3 ms·

They’re only too old due to age discrimination. I’ve worked with a number of excellent 50+ y/o workers in tech.

ChuckNorris89 4y ago
50+ aren't really retirees though, they're just older workers. How many 65+ SW devs do you know with up to date marketable skills?
- throwaway5959 4y ago
  They’re all retired, they’ve done very well for themselves and still hack for fun (and have fun associated hobbies like Ham and electronics).
  - ChuckNorris89 4y ago
    That was exactly my point. Retirees in tech aren't coming back out of retirement to work in flavor of the month framework and modern agile cargo cult.
    - throwaway5959 4y ago
      > modern agile cargo cult. Hear hear.
- JohnFen 4y ago
  I know a fair number of 65+ SW devs that are still working and their skills are as up-to-date as anyone else's. There are two such engineers on my team right now. (For the record, I am not a sprightly 20something, but I also am not nearing retirement yet.)
  - throwaway5959 4y ago
    That’s great! What kind of work does your team do?
    - JohnFen 4y ago
      It primarily develops deep learning vision systems.
- jonfw 4y ago
  I work with two developers in that age ballpark who are experts in the field we work in (cloud). And what does “up to date” mean? Have you seen the kind of tech that insurance companies, etc. use? To most companies, go is still a verb and rust is still something that happens to metal
commandlinefan 4y ago
> a number of excellent 50+ y/o workers As an almost-50-year-old, it might be worth reminding you young whippersnappers that folks in their 50's today started college in the 80's, which was about the peak of the computer revolution. You should expect 50+ y/o tech folks to be hyper-competent, rather than being surprised - they learned back when a bit of assembler programming was expected.
- dugmartin 4y ago
  And more importantly they had to read manuals and think through solutions instead of copying the first answer from Stack Overflow (source: me, I'm 51 and have been programming since I was 7).
- ChuckNorris89 4y ago
  >You should expect 50+ y/o tech folks to be hyper-competent, rather than being surprise Yeah, tell that to recruiters. The fact you had to learn things the hard way, including assembler and low level hardware, means very little to modern companies who are looking exclusively for experience in modern languages and frameworks meaning you can easily find yourself unemployed if you're lacking the experience that is in demand right now (AWS, Kubernetes, Kafka, Django, etc) despite you being an ace in C & assembler. Ask me how I know.
  - commandlinefan 4y ago
    > in demand right now (AWS, Kubernetes, Kafka, Django, etc) Not that I would ever do such a thing, but... it's really hard for a prospective employer to determine whether or not you actually used "X" professionally at your last job or whether you learned it on your own while you were looking for a job.
    - ChuckNorris89 4y ago
      They can figure it out during your probation period when they'll give you tasks and expect output of someone with experience and you'll suck at them because you have no hands on experience on large projects in production as you learned everything on your own off tutorials so you'll either be slow from constantly reading stuff and debugging the codebase to find your way around or you'll be bugging the seniors too much causing them to question your actual experience. Granted that depends on the company and team and their expectations on your output, but it definitely didn't work out for me. It might work out in large companies/projects where you'll only be a small cog in a large machine.

50+ aren't really retirees though, they're just older workers. How many 65+ SW devs do you know with up to date marketable skills?

throwaway5959 4y ago
They’re all retired, they’ve done very well for themselves and still hack for fun (and have fun associated hobbies like Ham and electronics).
- ChuckNorris89 4y ago
  That was exactly my point. Retirees in tech aren't coming back out of retirement to work in flavor of the month framework and modern agile cargo cult.
  - throwaway5959 4y ago
    > modern agile cargo cult. Hear hear.
JohnFen 4y ago
I know a fair number of 65+ SW devs that are still working and their skills are as up-to-date as anyone else's. There are two such engineers on my team right now. (For the record, I am not a sprightly 20something, but I also am not nearing retirement yet.)
- throwaway5959 4y ago
  That’s great! What kind of work does your team do?
  - JohnFen 4y ago
    It primarily develops deep learning vision systems.
jonfw 4y ago
I work with two developers in that age ballpark who are experts in the field we work in (cloud). And what does “up to date” mean? Have you seen the kind of tech that insurance companies, etc. use? To most companies, go is still a verb and rust is still something that happens to metal

commandlinefan 4y ago

> a number of excellent 50+ y/o workers As an almost-50-year-old, it might be worth reminding you young whippersnappers that folks in their 50's today started college in the 80's, which was about the peak of the computer revolution. You should expect 50+ y/o tech folks to be hyper-competent, rather than being surprised - they learned back when a bit of assembler programming was expected.

dugmartin 4y ago
And more importantly they had to read manuals and think through solutions instead of copying the first answer from Stack Overflow (source: me, I'm 51 and have been programming since I was 7).
ChuckNorris89 4y ago
>You should expect 50+ y/o tech folks to be hyper-competent, rather than being surprise Yeah, tell that to recruiters. The fact you had to learn things the hard way, including assembler and low level hardware, means very little to modern companies who are looking exclusively for experience in modern languages and frameworks meaning you can easily find yourself unemployed if you're lacking the experience that is in demand right now (AWS, Kubernetes, Kafka, Django, etc) despite you being an ace in C & assembler. Ask me how I know.
- commandlinefan 4y ago
  > in demand right now (AWS, Kubernetes, Kafka, Django, etc) Not that I would ever do such a thing, but... it's really hard for a prospective employer to determine whether or not you actually used "X" professionally at your last job or whether you learned it on your own while you were looking for a job.
  - ChuckNorris89 4y ago
    They can figure it out during your probation period when they'll give you tasks and expect output of someone with experience and you'll suck at them because you have no hands on experience on large projects in production as you learned everything on your own off tutorials so you'll either be slow from constantly reading stuff and debugging the codebase to find your way around or you'll be bugging the seniors too much causing them to question your actual experience. Granted that depends on the company and team and their expectations on your output, but it definitely didn't work out for me. It might work out in large companies/projects where you'll only be a small cog in a large machine.