fall in line. When you need bodies ageism makes perfect sense.

prometheus76 4y ago
We responded along the same lines, but your response was much pithier. Thank you for reminding me to edit my jabbering.
crustycoder 4y ago
When you need something done quickly and properly first time, hiring someone who has seen same the same half-assed ideas "reinvented" over and over for the last 30+ years and who won't try to sell them to you as the New Shiny makes much more sense. Unless you are into square wheels, of course. Most of the time experience and healthy cynicism is the cheapest option.
- duncan-donuts 4y ago
  Absolutely agree. There’s an aspect of technology investments that you can’t really see payoff with less than a decade of experience. I know early in my career I didn’t really understand how technology choices were really investments
- sjamaan 4y ago
  If you only care to "move fast and break things" with the sole goal of getting acquired, none of that matters.
pugworthy 4y ago
> Fresh young folks work more for less I've actually found that not always true. In order to acquire talent, the very large corporation I work for has been hiring younger developers at higher wage levels to compete.

prometheus76 4y ago

Young people are generally more willing to work long hours and long shifts, and generally are less skilled at negotiating their salary. Companies see more value in someone who may be less skilled overall, but is more willing to devote themselves to the cause, so to speak. Older programmers tend to have families and other interesting hobbies, as well as more experience at the salary negotiation stage, so companies would oftentimes rather not bother with them.

snarfy 4y ago
I wonder how much ageism in tech would vanish if the overtime exemption was removed.
lapcat 4y ago
These are all stereotypes themselves. Many people have children in their 20s. Maybe they even met their spouse in school. And younger people can be quite savvy in negotiating salary, even fresh college grads if they've received advice from more experienced folks. I'm astounded by the offers some of them receive. I personally never had children, and I naturally sleep fewer hours per day now than when I was younger, so I have plenty of time to work. Every individual is different.
- prometheus76 4y ago
  Exceptions don't invalidate the generalities, and I specifically said "generally".
  - lapcat 4y ago
    Do you have any evidence for these generalities? The average age of first child has been increasing but is still relatively low at 26 for women and 31 for men. How many over 50 people have young children at home? Maybe they had children, but at a certain point those children leave the home. And even while at home, teenagers need much less supervision than babies. https://www.forbes.com/sites/ashleystahl/2020/05/01/new-study-millennial-women-are-delaying-having-children-due-to-their-careers/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/ashleystahl/2020/05/01/new-stud... If children are the reason, it would be really strange and anti-empirical to discriminate against 50+ developers instead of discriminating against 30something developers. Statistically, the 30s are the prime child-having years.

amelius 4y ago

It might be because in tech your knowledge of tools becomes worthless as soon as a new tools and ecosystems become fashionable, which happens quite a lot.

silon42 4y ago
Not worthless... you can typically judge when a new tool has useful features, things to verify carefully before using or things that are likely a bad idea. Tool advocates/salesmen may not like you though.
le-mark 4y ago
The greybeard reaction to this is to pick a specialty, stack, and domain with less churn than the messier ones. Constantly treading water to stay afloat is exhausting and a waste.
- FerretFred 4y ago
  Yup! Perl has kept me gainfully employed for 35 years and I'm still working - about to retire though (to spend some time dog and side-projects).
  - evilbob93 4y ago
    Perl is getting to be like COBOL - lots of lines out there still doing useful things but they aren't cranking out new Perl programmers like they used to. Lucrative if you can find the gig. That said, I met a millennial COBOL programmer a couple years ago.
crustycoder 4y ago
If you don't expect to be learning new stuff every day throughout your entire career, you are in the wrong line of business.
- amelius 4y ago
  But it's not new stuff, mostly. It's just the same old stuff in a new package.

jhbadger 4y ago

On the other hand mathematicians are generally thought to peak early with their best work in their 20s and 30s (although like programmers there are certainly many cases that go against this "rule"). I think the idea is that mathematics and programming are supposed to benefit from creative vision uninfluenced by previous works whereas science and medicine are supposed to benefit more from experience.

thebooktocome 4y ago
Among mathematicians this is widely regarded as an old wives’ tale, there are ample examples of older mathematicians doing their best work outside that age range.
weeksie 4y ago
If you don't see the massive structural difference between the practice of pure mathematics and the practice of software, that means you misunderstand both software development and mathematics.
- jhbadger 4y ago
  Programming and mathematics are many things. Sure, it might be hard to see how maintaining a web site has has do with mathematics, but if you need to design a novel algorithm it is worth actually working out the proofs to show that it works (and if you want to publish it in a journal that is often essential).
  - weeksie 4y ago
    Computer science is a branch of math, but programming is not. People frequently confuse the two. The difference between using mathematical constructs to inform your engineering and discovering new mathematical constructs is fundamental and the practices do not intersect much at all.

chudi 4y ago

there was an article that stated that almost all software is written by jr professionals because as you improve your skills you just working more with people that writing programs, so I suppose that the reasoning of this is that companies knows this and unless you are in the small set of really tech oriented companies it doesn't really matter whats your skill level is.

Karawebnetwork 4y ago

We also expect these people to wear format outfits, lab coats, etc., while we "expect" techies to show up at the office wearing a graphic t-shirt and khaki shorts while juggling a latte and the latest laptop. I wonder if the uniform might be an important variable in blurring the age-gap. There's also the fact that standards are changing so quickly, new hires often bring useful information to companies while existing employees are often (stereotypically) set in their ways. In fields such as medicine, new hires are almost a liability.

deadlast2 4y ago

Do we, like I don't think so. math you peak at 20 most likely he same in programming and science.

j7ake 4y ago

For scientists there absolutely is ageism. A 40 year old postdoc is going to raise a lot of flags. Old scientists are expected to be in professorship positions, where most of the work is management and big picture rather than boots on the ground. The analogy for ageism in programming is that after a while, one is expected to go beyond writing code and into more high level strategy, design, and mentorship.