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Here is an honest answer that you won't hear from many others. Startups are not the best option for 50 year olds. Most 50 year olds demand high salaries, aren'

by temphn 15y ago

Here is an honest answer that you won't hear from many others. Startups are not the best option for 50 year olds. Most 50 year olds demand high salaries, aren't willing to work long hours (let alone nights and weekends), are far less familiar with new technologies and less willing to learn, and are much more cynical than 20 somethings. The risk, uncertainty, and low structure environment of a startup is just a bad fit for the age group in general. Our society hasn't yet adapted to the fact that as people get older in technology, they get less competent but demand higher and higher salaries due to their increasing fixed costs (mortgage, etc.). Those who will argue with you about the above facts want to eat their cake and keep it too, like the women who want to have kids and pregnancy and a social life but also want to make it big at a high tech startup. People do not want to acknowledge that tradeoffs exist: that women with young children can't put in long hours or that old folks just aren't as plastic and supple. Some engineers age like Ken Ritchie, and stay sharp. Some go into management or do consulting on legacy systems. Those are all legit options. A 50 something should have enough savings to bankroll his own startup; that too is a legit option. But working at a YC-style startup is not likely to be a good fit.

tptacek 15y ago
Our society hasn't adapted to the fact that people get less competent and unjustifiably more expensive with age because it isn't true. People who get less competent get less competent; people who demand unjustifiable compensation demand unjustifiable compensation. Some of those people are 50+. Some of them are 25. Some 20-somethings code for 2 years, write an O'Reilly book, and then reposition themselves as "architects". So many young people did this with the title "CTO" that the term "CTO" got tainted. This is something I was taught in 3rd grade, but apparently hasn't percolated into the public school system, so we're having to teach it to adults at great expense: one needs to be vigilant about prejudice. Or, in some cases not, because one of the subtexts behind ageism is that talent is getting more and more expensive, and firms want to avoid engaging with that reality. At least 21 year olds come bundled with the pretense of inexperience, so you can pay them 40% of scale. If I sound self-righteous about this, I apologize; I'm really not upset by it, because it is one of the more easily exploitable market inefficiencies our industry cultivates. You guys pay for the "Rails programmer" who foreaches through N+1 queries because they don't grok SQL joins; I'll pick up the 50 year olds who've shipped Lisp and written RISC assembly.
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
MaggieL 15y ago
Dude, you're arguing from stereotypes. Saying "as people get older they get less competent" is just silly; I can tell there's the same distribution in competence in a set of 25- year-olds that there is in 55-year-olds. (It is true that the 25-yos haven't had a chance to fall behind yet, and a lot of them will. But those are the same bozos who show up in the DailyWTF today doing dumb stuff with modern tools, and in 30 years nobody will care about their code.) And "a 50-something should have enough savings to bankroll his own startup" is a close second in silly. Evidently you haven't watched too closely what's happened in finance over the last thirty years. (A few folks have done well, many more have been close to wiped-out. Look up "Pareto distribution".) Mature engineers are just as capable or running on adrenaline (or just the high of building somthing really great) when needed as younger folks. However, they're more likely to know whether you really have an event calling for adrenaline, or are just looking to get 80 hours of work for 40 hours of salary. (Or are building something truly great as opposed to just a clone of something that's been done and failed six times already, but in node.js this time instead of Rails) They're also less likely to have the gullibility to buy into the equity compensation fantasies that a lot of startups lean on (while the VC guys stack the deck, and the techs show up here later whining about "those bastards screwed me on my stock options")
- tptacek 15y ago
  An implication of the parent comment is that hiring at 50+ incurs adverse selection, because 50+ developers that are on the market for full time work have demonstrated inability to succeed in startups. This sentiment misunderstands startups as well as software development careers. Most people will not succeed with startups. Most people who start companies fail. Most professional developers will opt not to start companies because the (low) success rate is obvious. The people who succeed with startups are not particularly likely to be amazing software developers. In fact, the impedance mismatch between raw programming talent and software startup success is one of the more irritating things about working in startups. There's no statistical observation to be made from someone's lack of success building companies.
  - spitfire 15y ago
    > The people who succeed with startups are not particularly likely to be amazing software developers. In fact, the impedance mismatch between raw programming talent and software startup success is one of the more irritating things about working in startups. From my experience, the people who succeed and reach the big payout tend to be the bottom quarter in terms of developer skill. They had an idea early enough, new enough or with enough impact to gain traction. Later professional developers come in to clean up their mess. Unfortunately, after the payout these low-skill (from a development sense) tend to think they were actually highly skilled. They don't repeat their first success, often they become "Angel investors". On the other hand. If you're hiring you should simply enjoy this large, un-mined vein of talent. Hopefully your competition doesn't catch on.
pasbesoin 15y ago
I've worked with plenty of snot nosed kids (and not just in software development) who were very quick -- to pull the wrong answer out of their ass. And very slow to critically examine, let along acknowledge their mistake. Good senior people listen, and if you're right, shrug their shoulders and fix it. They just ask you to do the same. One a the greatest pleasures of being on a good "senior" team was that all the members had long since left the superfluous parts of their egos behind. That team could turn on a dime. And the best part is that we knew when to, and when not to. TL;DR: Don't fear the beard. ;-)
mark_l_watson 15y ago
I don't agree with you on "they get less competent but demand higher and higher salaries due to their increasing fixed costs (mortgage, etc.)" I am an 'old guy' and although I may not be typical, I have easily averaged 10 to 15 hours learning new technology every week for the last 20 years. My Dad is another good example of my point: he is 90, still a member of the National Academy of Sciences, and in the last 5 years has learned to be an expert an 3D animation and video production - as a hobby. Also, once people reach a certain age, assuming that they are good at what they do, they are economically very stable, many of us no longer have mortgages, only work because we love it, etc. Anyway, your comments seem innocent enough, and I don't want to get on your case, but stereotypes and generalizations are sometimes not true :-)
- gruseom 15y ago
  he is 90, still a member of the National Academy of Sciences, and in the last 5 years has learned to be an expert an 3D animation and video production Wow. That's awesome! Is any of his work online? I still remember my favorite professor telling me that she saw things much more clearly at 80 than she did at 70.

by temphn 15y ago

tptacek 15y ago

Our society hasn't adapted to the fact that people get less competent and unjustifiably more expensive with age because it isn't true. People who get less competent get less competent; people who demand unjustifiable compensation demand unjustifiable compensation. Some of those people are 50+. Some of them are 25. Some 20-somethings code for 2 years, write an O'Reilly book, and then reposition themselves as "architects". So many young people did this with the title "CTO" that the term "CTO" got tainted. This is something I was taught in 3rd grade, but apparently hasn't percolated into the public school system, so we're having to teach it to adults at great expense: one needs to be vigilant about prejudice. Or, in some cases not, because one of the subtexts behind ageism is that talent is getting more and more expensive, and firms want to avoid engaging with that reality. At least 21 year olds come bundled with the pretense of inexperience, so you can pay them 40% of scale. If I sound self-righteous about this, I apologize; I'm really not upset by it, because it is one of the more easily exploitable market inefficiencies our industry cultivates. You guys pay for the "Rails programmer" who foreaches through N+1 queries because they don't grok SQL joins; I'll pick up the 50 year olds who've shipped Lisp and written RISC assembly.

deleted 15y ago
[deleted]

MaggieL 15y ago

Dude, you're arguing from stereotypes. Saying "as people get older they get less competent" is just silly; I can tell there's the same distribution in competence in a set of 25- year-olds that there is in 55-year-olds. (It is true that the 25-yos haven't had a chance to fall behind yet, and a lot of them will. But those are the same bozos who show up in the DailyWTF today doing dumb stuff with modern tools, and in 30 years nobody will care about their code.) And "a 50-something should have enough savings to bankroll his own startup" is a close second in silly. Evidently you haven't watched too closely what's happened in finance over the last thirty years. (A few folks have done well, many more have been close to wiped-out. Look up "Pareto distribution".) Mature engineers are just as capable or running on adrenaline (or just the high of building somthing really great) when needed as younger folks. However, they're more likely to know whether you really have an event calling for adrenaline, or are just looking to get 80 hours of work for 40 hours of salary. (Or are building something truly great as opposed to just a clone of something that's been done and failed six times already, but in node.js this time instead of Rails) They're also less likely to have the gullibility to buy into the equity compensation fantasies that a lot of startups lean on (while the VC guys stack the deck, and the techs show up here later whining about "those bastards screwed me on my stock options")

tptacek 15y ago
An implication of the parent comment is that hiring at 50+ incurs adverse selection, because 50+ developers that are on the market for full time work have demonstrated inability to succeed in startups. This sentiment misunderstands startups as well as software development careers. Most people will not succeed with startups. Most people who start companies fail. Most professional developers will opt not to start companies because the (low) success rate is obvious. The people who succeed with startups are not particularly likely to be amazing software developers. In fact, the impedance mismatch between raw programming talent and software startup success is one of the more irritating things about working in startups. There's no statistical observation to be made from someone's lack of success building companies.
- spitfire 15y ago
  > The people who succeed with startups are not particularly likely to be amazing software developers. In fact, the impedance mismatch between raw programming talent and software startup success is one of the more irritating things about working in startups. From my experience, the people who succeed and reach the big payout tend to be the bottom quarter in terms of developer skill. They had an idea early enough, new enough or with enough impact to gain traction. Later professional developers come in to clean up their mess. Unfortunately, after the payout these low-skill (from a development sense) tend to think they were actually highly skilled. They don't repeat their first success, often they become "Angel investors". On the other hand. If you're hiring you should simply enjoy this large, un-mined vein of talent. Hopefully your competition doesn't catch on.

pasbesoin 15y ago

I've worked with plenty of snot nosed kids (and not just in software development) who were very quick -- to pull the wrong answer out of their ass. And very slow to critically examine, let along acknowledge their mistake. Good senior people listen, and if you're right, shrug their shoulders and fix it. They just ask you to do the same. One a the greatest pleasures of being on a good "senior" team was that all the members had long since left the superfluous parts of their egos behind. That team could turn on a dime. And the best part is that we knew when to, and when not to. TL;DR: Don't fear the beard. ;-)

mark_l_watson 15y ago

I don't agree with you on "they get less competent but demand higher and higher salaries due to their increasing fixed costs (mortgage, etc.)" I am an 'old guy' and although I may not be typical, I have easily averaged 10 to 15 hours learning new technology every week for the last 20 years. My Dad is another good example of my point: he is 90, still a member of the National Academy of Sciences, and in the last 5 years has learned to be an expert an 3D animation and video production - as a hobby. Also, once people reach a certain age, assuming that they are good at what they do, they are economically very stable, many of us no longer have mortgages, only work because we love it, etc. Anyway, your comments seem innocent enough, and I don't want to get on your case, but stereotypes and generalizations are sometimes not true :-)

gruseom 15y ago
he is 90, still a member of the National Academy of Sciences, and in the last 5 years has learned to be an expert an 3D animation and video production Wow. That's awesome! Is any of his work online? I still remember my favorite professor telling me that she saw things much more clearly at 80 than she did at 70.