6 ms·

I don't think anybody can answer this question for you. At 40, you can still do the exact same jobs as someone who's 25 (at least in tech) if you put your heart

I don't think anybody can answer this question for you. At 40, you can still do the exact same jobs as someone who's 25 (at least in tech) if you put your heart in it. I don't know what's the expiry date for a SWE, but it's not 40. I'm a median IC in big tech at almost 50 and don't feel discriminated against yet, and for the most part, don't feel incompetent or behind, and feel I'm having the greatest time of my career (although it's demanding). I have no issue learning the same new techs as the younger guys when I need to. I may be a bit slower but it hasn't came up as an issue so far. I also have a few colleagues older than me and they're still going strong.

austin-cheney 2y ago
While many people talk about a bias against hiring ICs over 40 I also wonder if there is a bias to favor people over 40 for promotions.
- 93po 2y ago
  There is probably bias in that social skills tend to be better as you get older, which makes you a better leader and manager in many cases.
  - hilux 2y ago
    I would like to think so, but (speaking from experience) a hiring manager in his 30s or 20s may not recognize or value that.
- IshKebab 2y ago
  In my experience the only bias against hiring ICs over 40 (at least in the UK) is * They tend to get stuck on old technologies that nobody uses any more. I don't really care about your Perl skills, sorry. * They expect higher salaries. If you keep up to date with your skills (Rust, Typescript, Nix, etc.) and aren't precious about your salary increasing forever then I don't think there's an issue. I've worked with plenty of very skilled ICs into their 60s.
  - jghn 2y ago
    It's not just the UK. As someone who is themselves in the same age range, as a hiring manager it's been eye opening to see the clusters of resumes from older candidates. It continues to boggle my mind how many resumes out there are people who have spent the last 20+ years working on the same set of problems, using the same tech. The reason a lot of these people aren't getting jobs is not that they're old. It's that they've stagnated to a degree I would not have thought possible. Meanwhile there are people out there who are staying relevant *and* bringing extra wisdom to the table. Those people get hired.
    - cluoma 2y ago
      What would you look for to see if somebody is 'staying relevant'? Side projects? Personally, I would like to explore new technologies, and am still excited to learn, but feel limited by what is actually needed/required in my day-to-day which is unlikely to change.
      - jghn 2y ago
        It's more just that your day to day *should* change over the course of 15-20 years. What I'm referring to are situations like people who have current day to days that read exactly the same as it did in the early aughts. For instance poking at pre-generics Java to parse XML files, populating some enterprise beans, and pushing to a web page using whatever the heck framework was in vogue back then. There's nothing wrong with someone turning their brain off and working in that role for 20 years. But they shouldn't be surprised if their experience is completely irrelevant in the modern job market. If one wants to develop new experiences and their job won't provide that over a long period of time (say 5-10 years of employment, not every 6 months!) then it's time to consider the tradeoffs you're making.
      - IshKebab 2y ago
        In my experience technologies that were popular in the past but are basically dead now are a red flag. Perl, Pascal, Smalltalk, maybe even Java and C at this point, if they don't know anything newer.
- yodsanklai 2y ago
  Probably depends on the company. I think it's not in those big tech companies where everything is quite standardized. In my case, besides my manager, most of the guys discussing my promotion wouldn't even know me personally. Evaluation is very factual. It's more about picking the right projects so you can check all the boxes, also not pissing off colleagues. Same goes for interviewing. I passed several FAANG interviews when I was 45. I just practiced Leetcode like anybody else. Leetcode has its flows, but solving leetcode problems isn't out of reach for an older candidate. Could be harder to find the time to practice, but solving problems in interview situation is a matter of practice. The problems are pretty much known in advance. Edit: Now that I'm an interviewer, I really just ask my questions, and check boxes based on the candidate performance. We're also trained to avoid biases and so on... That being said, I very rarely see "older" candidates despite the constant reminder we're an inclusive place.
- meowfly 2y ago
  I don't know if by promotions you mean into ic tree also, but it's definitely there for management. My boss who is probably a decade older than me is very much hinting I'm making a mistake if I don't move into management at my age. I think there is probably some bias against promoting a young manager over an older one. I'm currently a team lead and I've resisted a management role. I just don't like managing (or being a team lead), but I'm aware lots of people do jobs they don't like. So we'll see.
  - willseth 2y ago
    Do you think you might like management if you knew it didn’t have to be permanent? Highly recommend Charity Majors’ blog about this if you haven’t already https://charity.wtf/2017/05/11/the-engineer-manager-pendulum/amp/ https://charity.wtf/2017/05/11/the-engineer-manager-pendulum...
- parpfish 2y ago
  interesting that in the US age 40 is precisely when protections for age discrimination kick in
stickfigure 2y ago
Maybe I'm misreading, but this sounds like a defeatist take. Why would a 50yo be slower? I'm in my early 50s and at the absolute top of my game. I'm a principal eng at a medium-ish company and spend a lot of my time mentoring the "kids" and providing direction to engineers that don't have the same well of experience to draw on. I would naturally assume that an IC in their 40s or 50s is much faster than someone in their 20s. But that assumes they've actually been doing IC work. I've had a lot of interviews with people that are very experienced on paper but struggle in the pairing interview; whatever they were doing before, it wasn't hands-on-keyboard work. If you enjoy programming I don't see why there's any limit other than senility or death.
- yodsanklai 2y ago
  > Why would a 50yo be slower? Well, our intellectual abilities decline as we get older. I don't know at what age effects become apparent but it's unavoidable so maybe i'm a bit defeatist indeed :) In my case, I can feel my memory isn't as good as it used to be and I do feel slightly slower to pick up things. I don't think it affects my job though. Performance isn't unidimensional. Regarding being faster than someone in their 20s, it really depends on what task (and which someone!). Lots of the things I work on are rather new. For instance, if I'm writing Rust or using some internal tools, I'm not at much of an advantage compared to my 25 years old colleague unfortunately. In any case, I try to not worry too much age in general. I do my job the best I can, I treat older and younger colleagues alike and just hope everybody else does the same.
  - askvictor 2y ago
    I've noticed the same as I get older; I think/hope the main compensation is that, despite being slower on the low-level tasks, the accumulated wisdom you've got means that you're better at the higher level stuff.
- michaelgburton 2y ago
  A buddy of mine introduced me to the concept pair of Fluid and Crystallized Intelligence. That's the short answer to your question. An older dev will have more accumulated experience and will be able to make decisions based on experience much better, but a younger dev will adopt new tools and learn new frameworks faster, and the latter tends to be the heavier load for the average job-lifetime (say 2-5 years) in the modern tech industry.

austin-cheney 2y ago

While many people talk about a bias against hiring ICs over 40 I also wonder if there is a bias to favor people over 40 for promotions.

93po 2y ago
There is probably bias in that social skills tend to be better as you get older, which makes you a better leader and manager in many cases.
- hilux 2y ago
  I would like to think so, but (speaking from experience) a hiring manager in his 30s or 20s may not recognize or value that.
IshKebab 2y ago
In my experience the only bias against hiring ICs over 40 (at least in the UK) is * They tend to get stuck on old technologies that nobody uses any more. I don't really care about your Perl skills, sorry. * They expect higher salaries. If you keep up to date with your skills (Rust, Typescript, Nix, etc.) and aren't precious about your salary increasing forever then I don't think there's an issue. I've worked with plenty of very skilled ICs into their 60s.
- jghn 2y ago
  It's not just the UK. As someone who is themselves in the same age range, as a hiring manager it's been eye opening to see the clusters of resumes from older candidates. It continues to boggle my mind how many resumes out there are people who have spent the last 20+ years working on the same set of problems, using the same tech. The reason a lot of these people aren't getting jobs is not that they're old. It's that they've stagnated to a degree I would not have thought possible. Meanwhile there are people out there who are staying relevant *and* bringing extra wisdom to the table. Those people get hired.
  - cluoma 2y ago
    What would you look for to see if somebody is 'staying relevant'? Side projects? Personally, I would like to explore new technologies, and am still excited to learn, but feel limited by what is actually needed/required in my day-to-day which is unlikely to change.
    - jghn 2y ago
      It's more just that your day to day *should* change over the course of 15-20 years. What I'm referring to are situations like people who have current day to days that read exactly the same as it did in the early aughts. For instance poking at pre-generics Java to parse XML files, populating some enterprise beans, and pushing to a web page using whatever the heck framework was in vogue back then. There's nothing wrong with someone turning their brain off and working in that role for 20 years. But they shouldn't be surprised if their experience is completely irrelevant in the modern job market. If one wants to develop new experiences and their job won't provide that over a long period of time (say 5-10 years of employment, not every 6 months!) then it's time to consider the tradeoffs you're making.
    - IshKebab 2y ago
      In my experience technologies that were popular in the past but are basically dead now are a red flag. Perl, Pascal, Smalltalk, maybe even Java and C at this point, if they don't know anything newer.
yodsanklai 2y ago
Probably depends on the company. I think it's not in those big tech companies where everything is quite standardized. In my case, besides my manager, most of the guys discussing my promotion wouldn't even know me personally. Evaluation is very factual. It's more about picking the right projects so you can check all the boxes, also not pissing off colleagues. Same goes for interviewing. I passed several FAANG interviews when I was 45. I just practiced Leetcode like anybody else. Leetcode has its flows, but solving leetcode problems isn't out of reach for an older candidate. Could be harder to find the time to practice, but solving problems in interview situation is a matter of practice. The problems are pretty much known in advance. Edit: Now that I'm an interviewer, I really just ask my questions, and check boxes based on the candidate performance. We're also trained to avoid biases and so on... That being said, I very rarely see "older" candidates despite the constant reminder we're an inclusive place.
meowfly 2y ago
I don't know if by promotions you mean into ic tree also, but it's definitely there for management. My boss who is probably a decade older than me is very much hinting I'm making a mistake if I don't move into management at my age. I think there is probably some bias against promoting a young manager over an older one. I'm currently a team lead and I've resisted a management role. I just don't like managing (or being a team lead), but I'm aware lots of people do jobs they don't like. So we'll see.
- willseth 2y ago
  Do you think you might like management if you knew it didn’t have to be permanent? Highly recommend Charity Majors’ blog about this if you haven’t already https://charity.wtf/2017/05/11/the-engineer-manager-pendulum/amp/ https://charity.wtf/2017/05/11/the-engineer-manager-pendulum...
parpfish 2y ago
interesting that in the US age 40 is precisely when protections for age discrimination kick in

stickfigure 2y ago

Maybe I'm misreading, but this sounds like a defeatist take. Why would a 50yo be slower? I'm in my early 50s and at the absolute top of my game. I'm a principal eng at a medium-ish company and spend a lot of my time mentoring the "kids" and providing direction to engineers that don't have the same well of experience to draw on. I would naturally assume that an IC in their 40s or 50s is much faster than someone in their 20s. But that assumes they've actually been doing IC work. I've had a lot of interviews with people that are very experienced on paper but struggle in the pairing interview; whatever they were doing before, it wasn't hands-on-keyboard work. If you enjoy programming I don't see why there's any limit other than senility or death.

yodsanklai 2y ago
> Why would a 50yo be slower? Well, our intellectual abilities decline as we get older. I don't know at what age effects become apparent but it's unavoidable so maybe i'm a bit defeatist indeed :) In my case, I can feel my memory isn't as good as it used to be and I do feel slightly slower to pick up things. I don't think it affects my job though. Performance isn't unidimensional. Regarding being faster than someone in their 20s, it really depends on what task (and which someone!). Lots of the things I work on are rather new. For instance, if I'm writing Rust or using some internal tools, I'm not at much of an advantage compared to my 25 years old colleague unfortunately. In any case, I try to not worry too much age in general. I do my job the best I can, I treat older and younger colleagues alike and just hope everybody else does the same.
- askvictor 2y ago
  I've noticed the same as I get older; I think/hope the main compensation is that, despite being slower on the low-level tasks, the accumulated wisdom you've got means that you're better at the higher level stuff.
michaelgburton 2y ago
A buddy of mine introduced me to the concept pair of Fluid and Crystallized Intelligence. That's the short answer to your question. An older dev will have more accumulated experience and will be able to make decisions based on experience much better, but a younger dev will adopt new tools and learn new frameworks faster, and the latter tends to be the heavier load for the average job-lifetime (say 2-5 years) in the modern tech industry.