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Ask HN: Is ageism in tech still a problem?

• MongooseStudios 1y ago
  Job boards aren't the problem. The problems begin and end within the boundaries of companies. ATS, recruiter, hiring manager, 6 30-60 minute interviews. Those things are the problem. If I had the money I could go hire a half dozen solid software engineers and at least 2 solid DevOps/SRE types today. I'm betting people in other fields could do the same. And yet, good people remain unemployed and scared.
  • major505 1y ago
    Everybody want their company to be a google where you are willing to waste that mauch time to get hired. In the end, HR hiring team fails to recruit because in makes the process to expensive for candidates, and the CEOS hire more HR recruitment becasue they think the problem is the lack of people to hire. HR needs to justify the salary, and makes hiring more a pain in the ass, feeding the vicious cycle. I miss the times where HR only responsabily was to process salary payment.
• tuyguntn 1y ago
  Yes, when 50 years old applies as a senior engineer, 25 years old senior engineers get uncomfortable. You might not notice it in any public conversation, but there is still a resistance: * will they be on-call? * can they work long hours? * how do I delegate to them? * are they going to resist new tech?
  • HeyLaughingBoy 1y ago
    How much experience does it take to be "senior" in that case? Has the 25 y-o engineer been working for 10 years or are they just diluting the "senior" term?
    • Nextgrid 1y ago
      From my experience the "senior" term has been significantly diluted in the zero-interest-rate period.
      • disgruntledphd2 1y ago
        Yeah people started calling me senior when I had 3 years of data experience so I totally agree.
  • adamredwoods 1y ago
    Recently, I've had a co-worker be "okay" with alerts in the middle of the night. I refused because I have to drive my child to school at 7.30am.
    • paxys 1y ago
      This is really the crux of it. Companies want to hire young engineers without responsibilities so they can burn them out. And there's a long line of new grads who will happily fit into that culture.
    • carlosjobim 1y ago
      If your kids school is more important than your job is, that only means your job is extremely unimportant. Like my job. Your kid is better off not going to school for a day, or arriving late. They're not doing anything important in school. Depending on company, maybe they need to hire people to do important things and have responsibility for important things. Somebody who would prioritize things like driving their kids to school over that is a no-hire. They should work a job which is less important, like I myself do.
      • abeppu 1y ago
        I think one seriously broken thing is that every company seems convinced their work is important, and scales their sense of how important work items are relative to the company as a whole. Orgs and teams do the same. You can be on a team that runs a service that's a small part of the overall company product offering, which may be a convenience rather than mission-critical to its clients, who themselves may be doing something BS, and that team may still want you to wake up at 3AM when something alerts. Making a blanket statement that just because a job wants you to wake up at 3AM means it must be important (nevermind more important than family responsibility) places way too much trust in the judgement of employers.
        • carlosjobim 1y ago
          All of us here have been to school and know how utterly unimportant it is. If not, that is a serious case of amnesia. It's a storage unit for kids, guarded by the most dim-witted people from the community. So when somebody says they can't work because of their kid's school, then either that person does not care about their job, or the company is asking for something out of line. It's either of those two options, depending on what actually is the job. My job is unimportant, so I can leave the phone off at night. If I had an important job, then the case would be different.
  • mindtricks 1y ago
    This is basically ageism. It's not accurate and should be coached out. Flip the question for a 25 year old: * Will they be on on-call or out partying with their friends? * Are they committed to the work or will they hop to another company once trained? * Are they able to work within our codebase or just jump to the next hot thing? These types of questions are ridiculous for both sides.
    • tuyguntn 1y ago
      > should be coached out No, it won't work. Biologically, 25 years old without a family responsibilities will not get it anyway. If you are 25 years old, single and your friends are similar to you, what would you do? Most I know are working 12-14 hour/day, because they eat breakfast, lunch and dinner at work.
      • disgruntledphd2 1y ago
        Worth noting that this basically doesn't work long term, and is much easier to maintain if it's different work (a job and a new enterprise). You'll notice that you become less efficient over time. I recommend taking a long weekend and coming back and keeping to 8 hours. It's a great discipline if you want to go further in your career.
  • mixmastamyk 1y ago
    As the fifties version of myself, I won’t need to be on-call or work long hours because I did it right the first time. Reply to below: Of course. But if you plan ahead properly, it will be extremely rare. To the point where it isn’t economical to have people on call. Because the downtime was caused by a meteor or maybe AWS. If it is truly mission critical, have a night shift.
    • tuyguntn 1y ago
      > I did it right the first time. Maybe you are writing libraries/frameworks? Any service running on production can fail anytime, whether you did everything right or not, things break sometimes.
• yieldcrv 1y ago
  A lot of it involves masking and blending in by the candidate You can easily find an older person ranting against the idea of using full stack javascript, unaware of the V8 changes while still having some valid criticisms But then wonder if their rejection is ageism, instead of the rant just one example
  • eloisant 1y ago
    I think staying curious and keep learning regardless of your age is key. You don't really want to be stuck in whatever tech was popular during your 20's or 30's and ignore or reject whatever is new.
    • IAmBroom 1y ago
      That's true for the hiree - but it's not an answer for the hiring group. How do they effectively discriminate for candidates who are apt in current tech, AND will stay current in upcoming years?
      • Simulacra 1y ago
        Show your work
  • IAmBroom 1y ago
    I can provide more than just one example to back up any prejudice you can think of. Treating a person as part of a group is the problem. And when you are trying to isolate one person out of many, like for a job hire, it's not easy to avoid mass-filtering to speed it up.
    • yieldcrv 1y ago
      There is tons of overfitting done by hiring managers
    • sokoloff 1y ago
      > Treating a person as part of a group is the problem. Yes, but it's efficient and effective in a large number of cases. Those with no programming experience is a group. Those who just graduated a CS program is a group. Fresh bootcamp grads are a group. People with 5+ years of experience with your tech stack are a group. Is there someone with no programming experience who would turn out to be great? Of course; none of us were born with programming experience, but most people are practical enough to not bat an eye when we use past experience as a proxy to quickly pre-filter the possible candidate pool.
• xnorswap 1y ago
  There's a huge ageism problem, always has been. I tried to avoid getting into software development because I knew it would be an issue one day. There's isn't a quick fix or easy solution.
• josefritzishere 1y ago
  The resistance I most often see is that companies are often hesitant to interview older candidates based on their assumptions around expected salary. This completely agnostic as to their actual fit for the role.
  • bob1029 1y ago
    I've always been willing to start with zero compensation or benefits until <milestone> to demonstrate my value and build trust. It is rare that a company will take you up on that offer though. It really highlights what the money is actually about and how tribal "professional" "business" can be.
    • sulam 1y ago
      That would honestly be an extreme red flag for me if I was considering hiring you. As an older engineer myself, I would never roll the dice like that — my contributions in this industry are public and I have the network to show for it. My time is worth something to me, even if it’s not worth anything to anyone else, and the older I get the more that’s true.
      • bob1029 1y ago
        Perhaps we are looking at a good example of the tribal scenario here.
• vergessenmir 1y ago
  get work done, look younger and slice off the first 5 years of your experience because it is "not relevant". I look about 10-12 years younger so I am able to slip under the radar but it makes me wonder how my peers who look visibly their age fare? The job market is london, sector: Hedge funds, asset mangement tech etc.
  • michaelt 1y ago
    Do you list the year you graduated on your CV?
    • Sohcahtoa82 1y ago
      I do, but if they're being ageist, it means less because I didn't finish my degree until I was 32 because I wasted the first 9 years of my adult life before starting college.
  • drillsteps5 1y ago
    Your application and resume will go through multiple systems and viewed and assessed by 3 to 5 people before anybody can even see your (presumably younger) face. In the resume, you can remove your experience prior to certain date (which is recommended anyways as it makes your resume shorter and very few employers care what you did 15 years ago), but you do have to list your education and most ATS systems require graduation dates. Even if you do manage to omit the dates, if you were senior developer or architect in the very the first position from 12 years ago that you have on your resume, the recruiter/hiring manager will be able to put 2 and 2 together. All the advice I've heard from the career/job search/whatever coaches/advisors was to not try to hide your age but use it your advantage. Trying to hide your age doesn't just make you looking silly, it might create an impression that you're hiding something more serious. But yeah, looking younger and healthier definitely doesn't hurt, not just in job search but in life in general.
• drillsteps5 1y ago
  Multiple issues. One of them is reluctance of younger hiring managers to hire older people. At 35 you don't necessarily see advantages that hiring 50 year old will bring you, as you don't have experience to be able to see that. Not sure if there is a "solution" for that as a 35 yo hiring manager will probably have an easier time managing under-35 individual contributor comparing to a 50 yo one. Different perspectives, experiences, etc. So by hiring younger IC the manager makes a correct decision. Sucks for us older folks but that's life.
  • guywithahat 1y ago
    The irony is working with inexperienced senior engineers has absolutely made me see the benefits of hiring someone who's 50, the person who can't see the issue is the less-technical management doing the hiring who thinks having a PhD is the highest form of experience anyone can have.
  • ChrisMarshallNY 1y ago
    When the CEO is 28, it is the head where the fishrot starts. In The Days of Old, the folks running the corporation were almost always in their 50s. They might have been prejudiced towards folks my age (60s), but they didn't have issues with hiring what are now considered "older" folks (40s and 50s), with the only issue being cost (they might be ageist, simply for cost reasons). The prejudice from younger folks is cultural, not cost. They don't want people around that make them feel uncomfortable. Many younger folks at tech companies, these days, make boatloads of money. It's not about cost. From where I stand, it looks like a lot of modern tech companies are establishing a "college, but being paid" culture. It seems that many modern tech companies resemble idealized college campuses, more than traditional professional production environments.
    • drillsteps5 1y ago
      I agree that mismatch is cultural, and my point was that there might not be a solution because it might not necessarily be a problem. 50yo is MUCH LESS likely to work well with bunch of under-30 yo, esp, if the leadership is all in that age. Is the company that much more likely to blow up and go out of business due to inexperience of the younger guys at the helm? Perhaps, but it's their company and that's how you gain experience in the first place. And IF it blows up in their face they'll learn (hopefully) and their 2nd, 3rd, 4th shots will be so much better. 50yo+ just need to stay away from these places to avoid becoming collateral damage. We don't have our entire lives ahead of us to make up for the lost time and wages. So not getting hired there is not really a problem. Of course it leaves 50yo+ with fewer places to work and earn salary. Sucks, believe me, I know.
• AnimalMuppet 1y ago
  In my sub-field (embedded systems), I don't see it. There are companies that see the value of 40 years of experience. (And there are plenty that don't...) But the vibe I'm hearing lately is that junior engineers can't get jobs, because AI. I don't know if that reflects the reality (I haven't been trying to find a job as a junior in quite a while), but people are complaining about that these days.
  • prideout 1y ago
    There's less ageism in embedded systems because older folks are more likely to be experienced with a lean & mean tech stack (for example vanilla C programming).
  • torginus 1y ago
    I did a lot of microcontroller and FPGA stuff in college a decade ago (and most of the stuff like Verilog and Cortex chips or RTOSes weren't exactly new then), but since then have drifted away from the field - I tried to get back into it as a hobby, and checked out what's new, and it seems to me that surprisingly has changed.
• jasonthorsness 1y ago
  I observed engineers at all ages at many levels and roles (manager vs. IC) at Microsoft. To the point of us having retirement parties. I am sure ageism is real but part of the meme of "no software engineers over 40" is just the population curve of developers making them less common. And probably there's something broken with the recruiting pipelines.
  • jghn 1y ago
    Yes. People don't take into account the growth in the number of developers over time. When the ageism discussion started, there was a huge growth in the developer market, which meant that a disproportionate number of devs were on the younger side of the spectrum. Now that we're a few decades into the conversation, that initial glut of devs are the greybeards. Thus it appears that there's more old people rolling around. Is there ageism? I'm sure. As an old, I'm going to avoid companies that give off a younger, coder bro type vibe. Partially because I assume they're more likely to be ageist. But mostly because even if they *didn't* have an ageist viewpoint and hired me, I know it's just not where I personally want to be.
• p1dda 1y ago
  I'm 53 (physician) and would like to pursue a second career in programming but realising it's really hard.
  • deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
  • blindriver 1y ago
    Honestly, pursue it as a hobby but don't try to make a career out of it. This is the worst hiring environment I've seen since the dotcom bust, and there are tens of thousands of fresh CS grads that are unemployed. If you want to go to school because you're interested, then that's cool. But to think you can make a living out of it when you're 30 years older than the tens of thousands of kids that you're competing against... I really don't think it's worth it unless you want to form your own startup that is medical-related.
    • p1dda 1y ago
      Thank you for your insight about the hiring environment! What are your thoughts about getting involved in an open-source project or something else to get some more experience?
      • blindriver 1y ago
        definitely go for it, it's a great way to get recognition. However, it's a terrible way to learn because getting a mentor to teach you how to make changes will be very tough. But if you can, it's great because it's real work and real code changes.
        • p1dda 1y ago
          I have mentored and been mentored and it's a tough process but necessary. It's what is stopping a lot of people learning a new profession later in life in my opinion, who would want to mentor an older person? I mentor young people with lots of energy and they are often very eager to learn.
• huijzer 1y ago
  According to statistics and people I met at conferences, young people are also not getting hired in tech. So maybe nobody is?
• foreigner 1y ago
  I see lots of ads for "Senior Engineer" that want 3 years of experience.
  • layer8 1y ago
    You could ask if they’d also be interested in a 10x “Senior Engineer”. ;)
  • Sohcahtoa82 1y ago
    Better than "Entry-level" that also wants 3 years of experience.
• georgeecollins 1y ago
  Just wondering, was the issue not enough job hunters using the site or was the issue that not enough companies wanted to post listings. If the latter, I would guess that lots of people in tech recognize the problem, but not many companies (sincerely) want to do anything about it for all the reasons people here will give: worries about salary expectations, worries about availability to work long hours, less experienced people feeling uncomfortable managing more experienced people.
  • leonagano 1y ago
    It was the latter. Companies didn't want to pay for listings
• aipatselarom 1y ago
  >I launched a job board [...] Weird, it says there your wife did.
  • leonagano 1y ago
    At the time I was an employee. They didn't like people launching side-projects, so, I involved my wife in the process. She's PR, so, she sent it to the media. I did the rest, being developing, contacting companies and talking to over 40s.
    • aipatselarom 1y ago
      Thanks for the explanation. I know it doesn't matter to the topic at had, but I actually went on and read all about your project, and that caught my attention. :)
• rootnod3 1y ago
  I would wager that it will get better soon. Once the LLM/Agent hype has died down and a few years of junior developers went down the drain untrained and unmentored, the demand for experienced seasoned developers will rise again. This is not to dismiss LLMs entirely, but they always get touted as “they can do ABC, as long as an experienced dev reviews the output”. And with LLMs hindering the growth of juniors in one way or another, I can definitely see a market for “senior” developers down the road.
  • ryandrake 1y ago
    I'm looking forward to a nice part time side-hustle during retirement, cleaning up vibe-coded messes. In a few decades, we might have an industry full of 20-40 year old software engineers who don't know how computers work and don't know how to write or fix code beyond begging an LLM to do it and hoping it produces something that works. Maybe I'll be wrong, and in 2050, there won't even be human software engineers anymore, but I'm not so sure that will be the case.
    • deleted 1y ago
      [deleted]
    • eldaisfish 1y ago
      you see this in other engineering fields as well. Government, for example, is chock-full of people designing renewable energy policy who have never even seen a solar panel and barely know how one works. There are engineering companies where wind turbine designers have never climbed a wind turbine or seen one in operation. This is how you get disasters like Ocean Gate where management would rather hire fresh college grads than listen to experienced hires point out mistakes.
  • knutzui 1y ago
    I've seen this take on LLMs many times, and I don't share the certainty that LLMs hinder the growth of engineers using them. Sure, if you want to use an LLM to produce code that works you need to have enough knowledge and experience to be able to review and, if necessary, request changes. However, another (IMO, even more powerful) aspect of LLMs, is their utility as a learning tool. They excel at imparting knowledge about new concepts, because they act as a personalized teacher. I find it doubtful that use of LLMs will result in less experienced and knowledgeable engineers in the future.
• jeffreyrogers 1y ago
  I think most of the ostensible age discrimination is explained by the tech industry's massive growth over the past 50 years (means more young people are hired than old people because they have the skills).
  • drillsteps5 1y ago
    As well as overproduction of CS grads in the last 10/15 years. Much like law grads a generation earlier. Wonder who's next, MDs perhaps?..
    • jocaal 1y ago
      Not a chance for MD's. MD's are the only degree where jobs are guaranteed, but graduation is not. They will always have a shortage.
• mixmastamyk 1y ago
  It likely still exists but the economy for software dev is so bad as to not be a major factor. In other words, it’s not ageism when one can’t even get an interview in the first place. Assuming you’ve kept your resume concise and removed education dates, etc. Which I have for the last twenty years or so, since the turn of the century! cough
• ldjkfkdsjnv 1y ago
  Yeah ageism is a huge issue, even in early 30s, working as a regular programmer is met with suspicion and looked down upon. Not only that, young engineers will be build whatever without questioning the value, business people prefer this. They dont want an engineer raising product questions also, it is true that technology moves quickly, startups dont need experts in tech thats no longer bleeding edge. large old school companies still do, so the number of companies that are viable employers decreases
  • sfpotter 1y ago
    It really depends onthe circles you run in. This isn't true everywhere.
  • mixmastamyk 1y ago
    Feels a bit cynical. Raising questions is incredibly valuable for a company as long as it is done in a positive manner. It’s what they tell us is the main benefit to DEI, and you can tell whether they are serious if they include older folks in their program or not.
    • ldjkfkdsjnv 1y ago
      its valuable for the company, not for the line managers/product managers
      • mixmastamyk 1y ago
        A successful business accrues to everyone, as long as you’re not obsessed with taking absolute credit. I’ve only worked with one or two such dysfunctional folks in my entire career.
• ferguess_k 1y ago
  I think we as humans will always have ageism or other biases.
  • mixmastamyk 1y ago
    Good point, like asking if racism or sexism still exists. Gets more publicity every year but fundamentally we are still a tribal species.
• bsenftner 1y ago
  Ageism is looking a one tree in a forest of extremely similar problems. We have a othering at scale issue in the species. It's fundamental. It needs to be recognized as an issue of, a problem with self determinism itself, the othering of those we are not intimate is a serious species-wise issue. There is another science here, waiting for formalization.
  • pixelready 1y ago
    Yes, I think othering at scale is the root of most of our societal ills. It was likely a useful heuristic when we were sparsely spread out tribal creatures, similar to always assuming the rustling in the bush was a tiger and not just the wind. In a tightly woven, interdependent system like modern civilization, it is placing a huge strain on us structurally as well as psychologically. Add to this it is an easy exploit for power ala “my leadership is great, <out group> over there is your problem”, combined with mass media platforms and the whole thing is cracking at the edges. How do we mitigate this though? It seems to take a massive concerted effort for a person to overcome those implicit biases. I was speaking with a family member the other day who is clearly primed by media in their country to assume that all current structural ills are caused by immigrants, and when probed about people of that same group that were actually in her life, she said “Well, Mr. so and so that works at the school is just a lovely decent hardworking man.” But she couldn’t take the leap that there are statistically more Mr. so and so’s in the group than the “bad ones” she was hearing about in the news. I’ve seen this pattern across all of business and politics. Don’t even get me started on the whole “culture fit” hiring standards.
    • bsenftner 1y ago
      There is a multi-level dynamic at play, that I suspect has at it's roots the widespread lack of understanding of effective communications. We are all alone, if not for communications. It is bias in communications, knowledge of the various forms of bias, their methods, and countermeasures that enable individuals and groups to move past argument and towards shared understandings. With shared understanding naturally causes shared compromise and solutions. Without shared understanding, situations degenerate to stalemate, war, welfare states, and economic slave states. Individual self conversation, recognition of it, it's biases and countermeasures lay a foundation for a rational individual. The lack of formal and public recognition of self conversation itself is hurdle one. Once that is recognized, a foundation for a rational public can be considered. Then communicating with others inter-personally, with peers, spouses, coworkers, managers, authorities and strangers. Pairs, small groups, larger groups, and audience dynamics: these all have biases, which are often magnifications of the same bias at a self conversation level. New bias forms are here too, and they must also be recognized, understood, and countermeasures established. This is all nothing but communicating, but doing so effectively, causing understanding in others, and gaining understanding from those less communication-ally skilled. Now let's take these biases and add in mass media, social media, and all the network effects they bring to the communication situation. Strangely enough, yet again the countermeasures that operate at lower levels continue to function here - except now we're dealing with the public. countermeasures now require public education. I think by spreading knowledge of interpersonal and self conversation biases, their countermeasures immediate and positive effect lay the foundation for widespread respect of effective communications. After all, the lack of it often only needs to be pointed out for people to consider the ease of adopting knowledge about and the countermeasures that enable more success communicating, which directly correlates to actual success. And that is with everything a person does, because this perspective begins with one's self conversation, reducing the bias there, first. That generates a more rational person, more aware, more active. Push this to network effects, and now we're talking societal change. It's a plan to impress secondary considerations on the general public, because that's the primary countermeasure in communication issues: consider further.
• deadbabe 1y ago
  There is all kinds of ‘isms in tech. Pretty much the only people who don’t have to worry are young straight white males. I suspect before ageism disappears it will first swing the other way where older tech workers snub young people entering the industry writing them off as vibecoders who don’t know anything and are easily replaced with an AI.
  • chucksmash 1y ago
    You just did an ism...
    • dragonwriter 1y ago
      Observing the aggregate effect of discrimination is not discrimination.
    • deadbabe 1y ago
      pessimism
• jimt1234 1y ago
  I used to work with a guy that was known for dressing nice, very formal. Back in the 2000s, he would wear button-down shirts, slacks, nice shoes; he stood out for a software nerd. Anyway, when I saw him recently, he was dressed in jeans and flip-flops, wearing a t-shirt. I asked him what's with the casual attire. He just said, "Trying to keep my job." Being an older dude in this field as well, I know what he's talking about.
  • iknowSFR 1y ago
    Wasn’t the same true of his original attire selection, though? If he wore jeans in the 2000s, he would have faced consequences. So he wore slacks. What’s really changed?
    • saulpw 1y ago
      As the parent comment said, he stood out for dressing nicely those years ago. Wearing jeans in the 2000s was not just tolerated or accepted, it was expected. I remember feeling wary of engineers who dressed up for interviews then, like they were trying too hard.
      • iknowSFR 1y ago
        Ah, I interpreted as a reflection of general work cultures. My 2000s years were always formal.
      • Sohcahtoa82 1y ago
        My general belief for interviews is to dress one step up from what you'd be wearing on a day-to-day basis at that job. I wear shorts and a t-shirt (often a DEFCON or BSidesPDX shirt) usually, so I'd wear jeans and a solid color t-shirt or possibly a polo to an interview, though I haven't done an in-person interview for a job since 2016. For remote interviews, I'm in sweatpants and a polo. In the early 2000s, I wasn't a tech worker yet, but I always assumed engineers were wearing khakis and a polo, so I would have shown up to an interview with black slacks and a button-up shirt, maybe even a tie.
      • 1y ago
• dzonga 1y ago
  I would rather work with "old" engineers rather than 25/30 year old "senior" engineers. Places with older engineers means: 1. things are done properly 2. less to break 3. no need to be on call 4. excellent WLB (no grind n burnout culture) 5. excellent mentoring and learning opportunities 6. sniper / laser focus on business fundamentals / making money rather than making noise on the internet streets
  • flustercan 1y ago
    None of these things are related to age or amount of experience. Someone with 20 years of mediocre experience will be mediocre, and they may also have a false sense of their own ability because they've managed to scrape by for so long.
  • pyb 1y ago
    Agree with 1-4, 5 and 6 not so correlated with age in my experience.
  • thorin 1y ago
    Would agree with this to an extent, however most younger managers would not agree, as they are "agile" and have deadlines to worry about.
• paxys 1y ago
  It isn't really a solvable problem as long as there is no standardized/regulated tech industry. Companies want coders who will fit into the "culture" – work whatever hours they need to, be on call 24x7, chase the newest fads, accept fantasy money, "move fast and break things" etc. There is an unlimited stream of new grads who will happily accept all this. Older people meanwhile don't have the patience or have other responsibilities in life. Go into companies and industries where this culture isn't the norm, however, and you'll find teams full of 40-50+ year old software engineers. Defense, aerospace, government, construction, medical tech, research labs, education.
• softwaredoug 1y ago
  I experience it differently. As an IC that’s relatively respected it my field, I think my seniority seems like a threat to some leaders. Because my word carries weight and I tend to be less obsequious with little to lose in these interactions. I have less of a problem to saying “the emperor has no clothes”. Younger ICs don’t have this luxury. They go along despite their reservations and often feel they don’t know better. Older ICs suffer fools much less (life is short, and older ICs have a well calibrated BS detector. Some bad leader don’t like that!). I have no problem interacting with younger ICs and even embrace my Dad-ness and Dad humor. I like mentoring and growing others, and I think it’s important to advocate for less experienced to get the lionsshare of the glory and attention. For hiring, I just am not open about my age and mostly interact with people virtually. I don’t have my early irrelevant jobs and don’t show my graduation dates. So I haven’t seen it as a problem.
  • ldjkfkdsjnv 1y ago
    yeah young business people dont want older engineers that can call them out around. they want other young clueless engineers to just build
    • softwaredoug 1y ago
      Possibly, but I’ve noticed this is independent of age.
      • Nextgrid 1y ago
        But age and/or proven experience (and not merely the "senior" title that everyone nowadays has) is a good proxy to be able to do this.
  • softwaredoug 1y ago
    To add to this I think it’s important for seniors to have a lot of humility, be open to new ideas, and not be one of these leaders! Have a lot of skepticism towards our ego and question whether we’re acting on status or actually what’s best.
  • 1y ago
• cornhole 1y ago
  yeah, you can’t exploit old people as easily as young people
• philosophty 1y ago
  There's a much bigger cohort of aging programmers than there was even 10 years ago, so a lot more of them are the best programmers available.
• hackthemack 1y ago
  I started working in IT in the 90s and I would say "yes" but I realize my observations do not carry scientific rigor. It would require knowing the thoughts and practices of millions of people. Such is the curse of social science. I do not think most people think of themselves as being "ageist", but it manifests in their actions. Usually a department will be filled with a group of young people, and in the interview process, someone will say, "I do not think this person would be a good culture fit". But they do not realize that they just do not want an old person because they seem different then what is already in the team. I also have a hunch, that "leet code tests", in the hiring process has a hidden agenda of weeding out "older people". Those kind of tests are usually on knowledge one might have learned in a college course and subsequently forgot about. Or, if you are juggling a family, you may not have time to go do all day knowledge crunch study to get the algorithms into your head. Companies do not want to come right out and say "we do not want to hire old people", but they selfishly want the most value for their buck. They want to drive down wages and extract value. What is more valuable to a company? A middle aged programmer who has to go home at 5pm to help take care of the kids? Or do they get more value out of a young person just out of college who has something to prove? I have seen perfectly reasonable people pass over hiring older people because they do not want to hire someone who might know more than they do, or someone who might push back on decisions. They want someone young who will just do what they say. As a society, I do not think we address such issues well.
• awb 1y ago
  IMO, it depends. I’ve worked with hundreds of startups over the last 20 years. The most significant trend I’ve seen is cultural cohesion. Some startups have a young, energetic culture. Some have an experienced, veteran culture. Some have a quirky, trendy culture. But overall many companies seem to value and attract more of the same culture they already have in place. So to a degree, I’d say yes ageism exists in certain companies that don’t value experience as highly as other qualities.
  • inetknght 1y ago
    > I’ve worked with hundreds of startups over the last 20 years. That's averaging 5 startups every year. How can you get good experience, or even truly understand a business, if you're averaging just around two months at a company or multiple companies in the same period?
    • projectazorian 1y ago
      He said "worked with" not "worked at." Likely as a contractor. And if so it's not uncommon for some projects to be very short while others might take 10-20% of your time for 2-3 years. Plenty of time to gather domain knowledge especially if clients are clustered in the same industry.
• m0d0nne11 1y ago
  Ageism is universal and blatant - nobody's even bothering to disguise it.
• harel 1y ago
  I'm in the UK and I don't feel ageism. Never did. I'm usually the oldest person in the team (49), and I've worked with people older than me. I'm a freelance contractor so I move around a fair bit. I do feel like my experience is appreciated.
• bluGill 1y ago
  There is still a problem that engineering is often seen as a "young persons field", and once you get some experience you will then move to management. Nothing wrong with management - we do need it, and a lot of what we have is really bad (if engineers make good engineers is debatable...), but that means there are less older engineers around which will skew data.
• indigosplash 1y ago
  [dead]
• blindriver 1y ago
  I don't think it's age. I think it's energy level and attitude. I'm in my 50s and had no problems getting hired 3+ years ago at a FAANG as well as a handful of other companies. Granted it was a good hiring environment, but I also took 3 years off and I had to work hard to Leetcode back into shape. I still have a lot of energy and it comes across in my interviews. I don't have an ego, I know that just because I have >30 years experience doesn't mean that I know more than my coworkers that are 30 years younger than me. I work hard and try to earn my paycheck every day and I'm not quibbling over lunch menus and complaining about the ingredients used at the cafeteria. I think as long as you not only have the technical skills but can also sell yourself as a good teammate with matching energy, it shouldn't be a problem. I think younger folks respect people that can match their energy and motivation and don't want to be dragged down by know-it-alls or slow workers.
  • deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
• rcpt 1y ago
  One of the things that I think gets overlooked is sample bias. People in their 50s who are engineers often started coding in the 90s. And back then it was a much less common career path.
• jacknews 1y ago
  yes
• pragmatic 1y ago
  If I were to start another company, I'd try to hire only 40+ people. - I've found junior engineers super resistant to new tech. Very rigid thinking, there is only way way to do something bc that's all they've ever learned, very religious about tech stacks, crazy strong opinions based on crazy limited experience - lack of work ethic, no call, no show, procrastinating right up until the deadline and then expecting code reviews, merges/releases to work on their schedule -tendency to fuck around and play games etc all day (see above) -limited experience with people from different backgrounds, culture etc.
  • pragmatic 1y ago
    Older people have families, hobbies outside of work etc. So they want to get in, get it done, go home. This usually leads to stuff getting done at a steady cadence. This is a bit sarcastic of course, seeing other ridiculous comments about older engineers. There's something to be said about people who just want to get their work done in reasonable time with reasonable quality and not chase every new fad like like a dog with ADHD in a squirrel habitat.
• 0xbadcafebee 1y ago
  Ageism is a cultural issue. Some cultures venerate older people, some shun them. So it will vary. There isn't one "tech" culture. If you're talking about tech companies in the United States dominated by white males, ageism has been (and afaik, continues to be) a cultural norm. Changing a culture's norms is incredibly difficult. The only way I've heard about it happening is through massive pressure, from either a large social group vocally pushing against an issue (with consequences), or a large industry spending millions of dollars to advertise something (diamonds, washing machines) and exploiting some other cultural bias to do so. Cultural norms can also change temporarily (we all worked remote during a pandemic and productivity went up, but after that it would seem our productivity went down? and women became industrial workers during WW2, but after that apparently they weren't good enough?). So even if the norm did change temporarily, you need continued pressure to make it stick. I have not heard of any massive cultural pressure to end ageism, so I would not expect it to end.
• sizzzzlerz 1y ago
  Even more. The two primary reasons I believe it harder to find tech jobs when you're older are 1) Your salary demands exceed the budgeted amount for the position 2) You probably aren't willing to work insane hours any more Even if your skill set vastly exceeds that of a wet-behind-the-ears engineer and can work at a far higher level, be more productive, and produce higher quality work, it's almost impossible to make that apparent when interviewing, especially when those doing the interviews are much younger.
  • jghn 1y ago
    > 1) Your salary demands exceed the budgeted amount for the position I've thought about this a lot lately. This is true for the obvious reasons, but it's more true than it seems. As an older, experienced dev I sometimes flirt with the idea of aiming for a mid-level developer job where I can just cruise. I'd expect the paycheck to be proportionately smaller than where I'm at now, but that's fine. But there's no way this would actually work out. Red flags would be raised all over the place at most companies like this. For one, it'd be viewed as a red flag that I'm cool taking that huge paycut. And then of course no one appreciates being told that you want to come in, get a week's worth of work done in a day, and then clock out.
    • UK-Al05 1y ago
      Well if you're not eager to climb the ladder, they have no leverage to make you work hard.
• farazbabar 1y ago
  I am a software engineer in his 50s, with stints in big tech, big bank and fintech with domain expertise in payments, risk, performance engineering, and data. In addition I have led global teams of hundreds of engineers with outcomes that have transformed multiple Fortune 500. I have been unemployed for a year and a half with no light at the end of the tunnel. Most of my network of similarly older professionals and C level executives has either retired or suffering similarly. Thankfully I am rich and still getting deferred executive compensation checks from multiple Fortune 500 companies but I am bored and think I have more to offer. I am working on a couple things to allay my boredom, we shall see if something comes of it.
  • jimt1234 1y ago
    As an engineer also in his 50s, I can relate, based on one concept: "wanting to work" versus "needing to work". I'm definitely not rich, but I could probably retire if I wanted to. I just don't want to. I want to work; I enjoy it. Many of my friends have retired, and they all seem bored to me. However, many/most people need to work to pay the rent, put kids through college, etc. I never really grasped this concept when I was younger, because, back then, it was all need to work. I feel like I'm a better employee now, because I feel like I can be more honest. If a manager says something stupid, I feel totally comfortable checking them on it. When I was younger that wasn't the case. I was always nervous about retribution. However, there's a flip-side to this: a lot of managers don't like to be checked. Also, there's exploitability. When I was younger, I never said no to any proposed work, regardless of how it impacted my "personal time". Now, my attitude is, "Work this weekend? Nope. Get a junior to do that. I'm going surfing this weekend." LOL
    • drillsteps5 1y ago
      Have a good friend, a 68yo guy, with grown-up kids (as in having their own families, houses, careers, etc), just happily hacking away in SQL, Python, building dashboards in PowerBI, learning AWS and bunch of other stuff, as a consultant. He says he'd be bored out of his mind just sitting at home. Who says you can't have role models in your 50s? :)
  • 1y ago
• seethishat 1y ago
  When the 20 something 'senior' engineers and 'consultants' don't know how to test network connectivity by using openssl, telnet and ping, you don't won't to work there. It's more like a day care than college or high school ;) How can a 20 something with very little experience actually consult? Based on what experience?
  • drillsteps5 1y ago
    Had a misfortune of working with 28-30 yo "management consultants" who "taught" best practices to 40-50yo experts in their fields (I'm talking specialists with 15-20-30 years of experience). That was... bizarre.
• kathir05 1y ago
  some say "wisdom comes with age". Though I don't completely agree but won't completely ignore. I see this applies to tech as well. When you start as junior you tinker with boilerplate code. everything seems magical. As you grow learn and becomes wiser, things what seemed magical before become logical After 10 years, surface level saturates. You will start to dig deeper. Things will again start to become magical and then slowly fades into logical. Then you go deeper and again process repeats. More deeper you go, you will find the luxury to shake the surface level toys. Some innovation happens at surface level, but you are deep down still going. There is not end line. You retire when you want to stop. Your choice! But much more still to be explored! Humanity continues! In short, As you grow, go deeper, become wiser, shake the status quo, innovate, repeat. Surface level people will Go gaga. But you don't react because you are still going deeper...
• hintymad 1y ago
  The real threat to a senior IC, in my own experience, is losing their edge, especially in a large company. As they grow more senior, they will spend more time in meetings, writing more docs, aligning more teams, drawing more boxes, tossing around more terms, defining more product features, and talking to more customers. As time goes by, they gain more institutional knowledge and getting better at company dynamics. They know which VPs to trust. They know which squeaky wheels to oil, and which buttons to push. They do everything better, except designing or implementing a challenging system. That is, the senior ICs start to resemble a strong product manager, or an effective director without a team. These are all good - until the company suddenly no longer needs them. Maybe their team has become a cost center. Maybe the project gets into maintenance mode. Or maybe the product has been so stable that the company does not even need more alignment. At that time, the ICs will find that all the institutional knowledge and so-called "leadership" is not that transferrable. And when they go out and interview for a new job, they find that they can't even sketch a solid design. Sadly, I don't have a solution. There are exceptions. I guess it's natural that a senior engineer will gain breadth but also get distracted as they age. What they need is a different kind of depth. They can still be of value to a younger team if they are like a hard-science professor who depends on their PhD students to write papers, yet they can still advise the students as no one else. In industry, my role models are people like Michael Stonebreaker, who can still shape the architectures of modern databases in his 80s. Wernher von Braun of Saturn V rockets, who could come up with new rockets like no one else. Or Kelly Johnson of U-2, who could direct and unblock his engineers with ease. Or Marc Brooker of Amazon, who seems able to go deep into both database and distributed systems to keep coming up with amazing systems. But then, I'm not sure how many people can be talented as those engineers. Or maybe another way is to get domain expertise, like how payment works, how insurance works, how accounting works, and etc?
• giantg2 1y ago
  Ageism is a huge problem, especially for some groups. If you have a disability, you might be stuck at non-terminal levels. This causes the hiring managers to question why someone with over 10 years experience, greying hair, and good creds (masters, multiple certs, etc) is applying for a mid-level role. There must be something wrong if you're not a senior. Well, yeah, that's kind of the definition of a disability.
• segmondy 1y ago
  Yup, and it's rooted in reality too. Older folks might have more wisdom, but MOST, not all of them are slower, it takes them longer to figure out things, learn new things, they are more closed minded. I say this as an older folk clocking 50, I was very open minded to hiring older folks as a younger person and have done many, and I have been burned the most by older folks that interview great, can talk the talk but can't back it up with walk. Now, I'm not saying ALL, just MOST. ... this unfortunately will always be a problem, I'm seeing it now with LLMs, most older folks are very closed minded about it, and younger folks are embracing it. Tomorrow they will be shocked when no one wants to hire them. Such is life. If you're older, keep your skills up to date, be chill, be open minded, and keep hope alive.
  • mixmastamyk 1y ago
    I chase my tail a lot less (with failed refactorings) these days. Can’t help but be much faster than when I did. Tortoise vs. hare.
    • segmondy 1y ago
      I think the challenge is that software is rarely baked in these days, if they can find themselves in a slow moving enterprise environment, most will be fine, but if they are in a "modern" day shop that's always chasing the new shiny framework and library then it's a struggle.
      • mixmastamyk 1y ago
        If folks are telling you that’s dumb, maybe they’re on to something. Or if company has money to burn it could be fun.
• tom_m 1y ago
  Yes absolutely it is. Especially with the whole "vibe coding" - only a youngster would come up with that.
• stonecharioteer 1y ago
  I worked for a month at a place where the median age was 27. I'm 38. I felt tired by their wasted energy. They'd fight over tiny details, have arguments about things that don't matter. Hearing Devs with 3 years working experience tell me they can architect anything fatigued me. They talked about their crazy architecture like it was going to change it all. I left in a month, but I'd have left in a week if I didn't need the money.
• quintes 1y ago
  I am a senior architect with plenty of years behind me, and I can say that as an IC some senior managers love me and some hate me. I will say there is a skew here and sometimes i think the dogs think it’s a turf war. I provide advice and guidance, advisory and technical leadership and it is interesting how sometimes these aren’t received well and the receiver will do what they want. Which makes it interesting because I give advice and then they don’t actually want it. I’m also older and stand up for myself. This is not without its own troubles. I am however thinking about what the next 20 years are gonna look like career, location and opportunity wise as I can see some challenges ahead where I live
• mspool 1y ago
  This isn't just an issue for software engineers and I don't believe it's an issue just in tech, but is more widespread, although I don't have direct evidence of that. What I do know is that I've been on the job market for 16 months and while I've had many interviews and made it through several rounds for multiple positions, that final offer hasn't come yet. The cynic in me says it's because I'm older, white, male and straight. The optimist in me says someone better got the position. Who knows which is true, certainly not me.
• TXAggieTPM 1y ago
  We (Boomers) really don't get credit for the really tough problems we've solved with no cloud, no GPU, 8 bit CPUs and a meg of RAM. We did that when we were young and no one seems to appreciate what we've learned since then. I'm a TPM and there experience is everything if you are horizontal (i.e. silo busting). A potential resource is this Podcast/Site: https://www.itgetslateearly.com/ https://www.itgetslateearly.com/ I fast forward some as the host has a chip on her shoulder but her guests have nuggets. I really need to work out feeding the podcast to an AI Agent to extract those tasty bits!
• kal-el1974 1y ago
  Yes. And also culture-ism. My age is only coincident with the fact that I'm a private person and don't like to do the "company culture" events like dressing up for Halloween or messing around at the office like it's kindergarten. I want to come in, do my work, and go home to my real life and family. I'm not "family" with anyone at work. None of them are related to or depend on me like that.
• huncyrus 1y ago
  Ageism is still relevant, and probably will be. I see - and experience - that, if a senior has more experience than the tech department altogether, then it will cause tensions. Also, most of the self-appointed C* level leaders (rich kid or l33tcode warrior) do not process well if someone has more experience and/or does not agree. As I learned when I rewrote 10+ times my resume, you have to hide your experience and age because anything over 8-10 years is just not relevant anymore, or causes ageism (even ATS/GPT/LLM/AI/BOT give you negative points for the age). I have experienced this firsthand, since I have 20+ YoE.
• chinabison 1y ago
  After suffering a mass layoff last year, one observation points to explicit and endemic ageism: All my former colleagues and reports 15-20 years younger than me landed jobs within a matter of months. Those of us 50+ remain unemployed a year later. It isn't about skills; I was at the top of my game when a layoff robbed me of my livelihood. It isn't a matter of pay. One of my former reports whom I mentored when I was a senior IC left right before the layoff hit with a job offer making as much as I was at the time as a manager. It was even explicitly revealed to me by an insider and former colleague who referred me to one position that I didn't get that the hiring committee wanted to go with someone younger, after which he caught himself and backtracked saying "earlier in their career". I was told on another occasion that I'd make a great addition as a manager or principal IC, but that they were reviewing their needs and deciding to search for someone less senior. Ageism is 100% real.
• Desafinado 1y ago
  There is a lot of generalization in this thread. Most of us have very limited experience that's only applicable to a small region, and likely doesn't apply everywhere. In general, not only in the software industry, people just like younger people more. They're better looking, and they have more energy and enthusiasm. It's a cognitive bias that isn't unlike racism and sexism, it's going to weight the odds in the favour of young people in every industry. And that's setting aside the fact that older people are closer to retirement and unlikely to spend a long time at the company in question.